How do you go from prosecuting a fish snagger (yup, it’s a crime) in your first jury trial to becoming a personal injury trial legend? Rick Friedman reveals all in this candid discussion with host. The author of influential books including “Rules of the Road” shares hard-won wisdom about building a successful plaintiff's practice. You don’t necessarily need to be the smartest one in the courtroom, he says, but you do need resilience and authenticity. Therapy helps, too. Most of all, get in the courtroom. Even if it’s to prosecute a fish snagger.

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☑️ Charla Aldous, Caleb Miller, Eleanor Aldous

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More likely than not, that 0.01% is all it takes to tip the scales of justice. Join us as Inner Circle legend, Charla Aldous, Eleanor Aldous, and Caleb Miller walk you through the critical moments, big decisions, and bold strategies that win high states cases and show you how to turn that 0.01% into a game-changing verdict. You're listening to the podcast where winning is more likely than not. Produced and powered by LawPods.

Hi, welcome to More Likely Than Not. This is a podcast being put on by Aldous Law. I'm Charla Aldous with a firm, and we are thrilled today to have my good friend, Rick Friedman, on the podcast with us. Welcome, Rick.

Thank you, Charla.

I was trying to think back of when we first met. I think it was like in 2007 at an inner circle meeting.

Yeah, I think when did you come in? I can't remember.

In 2007.

Yeah, that would've been

It. I remember, and I remember meeting you and your lovely wife, and I'd heard about you for years, and it's been so good getting to know you, learning from you. And you have been an author of many books that have been of great benefit to the legal profession. Can you tell us about few of the books that you have written or co-written?

Well, I've written lots of them in my head, hundreds probably. But in terms of published books, there's rules of the road, polarizing the case, the elements of trial, becoming a trial lawyer, and the way of the trial lawyer. So five altogether.

And let me show you, this is my rules of the road. Look at my tabs.

Yes, I'm impressed that you actually read it.

Are you kidding me? I've got it highlighted. Caleb came and pulled this off on my shelf and he said, "I just thought you might want to use this as a prop." And I'm like, "I'd forgotten how many notes I have highlighted. If you have not read books by Rick Friedman, that is a must-do for all young trial lawyers because I still abide by the rules of the road. And I get out and look at my notes before I start a trial, Rick, to this day."

That's really cool. Yeah.

You've done an amazing thing, a gift for our profession. But tell us, Rick, we like to have our listeners understand about the people, the guest on our show. Tell us a little bit about you, where you're from, how you became a lawyer, things of that nature.

Well, I'm from upstate New York originally. Grew up in a pretty steady middle class house in terms of ever worried about money. We weren't rich, but I never had reason to worry about money. When I graduated from college, I was pretty young and I didn't know what I wanted to do. So law school, for my generation, if you didn't know what you wanted to do, you went to law school. So I did, not really intending to practice law for very long, but just to kind of eat up some time and figure out what I wanted to do.

Let me stop you right there. You didn't go to just any law school.

I went to Harvard.

Harvard. You went to Harvard.

Yeah. And-

That's kind of a big deal, Rick.

Well, the interesting part of it, well, there are a lot of interesting parts of it. I feel like I got a good education, legal education, but probably the most important education is to kind of realize ... I mean, I was surrounded ... Well, let me just say this. If I didn't graduate in the absolute bottom of my class, I was pretty darn close. And being surrounded by all these really, really smart people, I realized smart people do stupid things all the time. And being smart is really ... You need to be smart enough to be a trial lawyer, but I routinely beat lawyers who are smarter than me. So there are a lot of other factors that go into being a good trial lawyer besides having the minimum smarts. So yeah, it was an experience. I was a little too young to fully appreciate it all, I think.

But the big thing it did for me is I lost, to the extent I had fear or insecurities about my intelligence, you'd think it would work the opposite way, but it was kind of like, no, here's this person who's super, super smart and they're on the Moot Court team with them and they can't write a decent brief, a persuasive brief. So I think that's where it helped me the most is recognizing that comparing things like intellect or Great Point Average or those sort of things. Well, people like to do that to make themselves feel more secure in the end. One of the best trial lawyers I know graduated from a non-accredited law school, and I learned from him all the time. So yeah, people react to the Harvard thing, but it's not as big a deal actually, I don't think, as people treat it.

For the young lawyers listening to this podcast, I hope they take that to heart, Rick, because I went to, we called it Harvard on the Hill. It was Grayson County Junior College and worked my way through there and then went to a small liberal arts college. And I can tell you when I got out of law school, if I'd look at my opponents and see they were from Harvard or Yale, I would automatically be intimidated. I'm like, "I'm not smart enough to stand up to compete with these guys." But then after a few years, I realized they might be really, really well educated and smart, but they don't have any common

Sense. Yeah. And they have their own insecurities and problems and blind spots. So to the extent any younger lawyers are listening, I would just say once you're out of law school, nobody cares that much about ... Unless you're trying to get a Supreme Court clerkship or something, but it's what can you do?

If you want to be a plaintiff's lawyer and represent the common people, I don't think it matters a hill of beans where you went to law school.

Absolutely.

No offense to Harvard. I think that's great.

Oh, right. And plenty of good trial lawyers went there, but they're not known for turning out trial lawyers and there's a reason for that. So yeah.

I've often had young lawyers ask me, "What is the biggest tip you could give us for being a trial lawyer?" I said, "First of all, be authentic. Just be yourself." And I think a good trial lawyer is somebody that can be authentic, be themselves, read people and have some emotional intelligence and compassion. That's kind of my spiel.

For sure. And what I always say is you need a ton of resilience. I just heard a quote from Nick Rowley the other day from one of his books that was, "To be a good trial lawyer, you have to hate losing, but not be afraid of losing." And yeah, you need a lot of resilience in this business, you know as well as anybody.

It's the honest to goodness truth. If you're too afraid of losing, you're not going to try them. And losing, we'll talk about that later. It's hard, but I say I give myself the 24 hour rule. Wallow in it, get under the covers, be in the fetal position, and then for 24 hours, then get up and go do it again.

Yeah, absolutely.

So you started off practicing in Alaska as I understand.

Yeah.

Tell us about your early career, Rick.

Well, like I said, I was probably pretty close to the bottom of my class and did not have any job offers. I suppose I could have gotten some, but I had this idea that I wanted to go to Alaska and practice for a few years. Well, my plan was, back in those days, I figured I could charge $65 an hour for my time. And so I did this rough math, like 20 hours times 65. Boy, I can live on that and I'll spend the other half of my time doing other things. And of course it didn't work out that way, but that was my naive idea of practicing law. So yeah, I went to Citgo Alaska, which is an island or it's on an island of about 300 square miles. At the time, about I think six or 7,000 people and 11 miles of road, paved road.

Why Alaska?

I'd had a summer job there between second and third year with the district attorney's office up there. And I actually was planning to start a law firm in Boston with a few friends, but one by one, they got picked off by the big firm and I was left alone and I thought I'd rather try to start a practice in Alaska in this small town than in Boston. And so it just seemed easier actually.

So you moved to an island in Alaska and set up your own shop. Were you nervous?

I think I was too ignorant to be nervous. Honestly, I wasn't taking it all that seriously. I really thought I'd do it for a few years and then move on. What I really wanted to be was a novelist and I thought I'll do this for a few years. I'll learn all sorts of interesting things and maybe incorporate them in some novels. And I really thought I'd practice for four or five years at the most and then move on to something else. I never thought it was going to be a permanent thing.

I never knew that story. That's fascinating. And now you're a lawyer and a novelist.

Well, not a novelist. To some extent.

An author. An author.

Yeah. Funny how that works.

So what type of cases did you handle when you set up your own shop?

Oh, everything. I mean, drunk driving, divorce, contract disputes, anything that walked in the door. For the first year or two, I made a lot, kept the doors open with real estate transactions. Back in those days, I was befriended by somebody who owned a title agency and he would give me work to type up warranty deeds and deeds of trusts. So he typed those up by hand back in those days. And I don't know, I think I got $25 for a warranty deed and $200 for a deed of trust. I just love

It.

Kind of kept the doors open for a couple years.

Rick, when I started practicing in my hometown of Sherman, I did traffic tickets. I was a traffic queen of Grayson County, Ben. I could quash them with the best of them. I mean, it paid the rent.

Yeah, exactly.

Do you remember the first jury trial you had?

Yes.

Okay. Do you want to talk about it or no?

Well, I think I can't remember if it's in one of my books, but in any event, my first jury trial, this is my second year, between second and third year of law school, and I was working for the DA's office. I was in Ketchikan, Alaska, which is also on an island, a little ways from Sitka, a town, a little bigger than Sitka, maybe 10,000 people. There were two DAs and two judges in the whole town and maybe 30 lawyers. And I kept bugging my boss, I want to do a trial before I leave for the summer. And so one day he comes up and says, "Okay, here's your case." And it was what's called attempted fish snagging.

You can't make this up.

So you can snag a fish by you take a treble hook, you cast it out and you kind of yank like this, hoping to snag the fish on your trouble hook. It's illegal, but really easy to do. So he hands me the file of these two kids who got arrested for attempted fish snagging. And I said, "The trial's tomorrow." And I said, "Okay, what are we going to do? " And he said, "Not we, you're going to do it. " And I said, "Well, I thought we'd be doing it together." And he said, "No, you can do this alone." And I said, "Well, I've never had an evidence course," which I hadn't at that point. And he said, "Well, all you need to remember is that if they object to hearsay, say you're offering it for something other than the truth of the matter asserted." I had no idea what he was talking about.

So I went in, the judge was a retired Coast Guard commander, kind of a gruffled guy, and I was the prosecution. So I had to get up and start voir dire and I stood up and I could not speak. I could not get a single word out of my mouth and never had my throat closed off. I literally could not speak. So I was just like a goldfish. So I'd go back to my desk and shuffle some papers, get back out in front of the jury, same thing, can't get a word out of my mouth, do that three times. And finally the judge says, "Well, if you're not going to ask them any questions, I will." And he just starts asking them questions. And that was my first trial.

Did he do the entire voir dire for you?

Yeah, I couldn't do it.

Were you eventually able to speak during the trial?

Yes, I was eventually. I did manage to do opening statement and we did manage to get a conviction.

Did you talk to the jury afterwards?

Yeah. I don't remember doing that. I doubt very much. I was so embarrassed and so-

I would hazard a guess made the jury fall in love with you because I felt sorry for you. They probably wanted to help

You. It's very likely, very likely.

That is a great story. Well, when did you start transitioning your practice to injury cases, Rick?

Well, unlike so many other injury lawyers, I'll bet in your first 10 years, you did many, many times more PI cases than I did. What started to come my way were employment cases. So I did employment cases, a lot of those, and just a lot of criminal defense. And there were always a few personal injury cases in my practice in the first 20 years, but not that many. And even over the next few years, the next 10, so say in my first 30 years of practice, it was employment and then a lot of bad faith, insurance bad faith. And yes, there were always PI cases mixed in, but in Alaska, there just weren't that many good cases to begin with. And then other lawyers were better at getting those cases than I was. So I definitely had personal injury cases, but it wasn't, I would guess it was probably 20% of my practice in the first 30 years, maybe less.

When you were handling employment cases and bad faith cases, were you trying those cases?

Oh yeah. Yeah. Almost all of it went to trial.You

Know what I always say when people say, how do you get the big verdicts? I say you can't fall out of the basement. When they offer you nothing, you go try the case. That's

Exactly, exactly.

That's kind of how I've always looked at it. But that says something that I've always believed, Rick, is a trial is a trial is a trial. I don't care if it's a criminal trial, an employment, IP trial, a trial is about relating to people. Do you have that feeling as well?

Absolutely. And I'll always tell the younger lawyers, "Just get into court. It doesn't matter." My wife, you know Kirsten, was a trial lawyer for many years, but for the first 15 or so years of her practice, she did public utility hearings. But then her first med mal trial she won and her second med maltrial, she racked up, but her foundation of experience was all in the public utility hearings. And so yeah, just get into court, get to places where you can ask witnesses questions, argue to the judge or arbitrator or whoever. And I mean, obviously any area of law has its own quirks and special issues, but if you want to be a trial lawyer, the big thing is just get into court as much as you can.

That's exactly what I believe. I tried those municipal court traffic cases, but it's talking to people and it makes you feel more comfortable on your feet. I was really shy back then and it got me out of my shell. So I love that, that you were trying all kinds of different cases. Your practice now is mostly personal injury, is it not?

Yes.

And when did you start transitioning more to the personal injury aspects?

It's not been that long, to be honest. Well, I've been doing this a long time, so I guess it has been a long-

How long have you been practicing?

47 years.

Okay. I'm 40, so I'm catching up to you a little bit.

Yeah, you are.

That's a long time, but do you still love it, Rick?

Yeah. It's funny you should ask that. The relationship has changed, I would say. I don't know that I loved it in the beginning. It was a harrowing process in a lot of ways. Basically sole practitioner or then I eventually had a few partners, but I would say I love the creative part, but you mentioned being kind of shy. Well, as my first story goes, I was painfully shy, not just in the courtroom, but everywhere. And so-

Me too.

Yeah. So it was hard. Those trials were hard. I wouldn't say I loved it. I enjoyed a lot of the practice of law for sure. And I enjoyed parts of the trial, but they were so stressful for me because of my psychological makeup at the time. I couldn't say I loved it. But having said that, as the years went by, I started to enjoy it more and more and more. And I'd say the funny thing is I probably enjoy it more now than I ever did. And I'm kind of, I don't know, shifting a little bit. I enjoy more teaching and coaching other lawyers than doing the trials myself now, actually. Although I have another big trial coming up and I'm excited about it and all that. I don't know. I think as any relationship changes over time, you find someone with a 47-year-old marriage and they're going to tell you they had 10 different marriages in that time.

And that's kind of been the way with me too. I have different attitudes at different times.

You know, one thing, Rick, that helped me get out of myself and my own insecurities is trying to willfully concentrate on my client. I'm like, okay, you're nervous. Well, think about what this person's been through. Think about how they feel in the courtroom. I still to this day do that. I think this is not about me. It doesn't matter what the jury thinks about me. It's how they feel about my client.

Absolutely. I mean, the biggest thing for me was about five years in, I was still super shy. I would throw up almost every morning before trial.

See, I think it's so good that young lawyers hear that because you have slayed so many dragons over the course of your career. And to know that you were like that, I think it gives people hope to understand that they're still going to be a great trial lawyer even though they're nervous.

Well, that's why I tell the stories, but yeah, but about five years in, wrestling with this kind of nervousness, somehow it occurred to me, this is a paradox and I'll admit it's a paradox, but in a way, the plaintiff's lawyer is the most important person in the courtroom and in a way is the least important person in the courtroom. And what I came to realize is they don't really care about me. And I started to think that shyness is its own sort of ego-centered thing. In the courtroom, they don't care if I have a golden retriever dog. They don't care if I went to the same college they went to. Really all they care about is, can I help them to do their jobs to decide the case? And that really is what it ... Of course, they're curious, but in terms of what they actually care about, I don't think they care about us.

And each of them is the protagonist in their own movie of their life. And we think we're the star. How self-centered to think if I make a little mistake, the whole case is going to go sideways. How self-centered to think if I'm not dressed exactly right or whatever. And so to your point, Charla, what you've done is take your attention off yourself by focusing on the client. I think that's the key to it in my mind is taking the attention off yourself. I do something slightly different. I put my attention on the jurors. If I were sitting in their seat, what would I want to know to do my job? And then I try to give them that. And I try to give it to them as straight and directly and simply as I can. I know you do the same. I've seen you do that.

Absolutely.

Yeah. And once you realize it really isn't about you, it's a very freeing feeling, as you know.

I can't believe we're having this conversation because it truly did happen to me. And I thought, "I've got to get beyond this. " And I'm like, "This is not about me. This is about my client. I may look like a fool. Who cares as long as I bring justice for my client." It's liberating.

Well, from what I know of your life, Charla, I think you probably felt at times like you looked like a fool before you started practicing and during the practice. And same with me. I mean, in a way that's helpful to have failed a lot because you do start to realize it's not that you can survive a failure and you can survive multiple failures. And it's really not about winning or losing even. It's about ... Well, the way I think of it now, the days after decades of doing this is it's about, can I express the truth of this situation to other people? And if I express that truth, they may accept it or they may not. That's their job, not mine.

But you've done your job.

Yeah. I do the best I can of expressing that truth. And as I'm sure has happened to you ... Well, I know because you've told me sometimes you lose a case and the client is still so grateful that they had a voice.

Had a voice that somebody believed in them. That is one of the beautiful things. Well, who were your earliest role models or influences, Rick, on your career as you started trying these cases?

Well, I'd say the big three were Jerry Spence, Mo Levine, and Bill Barton out of Oregon. Al Julian thrown in there a little bit. Al Julian had written a couple really impressive books. I don't even think they're available anymore, but-

I've not heard of Barton in the last guy.

Oh, Bill Barton pioneered the cases against the Boy Scouts in the 1980s.

Wow.

Yeah. As far as I know, the first one who ever got a verdict against the Boy Scouts. And great guy. We've become friends and I have to pinch myself because he was a hero of mine for so long and now we're actually friends, which I really appreciate. But he, phenomenal trial lawyer out of Newport, Oregon and he's written an excellent book on emotional injuries and psychological injuries. Just a brilliant, brilliant guy. And-

Do you remember the name of the book? I'm asking this for myself.

Trial Guide sells the more recent version, which is a thicker version. I think it's called Recovery. It's by Bill Barton and it's called Recovering for Psychological Injuries. Bill was the first one ... Well, as far as I'm concerned, he wrote the first good self-help book for trial lawyers, which is that book. And one of the things he talked about, which was a revelation to me at the time is, I'm going to simplify what he says, but he basically said, "Don't worry if your client has been sexually abused or mistreated before the event that caused you to be in court." He says, "Those are the people most vulnerable. It's the kid whose father abused them that most needed the Scoutmaster to treat them properly. It's the kid who had no father who needs the scoutmaster." So when they want to blame the divorce or the prior abuse, you welcome it.

You take that in and you say, "Yeah, that's what made him so vulnerable to this. " I mean, Bill had one revelatory idea after another that I just kind of sucked up.

When we get off this podcast, I'm ordering the book because I do a lot of sexual assault cases and that's what we see so many times. The victims obviously are usually damaged because they're the ones that are more susceptible to the abuse.

Exactly. Yeah.

And defense lawyers always come in, "Well, how did this hurt them? They were already so screwed up anyway." Okay. So Bill Barton's book, I'm going to read that.

Al Julian wrote a fantastic book on opening statements. I learned so much from that book. And all it was was a compendium of his opening statements with sort of editorial comments by him about why he did what he did. And he did everything from criminal work to products liability. He did some of the early birth control bill cases. He did everything. He was out of New York City. I don't know if that book's available anymore, but anyway, those were my heroes.

I might have to steal a copy of it from you and read it and then I'll send it back to you.

I'd be happy to do that.

Okay. I want to talk about your most recent slaying of Goliath. I mean, the Monsanto cases. I know that that has been a passion of yours, Rick, for how many years now?

Well, the firm started working on the cases in 2016, but to be honest, I didn't really get that involved until about 2019. So I've been at it for about six years or so.

And I told you this right before the podcast started. You didn't need my sympathy or worry, but when I was reading about all these trials you were trying, I kept thinking about how much they cost and how much you must emotionally, financially, and physically had invested. And I was worried. I'm like, I know he's good, but I mean, this is a big corporation. What is going to be the outcome? And so let's start with the happy ending. I know you can't say the amount, but you ended up settling those cases, didn't you?

Well, we ended up trying 10 of them.

I just want people to know before they hear about the trial so they won't get nervous like I was, to know that it ended up with a good ending. Is that fair to say? Okay. We'll talk about that later.

Yes, we had a very good ending. Yes.

I literally, I felt like I had settled cases when I got that news. I was so fricking happy for you.

Well, I could feel that, Charla, and I appreciate it.

I mean, I mean it. I just like, oh

Yes, yes, yes. I know you do.

So tell us about the Monsanto trials.

Well, each trial lasted about two to two and a half months, so that gives you an idea of the scope. So it'd be hard to summarize them.

How many trials were

There? 10 or 11, depending on how you count. Total of 11. The last one we settled after closing arguments, but the others were all up on appeal and we only recently settled those as well.

Who were your clients in those trials?

Well, so there was a chemical made by Monsanto, a class of chemicals called PCBs that in the 50s and 60s and 70s were put into all kinds of materials, including lots of materials that went into schools during the big post World War II school building boom. And so in essence, any school built before 1978 probably had lots of PCBs in them. This particular school called Sky Valley had fluorescent light ballasts that had PCBs in them.

And where was Sky Valley located, Rick?

It was a small town outside of Seattle. I mean, long story short, the PCBs got into the air. The students and teachers and parents were breathing the fumes and it caused PCBs are a systemic poison. They attack all different body systems. So if you and I were exposed to the same amount, we probably both would have some level of brain injury, but you might have digestive problems and I might have skin problems. Just depends which system is weaker, so to speak. And so we had about 200 clients, many of them, probably around half of them, children, the other half adults, and at the time they were exposed because a lot of these children were young adults by the time of trial. One of the biggest difficulties was that so many of these injuries could be attributable to other types of things or we'd have claims of brain injury, but our clients were getting straight A's or they were in the most recent trial, one of them had passed the firefighter exam, finished in the top 17 out of 400 people.

And so the difficulties of sort of making those injuries come alive for the jury in the face of these objective indications of they're doing well, that was a huge challenge, huge challenge.

It sounds like a challenge that most lawyers would say, no, I'm not up for that, including me probably. Because if you have a product and it causes one type of injury and all your clients have that type of injury, that is much more simple.

Yes. And just to that point, after we got our first couple big verdicts, plaintiff lawyers started calling me up asking about these cases. I didn't discourage them from doing them. I'd actually encouraged them. But when they found out what's involved, as far as I know, no one is ... I mean, there are other PCB cases, don't get me wrong, but almost everyone decides they'd rather go on than do something else.

I know that you are driven by your heart and your practice often and your sense for justice. What was the hook that got you to say, "I'm going to represent these people? "

All right, so here's the story.

I knew there'd be a story. I absolutely knew it.

We're sitting in a partner meeting and one of our associates comes in and says, "I really think we should do these Sky Valley cases." And he explains what they're about. And I said, "No, we can't do those cases. We don't have the resources. We're a firm of, I don't know, we were about 15 lawyers at the time." And he said, "No, no, we can do them." And I said, "Well, what are you going to do when Monsanto notices 200 depositions in a single month?" And he's just like, "No, no, we can do it. We can do it. " And I sent him packing and he came back a couple months later.

You didn't fire him, you just said no on those cases. Okay.

He came back a couple months later and said, "I've talked to the nation's leading experts on PCBs. They say we have a great case. I think we should do this. " I said, "No way. No way are we going to do this. " He came back a third time and I can't remember if it's the third or the fourth time, but at some point I just sort of threw up my hands and said, "Fine." At that point he said, "Me and Jim, who's another partner and Marianne, who's one of the paralegals, we can do this, we can cover this. " And I said, "All right, but we should joint venture with another firm." And he said, "No, no, we can do this all. " And so I finally just threw up my hands and said, "Fine, just don't come crying to me when it all comes crashing down."

So he wore you down?

Well, and then he filed the cases and I figured he's going to get summary judgment out or if he survives summary judgment, we'll settle for some modest amount. And I didn't think of it as a big deal. And meanwhile, I'm doing this mass tort case in Kentucky and not paying that much attention, honestly thinking I'm going to semi-retire after the Kentucky cases, and then I come back from Kentucky, those cases finally wrap up and lo and behold, we've survived summary judgment and Then there's a trial coming up in six months, the Sky Valley cases. I just got sucked in. I never made a conscious decision that, yes, I want to do these cases. I never did.

Let me ask you this. Once you started looking at the evidence and getting involved, getting ready for trial, I assume you started realizing how truly righteous the cases were.

Oh yeah. I mean, let's see what I can say about this. The historical documents about Monsanto and how they addressed their PCB issues are probably as bad as you can imagine. They really were not good. And so yes, it was a righteous case, but extraordinarily complex. I mean, the evidence went back to the 1930s. We were introducing newspaper articles from the 1930s and then it's complicated with the chemistry is incredibly complex and the law is complex. So it was by far the most complicated work I've ever done in the law by far.

I can tell you just the little bit that I read about it. I'm like, wow, how in the world can you simplify this for a jury? I mean, let me ask this first of all. I didn't know you had done other mass tort cases. You said you did one in Kentucky. I've been asked to come in and try a mass tort case, but I've never done mass tort cases. How was it representing 200 individual plaintiffs?

Well, fortunately, I was insulated a little bit from that. The lawyer who kept saying we should do these cases, he did a great job of sort of keeping all 200 of those people in the same boat. They all came from the same school, the same community. Most of them were kind of of the same view. So it was difficult kind of just managing those. I could talk about this for days because there's all sorts of permutations when you have a mass tort like this. But I'll go back to our mutual friend, Zoe Littlepage. When I first did my first mass tort case, Zoe said, "You got to try every case, even your worst ones, to let them know every case has value." That was a big lesson I got from Zoe. If you'll let me digress for a minute, here's the problem. Here's the essence of a mass tort problem.

When I got involved in the Kentucky cases, which involved black lung and respirator masks that were defective, we had about 400 clients there, 500 clients there. The national counsel for one of the defendants said to me, "Here's the way I look at it. You've got 500 clients in a funnel. My job as defense counsel is to keep the mouth of that funnel as small as possible so you don't try cases. Your clients will die or get sick and you'll die or get sick before these cases are resolved. And we will pay you pennies on the dollar because you cannot try all these cases."

He literally said that?

Yes.

He said that?

Yes.

Did he put it in writing?

No, no, no. No, but that's the reality, Charla. And what Zoe and Rainey, her partner did in those hormone replacement cases is they just kept trying cases. Well, I just sort of expanded on their idea. And so what I said to this guy is, "Well, we're going to see how many big verdicts your company can tolerate. We're going to try three or four of these a year and we'll see how you like that. " Luckily in Kentucky, we were in different counties and we could actually tee up a bunch of cases for trial. And sure enough, as we started winning those trials, they could not tolerate it. Historically, what has happened, as you probably know, is on the plaintiff's side, the mass tort lawyers scoop up as many cases they can get. Maybe they'll try a couple bellwethers, maybe they won't, but they still have to settle relatively cheaply because there's no practical way to get those cases to trial.

So in Kentucky, we had the benefit of being able to be in several different counties at the same time. So no judge, single judge was overwhelmed and we could get lots of cases to trial. And sure enough, they collapsed. In King County, in Seattle, we had a judiciary that was just so impressive. They gave us trial dates. They moved these cases along because the other thing that happens in mass tort cases is the defense comes in with shock and awe. So many pleadings, so many motions, so many lawyers that the trial judges get overwhelmed.

They bury you. They bury you, they bury the courts.

That's right. And the King County judges rose to the occasion, I've never seen a judiciary work so hard to push these cases through. So we were lucky that we had what would've happened if we were in downtown Los Angeles, we'd probably still be waiting for our first trial right now. So that was a big bit of luck that we just happened to be in a jurisdiction where that could work.

I got to ask you this. When you ended up settling your cases in Kentucky, did you have any other conversations with that lovely man?

Well, he was actually someone I was on decent terms with. He was just being frank and he's saying it in a friendly way. He's just saying, "You're not going to get the kind of money you think you're going to get. " Before we tried that first case, tens of thousands of similar cases had been filed in Kentucky in the prior 20 years and not a single one had gone to trial, not a single one. And the reason I got involved is my co-counsel there, he was a coal miner's son who having clients come to him saying, "My lawyer's asking me to settle for $10,000. Should I do it? " And he said I couldn't tell them not to because I didn't have an alternative. And he finally decided he was going to take a stand and that's when he asked us to come in. And we're trying to change the dynamic of a mass tort case.

And I guess the last piece I'll say to you, Charla, if you're interested in these cases, one of the things our plan was, once we realized in Monsanto that we'd have to try some of these, I really thought after we tried one, two, or three, the rest would settle and they didn't. And at that point, we had to bring other lawyers in to keep our strategy in place of trying three to four cases a year because we just couldn't do it all ourselves.

That's what I was going to ask you. How a firm of your size, like in Kentucky, how could you try all those cases? That is amazing.

Yeah. Well, the Kentucky cases were quite a bit simpler than the Monsanto cases.

I think any case is simpler than the Monsanto cases, really.

Yeah. Yeah. But at Monsanto, well, I think the problem sometimes with plaintiff lawyers is they kind of get greedy. "I don't want to split the money. I don't want to split the money so I won't bring somebody else in. "But I was committed to our strategy of we're going to try three or four of these a year to do that. We were supportive of the other firms that tried the ... I forget, maybe four of the cases were tried by other firms, three or four, but we were supportive of those efforts. And a lot of times we would also co-try them with other people and start splitting the work. But that is the secret advantage plaintiff lawyers have over defense lawyers is we cooperate with each other and defense lawyers always, always, always view each other as competitors.

Threat. I know. It's amazing. We have a case right now where they're, I won't go into the details of it, but they had a local firm and they brought in another national firm, then they brought in another national firm. And it is hysterically funny to me to watch them kind of trying to buy for the business. I mean, it's just a hoot.

Yes.

I want to go hug them all and say," Welcome to the party. I'm glad you're here.

"One of the Monsanto lawyers at one point, because they started switching up their firms. I mean, they had seven or eight or nine or 10 firms and literally hundreds of lawyers working here, working on these cases. But one of them, when we were trying a case against one of the other law firms, he said," I hope you win. I hope you kick their butts.

"Make me look good.

So yeah, that's the energy that's going on on the other side, which actually benefits us a lot, of course.

Okay. I know you're not a bragger, but I'm asking you a specific question. Tell us the amounts of those verdicts. Oh,

Of the verdicts. The

Verdicts, verdicts, verdict. I wasn't going to push them. I want to know the settlement, but I know I can't.

I honestly don't remember. I might be able to find ... The first one was around 185 million. That was on behalf of three teachers. So the first case was three teachers. The next one was about 60 million. The other thing we did is we let them choose which cases would go to trial first because they were trying to hold us up on scheduling cases. So we took to trial some of our weakest cases first.

What is so funny to me, Rick, is I ask you the amount of the verdicts. I can't remember. Let me look. Oh, the first one was 183 million. Most lawyers would remember getting 183 million because it's the only big verdict they would get in their lifetime. And yet- Well,

I mean, it just got crazy. It's amazing. I don't know. I don't know what to tell you.

What was the total amount of verdicts that you all got in the Monsanto cases?

Approximately 1.3 billion.

That's with a B.

That's with a B. And these are rough things. And we had about 40 clients who went to trial. It was about 1.3 billion. Some of the clients were defensed and some of the clients were hung, were hung juries, but roughly around 40 of them. So we might have taken about 50 to 60 to trial and about 40 of them won. I'm just trying to recollect. I don't have the exact numbers. And

I remember because I was keeping up with all this. It's like another trial would come up and it was a totally different trial team from Monsanto had hired a whole different law firm to come in and try it. And I kept thinking, when do they understand? And I don't care if they bring in Percy Forman, they're not going to win.

Yeah. Well, they kept thinking that if they just changed the formula somehow, the personnel. And it's comical to watch how these big firms operate. And they get in their own way. They can't keep their stories straight. And the judges, it's so funny to watch. A lot of our judges were, I won't say defense oriented, but they certainly weren't plaintiff oriented judges. But as time went on, they got more and more frustrated with Monsanto's lack of ... Well, I think it was most ... I told my partners, we have to stop assuming that what we have are really smart strategists on the other side. We're trying to figure out why they're doing certain things. I don't think they know why they're doing it. There's nobody at the top deciding what their strategy is. And I remember one time we were in court arguing about ... I think I was taking the position something should be excluded and they were arguing it should be admissible.

So we're arguing that and one of my co-counsel pulls on my sleeve and says," Tomorrow, Monsanto's arguing the exact opposite position and a motion before this very judge.

"Are you kidding me?

But the left hand never knew what the right hand was doing. And honestly, I think that was a huge advantage to us.

That's a gift.

Yeah, it really was.

I cannot imagine all the experts that you had. And I remember over the years following this, because I care about you and Kirsten very much and thinking of the financial risk that you were taking. Did you lose sleep? Please tell me you lost sleep at night sometimes over it.

I did. I did for sure.

I would not be able to say.

Yeah, no, no. I mean, each trial cost about a million dollars because they were so expert heavy and towards the end we were able to trim some of those. But I'd say on average, the trials cost about a million each.

And then in addition to having the trial risks, like all these different injuries and the causation issues and clients that seemed on the surface to be doing fairly well, they were also taking you up on appeal on some of your verdicts simultaneously. Isn't that right?

Oh yeah.

Wasn't there a choice of law question?

Yeah, because Washington does not provide for punitive damages, but they have a body of choice of law which says if the bad conduct takes place, the decision making for the bad conduct takes place in another state, we'll apply the law of that state regarding punitive damages. So we got Missouri law to apply, and that's what got us punitive damages.

I remember the day that you told us about that opinion. Oh my God. When I heard it was out, I'm like, " I can't look at it. I just want to know if you won or lost. "And then I'll read it, but I can't handle the stress.

I appreciate that. Yeah.

So you all have settled your Monsanto cases.

Yes, they're all settled, everyone.

And tell me the reaction by your clients.

I mean, I'm still getting ... Just yesterday, I got a text from a client from one of the early cases who got one of the smaller awards and just thanking us. I got an email two or three days ago from one of our first clients to go to trial who's sending us some paintings that her mother did, her deceased mother did. And anyway, I mean, the clients have been wonderful. They've just been so supportive. Most of, I wouldn't say most, many of them would come to the trials to watch the other cases go.

Oh, I love that.

Yeah. The group really came together and supported each other in so many ways.

So there was a solidarity there.

Absolutely. And while of course, out of 200 people, sometimes you hit a bump in the road with somebody being difficult about something, none of it was major. None of it was major at all. They all were good people suffering to one extent or another. Some of them had lives totally destroyed. Some of them major inconvenience, but able to live good lives. I mean, the whole spectrum, but you couldn't have asked for better clients.

Rick, I remember it was over 25 years ago. I tried a MTBE case against Conoco and I represented 128 trailer park residents. I was just brought in as trial counsel. But on the second day of trial, Timothy Devane, who is our lead plaintiff, they took up a collection and these people were dirt poor and got me a goalplated guardian angel lapel pin. And I have worn that every trial since then.

How do you do a TBI trial for 120 something people?

That one was all medical monitoring. It was an underground storage tank case, and it was a medical monitoring case. In fact, I had lunch with somebody today and I was telling them about it and they had offered us Conoco had offered us nothing. Jury found fraud, negligence, and gave us what we wanted for medical monitoring. And while they were going out for the bifurcation toward punitives, jury's walking out and one of the jurors, Ms. Smith, who I can remember like yesterday, she turned to me and said," Honey, can I get your card? "I'm like, " Ms. Smith, we better not do that right now. "But I am still in contact with some of those people from 25 years ago. And you know what? That's what gives me the strength to keep on going. Well, let me ask you this, Rick, because a lot of our audience, as I understand it from Caleb and Eleanor, because I wouldn't know, but our young lawyers, if you're giving young lawyers advice on how to be a great trial lawyer, what would you tell them?

Well, I mean, we kind of covered this in the beginning, I think, in a sense of I firmly believe that anybody who has a strong enough desire to become a great trial lawyer can do so, but as you know, you won't find a very successful trial lawyer who doesn't work like a dog. So that's the minimum price of admission is being willing to work really, really hard, need to have resilience. You've probably gotten tired of hearing me say this, Charla. I haven't said it directly to you as a person, but I say it a lot. I think every trial lawyer should be in therapy because it makes you a better person, but it makes you a better trial lawyer. And what sort of person you are has a big effect on what sort of trial lawyer you are. I

Am so glad you said that because you know I am in regular therapy. It saves me and I really do believe therapy helps us relate better to our clients.

Absolutely. So I made a vow to myself about eight or 10 years ago that in every CLE or podcast that I do, I'd work in therapy somewhere.

I love that, Rick.

I have. And so another friend of ours has started doing the same thing. I'll tell you her name later. But in any event, I now get, I don't know, at least once a month, I would say, maybe more often, either an email or a call from someone saying, "I took your advice and it's changed my life and I'm so glad you're telling people this. " I figure if it was good enough for Jerry Spence and Bill Barton and Mo Levine, it's good enough for me.

And I think some people think, "Oh, I don't need that. That's for sissies or this or that and the other." And another thing, and I know Kirsten does this, is the psychodrama classes.

Oh yeah.

Man, they're painful, but I am a big believer. Tell us just a little bit about the psychodrama.

Well, Jerry Spence gets credit for bringing this into the legal world, and he made it a big part of his trial college. And it's kind of a form of ... Think of it as a form of therapy, which it can be. It can also be a ... Well, it can do a lot of things, but people use it in a whole variety. It's such a big topic, Charla.

It really is. But there are psychodrama workshops for lawyers actually.

Yes, plenty of them. The trial college is still doing those and other people around the country are doing them. I credit psychodrama with finally getting me rid of my shyness. It's kind of like adult play in a way. You get a safe place to practice stuff. I find it really fun and endlessly interesting.

I don't know if you were there, Rick. I don't think so. But years ago, Mark Davis did a workshop with Alan Arkin and Santa. Were you there?

I was there.

You were? Okay.

Yeah.

That to me was unbelievable. And it was so interesting watching these really accomplished trial lawyers be so uncomfortable in being vulnerable.

Yes, yes.

That workshop, it was really meaningful. So I agree with you. I think therapy's important, and I would add to that psychodrama is very important. Well, Rick, you have slayed a lot of dragons in your career. When I ask you if you still loved it, I was scared to death you were going to say you're going to retire now on your personal island in Tahiti, but it sounds like you're going to keep going and keep fighting the good fight for the good people.

Yeah. Yeah. What I do hope to do is spend ... I have this CLE I do workshop that goes about four days that's called Ethos, which I hope to spend more time on that, helping to train young lawyers. And yeah, I have another big case coming in a few months and probably a few more left in me, I think.

What I often think, Rick, is how lucky are we that we get to do something that we really love and we get to help people in the process?

I agree with that, but I'll also say one of the most rewarding things for me about the practice of law has been also meeting people like you, like- minded people who really understand what this work is like and have chosen this.

And I tell people a lot, if you don't love it, don't do it because it's hard work.

Not worth it. It's not worth it.

It's hard from a time standpoint, emotional standpoint, psychological standpoint. I mean, that's why I think therapy is so helpful because it can wear you down.

Absolutely.

Well, Rick, I know you're on vacation, quote unquote, in Mexico. Give Kirsten my deepest apologies for asking you to do this podcast, but thank you so much.

She would say he would say anything for Charla and she would mean it and she would mean it.

The feeling is mutual. Well, thank you so much for being here. And for our audience, Caleb and Eleanor tell me I have to say that. If you have any questions about our podcast, you can find us at info@morelikelythanot.com. Thanks everybody for being here and thank you, Rick.

Thank you, Charla.

I think you can tell, and we at all this law here, we actually kind of like each other and we absolutely love, love what we do. And we work a lot of our cases up from the get- go, but we're brought in on cases a lot. We try cases all across the nation. If you have a case that you're interested in talking to us about, we'd love to hear from you. We've tried everything from trucking, workplace injuries, explosions, and burn cases, dram shops, ride-share sexual assaults, birth injury, your personal injury cases. If you need a partner to help you with your case, please call us. We can be contacted at aldouslaw.com. We'd love to hear from you.

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