Lots of factors figure into your chances of prevailing in a court before a jury of your peers, but it's a little surprising that a plaintiff's facility to speak English appears to play such an important role. That's the conclusion of a soon-to-be-published academic study by Dallas attorney Angel Reyes and Texas Tech University Rawls College of Business professors Bradley T. Ewing, Ph.D., and James C. Wetherbe, Ph.D. Among Hispanic plaintiffs, the study found that English speakers had better success in court than their non-English-speaking counterparts. In fact, Hispanic plaintiffs who relied on an interpreter during testimony were 15 percent less likely than an English speaker to obtain a jury verdict that exceeded the settlement offer. "What this study shows is that while Lady Justice is blindfolded, she certainly is not deaf," Reyes says. "This raises profound questions about the right to a fair trial and the impact of language differences."