Earlier this month, Ken Kyre attended the Annual Fall Seminar presented by the North Carolina Association of Defense Attorneys. It was well attended and had excellent speakers and presentations, including about traumatic brain injuries, recent cases decided by the N.C. Supreme Court and Court of Appeals, procedures in the N.C. Supreme Court, a trucking defense guide to cell phone forensics, and the influence of the “Reptile Theory” in depositions of corporate representatives. (For those unfamiliar with the Reptile Theory, it is (from the perspective of defense counsel and corporate defendants) a plaintiffs’ strategy designed to obtain unusually large verdicts by appealing to jurors’ survival instincts, attempting to have the jurors view the defendant’s conduct as a danger to the community rather than considering what happened to just the plaintiff. It’s a tactic that seeks to bypass logical reasoning and trigger a fear-based survival response in jurors.)

The seminar was informative and helpful.