A near-billion dollar Philadelphia verdict in October came down to a seatbelt engineered to add four inches of slack when only three inches separated Ru Amagasu's head from the roof. Houston trial lawyer Wes Ball of Farrar & Ball explains how his firm got there — and why he'd say the trials are picked for them rather than the reverse. Host Brendan Lupetin asks how Wes and partner Kyle built the practice with no mentors at all. Wes lays out the three kinds of focus groups his firm runs, why Philadelphia jury selection is about retention rather than strikes for cause, and why his opening rules are built to force the defense to answer before they stand up.

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• Wes and his law school friend Kyle opened their own firm in their late 20s, about three and a half years out of law school, with no mentor in the next room to learn from.
• Their training was entirely self-built — book after book, cross-examination after cross-examination, every idea criticized and critiqued between the two of them, then tested by trying small cases.
• In the toe case in Polk County, Iowa, they refused the settlement money on the table because it would never have moved their client, Yvonne To, out of a nursing home equipped for the elderly rather than a ventilator-dependent quadriplegic.
• Before the Philadelphia trial, the team ran a full focus group of roughly 30 people, recalculated their message, ran a second focus group, and then layered jury analytics on top.
• The Amagasu case turned on a seatbelt rip stitch designed to add four inches of slack when only three inches separated Ru Amagasu's head from the roof of the car.
• Mitsubishi's own owner's manual stated that a belt whose rip stitching had deployed even slightly was no good and had to be replaced.
• Jury selection in the Philadelphia trial took about four hours, and Wes didn't pick the jury himself — Kyle did, with a Philadelphia lawyer who had spent years aiding jury selection in that courthouse.

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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.

Greetings, fellow legal minds. You may have noticed a change. We are now Just Verdicts. Formerly trial and medical error, our podcast is undergoing a transformation. We're zeroing in on what truly matters, the strategies, stories, and mindset behind remarkable jury verdicts. Please join me as we dissect the anatomy of legal triumphs, spotlighting the lawyers, jurors, and narratives that shape courtroom outcomes. From pivotal cases to insider insights, we're here to fuel your passion for the law. So to all trial lawyers seeking inspiration and knowledge, welcome to Just Verdicts, where every verdict holds the keys to success. All right. So in this week, I'm talking with superstar trial lawyer Wes Ball out of Houston, Texas. And we've chatted a little bit over email, but we've never really met before this.

Yeah, nice to meet you. Finally.

Yeah, likewise. Hey man. Hey, great to meet you too. There's that trademark balls. Always have something with the balls around

You. I do.

So I first heard of you because back in 2018, and I'm sure you were slaying things way before this, but in 18, kind of like a nerd locally, and I'll always be checking to see what were the biggest verdicts in Pennsylvania for this given year? And I think in 18, I had something that was in there, but it was far below yours in the Shanika Brown versus Sylvie case. And I'm kind of going down the list and I'm like, "Who the hell is Wes Ball?" I'm like, "Who are these?" Oh, they're down in Texas. I was like, "What are they doing up here?" And I was reading all about you back then, and I asked a buddy of mine, Jason, and he was like, "Oh yeah, that dude's a badass." And then periodically Jason would kind of tell me about these other things. And then fast-forward, I'm watching the Alex Joan bits and pieces of this, and I had no idea that you guys were spearheading that whole case.

It's just weird sometimes when there's just certain lawyers that just keep popping up and everything. But I guess that's a consequence of you just and your partner and everybody you work with hitting all these home runs. So I'm just excited to talk to you. It's just weird to kind of put a face to the person I'm reading all these verdicts about and stuff.

You kind of making me blush. I think you're putting a little more stock into it than maybe I ever would. Yeah. I mean, we've definitely been a few places and we've enjoyed doing it, but I appreciate the kind words.

Yeah, no, it's just a really impressive. I mean, just what you guys have done over the last. I mean, I don't even know how many other verdicts there. I heard about that first big one that you hit when you guys first started the firm. I think you hit for like 33 million, but then had to wait for years and years and years until that verdict finally comes through. But I want to kind of go back in time to when you were in law school, Baylor Law School, and you had though to yourself that you knew you wanted to become a trial lawyer. Back then, I mean, did you have any idea or thought of what you and Kyle, your partner, that this would grow into one day? I mean, what was your horizon at that point in time? What you were thinking?

Man, I would love to tell you that we had some overarching thought and I've made it to there or we had this big, huge goal, lofty goal, and we made it to there. We really didn't. I mean, our goal, Kyle and I's goal kind of shared together was to simply work for ourselves to be plaintiff's attorneys and do what we like. I mean, that was honestly the true shared goal. Don't get me wrong. We fantasized like anybody else did about big verdicts, big moments, openings, closings, picking juries. We talked about it, we lived it, we breathed it. I mean, we had those kind of thoughts like a kid does winning the World Series, playing stick ball in his backyard. You never think you actually would be in the World Series. And by no means do I think I'm not in the World Series now or anything.

It's just where I think our firm has gotten the things that we've done, that was really hard for us and we didn't imagine it. We just kind of really took it one step at a time. And the biggest thing, I mean, in all honesty, my biggest success in life is having our law firm working for ourselves. And then everything else that has happened, the people that we have helped and touched, the cases that we have handled, the results that we've got, it's really all just incident to that main goal for me. It's something that I'm really not joking. I tell people this all the time when they ask me about opening up their own law firm or going on their own or whatnot. I tell them, if that's what you want, if you want to be on your own and you don't want to work for someone else, that, in my opinion, is the biggest compliment that you can give to yourself and also the biggest goal that you can have.

And whatever follows from there kind of follows.

Yeah, I feel you. And mine was a slightly different course to getting to the point of owning my own firm as well, but I share that just. I'm not even sure what it is. I mean, on the one hand, it's like a sense of comfort, it's a sense of pride, but then there's also all that, the terror and everything that comes along with running a law firm and people depending on you and so forth. But overall, I agree with you. It's just an amazing place to get to if that's what you know you want.

Yeah. I mean, I've enjoyed it like none other. And then like you said, the terror that comes along with it, that subsides after a little while with a little bit of success, but it never really goes away. I can't tell you how many times I've thought to myself about payroll or about whatever else it may be when you kind of take yourself out of the big picture. It's not that big of a deal, but you can't not think about it and not worry about it. And it's a burden, but it's a great burden. It's a wonderful burden to have on your own. I don't think it's for everybody, but it's certainly for me. And for Kyle, that's why I kind of go back to, I kind of achieved the dream in the first year as much as we struggled just doing it. And then everything on top of it has just been sort of icing on the cake.

So I totally get that. And one thing I'm really curious about is I'm always listening to all these different podcasts. And I was listening to a killer attorney up in Chicago, Jeff Kroll talking, and he was sort of led off with extorring the importance of having a great mentor. And I don't know about you, but I didn't really have one. I mean, I was basically sort of self-taught. And when I hear your story, you started off at another very accomplished. Well, you quickly realized you didn't like defense work. Peaced out of that.

That's an understatement. Yeah.

Jumped to a good plaintiff's firm, get your experience doing that, but in pretty short order within two years or something, you realized, no, I want to do this myself with my buddy from law school. We said we were going to do this. But when you are the guy at that point, how did you learn? What were your influences? Who were your mentors? I mean, my mentors were books basically, but how did you guys get to that point where you guys become so proficient and confident and capable of trying cases?

I would love to have a just straightforward answer for you on how that worked, but it's more organic than it is written out book-wise. Because I really, kind of like you said, I mean, I really didn't have a mentor because of the route that Kyle and I chose. We chose to open up our firm in our late 20s. And we had only been out of law school for what, three and a half, four years. I mean, I think three and a half maybe. There's only so much you can learn in three and a half years of practice, a year of it being at a large defense firm where, as anybody probably knows, you get zero experience. I was thrown into the fire at the firm that I worked at after that, which was wonderful for me. I wouldn't take that experience for anything else. And Kyle sort of the same.

But when you look back on it, we didn't have somebody at the next room over that we would run ideas by. We didn't have somebody that we carried their briefcase for and would watch them do openings or closings or anything in between. The way Kyle and I did it was we just had an insatiable desire to learn and to be better and to be good. I mean, when we opened up our law firm again, that was kind of the goal. And we felt solid in achieving it at that point, I guess achieving our life goal at that point. But then once you open it up and you start to get into it, you start to realize like, "All right, now what am I going to do? How's the rest of this going to go?" We didn't really think much after opening up the firm. And then when it's like, "All right, now we're plaintiff's attorneys.

We've got our own shop. Now what are we going to do?" The next logical step was how are we going to be good plaintiff's attorneys? How are we going to be good advocates for our clients? And because we don't have those mentors sitting beside us, teaching us that stuff, we just, as I said, became just fanatics for information about how we're going to do it and how we're not going to do it. So Kyle and I's office, our very first office was, our doors were right beside it. I mean, we had a small office anyway. I mean, it was maybe 1500 square feet or something. And we still do to this day. Every single thought was bounced off of each other. We constantly were thinking about what we were doing, the consequences of it, a better way to do it. And we really learned, even though neither one of us had a body of knowledge, we learned from each other almost in a way that we just knew we needed to get better.

So both of us were always thinking and running ideas off of the other. And I think that that helped us to do it. I mean, read book after book, read cross-examination after cross examination. Same thing for every and all facets of the trial. And then after we do that, then we start trying our cases. We're a small law firm when we first started out. And we're not huge now anyway, but we were a very small law firm when we first started out. We didn't have huge cases. So we had an opportunity to go try cases. And we did that. And we further taught ourselves by the fire. We would go try a case, win, lose, draw, learn from that, and then pick it apart and talk to each other about how we're doing it. If I was doing openings, Kyle was right there beside of me doing the exact same thing.

When he's doing closings or vice versa, I know what he's going to say before it comes out of his mouth because we both get ready for it and we both do it together. So it was really just fostering an environment where every single idea, every single thought was given room to grow, was criticized, was critiqued, and all the way to the point where we felt like we were running the traps on everything. So we were, again, really teaching ourselves and taking in as much as we could from every external source. We really did it. We bounced it off of

Each other. I noticed in watching, for example, the video testimony in the Alex Jones case, hearing you talk about some of these other trials you and Kyle interviewed on the Brown versus Sylvie case. It sounds to me, and you're just talking about it, you guys have basically always been trying cases as a team, it seems like, right?

Always. I mean, we've had a couple cases because he's had to be in one state and I've had to be in another state where we haven't tried our cases together. That's rare that that happens. But yeah, I mean, we've found a great. I mean, we're best friends, but we've also found a great partnership in each other professionally. There's never an argument between the two of us about what we're doing. We think so alike. I believe at least during trials and leading up to trials that we know where each other's going. So in my opinion, obviously the whole is greater than the individual parts.

Can you talk to me about, because as I look at how people evolve to get to the stakes of cases that you've been trying pretty consistently now, and it just seems to be going up and up and up, that there's a threshold point of, I don't know if it's confidence or belief or whatever it is to go try a case versus settling it. And it's not a precise description of what I'm trying to get at. But can you talk a little bit about, from a mindset perspective, is it that you were given no choice? Say, for example, when you guys. In a really amazing story that I think just could probably be a book, how you guys are basically taking all these loans just to go work that big first products case up to then go try it. Ultimately, when you go try that, and I'm assuming that was one of the big turning points in your career and your firm, or maybe you guys already hit a bunch before that, but I'm guessing not.

But can you talk to me about the mindset that gets to that point where you've got that level of confidence to go try these cases at the stakes that you guys are trying?

Well, some of it really isn't. I mean, it certainly is some confidence. Like that first case, the toe case in Polk County, Iowa. Certainly there's confidence involved with that going to try that case. But I would tell you a little maybe equal to confidence was not really. I mean, we were young, so we didn't care about the consequences of our actions. Our thought when we didn't have anything either. So our thought was, how are we going to help this person, Yvonne To? And by the way, she just passed away. She passed away about a month and a half ago.

And I heard from her family and it was terrible that she passed away, but her family was so, so thankful to us because her kids got to grow up. I mean, they're now two or three years post high school. Her children got to grow up with her, see her and be with her. And they would have never gotten to do that unless she had gotten the top rate care that she got. And it was although horribly disheartening to find out that Yvonne passed away, it was very uplifting to find out that what we had done really made a difference in not just her life, but everybody else's life. And so going back to that case, I mean, our thought was, how are we going to help this person? Because what was being put on the table settlement wise was not something that was ever going to help her.

The only reason that we would have taken that money on her behalf or asked her to take that money on her behalf was so that we could have put money in our pocket. I mean, she would have never, with the money that was being offered before that trial started, she would have never gotten that money and been in any different position than she otherwise was. I mean, she was in a nursing home that was geared to take care of elderly individuals. In no way whatsoever was that nursing home geared to take care of a ventilator dependent quadriplegic. She would have passed away months, maybe years, probably months from the time that trial began thereafter. So the money that was being offered would have never gotten her out of that. So why are we going to take that money if it's just to put some money in our pocket?

And that's clearly what the defendants wanted to do was just tempt us knowing that we were young, fairly inexperienced and definitely poor lawyers. And we didn't. And what I'm getting to on this is we just had reckless abandon for ourselves, which I think a lot of people, when they go try cases, one of the reasons why they're settled, especially at that stage of your career is because you think about yourself as opposed to think about the others. And we didn't care about ourselves. We frankly don't even to this day. It's not about the money for us at all. So when we're looking at it, the thought is, is this a good decision for the client? Is this money that's actually going to change their lives? Because all of our clients now are catastrophically injured. And if they're not catastrophically injured, then they're not with us anymore.

So we want to make a difference with it. Another way of putting it is it's not necessarily the confidence that we have in trying the case. It's our duty to do it. And of course, we have confidence to go try that, to go execute on that duty. But at the end of the day, I think our trials are picked for us rather than we pick our trials. And the way that the cases get resolved is we make sure that the defendants are very, very clear about what number would get them out of it. And a lot of the times that's something that they can't stomach. So that's why we go try the cases.

I mean, obviously it's 100% spot on. I don't know if I just get too bogged down in the philosophy or whatever the right mindset is because we wear multiple hats. We started, it's you're a business owner, you have responsibility to your family, a responsibility to the people that you employ in your firm, and we make money through these cases. On the other hand, your first and foremost duty is to these clients, these people that trusted you to take their case and work it up and get the best recovery for them. And on the same vein, I was listening to an attorney say that he looks at his job as maximizing his sole job in the case of what he's been retained to do is to maximize his client's recovery, period.

And the whole purpose of this is to make a huge difference in our client's lives. If our clients are alive, then the reason we're doing this is to make a difference in their lives. It's not to enrich my wallet. It's to make a difference in their lives. And there's a stark contrast between those two. I mean, I can tell you, in the Amagasu case, the case that we just finished in October that was almost a billion dollar verdict. The thought of getting that case resolved was we had very long talks with our client about it because money was certainly on the table. And the thought about it was, is Ru Amagasu is currently in a state run facility. He has probably an eight by 10 or an eight by 12 room that he's in. And it looks like something that would've been out of a Quentin Tarantino movie when you walk into the front of it really.

And he's just got one concreted up room. It might have one small window in it. It looks like a jail cell. So when the settlement thoughts are being discussed, I look at Ru and I say, "I mean, here's the deal, man. It's your decision, but you're essentially going to just be the richest man at the facility. It's not going to get you out of the facility. It's not going to get you home. I mean, it'll certainly put a nest egg down for your family, for your son, for your wife. But at the same time, I mean, you're going to be Ru Amagasu in the exact same place that you're in right now. You're just going to be a lot wealthier Ru Amagasu in that place." I give that example because that's how I go back to, we do this to make a real difference in our client's lives.

And when the settlement talks were happening in that case, at the end of the day, we're looking at it going, "The only difference this makes is putting money into pockets or bank accounts. It doesn't change lives." And that's the thought that we have with every single one of our cases. It either makes a difference or if the client wants it, then we go all the way through trial and find out what the jury has to say about it.

All right. Let me zone out of the philosophical thought and process of settling and trying and so forth and zone in on that case. Incredible. I mean, every news outlet. I'm still getting emails covering that verdict. I mean, unbelievable what you guys did in that. And also, credit's got to go to Ru, your client, for being brave enough to trust in you guys to go to trial and say no to what was probably a lot of money. But give me, if you can, that case is presented to you as Wes, do you guys want to get involved in this? You're looking at it. It's probably a hell yes. For the attorneys out there that have never worked something up with that magnitude, can you kind of give me an overview of what are you looking at and how are you approaching? How is your firm approaching working that case up to turning it into what you did ultimately?

I know that's a very broad question, but. Yeah.

So there's a lot there, right? I mean, the case was originally filed and was worked up for the most part by a just amazing attorney in Philadelphia, Dan Sherry, who I also do a lot of other work with. I mean, I consider Dan one of my best friends in the world now. We started as a business relationship and it's grown into that plus a very good friendship. And he's with Eisenberg Rothweiler. And Dan worked that case up and got us involved in that case maybe about a year out, something like that. And to be completely honest with you, the discovery in that case really wasn't too awfully in depth in terms of how much did we do. It was just a pretty. It was a very expert driven case. And the defect was very well known. So much so that the defect, which is rip stitching on seatbelt, is something that was used by a lot of car manufacturers and then discontinued because it just wasn't a safe way to design your restraint system.

And the dangers of that rip stitching design system is something that's pretty well known in the industry. So it's not like we were really blazing any trails there, I'd have to say. We really weren't. It was more of a gathering of information that already exists and then figuring out exactly how we're going to use that information. So I would say the way that we worked that case up was sort of from that standpoint. Okay, we've got a very well known defect. We've got an incredibly catastrophically injured client. How are we going to take all the information that already exists and put it in a light most favorable to the jury that we believe we'll have in Philadelphia? So when Dan asked us to come into that case to work it with him, which I'm incredibly grateful for him asking us to do that because in all honesty, Dan and his firm don't necessarily need Kyle and I.

It's a mutually beneficial relationship. I mean, those guys are as smart and as good as it gets, but we like working cases together. We've had quite a few trials together and we feel comfortable. So I think that's why we kind of do it. We bring them into our cases, frankly. So the first thing that we decided to do was let's get a hand on how a Philadelphia jury is going to see this defect. So we set up a focus group, a full on focus group in Philadelphia. And I think that focus group maybe was 30 individuals, two panels of 15, something like that. We did that. We learned a lot from that focus group. We go back, get all of the data from that focus group, and then kind of recalculate what we want our message to be to the jury. And then we decided to do that yet again.

Another focus group with the refocused information that we've got and how we want to do it. So we do that. And then in addition to that, we do jury analytics. We've got somebody that does this for us. We run jury analytics to figure out a whole bunch of different issues, how jurors are going to view it, all the way down to, I don't focus damages that often, but we even did it in this case a little bit. So I guess the roundabout way of me telling you how we kind of focused or worked up this case was through focusing it, figuring out what issues we knew hit best with the jury, what issues did not. And another thing on that in terms of figuring out what doesn't hit well is because this case was so well known information wise from the defect standpoint, it was also very well known from the defense standpoint as well.

So we were able to focus this case from that defense standpoint in a way that we can't necessarily do in all of our other cases because we're not exactly positive what the message is going to be, even though we're always pretty close. We're not always positive what it's going to be. And here we really were. There had been another rip stitching case that Mitsubishi tried down in Florida against a really good buddy of mine, Don Fountain and his firm, Lytle Ryder. That was tried, I want to say maybe like 2009, 2010. That case ended in a $16 million verdict. We had the transcript from it for the most part. We had a lot of information. And the way that we looked at it was now that we've got all this information, let's just figure out exactly how we're going to organize it, how we're going to anchor it and what we're going to do with the jury.

And I think all that work really served us well.

On the focus groups, Wes, a big believer and proponent of focus groups and doing them constantly myself and sometimes outsourcing them. Did you guys use a consultant to conduct your focus group? Yeah. Or did you do them yourself or combination?

Yeah. We used outside consultants on both of them. I'm trying to think, did we use two? I think we used two different outside consultants on it. I don't think it'd probably be a good idea for me to say who I use. I'll tell you later if you'd like. And we normally do that. I've got a lot of attorney friends who do focus groups on their own. I'll be honest with you, it's not something that Kyle and I have ever really done. We normally, for all of our cases, kind of go full out.

We've

Got a lesser way of doing a focus group and then a greater way of doing it. Both of them, in my opinion, are as time consuming as it can be and about as expensive as it can be. But we think it's justified and we use them on almost every one of our cases. Now on this case though, I think we went a little further than we normally do simply because we had all the information. We had a great jury pool. We knew we were going to have a great jury pool. So we wanted to make sure that we were messaging it exactly the way that it needed to be messaged.

Wes, and because I know the case is on appeal and everything, there's probably a lot of sensitive issues that could arise. But if you're able to share from the focus group structure perspective, how do the people you work with typically carry them out? Is it giving sort of some basic and then trying to understand how people are thinking about it generally? Or is it more of a plaintiff versus defense or is it some other variation that you typically run?

Yeah. So we do, I'd call it three general ways of focusing cases. There's a bunch of iterations under each one of them, but one is a full on, full day, almost mock trial. And we will do, that's kind of the long form, the true long form of our focus groups. And I'll do those focus groups for. When two thoughts come to mind, I'll do the long form. And that is one, I want to really, really get ready for the trial exactly the way the trial is. So it's almost like a run through, a dry run through on the trial to where my opening is done exactly the way that I want it. We'll even do cross examinations. We'll do some things that we wouldn't do on the other ones. And that's kind of the long form. And then a shorter form of that is just kind of a, we call it an issue focus.

So we've got a particular jury consultant that we work with who does. He kind of takes out the advocacy portion of it because the long form has some advocacy in it for sure. We like to keep it as minimal as we can so that the attorneys themselves don't affect it. But then the second one, the issue focus one takes out a lot of that advocacy. And normally with that, you've got a jury or a panel of anywhere between 20 and 30. And what our consultant will do then is he will break the jury's understanding, like break down walls of what the jury's understanding might be before hearing all of these issues so that we can get their thought on the exact issues themselves. So like for instance, he'll say, assume that the road is dry, that the weather is fine, that it's daylight. He'll go through a hundred of these different scenarios to really break down all of the walls that could affect how the jury is going to see this one particular issue and then get to the issue and then place the issue out.

And then with that issue and a series of very, very poignant questions will get a jury's reaction on the issue to figure out what they believe the issue concerns, what they believe it doesn't concern, how we can attack it one way or the other. And that sometimes has a presentation built into it from an attorney, but a lot of the time it's really more of providing information and then extracting information. So that's the issue focus groups that we do. And then the last focus groups that we do are really data driven. And the attorneys are not involved at all. And they are done on a database of a couple hundred thousand people. So our consultant will essentially figure out based upon what our panel is going to be, who she wants to hear these issues from. We'll write both sides of it in a very, very even handed way and then focus on a couple issues within those sides.

And then she essentially gets everyone together online after picking who it is that she needs. And this will be given to anywhere from a thousand at the minimum Up to 10 or 15,000 people at a time. And in doing that, you are really, really finding, if it's done to 10 or 15,000 people at a time, you're really finding common threads of thought between all these people that really help us in understanding how they view it or what the issue is about or what it's not about. So that's kind of the three ways that we do it. And we did two of those in this Amagasu case, this last one.

So you did more of the qualitative, smaller focus group, but also did the big data study in preparation, right? Yes. And it sounds like you've done that in other cases as well, right?

Sure enough.

In your practice in utilizing both of those data sets, one's qualitative, one's quantitative, you talked about essentially the way generally people are seeing more of the issue spotting type qualitative focus group. Each seems to have its own benefit. And in the big data groups, how do you find you're using those mostly? Is it for jury selection, for helping identify people with characteristics or belief systems that are going to be most in line with the story and presentation you want? Is it understanding value or is it also, like you said, I think a second ago, the themes that you started to pick up from the smaller group and working them in and seeing which ones resonate most?

Yeah. So I go back and forth, by the way, on which one I like to do first. It used to be a thought of I'd like to do the smaller focus group, the mock trial first, and then find out what you learned from that and use that in your big data focus groups. And now I've kind of gone do, I like to do the big data focus group first and then go to the mock trial almost like you're honing in on it a little better. I'm sure I'm probably going to waffle on that again in a month or two. But the big data is something and you kind of hit the nail on the head. I think it's better used, at least I've used it more, for jury selection and overall themes in the case or to spot problematic issues. It's not really for messaging necessarily at all.

It's not really for anchoring to figure out what you're anchoring your case with. At least I don't use it for that. I'm sure somebody else with a different viewpoint might have a different opinion on that. But you can really figure out a lot on jury selection when you've got 20,000 people that are responding to a particular issue when you know that each of those 20,000 people's background to a very specific degree. And you can figure out the problematic people, the people that are not going to be fair to you. And you can figure out the people that are going to be really fair to you. It's difficult for me to say that we really did that though for this Philadelphia case because I can tell you Philadelphia juries are different than a lot of juries across the country. I wouldn't say everywhere, but are different from a lot of juries across the country.

I think that the Philadelphia juries hold the heartbeat of the working class across the United States right now, feeling like they've been kind of stepped on by big corporations because I think that's the truth across the country really. And I think that Philadelphia juries see that more so than a lot of other juries do. When we're picking a jury in Philadelphia, we're more focused on retention of the jurors as opposed to calling out of the jurors. If I pick a jury in Polk County, Iowa, like for instance, in that toe case, I think our jury selection in that case was four days. It was four days and we went through two panels of a hundred. And it was four days and went through two panels of a hundred because we couldn't find anybody that was fair. Everybody really, really believed in tort reform at that time, believed that attorneys were bad.

We had minority foreign clients that were very difficult to get a fair jury for there as well for a couple undertoning reasons. And so we were focused on that case on identifying the people that could not be fair and making sure that those people had a reason not to serve. Whereas in Philadelphia, you're looking at it from a standpoint of, if you're looking at 10 people, nine of them probably are understanding of the position that your client is in, maybe one is not, and you're trying to keep nine on because the defense is playing offense now and trying to get those nine off. It's a different look in how you're doing it.

And I guess you probably have to structure the way you're thinking of your questioning and so forth because you're trying to not get rid of a lot of these people and keep a lot of these people in as opposed to in a lot of situations where I never really liked the term that much, but striking people or deselecting people is more of the focus. And typically seems to be more of the focus in general when you're any voir dire seminars and books and so forth is typically focused on that. And so that's interesting. I mean, you have to think both sides of it. You don't want to ask questions that identify the really good jurors for you that's going to help the defense get rid of them.

It's a tight rope that you really, really have to walk. I mean, you kind of clued in on it. Anytime somebody gives a talk about picking a jury that I've ever heard, their talk on picking a jury is how to strike somebody for cause, essentially. How to identify them and then how to get them off of your jury. That's 99% of juries, I think, across the United States, if we're looking at every single county across the United States, identify and get them off. In jurisdictions where like Philadelphia, I believe the jurors kind of have the heartbeat of what's going on across the country. You're the exact opposite. You are looking for retention. You're not looking to strike for cause. And retention, in my opinion, has just as many intricacies in it on how you do it properly so that your defense attorney sitting beside of you is not getting every single good person off the jury who is going to understand and be a fair judge of what your client has gone

Through. Can you walk me through, I mean, how was the jury selection structured? Because I'm sure you've discovered now that Pennsylvania is a peculiar state on a number of levels, but one of them being that every county does it a different way basically. And every judge within the county does it a different way. How was the jury selection in your case?

Yeah. So I am, by the way, just recently became a Pennsylvania licensed attorney.

Hey, congratulations.

Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. And you're right. I say that because I've done it now across the state from Pittsburgh to Philadelphia. And man, I feel like you could be a 50 year Pennsylvania law veteran and walk into a courtroom or have the chance of walking in a courtroom and going, "Well, I've never done it that way before." 100%. So you just kind of never know what you're getting unless you've been with that judge before. And the judge that we had in this case was just an incredibly attentive, smart judge. And she had generally picked juries in criminal cases. I don't know that she had picked a jury before in a very substantial civil case like this one. So that's why it was a lot different as well. She picked juries kind of the way that the criminal courts did. It was a very quick process.

We started picking a jury on Thursday morning, I want to say probably around, call it 11 or 12 o'clock. And we had a jury in place at three o'clock.

Wow. Yeah.

So it was about four hours worth of picking. And the judge herself was available for any strikes for cause if we needed to see her. But her court tip staff are the ones that really aided in the selection process. And it was, like I said, it went pretty quick. It really did. I'll be the first to say, I didn't actually pick the jury. Kyle did. And Jess Coliver, a wonderful lawyer out of Philadelphia that works for Eisenberg Rothweiler. She used to work for the Philadelphia civil courts in Judge Rao's courtroom. I think she was there. I think Jess was there for maybe five years or so. And she was actually the person who would pick or an aid in picking Judge Rao's juries. So she has an incredible, incredible understanding of the veneer panels in Philadelphia County. So we always defer to her on a lot of this stuff.

But the process there was quick, very painless. And frankly, I think the parties agreed pretty much on the jury that we got. I mean, we exercised, both parties exercised their peremptory strikes. I think we got three. Both parties exercised their peremptory strikes. But I mean, there wasn't any real argument about a juror that was left on that shouldn't have been or vice versa. There wasn't any big issues. I mean, it's certainly not an issue that's even been part of any motion for new trial or any appealable issue. I think the parties really saw, agreed on the jury that we got.

Did you open or did Kyle?

I did.

Maybe I'm lazy, but I like rules of thumbs and heuristics and so forth. Can you share with me any kind of big picture thoughts that you always bring to bear when putting your opening statement together?

Well, I would tell you, I never use the word always when it comes to it because every case is different.

Sure.

But I'm a big believer in, just generally speaking, I'm a big believer in rules. I think you give juries very easy, very straightforward rules that make sense in your case to follow. And if you have a fair jury, the jury thinks real hard about those rules. And you get to frame your case in a way that it should be framed if you're using the right rules. So I used rules in the case. I'm a big believer in anchoring your case, especially in Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania is the only jurisdiction actually, I think, in the United States where you're not allowed to suggest a number to the jury about what the ultimate award or outcome of the case should be. So if you're not actively anchoring your case in Pennsylvania, then you're losing really the only opportunity that you've got to bring reality to the situation in terms of what the reward should be.

Obviously we anchored our case, layered our case in that way. And then after that, we had just an incredibly good client, an unbelievably good client. And openings is something, this goes back to the never thought. I don't normally focus a lot on sympathy and opening. I don't like to do that because it's the first time you're with a jury. The last thing that you want to do is wear out your welcome or your credibility with them. And I think if you focus a lot on just sympathy, that sometimes it can be seen through as exactly that, losing some credibility in your case, trying to get emotions over the actual substance or material. In this case though, Ru is an incredibly articulate, brilliant, smart man, comes across incredibly well. And his injuries are just the worst. I mean, in my opinion, there's absolutely no injury that could be worse than quadriplegia.

He had a lifestyle before this occurred that is the exact opposite of what he has now. So I made sure to let the jury know how this has really affected him. And I wouldn't say that I played on the sympathy at all. I just made it very, very real to the jury about the situation that he was in. He was an avid fly fisherman. He made his own rods. He was a hiker, a biker, a mountain biker. I mean, he was the epitome of an outdoorsman. And this took all of that away from him. So I made sure that that was very, very forward in the opening so that the jury could understand that there were real implications to what their ultimate decision was going to be.

From a structural perspective though, is it basically some variation of front loaded rules, focus of liability on the defendant, then focusing on what the specific defects were into a causation component, and then sort of transitioning into damages at the end? Big picture or is it different than that?

If it's possible. I try to make my rules something that challenges the defense. So in opening, I like, if I can, when I sit down, for the jury to be thinking about what the defense is going to stand up and say before they stand up and say it. I don't want it just to be a blank slate where like, okay, now we've heard from you. Let's hear what they've got to say about it. I like for the defense to have to stand up and immediately either choose to ignore the fact that the jury is waiting on them to respond about something or respond, have to deal with it. And I think one of the ways to do that is to make sure that if you can, again, it doesn't always work this way, but to make sure your rules, while they are very simple, easy to understand rules, are rules that challenge the defense in what their position in the case is going to be.

Can you give me an example in Amagasu?

Yeah. So in Amagasu, one of my rules was that in a crash, if you are wearing your seatbelt, you expect to remain tight to the seat. Pretty simple in my opinion. I mean, the whole though about it is, is you wear your seatbelt so that if you are unfortunately in an accident, the seatbelt will protect you. The seatbelt should not be the cause of your injury. I think that was one of the rules, right? You wear a seatbelt so that it is not the cause of your injury or something to that matter. But the real rule there that I used was when you wear your seatbelt and you are in a crash, you expect to remain tight to your seat. And that's kind of a common sense rule that should have been followed, but for the bad design of the seatbelt. I mean, the seatbelt was designed to rip apart and include into or put into the restraint system an extra four inches of slack.

And the problem with that is after you put it all together, there was only three inches of clearing because it's a sports car. So it's low to the ground. The roof is low to the ground comparatively speaking. The headroom is not what you'd expect when you compare it to an SUV or anything else. So you've got three inches of clearance between the top of Ru's head and Ru is five nine, maybe 5'10" if he stretched on a really good day. Ru's 5'9", 5'10". And the seatbelt system is designed to add into the system itself four inches slack. Four is more than three. And when that's the case and you don't remain tight to your seat and you do have the opportunity to hit the roof of the car, bad things happen. And everybody agreed in the case that on his mechanism of injury. Everybody agrees that Ru's head hits the roof of the car, that his neck loads, and that neck load from hitting the roof is what causes the neck break and causes the ultimate injury.

And the whole though about it is if he stays off the roof, this doesn't happen. So the only way that he stays off the roof is if he remains tight to his seat. The only way that he hits a roof is if he doesn't remain tight to his seat. And so when the defense got up and as we believe they would start telling the jury about how this occurred and why this design was okay, they've got to explain why remaining tight to your seat is not a benefit. And there is no benefit to not remaining tight to your seat. There just isn't.

What did they try to come up with?

So the though about not remaining tight to your seat, and I agree with this, is when you're in a frontal crash and you've got an airbag, in order to really enjoy the full benefits of that airbag as a passenger, as a driver, you have to have your energy offload onto that airbag somehow or another. So seat belts used to be made in a way before airbags came around. And remember, this is 1991 too, when airbags are just first starting to be introduced and companies are starting to use them. Which to that point, by the way, the defendant, Mitsubishi, in their opening statement, declared to the jury that this was a transition period for the company in 1991 and did so in a way that just kind of blew me away because it was a gift to us in the way of they tried to explain like, oh, this is why we're using a seatbelt.

And I'll be honest with you, I think maybe the reason they said transition period is because they had to explain why it was a benefit not to be tight to your seat. And one of their best explanations on the go was, well, this is a transition period and this is why we're doing it. And it just came across really bad. If you're in a transition period as it concerns the most important safety feature of the product that you're selling, then you need to be damn sure that you're making the product the way that it needs to be made in order to ensure the safety of the people that are using it. And when you just kind of willy-nilly throw out transition period, it kind of sounds the opposite of that. And I think that's the way that it came across. But anyway, going back to seat belts, before airbags, seatbelts, for the most part, there is exceptions, but for the most part, seatbelts wanted to lock up and keep you as close to the seat as possible.

If the seatbelt didn't lock up and keep you close to the seat and there was no airbag for you to offload onto, the seatbelt had to stop you from going into the steering wheel. You don't want to go into the stering wheel either. That's the whole purpose of the seatbelt. So that's why seat belts wanted to lock you to the seat as fast as they could so that as you're going forward and you get, say, this far away from the back of your seat, that's not then when it locks up because if it does that, all of your momentum is going forward and then boom, it locks. And then the next thing you know, your whole body's bending over the seatbelt because you've now become a fulcrum. So the seatbelt kept you as close to the seat as you could. With the advent of airbags, you now had to change that.

You now had to allow the occupant's energy to offload onto the airbag. It's not because the airbag doesn't come out and press you against the seat, right? That's not what happens. You have to get to the airbag. So the whole thought of introducing slack into a seatbelt system became something that was readily understood needed to occur in order for this energy transfer to happen. So there's a number of different ways that you can introduce slack into that seatbelt system in order to offload your energy onto the airbag. And that's what they wanted to tell the jury about. Listen, you've got to get to the airbag. If you don't get to the airbag, the airbag's of no use. The problem with that though, and the jury saw this, the problem with that though is how you introduce that slack. So the way that the slack is introduced in this Mitsubishi 3000 GT is at the anchor end of your seatbelt next to your door, there is a rip stitch.

And when the frontal crash occurs, that rip stitch deploys. And where the rip stitch deploys, think about where it is. If you're wanting your chest to get to the airbag, then you want the slack to come from what is on your chest into the airbag. The way that the rip stitch was designed was below your hips. In order for that slack to get to your chest, it has to go through your hips. It has to go through the D-ring on your seatbelt that's buckled in. And then it has to actually get to your chest so that your chest can then go to the airbag. And the whole thought about that is, is when you do that, you've now allowed your rear end to effectively come four inches at a minimum off of the seat. And that's math. Your rear end comes four inches off of the seat.

And your head's only three inches from the roof. It's not a very good design. So they tried to claim that was the utility to the rip stitching design. And in reality, when they're explaining that to the jury, they're kind of making our argument for us because the whole thought is you want to stay tight to your seat. I'm fine with your chest going forward, but you're not staying tight to your seat. And they're making the argument for us. You're not staying tight to your seat because that's how we designed it. And the real problem with that is, is exactly what happened in our case. You have a frontal collision. If the incident, if the crash ends there, Ru Amagasu is walking around and fly fishing in his favorite stream today. Unfortunately, that's not where it ended though. He had a frontal crash with a tree.

And then after he had a frontal crash with the tree, the momentum carried his vehicle sideways a bit. And when it carried his sideways a bit, he did a fourth, a quarter roll onto the passenger side of his car. And when he did that, that's when his head was allowed to interact with the roof. And at this point, his belt has now, the rip stitching has been deployed and he's got four extra inches of slack. So that slack, while it may have arguably helped him with the first crash and getting to the airbag, it now was the problem with the second portion of the crash that he was in and was the cause of his injuries there. And I'll finish this up on kind of the defect with this. Mitsubishi was well aware of that. Their owner's manual itself said, if you're in an incident that causes your rip stitching to deploy even slightly, that belt is now no good.

You have to have that belt replaced. And they even had a portion in the manual that had like a diagram of a good belt, the one that hadn't been ripped apart, and a bad belt. And it said no good. And it had an X on it, no good. And the whole thought about it was when Ru's crash occurs, that first frontal crash occurs, his belt is now no good for the rest of everything that's going to happen and his incident. So it was a pretty easy decision, I think, to be made about the design of the belt when you don't account for anything else that's going to happen other than the one frontal crash scenario when we know that that's not the way that all crashes work.

Which comes back to why your rule was so effective because even their explanation isn't really much of an explanation. Right. So Wes, I've already hit the hour mark, but there's like one last topic that I really wanted to dig in with you about, and you've already touched on it. So now that you're a Pennsylvania licensed attorney and you have tried so many cases here, you know firsthand that way in which we are hamstrung and that we cannot suggest a number to the jury for non-economic damages, which is no doubt. I mean, all the science says that that is a hindrance to us getting fair verdicts for our clients, but it is what it is. And you have talked about the importance of anchoring throughout your trial. And I've certainly over the years found ways to anchor. But typically it was either during the course of the testimony inadvertent and then there was something you could use in closing or it was just something intentional that I would work to weave into closing to give us a shot.

But I'm really interested, and you don't have to go to specifics about the Amagasu case, but generally speaking, can you elaborate on what you mean by anchoring throughout opening your testimony, evidence and closing? And maybe it's not even damages you're talking about, but can you just elaborate on that?

Well, I mean, I think it is damages to the largest degree. So I got to be careful on what I say. And the reason I say that is because first I'll say this. Anchoring your case, in my opinion, whether you're in Pennsylvania or not, is incredibly important. Incredibly important. I mean, you have to be able to do it. Anchoring your case in a jurisdiction other than Pennsylvania I think is a little easier because you can flat out, as I do, and most of my cases not in Pennsylvania, tell the jury early what it is you expect the award to be. I mean, if you've got a case that we just resolved a case in Santa Fe, New Mexico, it was supposed to be in trial this week. It had four very unfortunate deaths in the case. And I was going to be doing opening in that case.

And I was going to early in my opening, in the first five minutes of my opening, tell the jury that we believed a fair award in that case was going to be $250 million. And it's a big number. And when you first start talking about big numbers like that, you almost feel a little shy to talk about them. But I'm here to tell you that you have to get a handle on not being shy about talking about those numbers and making sure that they come out early, very early. Because first is primacy. You want the jury to hear your numbers before they hear anything else. And if you can anchor your case by flat out saying what you believe that case, what the award should be at the end, that's your anchor. And that's the first thing they heard. And that's good. I'd say do that in every single jurisdiction.

And I've tried cases both ways. Early in my career, I did not do that because of what I just said, that I was kind of embarrassed to ask for a lot of money. I didn't think that it was a good thing to do. There's ways to do it that take that away, I think, and to do it correctly. But then when you're in Pennsylvania, you can't do that. So again, being first is primacy. So the numbers that you want the jury to hear, you can do in a number of different ways without saying, "This is what I think should be awarded." But you're also not even insinuating, "Well, this is what I think needs to be awarded." You're just making sure that the jury is hearing the numbers that you want the jury to hear before the jury hears any other numbers for any other reason.

Because juries, it's the whole thought about anchoring. Juries, people alike, not just individuals, anchor their thoughts on the first thing they hear, even if it doesn't have anything to do with what they're actually hearing. And believe me, the defense does the same thing. And that's why I say also in terms of the specifics, I have to be kind of careful here because I actually just got a motion in limine in our last trial, the one that we were going to start this week on preventing plaintiff's attorneys from anchoring their case, which was just a crazy motion in limine because the whole thought about that is I don't even understand how the court could police that. So I'm not supposed to say a number ever. So I mean, I think sometimes cases get anchored and people don't even realize that you're anchoring it. And sometimes cases get anchored and you don't even realize that you're anchoring it.

So the whole thought of being able to police a motion in limine on preventing someone from anchoring a case would just be absolutely impossible. But defendants are catching onto it. They understand that that's something that's in the psychological realm of getting big verdicts and whatnot. And they're doing everything they can to prevent it, but at the same time, they're also doing it. So at the end of the day, I'm just saying, make sure that your cases are anchored because I think it's an enormous, enormous part of it. It's the right thing to do. There's nothing wrong about it and we should be doing it

More. Excellent. Well, this is awesome, Wes. I could literally talk to you all day. I'll tell you the one last thing that we sort of at the beginning of the interview, I was talking about how I'd read about you back in 18 and that verdict, and then just hearing about other outcomes you've gotten since. And it's funny, before you know anything about somebody, you just kind of jump to conclusions about stuff. And I'm like, "Wes Ball's traveling all over the country, ripping these giant verdicts and stuff. He must just be like this lone ranger, maniac trial lawyer." And here you got, I heard you, and it resonated with me, most important thing in your life is your family and your kids and everything. Oh,

No doubt.

And I feel the same way. And there was a time when I was like, "Oh, I'm going to go around the country and try cases too." And I couldn't handle being away from home. And I guess it's amazing. I think you could probably do a seminar on, you must have some insane level of productivity or ability to delegate or trust in the people you work with or something in order to have your family that you hold in such high regard. And obviously I'm sure they love you and still at the same time be able to do what you're doing.

My family is the most important thing in the world to me. I mean, no, I don't think I'm saying something that a lot of other people wouldn't say, but I mean, it's true. And one of the reasons, other than the obvious things that they're that important to me is they're so supportive. My family understands what I do and where I go and how we help people. And I do everything that I can to maximize all of my time when we're together. I do not keep a structured nine to five office. I'm in my office right now. But I mean, for the most part, you wouldn't think that I had an office in all honesty. I go to the office to do things like this or to really focus on things. I work from the house a lot.

I'm with them a lot. When I'm not in trial, I do everything I can to maximize my time with them. We travel a lot together. We get along well so that when I'm gone, when I'm about four, maybe even five times a year every now and then, I'll be gone for two to four weeks at a time. And we When that happens, I'm not with them, but when I am, I try my best to maximize it. There's no way I could do this if they weren't as supportive of me and really believed in everything that we did.

Yeah. I mean, you hit the nail on the head there. I mean, I say that a lot about my wife, not to get all sentimental and everything, but same thing. I mean, because you hear about other lawyers and so forth and their spouses are not as understanding and not as just supportive, like you said. And I feel like without that, I couldn't do what I do. And obviously you're telling me you couldn't do what you do as well. And I'm also a big believer in there being sort of luck in life. And while you no doubt picked a spouse that you knew was right for you as I did as well, you're lucky. You're lucky to be able to have that great component also because it's such a foundational support piece of everything you do. So just thought that was cool.

Yeah, she's great. I mean, her name's Carissa and I couldn't be more thankful for having her and her allowing me to do and help people the way that we do. And frankly, I'm sure your wife's the same way. If you do this and you love it, you also found somebody who has the same kind of passion for it almost. So I mean, she hears everything. She hears every opening statement, every cross-examination. I mean, she's into it as much as Kyle, my law partner and best friend is. And I think that's the relationship that you have to have in order to be successful, at least be successful and happy for sure.

Yeah. Yeah. No doubt about it. And I think loving what you do, then you're not a grudge when you get home as much, but that's a key as well. Well, Wes, this was awesome, man. Thanks so much. I learned a ton and I'm excited that Schiffman will hopefully be working together on our own defect case. I think

We've got a great one. I think we've got a really, really good one. I think you might be having a podcast about that case at some point in the too awfully long future.

Well, honestly, the thing, I'm excited in helping that family a lot, but I'm truly excited to just kind of work along somebody that's been kicking as much blood as you have lately. So it's very exciting for me.

It's so fun to have good partnerships in what we do.

Yep.

I think anybody that's got any real success would always believe the same. Maybe they wouldn't say it, but there's no just my effort or doing it alone. I mean, I am so grateful for the teams, for the friendship, for the partnerships that we have in this. You can't do this stuff by yourself. And having smart, like-minded people that we can do it with, that's the tips, man. It really is.

Yeah. And going through those experiences, if you did it by yourself, there was nobody else that was also could share that experience and the awesome stories, no matter what, however trial goes, the stories, those are the things I feel like also live on forever that I love. So couldn't agree that doing it with other people at trial is really the best way to go. Yeah, it's great. Anyway, man, thank you so much for your time. This was a blast for me to get to talk with you. And yeah, I look forward to working with you in the future, man. Thanks a lot.

We're going to do some good. I appreciate it. Thanks for having me on.

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