Episode 6 of Jersey Justice Podcast: The Art and Science of Picking the Right Expert Witnesses for a New Jersey Injury Case

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Welcome to Jersey Justice, a civil law podcast that shares

practical tips and stories about personal and workplace injuries.

Joined two of the brightest New Jersey injury attorneys, Gerald Clark

and Mark Morris of Clark Law Firm.

As they take you behind the scenes of.

Justice and civil law.

But first, a quick disclaimer.

The information shared on this podcast is for general information purposes only.

Nothing on this site should be taken as legal advice for any

individual case or situation.

This information is not intended to create and does not constitute

an attorney-client relationship.

back to another episode of Jersey Justice.

Today I'm here with Mark and Jerry, and we're gonna be

talking about expert witnesses.

We're gonna be talking about why they're important, what role they play, and

what type of expert witnesses there are.

And I think you guys are gonna find this episode very insightful, whether you

are just the general public or you are in law school, or you're an attorney.

But there's a whole art and sciences to expert witnesses and we're gonna

take you behind the scenes today.

So I'm super excited to be here with Mark and with Jerry.

And we're gonna start the conversation off with Mark.

Welcome back.

And Mark, I'm gonna ask you, you know, what's the role that expert witnesses

play in an entry case in New Jersey?

Give us a little bit of that background for the audience.

Sure.

So, thanks, dimple.

Thanks, uh, thanks for having us again.

Expert witnesses.

I know we've talked about it quite a bit.

It's such a wide, wide field.

You know, when we say expert witnesses, there's one, there's not

one neat box that everyone fits into.

I think we've talked about, normally an expert witness is someone who has some

type of specialized knowledge that will help a jury to better understand a case.

If it's something simple like, you know, you're not supposed to crash

into the back of someone's car, you wouldn't necessarily need an

expert witness to, to tell you that.

Or to tell the jury that, but if it's something more complicated,

like this machine should have had an interlocked device on it.

So blades stop spinning so workers don't get their hands cut off.

I normally can't stand up there and just tell the jury how that process would

work or how that machine would work, and the jury's not gonna know, as a matter

of course, how that machine would work.

So a lot of times in a case like that, you would need an expert to come in because

it's a specialized type of knowledge.

So in an example like that, that would be, we'd call that a liability expert.

Normally it's a professional engineer, someone that's worked either with

machines, you know, or in some capacity around, uh, around component parts,

different machinery, things like that.

That's one small, small field of experts within that field.

You could have someone that works with, cars.

Someone that works with.

Factory machine, someone that works with construction site

saws, nail guns, whatever.

There's a ton of subsets within that.

So that would be something we would call a liability expert.

And then if we were to go to another area of liability, there could be

someone for talking about like if you fall on the sidewalk, if you slip on

something saying either, Hey, this should be the coefficient of friction.

Sidewalk can only be raised up this much before it's a dangerous condition.

All these kind of little nuanced things where, where experts come into play

and it could be something small where.

It should seem obvious, but there's times where, where you definitely

do need an expert and there's times where, where you don't.

Yeah.

Mark, thanks so much for sharing that.

I think that's really fascinating because, you know, for, for the general audience

who are not attorneys who don't practice law, like they don't know what's really

involved behind the scenes of an injury case, and there's so much involved if

someone gets injured, right, they fall.

Like the incident we had where the woman fell, you know, from the steps because.

There was deceptive markings and got injured.

Like all of that information has to be evaluated by these expert experts, right?

And they come in and they have the knowledge and the background and the

training to actually assess, you know, what happened, what may have been

the cause of a particular accident.

And I think that's really important for our audience to understand that.

Because, you know, if someone comes to Clark Law Firm and they're

injured and then they're like, oh well, It should be a simple case.

Like none of these cases are simple.

I mean, they're very complicated, you know, and there's a lot of things

involved behind the scenes that have to happen in order to, you know, get.

Get through the case and get progress made.

I wanna go to Jerry.

I wanna ask him, you know, similar, like to piggyback off of what Mark

shared, what are your thoughts on expert witnesses, and especially about the

particular one that Mark just spoke about.

So yeah, thanks, dimple.

I got some thoughts on experts.

First of all.

, to bring a civil case in New Jersey, you know, you bring your

case and then some point you have a trial and you go to trial.

So the expert is needed basically for trial.

And in New Jersey, before the trial, the expert has to write a report to

kind of outline what the expert would he or she's gonna talk about in the case.

So experts is like, It's kind of an interesting thing.

First of all, there's different types of experts and I mean, just kind of going

back to the big picture of things, so.

We do, you know, personal injury lawyers and plaintiff contingency lawyers,

we do these cases on contingency, so the attorney doesn't get any fee

unless there's a recovery in the case.

So there's like a lot of risk in these cases.

It takes a lot of time and it takes a lot of cost.

So the practicalities behind the scenes with this is, If you get hurt or someone

has a civil case or they've been wronged and they wanna bring it, you gotta

try to find a lawyer to take the case.

If you can find a lawyer, that's a good thing That'll take your

case on contingency so you don't have to pay out of pocket.

Cuz most people can't afford to pay a lawyer out of pocket.

And if you can get a good lawyer, that's an even that that is good in

that area that you're looking for.

That's even better.

And the challenge often in getting.

A lawyer to take your case is the need for experts, cuz experts are super expensive.

So a lot of times when the insurance industry, or say the pharmaceutical

industry or big oil or large corporations want to limit people's

ability to bring cases, a lot of ways they'll do it is they will lobby.

Senators and congressmen and, and the government to pass laws to make

it harder to bring those cases.

And one of the biggest ways they make it harder is by requiring vigorous

experts and a lot of experts, and it's very expensive because then

it financially disincentivizes people to bring those cases.

And one of the biggest things is like in medical malpractice, they.

Have passed tort reformed laws in the medical malpractice area that requires

experts early on, experts to swear under oath that the case is, , meritorious.

And then they create these hoops just to make it harder.

So then they say the expert has to be in the exact field as the other expert.

All these crazy things, which really just limit people's access to the court because

they make it financially difficult.

To bring a case that's kind of like a big picture part of it and something

of a behind the scenes, part of it.

And then there's different types of experts.

There's experts that will actually, their business is just to be an expert.

They're like a professional testifier.

And they, they say, well, we do forensic work.

But mostly the forensic work they're doing is te is testifying in court.

So you can have experts that are engineers.

You could have crash experts, you can have workplace injury experts,

you can have law enforcement experts.

And the thing is, And this is kind of interesting for anyone that's

looking to get into the expert field.

Anyone with particular knowledge, can be an expert in civil cases.

My brother, he's run like a fitness sales business for years, and I remember an

attorney I, knew called, called him up.

And said, Hey, could you be an expert?

It was a case where someone got hurt on a fitness equipment, machine.

So he doesn't have a PhD in fitness equipment, but he has a college

education in health and fitness.

And he ran a, a retail store for years that sold fitness equipment.

So that person qualified a as an expert.

And I remember I had another case that I was involved in

where the expert was a mechanic.

It was a products liability case dealing with an auto part.

And this expert did not have a college education, but he

qualified as an expert in the case.

So those are some thoughts on experts and I think that that

could be helpful for people.

Like if your attorney's listening to the podcast or just.

Some people looking to think about a career and what areas

they want to get involved in.

You know, whatever someone's specialty might be.

If there's engineering or science or math or you know, if someone's like a

career lifeguard or something that has a lot of expertise in water safety,

they could be an expert in like a pool drowning case, or they could be

an expert in someone who's injured.

Kind of doing water sports or something like that.

And so you can have professional experts that that's their business.

They write reports, they testify in court, but then you have other experts

where testifying in court is just a smaller part of what they do for, for a

living or what they do for a business.

And it's funny, I remember when I was in high school, I read

this book about World War ii.

It was a great book.

It had great pictures and it was really insightful.

And they talked a lot about spies.

And one of the points the book made is that the most effective spies in World War

II were the ones that actually believed.

So there was, there was a famous Russian spy, forget his name, but he really

believed, you know, he was really against Nazi Germany and really believed it.

And he was a double agent spy.

And those are sometimes the best.

Spies because they're the most convincing.

And it's like that I find with experts too, if the expert doesn't really

believe what the expert is saying.

Juries can just pick up on that, but if they believe in it, so we have this one

expert that we use from time to time.

His name is Vince Gallagher.

And Vince Gallagher is a workplace safety expert.

He's an OSHA expert and I think we'll probably have him

on the podcast at some point.

He's a super, super interesting guy and.

He is an advocate for workers' rights.

He, he worked in El Salvador during the kind of communist revolution

and the Civil War in El Salvador, advocating on behalf of workers' rights.

He goes to Haiti a couple times a year and donates his time for the poor, and he

really believes in these worker rights.

And so when we have these cases and he ties in the exploitation of

workers to violating the standards, it's, it's very convincing.

And it's not convincing because he's like putting one over on the jury.

It's convincing because he actually believes it.

And those can be the most convincing experts.

Yeah.

And the, the hired guns, I think that Jared kind of mentioned.

He, he's right.

Like those guys, they could write to your report, give you a thumbs

up, but then when it really kind of comes down to it and they're getting

cross-examined, they might just give up all those points and just say, you

know what, Hey, I got paid already.

And they're not gonna be as passionate as those guys like

Jerry talked about Vince Gallagher.

So it's, it's a mix.

So sometimes it gets tricky because if it's a really nuanced

area, You might need to go.

They have, you know, kinda like databases of experts, but you're

gonna pay top dollar for that guy.

And sometimes it could be someone from Texas that's gonna

have to fly into New Jersey.

So it really is a balance, figuring out on what cases you need experts,

and then who your experts gonna be.

And Jerry gave the example of, you know, someone who's been a career lifeguard,

they could be an expert in water safety, and uh, I think talked about some of

the cases he's had where he kind of had to roll his sleeves up and go track

down a kind of out of the box expert.

And I had one a few years ago where a woman's arm got burned at a banquet hole.

And she, it was a christening or something and there were self-serve

stations set up and in front of all the, the food trays where people had

to reach over and, and get the food to serve them, serve themselves.

The banquet hall had put these candles, Tea lights.

Tea lights, tea lights there.

It shows how sophisticated I am, but they're tealight candles, and this woman's

at a christening, so she's dressed nice.

She's got this long flowy blouse on seeing family members she

hasn't seen in a long time.

So she's talking to a cousin or something and she reaches over to serve herself and

her blouse catches on one of these candles and goes up in flames, burned her arm.

She got this nasty.

Scar.

, I remember she was very holistic as well.

I remember she put egg whites on it cuz that was supposed

to help with the healing.

And the pictures were very graphic in part because there was egg white on it.

But, so this is a long way of saying in that case, you know, when we talk

about experts, what we're almost always talking about is that there's standards

in some industry or some field, there's, there's standards that need to get

married to the facts of the case.

And you have to say these are the standards.

This is what should have been done.

And then this is, this is what the defendants in the case did,

and that's almost always where the expert's gonna come into play.

And so this case was kind of close because if it's something, so obviously,

you know, not smart, like don't put open flames in front of food stations

where people will be serving themselves.

You may not need an expert in that case.

But here we wanted to be safe.

It was a bad injury.

And so we tracked down this guy, I think it was a friend of another

expert we had used who was a chef.

And he wasn't just like, he worked in, you know, some kitchen, he

was a chef at like a country club.

And so he would be the person in charge of orchestrating, you know, banquets

at the country club, you know, more, I guess bigger events and things.

And we got a report from him.

To basically say, Hey look, this is what the standard is in,

you know, the service industry.

Don't put open flames in front of serving stations.

And we ended up resolving that case.

I think it was the day of trial for, for a good amount of

money for what the injury was.

And that guy, I don't think he'd ever testified before.

And in New Jersey too, there's a court rule that you can kind of help your

expert, you can work with your expert.

It can be a collaborative process.

So Jerry, I don't know if you want me to go.

Down that road.

I mean, the law kind of is what it is.

If you get a report and you feel like he missed something, you can say, Hey.

Exactly.

That's, yes.

Those are the things.

And so just in case, uh, anyone thinks Mark and I are just actors

and we don't actually work together, I remember this case, uh, it was

Solar Anzano was the name of the case, and it was the wackiest thing.

So you, you had.

I mean, I guess the candles look nice, but as people reach over to get

their glass now, now I'm going through some, some, injury pictures here.

But as people are like reaching over to get their glass, to get

their food, they have to reach over.

Yeah, definitely a hazard.

I mean, if you have long hair, even, I can imagine someone's hair catching on fire,

like you lean over, your hair goes, you know, towards the candle catches on fire.

I just don't know why they didn't think that part through, but I

guess that's why we need attorneys because a lot of times people don't

think things like that through.

Yeah, Jerry, if you get into more of them, it was.

And they on the website, the, the banquet hall, like promoted.

They, we were like obsessed with fire.

We found picture after picture of like, flamed everywhere.

It was really, really bizarre.

There's one picture, maybe I could share, maybe I'll share my screen.

There's one picture.

There's like a little kid that's like leaning up on the tablecloth with

the candle right in front of him.

I'm rushing to share though, and just, so, just so anyone thinks,

oh, this is your slip and fall.

This is, I mean, this woman suffered really bad burns.

Like that's a, I think it was a sec.

That's a third degree burn right there.

Is that blister bec because what happened?

Her, her, , the dress arm caught, caught the candle, right?

Yeah.

It was like, I don't know, say polyester or some type of material

that was extremely flammable.

And it was flowy and everything, and she's talking to a friend and she reaches

over and it, it went up in flames and it was just totally, totally inappropriate.

Like, there's old people, there's kids there, you know, the little

kids gotta reach over these candles.

And it wasn't like the, you know, the little blue flames you put

underneath to keep the thing warm?

It was decoration.

They were like, oh, this will look nice to have all these candles in

front of these serving stations.

And it just, it was.

Yeah, she and Jerry in that picture too, she pulled up, she had a tattoo

on her arm and it's always, there's different ways you gotta look at cases

and like things you, I don't know, as lawyers, we gotta think about like, so

as a defense attorney, they're like, oh, who cares that she burned her arm?

She's already gone and defiled her skin and gotten a tattoo tattoo.

And for, you know, in speaking with her, she's like, this

tattoo has a lot of symbolism.

There's a lot of meaning.

When I got this, I was so proud of it.

Now I'm ashamed when people look at my arm, cuz all they see is this burn.

So it's kind of putting a spin on where don't we have a video of the incident?

Yeah.

Yep.

There's a video trying to see too.

I think I, I had pulled out, yeah, it was a, it was a

christening, a kid's christening.

So there's very young children running around all these open flames.

You would think they'd get the fake tea lights, you know, that look

like real candles, but they're not.

That would've sufficed.

So as these people are serving themselves, bottom right there, you

can see in the, yeah, in the bottom right you can see there's a candle.

It's the, it's just the craziest thing.

How far into this video is it, mark?

I don't think it's too long.

I mean, it happens, right?

I think we, it spliced it down.

I think it's happening now.

No, I could see.

I could see her, her.

I could see it hanging over into the candle.

Look at that.

Yeah.

See that?

And it's like, cat, cat.

Oh my gosh.

You see her arm?

She doesn't even know it's on.

Look at this.

Yeah.

Holy crap.

Crash.

She got rip her shirt off in front of her, her family.

That was crazy.

Yeah.

So.

So that's a perfect example.

Like, like we're saying, like what's the expert, oh, well we're gonna have a

wedding expert or we're gonna have a food.

No, we got a guy that was in the food service industry.

He was a chef or something, mark.

Yeah, he was a chef at a higher end place that, I think it was

a golf club or a country club.

So he hosted events like this and he was able to speak to, you know, this is the

custom in the industry not to do that.

Yeah.

So, yeah.

So the way this works dimple is you'll, you'll have a case like that and.

That doesn't require an expert, in my view, because it was just, it's common

knowledge that you, it's like negligence.

It's like it was kind of dumb to do that.

You shouldn't put candles where people are reaching all over the

place and like you said, just get the fake candles with the thing I.

But what happens in these cases is the insurance company hires the defense

lawyers, and the defense lawyers will come up with whatever arguments they can

to have the insurance company not pay.

So you hear a lot in the news, like, oh, the McDonald's person was burned

with the coffee and frivolous lawsuits.

We've seen way more frivolous defenses than we have.

Frivolous lawsuits in my experience anyway.

And so what we do is we have to like dot all our i's cross

our T's and be triple sure.

So we get an expert in the case anyway.

And the defense wants you to have to get an expert because it ramps up the

cost of the case and makes it harder.

So they create these false hoops.

So we got an expert anyway, but the reality is, Do you really

need an expert to say that you didn't but to be double Sure.

We got one anyway.

Yeah.

So that's, that's the kinda thing that happens.

Yeah.

That was a big time.

Belts and suspenders.

Uh, approach getting an expert for that one.

But it, you know, we didn't have to fly to someone in from Texas for, you know, 10,

15 grand, whatever the heck it would be.

This was someone that, you know, I think looked at the case and we talked

about before, kind of really believed in it could give us what we needed,

and I think in that case it would've been effective had it gone to a jury.

Because the defense there would've been, oh, it looked nice.

You know, we thought that's what they would've wanted.

It was a christening.

We wanted it to be a, you know, a good setting and this

is how we've always done it.

And she should have looked where she was reaching and it's her

fault and she should get nothing.

So if that's the kind of back and forth that's going on in a case like

that, it could have been helpful.

It may have been helpful to have someone get up there and say, Hi.

You know, expert blank.

The defense in this case is saying that these candles look nice and that

they always put 'em out, and that's just how it's done in the industry.

Is that true?

No, this is absolutely not how it's done.

We have those little fake candles that you mentioned, dimple, and the reason we

have them is you get the same aesthetic without risking members of the public,

like small children and elderly people.

And people wearing flowy blouses getting very, very injured when they're

just trying to go to a family party.

Yeah, and the thing is, and you know, I, I don't want the podcast to be like

an infomercial or anything like that for our law firm, but you know, we generally

will go the extra mile and kind of.

Put, put the case in the best position to get a good recovery.

I've actually heard there's attorneys, like there's a lot of attorneys that

won't take a case if they have to get a lot of experts or sometimes

they have to get any experts.

And I've also heard that there's attorneys, like in an auto accident

case, they'll be at trial, they'll about to go out to trial and they have to

send a check to the expert, you know, 10 grand to come to court and testify.

15 grand, 7,500, and instead of writing that check, they'll actually convince

the client to just dismiss the case.

I've heard of that.

I've heard of that from defense attorney, friends of ours that.

They just know who those lawyers are and rather than risk the money and

the time to try a case, they'll just convince the client to dismiss the case.

So it's important to get the right, the right attorney that has relationships

with experts and is not afraid to spend the time, uh, and money that it takes to

work with the experts to present the case.

Right?

Yeah, big time.

And.

Jerry, you said kind of going the extra mile, like Jerry had a case where two

workers got electrocuted working on power lines and he went out and bought a book

on basically electrical engineering, a textbook, like a thousand page thing.

And I'm pretty sure Reddit covered a cover.

Highlighted it, flagged it, and that ended up being a multi multimillion dollar case.

That resolved kind of the same thing, not to do an infomercial for us, or,

I wanted to make sure I gave Jerry his credit, but one of the bigger settlements

I ever had involved someone stage diving.

Mark, I have to interrupt you in case anyone thinks Mark's BSing.

Yeah.

Here's the book here.

It's the National Electrical Safety Code.

Well, that's the, that's the handbook to it.

And then the actual code itself is here.

And then we have another recent, uh, case involving that.

So I got this textbook about the guidebook for linemen and cable men.

Which is good.

So a lot of times if you want to be like an effective lawyer working with

experts, you should try to become an expert yourself and dive into it.

So, sorry, mark, I interrupted you.

No, no, I love that percent.

That's, that's the point.

I'm, I'm kind of, I'm trying to make, like, that was a huge, huge settlement.

And again, not to be an infomercial, but not a lot of law firms, definitely

not a lot of lawyers that would go that extra mile and get multiple,

sorry, multiple textbooks on electrical engineering to settle the case.

And my kind of, I guess, small.

Parallel to that is I had a stage diving case where, you know, again,

maybe you don't need an expert to say people shouldn't be diving off stages,

but in a belts and suspenders approach.

I found this guy from like way outta state.

I just had done a ton of internet research and found someone who'd

written a bunch of articles and actually ran a group that was designed

towards putting on like safe events.

And I bought his textbook and read that thing.

It talks about, oh, do this during lightning storms.

You know, have this many, all these different little nuanced things, and

I learned that those standards, what I needed to know kind of through and

through, and I didn't end up having to use the expert, but the case settled

early on for, you know, a couple million dollars because I think in large part,

we knew exactly what we're looking for and how to prosecute the case.

That, that's kind of the cool thing too about being a lawyer is like, you know,

it's a lot of work and everything, but.

You're in, you're in the world.

Like you're in.

You're involved in so many different things like that.

The case Mark was talking about dealt with a guy who was at a hard, a hard

rock concert stage diving, and someone staged over and landed on the guy's head.

So you're out.

You're doing these interesting things.

It's not just the same drab thing every day.

You know, the cases are different.

There's different stories, there's different characters.

And it's kind of cool.

And then it can get very sophisticated when you're working with like high-end

engineer experts and PhD doctors and, and, uh, highly educated professors

in different fields and getting all different perspective on, on life

and science and engineering and the way things work and medicine.

So that's kind of cool too, working with experts.

Yeah, big time.

Jerry and I tracked down a guy from upstate New York.

He was like a college professor that.

I don't think it'd ever been an expert, but it was, he was a, we got him as a

warnings expert in a case where, and I'm not sure how much of it we can talk

about, but there was a product that was being, can we talk about this case?

Jerry, do you remember?

Yeah.

I think you could talk about it without naming any names.

Yeah.

There was a product that was being sold as comparable to the other products.

It was next to on the shelf.

Um, it was oil, it was motor oil.

Yeah, and it would have on it like a racing flag, lubricates

and protects your engine.

And it would be like a dollar or two cheaper than the oil right

next to it, like the Penns oil, the Vaseline, the regular oils.

And on the front it's got a racing flag.

Lubricates protects your engine.

The S SAE 30, whatever it is, you flip it over on the back and there's all the

disclaimers like harmful of swallowed.

You know, don't let children play with this.

And then in small font, bird in there, it said, not suitable

for engines built after 1930.

And this stuff was being sold in like, you know, 2015 through, I forget how

long, but in like present day and the defense in that case is gonna be, oh,

well we told them, we warned the consumer.

It's right on the back there.

So we tracked down this guy.

I think the, the classification was ergonomics expert where he dealt

with the effectiveness of a warning.

And I forget how we found him or, or what, but like he was a college professor

at like a technical school that dealt with like product labels and things.

I don't think he'd ever testified before, but he was moved by the case.

He's like, what a scam.

And came on, wrote a great report and.

Helped, you know, resolve the thing for, again, many, many

millions of dollars for consumers.

All that's fascinating for the audience because, I mean, this

is really behind the scenes.

We're taking you behind the scenes.

So what it's like, you know, to be an injury lawyer in New Jersey

because you know, when you see things on TV shows, they don't show you

half the stuff that happens and, and I mean, behind the scenes it's.

There's a lot of, you know, complicated things and information and fact finding

and expert witnesses and interviews and things that have to be done.

So if you guys are enjoying the show, make sure you share it out with your

audience and subscribe so that we can producing more amazing content for you.

But I mean, that story just even, you know, what we talked about so far?

Like some of these things are common sense, but.

People don't use common sense, which is why the woman at the banquet hall,

you know, burnt, got burnt and her arm got caught on fire and all that.

But that's the thing.

But what I think is brilliant is actually, you know, Jerry's being

a little bit geeky, but it's okay.

He read the whole book on this electrical stuff, but that just shows you like the

difference between a mediocre lawyer, And a brilliant lawyer because you

know, I always talk about like the term brilliant lawyer because there's a lot

of lawyers, but that let's just be real.

They're not all brilliant, but brilliance comes from really thinking outside of

the box of what you're gonna do and how you're going to tackle a particular

case or problem and go above and beyond.

So that that example's above and beyond.

Cuz I don't know how many lawyers are sitting around reading whole

textbooks, but you have proof, you have the books, you know.

Thanks.

Yeah, that was brilliant lawyer.

All right.

We talked about a couple of the different types of expert witnesses.

Are there any other expert witnesses that you wanted to, to tell us about?

Or was there an actual case that you were gonna pull up Jerry talk about?

Or was that the one?

Yeah, I mean, you know, experts, it's a funny thing because like

I said, you want to get an expert that really believes in it, but.

At, at some point, like a trial becomes, it's like, it's kind of like war on paper.

You know?

It's not war, but it's, it's, it can be very contentious.

It can be, it can be like almost a sporting event in a way.

And you wanna win, you know, your side wants to win.

See, we, we don't, If we don't believe in the case, if we don't

think it's a good case, if we don't think the person was truly wronged,

we're not gonna take the case.

And so we, we believe in our cases, and you wanna win,

you want to help the person.

And at the end of the day, we're generally representing a person of

limited means against a well-funded defendant, insurance company, corporation.

And we wanna win.

So, While you want to get experts that are well qualified and believe in what

they're saying, you need experts that are experienced because the defense lawyers

are gonna pull out a lot of tricks.

They're gonna try to put words in the mouth of the expert.

They're gonna try to twist what the expert says.

They're gonna try to, in some ways, they'll try to bully the expert into

flipping the side and going with them.

So you also need experienced experts that know how to testify, that know,

and, and you need your expert to stay strong on his, his or her opinions

that they put in their report.

So that's kind of like another aspect to it.

And in the next, episode, I want to show you guys , a pretty cool story

about dealing with experts and, a defense expert because, A lot of times

on the defense side, they're just gonna support the defendant no matter what.

And you'll have these because they're being paid by the insurance

company and that's their business, and they keep getting all these

cases from the insurance companies.

So no matter what, they're going to say stuff to hurt the plaintiff's case and

to try to help the defendant's case.

And it doesn't matter how strong the case is, a lot of those defense experts are

still gonna do that, and then they'll just say the most ridiculous, silly things.

And sometimes juries actually believe it.

So it's up to the plaintiff lawyers to expose that and

expose 'em for what they are.

And in the next episode, I'm gonna show you guys , a pretty cool story about that,

or a little vignette about that dimple, if you're looking at me for anything to add.

Any final thoughts?

Yeah, my, my only final thoughts are when Jerry says what we

do is like, Going to war?

I have, there's two things I think about with that.

Number one, he's absolutely right, like we literally have

opponents called adversaries.

And then the first case I ever tried with Jerry, we were driving the

court and he, I had my pen, I had my highlighter, I had my legal pad.

He asked me if I had, These little, these little flags.

And I didn't have those with me.

And he said, mark, we're going to war.

These are your weapons.

You don't have your weapons with you when we're going to war.

And so I have here, uh, the same thing and just to share that all this is real.

I have an entire bag filled with office supplies that goes into my

briefcase whenever I go to court.

Make sure I have all my weapons for Wait, show us, show us that bag one more time.

You know, let me get, let me get the good one.

I've got one more time.

It'll be interesting content for our short form stuff because we're really taking

you guys behind the scene so you can see what it is, like, what's in that bag.

Pull some of that stuff out.

Mark for a moment.

Give us a demo really quick and then Sure.

And Jerry's got his stuff too, so the audience can see.

Cuz in the bag, they can't tell what's in there.

All right.

We've got, we'll do an unboxing.

Let's do unboxing.

We've got low post-its, we've got multiple, multiple, four

color Clark Law firm pens.

There are highlighters, rubber bands.

I don't know if we're sponsored by these guys, so I'll say, , nutrition bars in

case you get hungry when you're at trial.

We've got cough drops for my coworker, , a flash drive.

You guys are prepared.

Flash drive just in case.

And then these guys that, that I pulled out, so nice.

Nice.

Jerry, what does your stash look like?

Well, I w I was saying that you can never have enough paperclips, but,

but my bag is, a lot like marks.

It's love it.

Yeah.

And if you forget that you're in trouble, it raises you have a tough time.

Yeah.

It raises questions when you get on a flight and you pull this

bag out of your backpack too.

But you gotta, you should name it a lawyer or something.

Okay, so I guess this one's a wrap, you guys.

Yeah, we're good.

Thank you.

All right.

See you guys next time.

See it.

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