The inaugural episode of “New Mexico Legal Lowdown” – the podcast dedicated to helping non-lawyers understand how the law works for them – introduces listeners to Brian Colón, managing partner of Singleton Schreiber's New Mexico offices. “I really try and live a life of gratitude and service. I should not be here. I'm sitting here on the sixth floor in uptown Albuquerque working for a firm that is just filled with fearless advocates,” he tells host Feliz Rael. Tune in as Brian shares how his firm advocates for clients in personal injury cases and also how it supports New Mexico communities with pro bono and philanthropic service.

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Produced and Powered by LawPods

Every New Mexican deserves to understand

how the law works for them or why it

doesn't work for them. Welcome

to New Mexico Legal Lowdown,

hosted by attorney Feliz

Rael. Each episode,

we will help demystify the legal system

and uncover misconceptions through real

conversations with New Mexico trial

lawyers. Produced and powered by LawPods.

This episode is brought to you by the

New Mexico Trial Lawyers Association

Alliance for Justice.

We want to thank our La Justica Circle

supporters, Singleton Schreiber,

Nick Rowley, Lori Benco, Sherry LaCour,

and McGinn Montoya Love,

Curry and Seavers, PA.

Through their generous investments,

they're safeguarding New Mexican's

right to access justice and a jury.

And now onto our conversation. Hi.

Welcome to the New Mexico

Legal Lowdown podcast.

We are trial lawyer or plaintiff lawyers

talking about the civil justice system

in New Mexico.

The laws in New Mexico may be different

from the laws in other states.

The purpose of this podcast is to provide

general information and to demystify

the civil legal process in New Mexico.

It is not a substitute for appropriate

legal advice. In any individual case,

please contact a lawyer if you want

to talk about your particular case.

Today, I am very excited

to have Brian Colón

from Singleton Schreiber with us as

our very first guest. I've known Brian

for over 25 years and he's

the perfect first guest.

Hi, Brian.

Well,

hey, Feliz. It's great

to be with you today.

I'm so happy. We're actually

recording after hours,

so hopefully I don't have my phone

ringing or anything like that.

And I bet it's hard for you to go longer

than about an hour without your text

coming in or your phone

ringing or something like that.

Well, you absolutely have

my undivided attention.

I have been a fan and friend

of yours for 28 years,

and it's been a great journey.

It's been awesome to watch you ascend

to leadership in our New Mexico Trial

Lawyers Association.

It's been awesome to see

you be a phenomenal advocate

for your clients and to

literally change the laws of

New Mexico to better allow

individuals to hold those who harm

them accountable for their bad actions.

And you've made New Mexico a better place.

So I'm a fan and I can't wait to

see where this conversation goes.

You're embarrassing me.

Thank you. You're so sweet.

So tell our audience about you.

First, what I want to know is,

when did you decide that you

wanted to become a lawyer?

Feliz, it's going to give your

listeners a real insight into how

unbelievable this mind is.

And when I say unbelievable,

I mean exceptionally weird.

I was taken to an event

when I was a young man.

I was probably 13 or 12, and I

had never met a lawyer in my life.

But I went to this event and

this individual got up and gave

remarks and it just blew me

away. Feliz, as you know,

I grew up in New Mexico like many

New Mexicans, and quite frankly,

most New Mexicans, I grew up in poverty.

And I had a father and mother

who were both disabled.

My father deteriorated before my

very eyes when I was a teenager.

He had muscular dystrophy and died

at the young age of 49 when I was a

teenager. And it was

really tough. But anyway,

this individual gave some

remarks that really inspired me.

And I looked to the person who

took me to the event and I said,

"Who is he and what does he do? " I

was probably, like I said, 12 or 13.

And he said, "Well, he's a lawyer. He's

a speaker of the house." And I said,

"Well, I don't know what any of that

means, but that's what I want to do.

" That's awesome.

Because he inspired me to believe that

there were people out there were fighting

for people like me that

were on the margins.

And I knew from that moment on

that that's what I wanted to do.

And fast forward a few years later,

I had the privilege of being elected

to Boys Nation from Boise State,

which is a program held by the

American Legion for about 50 years now.

And I got elected to Boys Nation

and a reporter came out to my house,

I'll never forget it. I say house,

but it was my trailer in Bosque Farms,

New Mexico.

We'd moved up from Section eight housing

in Carson Park in Los Lunas over to a

trailer in Bosque Arms.

And the journalist came to my house

because not too many people from Busquet

Farms or Losunas where I went to school,

got to meet the President of the United

States. And I was getting ready to go

meet the President of the

United States, Ronald Reagan.

And I share this to say

that he, Slim Randalls,

just like every good reporter

who sits across from a teenager,

their first question is, "Hey,

what do you want to do when you grow

up?" And I remember telling him,

and it's actually written in

the article, and I said, "Look,

I want to be the first in

my family to go to college.

I want to get a county degree.

I want to go to law school,

and I want to serve the people of

New Mexico in elected office.".

I love that.

I was 17. And as we are

doing this interview today,

the people of New Mexico allowed me to

live that third part of the dream as I

got half a million votes

and served as state auditor.

But I started out by living my dad's

dream that I'd be the first in the family

to go to college.

I went to New Mexico State University

from Los Lunas High School.

I tell people I was on the 10-year track

at NMSU, but not for a professorship.

It took me 10 years to

get my bachelor's degree.

But then I went straight to law school

and graduated and started practicing.

And yeah, I mean, I lived my

dreams. I ran for office, I served,

and this is kind of my bonus round.

And I am in a place of abundance and

enrichment and service in a way that I

could have never imagined. Hopefully

we could talk a little bit about that

today, Feliz. I think I

answered your question.

That is so fantastic.

And I think why not now?

Tell us a little bit about Singleton

Schreiber and the kind of work they do.

Sure. I reflect,

I'm here in my office in downtown

Albuquerque or in uptown Albuquerque.

We have four offices in New Mexico.

We're getting ready to open

our fifth office in Farmington.

We have an office in Las Cruces,

Mora, Las Vegas, Albuquerque,

and soon to be Farmington

in the next couple of weeks.

And when I think about what I'm doing now,

I just cannot be anything

except filled with gratitude.

Kind of told you how I

grew up, but on the way,

I'm the same guy that

had his car repossessed,

didn't have a single blood relative

in the whole state of New Mexico,

and my friends let me sleep on

their couch. Everything I owned,

I carried in a black plastic

trash bag from couch to couch.

And community filled the

gap for me in so many ways.

I think why I'm so happy now,

even having served and now

in this bonus round of life,

because I lived my dreams, this is

the bonus. And this bonus round,

I get to do what I've always wanted to do,

which is serve others and repay

my debt to the community that

didn't allow me to fall through the

cracks. And I should have. I mean,

I just absolutely should have. I didn't

have family to support my journey.

I just had myself and my community.

So I always tell Rafael, my son,

who's now 28, I always say, "I've

got a debt I owe my community.

I'll never be able to repay it fully,

but I'm going to die trying." And

Singleton Schreiber, New Mexico,

has allowed me to continue

that repayment plan

because I will tell you that when the

founders of the firm kind of identified me

and courted me to help them build

their law firm in New Mexico,

because we are national, we're in

eight states, we got about 120 lawyers,

we've got about 500 team members,

and we're continuing to grow. And I

just have the most amazing law partners.

If you go to our website

and check out our partners,

it's the most beautiful

collection of diverse leaders and

experts in the law.

Folks that have done billion dollar

actions against companies like Johnson &

Johnson for the Talc case,

people like Brett Schreiber,

who was the first to take a case to

trial against Elon Musk and Tesla and get

nearly a quarter of a billion dollar

verdict. It's the first time-.

That's amazing. I'm going to ask

you more about that. Yeah, no.

Because that's just incredible. But

let's first finish talking about.

Singleton Schreiber. Yeah. I mean,

but this is where I give my energy and

this is why I'm inspired because I am

surrounded by phenomenal trial lawyers.

I look around the table

and it's just amazing.

I've got retired Marine Colonels who

are leading our litigation teams.

I've got just so many

wonderful people who all bring a

positive attitude to the work we do,

an attitude of gratitude and service.

And there's an abundance mentality

that says, "We can do more.

We can work harder.

We can serve more communities."

And that's what we do every day.

We've got a strong appetite for

service and we do that through the law.

We focus our practice on

personal injury, single incident,

personal injury cases. So we do

trucking cases, motorcycle collisions,

car collisions, wrongful death,

medical malpractice, product liability,

but then we do big cases as well.

So I represent several school

districts in a big lawsuit

against Facebook, Meta, Alphabet,

the social media companies that knew

that they were putting a product in the

marketplace that was going to cause social

media addiction in our children. They

decided to put profits ahead

of our children's safety,

and I get to do that litigation for

school districts all over New Mexico,

small as Questa and as large

as Las Cruces and hopefully

Albuquerque public schools.

And just we get to be champions

in big cases and small cases,

but we like to really embrace the

idea that we're client centered.

We always put the client in the center

of every conversation that we have.

And I like to say for New Mexico,

I think I've proven it in the last three

years, we are not just client centered,

but we're community based.

When Brett and Jerry came to talk to me

about Singleton Schreiber and whether

I'd be the managing partner

to build out their firm,

they didn't have an office yet.

They'd come to New Mexico because

we are wildfire experts. We.

Have our fair share of

wildfires in New Mexico. Yeah.

Well, and we had our largest

wildfire in our history,

310,000 acres in Northern New

Mexico, the Hermit's Peakcale Canyon.

So they had come out because of that

to help the communities of Northern New

Mexico, but they hadn't built out

an office. And they said, "Look,

we want you to build this office

to be a reflection of who you are.

" And I said, "Well, who do

you think I am?" And they said,

"You're a passionate trial lawyer.

You are someone who is deeply invested

in community and philanthropy and you are

very engaged in the public policy

landscape or what some others might call

politics." And if you're going to be a

trial lawyer advocating for your clients,

if you're not engaged in public policy,

you can't serve them to your best

potential. And I really believe that.

And I think my colleagues

in the law like you,

because I've seen you at the Roundhouse

volunteering your time to advocate for

your client's positions and to get

good laws in the books in New Mexico.

And so that's kind of our philosophy.

We're client-centered, community-based.

We love to support community organizations

that are making a difference in

lifting up New Mexico, but that's kind

of the areas of practice that we have.

I've got a dozen attorneys.

We're one of the largest plaintiff's

law firms in New Mexico by a number of

attorneys, got about three dozen

team members all over the state,

and I'm living in a place of abundance

and service and filled with gratitude

every day.

That is great. I know you were talking

about the wildfire near Hermit's Peak.

I've done the hike to Hermit's

Peak when I was much younger.

And I remember when

that fire was happening,

I know people in Las Vegas and

I was refreshing my computer for

updates just to see where that fire

was going and who it was going to

hit. And I was mesmerized. I

could hardly get any work done.

It was tragic.

It's like nothing New Mexico has ever

seen before. And the heartbreak upon

heartbreak is that it was caused,

the federal government lit the match.

It was caused by the federal

government's negligence,

the admitted negligence

of the federal government.

And our federal delegation did a great

job getting a set aside to try and

compensate those

communities of $5 billion.

FEMA has done a very

poor job of getting that

allocation, those funds

out to the communities.

But it was a historic feat by our

federal delegation to get those

funds allocated. FEMA has done a

horrible job, I will just tell you,

but we continue to advocate for those

clients to make those communities whole,

and it's an honor to do it. And

we do it all over the country,

whether it's in Lahaina where

we have an office in Hawaii,

or whether it's in California,

the Eaton Fire, or Texas,

or Oregon, Washington.

These are all states where

we're representing victims

of wildfires and holding

big corporations and power companies,

or in our case in New Mexico in

the Harmons Peacaf Canyon Fire,

the federal government accountable

for those negligent acts.

I've heard that a fire is just one of

the most traumatic things that a person

can go through. And the few people

I've known who've experienced that,

say the most awful thing,

and maybe it's a little bit

different with modern technology,

but the loss of keepsakes

and older photos.

So maybe it depends on how old you are,

but I can't imagine that it's any

less traumatic for a young person

to just lose anything that ever held

value.

It just sounds awful to have to rebuild

life after something so devastating.

It really is. And all my

attorneys, 120 of us or so,

and all of our attorneys in New Mexico

in particular that work on the Hermans

Peak Canyon Fire or the Fire in

Rio Doso, the McBride Fire, look,

we understand the gravity of the pain

because a lot of our team members

have been victims of wildfires and then

they've come to work with us after we've

advocated for them. They

saw the work that we did.

But we take it a step further,

Feliz, and this is ...

I'll talk about a lot of things I'm proud

of for Singleton Schreiber if you'll

let me.

But one of the things on point with

what you just said is that as attorneys,

and you do this too, Feliz,

because you represent victims and

nursing home atrocities and other

children and elders,

and you're just at the center of a lot

of pain as well as an attorney advocating

for your clients.

But we take it a step further.

We literally have a mental health

professional that's on our staff to-.

That's.

Incredible.

It's unusual and it's

awesome because we've now

made all our attorneys go through

trauma-informed advocacy. I.

Love that.

It's really helpful because

you can try and be empathetic,

but if you haven't lived it,

all you can do is try because

true empathy is really knowing

what someone's going through and embracing

that. Empathy light, as I call it,

is trying to listen and feel

and understand and support.

But our mental health professional

helps guide us in that space,

helps guide our clients to resources that

they need for their own mental health

because of what they've been through,

which you described so beautifully,

but it's so pain centered.

That trauma is real.

Even if you didn't lose

everything in your house,

the idea that you had

to process for hours,

the idea of looking over your shoulder

to see if your home is still there or if

it stayed out of the

burden scar or not. I mean,

all of that is heavy duty trauma. And so-.

And I love that for two

reasons. I mean, on one hand,

when people come to hire a lawyer,

their legal issue is just generally just

a part of their issue. On top of that,

they may have financial issues

relating to whatever traumatic thing

happened to them. They may have emotional

issues based on what happened to them.

And I love that you have a mental

health professional on staff to help

your clients process

and gain the strength or

fortitude to continue

with life, number one,

but also to help your team understand

where that client is coming from because

at the end of the day,

I think it's our job to tell our

client stories in the best way we can.

And the better a lawyer can

tell their client's story,

the better they are as a lawyer.

100%, Felicia.

The only thing that I would add as

one more component of that is that

you as a lawyer, Feliz, me, you and

I have both been doing this now.

We're going to enter our 25th year of

practice and for a quarter of a century,

we've been representing plaintiffs,

and that means we carry their stories.

It means we receive their stories

in a way that comes with pain.

We also need the tools to process

our own transferred emotions that we

receive when we're

advocating for our clients.

That's not something we all think about

as often as we probably should is our

own mental health. I can't

serve my clients if I'm not

mentally in a good place.

And if we don't recognize that

there's transferred emotion,

if we don't recognize that there is

residual trauma that we receive by the

emotions that we expend on investing

in our client and their stories,

then we're not taking care of ourselves,

which means we're putting ourselves

at risk for being in a position to be

long-term advocates or even many more

clients down the road. So I think there's

those three things. It's

not for just our clients.

It's not just so that we learn as lawyers

how to treat our clients or receive

our client stories,

but it's also how do we process

that in our own mental health?

So it's kind of a three-legged stool that

that mental health professional has to

sit on every day when it comes to

delivering good service to us as a team

and her as a mental health professional.

That is so important.

I know because it's not an easy job.

Certainly it's not as glamorous as

I envisioned before I got to law

school or before I took the bar.

I think my frame of reference

was various TV shows and

I think the practice is a

lot more grueling than I

ever anticipated at

times. It's frustrating.

And I spend a lot more time in front

of my computer and looking through

documents. There's nothing really

particularly glamorous about that,

but it's okay because it's

part of it and there's a goal.

And I think that as long as we

live in accordance with our values,

that's the fuel that gets us

through the difficult days.

100%.

Yeah.

And I just finished an hour and a half

over at the law school on a panel talking

to the students, the 1Ls, the first

year law students about lawyer life.

And you're right, it's

not always glamorous,

but we're also in an enviable position

to be able to do what makes us

happy. If we don't like a particular

area of law, we could pivot,

but we've all chosen to be advocates for

those who've been injured and those who

are on the margins that don't have a

voice and don't have the capacity to be

their own advocates. For me,

when you are client centered,

while I'm reading thousands of pages

of discovery, I think of our clients.

It's like, my client doesn't have the

capacity to go through this discovery.

The end result of knowing that I'm

serving them is so enriching and so

fulfilling. And I think

that's why after 24,

going into my 25th year of practice,

I still love the law. I mean,

I mentor a lot of young people into

the law and young lawyers even,

and even a few elder lawyers,

but they're always amazed with

how much I love our profession,

but I also love people. And this

profession, when it is client-centered,

it is about people and their

stories and helping put

them in a stronger position than they

were in when they walked in the front

door.

And there is not many professions where

you can do that in so many different

ways. If you want to write, if

you want to be in the courtroom,

if you want to make laws,

it's such an incredible career and I feel

very honored to be able to call myself

an attorney. I just really think that

what we get to do is pretty sacred.

I agree.

I have various times thought about

other careers and I keep coming

back to this being really what

I was probably born to do.

I joke about taking other jobs, but

I've never been serious about that.

Anyway,

one of the things that you and I talked

about when we were getting ready for

this is what we,

and I hope that this is a recurring

theme with all the people who agree to be

interviewed,

is what are some of the things

that we think that potential

clients or the public in general,

what would be helpful for

them to know about what we do?

And one of the things that I agree,

there's a ton of mystery

around is how we pay for

lawsuits and we call them costs

to differentiate that from the

attorney fees. So let's talk about costs.

How does Singleton Schreiber handle costs?

Or let's talk about what we

think is the standard in the industry.

I suspect everybody pretty much

handles it the same way. We all,

when we do handle a plaintiff's case,

we do a contingent fee agreement,

which allows us and requires

us and the law permits us to

basically fund a lawsuit. Is

that how it works with your firm?

It is. I think it is a mystery. In fact,

the first question after I sit

down with somebody from intake,

their concern is, "Well,

how do I pay for this?

" Right.

They don't get it. They're like, "Well,

if you need an expert to talk about

whether my procedure was done correctly,

that's a lot of money.

I can't afford to pay another

doctor to come testify in court.

I can't afford pay for all these things

you're calling depositions." I'm not

sure what that is, but

it sounds expensive.

It is expensive.

And it is expensive.

Hundreds, thousands of dollars usually.

It is.

And part of my intake

is always a very clear

message. And I say,

if you only remember one thing from this

entire hour or hour and a half meeting,

however long it takes, I want

it to be this. You have one job.

As the person who walked into my office

who's been involved in a car collision

or been a victim of medical malpractice,

you have one job that is to heal.

You have to do everything

in your power to heal.

I don't want you stressing about anything

and I don't want you doing anything

that doesn't allow you to heal. I

will take care of all the costs.

I will advance those

costs. So in other words,

I will pay all those costs upfront. And

like you said, it's very often tens,

if not hundreds of thousands of dollars,

and I will take care of all of that. You

won't get a bill from me along the way,

and you are not expected to

pay that bill along the way.

That is something that we do. Now,

if we have a recovery for you,

then we're going to take the fee that

we get as your lawyer on that recovery,

which is a percentage,

and then I'm going to take those

costs out that I have paid,

which you have receipts for. You know

I paid them, you get to see those.

But sadly, there are sometimes when

cases don't go as you expect them to.

I've been there.

Yeah. Well, and quite honestly,

every case shouldn't go exactly

where you expect it to go.

Every case is a risk. I don't

care what kind of case it is.

Every case is a risk.

100% True.

And I think that let's talk about medical

malpractice cases for just a moment.

When I've got somebody that comes in

and tells me their journey through a

procedure, and I have a whole

nursing team from my firm,

I've got three nurses that work with me

and they do a secondary review after I

feel like there might be something

here we need to look into.

The nurses review an initial set of

documents and then we talk about what kind

of experts would be required to prove

up a medical malpractice case and we

proceed.

The next step is I have to hire experts

and I have to pay those experts.

Now, I don't pay those experts to tell

me that there was medical malpractice.

I pay those experts to tell me

if there was medical malpractice.

And if they tell me there

wasn't medical malpractice,

then guess what? I'm not proceeding

on that claim Because I'm not a

doctor.

I have to rely upon doctors to inform

me whether or not there was a breach

in the standard of care,

which is a fancy way to say,

did the doctor do what she

or he was supposed to do?

And if they didn't under

those circumstances,

then I'm going to hold them accountable,

but that doesn't happen 10 out of

10 times. So in that situation,

I've now spent tens of thousands of

dollars on experts trying to identify

whether I have a medical

malpractice case. And I promise you,

I've never had a client that said, "You

know what? I've got an extra 25,000.

Let me cover those costs even though

you're not going to pursue my claim."

That's a cost that I have to observe.

So there's a lot of overhead

and you have to be well

financed to be able to do, in

particular, medical malpractice cases.

Any medical case. First of all,

medical records themselves

can be expensive.

I've received bills for medical

records that are thousands of dollars,

and that's okay. I expect that.

Sometimes I will accept

a case for the purpose of

investigation because we

don't know what happened,

and I feel like my

clients deserve answers.

If nothing else, they deserve

answers. They may not have a case,

but sometimes we have to file for a

personal representative to be able to have

the authority to gather medical records.

You can't do that without filing

at least a petition to appoint a

personal representative.

And it's happened a ton of

times that we gather records,

spend hundreds or thousands of dollars.

We like to kind of have some

initial questions answered in- house

before sending them out, but it

also depends on how busy we are.

Sometimes we just send them

out and we just say, "Here,

you are a medical professional. Please

tell us what you think about this case."

And very often the answer is, "Well,

yeah, this is a really sad story,

but we can't point a finger at

anyone." And then I think it's fine.

And it's actually a relief

for many people to hear.

And I always say, "Listen,

I'll give you your records.

I don't feel comfortable pursuing

this case as a business decision,

but I feel like you're

entitled to answers.

And I hope it gives you a level of

understanding that helps you

find peace to know that a

different medical professional reviewed

the records and says that they did

everything that they could and everything

was appropriate and it's a fluke or

whatever." I think that

allows people to heal too.

And I think that that's a valuable

too, and I don't mind paying for that.

It's very valuable.

But these are costs that people

are looking at our industry or our

profession,

they don't contemplate some of those

items that we don't get to recover because

we choose to do this profession and

sometimes we make bad decisions.

Oh, sure.

A claim that probably we shouldn't have,

but we just wouldn't give up and we wanted

to push it all the way to the end and

it's expensive and we

absorb that. And look,

I'm always clear when I have a medical

malpractice intake, I say two things.

One, it's not medical malpractice

to have bad bedside manner.

I appreciate and I can understand and

I can actually empathize that this

doctor was rude, inappropriate, et cetera.

That's not what we're

here to talk about today.

We're here to identify whether

it was medical malpractice.

The second thing I say is bad end

results don't always equal medical

malpractice.

That's true.

It's not medical malpractice

to have a bad end result.

There is a much deeper analysis that

has to be done in order to determine

whether there's medical malpractice.

And those of us who do it,

I'm thinking of my colleagues and

my colleagues in our organization,

your friends and mine,

I know that they pursue far fewer

cases than they do intake for

because none of us are pursuing claims

that we don't think have merit and that

we don't have a basis from an expert

that says you've had a breach in that

standard of care we talked about.

If you can't fund an expert at some

point, you get shut down. That's.

Exactly right. Yeah.

So.

That's a long answer

to your short question,

but I do think it does provide kind of a

look under the hood of what goes on for

those of us that do those types

of cases. They're very expensive,

but we've all chosen to take the risk

and invest in those types of cases

because quite honestly,

we're the last stop for a lot of these

people to find comfort in knowing that

their loved one didn't die as a

result of someone else being careless.

Yeah.

And there's that expense of hiring

the experts and gathering the records.

That's part of overhead

even when we decline a case.

And there are also the cases that we feel

really strongly about that we have an

expert to support and we still lose.

Hopefully you haven't had to

experience that, but I've been- No, it.

Happened. It happens.

It happens. It happens.

But it's such an incredible

profession. I mean,

I just can't say enough

about how rewarding it is

to be someone's champion and

advocate.

New Mexicans, they deserve champions.

And I think in many ways,

the trial lawyers and the folks that

do plaintiff's work in New Mexico,

they're the champions of the

people. They're the people's champ.

They can be villainized for this reason

or that, but at the end of the day,

if you've had a loved one who you

think might be a victim of medical

malpractice,

Where you have a loved one that was

in a motorcycle crash and is now a

paraplegic,

you want a champion and that champion

has to be a trial lawyer that's

passionate about representing plaintiffs

and putting them at the center of their

story.

Yeah.

It's just amazing what we get to do.

We want to take a quick

moment to thank our sponsors.

This episode is brought to you by the

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right to access justice and a jury. Now,

back to our conversation. Now,

the other topic that I think

we both agree there's a lot of

misinformation about is punitive damages.

And when punitive damages are,

when someone gets punitive

damages, how often that happens.

Tell me your perspective

about punitive damages.

So often,

whether it's my case against the

social media companies or it's a case

against a company like Tesla or Elon Musk,

one of the richest humans on the planet,

if they've got behavior

that is shocking and that is

just outside kind of what somebody

would think of regular negligence,

the only thing that is only going to

ever get them to change their behavior is

something called punitive damages.

And that means they're not only going

to have to pay for the damages that that

individual plaintiff suffered,

the jury is going to communicate to them

that they are to be held accountable at

a higher level and it's something

that is going to be material to that

corporation.

And what people don't usually

know is that when a jury awards

punitive damages,

there are systems in place to make sure

that the jury was appropriate in its

award.

Fun word called remitter.

And the judge gets to

determine and evaluate that.

And the courts in different jurisdictions

have pontificated about what

appropriate levels are for

punitive damages on a given case.

Some jurisdictions say that, look, if

you have single digit punitive damages,

meaning they take the damages

and use a multiplier of those

damages to determine what

the punitive damages are.

And if that's a single

digit, if it's nine times,

if you injured me and it was

$100,000 worth of damages I suffered,

if you want to award punitive damages,

if the acts were so egregious that you

need to send a signal to that bad actor,

generally speaking,

if you have punitive damages that are

awarded up to nine times the damages

I suffered, then that's going to

be typically seen as reasonable.

So I think that nobody really

knows about those guardrails. No.

One.

Talks about those guardrails. And there's

one other thing I want to mention.

And the other thing,

if I can just interject is

that just because a plaintiff

alleges punitive damages doesn't mean

that the jury is even going to get to

consider punitive damages.

I think a lot of people,

it's part of their forms or the

templates or whatever because you don't

know.

And I always think about how

cases evolve over time just

as you gather more information

and texture and the case that you

initially signed up, for the most part,

they get more and more interesting.

Occasionally

there's something that you don't expect

that- A wrinkle. Yeah, a wrinkle,

but we have to take

that into consideration.

So I think a lot of people just without

knowing what the crystal ball will

hold, will make that

allegation. But in the vast,

at least in my experience,

maybe I haven't been lucky enough

to have one of these big wild cases,

but in my experience,

most judges will dismiss that out

prior to trial. And it's really

a rare and extraordinary case

where the judge will allow a jury

to even consider punitive damages.

No, that's an excellent point.

And I think that's important

to contemplate and people

should really understand

is that there are guardrails along the

way, even before you get to the jury.

So I think that's a point really well

made. I'm glad you brought that up, Feliz.

The last thing I want to point out about

the process is that let's be clear,

when you're going up against

a corporation like Tesla,

or you're going up against

a huge healthcare provider

that has the ability to

have 13 lawyers against you

or me at plaintiff's table,

and we get a jury to understand what

our client went through and they award a

verdict and it may have punitive

damages in it, we win, right?

We win for our client, we get that judge,

we get that verdict. What happens now?

I think there are some people that have

this idea that there's a check waiting

outside the courtroom door.

Well, no. It's.

Just the beginning of

a whole other chapter.

It's the beginning of a

whole other chapter, Feliz.

And I don't think people understand

that regardless of your verdict,

and especially if it's

got punitive damages,

means because you're typically

dealing with a big corporation,

that big corporation is going to appeal

those damages and that award until

the cows come home. I grew up in

Valencia County. We got dairy down there.

We got it down there.

I know what that means.

So then what ends up happening is you

also have to talk and counsel your

client about what that journey looks

like because they feel like they won.

They've been vindicated. And

if you don't prepare them,

they may think it's over at

that point. But as you say,

it's just the next chapter. It's only

just begun. And then quite honestly,

it goes through a very long appellate

process. It takes a lot of time.

Years.

That time, years. Yeah. No, thank you

for saying that. Years. And in that time,

negotiations are continuing to

go on. And so the idea that ...

I wish we had stats on this, but we don't.

But it'd be very fascinating

to know these verdicts,

how many of them get paid out in full

and how many of them are actually

negotiated down just because

they have worn the injured family

down. They have.

Worked.

Down and they cannot wait any longer.

They don't want to go

through this anymore.

So now there's an offer on the other

side for much less than what the verdict

was as deemed appropriate by their peers,

and they take much less than what

their peers said their case was worth.

So there's a lot that goes

on before you get to receive

that compensation for your pain and for

what you've been through from the time

the jury issues its verdict to the

time you actually collect those funds.

So I don't know.

It's easy to talk about people who've

been burned with scalding coffee without

talking about what she and her daughter

went through to have her recover.

It's easy to talk about a big number.

People failed to talk about

what a family actually received,

and they failed to talk about what that

family went through and how lives were

changed and how the daughter, I

think, if my recollection's correct,

had to quit her job to take care of

her mom because if I remember right,

she was burned,

scalded so bad that she had

her legs up just for her lower

part of her body to be able to heal

and didn't have mobility. And nobody

talks about any of that.

They just want to talk about hot cup

of coffee and how much money that jury

awarded. It's so unfair. And

I'll just close with This.

At some point,

I think all of us should

be able to put our trust

in the civil justice system that is based

in having our peers determine whether

Or not we should be

compensated for what we've been through.

And many times our peers say

we should not be compensated.

For better words, they sure do.

That's right. I mean, it's one of ...

I think about how much people

hate to show up for jury duty,

but it's one of the most ... I mean,

it's certainly an equal branch of

government, but it's so important.

And aside from showing up

to vote on election day or

if you go for early voting,

it is one of the most direct

ways to be involved in

government and applying the

law because what good is a law

if you don't have someone enforcing it?

And we're part of that enforcement

process and the jury is also part of that

enforcement and interpretation process.

And I just wish,

I know it's hard on working people

who have families to support,

but I wish more people would

show up for jury duty and really

take that seriously because I

think that when jurors do that,

I think they know how important it is.

It is so important and

they really get to make those

decisions as a group. But

we benefit from the collective experience

of peers in the community who don't

have specialized training or anything

like that. It's quite beautiful, I think.

No, it really is.

And it's rare that you get in front

of a jury because it's rare that it is

in your client's best interest to go

all the way through that process because

typically we're advancing

claims that are appropriate,

where somebody was negligent.

And so that means the defense of that

individual or that corporation is

typically going to counsel their client

that they're going to have to pay.

And as it gets closer to trial, a

lot of times that's what happens.

The vast majority of time,

that's what happens. Now,

does that put your client in a position

where they've been "made whole?"

Probably not,

but typically our clients

believe that being able to put it

behind them and to bring closure

and the time value of money,

to be able to put that to rest and

put it to bed is often worth being

made somewhat whole and not getting to

tell their story in front of a jury.

And it's a system that is

pretty amazing and for the most

part works.

For the most part, I know people

are disappointed all the time,

but it's the best system we have and

I can't think of a better system.

I want to give you more time

to talk about philanthropy

and your mentorship. And then I

have another fun question for you.

So tell me about your community service.

We kind of are landing where we started,

which is I really try and live

a life of gratitude and service.

I should not be here.

I'm sitting here on the sixth floor in

uptown Albuquerque working for a firm

that is just filled with

fearless advocates. Even I,

in as positive a space

as I almost always am,

my partners will come to me and say,

"Well, we really ought to do this.

" And I'll give you a perfect example

real quick, which is they said,

"We don't think it's fair that the victims

of the Hermit's Peak Calf Canyon Fire

should have to pay gross receipts tax

on the attorney's fees they're paying.

They shouldn't have to do that.

There's no way that governmental entities

should profit from their tragedy." I

said, "Well, that's interesting." I said,

"I just think the legislature is probably

not interested in doing a Swiss cheese

approach to their tax policy."

I said, "It's probably, I mean,

why would they want to do that?

They start creating an exception here,

an exception there. And

I'll just never forget,

Jerry Singleton looking me in the eye,

we were together and he just said, well,

not with that attitude, they

won't." And I said, "Okay,

I'll go try." And we

tried. And you know what?

The New Mexico legislature agreed

and said, "For this in particular,

governmental entities shouldn't profit

on the tragedy of the Herman's PCAF

Canyon Fire and we are not going to

apply gross receipts tax to those.".

Wow. I was not familiar with that.

Very few people are, but that's

Cherry Singleton and It costs me time,

it costs me money, it costs me a

lot to get that for our clients.

And as you know, Feliz, none

of that comes to the attorney.

That was strictly 100%

for the benefit of the

victims of the Hermes PKF Canyon

Fire. And this is what I get to do.

I get to invest my firm's resources

in being a champion for our clients,

even when it's not in our own

financial interest to do so.

And I'm inspired by

that kind of leadership.

I'm inspired by the fact that they love

that I'm a life member of the NAACP.

They love that I'm on the board for

the New Mexico Hispanic Bar Association

first couple of years I was a partner

here and they love the community

engagement, whether it's the National

Hispanic Cultural Center or in Guentro,

New Mexico or El Secomunitario

or the Grief Center of New Mexico

or all the ... For those that know me,

they know that I serve on all these

boards. I'm addicted to serving in our

philanthropic community. I don't

like to call it a nonprofit.

I like to call them social profits

because they lift up community.

They help provide that social safety

net for those in our community that need

support.

And they empower me to make that

investment and they empower me to do

that work,

whether it's with the New Mexico Dream

Center where we are investors in their

work.

I am typically the MC or the

auctioneer for their annual breakfast.

We have an entire division in our firm

that is being just unbelievable when it

comes to this novel approach,

but we are advocating for victims

of sexual and human trafficking in

this country and holding hotel

ears and their franchisors to

account for that work. And.

If you.

Mexico Dream Center, they're kind of

the clearinghouse for those victims.

So I've been leaning into that dream

center for, I think 10 years now, long.

Before- I feel like we could do

a whole podcast just on that.

We could. We could. And it is fascinating.

And the courts have been awesome

so far about saying, "Look, ACORE,

look, those who own the Red Roof Inn,

I can't think of the current company,

the Red Roof,

we are not going to allow you to shirk

responsibility and just say, well,

we had no idea it was our franchisee

who was allowing that activity to go on.

We didn't know. " No, really?

Aren't you supposed to be doing

annual inspections of your property?

You are furthering your business interest,

you're staying in this

lawsuit at least for now.

And I've got incredible champions

that are doing that work nationally.

And then I got Pilar here in my

office and Marissa down in Las Cruces,

former just Cracker Jane assisting US

attorney that has come on with my firm.

They're really filling that space in

New Mexico as we advocate for victims of

sexual and human trafficking. And we're

very inspired by the fact that our

legislature wants to have a truth

and justice committee and task force

on really getting to the bottom of what

happened with the Epstein case and what

happened at the Epstein Ranch,

the Zoro Ranch in New Mexico.

And we're empowering them

and we're applauding those

legislators for doing that

because it's not necessarily a profit

center for us, but it's a passion point.

And we take some cases because we got to

keep the lights on so we can take some

cases for profit,

some cases because they're just righteous

cases and it's the right thing to do.

And other cases just because somebody's

done something that really pisses us

off.

I love it. That's kind

of my business model too,

is there are the cases that kind of

make sure everybody can put food on the

table, and then there are the cases

that are just the right thing to do.

And without the pro bono,

I try to be very discriminating

about the pro bono,

but I do a fair amount and

it just has to move me.

And sometimes it is the right thing to do.

Well,

I told you I was going to pepper through

some of the things that inspire me

about being a partner and the managing

partner for New Mexico's operation of

Singleton Schreiber. You

hit on it right there.

So we are 3-0 against this

administration's ICE activity,

3-0, three habeas cases, three releases.

And for listeners that don't

know what a habeas case is,

it means somebody's wrongfully

detained. And quite frankly,

they don't have access to justice.

They don't have access to attorneys.

And we are a collaborating and

cooperating attorney with the ACLU,

and then we're getting other cases.

We're doing a case now where ICE

came in and shot a family's dog

just awful, but we're 3-0 against the

administration doing those cases pro bono.

And we think that the

immigrant population,

the mixed status families in America

right now need as much support as we

possibly can give them in this climate.

And do you know what we did?

Such important work.

Tell me what, tell me.

You're not going to believe

this. Are you ready?

Yes.

In three weeks, starting on December 1st,

we have hired a full-time

immigration law expert

that will do nothing but pro

bono work 100% of the time.

Wow. Can you imagine?

And this leader was like the leader of

the ABA's immigration section at the

national level,

and she's now coming on to Singleton

Schreiber for the sole purpose of being a

champion for our immigrants in America,

a champion for those homes

that have mixed status,

a champion and pushing back against

this administration's incredibly

inappropriate and unjust and

unlawful treatment of our community,

family, friends, and neighbors. And.

I am so proud of- Very important work.

So proud of it. So.

Proud. I'm proud of you too. Okay.

Here, time for our fun question.

Tell me what is either your favorite meal,

a New Mexican meal,

or your favorite place to go

for a weekend vacation in New

Mexico?

I'm a total foodie and

I eat out all the time.

My car has 150,000 miles on it.

My house is the same 1,900

square feet from 24 years ago.

My wife's car has a couple hundred

thousand miles on it. I don't spend money,

but I do eat out a lot.

I do too.

My favorite meal?

Yeah.

My favorite meal is probably

going to be my chicharonian eggs

over at Barrella's.

Oh my God.

They already know me in there. I want

a crispy tortilla, crispy hash browns,

green chili, sunny side up eggs, and

chicha rones. And I am ready to go.

And I will tell this, I always

tell Mike, I said, "Mike,

I always order my egg sunny sign up,

but I also know that it's just a

suggestion because whatever your metamera

cosineras back there want to serve

me, I'm going to love it anyway.".

That's right.

Just send it out. I'm going to

eat it and I'm going to love it.

So it's probably my favorite meal out.

Thank you so much, Brian. It has truly

been a pleasure to chat with you.

I always enjoy talking to you.

I hope we can do it again,

and please send my best to Ali.

100%. I will do that.

And thank you for being the awesome

leader that you are in our wonderful

profession of serving others and centering

our clients and being their advocates

and their voice when they don't have one.

And when I think about my favorite

trial lawyers who are real champions for

community, you're in that group,

Felicial, and I'm grateful.

For you. Aw, thank you so much.

I hope you have a wonderful evening.

Thank you. You too.

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This episode is brought to you by the

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