When the plaintiff’s attorney writes an enormous figure on the courtroom board, most jurors have never seen a number that large attached to a real person. That is the point. The number is not a calculation. It is an anchor.

And the defense that answers it with only “that’s excessive” has already lost the damages phase. A shrug is not a competing number.

Here is how to give the jury one.

1. Understand what the anchor is doing. Anchoring is a cognitive bias: the first figure a person hears becomes the reference point everything else is measured against — even when that figure has no grounding. Researchers have shown that people’s numerical estimates drift toward a number they saw moments earlier, even one they knew was random. In a courtroom, the plaintiff’s $15 million does not have to be defensible. It only has to be first.
2. Expose the number, then replace it. The strongest response is twofold: show the jury how the figure was built, then hand them a better one. Life care plans routinely assume the highest level of care, at the highest cost, for the rest of a life — ignoring medical advances, home-based options, and the coverage a plaintiff already carries through Medicare, Medicaid, or private insurance. Picture a plan projecting decades of round-the-clock skilled nursing for a patient whose condition is already improving. Name it for what it is: an advocacy tool, not an objective calculation.
3. Show jurors how money actually works. Jurors picture a lump sum as a jar that slowly empties. It isn’t. A responsibly invested award grows. Ten million dollars at a conservative five percent return generates $500,000 a year without touching the principal. When jurors see that a fair, well-managed award can fund a lifetime of legitimate needs, the “windfall” figure starts to look like exactly that — a windfall.
4. Make your number principled, not cold. A defense anchor only works if it respects the injury. Jurors will not follow a figure that feels dismissive of real suffering. Anchor to the evidence — provable medical costs, realistic earning capacity, comparable outcomes — and frame it as fairness, not stinginess. The goal is not to pay nothing. It is to ensure the verdict reflects actual loss, not emotion.

A jury cannot weigh a number against nothing. Offer only the plaintiff’s figure, and it wins by default. Offer a grounded, well-explained alternative, and fairness finally has something to stand on.

You cannot argue a jury out of a number. You can only give them a better one.

The plaintiff’s number is built to be remembered. The defense’s has to be believed.

For more insights on defending the damages phase and countering runaway verdicts, read Reviving Fairness: Defending Healthcare Heroes by John E. Hall, Jr., Esq., available on Amazon.