They offered $100,000. She demanded $450,000. They wouldn't budge — so she went to trial. The jury came back with $10 million. To this day, it remains the highest pain-and-suffering verdict in Luzerne County history. Meet Melissa Scartelli, the author of that verdict and many others. A 35-year trial veteran and founder of Scartelli Olszewski, Melissa has built her practice around medical malpractice, earning rare punitive damage verdicts against physicians and going to verdict in cases where she could not name a specific dollar amount to the jury. Host Dan Ambrose draws out stories behind Melissa's wins, including the way she anchors damages and the time she flipped a retrial in her favor by calling a defendant doctor first. 

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2026 Programming

☑️ Training Witnesses to Transport Themselves and the Jury in Direct (Dan Ambrose), March 6-7, Hermosa Beach, CA

☑️ TLU Beach, June 3-6, Huntington Beach, CA

☑️ Dark Arts Trial Craft Bootcamp (Dan Ambrose and David Clark), Huntington Beach

Episode Snapshot

• Melissa grew up in Scranton, Pennsylvania, in a middle-class family; her father nearly died of a heart attack when she was a freshman in high school, and her mother was later diagnosed with kidney disease — experiences that made her empathetic to people’s suffering. 
• Melissa attended Dickinson College and Dickinson Law School, became captain of the trial advocacy team, and won the International Academy of Trial Lawyers Award in Advocacy at graduation.
• After clerking for a civil trial judge to study the best trial lawyers in the courtroom, Melissa joined Hourigan, Kluger and Quinn, becoming the first woman partner and trying cases nobody else wanted. 
• Twelve years into her career, Melissa left the firm with no book of business, no clients, and no family connections in law to start Scartelli Olszewski. She was joined by her husband — a former judge — and her daughter Rachel. 
• Melissa's first major med-mal win came in a misdiagnosis case involving a 16-year-old with a pilonidal abscess treated incorrectly with Preparation H for eight months; she obtained a $10 million verdict despite her client facing no wage loss and having no specifiable damages.
• In a second malpractice case, a doctor removed a patient's finger for cancer that didn't exist — then “just kind of blew him off” after the misdiagnosis was revealed. After a mistrial, Melissa retried the case to a $1.5 million verdict. 
• At TLU Beach, Melissa will teach practical “do’s and don’ts” for med-mal trials.

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The most dangerous place you can be as a trial lawyer is to think you've got it figured out. I'm still trying to get better. I still have the passion for it. I believe in it. Everyone can learn to do what I do.

And yet there's a group here that continues to get extraordinary verdicts, trial lawyers, universities revolutionizing educating lawyers to be better trial lawyers. It's been invaluable to me.

Trial Lawyers University where the titans come to train produced and powered by LawPods. Hello, Melissa.

You made it a whole. Hi there. At least our home for the week here at the Big Easy Lodge. So look at this great Buick. We have all of our friends here and Melissa and I have been getting to know each other well. We got to know each other a little bit before we came out skiing today, I was privileged enough to come out to the Northeast Pennsylvania Association of Trial Lawyers and teach out there and meet all the, and see your town where, what's it called? Wilkes Bar, Scranton. Scranton, Pennsylvania. Never been there before. And especially December, people are like, you get to go to Scranton. Yeah, I'm going to Wisconsin before that. Like see, because people don't want to be outside that. So that's why it's good to time to have a conference. So I really appreciate that. So Melissa is here with her lovely daughter Rachel, and we got to know each other from our good friend

Philip Miller. Yes,

Philip. Finally, he'd done something for me. I'm like, Philip, I've done friends with me for it's five, six years. You've never done anything for me. Finally introduces me to you. So he's off the hook for a little while.

Good.

But Philip's one of my favorite people. I know. One of your favorite. Anybody knows me. It's kind of one of their favorite people being Philip Miller. But Melissa, you've been being a trial lawyer now for how long?

35 years.

And so from the very beginning though, well, Abby, long before you went to college, but tell us a little background on your beginnings. Where'd you grow up and what kind of environment did you have?

Sure. Well, I grew up in Scranton, Pennsylvania.

Oh, just a former president.

Yeah.

So you're Scranton Melissa.

That's

Right. All

Right. And so I grew up in a middle class background. My father was a plant manager. My mother left nursing school and raised four children. I was the second oldest. I was the first person to graduate college. Neither parent went to college, but they were big proponents in education. In fact, they sent me to a prep school for high school Jesuit prep school. And that's what the Jesuits do. Their mission is teaching. And so I learned in law school in high school that I really wanted to do something important and I wanted to help people and continue to learn. And I wanted to become a lawyer as far back as high school,

Well, you're probably not going to do this, but I went to Brother Rice, which is run by the brothers. You see that?

How

About that? How about that? I know Mission Along was teaching. That's why. That's maybe why we started Trial Lawyers University.

Right.

Because that upbringing, when I was a kid, I didn't even realize they were influencing me like that. Amazing. I was always wondering why did I do this? It was the Jesuit brothers mission for teaching. So from a very young age. And so your parents encouraged the learning and so where'd you go to college and law school?

So I stayed in Pennsylvania. I went to Dickinson College in Carlisle and then stayed on after college to Dickinson Law School. I didn't want to go too far. My

Parents,

My parents were not very healthy when I was in high school and college. And we were a very close family. So I wanted to go away to school, but I wanted to be close enough that if they became sick, I could get home quickly. And my parents' health actually was a big factor I think in my formative years because we were always became close. And as kids, me and my siblings, we wanted to take care of them. And I think that later on influenced my becoming a plaintiff's lawyer because I feel like I was taking care of people for a very long time.

Because both your parents, you said they weren't in the healthiest of conditions. So say more about that.

Sure. So when I was in high school, my father had a massive heart attack. He was 47 years of age. I was a freshman in high school and he nearly died. And that was obviously pretty traumatic. And in fact, I remember all of us kids being summoned to the hospital to pretty much say goodbye to him in the ICU. He survived. He was a very tough guy and ultimately lived to age 86. So it's a happy ending there, but it was something that when you're young and your life changes on a dime that is pretty influential. And then a few years later, my mother was diagnosed with end stage renal disease, which is kidney disease. And so as a family, we were always taking care of her and looking after her. And so I didn't go far to school because I wanted to be close by. And we remained as a very close family, a very nurturing family, a loving family. I had a wonderful upbringing and fortunate in many ways.

Well, in law school, did you do any participate in the trial team or mock trial trial ad that helped you develop your presence?

Yeah, I did. I think from kind of taking care of my parents, I sort of from high school became kind of a take charge person. We were always a very athletic family and I was always very competitive. So when I decided as I looked at careers, what was suited or suitable for me, I liked advocacy. I liked taking charge, I liked caring for people. I was empathetic to people's suffering. And so I decided early on I wanted to be a trial lawyer. So when I got to law school, I wasn't the best student. I figured all I had to do was graduate. Right.

I agree.

I mean, I figured once I got there, that's okay. I didn't have to be the first in my class. But I was lucky because the head of the trial program was a nationally recognized instructor in trial advocacy. And I said, I'm going to make the trial team because I want to be a trial lawyer. And my focus in law school was really my trial advocacy class and making the team and competing. I was a natural competitor and I knew that's what I wanted to be. So I was very driven.

Did you win any awards?

Yeah, I did actually.

Let's hear about them. Because nothing like predicts future success, future results like success in trial, add in law school for God's

Sake. So during my second year, I took the class trial advocacy and based on your performance in second year that the professor decided who would be on the team. So I made the team and I made captain of the

Captain,

Captain

Rachel. Do you know Melissa was the captain of the trial team?

I dunno if I ever told her

That. Yeah, so modest.

I'm very modest.

The modesty, you don't be bragging about captain of the trial team. Okay, so you started to get some

Yeah, so at graduation I got the award from the International Academy of Trial Lawyers Award and Advocacy. I was captain, which meant that I was, no matter what side of the case, we were competing, whether it was the prosecution or the defense, I was always on one of them competing. So that was awesome. And so when I got out of law school, I went back and was teaching in the program, but it was so formative because I decided that of course, that I wanted to go with the best firm and learn from other really good trial lawyers. So I took a job clerking for a civil trial judge so I could watch other lawyers and then pick who I wanted to go and work for and win.

Wow. That was very good discipline and foresight for a law student or law school graduate. I had no clue what I was doing when I was getting out of law school. So the fact that you already knew that, and so you did your year there and tell us about where do you start your actual trial lawyering career since you had a one year warmup for it?

Yeah, so I decided I wanted to work for this law firm called Hourigan, Kluger and Quinn, it was a regional law firm in northeastern PA, a bunch of offices, 30 some lawyers, and it was headed by a really phenomenal trial lawyer. In fact, he's an inner circle guy now. Joe Quinn and I applied and he knew Gary Gilden, who was my advocacy professor, and he called Gary and said, this law clerk applied. She listed you as a reference. What do you think? And he said, you got to hire her.

You must've said something good. You got the job.

Yeah, she's like a dog on a bone. So she'll work hard.

Alright. And so you get hired there at this prestigious trial firm. And tell us about, because you don't work there still, do you?

No, I was there 12 years.

12 years. So tell us about this 12 year journey at this prestigious firm.

So I had a phenomenal run there. I became partner in four years. I was the first woman partner there. I walked in the door and said, I want to try cases and I want to get in the courtroom as fast as possible and I'll try anything. And so I got a lot of opportunities. In fact

A lot of anything,

A lot of anything

Or maybe things that maybe most of

Them were pretty, we call them dog bite cases. They were cases that nobody wanted to try. And so in fact, some of my first cases were defense cases because at that time we did defend defense work. Our firm had all kinds of insurance companies and we defended for State Farm, progressive Aetna, a ton of carriers. And there were a lot of little cases. So unlike today when young lawyers have very little opportunity to get in the courtroom early, especially civil lawyers, I had amazing opportunities. So I started trying automobile defense cases for insurance companies and winning cases. And then my partners, if they didn't want to try something, I used to get a case on a Wednesday and somebody would say, can you pick a jury on Monday on this case? And I was like, awesome. Of course I can. So I took every opportunity to do that. But we also had plaintiff's cases and I really loved getting to know the clients. And I loved winning because winning, I'm competitive. I came out of the womb

Competitive. But you like winning.

I like winning and I love winning defense cases. But my first plaintiff's win, that was just amazing. It was just amazing helping somebody, getting money for somebody rather than

Denying

People

Money, denying people justice.

I didn't like it. I can't imagine. I hope not. And in fact,

If you liked it, I hope you would stay there with those.

I know. In fact, over the years we became so successful as plaintiff's lawyers as a firm, and I was involved in the decision. We ended up taking a very courageous step in telling all of our insurance companies, see, you we're going to become an exclusively plaintiff's firm. I mean they did med mal defense, auto defense, and it was very lucrative. And we said, you know what? It got to the point they were telling, yeah, they didn't like us doing plaintiff's cases. You shouldn't do that. You shouldn't be promoting this type of thing. And Joe Quinn was like, I'm not going to be told what to do and we're going to be

Plaintiff's lawyer knew. Knew was Melissa Scartelli, you be

Told to do. And I was right there.

Alright, so you started being plaintiff's lawyers only.

Yeah.

And so 12 years, but how many cases did you try to those 12 years?

Well, I tried a ton of cases. Second chair,

We

Had some major cases, crashworthiness cases, products cases, some of the biggest cases in the crashworthiness field we had. So I did a ton of that and I probably tried about five or six plaintiff's cases of my own, but they were cases that they weren't the best of cases. When I say that, great people. But I was getting the more difficult complicated cases. Of

Course you were.

Yeah, naturally, and I'm not critical of that, but any really good case, the founder of the firm, the lead guy wanted to take it and he had every right to do that. He was very successful, would take the best cases. And the ones that were a little bit more problematic or challenging went to the lower tier people, even though I was a partner. But again, very happy

Apparently. It doesn't mean that much at the firm you're at

Very happy,

Nice title to

Do it. But I tried some cases that I shouldn't have won, but I won anyway. I was just always so thrilled to be doing something, making money

Actually. But there came a time then you were not so thrilled.

Yeah, well, I mean I think as I advanced and became more successful in the courtroom and I wanted the bigger cases I wanted, you want bigger

Cases so you get bigger verdicts and make more money. That's so weird. But go on. I'm surprised you're plaintiff lawyer.

I kind of wanted to just write my own script.

You want to be in charge of your own life

Too. Yeah, I wanted that. Wow. I was very greedy.

Who? Yeah, very selfish. Heavy.

Yeah, very selfish. And there became a time that it was kind of a, who moved my cheese? I don't know if you've read the book, but it was like how far can I kind of got as far as I thought I would go. And so I decided that I'm going to start my own firm, which looking back, I don't know, it was crazy. I had none of my own clients. I was never marketed. I didn't have to be marketed. Nobody knew me. There were no lawyers in my family. I had no book of business. I was nothing really in terms of a name or a brand. But I decided 12 years in, I went to the firm and said, I'm going to go out on my own.

So how long you had your own practice now?

So I've been in my own practice for 25 years.

So 2001.

2001. Yeah,

2001. And your Lemur Law Firm now is Scartelli and

Olszewski.

Olszewski.

My husband is a partner of mine in life and in work. He is a former prosecutor, a former judge in Erne County, and then left the bench after 10 years and joined me and I changed the name of the firm to Scartelli Olszewski. And we have our daughter who's a lawyer with us, Rachel Olszewski, very thrilled. She has, we're

All thrilled that Rachel,

Rachel,

I know

New energy to the firm. She's been with us five years. Rachel's a third generation lawyer. Her grandfather was appellate judge in Pennsylvania.

Prestigious bloodlines.

Yes.

Alright.

You are helping form her to become an amazing trial lawyer. And that's how I met you. And through Philip Miller, because Rachel's at the point where we need her to start trying her own cases. And I called Philip and I said, what is a good and excellent trial program for a young lawyer to learn trial skills? Because we had this conversation. There aren't any trial skills programs out there. The opportunity I had was amazing. And then getting into the courtroom was amazing. But these young lawyers do not have that today for reasons we all know. So Philip said, you got to meet Dan Ambrose and sent Rachel to Hermosa Beach and she came, Huntington Beach. Huntington Beach.

We'll be sending her there. Hermosa Beach, that's going to be, that's the location of the new

TI

Trial pack. But we've been having residents annually in Huntington Beach at the Poeo Hotel. And we'll be holding residents there this year, again from June 2nd through June 6th. So you're going to make your debut there. So we were talking about that, which is very exciting. We have for sure the greatest trial program ever put together. And people say it to me, they say it to my friends and they always say, Dan, you say that every year. And I'm like, but then before I can answer. And you're right, you do it. But then of course it is going to be better this year because not just because Melissa's coming, that is one thing that's going to make it better. But we got dinner Tuesday night with our friend RA from Finn Eagle and then Scott Frost, we closing it down on Sunday morning with a brunch. And then on Wednesday our friend Ted Wackers taking a whole bunch of us out to go golfing. So we have cool stuff and the greatest trial lawyers coming to teach with lecture tracks and workshops and theme parties and so much learning and so much friend making. It's

Crazy

And fun

Too

On top of the ball at the beach. That's why being that we have such a great time every year at the beach, that's why we decided, you know what? We should move just to Hermosa Beach. So we just doesn't have to be five days a year. We can kind of live that dream closer to the 365. Might have to do some work in between there and leave town. But that's Mike the cross. We must bear. But this is about Melissa. First of all, how was skiing today?

It was incredible.

Wasn't it Fucking awesome. It was

Perfect.

Sunshine,

Yes.

The snow was great. It was powdery. Very few ice patches.

Blue skies.

Blue skies. No wind. No wind. Long and flat. It was a picture was what they call it. My friend Conal Do bird Bluebird day. We've got a blue de bird day.

Yeah, after three hours of training this morning too.

Well that's because we're here for business. That's

Right.

Training, breakfast, skiing. We have a little downtime for an hour. But here we're doing our podcast though. And then more training tonight because

It's brutal. But it's good.

Brutal. It's exciting, brutal.

It's good, it's good.

So the training, well, we're going to talk about your success, but for somebody that's had yours, because you've had tremendous success, you've tried a lot of cases. And so now we're training. And so we did a little bit of training in Pennsylvania with that was light though. That was very light, very limited preparation. This what we did a lot more preparation for. So what have you learned? What have you learned about? Well, today we did cross examin. We've been working on cross-examination real hard. So you've crossed a few witnesses in the courtroom.

I have crossed a few witnesses in the courtroom and I have to say it has really been eyeopening being involved with the training, with your training at Trial Lawyers University because I've had a lot of success in the courtroom and I feel as though I'm pretty good and I know how to win a case, but frankly, I have so much more to learn about my performance skills and I've really never focused on how I look, the taglines, maybe awkward movements, some repetitive words. So I'm learning that I really need some honing in on performance skills that I really thought I had it all covered. Do you know what I mean? It's hard to get to the point where you're trying cases 35 years and you realize, wow, there's a lot more I should be doing or thinking about and I could be even more effective.

And I'm not just saying that to you, building you up when you come to one of these programs and you see yourself on video doing things and seeing some perhaps awkward movements or stiffness or it's really eyeopening and it's amazing. So what you've got going is a pretty good deal here. And it's something that I highly recommend, especially to lawyers starting out, but frankly for lawyers of all skill levels, because we know as trial lawyers, the learning never ends. And if you get to the point where you think you'd know everything or you've got all bases covered and you're top, well guess what? You're not. Juries change the way people process information changes, attention spans are vastly diminished compared to when of juries when I started out. And there's constantly things to learn. And so it's really been eyeopening and pretty awesome actually. And I'm looking forward to coming out to the program in California. But really, I got a little bit of this in December when he came to Pennsylvania, but we've been at this a few days now, and I really think that I can't wait to try my next case because I'm going to be more thoughtful about my performance and what I'm doing in the courtroom. In addition, obviously substantively as to what's going on in the case, I think it's just awesome.

TLU Huntington Beach is going to be the greatest event of 2026. There's going to be four lecture tracks, eight workshop tracks with the top trawlers in the country on Tuesday, June 2nd, there's going to be a golf outing and also a pickleball outing that night we're going to have a dinner at the Lare, we're going to buy it out. So everybody gets a chance to meet each other beforehand. And then during the conference, of course we do a full breakfast, full lunch and theme parties every night. This year we're going to be utilizing the pool area and the restaurant for more of the parties. And we're going to have an adult swim, right one night, a Satch Oliver party on Friday night, and the last theme party is going to be a eighties run DMC Adida jumpsuit. It's going to be the greatest. And last year we had over 800 people. This year it's going to be over a thousand. So if you want to be part of it all and you want to stay at the EO hotel, don't delay because it sells out fast. And then you're going to be in the overflow, can't wait to see you there. TLU Beach.

Well, it's about being intentional with everything we do. And my friend Dave Clark, who was my mentor, he said, it's about making the unconscious conscious. And that's what the goal is because unconsciously we're all comfortable, we're all good storytellers,

But as soon as somebody says, tell me a story and puts pressure on a person that's like they become robotic and it's only their conscious mind they draw from and not their unconscious mind. Whereas we're just hanging out, we're telling us, talking stuff, remembering stuff. It's our unconscious mind. And to do the repetition of these skills, because skill is an unconscious thing. It's a matter of a repetition of a controlled movement. So you do it so many times that you can do it without thinking for a basketball player, shooting a ball or a tennis player swinging the racket. Like Serena Williams doesn't have to think when she takes the racket back and swings. And Michael Jordan doesn't have to think when he pulls up for a jump shot. And as trial lawyers, we don't have to think about deploying certain skills in the courtroom because we've practiced them so much before.

It's game time. They just flow out of us. And that's when it's people get presence, people get comfort, people learn to relax, even relax. It's all about the repetition to help build the presence. And that's what we're trying. So what we're doing here with using a model case like this trucking case where we have a dash cam video and we have photographs from the scene, we can all witness the crash in the story part in every aspect of trial, not just opening and closing and direct, but on cross-examination to take the jury out of the jury box and transport 'em to the scene, not just the scene of the crash to make 'em witnesses, but to the scene of the hospital so they can see the struggle of the suffering, take 'em to the scene of the home. So they witness the struggle of these injured people trying to find a life again and the struggle with the pain and survival. So that's what I think our job is besides getting these skills. But we talked a lot about growing up and learning to empathize because you've had quite a few cases that I want to ask you about actually I am. So especially because you tried quite a few products cases in your career, is that right?

Yeah.

About how many products, trials would you say you've been party to or part of?

Yeah, I've been probably a part of close to 10 products cases, several automobile crashworthiness cases. I tried a case involving a defective bucket truck. It was one of my first cases when I opened my firm. I had no business when I opened the firm, but thankfully I had a lot of friends, a lot of former partners who would send me cases, but they were cases that were the difficult cases. No one was sending me any

Be you had a lot of time as starting off the wrong

Leg. Nobody was sending me a bus full of neurosurgeons who got in a crash. So I was trying the most problematic, challenging cases. And one of the cases I got was a product liability case against an aerial bucket company. I represented a tree trimmer and he was electrocuted in a bucket truck trimming trees, and he was so badly burned, it was amazing. He survived the damage in the case. The damages were huge. He was burned like three quarters of his body, went right into a power line. And because the wire hooked down the bucket, it grounded him. So he completed the circuit and he was in a burn center for months. In fact, his burns were so bad, he had to have what was called leach therapy. They actually got leaches from somewhere and they would put Lees on his wounds and the leches would suck the blood from him. And he would sit there and once they got really big and fat, he would have to take them off and put another leach on. It was the most horrifying injury I had ever seen. But the liability was challenging because built into the trial story was the defense of it. It was his fault. He got too close to the wire.

Hold on. The defendant blamed the victim.

The defendant blamed the victim because he hit a power line and all the standards say you have to be so far apart from the lines, the standards are so it was not in favor of my client. The standards were for the industry. And if you followed the standards, you'd never be able to trim a tree. It wouldn't get close to a wire. So it was built in, there was a built in excuse to blame my client, but what really happened was the bucket, there wasn't a good stopping system for the bucket and the bucket lunged, and he couldn't stop it in time, and he ended up in the wire. And so we had a very good theory about the controls being defective, and I had a great expert midway through the developing the case. My expert passed away. I was putting a ton of money into the case.

There are biomechanics, engineering injuries. I mean, there was so much involved. And this was early in my law firm. So I went to a local, one of my mentors, an older gentleman who tried a lot of products cases, and I said, I should bring in somebody else to do this with me. I was into this case a couple hundred thousand dollars. I'm looking at a trial, it was a four week trial. I should really partner. And that wasn't me because at that point I was trying anything and everything, and I never showed any fear, if you will, of taking on anybody. But I said I should probably partner with somebody. And he said, well, I don't want your case. It's pretty complicated case. But there's this big guy in Philadelphia, he's the guy when he's on a case, everybody quakes and you should talk to him.

And long story short, I talked to him, he said, yeah, I'll try this case with you. We will run this together. He signed up, signed on. Client was great with that, and he pretty much ghosted me after that. It was unbelievable. Couldn't get in touch with them, never got involved, didn't help out. I was nearing discovery deadlines, expert witness deadlines. And I said, well, I'm not giving up on this client. And so I said, I'm going to try this case. So I put on this huge case, had all these experts, and when my liability case was one of the jurors got sick and the judge declared a mistrial and

There were no alternates,

There were alternates, but it was kind of a crazy, the guy had shingles, there was a pregnant lady on the jury. He thought everybody could be sick or get shingles, so he sent everybody home. I had, like I said, my liability case in hundreds of thousands of dollars in this case mistrial. Well, the defense loved that. So then we come back, I don't know, six months later, I try the case for four weeks, lose the case.

Hold on a second. So this is your second trial. You're hundreds of thousands and you lose the case.

I lose the case.

What was that like?

It was devastating. First of all, it was so hard for my client. This guy was just injured, maimed in pain for the rest of his life. It wasn't his fault. He was in a very old defective bucket. It was devastating. But also I was convinced that the trial judge made a substantial error in the case. He led in a hearsay document, an investigative report that blamed my client. And I argued like mad saying this is irrelevant. It's prejudicial. You can't let this report in because even though it was a crashworthiness case, the defense on causation blamed my client. The judge let this report in blaming my client, and I lost on causation. And so I said, I'm appealing the case. I'm not letting this go. And I think a lot of people would've let it go. I appealed the case and I won on appeal.

You handled the appeal yourself.

Yeah, my office did.

But you,

Yeah, myself and my associate, we wrote the brief, argued the case.

It'd be so hard to write an appellate brief on a trial that you've done twice and got screwed on just to constantly read those transcripts to relive that

Horrific

Traumatic event.

Yeah, no, it was, and I didn't go to law school to be an appellate lawyer either. So now I'm in the appellate court.

The fact that you could do an appeal, I can't even imagine writing a brief letter. I'm doing an appeal.

So all of a sudden, so I won the appeal, good news, bad news is I got to try this case again

In front of the same

Judge. And so by that time, the funniest thing about it was there was so much time and effort and money into this case on both sides that the company, the manufacturer of the bucket, they were self-insured for the first million dollars and they had exhausted their million dollar retainer, the self-insured retainer. So all of a sudden now, an insurance company finally gets involved and they learn that there's this crazy lawyer from Scranton, Pennsylvania won't let this case go. And I get a call before the third trial and they say, what do you think about going to mediation? And I was like, I'll mediate this case.

If you're going to put enough money up, I'll mediate the case. So we kind of postured a little bit, and I got a great mediator to come up from Philadelphia to Scranton, and she put us all in the room, and now the insurance company's there. And I got up at one point and said, look, you're meeting me for the first time. I know you probably heard about me, and I'm going to tell you right now, I'm going to try this case again. If you don't come up with enough money, I'm not afraid to try this case again. I'm going to win this case and I'm not going to let this case go until I win. So you got to come up with a lot of money. And they did. We settled the case.

Wow.

Yeah,

It's a lot of resilience.

And my client finally got the money he deserved, and it was a good settlement and he was taken care of. But there were a lot of lessons in that trial. But

How'd you handle the whole thing? I can't even imagine. I know there's lessons in every trial, but that sounds like too much learning for me.

Perseverance. I think that

Was the first

Lesson, perseverance. And that's just the way I am. When I founded the firm, I said, I'm going to worry about my client not going to worry about money. If I worry about money and making money, it's not going to happen. If I take care of every client I have, the money will come and the people will be best served. And so I just constantly just kept thinking about him. And I know from growing up in an instant, your life could change and what suffering's about and worry and anxiety and money problems. And so I was worried about him. And that's how I've kind of focused my practice worrying about everybody in front of me and taking care of them as best I can.

Takes a lot of energy, doesn't it?

Yeah, it does. But I want to talk to you about maybe a case I

Won.

How about

That? No, I know. Because you do well, because you really focus on medical malpractice.

Yes, I do.

And that's kind of your niche. And so you were telling me about a trial that you did and that had to do with a young man who was misdiagnosed with a tumor or something

That was an Well yeah, tell

What was it about?

Yeah, so this was a young guy. He was 16 at the time, and he was misdiagnosed. He thought he had a hemorrhoid. And he said to his mom, I got this hemorrhoid. And she made an appointment at the local clinic. And at that point, he's 16, and she goes to the clinic with him, and she's kind of in a quandary because she knows the doctor's going to pull down his pants. He's a tough guy. He's a football player, he's a rugged kid, and he's embarrassed with his mother in the room and she doesn't want to inject herself. And she thought, I'll let him go into the clinic with the doctor. It was a resident because it's a hemorrhoid. So he goes into the clinic and the resident talks to him. He said, I think I have this hemorrhoid, I have this pain. And the resident decides to prescribe him just preparation H without looking at his bottom.

And the kid gets the preparation H or the prescription dose of that. And for like eight months, he's putting preparation H, but he doesn't have a hemorrhoid. He has a pilonidal abscess, which is actually in the crack of his butt, a pie. And it's an abscess that can tunnel and become pretty devastating. It's not a tumor, it's not cancer. It's just a pretty really invasive abscess that's hard to cure unless you get it early. So now he's got eight months of preparation H on the abscess. And ultimately when he's diagnosed, it had tunneled into his bottom and he had so many surgeries to debride, cut it out, clean it out. And he was such an amazing kid. I mean the start of when he was 16, he goes the rest of his high school years playing basketball, working at Lowe's, stuffing paper towels in his underwear because he was bleeding all the time, surgeries weren't working, had a kept going back.

He goes to the local college by that time, three years in, he's got a wound vac. It's not healing. And he's sitting in class with a wound vac and a hose coming out of his butt with a little machine gurgling sucking out the abscess from his butt. But he never misses work, never misses school, never misses doing chores for his mom. Just a beautiful kid. And so thankfully, ultimately he gets in the hands of the right surgeon and does major surgery on his butt, kind of closes up the top of his butt. And so his butt cheek is a little lower. He's got a flap and he's cured. And so we sued the resident, the clinic, et cetera, et cetera, and they don't want to offer any money because he's a young kid. He's cured, no wage loss, no medical bills, and he has a scar on his butt. That's his damage. But the kid went through hell in Pennsylvania, we can't ask for a specified sum of money. This was a pain and suffering case on a kid who has a good future, who's cured. They offered peanuts to try the case.

What's peanuts? A hundred grand,

A hundred grand?

What was his demand? What did he want?

We looked at the case and all of the problems with damages in terms of the future and so forth. And I think our demand was like $450,000 and they wouldn't pay it. And so they forced us to try the case, and we even tried to compromise it in the middle. And I had said, and I've said this a lot in settlement negotiations, look, you're not offering enough for my client to make any difference to my client after costs and fees at this point. It's my money that is put into the trial, not his. If he loses, he's not out anything. You're not offering him any money. You're the ones with the risk here, not him. And this isn't going to break me if I lose this case. So pay him the money. They wouldn't pay him the money. So we go to trial and we try for a couple of days, and again, I can't ask for a specified

Settle. There's no medical bills, no lost wages, nothing to anchor.

And when I go to trial, I say to my client, we're going to get the verdict. Whatever it is, we're going to take it. No emotion, just if it's a win, great. No jumping around, no acting crazy if you lose. We sit there, we take it. And so we're waiting for the verdict and the jury comes back, the foreman stands up, and the verdict's $10 million. And everybody froze. And it's so funny, and I'm like, did they just say $10 million? I leaned over to my client, I said, did they just say 10 million? He was like, yep. He was afraid to speak. But we were thrilled and we were so stoic, and we were obviously very thrilled. The jury leaves the courtroom and then we talk to the judge, and the next thing you know, there's a knock on the door and the jury comes in the foreperson and says, I just want to make sure the plaintiff is happy because we really like him and we're just hoping we gave enough money. And so that was pretty awesome.

Be sure to join us in Winter Park, Colorado, March 14th through 21st. We're going to be doing a ski and trial skills bootcamp. So we'll be skiing every day, but in the morning and in the evenings, we'll be working on your trial skills. That means witness prep and direct examination, cross-examination presentation skills, which are opening statement and closing argument, and of course jury selection. And remember that your entire tuition will be donated to the fight against Uber in California because they're trying to destroy our civil justice system. And they're starting with California, but they win here. Your state may be next. So join the fight and come to Winter Park. I bet it was, because of course I asked, did you collect it? And what'd you say?

Yeah, I did.

Every cent,

Every penny. Every penny. They did appeal it, but the day before their brief was due in the appellate court. They paid every dime.

Well, that must have been nice, especially having your own firm and stuff.

Yeah, that actually to this day is still the highest verdict for pain and suffering in Luzerne County history and the highest medical malpractice pain and suffering case. There was one case since then, which had huge economics. It was like $12 million. But that case is still the highest pain and suffering. I mean, when you can't ask for a sum, it's challenging.

I bet. How did you articulate to help them see the 10 million? I mean,

Well, the strategy that we used worked. Our client was such a good witness. We put him up as a first witness and he did an amazing job. And we basically say to the jury, look, this is our system we put on, and I tell these the jury early, you're going to hear from family members, friends what the suffering was that this young man went through. Not to garner your sympathy, but so that you can understand because at the end of the case, you're going to have to use your collective wisdom and award a sum of money. Should we prove our case? That's a fair trade for what he went through. And you're going to have to decide the value of that. And I can't tell you what amount that is. I'm not allowed to tell you what that is. I can't give you the sum, but I am giving you the information so that you can understand fully, so that you can decide what's a fair trade for what happened here for this malpractice and the doctor not even taking the time to look at this young man's problem, just handing him a prescription and not looking at it, not taking the time to even understand why he's there.

Well, they did a good job coming up with a number.

Yeah, they did a

Great job. I mean, that's a lot of trust. Good job with the trust there. And then you also told me a little bit of a case where a young man lost his finger.

Yeah, I had.

What did you love about that case?

So what I loved about that case was that, well, first of all, my client was a great guy, another hardworking single, great guy, family kid, young man in his twenties. The doctor was a jerk. He was so mean to my client. Ultimately, the doctor blew him off after the malpractice. So let me just give you the background. My client goes to him because he had a lump on his finger and he had it for weeks and it was getting worse and worse. It was his left ring finger. It was an orthopedic surgeon. And the orthopedic surgeon ultimately took a biopsy, and the biopsy came back equivocal. The pathologist said, this could be a cancer, an osteosarcoma, but I'm not an expert in bone pathology, so I'm going to send the pathology out to the Mayo Clinic to be sure. So it could be cancer. I'm going to send it out to be sure.

The orthopedic surgeon called my client in and said, you have cancer, it's highly aggressive. If it spreads to your lungs, you're dead. We need to remove it right away. Never told him that the pathologist diagnosis was equivocal and removed his finger. And then ultimately when the pathology came back as not cancer and he didn't need to lose his finger, the orthopedic surgeon basically said, oh, well, and just kind of blew him off after that. He had neuromas, he had pain, he was trying to get help and get therapy, and the orthopedic surgeon said essentially, it's no big deal, never sent him to therapy.

They offer on the case

Nothing. They offered him zero.

What'd you demand?

My demand was $1.5 million and they offered nothing. And the adjuster went so far as to tell the judge he will never offer me any money on the case because it was personal. The adjuster didn't like me because I got sanctions against them in a discovery dispute earlier in the case. They wouldn't turn over documents. And so he literally told the judge, this is personal. She's going to try the case. And so I had a punitive damage case against the doctor, and we got a $1.5 million verdict including punitive damages against the doctor in that case.

See that you got Exactly. Is that a rarity? You get punitive damages against the doctor?

Very rare. I've gotten two punitive damage verdicts in Erne County, Pennsylvania, and I don't know anybody else who has, and I don't know anybody else who's ever gotten punitive damages against a doctor either. And we did in that case. But that case was also challenging because we started that case and several days into the trial, the defense lawyer got sick and we had a mistrial. And so we had to stop the case. And I retried that case to verdict.

Do you think it's easier or harder to try a case for the second time?

Harder? My case was in, so they knew by the time of the mistrial I had, they saw my experts, they cross examined my experts, but they made a very big mistake in thinking that I was going to retry it the same way.

Would you change? We

Actually got Philip Miller involved in that case.

Oh,

And we came back to Philip and we said, we got to mix this up and win this case, and we've got to pull some surprises.

What did you surprise him with?

Well, we learned that the defendant doctor, he was such a wing nut. Not only was he kind of a jerk to my client, but his personality was so crazy and different and odd and unsympathetic that I decided to call him as the first witness. Whereas in the first trial, I hadn't yet called him. But his demeanor and mannerisms in the courtroom were so odd and we couldn't predict that.

You mean you tried it the first time?

Yeah, the first time. And my client, we did put him on the stand and he just didn't nail it. He got very nervous. So we mixed up the order. That was one of the big things. And it's always a risk calling the defendant as of cross the first witness because you can control the cross, but then after that, you turn them over and the defense gets their whole case in as your first witness. So in a malpractice case, that's risky.

I get it.

But we took that risk, called him first, he bombed. We did a great job cross-examining him. Jury didn't like him, and it was smooth,

Smooth sail. And that was with the skills you had then

Smooth. Yes.

Imagine now talk about him cutting off that finger and like, oh, not even thinking, oh, poor guy doesn't have a finger.

Well, and the defense said, Hey, it's a young guy without a ring finger. Big deal.

It seems like a pretty big deal to me.

Yeah,

I mean, I don't really think about all the things I do with it, but I know if it wasn't there, I know I'd miss it. I'm pretty certain. I'm pretty certain. So Melissa, you're going to come to Huntington Beach this year. We're so exciting to bring the whole family, Peter and Rachel, and we're going to have a Scartelli Olszewski, ,

Olszewski,

Olszewski party. But you're going to be teaching. We're so excited because Scranton, Pennsylvania's just been in Luzerne County, been even hiding out there, but now the big West coast is waiting for you. So what are you going to teach in Huntington Beach?

So I'm going to teach a topic on medical malpractice. That's what I do.

That's what you do.

That's my thing.

That's your game.

That's my game. That's

Your game. It does product case cases you can do. You can do other cases, but medical malpractice, that's where

Medical malpractice, I love medicine. I have a knack for figuring out the medicine and strategizing, collecting experts. I've had so many medical malpractice trials. I have a long list of do's, and I really think I should talk about practical tips, like trial, practical tips, mistakes made not to make that kind of thing. I'm going to do something. You

Probably made you share mistakes, huh?

Yeah. I mean that's how we learn, right? Anybody who thinks that they don't make mistakes and can't learn from their mistakes, I dunno what they're doing trying cases. No, they don't. And so I think that, and after every case I make a list of what lessons learned, here's what I'm going to do different the next time, here's what didn't work. So I think I'm going to do something very practical

Through that. Long listings, all those things and all those lessons you've

Learned

And let all the folks know that do medical. These are the landmines I've stepped in.

Yes. And don't

Do this unfortunately. Unfortunately I'm still here. But this is how we navigate these landmines and medical malpractice, which is a little more different than any other kind of case. I mean, honestly, especially in California because of the caps. So very few of the great lawyers do medical malpractice. Other states where they don't have caps, obviously it attracts the great lawyers. But you're not going to get a Brian Pan to do a medical malpractice case for the most. He gets $500,000 and Guy sneezes and I'm sure a 500,000 bill comes out.

Yeah,

I'm sure.

Join us March 6th and seventh in Hermosa Beach, California for our witness prep and direct examination workshop. You will learn how to transport your plaintiff and before and after witnesses back in time. So they not only remember the story, but they relive it so that the jury not only hears it, but they experience it because the jury can't provide money for pain. They don't feel this program is limited to 10 participants. So register today. So you're going to do that. That's going to be great. But also, I know you've been real active about the concern of a lack of trials and what can be done. So talk to me about that a

Little bit. Yeah, so what you and I've talked about is that unlike my upbringing, the young lawyers today don't have the opportunity. There's no trial programs. You're the only trial program that I know of, a trial skills program. I had that in law school and I had opportunities to try small cases. And now there are no big plaintiff's firms. There are not many plaintiff's firms around and across the country, the number of civil jury trials is dramatically down. So the opportunities to try cases are less for everybody, and there are no small cases, and these young lawyers aren't getting the opportunities to get into the courtroom. In a civil case, as I had in my early days, in fact, Pennsylvania through one of our Supreme Court justices founded this project, it's called Project Litigate, to try to encourage law firms and judges to allow young lawyers to come in and try cases. But it's a real problem. And so something has to be done to help trial lawyers develop skills. Your program is one such program, but there's got to be more opportunities, and that's the problem.

So here's on a side note, one thing we're doing it till you this year is that we give law students scholarships. So last year I think we had about 20 law students, so hopefully we're working on it. We're hopefully get up to 50 law students this year. So if there's any law students listening this or anybody that has law students that work with them before them, they want to come to the conference, they can come on a scholarship and they get to participate in workshops and meet lots of lawyers and it's people. Sometimes people find jobs and internships. And it's pretty darn exciting to get exposed to all this because I think, man, if I would've had some direction when I was young, what I could have become, but I didn't faster. It's been a hard journey. I mean, I've made so many mistakes. I mean, I thank God, can't believe I'm sitting here sometimes. I've been so fortunate, but my nephew, it'd be like all the things would help people avoid all the mistakes and get to greatness sooner so they can really enjoy a great life faster and not win their 58, or in your case 42.

And so, you know what I mean, to try to help speed up the process.

But I think what Trial Lawyers University could do is since you're creating opportunities for law students and young people to come, they can interact with more senior lawyers and perhaps get some of the more senior lawyers to agree to mentor next time they're going to trial, maybe some of these law students or young lawyers get on a plane and just sit and shadow, maybe do a witness, make these connections. Because the more connections you make, the more opportunities. And you have so many great people in your group that you get in there. I'm sure they would be thrilled to invite a young lawyer to tag along.

Oh yeah, it's going to be so great. That's why I'm so great and excited about moving to Hermosa Beach. We're going to start having trainings at my house once a week, twice a week, not even with me doing it with other lawyers doing it, but also having law students come. So many law schools in la and that's where we're going to be living. And it's like to get to meet all these people when they're young and the ones that are want to be plaintiff's lawyers, helping them on their journey, fast tracking, teaching 'em about presentation, things they've never thought about, give 'em a faster start out the gate. I'm super stoked for all of that. And the thing that was special about your program, you're telling me is that if a young lawyer takes a witness and with the senior lawyer that most courts have a rule one lawyer per witness, so then the senior lawyer can stand up and help clean up any mess or mistakes that the junior lawyer made. So ultimately the client doesn't suffer.

Right. And that's the thing. Project litigate, that's one of the aspects of the project. If state trial judges sign onto this, they let a young lawyer have the opportunity and then there's no risk to the client because the senior lawyer can mop up. And that's one such way that Pennsylvania is addressing the subject of young lawyers not getting into the courtroom. And also our trial judges in Pennsylvania who sign onto the project, they encourage firms to send lawyers in to do oral young lawyers to do oral argument on cases that maybe oral argument was not necessary or not needed, they say, but you can have argument if you send one of the junior lawyers to come in and go to court. So there's some initiatives like that going on in Pennsylvania, which are great. I've actually, what I've been fortunate with my opportunities going to trial, and I've helped my husband. He's a criminal defense lawyer, and I've gotten to try some cases with him, some witnesses and so forth. I don't don't know anything about criminal

Law. I know a lot about it.

I

Know too much about it, and it's okay.

Yeah. In the last 10 years, I've second chaired criminal defense cases doing expert witnesses, accident reconstructionists, something, medical victims, if it's a female victim, and

We call those accusers, by the way, in the criminal.

So

Unless our client gets convicted, then they're a

Victim. That's true.

All right, let's get the credit. Let's get the right phrase. I don't even know the lingo that's we don't need criminal it too soon now by their own lawyer. That'd be not such a great thing.

So I've gotten to do that, and I think that young lawyers really should team up with maybe some criminal defense lawyers and get some opportunities that way. Possibly.

Or what I'm really stoked too is people that have med cases teaming up with lawyers like you, who, you know what I mean, who've been there, can help mentor them and not just take the case and get a referral, but take the case and work it with them and give them the opportunities. Because that's why with that, I'm moving back to California because licensed there and I can go to court

There.

I wasn't licensed in Vegas. I didn't know anybody there. Just a couple people here in California. I know lots of people and it's exciting to help people practice to train the basic skills the basic skills here, but applying them to actual real cases.

And so you see a person's like hear the training. We do the training of the defense medical expert, but then we cross examine a defendant truck driver of a real case that like Joe Free is doing where we have a dash cam video, we have photos, and then you could practice REIT doing the cross of that witness. But you're employing the skills that you just learned, right? Like the pacing, the breathing, the emotional state control. But that's how it's going to keep continuing to get better. So here's my, actually yes, this would be my last question for you. So if we could go back some 35 years or so, whatever long it's been. How long you been a

Lawyer? 35, 36? I don't know.

36 years. Six years. But you just get out of law school?

Yes.

Okay. Because when you start in your little clerkship there seeing what's going on with these lawyers who you want to go work for, but now that you have all this wisdom after 36 years and all these trials, what advice do you give young 27-year-old, whatever, 20 whatever you are malicious. What is your advice to that young lawyer? She wants to be a trial lawyer.

Right? Well, my advice is, first of all, client first. I think that if you focus on your client, getting to know your client and be passionate about what you do and never stop learning trial lawyers are students forever and my advice is to be passionate about what you do. And if you're not passionate and empathetic and you don't care about your client, you don't want to be a plaintiff's lawyer and never stop learning. There's so many people you can learn from. Your skills can always get better and just persevere and take one client at a time. Don't worry about the money will come if you're passionate, you're empathetic, you are humble and know that there's always more to learn and you stick to it, you'll be successful.

That's pretty good advice. But I thought the same thing. If I thought become a great lawyer, the money would come. But as a criminal defense lawyer, the money never came. So it never came. You got to be in the right area of law until you really good and have the money you, because if you're doing that or you're doing writing wills in estates, you can become really good at it. You can make a living, but you're not going to really make money. Yeah,

That's advice to plaintiff's lawyers.

That's the people that have the plaintiff's lawyers. That's right. That's the plaintiff's lawyers. That's right. Actually, you said knowing get to know your client. That's so critical. Most people never really get the story from their client and that's why I'm really, I've been doing witness prep for a long time, kind of like I consider to be one of my strong suits. And so we're doing our first witness prep kind of workshop in Hermosa Beach, and that's the first one because moving to Hermosa Beach next week. So I'm really excited about that and the people that do it, when people really understand how to get the story from their client and then they're really telling their clients authentic story and not the story that they think they should be telling or the story that they want to tell, that they think is the best story and not that when that actually happened and the client hears it, that's not my story

And

There's a big disconnect and so I'm stoked about that. Oh, here's actually one other question. I was thinking about ski camp, but it's been because now you're at ski camp, so we're training in the

Morning

Ski during the day, train at night. So we've been here for a few days so far. I know you have to leave a bit early, you have big things happen at home, but what's been your highlights of ski camp?

Well, first of all, the people in ski camp are awesome. The lawyers here. We've got a young lawyer here who's a law student.

Cameron

Cameron, who's a law student, and to the more senior lawyer like myself, like you, the whole gamut. And everybody here is wonderful here to learn and is open to learning and is open to criticism and the camaraderie is awesome. We also have here some really tremendous vendors, people who care about our clients, people involved in marketing and funding, and it's just a beautiful, friendly environment. We're in an unbelievable magical lodge that is like a dream of a place in Big Sky Montana,

Special Nick and Courtney Raleigh

For

Letting us have their place as we do our bootcamp

To

Defend, to beat down Uber. We're going to beat back. I'll contribute a little bit.

Exactly.

And our defense of the constitution, the sixth Amendment right to jury trial.

So it's a great blend of everything. I mean, we work hard. We're up at the crack of dawn training for hours and then race off to the slope and have an amazing ski day, come back, train for a few more hours, have a massive beautiful meal. We had homemade gumbo,

Gumbo that was Aron from

HMR Aaron.

You're talking about those financial stress early on with the money. If you had MR, then you'd really be like, fuck you. It's even my money. I really willing to go to trial because it my own right

Now. Yeah. I didn't have to fund all my cases. I to fucking tell me. I didn't know I,

Aaron

Will come up with all this money and low risk and it'd be, wow, I can't wait. I can't wait to borrow some money and try some of these cases rather than use my

Own money. I have Tim help you find them, and

Now Tim is going to get me all business because he's an amazing marketer.

See that?

But it just really, I can't speak any higher of the program than I am. I mean, it's just been tremendous.

Thanks. Been having a great time myself. And so people want to get ahold of you, Melissa Scartelli. What's the best

Way? scartelli.com is my website,

scartelli.com.

It's

About to be way better. Pretty soon. Yes.

Yes.

After Blue Summit Reengineer.

Well, we'll see. Hope so. Yeah.

Alright.

It's going to be fun.

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