Read that sentence again. A truck weighing forty tons crossed a double yellow and killed someone, and the sentence does not have a villain in it. The vehicle left its lane. As if the truck decided. As if no hand was on the wheel.
That is the passive voice, and it is the defense lawyer's favorite tool. Not because it is bad grammar. It is perfectly correct. That is exactly the problem. It is a clean, correct sentence built to hide the one fact that matters. A person did this.
Watch how it works. Mistakes were made. By whom. The plaintiff was injured. By what. Contact occurred between the two vehicles. Contact occurred. A man is in a wheelchair and the sentence reads like a weather report. Every one of those lines is missing its subject on purpose. The actor has been lifted out and set down somewhere the jury cannot see him.
Here is the rule you carry into every draft. Put the actor in front of the verb. Name who did what to whom, in that order. Not the vehicle left its lane. The driver crossed the center line. Not the plaintiff was struck. The truck hit her. Subject, verb, object. The person, the act, the harm. When you write it that way the sentence points at the defendant every single time, and it keeps pointing whether the jury is reading fast or slow.
The defense will write the other way, and you should expect it. Their brief will be full of vehicles that drifted and collisions that happened and injuries that were sustained. Do not answer them in their own grammar. Do not let their fog into your reply. Every time you restate a fact, restate it with the actor back in front of the verb, so the jury reads the driver next to the thing the driver did, over and over, until the passive voice looks like what it is. An attempt to change the subject.
There is one honest exception, and it is yours to use, not theirs. Sometimes you want the passive. When the harm is the point and the actor is obvious or beside the point, the passive can put the injured person first, where he belongs. She was left on the shoulder for twenty minutes. That is a choice, made on purpose, for the victim. Use it that way or do not use it at all.
Grammar is not neutral. Every sentence either names the person who did the harm or hides him. So pick the verb, then ask one question. Who is the subject. If the answer is a vehicle, a collision, or a mistake, you have let him go. Put him back.
