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Episode

92 – Delisi Friday – Back In Action: Post-Trial Discussion

By Michael Cowen — 1 year ago

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In this episode of the Trial Lawyer Nation podcast, Michael sits down with his Director of Marketing and Business Development, Delisi Friday, for a retrospective look at his recent in-person trial, including prep, mindset and more, only 3 days after the case settled.

The episode begins in a unique way with Michael turning the tables on the traditional Trial Lawyer Nation format and passing the interviewer role to Delisi. She goes on to open the conversation about how Michael is doing after his recently settled trial. “I’m on cloud 9,” Michael says in response, before going into how fun it’s been getting back into a courtroom for his first in-person trial since February 2020. (For the post-trial discussion of that case, check out Ep 53 – The Verdict Is In! with Malorie Peacock.)

After a brief reflection from Michael about just how much he missed in-person trials, Delisi comments on the “calm confidence” he displayed throughout the trial and asks how he developed that skill. Michael goes on to describe working on his mindset and sense of self to “have joy in trial.” He elaborates by sharing how he worked to separate his value as a person and his worth as a lawyer from his trial results. This created an environment where he was not only able to have fun and focus on what he needed to do, but also remove unnecessary pressures.

“You don’t want to say ‘I don’t care whether I win or lose,’ because that’s not true […] but, I just let it go [and] went in there with, ‘I’m just going to have fun, I have a great story, I’m going to tell that story, and I’m going to trust the jury to do the right thing.’” – Michael Cowen

Following a discussion on the differences between this trial and trials in 2019, Michael goes into the unique jury selection process for this trial. For starters, to appropriately space the 45 potential jurors, a larger courtroom was used which came with its own obstacles, such as columns blocking peoples view, the need for multiple spotters, and jurors being unable to hear their peers which limited discussion. “This was probably a little better, because we actually got to talk to every single person and the judge didn’t give time limits. We got to spend a full day doing jury selection, which in south Texas is a rare thing.”

Circling back to voir dire from a conversation about the client in this case and the challenges that arose from her growing story, Delisi cites Joe Fried’s advice from a previous episode (Ep 86 – Challenging Your Paradigm) regarding being comfortable with your number and asks Michael about his number, how he got to it and if he brought it up in voir dire.

Click here to view/download Michael’s opening transcript for the case referenced in this episode.

“I wanted to mention the $30 million number, that was going to be my ask in the case, and I put a lot of thought into why I thought $30 million was fair in that case [
] I wanted to get it out there early.” – Michael Cowen

In order to better understand the $30 million number, Michael goes on to describe his client’s injuries and her life before the incident. Before the incident, his client was a charge nurse at a women’s oncology unit in a top hospital in San Antonio. She enjoyed her job, helping others, the comradery with her fellow nurses and some well-deserved bonding time after a 12-hour shift. After the incident, however, that would quickly change.

Following an incident at Big Lots, where a 29-pound box hit her in the neck and shoulders, she would incur physical injuries such as a multi-level fusion in her neck, a rotator cuff injury, back pain and (we believe) a mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI).

Delisi then asks Michael about his decision to not have his client in the courtroom. Michael goes on to explain when your client is there, the jury is focused on them (seeing if they’re fidgeting, timing how long they’re seated/standing, etc.) and are not listening to the testimony. He also brings up that his client had some real psychological problems such as anxiety and depression, and that her moods could be unpredictable; a factor that he did not want to risk when presenting in front of a jury and felt would be unfair to her as well.

“The only reason to really call her was fear that [the defense] would punish us for not calling her.” – Michael Cowen

Delisi shifts the conversation to Michael’s use of photos of the client before her injury. Michael explains that to know what someone’s lost, you need to know what they had, and how he had to “bring to life” the person she once was. He goes on to say that he worked with his client, her friends, family, and others to get a lot of photos of her smiling, and doing what she loved, to paint a picture of her joyful life. When talking to Michael after the case settled, one juror described the contrast of those smiling, happy photos to her current, pained photos as “striking.”

One of the final topics Delisi brings up in this episode, is Michael’s thoughts on trying his first case with his law partner (and frequent TLN guest) Sonia Rodriguez. He shares why it was a great bonding experience and while there may have been some differences in approaches, that he knows their trial team “will get there” after working more cases together. Delisi brings this topic full circle by discussing the importance of over-communicating with your staff, especially ones that you’ve not tried cases with before, to assure your trial preferences and processes are handled as smooth as possible for all parties involved.

The episode ends on a lighter note with Michael talking about an experience with his 10-year-old son, a meltdown, and his unique approach to make his son smile. He explains that during a 3-day weekend, his son did not want to do his homework and was less than thrilled about being asked to do so. Michael, attempting to soothe the situation, offered a unique (and very attorney) approach to the situation; a Change.org petition to end weekend homework. The two end by calling out to fans of Trial Lawyer Nation to make a 10-year-old boy (and many more 10-years-olds, for that matter) smile by adding their signature to the petition.

This episode also covers the differences between trials pre- and post-pandemic, Michael’s feelings about settling his case during his return to in-person trials, going against respectable defense lawyers, and much more.

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Episode

63 – Sonia Rodriguez – “You Got Me”: Discrediting Defense Paid Opinion Witnesses

By Michael Cowen — 3 years ago

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In this Trial Lawyer Nation podcast, Michael sits down with his law partner Sonia Rodriguez for an overview of deconstructing defense-paid opinion witnesses. They highlight many of their favorite strategies to use when dealing with a witness who won’t answer your questions, their favorite unexpected “gifts” from witnesses, and the importance of why someone becomes a defense-paid opinion witness in the first place. This episode is full of shocking real-life examples you don’t want to miss.

Michael begins the episode by highlighting the defense strategy to hire someone to discredit their client. He asks Sonia, “What do you do to deal with this?” Sonia describes the first action she takes, which is reviewing what organizations they show they are affiliated with on their CV (curriculum vitae). Most professional organizations have ethical guidelines which these witnesses must abide by. She’s found success in displaying these guidelines to the witness during the deposition and using them to prevent the witness from stating biased information.

Michael then describes the common narrative these witnesses all portray which every plaintiff attorney listening is sure to relate to. Any injury from the crash goes away in 6-12 weeks, but any injury from 10 years ago is most certainly the cause of everything today, even if they haven’t been to a doctor for it in 9 years. Sonia has combatted this in medical witnesses by focusing heavily on the client’s description of pain. Most doctors will admit that the patient’s description of pain is a very important part of the diagnosis. She uses this information to put the witness in a position of saying, “the records aren’t adequate,” which does not play well with the jury.

The conversation then shifts to the difficult but highly effective strategy of turning the defense paid opinion witness into your witness. Sonia explains why this is so difficult to do successfully, but has maneuvered these difficulties by focusing her depos on what she knows she can get from them. She shares an example of this where she was able to build up the witness’s credibility, then use it to get some simple, clear concessions.

On the other hand, Michael says his primary goal in every defense paid opinion witness depo is to make them his witness. Instead of fighting with them in an area where he does not have credibility, he spends his time researching the witness, reading prior depositions, and trying to find what they will give you based off those prior experiences.

Michael elaborates further on the importance of reading past testimonies by sharing a shocking example with a biomechanical engineer who claimed his client could not possibly have a herniated disc from the crash. Before trial, Michael read several of his previous depositions and went through all of the literature the witness cited in the case. He then shares an example of how he used those prior depos to discredit the witness, how his voir dire helped him do this while also relating to the jury, and why reading the literature can help your case.

Sonia wholeheartedly agrees and gives her real world experience using the literature to your advantage. She shares an example where a neurosurgeon used a study about the prevalence of herniated discs to claim her client’s pain wasn’t caused by the crash. After reading the article, Sonia found that it only referred to a specific type of herniated disc, which was not the type her client had. After revealing this, all the witness could say was, “You got me.”

Another all too familiar roadblock is the witness who just won’t answer your questions. While Sonia and Michael both agree this will always be a barrier, they both share insightful techniques on how you can overcome this. Sonia does this by always recording the testimony, so she can show the jury the witness was refusing to cooperate or concede to basic things. Michael then offers another strategy he employs with uncooperative witnesses – using basic, fair questions in a true or false format. While you may still need to ask the same question 10 times to get a response, you can always cut out the first 9 asks. The key to this is to never appear mad or frustrated because it doesn’t present well to the jury. Sonia agrees with this strategy and points out how well-suited it is for a Zoom deposition.

On a lighter note, Michael and Sonia share their favorite unexpected “gifts” they’ve received from paid opinion witnesses. Sonia details her experience of utilizing past testimony to prove an orthopedic surgeon was simply touting lies for money and highlights the importance of sharing information with other members of the plaintiff’s bar. Michael’s favorite “gift” was an ex-sheriff providing testimony on a drunk driving case, who made an incredibly racist statement in his deposition. The judge insisted the case not be made about race, which Michael had no issuing agreeing to. But when Michael asked the sheriff the same question at trial (assuming the witness had been prepped not to make the same mistake), he made the SAME racist statement he made in the deposition.

While these unexpected “gifts” are a huge blessing, they’re hard to come by on most cases. Sonia and Michael conclude the conversation by exploring why people become paid opinion witnesses in the first place. He accurately states, “This isn’t why people want to become doctors or engineers.” Michael explains how many of them either just weren’t good at their jobs or experienced an injury that rendered them unable to perform surgery.

This podcast also covers using before and after witnesses, focusing on the symptoms instead of the diagnosis, whether or not to “go in for the kill” in a deposition, verifying the qualifications of a witness, and so much more.