Word of mouth

If you need a lawyer, get a good one:

The Indiana Court of Appeals has overturned the conviction of a woman who was sentenced to eight years in prison in the 2004 dragging death of a Bloomington man.

The court ruled that 30-year-old Misty Evans’ attorney should have objected to improper instructions given to the jury.

[. . .]

Prosecutors say Evans had been drinking before she hit 21-year-old Jesse Reuben Jacobs with her car and dragged him to death. Evans says she wasn’t drinking and she thought she had hit a deer. She says she didn’t see Jacobs’ body under her car when she stopped to look for the animal.

Jury instructions at her trial told jurors to determine whether there was an accident that caused Jacobs’ death, and that Evans failed to remain on the scene. But the appeals court says the jury should have also considered whether Evans knew the accident hurt a person.

I took an advertising course at Ball State, and I remember exactly two things from it: 1) The best kind of guarantee is a money-back guarantee and, 2) Word-of-mouth is the best kind of advertising. The latter is best for the advertisers — it doesn’t cost anything, and it means they are doing well what they are seeking money from the public for.

But it’s usually better for consumers, too, especially when we have to entrust something important to people with a lot more specialized knowledge than we have — whether it’s an incompetent lawyer who can cost us our freedom or an unscrupulous electrician or plumber who can fleece us for home repairs. There haven’t been networks where we could find out who the good people and the bad ones were, although it seems that the Internet might be starting to fill that gap. So we rely on word of mouth. I used the roofer someone I knew had used and been happy with.

You know the old joke, right? What do you call someone who graduates last in the class in medical school? “Doctor.”