Tim Wojton was prepared to tell jurors that a skilled nursing facility violated six different standards of care, leading to a patient’s death from hypovolemic shock. Then he realized that there was really just one. “I thought, wait a minute, understaffing isn't just another breach. Understaffing is the original sin.” In this case breakdown, Tim and trial partner Matt Scanlon describe to host Brendan Lupetin how they tracked down former employees, turned brutal cross-examination moments into powerful jury connections, and used a simple tree analogy to help jurors understand corporate negligence. Jurors awarded $750,000.

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Welcome to Just Verdicts with your host, Brendan Lupetin, a podcast dedicated to the pursuit of just verdicts for just cases. Join us for in-depth interviews and discussions of cutting edge trial strategies that will give you the keys to conquering the courtroom. Produced and powered by LawPods.

Alright, welcome back to Just Verdicts. And today I'm with my two buddies, Tim Wojton and Matt Scanlon from Scanlon and Wojton right down the street. I'm even repping some Scanlon and Wojton swag. You guys are the swag masters. Thanks for being here guys.

Thanks for having us.

So it's like my favorite, well, I mean I love all the different interviews, but I really do enjoy interviewing my friends about verdicts that they've gotten and we're going to talk about a great super hot fought verdict. You guys recently got in the SNI versus Concordia et all case. But before we get into that case and it's a battle and I remember Tim, you in particular sharing with me a bunch of some amusing, some frustrating anecdotes about trial, but want to hear a little bit more about you guys. So where did you guys meet? Was it in law school?

We did, yeah, we met at the Starbucks at Duquesne University I think before class even started a funny little story. Tim's father, God rest his soul was talking to Tim and kind of a stern tone about how he needs to really focus. This is an underground, you need to take this seriously, you need to do your reading and using some fun word choices there, some expletives, probably how I would speak to my 10-year-old son if he ever decides to go to law school. So that was my entree into meeting Tim and his father.

Wait, so you just happened to be in Starbucks and Tim's there in Starbucks getting lectured by his dad?

Yeah, and it was really funny. I don't know exactly how much I should go into, but he was essentially in my best Tim Moton senior voice was kind of saying, you got to pay attention damnit. This isn't something to mess around with here. You need to be doing your reading all right, you're not going to be out at the bars, you're not going to be doing any drinking. And it was really that I turned around, who the heck is this guy That was Tim and his father.

Tim, tell us from your point of view how that went out and then how did that lead into you befriending Matt or was it just Matt taking pity on you?

Yeah, it was probably pity, I'm guessing that was standard fare for my father and God love him for it. I'm a better man for it. All through high school, undergrad and of course his matches shared first day orientation of law school every day was keep your nose to the grindstone. No fooling around. This is serious. I don't want any bad news from you. Alright, this is not joke. He would say just like that Matt is in the corner of Starbucks laughing his butt off and I knew just from his infectious smile and his laugh, I knew we were going to be friends.

So what you guys buddied up through law school and before we go on in that, Tim, I know your dad was a prominent attorney in western pa, what kind of attorney was he? And I imagine he had quite the influence on you.

Sure, yeah, so he was a solo practitioner almost always. He started off with a small firm in Pleasant Hills. So my dad was born and raised in McKeesport, went to Akron University School of Law and then settled in Pleasant Hills where he had a small firm for a while and then he branched off on his own pretty early 1983, something like that and did general practice, so criminal defense, family law, PI stuff, you name it, I mean bankruptcy, all kinds of stuff, contract disputes. So it was a real pleasure upon graduating law school to join his practice and we formally became Wojton and Wojton and it was a very entertaining five year stint with the old man and he was a great mentor and it was really enjoyable.

That's cool. I didn't realize that for some reason I thought you and Matt hung a shingle right out of school. I didn't realize you got to work with your pops for a period of time. Matt, what about you? Did you have any sort of family lawyer, legal connections or are you first generation lawyer,

First generation, so I'm originally from Connecticut. I was born and raised in Norwalk and then Stratford and then ultimately Trumbull, Connecticut and that's where I went to high school. And so I followed my sister. Actually, it's kind of dorky to say but to Duquesne because she had gotten a scholarship and I said, ah, let me see if I can get a scholarship. Ended up getting a full ride scholarship for music undergrad and so I'm a guitar player and went to music school and then was dating my now wife at the time and she started hounding me, I guess is the word, about what are you going to do to make some money after this thing and well, my cousin's a lawyer and that's actually who I graduated law school and started with is Jonathan Stewart and Murray.

Oh, he's your cousin.

I think you know those guys.

Yeah, I know Jonathan real well. That's interesting. Okay,

So learned a lot of great stuff from those guys. Shout out to Pat Murray and Jonathan Stewart because they threw me into the fire right away and let me get involved and I think my first trial was second chairing a case with Pat Murray. So yeah, that was my invitation into practicing law was with those guys.

So you two were same year in law school?

Yes, we graduated oh nine

And so you go your separate path to start. What led you guys Lincoln up and forming Scanlon Walton?

I'll give my version of it, but Tim coming in from Pleasant Hills would come into town into Pittsburgh a lot to appear for motions court or filing things and every time he would come into town he would text me because at the time Stewart Murray, they were right in the Frick building right on Grant Street and he would say, Hey, I'm around, you want to get a coffee? And that's kind of thread running through this storyline for us is we're both big time coffee lovers even now we'll stop during the day and say, Hey, you want to grab a cup of Joe and go sit in the, we have a serenity room at the office and we'll talk about cases or life. So it's good. I mean that was kind of Tim, did I miss anything there on that?

Well you're also forgetting that today is Taytay Tuesday. Taytay meaning latte latte Tuesday, so we'll be going there later on.

Oh, I love it. You guys go that and is there a caffeine reference to every day of the week or just Tay take as it rhymes with Tuesday,

Just Taytay Tuesday for now. I agree with Matt and he put the bug in my ear or sort of the itch for joining together as a firm. It was kind of his initial idea and my father was getting to the point where he was still working very long hours and working hard, but he was interested in winding down. So the timing was kind of just right at that five year mark and we made it happen.

And were you guys set on from Jump Street doing only personal injury at Med Mal or were you to start whatever comes in the door kind of work?

I think we had our mindset that we wanted to be plaintiffs lawyers and handle mostly just injury related cases for plaintiffs med mal included. But initially upon starting out we thought we kind of have to just whatever comes in the door we'll handle, so it was at times divorce cases or custody cases or wills and estates and we got really proficient at everything we did and then we kind of got to the point we were lucky or blessed enough to have referrals coming in and they were for medical malpractice cases and luckily we got to the point where we could just focus on those kind of cases

For younger listeners, whether it's people that are a few years out in a firm and are thinking about starting their own firm hanging their own shingle or law students as you look back, because that would've been what, 14 or 15 that you guys formed your current firm

2014.

It's very daunting to a lot of people and you guys did it much more sort of abruptly bootstrapped than say Greg and I did, who sort of reformed ourselves out of our prior firm and if you had to do it again, what would you do different and what advice would you give to people who are toying with the idea but maybe nervous or worried about the risk of going out on their own?

Well, I guess I could take a crack first for one thing in our case, I think Matt, if I remember correctly, you yourself, and it wasn't me, it was Matt had a number, at least three or four contacts that were calling him and suggesting cases that we thought were exciting cases. One, including a pretty big med mal. The good thing about that is once you start the firm right off the bat, bang, you got three, four cases right off the bat that you can focus your attention on including, like I said, this medical malpractice which we were both interested in getting involved in. And so it gave us sort of I guess some inspiration and some excitement and something to work on. I think it'd be tougher to do if you start off and you have nothing like no clients, no claims coming, so it's good if you have people calling you on phone saying, I have a case. I have a case, gives you something to work on right away.

Yeah, Tim's right, we started out of what I began building probably there was a three to four month period after I had left Stuart Murray and prior to Scanlan and Wojton officially beginning where I was cultivating four or five pretty good cases, two in particular that were really solid and had legs. So we started with those and thought, well, to make money in the meantime we'll bring in family law and I had some good contacts, Tim, through his dad and other contacts he had. We just kind of brought it together and started that way. I think the only thing when you talk about doing things differently, it's hard to look back and say we would do anything differently. Of course it would help if you started with more than just three or four cases or it started with a case that had just settled the cases we started with. I don't think we resolved those for I think we were two years or so into our practice until they resolved, right, Tim?

That's true. They were at the very beginning points. I mean not even complaints drafted yet, so they were the very beginning of those cases, but again, it was something to keep your eye on and work on and get you excited to wake up and go to work for.

I think the only advice I would give just in closing on this point is even in the lean times you kind of rely on the relationship and friendship you have and things aren't going to be perfect from a monetary standpoint, but anyone thinking about it, if you've got a really good working relationship, professionally, friendship otherwise with somebody, I think it's worth the shot.

Yeah, I think there's a lot to be said for that exact point. I can remember when Jerry Myers, Greg and I, his former partner offered us minority partnerships in the firm and we signed the operating agreement, formalizing it, and we walked outside and I can remember so vividly him like shaking my hand and telling me that we're married now and just the seriousness and finality of a partnership and then you start to realize all the pros and cons and implications of that and how important a good trusting relationship is with your partner. I mean it sounds obvious, but I think it's like you said Matt, particularly in those leaner times that it makes such a difference that you can trust and you guys are both kind of rowing in the same direction rather than annoyed with the other or animosity or things like that. I obviously was very fortunate, sort of like you guys, but my version is Greg and it's like without Greg, I don't think that our firm would've gone as well because we could trust each other and we're so complimentary and I know you two are very much like that yourselves and your firm has really blossomed over the last several years.

Tim, I can remember first meeting you and you were drinking the same Kool-Aid as me on all the different books and trial strategy and everything in just very sympa a mindset. And then that made me and Greg realize these are guys that we to get to know better and hang out with and refer cases to and you guys have just been kicking butt, which is awesome, but I think it all comes back to you guys have a good relationship, you guys are really passionate about what you do and getting better and better results leading into the ske verdict that you got. What about a month and a half ago?

July, two months ago?

Yeah. So tee this up for us. What type of case is it and what was the gist of what you guys were working with and why you dug into this

Case? So this case came to us as a referral from another client who we were helping also in Beaver County and it was her brother-in-law. His name is James, James Sni, and it was James's brother, Tom Sni, who was right around the age of 78, 79 when he suffered a fall at home. Now this was a man who was not married, never was married, no children lived alone, but he lived in the second floor of an apartment building and climbed upstairs every single day, was quite mobile and active in the community. Despite that he was very frail and fragile because he had years prior to this event, years prior he had struggled with burki cell lymphoma, a type of cancer, and they put him through the whole gamut of cancer therapy, which caused him to lose a lot of weight as part of this cancer treatment.

He also suffered what's called pancytopenia, which is where he has low white blood cells, low red blood cells. The blood cells are all just very low and his white blood cell count was particularly low. That was essentially his baseline going into this fall at home. He fell at his house and broke his pelvis. When he was eventually found, he was transferred to the orthopedic surgeon who looked at it. There was no surgery, he just had to undergo some therapy. The surgeon referred him to Concordia at Villa St. Joseph for what was intended to be about six to eight weeks of physical therapy, occupational therapy just to get him back on his feet and back home. To summarize it real quick, and we'll get into I'm sure some more details later, he enters into the facility, what was it, Matt? 145 pounds, something like that,

Right around there.

Yeah, maybe 140. He was very light, very frail, and they're aware of it. They document it. Despite that he's there for three months, maybe three and a half, and by the end of his time there he has lost another close to 27, 28 pounds. He also has experienced pressure injuries, pressure wounds, and ultimately the day that he died, he was transferred out of the facility to the hospital due to slow responsiveness. It was found to be severely dehydrated. So the death certificate lists hypovolemic shock, which is in most cases secondary to a loss of volume in the body, dehydration. So that's the case just from a bird's eye view nutshell, and we began to investigate it to see whether or not there was neglect.

Where'd you go from there? I mean that fact pattern respectfully isn't the sexiest of fact patterns, but what was it that jumped out to you? Was it the dehydration? Because that's a particularly upsetting thought that somebody in somebody else's care could be so sort of inadequately taken care of that they literally died of thirst, died of dehydration, low volume organ shut down. Was that what caught your attention or was it kind of the big picture?

Yeah, it's funny for us, what pulled me into it initially was actually the loss of weight. I thought coming in at one 40 and losing 27 pounds is kind of like one of those facts that make you go, whoa, it makes the eyes open up. So that to me seemed unusual and I wanted to investigate that. And it's funny how sometimes cases evolve over time. So the case started off the first half of litigation including discovery, our theory was that actually the cause of death was pneumonia because even though the death certificate said hypovolemic shock, it also said pneumonia and there was this big one. Part of the case was the family was upset that he was supposed to be on what are called neutropenic precautions, and so he has to be isolated from other residents because if he gets an infection, he's in big trouble with a low white blood cell count.

Well, during his stay there in his last two or three weeks, they took him off the precautions, put him into what we believe was a dementia unit, and other residents were coming in and randomly coming into his room. And so we tried to make the case all about that and it wasn't until halfway through litigation that we realized that was probably the weaker argument and the defense had some good defenses to this, they had some good answers to this. So we shifted gears and I said, you know what? Wait a second. I think it's in the dehydration. That's where we should focus and make the case all about that. But certainly the loss of weight was the big hook that got me initially and got me to start the preliminary investigation.

But just to add to that, if I may briefly, I think Tim, correct me if I'm wrong, I think this is where the clients, the family of Tommy really helped things because Jim and Patty, our clients were the entire time so faithful to fighting this fight for him. It really helps you when you have clients like that that are going to push and want to be involved. They want to know what the depositions are yielding, they want to know what the expert reports are like. And so just want to kind of touch on that as well that I think they really help push along different ideas that we had about the case.

Do you think they helped put the light going off about the dehydration versus the pneumonia theory or was it also just what you were hearing and understanding in the course of taking depositions?

I think Matt makes a good point in the sense that it was the family, the brother and sister-in-law of the decedent are clients who were very, very passionate about the case and every time we spoke to them, it was a great conversation. I mean, they had so much insight. I think initially they were on board too with the whole isolation neutropenic precautions issue at first, but I think it was through depositions that we began to shift our focus to dehydration, which was the right move. But yeah, having them as clients was fantastic. They were very supportive, very clued in, very passionate about the case, and that really helped us a lot.

So I recall there being at least a theory of understaffing because it's sort of like, okay, well we know he was dehydrated. We know he lost all of this weight. Now you've got to kind of peel the onion back further to find out what was the motivation, what was why that led to that happening. So were you thinking this must be a staffing issue or did that start to come to light as you're getting records in The course of discovery

Came to light throughout the discovery process, but now that you mention it, that played a key role in focusing the opening statement because initially you could have argued that there were like six breaches of the standard of care here in this case because in addition to not feeding him, there was the failure to replace his dentures. He gets in there and on day two, his dentures break and they never replace the dentures, which is in violation of the various CMS standards nursing home standard. So that's one breach. Another breach is not doing nutritional assessments regularly, which they were supposed to do. Another breach is not turning him every two hours, which helps to create the wounds. Another breach is not providing sufficient amount of water for his weight. And then another breach finally is the understaffing. And so in my head I was trying to organize this opening statement and it was so clunky. It was like rule one, rule two, rule three, rule four, rule five, how do I do this? And then I probably reworked this thing for two weeks and finally you mentioned it. I thought, wait a minute, understaffing isn't just another breach is the original sin. That's the foundation upon which all these other things can be explained and understood. So from that point, when that light bulb went off, the opening statement then became about the main overarching violation was understaffing, and then from that

And how did you approach that in opening?

Yeah, so basically it was your standard thing that everybody would agree to. Common sense is that a nursing home or a skilled nursing facility must meet the needs of all of its patients, number one. Alright, number two, a nursing home in a skilled nursing facility cannot meet the needs of all of his patients if they're not adequately staffed. And so therefore when you have insufficient staff, it is not surprising to see certain basic needs go unmet needs like being fed needs, having water needs being turned every two hours when you're immobile. So from that umbrella of the understaffing, that's where all these other breaches fit in nice and neat. And so that became the theme of the whole opening and basically the whole case, everything stemmed, the understaffing glued it all together.

Talk to us about the evidence you had developed one thing to say, oh, this happened because of understaffing, but I mean jury's going to want to know what evidence do you have to back that up?

So in this case, we were able to locate at least three or four actually former nurses, aides, former employees who told us on the phone about their concerns of understaffing and about specific incidents that they observed and witnessed residents lying in their filth for long periods of time, residents not being turned all night long. We even had a ex aide, nurse's aide testify. It was not unusual for the nurses including upper management at the facility to essentially look past charting errors and things in the chart that weren't quite accurate. So having these former aides, these former employees was critical to proving that piece or providing that piece of the puzzle. We also did have a staffing expert as well, but I think that it's the former AIDS and employees that make a bigger impact on the jury, much more so than the staffing expert.

I'll just say too, Brendan, to add to that, I think what's critical, and this is something that we're learning every trial we do, but it's great for younger attorneys who are starting to try cases. You really have to invest the time. There's no replacement for you yourself digging into the records as voluminous as they may be. As I got on board closer to trial, and Tim had already done a real yeoman's job at kind of going through all the records, but there were so many instances where you could highlight a missed meal or a missed times where they didn't give him the required or the recommended amount of water or food, and so there's really no replacement. Even when you have experts for digging into the thousands and thousands of pages of records, you have to master that. And Tim really credit to him knew those records in and out.

How did you guys find these past? How did you track down these prior employees who were willing to tell you from their vantage point what it was like from the inside?

Yeah, I think we had used a service. I personally first met them. I think Tim had met them a few years prior, but I had met them out in Huntington Beach at the Trial Lawyers University meet up there June of 2024, and great guys and gals run that firm, and so we use them to locate some of the past employees, I believe.

And tell me that process because toyed with reaching out to strategic, I've heard all about them and certainly heard them touted by TLU and at a lot of the national seminars we go to, but how did the process work? So did you contact them, say, here's the case we have, here's the defendant. Can you try to find us some people or did you have to have names that you pulled from the records or from prior staffing logs that you gave to them to track down?

Tim, correct me, I'm wrong. I think that you provided names based upon what the records showed or did you just give them the records and say have at it?

Yeah, so we had a list prior to meeting the strategic folks of all the employees who were there during our client's admission who were no longer employed, and we got that simply by asking it in discovery. We asked in discovery, I said, I probably listed close to 50 names because there's a lot of aides and nurses at a facility like this. I asked the defense counsel, I said, who are currently still employed and who aren't? And so I took the ones who weren't employed and sent that list of names to strategic and I said, can you find these folks their addresses, their contact information, and can you start to reach out to them in connection with this case? That's what they did, and they found us several that ended up being quite helpful.

Do you think based on that, because it sounds like, and obviously I want to get into how it actually winds up working at trial, never as smooth as we would hope, but based on how that led to you identifying some very helpful people, is that something you feel like you're going to be doing more and more frequently in cases or does it kind of depend on the case?

I think it depends on the case.

So talk to us about, this was Beaver County, right?

That's right.

What was jury selection and did you have a sense of the type of people you wanted or did not want on this jury?

Yeah, so in this case, we used this service called e jury, which I know you're familiar with Brendan, and as you know, they take sort of the basic facts of the case from both sides along with some questions that you as the attorney prepare, and they send that to 50 individuals within the Western Pennsylvania area and have them review the facts, review the case, answer the questions, and then give sort of their opinions, who would win, who would lose, and how much they would award if anything. What we discovered in the results for this one was that the best juror for us was sort of a middle aged woman, was basically the best juror. The men. There were some men that were okay, but certainly no young men, so younger jurors across the board were clearly not good for us. So basically we're looking at jurors 50 years of age and up is what we were going for, and primarily women to the extent we could to the extent. And so it turns out that's essentially what happened. That's kind of the jury. We got lucky enough, and I could let Matt, maybe Matt wants to go on talk a little bit more about the jury selection process.

Yeah, it was interesting. Beaver County is similar to a lot of Western Pennsylvania venues where they don't let you kind of go on and on. And I know some of the trial gurus that we talk to and we hear from at TLU and those kinds of things, they talk about how jury selection can go on for days and they can ask all of these open-ended questions. As you know, Brennan, we really can't do that here. And Judge Tosi was very fair in how she handled it, but again, it was still limited. But I do remember that we ended up getting, I think two or three younger males on the jury, correct?

Yeah, we had three men and nine women. Two of the men were probably around our age in the forties I'd say, and one man was older probably I'm guessing in his sixties. So that was the breakdown. And it was your typical western PA jury selection really in the sense that the judge was asking most of the questions and I think she, I can't remember. Did she accept some attorney suggested questions, man, I think she did.

She did. Yeah.

Lucky enough, this was a case where to my pleasant surprise, the judge would ask a lot of questions to the entire panel, all 50 or 60 of them. They were quite receptive and a lot of hands went up to a lot of questions, and one of the questions that actually the judge herself kind of almost regretted including, but actually ended up being very helpful, very helpful to us on the plaintiff side was the question, do you think that there are too many lawsuits being filed in America basically? And a surprising number of hands went up, I guess not surprising, but the judge was surprised. And so because all the hands went up, they all had to be brought in one by one and asked about that. There were several who once you asked them more about that question went off, and so we had a good few causal strikes on that.

I will say they were a much more vocal group in their entirety than other veneers we've had. In other cases,

It's kind of luck of the draw. Sometimes you get the chatty groups and you get sometimes it feels like you got a bunch of mimes for your jury panel, so you get your jury. What about motions in limine? Were there headaches problems leading into trial where you had to pivot or was it relatively smooth?

Quite a few. I believe from the defense, this was the first time I ever had to do a preliminary hearing with one of my proposed experts prior to trial, three or four days, I think before jury selection, my expert health economist for the understaffing question was beamed in from New York through a live feed into the court, and the opposing counsel and I had to go through his qualifications. There was a challenge to that. There was a challenge to the models that he used to determine understaffing, the challenge being that these models are not accepted by the commonwealth. They're too novel in their approach and all that stuff. So we did have almost a two hour hearing, just several days before the actual trial, and the judge ultimately allowed him to testify.

Was your expert beamed in for that argument,

For that hearing? He was beamed in, but for trial he came in.

Okay, gotcha. Because I was curious, did you have any of your experts or any witnesses by that kind of Zoom type feed or was it either prerecorded or live?

Our one expert, Dr. Scott Hawk was our wound doctor. He came in remotely through Arizona, is where he is.

Can you talk to me about that for a minute? I have a trial coming up in November, at least one of my experts. I'll be doing that for the first time actually in a trial. I just tried a month and a half, the defense beamed in one of their witnesses and it wasn't great. It actually made me kind of nervous. There was a little bit of a lag and there were some issues. Talk to me for a second. How do you feel that worked with the virtual feed of the expert from a distant location,

From your vantage point, Matt, how do you think it went?

I thought it went off without a hitch. It went really well. No delays, no lags, no issues like that.

No. I guess in some ways that comes down to luck. I guess sometimes you have these technological issues, but in this case it went pretty smooth, thankfully.

Well, I talked many episodes ago, I talked with James Tallman and blank on the name right now. My guy and Tom Renny, who's awesome, they tried a case out in, their main expert was brought in by Zoom Feed. They said he was on this big screen and they thought it was incredibly helpful and effective. I've heard mostly positives from it, so it's good to hear you guys had a good experience with it as well because you're always nervous whenever you're trying a new modality in court. So I'm glad to hear that it went well. Sorry to digress for a second, but you get over the hurdles of in elimina emotions, you get your jury that for the most part looks kind of like what you were hoping it would look like. Get into opening. Tim. I imagine with your drama background, you are a no notes guy and you're up there doing your thing, right?

Generally I prefer it that way. I just feel more comfortable that way. Part of my struggle is I got to tone it down, especially in the opening and the opening as you know, you can't be too passionate or emotional shouldn't be at all, and it's my tendency to be that way. So I really had to tamp down. I think I was able to keep it even keel on this case as opposed to other cases where I may have gotten dinged.

I was just going to add to it. That sat in on Tim opening a few times now, and I think that was the most sort of straightforward and direct he's ever been. I will say that one of the things that surprised me is defense counsel as fantastic as a trial attorney as he is, was very kind of short and almost at least I thought left something to be desired if I was on the jury sitting and watching this. Yeah, I thought Tim's opening was really fantastic,

And I kind of remember talking with you, Tim, about this, and your take was openings leaning in your favor based off of just the vibe. The presentation comparatively defense counsel kept it short. There wasn't a lot to it. I remember you saying, but then I recall you telling me that defense counsel was very formidable on cross exam and generally I recall you telling me it was tough sledding even in your direct exams because of objections and so forth.

So this was probably the first trial where I was just peppered like machine gun style with objection leading, objection leading. And in my honest opinion, I may be biased of course, but I didn't think I was leading at all, but the judge disagreed. So there were so many questions I asked leading, sustained. I'm like, Jesus,

There were a few times where I kid you not both Tim and I in doing direct examinations, looked at the judge sort of exhausted and flab like, judge, are we really leaving? What else can we ask?

Yeah, so this was my first witness and my first witness, by the way, was one of the former nurses aides, one of the whistleblowers. So I got her up there and I had a whole roadmap of where I wanted to take her. And this roadmap was being blocked every step of the way with leading objections that were being sustained. And we as trial lawyers, for the most part, you have to absolutely keep your cool and look unfazed in front of the jury. But it did get to a point towards 20 minutes into it after the 17th leading objection. I literally at that point went to the judge, went like this, judge, how else am I supposed to ask it? And she said, well, just try another way. I'm like, okay.

I mean, we hear these great trial lawyers and these seminars say, well, sometimes that can play to your advantage because it ticks off the jury, but it is very withering to you as the trial lawyer when A, you have this plan, it's not going according to plan B. There's that kind of flop sweat feeling of am I bombing right now? Is this jury think I don't know what the hell I'm doing? Kind of. It's not a very good feeling at all. It's very helpless feeling.

You feel like you have a hot lamp on your head or something.

So just what we need is additional avenue of stress. And the other tough thing is your opponent then they can smell blood in the water when the judge is going along with it, it really can become kind of a death spiral. But it sounds like you managed to get through it, but I guess when the question is, I mean stepping outside of how miserable that feels for you guys trying to deal with that, did you get the sense that the jury was getting a little fed up with all of the objections in that sense, in the sense it kind of hurt your opponent maybe a bit?

Obviously I couldn't tell, but go ahead, Matt.

From my perspective, I only answered Tim first because that first time it happened was you questioning a witness. And I would look over and I could see that 30 minutes in to the first witness. In our case in chief, there's some kind of big breaths and some eye rolling. And even though it's frustrating, I know Tim is being tested there, I knew right away this is not going to work to his benefit.

It's like you kind of have to go with your gut, but I personally think sometimes while they're like, keep your cool and just roll with it personally, I think it's okay to some extent to show a little bit of exasperation at a certain point. What else am I supposed to do here? I mean, maybe looking less professional, but I think you're being honest and calling it out at the same time. I've been doing this my whole career, I've never had a problem with these types of questions, but you don't want to bog it down into some whole side dispute.

And then later on, I think it was during the break, during the lunch break on that same, that was the first day during the lunch break, we did have a chambers meeting where we discussed other things. And I said, oh, by the way, judge, we're on the record. Would you mind sharing with me the court's idea of what a leading question is? And we had a very, very kind of funny discussion about it. And I think from that point on, both defense counsel and the judge were less, they did it less often after that little powwow, which was nice.

So that first witness, obviously we were taught the first witness is critical. Your first witness was one of the, was it your expert or was it one of the former people? Right.

One of the former people. And that was quite strategic. I wanted the first witness to come up there and rebut everything the defense counsel said in the opening. I wanted to be an immediate rebuttal. So that was why we chose an ex-employee. And then our next witness, I think we did a video depo and then our third witness and last witness of the day, and this was a Friday, by the way, Friday afternoon was our nursing expert. And this is where I, even though we've been doing this, Matt, we've been past the bar in 2009, I'm still learning what I would consider to be almost like stupid lessons, like lessons I should know. I didn't properly vet the background of the nurse vis-a-vis the issues of the case. And what I mean by that is the nurse herself did a great job. We're so happy with how she did.

She came off wonderfully. This was her first time testifying at trial and she'd only been an expert several times just doing written reports. So she was a little bit nervous, but I thought that was very endearing to the jury. I think the jury liked her because she was so real and normal and raw and just sort of, this was new to her. I think the jury liked that. But what I did not do, I did not check because she was a director of nursing at various facilities out east eastern PA as well as a nursing home administrator. I learned the hard way during opposing several of the facilities where she was a director of nursing or an administrator. Those facilities were dinged by state surveyors and inspectors for some of the same violations that we're alleging in the case. So failure to turn people every two hours, failure to provide sufficient or nutritious food, all this stuff.

And defense counsel to his credit was just going over these one after one after one, and it seemed like a half hour. I mean, he was just, isn't it true, ma'am, that in 2019 your facility that you were in charge of was cited for, and then isn't it true that the next year your facility was cited for this and for that? And with every passing minute, I'm sinking down lower and lower in my chair, going under the table. It was so brutal. And it was Friday at three 30 in the afternoon. I'm like, and I remember thinking, dear God, if there's any way you can get me out of this, just throw in the towel. I'm done. I quit.

Pretty brutal. Cross exam of your expert. What do you do? It's like I'm thinking of that moment in Billy Madison where he is in the competition at the end and the guy plays a virtuoso violin and then he gets up and he just like, he's good. What did you do, if anything, in response to that?

I kind of defaulted back to something I sometimes do in other cases where if I feel like that the other side has put a real ding on me, they gash the armor a little bit. They got some points. It does something to me where I kind of let the drama and theater guy come out. I feel like at this point in my mind, I'm like, what else do I have to lose at this point? I'm just going to go out there and have fun. I didn't know how else to, I couldn't address this on the merits. I knew none of the information he was citing. I had none of it in my hands. So what I did was I got up and I just said, and at this point I'm visibly animated, but in a happy way, in a friendly way. So I get up there, I'm smiling, and I say, nurse liberator, when your facilities were cited, as we just heard for a half hour from opposing counsel, how did you handle it?

And I didn't know what she was going to say, but thankfully she said, well, we had meetings about it. I said, you had meetings about it. In other words, you took accountability, didn't you? Yes, I did. And in fact, you didn't shirk this and try to wipe your hands of it, did you? No, I didn't. You didn't say, oh, don't sue me, don't sue me. I didn't do anything wrong at that point. Objection, objection. And the jury is laughing their butts off. And then of course that just feeds me even more. It's just what I need to hear, like an audience. So they're laughing their butts off. And the judge herself was laughing and she said, Mr. Ton, maybe a bit less with the drama. And I said, well, you have to forgive me, judge. I do have a theater background. And they were laughing again. And it was the only thing I could think of to do was just to point out that she's different than the party we're suing because she took responsibility. She brought people in, she disciplined them, she took corrective action. And at the same time, I tried to make fun of opposing and counsel a little bit. It was fun.

Yeah, I mean, I'm sure you've seen that there, these older school legendary trial lawyers that suggest you do that. They suggest that your cross exam is you basically testifying to the jury. And I will see other counsel do that from time to time. I don't think it's effective. I think that generally the jury, they don't want people staring at them. Certainly not lawyers for the most part. I think maybe once in a blue moon, maybe you make a really good point, then you maybe kind of glance over the jury. That is okay. And I suppose it's whatever you're comfortable with. But I have seen people do that, and I do not think it is effective. I think it is actually counter to what they think they're accomplishing. So I don't do that. I typically just try to have my conversation with the witness, you know what I mean? And on cross, you'll maybe move to another side. So they're sort of looking away from, but even that, I think sometimes it starts to get absurd, the level of minutiae of what you're doing. And it's really much broader strokes that are making the differences. But I don't personally like that testifying as part of your cross to the jury. I think it just comes off stilted and it just comes off like a lawyer trick or something. I think

One thing to add about the cross is that defense counsel had a real penchant for looking at the jury while he was asking questions on cross to the witness, which looking back on it, I'm not sure if that was effective or not, or if that actually was a negative for the jury. But asking the question to the witness, but staring at the jury while asking the entire question,

It 100% fits what a lot of trial advocacy schools would teach. He was phenomenal at his advocacy at trial. But yeah, he did do certain things that, as you said, Brendan, were sort of traditional things that have been taught for many years that maybe in today's world feel kind of old fashioned and didn't quite fit.

So there's a moment you're going into the weekend feeling horrible on that cross, but then you kind of save it sort of going with your gut, being yourself going into that weekend. So you come back. How does the rest of the trial sort of unfold, and where are you as far as feeling like jury's with us? I don't know. I'm worried. How are you feeling when you get back into it on Monday?

Well, I guess to answer that question, we should probably discuss just for a minute, some of their defenses. One of their big defenses was that our decedent, the resident there rejected care. In other words, it's not that we failed to feed him. He rejected meals. And it's not that we failed to give him water. He rejected water. He also didn't want us to touch him, so he wouldn't let us reposition him every two hours. So to some extent, we really had to get into the weeds. And this is what Matt was saying earlier about what the chart showed, what the record showed about whether or not did he reject these things. If so, how often Matt did a good job cross-examining their records, basically their records custodian, their electronic medical records agent about, well, what does it mean whenever you have this entry in the chart?

Does that mean that it was rejected or does it mean that perhaps it wasn't done? She eventually had to, under Matt's examination, had to yield and say, well, if that's the entry, I can't tell you what happened. I can't tell you if he rejected it or not. And in fact, isn't there an actual entry for rejection? Patient rejects it. You can actually put in rejected, yes, you could do that. And that's not in here, is it? We don't know if he rejected it. Matt did a good job with that. One of their defenses too, which was not very specific, it was a very broad, vague, ambiguous objection, was basically the existence of COVID. It was just sort of, you got to give us a pass. It was COVID. COVID was crazy, and everybody had to deal with COVID, and COVID was nuts. And if we had some things in the record that weren't quite complete, you got to forgive us for that. It was COVID. And so they brought in this expert Dr. What type of expert was he? Matt, I'll let you take this because Matt cross-examined this expert.

Yeah, he was, his name's Dr. Neiman, and he was a, it's funny, I'm trying to think what kind of doctor he was. It'll come to me. He was not very memorable. And if he was, I was not for the reasons they intended, but he was interesting because I think even he kind of was like, what am I doing here? And at one point, I think he just sort of said, well, it was COVID, man. Everyone knows it was COVID. We could have obviously as trial lawyers, some fun with that. Obviously you got to be careful that you're not coming across as, and you never want to be anyways, that you're not mocking someone. That's not why you're there. But they did. I was quite surprised at how often COVID was mentioned. And this pancytopenia, which was a condition Tommy had, it was just like the jury had by the end, you could tell had their fill of pancytopenia and COVID to the point where it was like they know that jurors are smart. They know that care still has to meet a standard even when other things are happening in the world.

Plus we had evidence, good evidence that this facility was not overwhelmed at all with COVID patients. In fact, during our client's time at the facility, I don't think, excuse me, I don't think there was one patient who had COVID during his time there. There were two or three employees who took some time off for COVID, so there was not an outbreak. So that made the COVID excuse all the more bogus. And I will say defense, their last defense was to hit this pancytopenia thing over and over again from a causation standpoint. And the argument is that because of his low white blood cell count, and he was not long for this world anyway, he was weak and fragile. And so that's why that if you have even the beginning of a blister on your skin, if you have pancytopenia, you're not going to expect that to get healed very easily. No matter what the nurses do, he has this underlying condition that's going to make him basically wither away. And they articulated it better than that. But that was sort of their focus was this pancytopenia from a causation standpoint. And he rejected the care that we were offering. So the cross-examinations of their folks, whenever it was their case in chief, I thought actually was the highlight of the trial in terms of how we felt. We felt really good cross-examining their people during their case in chief.

What were some of the highlights that you guys can remember from those?

So as Matt, just to repeat real quick, what Matt said with this one, doctor was really cute and fun to watch. When Matt at one point said, doctor, I see you mentioned COVID maybe seven or eight times in your report. Why did you do that? And the doctor simply said, well, come on, man. It was COVID. I mean, come on. What else do I have to say? You were all there. It was COVID, it was everywhere. It was in Europe, it was in Asia, it was everywhere. And Matt kept his composure. He just said, well, I understand that, sir, but it have to do with this case. Well, come on. That was sort of a standout

Moment. Just to add to that, that was one of those moments just where even though you've got more on your outline and you have more material and you can go into it more, Tim and I kind of did a quick caucus back at trial table, and I said, am I done? He said, yeah, you're done. You kind of know with a witness when it's time to just move on you. I was looking at the jury here and there, given some quick glances when that was happening, and you could tell they just weren't buying this guy at all.

And then another one of my favorite moments of trial for me personally was their nursing expert is a very, very, very well traveled expert. She had been testifying in cases since 1993. I was about 12 years old at the time. I knew that she had been involved in thousands of cases, but I wasn't quite sure what the exact number was. I knew it would be big. So on cross-examination, of course, you start off with that line of inquiry, and I asked her, how many times have you done this? I think her number was somewhere around 5,286. And then she went further and said, I'm sorry, this makes this 5,287 if I include this case. I said, okay. And I said, how often for the defense, and Matt, you could correct me if I'm wrong, I think it was like 70 or 80%.

Right. But then the next question was great.

Yeah. The next question, and this is one where I did not know the answer, I had no clue. I just thought I'd throw it out there. I said, have you worked for this particular defense law firm before? The answer was yes. I said, how many times? I'm thinking she might say five or six, maybe 128. That's great. So that was a lot of fun. And then initially I was a little bit intimidated because of her experience being a veteran of trial work. I mean, she has more experience with examinations than I do, so I was a little nervous about it. But one of the great things about this examination is she just didn't have a handle on the facts of the case. Now, she had her report, she wrote a report, and she had a chronology of nurses' notes, basically from the time he got in there to the time he died.

And she was sticking to this theory, the defense theory, that he was rejecting care. But surprisingly, in her nurse's notes in her report, she only identified one time in the month of January where he rejected a meal one time in February and one time in March, and no times in April. So this led to a very fun back and forth, and she herself got very exasperated. And Matt, if you want to, from your perspective, I'm sure I'd love to hear your thoughts, but it was very enjoyable to ask her. I said, nurse so-and-so, you say that the decedent rejected care. Isn't it true that you only identify one time in January and she's looking through her notes a very long minute or two? Yeah, I guess that's true, based upon my notes. And isn't it true it's only one time in February, same thing. Yeah, I guess that's true. According to my notes. And I cut to the chase and I said, then how can you say that my client loses 27, 28 pounds because he's rejecting meals? Well, I saw that in the depositions. I said, well, whose depositions who? She said, the nurses. Now I knew that I got her because I didn't depose any nurses.

I deposed a director of nursing. That was it. So I said, who are the nurses whose depositions you consulted? She couldn't name anybody. And finally she said, well, I think it was the director of nursing or the director of administration. I said, ma'am, are you aware that two days ago, the director of administration came up onto the stand and she herself admitted it was only one rejected meal in January, one rejected meal in February, and one rejected meal in March. Are you aware of that? Well, I'm not aware of that, but he must've been rejecting care. I said, well, why do you say that well, because it makes no sense otherwise. There's no other reason. And she was banging the desk and I said, nurse, I said, nurse, there is another reason, isn't there? No, there isn't. I said there is. They weren't feeding him.

That can't be. That cannot be. Well, you weren't there, were you? Well, no, but it just can't happen. Well, why can't it happen? So you got the idea, and I really kind of, when you're in this back and forth and you know got the expert, you got the witness, you just can't help but to milk it. So I allowed these big pregnant pauses and I was very soft in my voice. I was not intimidating. I was very soft. And so I think the message got to the jury pretty well at that point, and we found out later from the jury that kind of left an impression.

You saw her losing credibility live in real time, just with every single time Tim was able to expose an untruth based on the records and the fact that she just kept towing the line was great for us, terrible for her and the defense, but was like, I was like, yeah, just keep saying that it's not true that they weren't feeding him because you just saw her losing credibility.

That's great. Good turning moment. So tell me about closing.

Well, Tim closed as well, and it was powerful. One of the things that Tim did really well was had an idea to use a whiteboard to discuss, because I think one of the things even at the time of closing that wasn't real super clear to the jurors was what's the interaction or the interplay between the one actual entity where he was in sort of the parent company, so to speak. And I think Tim ended up drawing and it was actually a pretty good drawing of it, a tree and talking about how the branches and how it all comes from the root, the strength from the root and money funnels that way. And I think that was a really critical moment was because we started noticing that they were trying to say kind of hedge a little bit, even if it was some of the nurses and nursing assistants and the facility. But Tim did a good job. I remember that being a really critical moment where I was watching the jurors, really looking at what he was doing. Drawing on that whiteboard.

Yeah, so the idea there was that the trunk of the tree was sort of the head parenting company and each branch of the tree was a branch location. There are various branch locations, and so the argument here was to kind of take the heat off of the particular nurses and aides. They're not the villains in the case. So the closing was to make the corporate parenting company the villains. And the whole closing was oriented towards these folks in the trunk. The number crunchers are the ones who are siphoning off funds and not allowing the money to get to this branch where the leaves, the leaves which represent the residents. The patients need it, like the leaves need water, and they're holding back the money to pad their revenues. And as a result, these leaves, these people are not getting what they need. Nutrition water, just like in a tree. And what happens just like a leaf falling off and withering away and dying, you have Mr. Sni withering away and dying. So that was sort of the kind of a focal point, I guess visually. Visually to the clip.

That is an awesome analogy. They could probably be used in a lot of corporate type cases where at the end the leaves are the patients that pay the price when things aren't done properly. That's really a terrific analogy. How did you approach, because as I said at the beginning of the case, and this is not to make light, I'm talking sort of just lawyer analysis, speak that not the sexiest of cases because he was what, a 78-year-old guy, not married, lived alone, no kids. That is a tougher dynamic from a damages perspective just because you're having to overcome that natural thought process. Something we're going to have of like, well, what are the real losses? Money's not going to bring this guy back. Where's the mike going to go? What good is the money going to do? So how did you approach your damage argument in a closing like this for him?

One preliminary thing first, and this goes back to what something Matt did, Matt did a direct examination of our client, the brother of the decedent, James Kinney. He was the main plaintiff. Matt did a direct examination of him where James just basically introduced the jury to the story of his brother and who his brother was as a human being as a person. This was important to get the jury, we believe emotionally invested in the family and in Tom who died at the very end of Matt's direct examination, we only showed a picture of the decedent one time, and this was the time at the very end of the examination, we put a picture up on the screen of the decedent, maybe a month or two before his admission, and then a month before he died. And you saw a difference, a big difference. And so Matt focused on the sort of the later picture a few weeks before he died, directly asked James the brother, do you see a difference in your brother there, James from before he went in to just a few weeks before he died.

And this is one of those moments that you cannot plan. You can't strategize this moment. It just happens. It has to happen on its own. James was just sitting there and the pause, the silence must have been at least two full minutes, which in court seems like an hour. He just sat there trying not to cry and just whispered very much so he looks different and he was very emotional and I looked over and clearly the jury was just moved by it. So I bring that up just to say that I think that it was important that the jury have some reason to care for this family and for the person who died. But in terms of caring beyond that, as Brendan, it's important for a jury to care not only about your client, but to care about the community going into closing, one of the things I thought I would do to sort of get the jury really because tired at this point, they've heard it all, but I wanted to capture their attention.

So one of my opening lines I think was, I'm trying to remember exactly how I said it. It was something along the lines of, you've heard the last chapter of the story of Thomas sny, but the chapter of the story that you are going to write you the jury is just beginning. The story you are going to write is going to reverberate in these halls and in this community literally forever. And so I just wanted to hook 'em in and get them to pay attention and make them kind of sit up a little bit like, oh wow. So it's empowering jury. Then when it came time to get to the damages, we still had punitives in the case. I was able to give my first ever Punitives closing, which was a lot of fun. And I got a lot of helpful bits from colleagues that you and I know Pete and Mike gave me some good ideas that I used.

I used a variation of the man with the briefcase in this case. And what I just basically said was from a compensatory standpoint, just imagine someone comes up to somebody in Thomas Kinney's shoes and says, look, I'm going to make a deal for you. I got a blank check here. It's blank. How much money do I need to write into this check for you to voluntarily accept the following. And of course you go through all the damages, everything. And then repeatedly as you go through the damages, every once in a while you repeat, how much money do I have to write in that check for you to accept that? And how about this? And so that was my compensatory damages argument. And of course that then just kind of dovetailed into punitives, which was great.

What was your exact punitives argument?

I got a lot of this from Mike Calder. So thank you Mike for your help on this statements that normally we would feel very squeamish about saying, because you'll often have a punitives case, but I had to say them with conviction and not look squeamish. So I had to say them, I meant them and I think I did. But basically statements that are very bold statements like this is a verdict for all time. This is a verdict that has to make a difference. You're not punishing the branch location, you're not punishing Concordia at Villa St. Joseph. You are punishing the number crunchers the people who push pads and pad their revenues. I'm pointing at the trunk of the tree. You have to deliver a message that is so painful that they would never even think about doing this again. You have to hit 'em right between the eyes. And I had five or six variations of that statement about how painful it has to be, how much of a deterrent it has to be. And then there was some more empowering language. You have the ability, you are in a position to change the way care is provided to our most vulnerable from here to next week, to next month to next year and forever. You can do that today. So it was a lot of that kind of stuff and it was great, great fun.

So long deliberation,

Four hours, four and a half. And the entire time we're sitting in that little courtyard inside. It's outside, but it's like inside. It's kind of like an atrium and it's beautiful there. But we were sitting there with the clients and times Tim and I were sitting alone just talking. And the nerves were definitely getting to us as each hour passed. And I think they came back fairly soon with a question, right?

Yeah. So the question was kind of odd. So during jury selection, the juror who ended up being juror number one, a younger woman, happened to know, the plaintiff's family happened to know the plaintiff's parents or something.

Her parents knew the decedents. So our clients, the decedent's brother and sister-in-law.

So her parents were friends, like close friends with our clients who testified and we thought they were going to get stricken or motioned for cause, but they weren't. The defense allowed her on. And of course we were gleeful at the time. We're like, this is great. An hour we're into jury deliberations. We get a question from the foreperson who we don't know who it is yet, but the foreperson says, juror number one keeps talking about how conditions are at this facility and how she knows somebody who's there now. And oh, by the way, does she happen to know one of the parties in the case because talking like she does. So the judge brought the whole jury into the courtroom and just basically said her only instruction was you are only to consider the facts and evidence that was presented at trial. Go back out. And we found out later when the verdict came back and we spoke to one or two of the jurors that juror, juror number one whose parents were friends with our clients was one of the two holdouts that went against us.

Go figure. Crazy. So verdict finally comes out. And how did it turn out for your family?

It was great. I mean, they came back with a compensatory verdict, 750,000. We were hoping they would come back with punitives. We really kind of stand by that. They should have. But they were a great jury. Can't complain. No punitives unfortunately. But it was a great verdict, especially given what you said, Brennan, that is an older guy. Other comorbidities didn't really have too much family, no kids. So for a nursing home case, we think it was a fantastic result.

Yeah, a hundred percent. That's amazing outcome for that case. I don't think anybody would've expected that and great outcome for that family. They must've been highly appreciative of year two efforts on this case. Did you have any discussions with jurors afterward on their thinking about punitives?

We did get a little bit of feedback from a couple of the jurors that the jury instructions on punitives kind of hung them up. I didn't get too much detail on this unfortunately, but what I was able to glean or gather from what they were saying was that there's two different types of punitive instructions. One is punitives as to a direct theory versus punitives on a vicarious theory. And the judge decided to give both the direct and the vicarious instruction. Well, the vicarious instruction is kind of confusing vis-a-vis the facts of our case. And basically, as you know Brendan, it's basically you have to prove that the principal knew what the agents were doing and basically ignored it. But in our case, it was not the agents who were causing the problem, it was the principles who were causing the problem. So I'm worried that the jury may have got hung up on that and said, well, how does this apply? If I could do it over again, I would've probably made a stronger push to eliminate the vicarious instruction, which I think might've been confusing.

But to that point, just briefly, Brendan, you talked about the minutia with trials. That's one of those instances where back in chambers when we were having the charge conference, I remember that was an issue we all kind of ruminated and discussed for quite a while was Tim and I were really pushing to change that particular charge, that instruction. We just didn't like it from the jump. And so younger trial lawyers who haven't maybe done as many, and we're obviously still learning, I've got less even experience than Tim. But to see those conferences and how important they are to the ultimate,

Well gents, killer verdict, great outcome you always have. I feel like take back to that moment where Tim, you're sliding under the desk and you're having those thoughts that we all have ready to throw the towel in. This case is over, we're done. And you didn't give up and you guys kept battling forward. And then you get to these golden moments and cross and ultimately pulled out a great victory for your clients. So I think just a lot to be said, therefore never giving up persevering resilience that's needed on top of everything else we've talked about. So fantastic job guys. Super happy to have a chance to get you on the pod and chat and just super fun to catch up. So super happy for you both.

Yeah, thanks for having us, bud.

Thanks so much, Brendan, we appreciate it. Absolutely. So that's Matt Scanlon, Tim Wojton from Scanlon and Wojton. You can find 'em online, find 'em everywhere. They seem to be everywhere in Pittsburgh. I'm sure we'll do this again sometimes soon with your next big verdict fellas. But thanks, and we'll talk to you soon. Okay.

If you enjoy the show, please subscribe to the Just Verdicts podcast on your favorite platform and consider leaving a review. And if you're interested in co-counseling, local counseling, or referring a catastrophic injury case, we'd love to work with you. Call us at four two eight one forty one hundred or visit our attorney referralPage@pamedmal.com slash refer. Thanks for listening.