Do Clichéd Statements Make You Look Guilty?

I think so.

I don't have any particular data to back this up, but I am of the opinion that clichéd responses to allegations during legal disputes just make you look guilty, in the same way "No Comment" does.

And the cliché increasingly favored these days is:

"This lawsuit is without merit and we will vigorously defend ourselves."

Indeed, a quick Nexis search reveals that that phrase was used some 600 times in the past year by litigants in various cases (granted, some of these may be quoting the same response).

At the very least, responding in a rote, clichéd manner makes a corporate defendant or litigant look more guilty than it should. With a little thought and a little finesse, a litigant can put together a response that might actually make people believe that the lawsuit just filed is without merit.

Consider this example of how not to respond, from a recent New York Times story on a lawsuit against Credit Suisse Group and Cushman & Wakefield over a failed property investment in Colorado. In two separate paragraphs in the story, we find the following:

[a] Credit Suisse spokesman... said Monday that "we believe the suit to be without merit, and we'll defend ourselves vigorously."

...and:

A Cushman & Wakefield spokesman said: "The allegations are completely without merit, and we will defend ourselves vigorously."

Hmmm. So well coordinated and wooden a response makes me wonder if there isn't something to this lawsuit (and PS -- why does CS find the lawsuit without merit, whilst C&W only finds the "allegations" without merit?).

Part of the problem is the fact that lawyers are trained to answer a legal complaint in court in a very rote manner, i.e.:

ANSWER

1. Denied.

2. Denied.

3. Admitted to the extent my name is, indeed, James F. Haggerty, otherwise denied.

This may be an efficient way of responding to a complaint, but the same technique does little to advance the ball when responding to public reaction to a lawsuit. In a way it reminds me of the old Baltimore Catechism that we parochial schoolchildren all grew up with:

Q: Do you believe this lawsuit is without merit?

A: We believe this lawsuit is without merit and will defend it vigorously.

But what's wrong with this sort of a response, hackneyed though it may be? Well consider another kind of response, from a well known case I've blogged about recently (here and here): the lawsuit by AT&T against Verizon.

Verizon, when faced with an AT&T lawsuit over their "there's a map for that" series of ads, could have responded with a standard cliched statement. Instead, they said something sharper and more interesting, in both court filings and in public:

AT&T did not file this lawsuit because Verizon’s “There’s A Map For That” advertisements are untrue; AT&T sued because Verizon’s ads are true and the truth hurts… AT&T now is attempting to silence Verizon’s ads that include maps graphically depicting the geographic reach of AT&T’s 3G network as compared to Verizon’s own 3G network because AT&T does not like the truthful picture painted by that comparison.

Under intense public attention, AT&T's lawsuit was subsequently withdrawn (see a nice description of the debacle from Seeking Alpha, here).

Now, clearly, particularly at the onset of litigation or when allegations are otherwise first revealed, there is precious little you can say. As famed litigator Ted Wells put it in the new edition of my book In The Court Of Public Opinion, in the early stages of a legal matter "[m]uch of our time is spent dressing up 'No Comment' as a comment."

But that doesn't mean you can't do it well (I blogged about one example of responding well, here).

More on this topic to come...