Stepping into High-Profile Litigation
| Author | James F. Haggerty |
| Profession | Lawyer |
| Pages | 97-132 |
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CHAPTER FOUR
Stepping into
High-Prole
Litigation
As we emphasize throughout this book, communications strategy in liti-
gation or other legal dispute should be securely in place well before the
lawsuit actually begins.
But it often doesn’t work that way.
In many cases, the rst thought as to communications strategy
occurs only after the rst reporter has called. Unfortunately, up until
that point, the focus has usually been solely on the legal aspects of the
case, with barely a thought given to the court of public opinion.
In this chapter, we look at what to do when a business executive,
lawyer, or communications professional is thrust into the center of the
media storm. Critical to this effort is a response discipline I call “Con-
trol, Information, Response,” or CIR. Then we look at a high-prole case
that made headlines relatively early in my career to see how we used the
CIR system to begin to turn the tide.
My brother is a plumber, and we often joke that much of the
time it seems we’re in the same business: We can be called at any
moment, it’s usually an emergency, and we both often nd our-
selves knee-deep in “it” before too long.
Several years ago, I faced just such a situation. I returned from
a lunch meeting with a colleague to a somewhat curious voice
mail message. In heavily accented English, a man I did not know
was asking me to call him . . . I think. In fact, in the relatively long
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message, that was about all I understood. While I was listening to
that message, two more voice mails appeared. One of them was
from a lawyer who is a continuing client of mine.
“Jim, you should be getting a call from one of the rm’s clients,
a large foreign company, about a touchy legal matter they have on
the West Coast. Give me a call when you get the chance to discuss
it.”
The next message, just as my client predicted, was from the
general counsel of the foreign company, which was based in New
York. He introduced himself, said he had been referred by my
lawyer client, and asked that I return his call.
No sooner had I listened to that message than the phone rang
again. It was another executive of the foreign company, this time
calling from the West Coast.
“Mr. Haggerty, uh, this is Mr. Agnello.” (This is not his real
name.) His English was far better than the man who left the origi-
nal message.
“Mr. Agnello,” I said, “your general counsel in New York just
left me a message. He was referred . . .”
Mr. Agnello interrupted me.
“Mr. Haggerty, uh, we have a difcult legal problem here. And
a news crew wants to interview me about it.”
“They called you?”
“No, they’re here.”
“Where are they?”
“They are standing right next to me.”
Now I have been called late in the action in many cases, but this
took the cake! I’d like to say I was full of condence as I instructed
Mr. Agnello about what to do, but, again, this was pretty unprec-
edented. Among other things, at this point I knew nothing about
the company, nothing about the issue they faced, or exactly what
the news crew was looking for.
Clearly, the rst thing we needed was time.
“Mr. Agnello,” I said, “here’s what I want you to do. Put me on
hold, escort the camera crew to the nearest conference room, ask
them if they’d like something to drink—coffee or water or what-
ever—and tell them you’ll be right with them. Then come back
and tell me what this is all about.”
I clearly remember Mr. Agnello hesitating for a moment, as if
mulling it over, then thanking me very quickly before putting me
on hold.
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It would have been very easy to make the wrong move in this
situation. I might have instructed Mr. Agnello to politely ask the
camera crew to leave, and if they refused, call security to escort
the crew from the building. That is the usual response when a
trespasser refuses to leave, even one with a video camera and a
daily news slot. But let’s face it, this was exactly what the news
crew wanted! It would have turned the entire proceeding into
a circus—and these things never look good on television. I’m
always reminded of the incident many years ago where, after
NBC was bought by General Electric, David Letterman showed
up at the General Electric headquarters with a basket of fruit,
camera crew in tow. He was met at the door by security guards
who rudely told him to leave (even though he was technically a
General Electric employee at that point). The head security guard
then refused to shake Letterman’s hand and threw his hands over
the television camera lens before throwing the camera crew, and
Letterman, out. It ran on highlight shows for years and still, more
than 30 years later, I remember it fondly (or amusingly).*
Lesson to be learned: hand-over-the-camera-lens never works.
So don’t try it unless every other attempt to deal with the camera
crew showing up at your ofces or facilities has failed.
This case offers a perfect illustration of that principle. Instead of
throwing the camera crew out, we decided to politely escort them
to a comfortable, secure area of the building while we planned
our next move.
While I was on hold with Mr. Agnello and he was escorting
the news crew to the conference room, I quickly did an online
search to see if there was anything written in the past day or so
that would give me an idea as to what this was all about. I found
the following in a small Southern California newspaper:
Man Commits Suicide after Settling Discrimination Claim
A local man hung himself in his garage last night, three days after
settling a racial discrimination lawsuit with his employer . . .
That’s about as far as I got before Mr. Agnello came back on the
phone.
*You can nd a video of that YouTube moment here: https://www.youtube
.com/watch?v=sOEBgSBfko0.
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