In this Blitz Throwback QA episode, we tackle diverse and compelling issues.

Jen from a trailer park raises concerns about deplorable water quality and fears of potential displacement. Steve offers insights into the intricate world of groundwater litigation, offering expert advice.

Jeremy seeks guidance on early lease termination and disputes with his landlord, receiving crucial tips on protecting his rights.

Randi unfolds a gripping tale of medical malpractice involving his cousin, leading to an in-depth discussion on handling severe medical negligence cases. Along the way, Steve enlightens listeners on contingency fee structures and the steps to secure adequate legal representation.

Got a question you want answered on the podcast? Call 614-859-2119 and leave us a voicemail. Steve will answer your question on the next podcast!

Submit your questions to www.lawyertalkpodcast.com.

Recorded at Channel 511.

Stephen E. Palmer, Esq. has been practicing criminal defense almost exclusively since 1995. He has represented people in federal, state, and local courts in Ohio and elsewhere.

Though he focuses on all areas of criminal defense, he particularly enjoys complex cases in state and federal courts.

He has unique experience handling and assembling top defense teams of attorneys and experts in cases involving allegations of child abuse (false sexual allegations, false physical abuse allegations), complex scientific cases involving allegations of DUI and vehicular homicide cases with blood alcohol tests, and any other criminal cases that demand jury trial experience.

Steve has unique experience handling numerous high-publicity cases that have garnered national attention.

For more information about Steve and his law firm, visit Palmer Legal Defense.

Copyright 2025 Stephen E. Palmer - Attorney At Law

Alright. Steve Palmer, my lawyer, could be yours. How are you doing, Steve?

I'm doing great. How are you guys doing this morning?

Let's go to line one here. We'll go to Grove City for this one. I know Randy's got an incredible question here in a second. It's gonna blow your mind. It's unfortunate, but it's incredible. Water quality question from Jen. Hey, Jen. How are you?

I'm doing good.

So you are on with Steve Palmer. What's your question?

So, I live in a trailer park, and the water quality is not okay. When you let it sit in a cup or a bowl or something, like, brown sediment just settles at the bottom. When it comes out of the faucet, it's brown. It is gross. No one trusts to drink it or to give it to pets or use it for cooking or nothing like that. It is a % undrinkable. And people have been trying to get a hold of someone to come out and test it, make a report about it, possibly bring it to the news, something like that. And then other people are saying that if we do bring too much attention, then possibly it will shut down our trailer park, and then we will be without a home.

Now are they able to just shut it down and kick us out and not, like, buy us out or something?

Yeah. Boy, that's a

like that for everybody at the trailer court? It's like that for everybody?

Every single trailer. Yes.

Wow. Wow. That that's like that sounds like a movie scenario. That sounds like Erin Brockovich.

Yeah. I wanna say there's almost, like, 200 trailers there.

Wow. I gotta tell you, I this is gonna take this would take more than the time allotted here for me to think this through and sort it out. I would say this, I I'm not sure you gotta first figure out who's responsible for the water, who's responsible for the contamination, can you prove who's responsible for the contamination, and whether it's actually harmful. You know, there's, you know, I I I've had water from wells that doesn't taste the greatest. I don't think it's necessarily bad, but, you know, we'd have to get a lot of information to get this figured out. This is gonna require somebody a lot smarter than I am who does this kind of, lit groundwater litigation. And, you know, you're gonna need geologists who are experts. In fact, a friend of, the show here, my show anyways, Jay Simons, he's a he's a geologist, and he could provide some input.

You're gonna need an attorney who's done this kind of litigation before. This is a complicated mess, in other words. So I'm I'm I'm happy to try to run interference on it and get you plugged in or the the the the the whole development plugged in with the right person. Just give me a shout. (614) 224-6142.

Now, Steve, like, what do people do, like, you know, when when they're in a a financial situation where it might not be so readily available to just, to get themselves a lawyer? And, like, at the end, you you know, you might not win any money, but, you know, how do you pay for something like that? You know, like, how does that work?

Yeah. It gets difficult. So a lot of attorneys who do this kind of litigation will fund it, and they'll fund it based on their assessment of what the outcome will be. And, you know, they would say, look. We're gonna take a contingency on the case, and, we can help with expenses along the way. But, ultimately, the clients are responsible for the expenses out of the reward if, we win. So that the contingency fee structure is there for a reason. It's there to address the reason you're talking about.

So if you get somebody who doesn't have the means to hire a lawyer and they've been in a car accident, for instance, and, the if if we weren't allowed as attorneys to take contingent fees, then that person would never be represented because the time, the money, the expense that we put into it, if you don't have, at least the hope of some sort of a fee structure at the end, you're not gonna do the case. There's just too much invested.

Gotcha. Alright. Let's go to line two. Jeremy has a lease question. What's up, Jeremy?

Hey. Good morning, everybody. Thanks for taking my call.

Yeah. You're on with Steve, man. Go ahead.

Cool deal. I moved into this new apartment. It's like a duplex situation upstairs downstairs kinda thing, about five months ago. And long story short, it's been, just catastrophic experience. However, I think our landlord is is he kinda gave me a handshake agreement a while back to let us out of our lease early, since, in the spring, which is now. And I was just wondering what I need from him to make that ironclad going forward if he if he does agree to let us out of the lease. Like, what what paperwork needs to be filled out? What needs to happen? Also, side question. He he comes over unannounced all the time.

And, a couple days ago, he came over, and I overheard him in the downstairs tenant, which is the person we have the most problems with. They're basically in cahoots, and they were talking about how they were threatening to claim that I did some damage to her ceiling, if, if they wanted to scare me, essentially. Like, it's a really kind of a scary situation, but they're they're in they're in cahoots somehow. It's really weird. So I was hoping you could give me a little bit of the

Yeah. Well, let's start with the first question because that's gonna be an easier one. I I think the the answer to that is it's gotta be in writing. It's gotta be in writing. It's gotta be in writing. Anything that is gonna modify a written contract, can only be modified in the same way. And if if he's really gonna let you out, if he's really gonna put his money where his handshake is, then he's gonna have to sign a document that gives you a release or terminates the lease without any sort of punishment or, repercussions. And we call that in laws or, I think we'd probably call it a hold harmless agreement where everybody agrees that they're not gonna go after the other.

So if he did give you a handshake agreement and, he actually meant it, then then what you do is you approach him and say, I want out. Can we do a written agreement to let me out? And it could be something simply and I guess I should back up. You should first start with what's in your lease. There may be some provision for it there. There may be a provision that says, this lease can be terminated upon agreement of the parties by written addendum or something. And, that would give you a guide sort of a guide map on where you need to go and what you need to write. But, it could be something very simple that both parties hereby agree to terminate the lease bye bye. And if he signs and you sign and you go on out the door and move out, everybody's happy.

I think that, if you can get it done, will resolve your second question, which is what do you do about this alleged setup scenario or plot? I would, I would hope that you could just resolve it by getting out of there. It sounds like no place you wanna live. And then as a general matter, if they are going to do something like that, there has been discussion like that. You just wanna document it. Even if you just write it down and say, on x date, I heard this and then keep a log of everything you hear, that's better than just relying on your memory later. If you've got others that hear it or heard it or are witness to something like that, then get them on record too. And by record, I just mean a written statement, if nothing else. And then you can, you can keep that for later.

But that sounds pretty sinister, I I gotta say.

Yep. Cool. Thank you. So I appreciate it.

Yeah. Jeremy, thanks, man. Alright, Randy. So your situation, you gotta tell Steve about this.

Okay. So my cousin gives birth last week, and, she's very thin. Like, the thinnest woman you could ever imagine. She's just tiny. So then the doctor comes in, delivers it, stitches her up because she tore very badly, tore very badly. She goes home and she said she could just she was in so much pain and it started to kinda smell. So she knew something was really wrong. They went to the emergency room, and they're like, yeah.

Your your flesh is decaying.

Yeah.

What?

They the the doctor who delivered her baby and stitched her up did not stitch her up properly and they should have sent her into surgery to stitch her up, and they didn't. So she went had to go to emergency surgery, a day ago, and they had to reattach her anus.

Wow.

They I mean, it's severe. She has to be on liquids for two months because she cannot go to the bathroom properly. She has to be bedridden for two months. With a newborn? Newborn.

Boy. I'm really And

I mean, I'm thinking, malpractice. So she goes into the colleague of the doctor who delivered her, and the colleague was like, I am so sorry. She should have since she went to emergency surgery immediately. She you should have never been sent home.

Right.

The lady marked it as a one under the classifications of the the severity of the tears, and she was in actuality a four.

Boy. Yeah. This is a this is a medical malpractice case. I'm happy to help out with it. We can get, our good friend Dave Goldstein involved and, get the case assessed and, get her represented. I mean, this is, this is a law enforcement. Out

of state.

Doesn't matter. Out of state.

Yeah. We can still yeah. We can we can, engage the right people and get it done that way. I I'd I'd much rather be the quarterback of it up here because, you know, I trust myself. I trust you. And we trust you too.

Love you.

You've helped us so many times. We only, we only trust you, to be honest.

Yeah. Have her call me. You got the bat phone. She can use it. Have her call me. I'll be happy to talk her through it and, get her some help quickly.

Thank you so much.

Fine line of medical mal malpractice, like, how to how to tell, like, what's going on with with that? I mean, is it tough to accuse?

Yeah. So the general standard is gonna be this. One, you gotta prove the malpractice. You gotta establish that whatever medical care fell below what should have been done. And, you in Ohio and many other states, you gotta actually have an expert, another doc, another surgeon, another person, to come in and say that, that, yeah, I reviewed this and it's bad. But then you have to have damages. And you don't have to have damages to make the claim, but you have to have damages to get a lawyer interested. And the reason, sort of like the landlord tenant question before, or I mean, forgive me, the water question before, is you gotta have lawyers interested to put in the time, the money, and the effort to get paid out.

So, if somebody, say they had stitches and, the stitches were were done incorrectly and the cut took a little bit longer to heal, well, that could be malpractice, but there's no reward there. There's not really any permanent, disfiguration or damage. Now in the case that we're talking about, it sounds like there are significant damages, and that is what will get a malpractice lawyer interested. And then the issue is, how do you find somebody who's not gonna be the quintessential carnival barking ambulance chaser and really get to the person who is the lawyer's lawyer? The the guys that the ambulance chasers call when they need real litigation, and and that's where I can help.

Oh, thank you so much.

Yeah. Alright. Well, the one and only Steve Palmer. And, you know, I'm I'm a judger. Like, when it comes to, like, radio and podcasts and stuff like that, I think there's a lot of stuff that sucks out there. But, Steve Palmer has, been a student of the game, if you will, and created a great podcast for himself, and I say that in all truth. Steve, tell them how they can get your podcast and how they can call you if they need you.

Yeah. It's simple. Go to lawyertalkpodcast.com. That's the easiest way. Or you can just look up lawyer Talk podcast, and you'll find it wherever you get your podcast. But, the website is a great way. We've got different types of, episodes now with questions and answer series as well as some bigger legal topics if you're interested in that and some long form discussions, interviews of pretty influential people. We had JD Vance on a couple weeks ago, so, really good content there.

And then, you know, I still have a thriving legal practice, and you can always catch me there. (614) 224-6142 or OhioLegalDefense.com.

Steve Palmer, ladies and gentlemen, my lawyer could be yours. Thanks so much, Steve.

Hey. Thanks, guys.