Can rocket science teach us anything about settlement value?
Knowing the legitimate value of our case, makes us potent and self-assured mediation participators. Credit goes to NASA, for its expert object lesson teaching us to look at known, and unknown unknowns, and for giving us a superpower that credibly appraises the genuine settlement value of our case before we mediate it. The tool supercharges our legal judgment, it doesn’t replace it.
PROBABILTY IS A THING, NOT A “FEELING”
Instinctively, we "sense" the odds that something can happen to us. All of us flip coins and we are comfortable predicting a fifty-percent chance our coin lands, “tails”. We know the chance we draw that card we want from a deck; one in fifty-two. How confident are we knowing probabilities when questions are complicated, and a long chain of events made of distinct event outcomes, affects our success? Not very sure, it turns out.
If we trade NASA’s rigorous risk/reward analysis for our litigation intuition, we will resolve our cases swiftly, advantageously, and cost-effectively.
NASA COMPUTES PROBABILITIES AND MAKES INFORMED CHOICES
Few things are more complicated than rocket science. Here’s how NASA uses its tool:
Do we know the distinct things that must go right for us to get live images from a robot on Mars’ surface? NASA engineers do, and the odds are not good.
NASA ENGINEER KOBIE BOYKINS
Four years ago, Kobie Boykins, principal mechanical engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, took the stage to speak to a large audience. At the time, Boykins’ role was designer of every actuator on NASA’s Curiosity Mars Rover. For non-engineers attending, Boykins explained, “Actuators are machine parts that start, stop, and manage movement. If actuators go bad on Mars, the rover doesn’t 'rove'”. In describing his formidable responsibility, Boykins said, “actuator failure means mission failure.”
NASA spent $2.53 billion on its Curiosity science mission. Boykins had to foresee known unknowns, and predict unknown ones, so a faulty solar panel extender, or a dodgy axle motor, didn’t malfunction 140 million miles away, demolishing the mission thousands of engineers and scientists devoted years of their lives to achieving.
Before Boykins’ first actuator so much as twitched, the lander carrying the rover had to get to Mars orbit. Liftoff of the Atlas V rocket, earth orbit, transit to Mars and deceleration into Mars’ gravity capture could have failed.
The rover descended to Mars under an immense polyester and nylon parachute. In the final seconds before landing, the landing system fired hydrazine rockets and the lander hovered, while a one-of-a-kind carbon fiber tether lowered Curiosity gently to the surface. The rover landed on its wheels, controlled explosions cut the lander tether free, and the landing system flew off to crash-land a safe distance away. Bing. Bang. Boom. The odds of NASA’s world class genius putting Curiosity on Mars? Less than one in three.
The odds Curiosity’s dozens of indispensable actuators each did their jobs? Boykins pegged it at one in four.
NASA’s PROBABILITY CALCULATOR
What then, were NASA’s odds that everything went right, and we saw live pictures from Mars? NASA plugged the “one in three” and “one in four” numbers into its tool. The answer? Eight percent. What! How?
Thirty-three percent of twenty-five percent is eight percent. The math works because logically, we cannot succeed or fail at step two, unless we succeed at step one first.
Here it is again, in practice: A little more than two-thirds of the time, NASA Mars surface missions fail before the surface science experiments start (Step One). Once in every four attempts, the complicated robot machinery does its science flawlessly (Step Two). We can see the chain of sobering probabilities against us getting our pictures.
OUR GUT TRICKS US
In our gut, we sense that most risks are fifty/fifty. That’s served us well in coin flips. It’s a distorted confidence when we are betting on the chance to flip our coin and our chance to do it, depends upon the outcome of our last coin flip.
CALCULATE REAL CHANCE
Dispense with our litigation intuition and instead, apply NASA’s penetrating probability model to our own probabilistic risk/reward analysis about taking our case to trial. NASA’s tool is math. It’s agnostic; it shines impartially on plaintiffs and defendants. It’s only faithful to logic.
What are our real odds of winning or losing a motion to dismiss? Win, and we get our chance to litigate consequential discovery motions. Next is summary judgment, then motions in limine before trial. What about our fight over jury instructions and the special verdict questions? Recovering or paying attorneys’ fees and costs? Collecting on a judgment, or paying it? Avoiding appeal, or prevailing on it?
TRUST OUR NUMBERS
We litigate because we want to win. Distinct events are less or more likely to happen depending on our case. On our way to victory, our litigation outcome hinges on the probability the successive event outcomes in our event chain, favor us- pool sharks call it, “running the table.”
NASA spent $2.53 billion on the eight percent likelihood we would see live pictures from Mars. It worked out great. At what cost do we take our case to trial at the expense of an agreeable settlement? If our legal judgment about our risk is good, we can trust our answer.
3Chairs CAN HELP YOU
We look forward to answering your questions and helping you with your full or half-day mediation. Contact us:
3Chairs Mediation Group, Inc.
(855) 3Chairs | (855) 324-2477