I have worked on matters with 9,000 claimants. Twelve of them, at most, will ever see the inside of the courtroom during a bellwether. The rest learn what happened the way everyone else does: from a reporter, an analyst, a Facebook group or the defendant's investor call. When I work inside a leadership team for the life of a litigation, the bellwether is the stretch where I earn my keep, and the planning starts about three months before jury selection.
The reporters who'll cover the trial start reading now, and what they find in these weeks shapes the first story they write. I go through everything public about the litigation as if I were still at Dow Jones with a story due: the docket, the key rulings, the MDL website if there is one. Then I write a plain summary of what the case is about and how many people it involves, with every fact tied to a filing or an order. Counsel approves every word. Nothing I write about a case goes out any other way, and I've been doing this long enough that I don't want it to.
We settle who speaks. That person reads the court's orders on publicity and Rule 3.6 again, and every statement we make during trial is checked against them. The reporters get that lawyer's direct number, the trial schedule, the courtroom, and the court's rules on cameras, which are different everywhere. The defendant's communications team is doing exactly the same thing this month. I'd rather our reporters already know us when the trial opens.
Reporters file at the end of each day. They need an accurate account of what happened in court and, if the defendant said something outside the room, a response. Both before deadline. The account is short and factual. It doesn't characterize witnesses or evidence and it never says anything a juror couldn't hear. I was trained as a reporter and I write these the way I would have wanted to receive them: no spin, the exhibit number, the page.
Two statements, written and approved before the verdict. If the plaintiff wins, the statement says what the jury found, in the jury's terms, and what it means for the cases behind it. If the defense wins, the statement is just as calm, says what happens next in the MDL and does not argue with the jury. I have had to send the second kind, and the discipline of having written it in advance is the only reason it went out well.
Analysts write about settlement value. The company frames the result for its investors. Reporters ask the regulator what it plans to do. This is the week our trial summary, with the testimony and exhibits already in the public record, becomes the document reporters go back to. If it doesn't exist, the company's version is the only one available, and I've watched that happen to firms that tried the case beautifully.
Every claimant with a case waiting behind this trial is searching for news about it. What they find tells them whether their lawyers are in control. A short, regular update to claimants during trial, cleared by counsel and saying the same thing we're saying publicly, is part of the plan from the first day. I learned that lesson with 9,000 women who deserved to hear from their own lawyers before they heard it on the radio.