In Coyote vs. ACME, Wile E. Coyote finally does something more sensible than ordering another rocket from the company whose products have been blowing up in his face for decades: He hires a lawyer.
The resulting lawsuit begins about where one might expect a claim involving a coyote and malfunctioning mail-order weaponry to begin: in a small Albuquerque personal injury firm. ACME, meanwhile, has considerably greater resources, sophisticated counsel and, most wonderfully, the Tasmanian Devil as its head of public relations.
Eventually, however, the case escapes its original confines. Allegations of broader corporate misconduct emerge, reporters arrive and the controversy reaches Washington.
The plaintiff wants journalists asking, ‘What does this reveal about the company?’ The defense wants them asking, ‘Isn’t this simply a dispute between two parties?’ Those are profoundly different stories.”
There is a useful litigation communications lesson buried beneath all the anvils: publicity does not, by itself, create settlement leverage. What can create leverage is changing how an organization classifies the problem.
Most significant institutions have systems for processing disputes. A demand letter goes to a claims professional. A complaint goes to litigation counsel. A regulatory inquiry goes to compliance. Each system comes with assumptions about staffing, authority, reporting obligations and acceptable outcomes. That institutional machinery is designed to make disputes manageable. In a sense, its purpose is to make them boring.
For plaintiffs, therefore, the communications question is rarely, “How do we get publicity?” Instead it’s: “What legitimate facts make this matter difficult to treat as routine?”
A lawsuit alleging an isolated product failure is one type of problem. Evidence suggesting a recurring failure is another. A dispute with one former employee is different from one raising questions about companywide practices. Obviously, a case confined to damages can acquire a different institutional significance if its allegations implicate customers, investors, regulators, employees or an important corporate narrative. Nothing about that requires inflammatory rhetoric. Often the most effective communications strategy is precisely the opposite: disciplined presentation of facts that allows sophisticated audiences to understand the implications themselves.
When that happens, the case may migrate internally. Outside litigation counsel begins reporting to the general counsel more frequently. The communications department becomes involved. Senior management asks for briefings and the board may need to be briefed. Settlement authority changes; lawyers who were managing a case are suddenly managing a corporate issue.
That migration also creates friction inside the institution. Litigation counsel is trained to protect the record, preserve defenses and avoid unnecessary statements; communications executives are responsible for audiences that may demand an answer long before discovery provides one. Neither instinct is wrong. The problem arises when legal and communications strategies are developed separately, leaving the company to win an argument in court while losing control of what the dispute has come to mean outside it.
That migration can matter more than a hundred favorable headlines. But plaintiffs’ lawyers frequently confuse attention with leverage. A press conference announcing a lawsuit may generate coverage while accomplishing nothing strategically. Worse, premature publicity can cause defendants to harden their positions. Once executives have publicly defended conduct, or a company believes its reputation is under attack, compromise can become institutionally more difficult.
Therefore, the first public act in important litigation should be calibrated almost as carefully as the complaint.
Before communicating, counsel should understand not merely the legal theory but the select audiences and influencers capable of changing the dispute’s trajectory. Is the relevant audience the trade press? Investors? Regulators? Employees? Customers? Other potential claimants? Sometimes it is the general public but much more frequently it is not.
The objective is not maximum attention; rather, it’s consequential attention.
Social media has made that calculation harder. Litigation narratives no longer move neatly from courthouse to reporter to public. They can form instantly, often before the underlying facts are understood. Algorithms accelerate that process by rewarding the most engaging interpretation of a dispute, not necessarily the most accurate or legally significant one. That algorithmic compression matters: the window in which counsel can investigate, deliberate and decide whether to speak may now be shorter than the time it takes the legal team to agree on what can safely be said.
Audiences also increasingly encounter disputes through communities already inclined to identify with one side. In Coyote vs. ACME, humans and cartoons practically constitute their own constituencies, each predisposed to see the case differently. Real disputes can develop similar tribes (e.g., employees, customers, activists, investors or industry peers) each amplifying facts that reinforce its existing narrative. That makes early communications more consequential. Once a case becomes a symbol of something larger than itself, lawyers may discover that the narrative has acquired stakeholders they neither chose nor control.
Defense counsel should understand the same dynamic in reverse. Some defense communications strategies fail because they attempt to win an argument that would have been better left obscure. A categorical public denial can elevate an allegation, invite scrutiny and create language that plaintiffs will quote throughout the litigation.
Sometimes the better defense strategy is to deprive a dispute of novelty. If the plaintiff is trying to paint a tunnel on the side of a mountain in hopes everyone drives through it, the goal is to make sure people are focused on the actual road. In other words, if the facts support it, a seemingly extraordinary allegation can be placed within an ordinary legal or commercial framework: a contractual disagreement, an individual employment matter, a conventional product claim, a dispute already governed by established processes.
This is not about minimizing legitimate concerns or misleading anyone. It’s about context. The plaintiff wants journalists asking, “What does this reveal about the company?” The defense wants them asking, “Isn’t this simply a dispute between two parties?” Those are profoundly different stories.
Sophisticated litigation communications therefore, operates on two levels simultaneously. Lawyers argue about causes of action, evidence and remedies. Communications strategy addresses the parallel contest over what the dispute means and consequently, who needs to care about it.
That distinction also explains why litigation communications should begin before reporters call. Counsel should identify the facts that could expand the significance of the case, anticipate which documents or testimony could alter its public character, understand which audiences matter and determine what developments would justify communicating or remaining silent.
The goal is maintaining options and a company that prepares only after a controversy becomes public has already surrendered many of them. So has a plaintiff who spends his most compelling facts merely to announce that a complaint was filed.
Which brings us back to Wile E. Coyote. For years, ACME could regard each explosion as another unfortunate encounter between one unusually persistent customer and one spectacularly unreliable product. The problem becomes more serious when the explosions stop looking isolated.
That is the communications inflection point lawyers should watch for. The objective is not publicity for its own sake. For plaintiffs, it is making a consequential case impossible to process as routine; for defendants, it is preventing an ordinary dispute from becoming something larger. Because in litigation communications, the most dangerous thing about an anvil isn’t that it falls. It’s that everyone looks up.
John Hellerman is President of Hellerman Communications, an award-winning corporate communications agency specializing in positioning professionals and their firms to win business and navigate crises.