First Case

The "judge" had planned the accident himself, and used his own car to stage it. He had arranged for someone to drive, and for someone else to get hit. He had even sent out an ambulance to pick up the victim. His Honor, Professor Charles W. Joiner of the University of Michigan's law school, thought he had found a perfect way to get a practical lesson into his students' mock courtroom trials.

He had rounded up about a dozen dramatics students to act out the accident, and he had taken motion pictures of it from four different angles. For one sequence, the camera was behind the driver's seat, as the car moved down Ann Arbor's Monroe Street, sideswiping a pedestrian who stepped out from behind a parked car. The other shots showed what witnesses would have seen from the sidewalks. For the trial, the driver and witnesses saw only the sequences that applied to them. The student lawyers had to prepare their briefs without seeing the movies at all.

By last week, the case of Kelly v. Donaldson had come before Judge Joiner's mock court, with Victim Kelly suing Driver Donaldson for $5,000 in damages. Their lawyers were up against "witnesses" who were just as easily confused by what they had seen on the screen as witnesses of actual accidents usually are.

The witnesses disagreed on how fast the car was going, and how much attention the driver was paying to the road (he had been shown waving to friends). Donaldson's lawyer got a girl witness so mixed up during cross-examination that she began sobbing "I don't know" to questions she had already answered with assurance. Driver Donaldson's mind went completely blank when he finally reached the witness stand, and he wasn't playacting. Said the professor: "A perfect example of retrograde amnesia."

After an hour's debate, the jury of six students was unable to reach a verdict, which was understandable, since both driver and pedestrian were at fault, and witnesses were undependable. Professor Joiner declared the trial a classroom success. "I thought we had a good thing here," said he last week. "Now I'm sure of it."

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