Many lawsuits involve verbal exchanges remembered differently weeks, months, or years later by various witnesses. Often, even when recollections are irreconcilable, no one is knowingly lying. Their memories are just different. We don’t actually recall exact words we say or that we hear seconds after the exchange, let alone far longer periods of time. Instead, we remember “the gist” or “the essence” of exchanges and sometimes (maybe always) each of us walks away with a subtly or even dramatically different experience.
But when one person (and his pals) say a physical altercation occurred and a person was knocked to the ground and another person (the person supposedly knocked to the floor) (and his pals) say there was no such event, there is no room for “different perspectives.”
Author Chris Kyle’s lawyers seek to have a large part of former Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura’s lawsuit thrown out on summary judgment (two of three counts (Count II: “misappropriation/right of publicity” and Count III: unjust enrichment) based on legal arguments.
In response, Ventura’s lawyers set out their evidence that Kyle’s entire story is just that, a story. The Ventura response brief is strong advocacy. It would therefore seem that this case might ultimately go before a jury — maybe not on all claims, but at least in part — which will have to figure out which U.S. Navy Seals were walking the walk and which were just talking the talk.