Slides That Follow Your Voice: US Southern Accent Court Opening

Slide 1: Two documents that do not match

0:17May it please the court. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, good morning. My name is Caroline, and I represent the plaintiff in this case, Ms Odessa Greer, who is sitting at that table in the blue jacket, and who has been uh, waiting three years and two months for this morning.

0:35Now, what I'm about to give you is called an opening statement. It is not evidence. It's a map. Over the next four days you are going to hear from eleven witnesses and see about two hundred and forty pages of documents, and my job right now is to tell you where we're going, so that when you get there, you recognise it.

Slide 2: It is not evidence. It is a map.

0:56Here is where we're going. In March twenty twenty-two, Ms Greer hired the defendant, Tidewell Drilling, to put a water well on her farm on the Caney Fork road. She paid them thirty-one thousand four hundred dollars. Thirty-one thousand six hundred, with the pump. The pump is a separate line. You'll see it. They drilled to three hundred and sixty, excuse me, three hundred and eighty feet, they told her the water was good, and they left.

Slide 3: The well on the Caney Fork road

1:24By August the water was brown. By October it was undrinkable. By the following spring, fourteen of her cattle were sick, and the state laboratory had found, in her well, a level of iron and manganese nine times what the standard allows.

1:42Now, the defendant will tell you that the ground is the ground, and that nobody can promise what is down there. And that is true. Nobody can. But that is not this case.

Slide 4: What Tidewell knew, and when

1:53This case is about what Tidewell knew, and when, knew, and when.

2:01Because you are going to see a document, exhibit fourteen, which is Tidewell's own drilling log, in their own driller's hand, and on the line for three hundred and forty feet, it says, in pencil, red water, keep going. And you are going to see exhibit fifteen, which is the report they gave Ms Greer, which is typed, and which says, at three hundred and forty feet, clear.

2:26Now I want to be careful here, because His Honor will tell you what a document means, not me. I'm just telling you there are two of them, written about the same hole, on the same day, and they say different things. I drove out to Caney Fork last month, by the way, to see the well, and I got lost twice, and a man at the feed store, I'm getting off my point. There are two documents. That's the point.

2:51You will hear from that driller. His name is Ray, he has worked for Tidewell for nineteen years, and he is not a uh, a bad man. He is going to tell you that he wrote what he saw, and that what happened to it after that was above his pay. I believe him. That is for y'all to decide, not me.

Slide 5: Ray, the driller, 19 years at Tidewell

3:11You will, you are going to hear, from a... You will hear from a hydrogeologist, Dr Whitfield, who has spent twenty-six years looking at what comes out of holes in this part of the state, and who will tell you that a competent driller, seeing red water at three hundred and forty feet, has two choices: case off that zone, or stop and tell the customer. Tidewell did not do either one. They kept going, they billed for the extra forty feet, and they wrote the word clear.

Slide 6: Dr Whitfield, hydrogeologist, 26 years

3:42And you will hear from Ms Greer. She is sixty-seven years old. She has farmed that land since her husband passed in two thousand and nine. [sighs] She is going to tell you about hauling water in the back of a pickup for fourteen months, about the vet bills, about the four cows she lost, and about the day she found the pencil log in a box of papers the defendant produced in this lawsuit, and sat down on her porch and did not get up for a while.

Slide 7: Ms Odessa Greer, 67

4:10I asked her, getting ready for today, what she wanted me to tell you about that porch. She said, tell them I got up. So. She got up. She's here.

Slide 8: Damages: 212,000 dollars

4:22At the end of this trial, I'm going to come back to this spot and ask you for a verdict in her favour, and for damages of two hundred and twelve thousand dollars, and I'm going to show you exactly how that number is made, line by line, because she does not want a dollar she cannot account for. And I had a, no. I'll leave that for closing.

4:44That's the map. Four days. Eleven witnesses. Two documents that do not match. [chuckles] Some of those days are going to be slow. Hydrogeology is slow. I apologise for that now, and the reason for every slow hour is in exhibit fourteen. Thank you.