Patrick Kang - Learning from Adversity: My Evolution to Becoming a Winning Trial Lawyer

Voice Over (: 00:00:00

The most dangerous place you can be as a trial lawyer is to think you've got it figured out. I'm still trying to get better. I still have the passion for it. I believe in it. Everyone can learn to do what I do. And yet there's a group here that continues to get extraordinary verdicts, trial lawyers, universities revolutionizing educating lawyers to be better trial lawyers. It's been invaluable to Me.

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Trial Lawyers University where the titans come to train produced and powered by law pods.

Patrick King (: 00:00:31

Well, we got Patrick King with us today, and Patrick King, destined to be a rockstar. He grew up within a half a mile of where I grew up. So I mean, he's got a good start, but now then he decided to move to Vegas. So Patrick, how did you from Bloomfield Hills, Michigan and Wabe subdivision because how did you get all the way from there to Las Vegas?

Voice Over (: 00:00:57

Well, I went to law school at Cooley, which is Lansing, Michigan. And when I graduated from Lansing, Michigan, Cooley Law School, I thought to myself, I definitely don't want to live in Michigan anymore.

Patrick King (: 00:01:10

That was a good, actually complimentary because I did not get that realization until I was 45 years old. But the fact that you got it at 25, so it already shows you're quite a bit ahead of me.

Voice Over (: 00:01:22

So after about what, I'm 25 at the time, 25 years young. So I figured I got to get out of Michigan, where do I want to live? So I picked a couple cities that I wanted to interview in, and Las Vegas was one of them. And I think that was because my dad at the time, he had come out here to Las Vegas for conventions because he owned a shoe store in downtown Detroit. So he came out here for a number of conventions and the one thing he told me was he noticed that there is a growing Korean community in Las Vegas, but no professionals like doctors or lawyers or accountants helping the Las Vegas Korean community out here. So he suggested very smartly, why don't you check out Las Vegas? Why don't you go out there If you like it, you could be the only or one of the only Las Vegas Korean attorneys out there. So I interviewed at a law firm called Callister and Reynolds, and they offered me a position as an intern and a law clerk. And I started out here in summer of oh six.

Patrick King (: 00:02:27

Alright, well you got here a little bit before bi, got here about three years ago, but before you got here, you went to law school and I know you why you went to Cooley. It was the only school you got into. The same reason I went to Troy College of Law and it's a school and you're going to get a law degree, but before you went there, you had some point in your life. You had to come to the idea, Hey, I think I'd like to be a lawyer. So when did that epiphany hit you?

Voice Over (: 00:02:50

Well, I mean that kind of goes back through the history of what I was like in college. So I went to college at John Carroll University. It's a small division college in Cleveland, Ohio. I initially went out there because I wanted to play football that went by the wayside pretty quickly. So I ended up playing rugby, which was more of a club party sport if you know anything about it. And that gives you any indication of what my four years of college was like. I mean, I spent four years pretty much enjoying my time there, so to speak. I chose the major of sociology and once I got into that as I was heading into my senior year, my parents would ask me, whatcha going to do? Whatcha going to do with a sociology degree? And honestly, I had no clue. I didn't know what sociology majors went on to do for a living.

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So I decided to go to law school and that's kind of something that had always been in the back of my head because the history, we didn't just end up in WA Country club. It didn't just fall from the heavens. My parents, when they moved here as immigrants, actually before I was born, so I was born in Royal Oak Michigan in 1981, but they moved here in the seventies at some time. My dad, he came in and he ended up working at the General Motors plant in Detroit. And for years he worked there. And I remember as a kid, we lived in some small house on the edge of Troy, Michigan, which I'm sure you're familiar with. And during that time period, there was a point in time when an engine apparently wasn't secured properly and it fell on the plant and it fell on my dad and it injured his spine.

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And I remember him being bedridden for months. I was really young back then, so it was a little bit of a blur and the memory isn't so great. But I do remember a deep struggle within my little family unit at that time. And there was a point, a very vivid memory where I'm sitting at the kitchen table and my mom and dad are there and there's two guys in suits who were lawyers and they were there and they were explaining to my parents that they had settled the case and I don't remember what the number was and my parents have never told me, but it was enough money that the tears and the relief that I felt in just that kitchen table that day. I remember to this day, like 40 years later, I still remember that moment and that sticks with you. That sticks with a kid because these superhero in suits came in.

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They're lawyers, injury lawyers. They came in, they helped my dad and they really just changed our lives. So my dad was able to get the help he needed. He got fixed, he got a surgery and then he quit General Motors. He bought a business with the settlement funds and he started this small little shoe gallery in downtown Detroit and did well for himself because within a few years we had moved to Bloomfield Hills, Michigan and were living in WBE Country Club and Club Club From then on. It was just a different kind of life experience for me and that kind of power that those lawyers had, that ability to bring that level of justice and change my whole family's life trajectory. That's something you don't forget. So by the time I was in college, even though I was kind of messing around and not really sure what I wanted to do and where I wanted to go, that memory stuck with me.

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So that memory stuck with me. So when I said, Hey, I'm going to go to law school and take the LSATs, it just felt right. So unfortunately, like you were saying, yeah, Cooley was the only law school I got into. My GPA wasn't so great in college. My LSAT score was great, so I got some money from Cooley, went there, but no other places including the Detroit College of Law, which was Michigan State Law School, didn't want to take me. But that's fine because fast forward to 2025 today and I've got a law firm, five attorneys I certainly went to, I'm the only Cooley Law grad at my firm. You've got a couple boy grads, got some Arkansas grads, got some Cali law grads. So that just tells you it doesn't always matter what law school you go to, it matters. Get that law degree, get the bar exam, get the license, and what you do with your license. That's probably the most important.

Patrick King (: 00:07:20

Detroit College of Law was the only school I got into. I mean, I didn't apply to Cooley. I probably would've gotten there too, but

Voice Over (: 00:07:25

Definitely would've

Patrick King (: 00:07:26

Probably. But a lot of my friends went there and I know it's a tough school and I know that they knock out three quarters of their starting class and they give everybody a chance, which I think is great because some people have the aptitude, but they would never get into the other law schools. I mean obviously and law school, we all know it doesn't mean shit. It means that you had the discipline to sit down your ass for three years and run through the mechanics of whatever the hell they wanted to teach you, who give you some semblance of passing the bar exam. But still not really because you forget all that crap before you get to that bar exam.

Voice Over (: 00:07:59

Oh yeah.

Patrick King (: 00:07:59

But eventually you did get the bar exam, you moved to Vegas, you get your first job at Callister, and what kind of law was that?

Voice Over (: 00:08:05

So Callister and Reynolds, so the draw there was they built themselves as an entertainment law firm. So back then Rob Reynolds represented The Killers. So I'm sure you heard of The Killers. That was like the height 2007. The Killers were at their height. They also represented this new and upcoming band called Imagine Dragons, which is now legendary rock band. So they build themselves up. They were an entertainment law firm. Now really your 25-year-old kid, you're thinking, oh great, I'm going to go work at this entertainment law firm. I'm going to be schmoozing with rock stars and movie stars, and they'll probably thank me when they win their Oscar and it's going to be great. But I end up there and they had hired a bunch of attorneys, new recruits, NYU law, Harvard Law, a lot of Ivy League law grads, and I was kind of wondering how did I get here?

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Well, they liked the fact that I spoke Korean and they wanted to put me to work in the civil division. So I went straight to work in civil litigation. I didn't even touch anything in entertainment law. They wouldn't even let me breathe near any of their clients over there. So they threw me into civil lit and that was actually the best thing that could have possibly happened because within two months there I saw my first bench trial and I'm just a law clerk. I'm about to get ready for the bar to study for the bar there. See my first bench trial. And I thought two things. The first thing I thought was, this is cool. It's literally a chess match between two teams and the winner takes all. And then the second thing I thought was I can do this for sure I can do this.

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And going back to Cooley, when I was in Cooley Law School, you take all those law classes, right? Torts, contracts, property law, and when you're taking all these law school classes, there's always, the way these law schools work and Cooley worked is there's always that one person, whoever scores the best in the class, they get something called the Book Award, at least at Cool. It's called the Book Award. I never got that at cool, except in one class, my last semester of law school, I took a class called Trial Skills and it was just a trial class and that was the only class I got, the book awarded and I loved the back and forth. I love the cross-examination. I love the fact that really you're just getting up and you're telling a story, you're telling your client's story, and you're doing it in a way that you're trying to persuade someone, whether it's a judge or attorney. So once I saw the bench trial, it reminded me of that experience in law school and it really just made me want to be a litigator. So from then on, that's all she wrote. That's what I wanted to do.

Patrick King (: 00:10:59

So how long did you spend at this Callister and Reynolds before you make the next step in your career?

Voice Over (: 00:11:05

I was there about a year. So I took the bar in February oh seven, passed it in April, and I was only there as a full fledged attorney for a handful of months. So my father being the wise man, he was exactly right about the Korean community here. So the Korean community in Las Vegas was very strong in oh seven, and they had very little professionals to turn to. If you wanted a lawyer in Las Vegas, you would go to California. That was kind of the same back then for Koreans. So as soon as I passed the bar, my firm very wisely started promoting me in the Las Vegas community here. And we just started getting in business. I mean it was hand over fist. Everybody was coming to us because we were a full civil litigation firm at Calister Reynolds. We were getting contracts, landlord tenant, we were getting employment cases, injury cases. We were getting everything under the sun. In fact, one of the biggest clients we landed was a Korean casino who was trying to open up here in Vegas and they needed to team up with a Vegas casino company in order to do so, like ha's or Caesar's Entertainment or something like that. That was obviously beyond my pay grade, but that went over to the senior partner at Callister,

Patrick King (: 00:12:30

TLU. Huntington Beach is June 4th through seventh, 2025. We've bought the entire Passe hotel for the event. So that means everybody at the hotel for those five days is going to be with the trial lawyers. It's going to be great learning. We have four lecture tracks and eight workshop tracks and the workshops and small group training where you can work on your skills of cross-examination, depositions, opening statement, jury selection. But on top of the great learning, we got great networking because every morning we do a full breakfast for everybody outside in the ocean lawn. Every afternoon a full lunch and every evening we have theme parties with live music, lots of food and open bars where there's never a wait for a cocktail. And on top of it, all the four days before TLU Hunting Beach, we're going to be doing a dark arts program with Dave Clark. So TLU Beach, you don't want to miss it. It's going to be fantastic. So you leave there after a year, but where do you go to, what's your next gig?

Voice Over (: 00:13:38

So as this Korean clientele is building, a couple other guys at the firm said, Hey, there were young attorneys and they were very smart though, NYU law, Harvard Law guys, and they said, Hey, why don't we?

Patrick King (: 00:13:52

They said, Hey, we need a Korean partner, these Koreans, and you're the only Korean around Patrick, you want to join us because you're not as smart as us Korean.

Voice Over (: 00:14:01

You went to Cooley, but you speak Korean, so we want you. So that's how that happened. So the three of us, relatively young attorneys got together and we decided to start our own firm, and that firm lasted approximately two years. It was good when it was good and when it was bad, it was bad. So

Patrick King (: 00:14:20

What was the reason for the breakup? I mean, because you're young, you get these ideas to be partners. I always think partnerships are so hard because it's always like, what's the equity? What's the balance? How do you, you know what I mean? So what was the reason for the breakup as nicely as you could put it, Patrick, I know you want to make it nice. Nobody knows who your partners were. They probably forgot about you by now. Anyways, don't worry about it.

Voice Over (: 00:14:41

Right? They don't even remember, look, we're three young guys. We're three young guys and the recession hit in oh eight. When you're talking about three young talking with three egos and then you have a budding law firm and the recession hits. I mean, that's just a recipe for disaster, I think. So in the most simplest terms, I just think it was the right firm at the wrong time. Those guys were really intelligent, really smart, really good guys, good. We just couldn't make it work. And the economic struggle was real, especially once that great recession hit. So we broke up and by the time the lease was up, we were all out of the office that we had rented out together. I went to this small little back alley Chinatown office here in Las Vegas by myself in June of oh nine, and I started Ace Law Group, what we have today,

Patrick King (: 00:15:35

And now you're like the king of Chinatown because we go there. We used to there a couple of days ago because we do our bootcamps. We always go to wheat Wheat tie in Chinatown and your SEO guy, Tim was with us this time, and I'm like, man, you see Patrick Kang, you see your client every time we go down. He's like, no man. When he blind, I'm like, his big bald head sticks out of every half a dozen billboards when you drive around. I mean, because there's the Billboard Ace Law Group, but then there's the big head popping out above it. And then he's like, oh yeah, I see it everywhere now. He just got to be looking for that handsome face to see. It's hard to miss. It's hard to miss. It's very hard. It's bored. And then you got

Voice Over (: 00:16:10

My head

Patrick King (: 00:16:10

Over it. It's closely impossible to miss. So now Ace Law Groups is what? Oh eight, that's when you got started?

Voice Over (: 00:16:18

June of 2009 was our,

Patrick King (: 00:16:20

I thought it was Patrick King and I thought it was King and Associates before it was Ace Law.

Voice Over (: 00:16:23

So yeah, it was Kang and Associates. And then sometime in 2009 or 2010, I don't remember, but that was back in the era where Vegas had all those gimmick law firms and it worked. I mean, you had law firms like half Price lawyers really growing and really, really budding. So I thought maybe getting a name out there like Ace Law Group would've been good. Plus that was back in the day where Yellow Pages was just on the cusp of disappearing. So it was still around, not quite,

Patrick King (: 00:16:55

Thank God,

Voice Over (: 00:16:56

Not quite dead. And that's when your name a CE. So I was always first in the telephone book, but that lasted about six months before Google finally just kicked them out and took over.

Patrick King (: 00:17:11

Got it. And so you start, well, king and Associates, it was yourself and your secretary of anybody was your one associate, and they grew into the Ace Law group. So now I want to talk to you about your journey to becoming a trial lawyer because you and I first crossed paths when you were doing Thea Casea case was Sean Claggett. That's where we first met. So tell us a little bit about that experience in the impact it had on you.

Voice Over (: 00:17:38

Actually the first time I met you was in 2018 when you were doing the Trojan Horse seminar. You just don't remember me, so that's great.

Patrick King (: 00:17:45

You didn't have any verdicts then. King. How am I supposed to remember you?

Voice Over (: 00:17:48

Well, I did. You just didn't know about.

Patrick King (: 00:17:49

Yeah, well, I mean, come on. Your 10,000, 20,000 verdict's not going to pop on my radar. I'm

Voice Over (: 00:17:53

Sorry. So in 2009 when we started the firm, we were kind of a jack of all trades firm. We did everything. We didn't do just injury. It wasn't until 2017 when we made the switch, pure contingency cases. We got rid of all the flat fee, got rid of all the DUIs, got rid of all the contracts we were drafting, and we focused on injury and employment law. And that was big scary leap for us. But obviously Indo was the right call. So 2017 or so is when we started that almost within a year we got the ASA case. So that ASA case happened. It was a big wrongful death case with Republic Services and from the Get Go Republic services, they were trying to get us to a mediation. They offered to pay for it. I'd never heard of anything like that back then. I had just kind of really started getting into the injury game for real by that point, even though I've been an attorney since oh seven.

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So I go to this mediation and it just felt like an ambush. Their numbers were super low, six figures. And at the time I was really good friends with Will Sykes. So I called Will, who's Sean CLTs partner, and I told Will what was happening and Will who was pretty entrenched in reptile by that point, 2018 19, he said, get out of there. Get out of there. Come to our office, let's talk. So that's what we did, and it was probably the best decision we ever made. Fast forward to the trial when I met you. That's 2021. So by 2021, I had basically gone through years of being able to see how Plat and Sykes litigate. I got to do depositions with them. We basically litigated the whole case together with them. And I basically got to see all their documents, how they do 30 B6 depositions.

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I got to do my own 30 B6 deposition with them. And then once we got the trial date in August of 2021, they spent pretty much the month of July preparing for trial. I'd never seen anything like that a whole month and a whole trial team gearing up. So I basically spent two months living at Sykes office. They paid me millions, a lot of money. Eventually insurance got me to educate you. Trial, bootcamp, exactly. So it was when you take that experience and you add the fact that by that point TLU on demand is in full swing. So I'm watching video after video after video constantly. So once you take those two things and you add it together, I mean that was powerful. That was powerful because till you on demand, you can really learn the mechanics and learn the style of how people do things and adapt it to yourself.

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But then when you see it live, when you see someone like Sean Pla, how he operates and how the sausage is made so to speak, it really takes it to that next level. So having gone through all that, I was ready after that trial. I saw just the power of the belief that Sean and his trial team had in a case and the courage to take it to verdict. I mean, I don't know how much I can get into it, but they were rejecting eight figure settlement offers before that verdict came in in our responding trial. So

Patrick King (: 00:21:16

I remember being there because I was there for a little bit of it,

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But the night before closing argument, I think they had offered $10 million, which was the amount that you guys had offered. He originally offered to settle for a year earlier, but then it was like, I remember him meeting with the client coming out of that. I wasn't there, but coming out of it, he says, we're doing closing. I'm like, wow. Said that took a lot of courage. He goes, it's not courage. It did an analysis. It's the scientific decision. I have the data. They had done this big data and this is what I just lay it out for the client, let them decide. And I remember that vividly because obviously that's a lot of money. And I remember it also saying, I don't know the mediation. Didn't the mediator somebody or the defense say they offered that low six figures? That's a lot of money for somebody like you that really set her off.

Voice Over (: 00:22:07

That's a lot of money for somebody like you. Yeah, that was a horrific moment. But courage, I mean, it's still courage, right? Because

Patrick King (: 00:22:18

Courage on everybody's parts, courage on the client's part.

Voice Over (: 00:22:21

Getting that data is huge and I agree, but it's still courage to trust the data and trust yourself and move forward on that. And in a way, the data gives you the courage. And it took me a couple of trials since the ASA trial to really figure that out. For example, in the last trial we did, did three focus groups and every single focus group came back positive with multimillion dollar verdicts in our favor. And that armed me with the courage to say, no matter what, I'm seeing this trial to the end, I'm seeing this trial through the verdict. And that's something I learned. If you go really back in time, back to ESP Spana, I learned that watching those guys go forward and have the courage of their convictions to go in and take that one to the house. So it's important. It's important to see it too. I think

Patrick King (: 00:23:12

It is. It is. I remember when you, because your first seven figure verdict was an employment trial, is that right? And how did you get all interested in employment law? Because employment's big in California. We just did a bootcamp last week at David dti. He is the most unassuming gangster of all gangsters. I mean, he's had six verdicts in a row with eight or nine digits in them for employment. That's just mental anguish. There's no limbs being lost. There's none of that. Most, I think in every one of those they waive the economics. So this is just humiliation, pain, suffering, anxiety to put those kinds of numbers together in employment. But that's in California. Now, in Nevada, what is it? I assume it can't be so lucrative because you're the only employment lawyer I know, or you're the only one that's got a brain.

Voice Over (: 00:23:59

Yeah, that's employment is hard in Nevada, we've got a lot of caps here. We're stuck with a lot more harsh monetary caps here in Nevada. But still, I think one of the differences though is you go back far enough in California's history, they probably were dealing with similar things. But you had guys like Gilbert Robertas who had the courage to take all those trials to verdict in California and really kind of change the landscape of how it works there. I think that needs to be done here in Nevada and we've seen it. So we got into it doing it pretty much since June of 2009 because nobody else was doing employment law. So it was from a marketing standpoint, it was low hanging fruit. We started getting these cases, and I can tell you for 15 years of practice, insurance, defense, employment, defense firms told us the same thing over and over.

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This is Sin City. You're not going to get a big verdict in Sin City on a sexual harassment case. That was the employment cases. We were doing sexual harassment, and it just didn't make sense to me. It didn't make sense to me because you had rampant sexual harassment going on here. I mean, obviously look, the Me Too movement happened and it changed everything. So more people started coming out and all of a sudden our business model went up like this. But still, it wasn't anything compared to what was happening in California with those guys, with D Roberta getting those huge verdicts. We have caps here in Nevada. We're limited in what we can recover. So it's still incredibly difficult for us. So finally in January of 2024, we take a sexual harassment case to verdict. That was the first time we actually had the gall to try it.

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I think defense counsel was shocked after roughly a two week jury trial, we got 1.49 million from the jury. Even though that number got brought down to, I think it was a little over 600,000, which was once caps were enforced and all that in post-trial motions, even though that number got ultimately brought down, it changed the way defense firms looked at us. So now ever since then we've seen an uptick in sexual harassment settlements. They're no longer does a defense attorney tell us, Hey, you're not going to get that kind of verdict in Sin City. They know we've gotten it now and not to plug TLU on demand too much, but I'll tell you what, getting ready for that sexual harassment trial, I mean, there's not much to go on here in Vegas. You don't have much many people I could go to and draw knowledge from.

(: 00:26:39

So what did I do? I went to On demand, I Googled employment and who did I find? I found the great David d Robertas, and at that time he had the seven class video track on the Edison case that he did. It wasn't quite sexual harassment, although it was similar along those lines. But I watched all seven videos over and over and over, and you know what? Every time I watched it, I got a new idea or I took one of De Roberta's idea and I made it better, or I adapted it to me. I adapted it to my case. And I think that was one of the benefits of TLU on demand. I've been doing that ever since. Every time I go to a trial, I will search if it's something novel. For example, this last toxic mold case we did, there's not any toxic mold videos on demand, but I did find the benzene case that Jacob Norman did with Row. So I watched his video a few times and got some ideas from that because that's kind of like a chemical toxic exposure case. And then because there's a premises aspect, I found one of Michael's premises case analysis, and he's a young attorney, but he's great, he's excellent and he's got all these great ideas. And I watched one of his, it's the slip and fall on the driveway ice. So it was in winter in Wisconsin

Patrick King (: 00:28:01

And a 70-year-old client who previously was diagnosed with CRPS,

Voice Over (: 00:28:07

Right? No, it's great case analysis. And so it doesn't always have to be like the famous rockstar trial lawyers. You can go on demand, you can find a couple videos that you really like. And what I do is I just watch them over and over and over to get ready for trials. And every time I watch the same video, you know what happens? I get a new idea or I hear something I didn't catch the first time around. And then I'll take that and I'll adapt that because that's the most important thing about being a trial lawyer, I think, is you've got to take all these great ideas that all these great trial lawyers have and adapting to yourself. That's how we ended up with the big sexual harassment verdict, a seven figure one at the beginning of 2024. And that that's really kind of changed everything since.

Patrick King (: 00:28:54

It's amazing what a seven figure verdict will do for not just your settlements, but even I would say even more for your mindset because high performance is really a combination of three things. Your conscious mind in a trial setting, what strategy we know, what visuals, how are you going to structure your opening, what are the video clips you want to use, impeach with, what questions you want to ask in voir dire, what's your damages model? These are all conscious decisions. And then the second part is your unconscious processing or your skills, your performance, the rest of it, your hand movements, your voice, your facial expressions, your eye contact ability to create space to really control the attention of the jury. These are all skills that when it's game time, you can't think about those skills. It's like if somebody's trying to shoot a free throw and the game's on the line, they start thinking about all their training, how they're breathing, how their feet are moving, they're fucked because they're interfering with their unconscious processing.

(: 00:29:48

And so you got to have that. But the third aspect of high performance is the self-image. And I think that's what great result does more than anything, which is, and the flip side of that is so many people at the beginning, their careers, they go and try these shitty cases because they get handed to them by their partners or their, you know what I mean? They're like, oh, go get some experience in the courtroom. Well, if that experience is getting your ass kicked and your case punched in, that's not an experience that you're going to enjoy because I don't care how bad the case is. You lose in a courtroom, it's a public rejection and humiliation and everybody knows you're lost. Everybody in your office looks at you with those sympathetic eyes and it's horrible. But people need to be aware of that type of having those experiences because most people, they have 1, 2, 3 of those in a row. They're done. They're fucking done. They're never stepping into that courtroom again because they're just, they can't do it. They can't bear the rejection, they can't bear the pain. So that's what winning versus losing and taking the right case of the trial and it's not taking the crap.

Voice Over (: 00:30:45

Well, I think those losses can be even more important than the win sometimes because the failures, if you learn from it, it's not a failure.

Patrick King (: 00:30:53

I could agree with you more, but I'm just saying when you go in there and you have no chance because a case wasn't prepared properly or because you don't have the evidence and you get to see, it's like a steamrolling situation. That's what I'm not talking about, going and doing your best and everything's just, you did the best you could, but you still didn't work it. And then you go back and rethink. And I've heard so many, I remember Satch Oliver when he's talking about when I did this podcast, losing the case and for weeks just not being able to stop thinking about trying to figure out everything that he did wrong and correct it because that's all we can do. And that's good learning. I know that before you got your six plus million dollar toxic mo verdict, you got punched in the nose just not long before that on a similar type of case. Those are tough cases. The science is not clear and there's mold everywhere. And so the case that you, I want to talk to you about that mold case you lost prior to tell us about what happened and that one and what you think went wrong.

Voice Over (: 00:31:50

Since Covid, I've had approximately nine jury trials, and that was the only loss. And it was in the summer of 2023. It was a toxic mold case. And just like you said about Satch Oliver, that really resonates with me because for the next three months, that's all I could think about is what I did wrong. So we got defense in that case, but it was the best thing to ever happen to me. And I'll tell you why. Because first of all, I was able to do my first trial. I did the closing, and for the first time ever, I asked for eight figures from a jury, and it felt good. It felt good, it felt it flowed that jury. I mean, they thought about it, they deliberated for about four hours before they came back with the defense verdict, but still, I mean, they were arguing back. They were thinking about it.

Patrick King (: 00:32:40

You had a shot. You were at the gate,

Voice Over (: 00:32:42

Right? I was right in it. So there was some hope for about three hours and 59 minutes. So in retrospect, some of the biggest lessons I learned from that case I've done in every trial since. And after that case, I got my first seven figure with sexual harassment. Then I did another jury trial last summer, and we settled on day four for seven figures. And that was a tough premises case. And then most recently we got the $6.6 million toxic mold verdict. And that all spawns from the lessons I learned in the defense verdict I got in that summer of 2023.

Patrick King (: 00:33:17

But what are those lessons? What did you learn? What did you not see until it was too late?

Voice Over (: 00:33:24

So I think the number one lesson was something that I knew going in to that trial I just lost sight of, which is keep it simple. Keep it simple. And you said it yourself mold, the science is not quite there, right? So there's a lot of explaining that can actually start happening when you're at trial. And that's what I started doing. I made the mistake of getting too fancy, getting into too many medical journals, really trying to fight this mold as a myth argument, and I got lost in the weeds doing that. What I should have done is just realize that, look, if the liability is there and we're proving that the landlord and the property manager has committed these bad acts and ignored this history of red flags that sound familiar like any other corporation in the history of time, if they're ignoring red flags, then all you got to do is tie it in to the damages and explain it from there.

(: 00:34:28

It doesn't have to be, it doesn't have to be complicated. That's the problem I made. The biggest issue I had in that trial was I overcomplicated, I overcomplicated the liability, then I overcomplicated the damages and I ended up shooting myself in the foot. I think that's the biggest lesson I learned. So ever since then, if I have a trial plan that's six pages long, I start chopping that down. I start chopping that down. Everything I do, I'll do it. Whether it's my opening, whether it's my direct, whether it's a cross-examination of a defense expert, I will go through and I will chop that down to the bare bones of what we need.

Patrick King (: 00:35:09

Well, I don't think it's any coincidence that your biggest verdict, your six, was it what? 6.6 million on this mold case? We're going to talk about a minute, but I think there was a major event in your life that predated that verdict, which is you finally showed up to trial Lawyers University Las Vegas, even though you lived here, didn't come in 21, didn't come in 22, which I couldn't understand. I do my bootcamps at my condo once a month, but you never stop by to visit. Maybe when Joe here in March or Satch Oliver is here and John Ram Miles here in April, maybe you'll come by and just grace us just for an hour. So, because look, a lot of people that, like Joe said to me, Hey Dan, is it possible I can meet Patrick King when I'm in town? I said, Joe, I don't know. Patrick's pretty busy. He said, can you at least ask? I said, I'll do it, but I doubt it's going to be possible. But you did finally attend our Caesars Palace conference.

Voice Over (: 00:36:00

I made a mistake there. I mean, I always kind of thought, well, till you on demand, which I watched religiously, I thought that was enough. I didn't realize the value like a live seminar really had until I finally went And when I went to TLU Vegas this past year in October, that was a game changer actually seeing Rex Paris in person. And then after he gives his talk, being able to go up and talk to them, because all these guys, they always kind of give you that time to come up afterwards and chat with them. And I didn't just go up. I took that opportunity to actually pick their brain. I didn't just go up and say, Hey, I'm Patrick K, and can I get your phone number and coffee? No. I was like, look, hey, I got a similar case like that. What do you think about this? And I would grab five minutes of their time and actually get some live feedback. And I mean that in and of itself was invaluable at TLU Live. I loved it. And I didn't realize that. I mean, that's on me. I didn't realize that until I actually went. So if you guys are thinking on demand is enough, you're wrong. Try to go to these live events, try to go to the workshops. I mean, I agree with Dan that LU Live Vegas was a game changer.

Patrick King (: 00:37:12

Yeah, don't try. You got to do, whether it's TLU or the reality is, is that my goal whenever people come to my events or whatever I do, is to help them make more money. At the end of the day, that's what it comes down to. And so we make more money, I think really in two key ways. One is to improve our skills, improve our knowledge. So the cases that we're working, they become more valuable because we understand how to see the value, how to put it together. That's one way. But another way that we all can make more money too is by building our network, our people that we have personal connections with, because people only refer cases to their friends unless you're somebody famous like a Claggett or Raleigh. But other than that, if they have a referral in Vegas, I mean, they send it to their friends.

(: 00:37:57

And so therefore the more people you meet, especially being here in Vegas where it's so many people come here and get hurt, they don't know anybody. I mean, remember Brian Nettles? I used to see that guy at every conference around the country. Look, now he's retired. Then the shootings cases happened at Mandalay Bay. He was like local counsel for so many firms, I think. And he just really, his networking skills is what allowed him to retire at age 50. And that's the important part though. And then becoming friends, first of all, and then seeing people who are similar to you in age that are not the Rex Par or the Brian Panish or the Nick Row, but similar to you and getting verdicts like the Michael car, that guy, that guy's a perfect example of what could be done from just because it's all available, everything's available now. I mean, it's available at your fingertips and on your phone with the On-demand app, but also all these people are so giving and so kind and actually trying to help you get better, which is really the big, it's amazing.

Voice Over (: 00:38:56

Yeah,

Patrick King (: 00:38:57

It's the biggest shift that I saw with the Covid because when everybody, because conferences before that, they always seemed like people were sometimes up to just kind of give it a commercial for themselves because they got 30 minutes to speak. And obviously, I mean, that's been the major for most of the top lawyers. Most of their business comes from other lawyers. And so that's kind of like their lawyer to lawyer advertising, which we all get. Everybody knows that. And most cases, it's like there's two guys that were in my bootcamp last week, and I think Debra Buras is co-counsel, both those cases and one's in Kentucky and one's in Florida. But these guys are like, I'm going to have this guy who's got it figured out, basically do my trial with me exponentially increase the value, but also mentor me and teach me along the way.

(: 00:39:41

So then for my rest of my life, I have the skills, I have the notch, I have the belief in myself, and I see how it's done. And that's really the part that is, you can't get from a video. You can't get that inspiration and that connection and that collaboration. And that's another reason why I do these specialized kind of bootcamps with the Dean Roberta Unemployment. So you get 10 employment lawyers who are highly focused for four days plus meetup ahead of time in March. We're doing Joe Freed on trucking and speed trial, applying the concept of speed trial to the trucking cases. And everybody's coming with a trucking case that they're going to work on in person for four days, but prior to that for six weeks. So that way when they get there, it's like we're doing high level stuff right there, huge.

(: 00:40:24

We're not just trying to figure out who people are, what their cases are about. And then in April, I got Satch Oliver, this deposition is our trial methodology combining with John Romano, who's really, really studied and presented a lot on articulating damages on pain and suffering. And so that's just, and then Michael Hill doing elder abuse, and I mean it's these specialized groups. And then before we do, I know you're coming to Huntington Beach, which is, you have no idea how awesome Huntington Beach is, but Vegas was great, but to me, Vegas is, it's almost, I'm not going to come back to Vegas until 2026 because I really want to spend this next year doing what you've done and really becoming a trial lawyer. And I cannot focus and do a conference because to me they're like major trials. I mean, it's 12 hours a day, seven days a week to make sure, because so many people are counting on me when they come here to be great for them, whether they're an attendee, whether they're a speaker, or whether they're an exhibitor, because everybody is trying to make a living.

(: 00:41:24

And if they're not, they're not coming to your, you know what I mean? They're not coming. And so the Huntington Beach thing, we take over the whole hotel, it's the of summer. So I always had, my dream was to have a great summer party, beach party and start off the summer, start off, just get in the flow of it. And last year we had over, there's around 600 people, so it'd probably be similar size this year, so it's a little bit smaller. We bought the entire hotel, the pass right on the ocean. So every room has a balcony and an ocean view. We do a full breakfast for everybody outside on the ocean lawn and a full lunch for everybody. We got four lecture tracks, eight workshop tracks. So we record a wall. I mean, not the workshops, but that way too, if you miss anything, you can catch it later. So it's like great trial lawyers, but it's the intimacy of it. And then it's so great because it's not just that part it, but even after hours having, we have theme parties because I love theme parties and I love live band karaoke, so that's pretty much theme parties and live karaoke every night for people that like that kind of stuff. And you being Korean, you probably really go off on karaoke. I mean, that's got to be your thing, dude.

Voice Over (: 00:42:28

That's a little stereotypical. But yeah, absolutely. I love karaoke. No, I'm not,

Patrick King (: 00:42:33

But you won't have a separate room. Okay, you have to do it out in front of you. No special rooms for the karaoke. I remember going to Korean karaoke by, I told

Voice Over (: 00:42:41

You, I went, I'm from Michigan, Ohio. That's how I started my karaoke getting up there on stage in front of him.

Patrick King (: 00:42:48

No, you know what? It does take a little bit. People are like, oh, I can't sing. I'm like, none of us can sing. If you could sing, you'd be on American Idol.

Voice Over (: 00:42:56

Yeah,

Patrick King (: 00:42:57

You put yourself out

Voice Over (: 00:42:58

There. It's about the performance. Performance,

Patrick King (: 00:43:02

Right? Being there, it's like getting it with the music. But that even after the party should like eight 30 to 1130 every night because we have the whole, oh, and we also have, during the parties, we have food trucks every night. So a different food truck every day. Oh, really? I didn't know that. Yeah, it's great. So that way people that want to go out to dinner, they can, but people that don't, they just want to have the gourmet food truck. They can do that too, because from eight 30 to 1130 every night, we're not done, Patrick. We have a DJ in the lobby and an open bar and a couple of ping pong tables, air hacking foosball, so it's like a gaming lounge every night for people that want to hang out. So I'm so fired up. And then we got so many great people coming this year. Ben Rabinowitz, I don't know if you know who he is, but I know he is a super gangster. He teaches this cross-examination workshop on Expert Crosses on the first day on the Wednesday of every conference. He did it in New York. He did it in Vegas just a couple months ago. But this is one of the most well received programs. I mean as far as little workshops ahead of time, because Wednesday at Huntington Beach is just workshops, just the small group training. We had Dudley de Bosier there last year, teaching on business operations. We had Lloyd Bell is going to do a one day med mail masterclass

Voice Over (: 00:44:14

Oh, nice. In

Patrick King (: 00:44:15

Huntington Beach. So is Steve Robertas just one day. And then Peter Bird is actually going to speak six different times at different aspects of trial. The guy just has so much knowledge in it, and you're going to be teaching something too king. You're going to teach a workshop on putting together your cases. So tell us a little bit about that. These are tough cases and not a lot of people take them, but people that do and they know what they're doing, they could, we're going to talk about your result in a minute, but what's your mold? We've been working on this mold shit a long time.

Voice Over (: 00:44:45

It's been years in the making. So the best mold cases, and what you're always looking for is you're just looking for what's the people in the industry? They call it a water intrusion event, but to a jury, you call it water. So you're looking at leaks. Is there a leak? Is there a history of leaks? Okay, that's all you're looking for. And then if there's a history of leaks, you're really just trying to spot a repetitive leak. So like, oh, there's a leak in my kitchen sink. So they reported to the property management company. What do they do? They send out a maintenance guy. They're like, oh, you just tighten the nozzle here. You're fine. Three weeks later, Hey, my kitchen sinks still leaking, something's wrong. Maintenance guy comes out, oh, you just got to tighten the nozzle. But no, what really is, what you got to do is if you can see that there's a repetitive leak source, you got to figure out is there a separate source?

(: 00:45:41

Did the property management missing? So if they miss the source, what's likely happening is that there's a leak happening where you can't see and you can't figure out where it's coming from, and that leak is causing moisture, and that moisture is causing mold. Once you have that, I mean, that's all you need for that aspect of it. And that really is any other premises case at that point. Oh, you're looking at what are the red flags that you missed? So you hit like, oh, you've got three kitchen sink leaks and you missed them all, and they were all within a two month span of each other. So once you have that kind of down, you need that special doctor, the medical mold expert, because you go to any doctor in any field like allergy, doctor, ear, nose, and throat, none of them know anything about mold.

(: 00:46:28

None of them know about how mold affects the body. There's no medical school classes on mold, toxic mold exposure. So you really need a medical mold specialist. And they do exist. There are very few and far between. The guy we like to work with is out in Pasadena, California. His name's Dr. Jim. He's excellent. He got into it about 10 years ago, and he has his own practice, and his practice is 80% treating victims or patients of toxic mold exposure. So they've been poisoned by toxic mold, and there's actually a series of tests that you can do or that he does in order to figure out, okay, well these are all the indicators. And some of them are showing like, oh, they've got high IgE levels that show there's definitely an immune response to something happening. So if you have a continued heightened immune response, that means your immune system's in auto drug.

(: 00:47:22

So it's taken me years to kind of figure it out. But the best way to explain it to a jury is it's like an autoimmune. I mean, everyone knows about autoimmune diseases. I have one myself, as you can see, it's called alopecia. It's where your own immune system is attacking. So it's attacking your hair follicles and having your hair fall out. So that's essentially what toxic mold poisoning does. It causes your system to go into overdrive. Your immune system doesn't know what to do, so it's just frazzled and broken and it starts attacking everything. So it inflames your sinuses, and in worst cases, it inflames your brain. And that's called toxic encephalopathy. The problem is, and this is where I think a lot of, and this is where I used to get scared, and this is where a lot of other injury attorneys probably get scared, is no doctors sign off on it because in the early years, it presents as allergies, it presents as headaches that you're not really sure of.

(: 00:48:20

It presents as different kind of really common cold flu-like symptoms. So once you kind of figure out and get past that, there's indicators, not only are they getting headaches, but they're getting headaches every week. And these headaches aren't getting fixed by your average Advil, Tylenol. There's something else going on. If it's your own immune system attacking your brain and inflaming your brain, it's not going to get fixed with Tylenol. And the more it does that, the more your brain is being inflamed by this attack, by your immune system from the mold poisoning, that's when you need a doctor to come in, do all the testing, to do all the testing on your blood, make sure that those levels are high. And if that's the case, you'll also see consistent with that like a cognitive decline. You know what I mean? So it takes years for that to develop is the problem, because it doesn't happen overnight.

(: 00:49:18

I mean, it's a slow burn. The injuries are a slow burn. So it's scary because what's the biggest fear of injury? Attorneys have gap in treatment because they'll go, you can't treat tenderness, which is one of the common side effects of toxic mold, poison. If your sinuses are inflamed, what happens? Your eustachian tubes in your ears start getting inflamed because it's part of your sinuses, and that's when you start getting the ringing in your ears. So there's no real treatment for that. So people just live with it until it gets unbearable. And that's when they finally go to a doctor three years later. And then the defense attorney on the other side is like, well, first of all, we don't know that mold caused this. Second of all, mold is everywhere. You're breathing it in right now. Third of all, tindi, there's a three year gap in treatment.

(: 00:50:10

You're saying his exposure, your client's exposure at the mold department was three years ago, and now you're coming here and saying that he has mold, he has mold poisoning, he has tenderness, and he has all these other toxic encephalopathy. This is the biggest problem that we run into. But if you have the tools, and in order to get there, you need the medical mold expert and you need the certified industrial hygienist to talk about the environmental aspect of it. But if you can take those two and tie it in, that's really all you need because they can explain how this happens. And it takes years. It takes years for this to really develop into something that people are actually concerned about. Imagine having a cold, Dan. Imagine having a cold, not a big deal, right? Imagine having a cold for three years straight every day. You have a cold every day for three years straight. I mean, that would get horrific. After a while,

Patrick King (: 00:51:06

You can catch what you missed on TLU on demand. It has all of the live conferences that we've done for the last three years, including TLU 2024 in Las Vegas at Caesars Palace. All nine tracks are being recorded. In addition to that, over 385 webinars. And we collect the pleadings, transcripts, and PowerPoints for all of these cases. And it's an app for your phone so you can learn anytime, anywhere. If you don't have TLU on demand and you want to try it out, send me an email, dan@triallawyersuniversity.com, and I'll send you a complimentary access code. TLU on demand. It's the library for trial.

(: 00:51:52

Yeah. I like to keep any kind of illness limited to three days just so I know what it's like to feel like shit. So when I feel better, I'm like, I'm back. But if you don't ever get sick, you never know what it's like to be back. And so in hunting Beach, you're going to be working with people in this small work group and a small group. People have mold cases, helping them kind of put together and frame, put together the evidence that they're going to need to actually take that case for trial or get a great result settlement wise. But they don't only settle those cases well, at least unless, until you get a 6 billion plus verdict, then you probably get more likely to get cooperation. And that's really what I talked to you about, really that specific case because doing a case analysis on that. What's the date of that?

Voice Over (: 00:52:34

February sometime February 17th 19.

Patrick King (: 00:52:38

Come on King. This is the highlight of your February. I know you know it off the top of your head. Don't try to big time me and act like it's not on your wall. You've already told all your colleagues, your family, everybody to watch it, highlighted it and

Voice Over (: 00:52:52

That date already. It is. I got it right here. February 12th.

Patrick King (: 00:52:58

February 12th,

Voice Over (: 00:52:58

12th and 30 am

Patrick King (: 00:53:01

Great. Alright, well for those people who are interested in the mold and perhaps, but tell us, give us a little background. What was this case about?

Voice Over (: 00:53:09

So this case, this case was about a family, single mother, two kids. She signed a lease, moved into an apartment in August of 2019, and November 19 had rained in Vegas. And when it started raining, her living room ceiling started leaking. The problem was it didn't stop leaking for three days. So she reported to the property management company right away. Her and her kids actually had to put down buckets and change out buckets because they got filled up so quickly. And then on November 23rd after three days of rain maintenance, stopping by one time to look at it, seeing the bubble in the living room ceiling and saying, oh, that's a problem. Yeah, you know what? We'll come back when it's dry and then we'll fix it. So they just left it. They didn't offer to move her out of a hotel. They didn't think it was a concern.

(: 00:54:08

And then November 23rd, 2019, after three days of leaking, the single mother, her name's Anna, she's leaning down to switch out one of the buckets, right? As she's doing that, she hears a crash, the ceiling collapses on her, falls on her, hits her head, neck back, knocks her to the ground. About two minutes later, her 13-year-old daughter who has asthma, a history of asthma walks in is like, oh my God, what was that noise? Mom, are you okay? And then as she's talking, she starts breathing heavily. The sudden hole in the ceiling released an untold number of mold toxins into the air. So the 13-year-old daughter, her name's Kena, had an immediate asthma attack. And even though she had a history of asthma, it was one of those situations where always just the little spray would always fix everything. But she never had to go, never no ambulance, no er never.

(: 00:55:07

But in this moment it was so bad. Spray didn't work. They got the nebulizer out. That didn't work. So she ended up, mom ended up calling the er, the ambulance. Ambulance came, took her to Sunrise Hospital that night, and that's what it took to get her asthma under control from that sudden toxic mold exposure. As time went on, the kids got better, but mom actually got worse. So she was like the classic mold case where as years went on, something wasn't right. Something wasn't right. She was always sick. She always felt like she had a fever. She always felt like her ears were plugged. She always felt, all of a sudden her thinking started to go, her memory started to go. I mean, this is a certified farm tech, so she certified farm techs should have some good organizational and memory skills, right? I mean, you'd hope.

(: 00:55:57

But she started to have short-term memory loss. And then fast forward five years later, and she has trouble holding down a job because she's constantly getting migraines three to four times a week. And her short-term memory loss is affecting her ability to work. So that was the damages aspect of it. And once we dive into the liability, we found out that this building had a five year history of leaks and that the building itself had approximately what 30 plus leak complaints in that five years. And the worst part was they knew about it. They actually, the maintenance supervisor testified in his deposition that that building had a pigeon problem. So pigeon trash, pigeon crap was cluttering up the gutters and making it pool in the corners of this building. And she had a top floor corner unit. So

Patrick King (: 00:56:55

This is what happened. So how long after that roof falls in, do they hire the ACE Law Group?

Voice Over (: 00:57:02

Well, that was the hard part because she's a single mother. She's struggling, so she's trying to find it. She's homeless. So November 23rd, 2019, I mean, you could probably just do the math off the top of your head. That's a week before Thanksgiving. So she's sleeping on floors at her sister's house with her two kids struggling to find a place to live, and they're getting close to Christmas. So she empties out her savings because the property management company's not helping them. It wasn't until they told her, Hey, come in. The property management said, Hey, come in. This was bad. You're right. We're going to refund you your full deposit of 900 bucks. We're going to give you your full December rent back and we're going to give you all that back. But you got to come in and you got to sign this document. And it was a settlement agreement, a waiver of rights. And when she saw that she got bad, she was pissed. So she left there, she started looking for injury attorneys and she ended up finding us.

Patrick King (: 00:58:07

And Wendy, how long after she hires you, do you realize this is most likely a bold poisoning case?

Voice Over (: 00:58:12

Well, we knew that it could have affected the daughter, but we didn't know it was for her because she had headaches and a neck injury. So for years we treated it like A TBI case because that's what we thought it was. I mean, a concealing collapsed on her, but once we dived into it, it was none of the typical TBI stuff. So she also had something called a Chiari malformation, which was, it's your classic genetic defect that can actually show symptoms of TBI issues. So that's a good defense. So looking through it, she had none of the MRIs showed anything. None of the CT scans showed anything. It wasn't until we said, you know what, let's send her to the medical mold expert. Because she was getting worse. She was getting worse. She got her cognitive testing done by a neuropsych and her numbers were horrific. She was scoring in the second percentile, 11th percentile if you gave her five names. And then a minute later asked her to repeat back those five to her. She couldn't remember. That's how bad her memory was getting. And remember this certified farm tech and had been for decades. So once that concern really got on her radar and she herself was starting to get concerned, we got her tested and it turns out she had significant toxic mold poisoning.

Patrick King (: 00:59:34

So you're getting ready for trial. I got a toxic mold poisoning case. What do you think is the most important question, just specifically for the botoxes to ask the jury in voir dire? I know I'm catching you off guard. We didn't talk about this in prep, but I got to see how you can, I got to test your trial lawyer shit king to be able to be spontaneous in the moment. I just bought you 25 seconds to think about it with this past conversation right now. So what is it?

Voice Over (: 00:59:59

Believe it or not, there's nothing really special or unique about what we would do in our jury selection for a toxic mold poisoning case. I still think the biggest question is can you award money for pain and suffering? Because that's the biggest damages to come out of a toxic mold case. Kind of like we were talking about earlier in this podcast. It's not like your classic, there's a spine surgery happening or there's a limb missing. You're talking about inflammation. You're talking about chronic inflammation inside a person's body. I mean, that's a lot of mental distress. That's a lot of suffering. That's not exactly hard economic damages. In fact, we got rid of our economics. So I think our most important question to ask a jury was the same thing you'd ask in any trial, especially a trial where you were just focusing on non-economic damages, which is can you award a large sum of money for something like pain and suffering? And if not, why? When you start getting those jurors out. So the jurors who are good for the non-economic damages, the jurors who do believe pain and suffering has value in this world and they feel comfortable assigning value to it, those are the jurors that you want.

Patrick King (: 01:01:12

Let me ask you this, the trial, what was your highlight from that trial? The moment you think back like that was good shit. People ask you stories about the case. I'm telling them this one for sure.

Voice Over (: 01:01:23

Yeah, I was thinking about that and there was a lot of moments, but I think one moment I really liked was we had this, and we'll go over it in the case analysis in depth, but we bought this big board and like I said, they had 30 some work orders of prior leaks. So we bought these red flag toothpicks and the first witness we called was obviously the corporate representative who I knew from her deposition. She was a jerk. So you got to assume she's going to act the same way, which she did thankfully. So we put her up there and then we just started going through the work orders. And in front of the jury, you go up, you get her to own the work order, and you say, well, so this says leak in the living room. You see that? Then it says, what did the maintenance person, oh, they patched and they painted it.

(: 01:02:09

So they just did a patching paint. They didn't figure out why it was leaking. They didn't look and see, oh, there's mold in here, we better call in a specialist. We better call in a remediation company. You did that, right? And then we started pinning all these red flag work orders too. And by the end of it you had this big black board with 30 plus work orders on it. And it was so powerful that even defense counsel came up to me at one point and said, this is great. Can I take a picture of it? And I was like, yeah, sure. And I thought she was taking a picture of it so she could use it in her closing against me or something. But no, she never even touched it in her closing. She honestly just wanted a picture of it because she thought it was so good.

(: 01:02:52

So I mean, that was a good moment. And that coupled with the very last pin drop moment we asked the corporate rep is, now that you see all this, you see all these red flags, right? Corporate rep, can't you admit now that you guys screwed up, you guys should have done something more than you actually did. And that was that pin drop moment. And she was just like, yeah, we should have. And the jury was just silent. And when the corporate rep came down off the stand, it was one of those defense counsel standing up and say, can we get a 10 minute break, please? They just sat at the table. They just sat at the table, not talking to each other, not preparing for the next witness, just sat there, kind of stared off into space. It was one of those moments, and I don't think I've ever actually had one of those moments myself in a trial. So that was a pretty cool moment.

Patrick King (: 01:03:41

Roger dad would describe that ased as what? Just likened like a deer in the headlights. He just,

Voice Over (: 01:03:48

Yeah,

Patrick King (: 01:03:48

Frozen in time by the experience to witness or after the fact. You eventually got what, 6.6 million, but what did you ask for in this case?

Voice Over (: 01:03:58

So in my closing, I asked for approximately 16 million and it felt good asking for it. Defense in her closing asked for 28,000.

Patrick King (: 01:04:09

So there was a little bit of two ships passing as the night. That's what deas calls his trial strategy. He's like, I don't want it to be tit for tat. I just want it to be two ships passing the night. And he says that I like that. I want them defending a case that I'm not trying, they're not defending, I'm know what they're doing over there, but I'm doing my thing. She's like, that's my kind of trial because then it's the dichotomy. So obvious.

Voice Over (: 01:04:31

Yeah, that's what happened. What happened, the funniest part about her closing was she conceded liability in her closing and said, just give them 28,000. This is like it's mold molds everywhere. But in her opening, in her opening, she committed a mistrial because we had a motion in limine that she couldn't say that this was an attorney driven case. The first words out of her mouth was, this is a setup by the lawyers. This is a setup by the lawyers.

Patrick King (: 01:04:59

How did you know to make a motion in limine to do that? Because does the defense do that pretty much at least half the time?

Voice Over (: 01:05:05

Well, we knew it because they kept telling us that it felt like set up and we were just driving the case. The medical bills were what, 50 grand in this case. We got rid of the medical bills and they didn't really understand that tactic. They just fought it on principle. But doing what typical insurance companies do, they said, look, your medical bills are 50, here's 300,000. That's more money than you deserve in a lifetime. This is ridiculous. Your case is bullshit. They actually told me that before trial your case is bullshit, your client's bullshit. And they didn't really get it. So kind of like what Dear Robertas was saying, they were trying a whole nother case than we were because we were up here. They were down here. They started off by calling it a setup in their opening and then closing, they conceded liability and said that made mistakes and just award us $28,000.

Patrick King (: 01:05:56

So they violated the motion li by state attorney driven. But you could have made a motion for a mistrial at that time, but you decided not to.

Voice Over (: 01:06:03

Well, so at the break I stood up and I said, your honor, I have to address, they violated a motion order and then I couldn't help myself, but the next words out of my mouth were, but I don't want a mistrial, your Honor, because I thought she would give it to us. I mean, it was that bad. It was that blatant. So I was like, I don't want a mistrial, your Honor. And she's like, okay, plaintiff counsel, you don't want a mistrial, right? I just want to put that on the record. I'm like, I do not want a mistrial. I just want it to be known that she's violating the motion. Eliminate order. Tell her stop doing it. I didn't know what else to ask for. I wanted her to stop, but at the same time, I didn't want to mistrial.

Patrick King (: 01:06:43

I think in hindsight, you made the right decision. So that's a great thing. Oh, let me just tell you, because let me try to persuade you that you should come by March 5th, three at least to stop by for an hour or so, have lunch. Okay. Because I'm really stoked about this, super stoked because Joe Fried and I go back to 2002 because Joe was actually the person that in 2000, well I met him because at the Trial Lawyer's college, actually 2003, I finally went in 2000, went around there. Anyways, he was the first person I met there. He was a friend of mine, a big influence in my life. And then in 2012 when I told him I don't want to be a criminal defense lawyer anymore, I've seen all these people have much better lives than me making a lot more money than me, and I think I'm a good lawyer.

(: 01:07:29

He's like, well, Dan, if you want to become a civil lawyer, you have to figure out what you know that civil lawyers don't know. So you can go to their conferences and speak and then perhaps get involved in civil cases and learn how it goes. And so that's what I kind of developed. I used to teach a lot on this witness preparation methodology at GI developed, which when I showed Joe that he's like psychodrama at a chair. And of course that got me quite angry because hey, that had to do with psychodrama. I generally reject just like it has to do with child lawyers college, just, I was there for 12 years and I had a lot of great experience. I made a lot of friends, but I just really thought that the teaching methodology was, I just thought it was nonsense. I mean, it's great for making friends and having fun and becoming a better person, but for becoming a trial lawyer, I didn't see it then and I still don't get it now.

(: 01:08:12

And so that was the beginning, but we've been for a long time. He spoke at all my conferences and he is just a great teacher. I mean, there are some people that are great trial lawyers and there's some people that are great teachers and there's very few people that combine the two of them, and Joe's one of those people. And so we're doing this program March 4th. I call it March 5th three, but kind of March 4th through eighth because a half day before the official program starts, I do a witness prep and direct examination workshop because I just think people are really, really, a lot of people really need help in those areas. And there's only so much time, but for our four days we're doing this bootcamp here in Vegas, there's going to be like six weeks of prep with both Joe on your case and all the different aspects of your case, the evidence of your case. So that way with the group, so everybody knows each other's cases before they get, they're all working trucking cases, but also preparation in the presentation skills. And we're going to changing for the first time the story that we told, because we've always told the story of this criminal case that I did about a dozen years ago at a tanning salon. Anybody that's done bootcamp knows the story of riding. I think I know what you're talking, talking about.

Voice Over (: 01:09:18

You put it on your on-demand videos

Patrick King (: 01:09:20

Too, right? Oh yeah, no, no. I've really red redone all those too to really at this last program, every time I do a program, I redo the videos. I kind of update the presentation of it and the explanation of it so that people can understand it better and learn faster. And so there's be, in that six weeks, there's going to be a lot of training on the trucking crash story, like the crash, the ambulance coming, take 'em to the hospital. Those are the three major scenes I think that are most accident injury cases. So once a truck or car, once you be able to create the illusion of movement and understand that when you're standing up in front of people, you have a stage, you have stage left, you have stage, and that this is a performance, but it's different than acting because it's more like standup comedian.

(: 01:10:00

You have your materials, but you have to interact and riff off the audience. And so during this bootcamp, you're going to be not just learning the presentation connection, the eye contact, emotional state control, the hand movements, controlling your voice, the pacing, the pausing, be able to create space or create illusion, but also really working with Joe for every day for just broken down. It's only limited to 10 people. So 10 group people, two groups of five. And so basically he works on framing the case, helping people figure out witness sequencing, figure out damages, models, figure out do we spend,

Voice Over (: 01:10:35

That

Patrick King (: 01:10:35

Sounds great. Day on depositions, like the key depositions and trucking cases and how you get the evidence you got to get and put it together because it's the first time that I just met with him this morning going over the outline. It's only two months away, or not even that, but really just he's like, I'm really excited. This is the first time I've known anybody really putting together a strategy in the theory at a high level with the presentation skills and the performance of it. Because you might have a great story, but if you're not a storyteller, if nobody's listening to your story, it's going to greatly impact the results. I

Voice Over (: 01:11:10

Mean, that sounds like a game changer. You know what, I'm going to come by for sure. Look at that. You

Patrick King (: 01:11:16

Persuaded. Oh, king, I am so grateful. That's what I wanted do. Now it's all been worth it. Alright, Patrick King, I know that you got that big law firm, you're running over the ACE Law group and so I appreciate that. But it was really great because that's one of the things, my favorite things about these podcasts, people a little bit. But then in doing a podcast and even the preparation, I suppose at some point I knew you were from Michigan, but the fact that you grew up a half a mile from my house and the neighborhood you grew up with before it was a neighborhood, it was just a big chunk of land. And then they started carving roads. And I used to have a motorcycle when I was a little kid, like a YZ 80 when I was like eight years old. So it'd be ripping around there when those houses were going up. We're like, man, man, we were like, these people are where rich people live. They're big ass houses in that neighborhood with big pieces of land or surrounding the country club, but you don't know this about people until you spend time with them. So

(: 01:12:10

Thanks, good busy with you, Mr. King, and I'll see you on February 12th and before February 12th because we've got to prep

Voice Over (: 01:12:19

In March. And before that, Dan, lemme just say thank you. I appreciate you having me on here. Let me say again, what you're doing for the plaintiff's community I think is a game changer. I've thought that for years. And if it wasn't for TLU on demand, I cannot say this enough and I genuinely mean this. If it wasn't for TLU on demand, I would not be here today. I honestly wouldn't. I wouldn't have the verdicts I would and everything else. I mean that's my big experience. Everything else, it's one of the greatest things I've ever seen. Just like you said, it's at your fingertips. You can look up anything and everything and it'll help you. So man, I appreciate it. I appreciate this and I appreciate everything you've done, man.

Patrick King (: 01:12:59

Thanks. It means because I searched for so many years, try to figure this shit out. And now it's like I always tell people it's the greatest time to be a trial lawyer. If you want to be a trial lawyer, the only thing stopping you from becoming great

Dan Ambrose (: 01:13:13

Is you. Because

Patrick King (: 01:13:15

The information's there, the access to the great ones is there. But

Dan Ambrose (: 01:13:19

Here,

Patrick King (: 01:13:19

If you choose not to do it, if you choose to leave a mediocre life, at least you have at least it was a choice. It wasn't because of the situation, the circumstances, people not helping you, you chose not to do it. So therefore, if you want to live a beer life, that's your choice. You want to live a great life, that's your choice. And I truly believe that more people, I think the biggest difference now is that in the training, if people know what to focus on, instead of just doing everything under the sun, why people are like, what's your problem with a trial? Lawyers college or the expense method is kind of the same thing to me too. It because you go there, people go there for three weeks, spend so much time and money, and they think they're going to transform as a trial lawyer.

(: 01:14:01

And when they don't, they're like, oh, I guess this is who I am. I guess I just have to be myself. That's all weird and nervous and blah. And it's like, no, you don't have to be that. That's not what you have to do. But you have to put the time into the right time to training and not just train endlessly. So that's really what I see the differences today is people figuring out what's working, what's not. Take the shit that's not working, throw it away and just focus on the shit that works to get better to where you want to go. You'll get there so much faster as people when we're in the learning process, we have to make progress. We have to see ourself improving, right? You have to see yourself improving a little bit every trial or else it's hard to stay motivated. This is fucking hard work and you got to take a lot away from the rest of your life to become this. But I love to see when people like you and like the Mike Carps of the world and the Ryan Skys are pushing themselves training to get better and then getting there and getting the results in. And as you know, this is going to be my year 2025 where we're going to try Mr. King Big. So when I get my next case, you're going to hear about it. Okay? Wait, man.

(: 01:15:00

Alright, I'll see you

Dan Ambrose (: 01:15:01

Ready to train with the Titans and set records with your verdicts. Register for our live conferences and bootcamps@triallawyersuniversity.com. Start getting your reps in before the big event by going to tlu ondemand.com to gain instant access to live lectures, case analysis and skills training videos from the trial lawyer champions you love and respect, as well as pleadings, transcripts, PowerPoints, and notes. For a roadmap to victory, join the group that continues to get extraordinary results. Trial Lawyers University produced and powered by LawPods.