Colorado PI attorney Jason Jordan, founder of Jordan Law, has a vast amount of product liability experience, but he recently settled a “felonious killing” case that had reminders of the killing of George Floyd. In that case, Jason represented the widow of a man who was killed when guards at a hospital leaned on his back and neck until he lost consciousness. 

In this conversation with Keith Fuicelli, Jason recounts the details of that case as well as how his team investigates to determine if a case has product liability issues. He also describes his process for getting to know clients in order to humanize them for a jury and to prepare them for testimony in court. Finally, Jason stresses the importance of partnering with other attorneys both for their experience and for expertise in specialized areas of the law.

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Episode Snapshot

• How Jason opened his own practice out of law school
• Why Jason encourages young lawyers to ask for help, seek partners on cases
• A car accident may include product liability issues, so lawyers should be prepared to investigate car parts involved in the crash
• How Jason exposed the training of hospital guards who killed a patient by leaning on his neck.
• How to get to know your clients well so you can humanize them in court
• How a video tape of a hospital patient showed he wasn’t violent until a guard touched him
• Why it matters which state a trial is held in and the importance of investigating state laws
• How focus groups can help trial lawyers decide how to present a case
• If a victim or a client has a dark side, lawyers must offer testimony about their strengths
• How press conferences can be a tool to help stop witness intimidation

The information contained in this podcast is not intended to be taken as legal advice. The information provided by Fuicelli & Lee is intended to provide general information regarding comprehensive injury and accident attorney services for clients in the state of Colorado.

Welcome to the Colorado Trial Lawyer Connection, where Colorado trial lawyers share insights from their latest cases. Join me, Keith Elli as we uncover the stories, strategies, and lessons from recent Colorado trials to help you and your clients achieve justice in the courtroom. The pursuit of justice starts now. Alright, well welcome back everyone. Keith Fuselli here. Excited to have another episode of the Colorado Trial Lawyer Connection. And this episode is very special because I've got my great friend, Jason Jordan on to talk about an amazing trial that almost made it to the end. But I guess sometimes things happen mid trial and for the better and you settle cases mid trial. But Jason, thank you so much for appearing on the show. Welcome.

Thanks for having me, Keith. And it's good to see you man.

Yeah, good to see you too. So Jason, before we jump in and talk about this case, tell us a little bit about yourself. How did you come to Colorado and are you the kind of guy that always knew you're going to be a trial lawyer?

Okay, let's start with Colorado. Basically, my parents moved to Colorado from New Jersey when I was a junior in high school. I was convincing enough to allow them to let me stay back in Jersey and live with a friend of mine for my senior year graduate, and they got wind of some of the things I was getting involved in. So it was basically graduate two days later you're out. So I always like to say two days after graduating high school I moved to Colorado, but that was the reason why and I've been here pretty much ever since other than law school out in San Diego. So I've been here about 27 years and love it and started my practice here. But did I want to always be a lawyer? It was always in the back of my mind, but doing this type of law was one of those things that I never even, it's like going down to the legislature, half of them don't even know what we do.

I was so naive going into law school, I really didn't know what, I hate the term personal injury lawyer, but a trial lawyer, what we do and the idea that you can fight David versus Goliath and really help an individual person through a horrible time in their life and make really good money doing it. And once I got exposed to that in an internship in law school, it was just off and running. I mean, I worked full time in that law firm. I got the little case notes, little summary books of all the big ass books in law school and just kept my outlines ahead and studied to pass and started my own law firm right out of law school. I already had been working in a personal injury firm for two and a half years. They wanted me to stay in San Diego, take over a guy's practice.

The firm was Hidde Rotten Orley and Dave Hidde really mentored me, still a good friend. They offered to open up a satellite office for me here in Colorado and I decided I turned that down and just give it a run on my own. I was young, aggressive, I had one kid, one on the way. My wife thought I was crazy. I got a job offer from Godin and Beatty for like $55,000 a year. She was begging to take it. I turned it down and within the first four months I think I hit a $400,000 case and she was like high five. You made the right choice. And then from there it just kind of took off.

Yeah, I can remember back then because you and I actually knew each other right around that time, I was always so impressed that you started your own firm literally out of law, law school, hit the ground running and frankly have had nothing but success since. So let me ask you this question. Anyone out there who's thinking about starting a law firm, maybe they're in law school and they know they want to do this work, any advice you've got for 'em?

Yeah, I think first of all, you got to trust in yourself and you have to really have the confidence and the knowledge, right? I mean, I get young lawyers calling me up, asking me questions sometimes, and I'm not trying to be a jerk, but I'm like the lady that answers my phones upfront knows the answer to that question. Maybe you need a little bit more experience before you go off on your own. But I'm not one of these people where I try to oversell myself in one way or another. I'll admit I had a unique situation where my parents had a home here, my father took a job up in Idaho and I had a wife with a kid pregnant with another and I had a home office. I didn't have to pay any rent. It was, I had some things unfold for me that it gave me the opportunity to say, okay, I can try this.

And I had a little bit of a buffer, a little bit of a safety zone, but I just took full advantage of it and I went full steam ahead. So I think it's important to recognize I'd read something the other day, yeah, I believe in luck. The harder I work, the luckier I get and it's the truth. But if you're trying something like that on your own, I think you better have a lot of experience or at least know enough. And a lot of times I think some of the most successful people are the ones that know what they don't know and then they go and get the information that they don't know. I mean, you start to try to really deduce what is it that I'm missing? What is it that I need and lean on? What I found was really interesting to me was picking up a phone and calling a lawyer who was more established than me, much more established than me, and asking for advice and them actually wanting me to be successful, actually giving me advice like a rising tide raises all ships.

I didn't think I was going to get that type of response. So I remember Todd Travis was a big mentor of mine when I was younger in my career. I called him so many times. I think one day he said, you just need to take the professional liability code and just leave it in the shitter and every time you're in there you just need to open it and read it and stop worrying so much. I was so scared I was going to make a mistake. So I think having the courage and the confidence in yourself and making sure that you've got a pretty good knowledge base to start from and not be afraid to reach out to other attorneys out there and ask for help. And when you need to co-counsel cases. I mean, I had a huge case that I wound up co-counseling years ago with a lawyer in town probably 2007 when I was a second third year lawyer. And it was the first time I sat through a really long 30 B six, a case with 52 depositions. It cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and it was an eyeopener, it was an easy case, but it was like, I got excited, you got me going. Like, okay, I can do this. So I think co-counseling is always an important thing as well when you need to.

Let's talk about that for a second because one of the things that I think is so impressive about your firm, and so we fast forward now, I dunno what 15, 20 years you've had your firm.

Almost 20. Yeah, close

20. So you go from hanging your shingle to now having one of the most badass firms for sure in Colorado national, nationwide, trying cases throughout the country on a very, very high level. And one of the things that I'm so impressed with your operation is the team that you have in place and how you work up cases before you step foot into the courtroom. So talk to us a little bit about what the listeners can hear about how you and your firm investigate cases.

So I think when a case comes in, first and foremost, the vast majority of our cases, and I haven't counted recently, but the last time I did maybe a few months ago, it was like 85% of our litigation cases are co-counsel cases. They're law firms that bring us cases. So they've already come with some work done on them and whether good or bad or whether there's things missing that we need to kind of fill holes or whatever, there's always going to be an investigation in terms of like, okay, where are we? What do we have? But if you're talking about a case that just comes in the door and straight up looking into investigation, like we were talking off the before we started filming about a case where I know it's going to be heavily decided upon based on the EDR data that we're going to be able to pull from those vehicles.

Well, I'm trying to figure out exactly how I can do that and how quickly I can get that done. But generally speaking, I think we start with what kind of case is it. Obviously, if it's going to be a product type case, we do a lot of product liability that's in Ann's wheelhouse. So I'm going to defer to her and she's going to kind of take lead on the steps that we need to do to get this thing lined up, get the vehicle, get it secured, do as many interviews as you can before you let the other side know because GM or whatever's going to send 50 investigators down to that area and start getting affidavits to try to secure a venue that's better for them. It would be inconvenient for us to travel and da dah dah, dah, dah. We try to do the opposite.

Right. So let me stop you because a lot of people that are hearing this might not have any idea what you're talking about. So talk to us a little bit about venue product liability and what you mean when you say GM is going to send people down to get affidavits to try to secure a favorable venue.

Yeah, so I'll give you a case I had about 10 years ago against Hyundai. It was a fatality case, it was terrible. Basically as the car went off side of it was on 70, eastbound went off the side into a ditch and when it did the front right triggered the torso passenger bag, which crazy design, the cable went through the door and then there's a giant hole inside the metal panel of the door that the cable runs through to the handle of the door where the torso bag is. So when the bag goes off, it pushed on the cable, the door opens, and this poor 19-year-old girl, as the car is rolling is now strapped to the outside of the car with the seatbelt wrapped around her as it's rolling and it killed her. But it happened in Colorado. The vehicle was manufactured partly in Illinois, she bought it in Illinois.

She die on scene. I mean they flight for life, but she died in the helicopter. It's not going to be a case heavily intensive with respect to medical experts or even the EMTs or the police officers that show up to the scene. But we know what the defense is going to do. They're going to go out there and they're going to get their investigators to sign many witnesses as possible to sign affidavits about how inconvenient it would be to travel, et cetera, to try to keep it in a venue like here where there's a cap on wrongful death and make it harder for us. Whereas we want that case in Cook County, Illinois and we want to apply the law in that state. So what we'll do is we'll go out and do the opposite. We get an investigation started and we'll go out and we'll get the affidavit signed that say it's not an inconvenience for them to travel. And then also when we're arguing with the judge later, obviously this is not a heavily Colorado located witness intensive case. It's going to be back there where they are and they've got experts all over the country, et cetera. So that's just one little side note that I think people that don't do products don't think about. I certainly didn't in that case until Anne told me, whoa, pump the brakes. This is what we're going to do first.

Yeah, let me interrupt you only because I'm thinking of myself and how do I know if I'm dealing with an auto product case, obviously you have to have catastrophic fatality or catastrophic injuries. Is it the kind of deal where anytime you have catastrophic eight figures and damages type of case that you need to investigate the product side of it or how can our listeners that do not live in this world that you live in know that they need to reach out to you?

Yeah, it's kind of what you just pointed out I think makes sense. So you have this horrific situation, not to not get too case specific, but semi-truck hits a family head on, kills both parents. There's three kids in the back and they're all ICU for weeks, but they live young six, like nine 11 and it just looks like guy blew a tire and went into oncoming traffic and it's sad and there's going to be a million dollar policy. Well, I get a phone call from a lawyer friend of mine in that state and says, I want to look into the tire and see if maybe there's something wrong with the tire. Well, we first isolate the vehicle and we do it in a way with a good chain of custody obviously, so there's no spoilation type issue later. And we just look at it, no destructive anything, photographs, whatever we need to do before we notify the other side and have the proposed protocols go back and forth between the experts to then determine how we're going to actually diagnose this and phone rings.

And he calls us up and he's like, this is literally his words, this is the fucking litigation gold. And I said, what? And he said, the tire two tires back was going to blow within two three minutes the same way the one upfront did, and it was nine tires later off the same fucking assembly line. You have a great products case. And we were like, holy shit, just by looking into it, storing the vehicle, now all of a sudden the cases become something potentially much different, right? Yeah. So I think there's always a need, I think you're right about say eight figures because you're going to spend, I mean we had a firewall case that we resolved in Oklahoma maybe eight, 10 months ago, a year ago that we spent over $870,000 in costs. I mean these things are not cheap. Right? And you got to remember too, for people who are watching this in Colorado when we are very lucky to have that Supreme Court directive that says you get a trial date within one year of the date of filing, a lot of other states are not that way. You're looking at 3, 4, 5 years of litigation and that type of costs you're carrying for a long time and they're high risk. I mean they really are very high risk cases, so you better know what you're doing and you better be highly selective in terms of the ones that you take. But yeah, I think anytime you have something that has that type of damage and that type of injury and something questionable like that where it's not like, Hey, they just blew a stop sign, I think yeah, it's obviously well worth looking into. Got

It. So obviously people, Colorado or whoever's listening to this, they can reach out to your firm Jordan Law and you'll at least be able to give an initial screening and give some guidance on potential next steps,

Right? Absolutely. We do it all the time. Yeah.

Alright, so let's talk about, I had the great pleasure of watching some of this last trial on CVN. Fascinating, fascinating case. So if you could just give the listeners a little factual background of what happened.

Yeah, so our client, this man Matthew Jones was taken early in the morning, I believe around 5:06 AM via ambulance to St. Mary Corwin's Hospital down in Pueblo. It's a Catholic health initiative hospital with basically gout. He had swelling in his legs and had some issues going on. He's taken in originally, he's a little bit confused, a little bit combative, not physically, but more like not wanting to answer questions and they put an IV in him and some other things. And then he basically just wants to go home. He wants to a MA, he's going to leave against the medical advice and they allow him to do so as he goes to leave, he's walking through the front area around some other areas, but he's just walking around and then he just stands in the front. He's trying to get a ride. They tried to call a taxi.

His mother had a shoulder surgery, couldn't come pick her up, said or him up, send the taxi and I'll pay when they get here. And they said, we don't do that. The hospital could give vouchers. I mean this was all testimony you saw, right? They could give a voucher and send him home, but they took the position that, yeah, he wouldn't have used it anyway. They could have called the police and they said, yeah, the police don't arrive for hours, so this and that. But they tried claiming afterwards that he was ripping phones off the walls. He was this, he was that. He was belligerent, he was aggressive and threatening and eventually after about 25 minutes, four security guards just surround him and they grab him and try to force him outside. Well, it's 19 degrees out, the sun's not even up. It's snowed the night before.

He's wearing shorts and a T-shirt and he of course resists and he puts his foot up on the door, he winds up cracking his head, they roll him over into a prone position and they get on his back and they get a forearm on his neck. They're on his back for a total of about three minutes and 16 seconds if I recall. And on his neck for about a minute and 34 seconds, a nurse comes out, puts her hands up and says, this is looking like a George Floyd situation. We all know how that turned out. I don't like the color. I'm getting a pulse oximeter. And they stayed weight on top of him until she came around. By that time he had lost consciousness, never regained consciousness and died eight days later. Like George Floyd, he had some substances in his system, he had methamphetamine, ecstasy, cocaine, he's 400 pounds.

So of course they want to try to paint him as this guy that's like this trailer park guy. Their idea was to paint him in that type of a light and paint him as being belligerent. I mean, I could not believe an opening statement when the defense lawyer said belligerent, Nick and I split the trial up where he was going to do the human side with the family and the medical and I was going to do the guards and the liability. And of course in our case, we did not file civil rights type of a claim. We filed wrongful death negligence and we're going felonious killing because we knew we had two former DOC trained guards and we had two former Pueblo County Sheriff's office, 27 year, 24 year veteran deputies that were trained. And Michael did a masterful job in the depositions lining this all up.

Mike Rosenberg?

No, Michael Harris in our office, Michael Harris, he did a great job going through all of their training, all of their experience. They know that they should not have done that. Right. So my job was to get to obviously for the felonious killing standard conscious disregard of a substantial and unjustifiable risk.

Let's pause real quick because I know that some of our listeners may not be familiar with this. So first of all, felonious killing no cap, no wrongful death cap at all, correct? Same thing with a 1983 claim. But talk to us just very briefly about the strategy decision on 1983 claim versus not. And then also, correct me if I'm wrong, but felonious killing is the decision made by the trial judge. It's a question of law. Did the judge make that determination for you or would that have been done post-trial?

Great question. Civil rights that was ruled out pretty quickly with us. Not only just federal court, I actually like being in federal court. I have two federal trials next month. A lot of lawyers don't. That isn't the reason why I think number one, they were charged with homicide. So we've got felonious killing, right? Then they drop the charges. But we knew from their backgrounds that we were going to be able to set up the conscious disregard. We knew from their training, right? We knew what they were trained with.

Give us the standard for felonious killing, right?

So for felonious killing, for those that don't know, to be able to get to a felonious killing where the cap is blown, you have to be able to show that they consciously or somebody in this situation consciously disregarded a substantial and unjustifiable risk. So if you noticed when I was doing each one of the security guards, I was going through their training. You knew, and if you noticed, we focused on, he was not agitated, he was not aggressive, he wasn't threatening, he wasn't interfering with patients. I did this with every single witness and the first witness, officer Ruff was one of the most brutal witnesses I've had to do in my career only because it was, I had to watch a full 25 minutes of tape and walk through while he's just standing there. Well, how many times can you ask the same question? He's still not belligerent, right?

He's still not aggressive. Would you agree? He's still not combat, right? Oh, here comes the patient, they're able to check in. He's not interfering correct and and I told the jury, I need to make sure the entire video is seen because defense counsel got up and said, and when he gets to this front of the desk here, this is where he becomes belligerent and it's like belligerent in my ass. And I knew the testimony they all had given in the depositions to Harris. He was not combative, not aggressive until their one guard, Randy Villa put hands on him and that's what escalated the situation. And they're trained in deescalation tactics and verbal judo and all this stuff from their years at the Sheriff's Department and Department of Corrections. So I'm setting up conscious disregard.

Alright, and let me stop you real quick. Just for the listeners, could you just educate us on this idea of deescalation and what both, because the reason I want to go a little bit deeper on this, Jason, is some of us might have the sort of negligent security type cases that come in. So what would be the standard that both security and police are trained to do in situations like this where they need to remove somebody?

Right. Generally speaking, it depends upon the risk involved, and that's why it's so important to show he was not a risk to anyone at any given time. So deescalation should be continued, which is talking, right? They call it the verbal judo just continue talking. If you notice in the trial, one of the guards even said, I took his sweatshirt off the thing and tried to have him follow me. Sometimes they'll follow you in a situation like that, calling a taxi, calling the police. These are things that are all deescalation where you're not having to go hands-on and escalate the situation to a physical and combative situation. So if you go to a bar and it's a security guard, what's their training? I mean, it's going to be maybe a different question there. Here we knew we had actually government trained in departments of corrections and in the sheriff's department we knew every year for 27 years, this guy had the same training. This guy had the same training for 24 years. So to get them to understand, oh, and to go back to your question that if he's not threatening, there's no reason to escalate, only a reason to continue deescalating. And that they even mentioned at one point I got him to agree that a couple of days before a similar situation happened and they just ignored the guy and he got bored and eventually walked away. One

Of the things that I thought was fascinating is the fact that these security guards were former corrections officers. It seemed like you were masterful in using that as a sword and a shield in the sense that they had this training, but yet they're used to being in a prison and a hospital is not a prison, and so you have to treat people differently. Was that something that you all had sort of strategically decided was a theme you were going to explore?

I did, especially when in the deposition Michael took with Ruff, which was the first witness that we used, and this is the reason why we used him is because he said when he did the interview, he was told by the supervisor at the time that he wanted his guards to be more like a SWAT team and he wanted them to have sidearms and he wanted them to be able to be nice guys, but to be able to flip the switch and go aggressive, which is in complete violation of all of their standards. And he himself said, I thought that was a little weird, but I needed the job. And then how many times he had told other guards like, Hey, this isn't a prison. I mean, these are customers, you treat them differently. Including his good friend who he spent 24 years out of his 27 years, Randy, he had to warn him multiple times and he's the guy who does the escalation who comes up and puts his finger out and says, you're out of here and grabs him.

And that's what escalates the situation. So that's why we started with Ruff and that we were going to start with him to basically create and get the understanding that this was a situation that he didn't feel comfortable with. He even said to his friend, Randy, I've had more physical confrontations in this hospital in two years than I did in 27 years in the sheriff's department. What the hell did you get me involved in? That's what he said, this Randy Guy that's like, it's gold, right? That's why we started with him. And if you watch that witness, you'll notice in my preparation, I sit down with my, I use Dan Brewer quite often. Dan's great for my audio visual, and I sit down with Dan and I go through with that witness and with every witness, but specifically the first few that I'm going to do this with, and I know all the main points that I know I need to get that are going to be the big ones like that.

They're going to try to backtrack, they're going to be coached. They have to be to try to not say that again. And I got him page line queued up, ready to go, impeachment show the video. So when I did the SWAT team and I said, when you had your interview with this guy, what was your recollection of that? And he was like, oh, he's very professional, this and that, and gave me this great story about how great he was. And then I played the video and of course he goes through SWAT team and this and that, and then I'm like looking at the guy and then of course every question after that, he's just given it to me. I said, we can go back to your transcript on your depo if you'd like and play it again. And he's just given me what I want, right?

Yeah. So yeah, the strategy there was to start with that guard for that reason, but you would expect the hospital to be treating people differently and using deescalation tactics much more than you would in a prison situation where you're dealing with rapists and murderers and such, right? So definitely that was part of our plan going into it for sure, because we needed to show the conscious disregard and then the substantial and unjustifiable risk. You knew this could kill someone. I don't know if you caught, I actually with one of the guards, Castro, he was crying at the end and I said, you would agree that's a substantial risk. I mean death's about as substantial as any risk could get agreed. And he said, yeah. And I said, he wasn't, as we've said many times, he wasn't threatening anyone until you guys escalated it. You would agree that was an unjustifiable action on the part of the guards, and he's literally just given me the felonious killing standards. I'm just walking each one of them down the path. So we felt comfortable with that. Now during the trial, Nick wanted to put the question to the jury and at least do a jury advisement question, and that was still up in the air, and he and I were going back and forth

On no pretrial determination, no motions for summary judgment on the felonious killing piece.

We did do that. We filed a petition to have the judge determine it beforehand. We also had filed a motion for punitives to amend for punitives, and the court, in his order granting it said willful and wanton. It's a very similar standard to the felonious killing. So he was already indicating we had really, I mean I had all the depo transcripts in the petition to have the judge determine it pretrial, but he was going to defer, which I knew he would. But in his punitive damage order, he did highlight the fact that they're very similar standards and she sees a prima fascia showing at least to give us the punitives in this case. So it was almost like a warning across the bow of the defense that it's very likely if the evidence comes in this way, that he would find for felonious killing. Who

Was your judge again? I should know that, but I don't have it in front of me.

Judge Figa in Arapaho. And I got to tell you, he's just one of those judges. I mean, you love to have, okay, he calls balls and strikes. He lets you try your case. You might disagree with the ruling here and there, but at least he's got a reason for it. I really enjoyed trying the case in front of him. I thought he was great.

Yeah, it seemed like you all had a great time, a great demeanor, great. Everything was moving quickly. Question. I would love to hear a little bit more about the thing that struck me that was so impressive about how your team handled this trial is how you humanized your client from what some of the stuff I heard hadn't worked in years on methamphetamine. They really abused his wife apparently. All this stuff about the domestic abuse coming in, right? Walk us through a little bit about if it was you or Nick or how does it actually work in the trenches to really be able to tell this amazing human story at trial?

Right. So it's interesting. So I made a video recently that was on Instagram talking about going to your client's home and getting to know them, and Nick was going to take the client. So he had a nice dinner with her and spent some time with her, not only in the past, but of course right before trial. You get so many good nuggets. What happens is your client's not going to tell you a specific story because they might not think, probably don't think that you care or that you want to hear that story. They don't understand how the trial plays out, whereas that little nugget and that little story is what's going to humanize this person? I need to know that. That's why going to a home, going out to dinner and having those long conversations matters because you get much more information than just, okay, he wasn't working.

What can you say about him? He used to go to your softball games and make it simple like that. Here, the defense had two different instances. They had a 2011 instance, which they misread and they didn't get to get into because we were able to show it had nothing to do with her that they thought was a domestic violence incident, but it did have alcohol involved. And then he violated probation. So he did go away. He got violated, he went away for a couple years and then they had the one incident in 2020 where as you heard, he grabbed her jacket, whatever, but it was more about just talking about who he was when he wasn't drinking and how often would he be drinking. He had some older brothers and sisters that were bad influences that he would hang out with and when he would know, don't come home until you're sober, but it's sort of like being a fly on a wall.

I mean, if you're a fly on a wall in my home, you're going to see some moments that you're going to be like ones that maybe we're not that proud of as a family. It's in everyone's home. It's in everyone's home. So for them to pick one moment in 2020 basically, and some other issues that he had been dealing with, which was substance abuse and alcoholism, et cetera, which he controlled pretty well. He'd go three, four months without drinking and then he'd go on a bender and not come home, et cetera. I think number one, with the substance abuse, everybody on that panel has somebody they know, someone they've cared about someone in their family that has dealt with that. So it's not like you could just make him a throwaway because he was dealing with that. He was a human being. He was a human being who had great memories with this woman, and that was really easy to show. And then to have them try to take that one incident and try to paint him as that person, even with the methamphetamine and the cocaine and the ecstasy and the bottle of alcohol on him and all of that. When we talked to the jurors later, they actually told us they did not like how they were defending the case and trying to paint him as some degenerate trailer park type person when she really loved this man.

One of the things I loved is that the 90 10 thing, I think I saw Nick say in opening 90% of the time, he's this great guy, 10% of the time he's not. And this was one of those, it was Super Bowl weekend, 10%. I mean, that really resonated with me as someone who knew nothing about the case and just watch it. I thought that was really effective.

And that's like the fly on the wall. We can all go into someone's home and find their worst moment and then say that's exactly who they are all the time. No, maybe it's like 1% of the time. So I think Nick did a masterful job with that. I thought he did a great job with the client on the stand and humanizing her and the family and the story. And I think also the way the hospital lied to her and told her he was all alone and he coded and fell and hit his head. And it wasn't until the cops called her six days later that she found out, no, he was in an altercation with four grown men that put him in that position. She had no idea. I mean, I think that also really amplified the anger for what the defense was trying to do and really helped that story. And it showed how upset she was, which really helped show how much she loved that man that she had been lied to, that it just hurt her so much. So it all kind of came together very well. And Nick has just masterful at the human side of the story, trial by human. That's his method. Talk to us

A little bit. I noticed that there was a press conference that you all did, I think. Was that right when you filed the

Case? Yeah, I think it was the same day we filed the case. There was a press conference down outside the hospital down in Pueblo.

And what are your thoughts on when to do a press conference, when not any advice you have for listeners about pretrial publicity?

I think it really depends on the facts of the case. I think it depends on, some people think it depends on the defendant, right? Oh, they're a big defendant. I mean, they're the Catholic church. They get sued all the time. They don't give a shit about getting sued. When you're doing a product liability case against General Motors and you're like, look at these injuries, this guy's burned, I mean all over lost his arms and all this. And it's like that's every case they see because they cost $800,000 to litigate. It's not like your case is the only horrific case. So it's like some people just think, oh, it's a defendant, so it'll get my name in the news or it'll be in the news and it'll scare them. And it's like they're not scared of that. But I do think in this case, it was so similar to the George Floyd type situation. We knew there was a coverup that was basically going on, lawyers trying to interfere with people, being able to speak with the police, with the nurse Betty Weber and trying to intimidate her. We knew that there was some really shady stuff going on that we wanted to bring light. It was really bad, and I think that was one of the real reasons why we decided to do it. But I've also found in times where it's like it doesn't move the needle one way or the other.

So how was it, I think I heard you say that somebody else had the case before and brought you in to co-counsel this case. Yeah. How did this case, how was it born? How did her Spidey senses go off that something here is not right? Was it when the hospital changed their story, six days later, she went and got a lawyer and it was obvious that something needed to be investigated. I'm just sort of curious how the case came to be.

It wasn't really the hospital that changed their story. Remember the hospital said he coded by himself and hit his head. It was when the investigators, the sheriff's office called her and said, we need to talk to you. And if you saw this in the trial, she said, I think you have the wrong person. And they said, no, you're Dietra Jones. And they said, yeah, and your husband's Matthew Jones. Yeah. And they said he was involved with an altercation with four security guards, and that's why he's in a coma basically. And she was like, wait, excuse me. That's when she decided to look for legal representation and she found an attorney down in that area. David Webster, great guy, former prosecutor. And David and I had been friends for a while, worked some cases for a while with Michael as well, and with Nick, and he gave us a call and said, look, this looks like, I mean, they had already started to run interference with the law enforcement, the investigators, and the story on the news was he's ripping phones out of the walls and he's aggressive and all this bullshit. So we knew right away we wanted to get involved and get as much evidence as we possibly could. At that time, obviously they were being charged or the investigation was still going on. They were ultimately charged with homicide. So then of course, as you know, your ability to get your hands on a lot of evidence at that point is going to get shut down real quick. So it was more of a waiting game until all of a sudden they just dropped the charges.

Did they consult with your client about that? What was the story? What

Really? Yeah. I mean, think about it though. It's Pueblo County. You got two Pueblo County Sheriff's Department deputies for 27, 25 years that are being charged, and they look at him like he's on meth. I think they thought no one's going to miss him, so what? We can just drop the charges and let it go. Wow. I think that's really what they thought. But it's a shame really. But it also put us in a position to show the jury that, I mean, they wanted to talk about it. The defense wanted to talk about it. Great, let's talk about it the jury. You're going to be the only ones that are going to be able to actually hold these people accountable for what they did. They have their nepotism down there that let them off the hook. And frankly, guess what? Same with the judge and the felonious killing. He is the last one to be able to really hold them accountable when he sees all that evidence here in Arapahoe County, not down in Pueblo. So I think it actually, I don't want to say it helped us, but we definitely played into that to be able to show these jurors that this was the last chance for Deidre and Matthew to actually have justice. And when you see the video, we walk through it and you show he's not belligerent, as they say, he's not tearing phones off the walls, he's literally just standing there until they assault him that this is the last chance for justice.

So I am sort of very curious about the settlement piece of this. I'm assuming that you have entered into a confidential case, went away, whatever we're allowed to say. Were there any pre-suit settlement negotiations?

Yeah, there were some.

Okay. Are you allowed to talk about them or No,

I'm not going to get into that, but it comes down to the cap. It's easy to posture and say, we don't think you're going to get felonious killing. Well, we rested our case and they only had two experts the next day, and then we were going to close and it settled during lunch. Right after we arrested, it got resolved. So I mean there were some that went on, but it really didn't get very far. And then during the trial, it started right after the first witness we started talking. Yeah, I didn't actually expect it to happen. I didn't think that it was going to happen, but I think honestly, Betty Weber, the nurse coming in talking about how they were throwing her under the bus, she was the only one trying to help. They had an HR file that blamed her saying she lied, she needs to be reprimanded. She did all this bad stuff. She never said the George Floyd comment. And then they had a quality assurance separate investigation where they have five people that admit she said it. Wow. So it's like a job is to cover its ass, and that's exactly what they were doing and trying to throw this woman, she's the only one trying to help 'em. Right. So it really, as the evidence was coming in, I think they knew it was not good, let's put

It that way. Yeah. Did you get a chance to talk to the jurors afterwards and what feedback did you get, if any from them?

We did. I did not. My daughter was going to college and I raced home hopped. I got changed, hopped on a flight, met them out in Tennessee to go drop her off because I was going to miss the opportunity to drop her off at college. But Michael, my paralegal, Rebecca, David, they stuck around and they spoke with almost every juror. We had two alternates. They spoke with every juror but one, and they spoke with one alternate. The defense wasn't there. So it's more of a one-sided type of a conversation, but that's where we learned things from them. They were not happy with how the defense was trying to portray Matthew and blame him and that sort of a thing. I mean, you go to a hospital to get care not to get taken down by four dudes and killed, right? So they were pretty upset about a lot of things in that case to be honest. But yeah, we did get a chance to speak to them. Again, I wasn't part of that. So I spoke to Rebecca, I spoke to Michael and got some secondhand information from them about how the jurors felt,

Well, what an amazing result for your client. I mean, obviously it's just completely horrific what she went through, but through your efforts, life changing, that's got to feel good

Doing what we do. I love the cases where, like you said, life changing. I had a client that lost both his arms and a fire and I was able to get a substantial amount for him enough that he could get prosthetics to where literally connects to a central nervous system and he can feel and use his arms. I mean literally, I say I, not me. And it was a product liability case and busted her ass. I think it was 57 depositions. It was a shit ton of money and it was a lot of risk in a state that is not, I could have lost at trial. Anne and I were able to get this young man his hands and arms back and when you see video of him using them again and smiling and it's like took him five years. But it's incredibly rewarding to know that you can use your law license to do that. Right. Talk

To us a little bit because I'm sure a lot of listeners, this is primarily Colorado trial lawyers doing car crash cases and whatnot. What do we need to know about product cases and when one comes through our door, obviously reaching out to a firm like yours that has the experience and financial resources, but what's the product liability 1 0 1 for lawyers that do car crash cases all the time?

Right. Well, first let me say we do car crash cases as well. I mean, we're not just doing product liability all day long. We do car crash cases. We do a lot of them. We have Mike Rosenberg in the firm who's just one of the best, if not the top one or two in the state in my mind for bad faith insurance. And he's just absolutely a genius. So we do a lot of different things in our firm, but when it comes to products, you got to have a good sniffer, you got to have a good life. Something else may be wrong here. Sometimes people I think just think horrible accident. There's not enough insurance and they look at the car, and I'll give you an example. I had one where we actually did have unlimited funds from an insurance standpoint, and this is a long time ago.

And basically I had a college wrestling team from out of state that was coming through Colorado and they had a coach driving and they hit ice and went off and overpass and horrific injuries. And even though there was enough to recover, the father of one of the boys wanted to sue the car manufacturer because the seatbelt, when it crushed, I mean it's rolling down a hill when it crushed in, it pulled across the lap restraint and it shattered this kid's hips and it caused such damage. He can't get an erection. I mean, he had significant issues and he was like 19-year-old buff wrestler dude. And I'm like, look, man, the car looked like it took a hit from a freaking bazooka. I mean, what do you expect it to withhold? I mean, I'm surprised everybody lived, you know what I mean? Yeah. So it's like some people are reaching in some instances, but there are good roof crush cases.

There are other products cases out there that you do want to have a good sniffer on in that tire situation that I explained earlier. There are other ones where we have a case right now in California, Los Angeles where a guy is driving a truck and he's on the highway and a car breaks down it's dark, dark spot of the 4 0 5 and he doesn't see the car and just runs right through him. Well, he is in the leased model of that truck. Every model above that has the automatic braking sensing system, but they didn't put it in that one. And it's like they drive right through the thing. I got an incomplete quad and a death case, and it's like they don't usually like to litigate those cases for too long. Just basically them being cheap, not putting in that extra part. It's the lowest model, but every model above that has that, and it would've alerted the driver, it would've braked for him, obviously dropped off the speed, dropped off the impact, and allowed 'em a chance to go around the threat.

Are those becoming mandatory through the federal government at some point in the near future?

It's interesting you say that in 2006, they had a law was passed that required specific information to be that's the minimum and EDR collection of data every year. Things change as you go ahead and sometimes their defenses, well, it wasn't required. Well, that's not always a defense. It's available. I mean, how many other manufacturers have this already and are using it in their vehicles? So yeah, it's changing all the time. In that particular instance, I know it was a later model vehicle, which is a problem for them later model meaning it's a newer vehicle that should have had it. But yeah, I think having a spidey sense that it's something went wrong here and knowing to look a little deeper into a potential product failure, but we get all kinds of things that are products cases. It's not just auto.

Let me ask you this. One of the things I'm very curious about is trial preparation, how people go about preparing for trial. So talk to me a little bit about when you really start diving deep and are you focus grouping, are you using focus groups to do mock voir and opening? How do you all go about preparing for trial? Because obviously you are masters at it.

So it's a great question. So if I am running my own focus group, which I rarely do anymore, I obviously will take it as an opportunity to voir dire. And I'll tell people this too, if you're going to do it, get 40 people in a room, right? I've spoken to friends of mine that I'll say every Friday I'll do one with seven people on the phone just to get tidbits of information and do it over the phone. I find it fascinating, it works for her. But I'll do sometimes 40 people in a room and I'll do voir dire and I'm doing it to practice voir dire and I'm trying not to let them know what side I'm on, but I'm also trying to say we're going to break you up into groups because there's going to be, out of those 40 people, I'm basically going to get three, four different focus groups and separate them, but I'm going to get one of those groups are going to be filled with nothing but people that would clearly never make it on the jury. So they're not influencing the people in the other groups.

Let me stop you because fascinated by this procedurally, how do you do this? You get 40 people in a room, you separate 'em into groups, and then are you using video monitors? How are you presenting the

Evidence? Right downstairs in my office, we can hold up to like 60 people in that conference room down there. I'll rent it out for the day. We'll put 40 people in there, we'll put up a presentation, get it all ready to go, and we will practice voir dire with them. And then from the knowledge I'm getting your group a well group A may be the one that I'm just saying I'm disregarding. I'm not just going to abandon them and let them feel abandoned, but when they deliberate and I put an audio recorder, they're not getting an audio recorder. I once had one time where a woman came out of the room and she goes, that man is so unreasonable, he would never be on this jury. And I'm thinking, lady, neither would you. That's why you're in that room. So sometimes I'll use it as an opportunity for voir dire, but I pretty much at this point know how I want to voir dire a case.

I love doing voir dire. I mean, I really do. I've learned a lot from Nick over the years as to how to just be so much better at it. I'll tell you clients or the jurors walk in trial and we've got on this last one and we've got, I dunno, 50, and he just leans over to me and he says, A lot of souls right here that need love. And I just thought to myself just setting the tone for himself, he was going to do the jury selection of vore. He talks to me about it all the time. People get up and they talk about it as like, I got to find the enemy. I got to find the bad one. No, man, these people are human beings who come with their own stories, their own baggage, and that you truly are trying to get to the bottom of whether or not they would be a good juror.

And if you treat them that way and treat 'em with love and respect and be honest with them about that, you're going to get a very good jury, at least get good responses to be able to make a good decision whether a judge is going to give you the cause or not. That's another story. But typically, I actually will outsource my focus groups to some other people that I've been using across the country that are not cheap, but very, very good and I get a lot really good information from it that helps me on these larger cases that helps me kind of prepare and know how I want to frame my case. From the trial prep standpoint, it really is this collaborative effort between who's doing what from paralegal, I've got great paralegals and setting up trial exhibits and figuring out what they're stipulating to, which witnesses that we want to get in what order.

Obviously if they're not going to admit or into evidence or they're not going to stick to this evidence, I might need this witness first to be able to get this in. So it changes the order of not only witness but how I'm telling my story. So you got to kind of figure that out as well. Then it's just sitting down and spending time together sometimes. We'll VRBA house, we'll go up to Montana with Nick and just one of his places up there. We'll just camp out and just spend a week or two and just, I mean literally going through the entire case and figuring out every little detail that we need and a lot of the details that we don't need and witnesses that we don't need. And all of a sudden shortening the trial by cutting witnesses out. Let's

Talk about that because that's been a new sort of something I just firmly believe in. The Joe free less is more just trying to go in and streamline it as much as you possibly can. And here you have the trial that I watched most of all, the direct of your client was not very long and the entire trial, what'd you rest in three days or something?

It was Thursday, but we didn't start trial till we opened Tuesday morning. VO dire was all Monday. So yeah, you could say it was like three and a half days, right? Two and a half days or about three days. So yeah, I know what you mean and I agree less is more. I try to always slow myself down, but I want to get through my evidence quickly and succinctly and I want not to bore the jury. I think that's very important. I think it was tough for me in this case. Like I said, with the first witness, 25 minutes of having to go through that video. But then when I have the other guards, you see how much quicker I am them because okay, you saw the video, you would agree with fellow officer Ruff that he was never combative. He was never this, he was never that dah, dah, dah until Randy laid hands on him and that's when he escalated it.

Right? And your training, you had this and that and that and that. And before I know it, I get him to say to me, yeah, it was unjustifiable what we did. He's crying. And I said, do you want to apologize? And he's literally looking at my client apologizing, crying, and no further questions. I was done in like 22 minutes. I got what I needed and I didn't do it in a nasty way or a too fast of a way. I didn't care. I just got the information that I needed. And don't belabor the point. I think it's important, especially when you're on the winning side, when things are going well, I think you don't want to bore the jury and you want to get 'em up there and get 'em off. I think that's an important part of it. But when you're dealing with complex stuff like product liability claims, there's an education part to the jury, which is like what that video was. Although a boring one that takes a little bit longer.

So I think the last question I've got is could you talk to us a little bit about how you prepared your client for trial testimony? And because boy, she was wonderful, so lovable on the stand and you could tell the defense was trying so hard not to be mean, but she just did wonderfully. How'd you all go about prepping her?

Right. So one of the things, like I said, Nick taking her out to dinner, he did that alone. He just wanted to be that bond between him and her. But what I typically do is a number of things. One, and I would recommend this to any lawyer out there that's going to go into trial, go into on a Friday when you're setting up, you got your audio visual, you got your paralegal calling, getting time from the clerk when they could get in there to set up audio visual and get everything set up. Bring your client in, have 'em go sit in a juror seat, have 'em go sit in the witness chair, have 'em go sit in the seat that they're going to sit in next to you during the trial. Get them familiarized with the courtroom, get them comfortable because Saturday and Sunday is going to be the most anxiety ridden time of their life.

They're going to come in there shaken, right? But if you take them there beforehand and get a feel for what those, there's only going to be six of them in here, right? A seventh with an alternative, just the judge up here and there's going to be the guy that deposed you over here and there's going to be us over here. Go sit in the witness chair and you're going to look at them when I ask you a question, I want you to look over at them, don't answer it to me, answer to them. And you can kind of walk them through that in the courtroom. Number one, you're helping take away a lot of that stress and anxiety from them with respect to direct examination and cross-examination. I've always said direct examination is one of the most scariest things for me, unless it's an expert.

Because I never know what the hell's going to come out of my client's mouth. No matter how much you prep, you never know what they're going to say with an expert that's been doing it a while. Wind 'em up and just let 'em go. Ask 'em an open-ended question and let 'em go. And if they're good and you trust them, you're fine. Whereas cross, you're in control. You can lead all day long. You're controlling what's going on in the courtroom. In this particular case, how are they going to cross her? They can't really go too hard on her. They're going to try to talk about the DV stuff and make it sound like to help devalue the overall relationship that the issues in that relationship, et cetera. And we just wanted to talk about the fact, let her answer it honestly, of he was my everything.

And that's what she kept saying. I mean, I loved him with all my heart and I knew the 90% guy was the guy that I love being around. And the 10% guy knew Stay at your mom's house so you're ready to be sober and come home. But we definitely work with our clients quite a bit with Cross. I had a case years and years ago down in Douglas County where my client was not very good. And I mean he was just not good. Not good. A nice guy, really nice guy. Yeah, we've all had those. We've all had 'em. Unreal. Peter Weinberg, right? Yeah. So I hired Peter and I'm like, Peter, I got a problem. Here's what I want you to do. I got a friend of mine who's an old defense lawyer and I'm going to go use a friend's mock courtroom and I want you to go down there and watch.

And I'm going to have him cross examine him. He's texting me. He's legitimately the worst witness I've ever seen in my life. And I'm like, God damnit, and that's why we're trying this case. They're offering me shit money. And I'm like, alright, we're going to have to figure this out. So we worked with them and honestly I had to sit him down and just tell him, a jury's not going to like you. A jury's not going to like you because you do this, you do that and you do this. And we went through and we worked with him consistently and we said, we're going to make, he worked on a space project. So I said, we're going to make you the pocket protector guy. That's what I'm going to make it. You're going to be the nerdy guy. So if you kind of go off on a trail a little bit, it's okay.

And I'm going to set it up that way in opening about you're a little quirky kind of guy. You'll see this is what he does for a living. Not all of us are cut out for that job, et cetera. And the defense lawyer tried to get him popping so much and he did not do it. And then he even cracked a joke back that the jury was busting out laughing where he said, and you were doing testosterone therapy for a hair loss. He was bald. And he goes, yeah, you lucked out in that department. And the jury was laughing their ass off. We knocked it out of the park. We got like eight times their last offer

In Douglas County and that's

Great in Douglas County. It was all just because of the fact that we recognized we had to put time in with the client and we had to really prepare this guy for what was coming and how to handle himself on cross. So it's a great question. I mean it really is, and I think every case is a little different, but getting, obviously getting to know your client, I really recommend getting them in the courtroom so they can actually get a feel for it. And they're not as if they don't know what to expect. All these people see on TV shows, right? These CSI, they're going to get ambushed on the stand and they're going to shit their case right there on the stand in front of everybody and embarrass themselves and it doesn't work that way. So you get them to see what it really is, and now you can calm 'em down. They're going to listen a little more. They're going to be a little bit more approachable and they're going to respond better on the stand.

Yeah. Well, I think that brings us to the end. And Jason, thank you so much for taking time out of your very busy schedule to chat with us. I have learned so much and am truly inspired. I'm so grateful for the result you had for your client because telling you just from what I watched, I really felt that connection with your client. And I'm sitting here watching a trial on CVN, I'm not even in the courtroom. So that power of that trial by human and what Nick and you all did is just masterful. So thank you again for taking the time to speak with us and we'll catch everybody on the next episode. And Jason, I know you've got a couple more double set next month, so best of luck coming up to your many adventures and thanks everybody for tuning in.

Thanks for having me, Keith.

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