Build Your Own Trial Toolkit, with Sharif Gray

WelcElme to Elawvate, the

podcast where trial lawyers,

Ben Gideon and Rahul Ravipudi talk

about the real issues that come with the

fight for justice. So let's

find inspiration in the wins.

Let's learn from the

losses. But most of all,

let's keep learning and getting better

and keep getting back in the ring.

Are you ready to Elawvate your own

trial practice, law firm, and life?

Let's get started. Produced

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Hey, it's Ben.

Rahul and I started this podcast because

we love hanging out with fellow trial

lawyers and sharing ideas

that can make us all better.

And both of our firms also regularly

collaborate with other lawyers across the

countries in cases where we can add value.

If you're interested in collaboration or

even if you just have a case or an idea

that you want to bounce

off us or brainstorm,

Rahul and I are going to be hosting

confidential case workshops the first

Wednesday of each month.

So here's how it works.

If you have a case or an idea that you

want to talk about or brainstorm with us,

just send me an email to ben@elawvate.net,

E-L-A-W-V-A-T-E. Net,

or go online to elawvate.net and

submit a case workshop request.

We will schedule you for a confidential

30-minute Zoom meeting where we can talk

about your case to see if we can help.

If you feel like there would be good

value in collaborating on the case

further, we can talk about that. If not,

that's okay too.

We enjoy helping other trial

lawyers because we know

someday you'd be willing to

do the same for us if we

needed your help. So again,

if you're interested in

workshopping your case with us,

just send an email to ben@elawvate.net

or fill out a case workshop request at

elawvate.net and Rahul and I will look

forward to chatting with you soon.

Today's episode of the Elawvate Podcast

is brought to you by Steno. Rahul,

you guys work with Steno.

Steno is the best in

court reporting services,

not just in court reporting services,

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We're talking about AI a little bit

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Now we're brought to you by Hype Legal.

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They recently redeveloped

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we're brought to you by Expert Institute.

Rahul, you guys work with them, right?

We both use Expert Institute because you

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Going to the repeat experts every single

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the best way to do that is with Expert

Institute.

Welcome to the Elawvate

Podcast. I'm Rahul Ravipudi.

And I'm Ben Gideon.

Ben, it's great to see you.

You were not at TLU Huntington Beach

this weekend, but your partner was.

Do you feel like you missed out?

I do. I saw some photos of

my partner in a tracksuit.

It looked like a lot of

fun. I know you went,

but you didn't bring a tracksuit and

Sharif went, but he refused the tracksuit.

So people have principles, that's good.

Yeah, I missed the tracksuit party, but

otherwise I think I would've done it.

I've got this awesome

Buffalo Bills tracksuit.

It looks ridiculous to

be perfectly honest,

but it seemed like the right

moment to whip that out.

I feel like you have a lot of

ridiculous Buffalo of Bill's attire.

Onesies.

Right.

Blankets. Yes.

No, it's fitting. The bills

are pretty ridiculous.

Oh, see. We didn't have to go there.

Their window is closing and didn't

happen for them. It's too bad.

It's not closed yet.

Speaking of windows closing,

I'm sorry to hear about Brian

Panish's $176 million verdict.

I thought he wanted a little bit more,

but maybe he'll get some additional in

the punitive phase, which is coming up,

right?

Yes.

So he just finished a punitive

phase yesterday and the

jury's deliberating on it

and maybe something will happen today.

I think this was a really cool way.

There were so many Instagram posts on

this and a lot of video cuts and it just

seems like something that's going to

be happening on certain trials in the

future where it creates a lot of

awareness on defendant's reprehensibility

and what happens in the

courtroom, frivolous defenses.

And I know that on this

particular trial, I mean,

people who were non-lawyers were talking

about and it was fascinating to me to

see how this case sort of

carried through the airwaves.

For sure. There's been

a lot of talk about it.

Our chief operating officer of our firm

just revealed to me this morning that he

watched eight hours of the trial.

Thought it was fascinating. So I mean,

he's not a lawyer.

Today is an awesome day. We

get to introduce and have

as a guest, Sharif Gray.

And I'll tell you that the

reason I started with the

little TLU conversation is

not only because it just happened,

not only to give Dan Ambrose a little

shout out because that was the first place

that I met Sharif Gray. And

right before we started,

it was the first place that

he got to see you, Ben.

And so one of the things that I would

just want to start with is when I met

Sharif,

he was an up and coming lawyer

and was so hungry to learn

everything he could as fast as he could

so that he could get himself into the

courtroom and do the best for his

clients, which I really appreciated.

And then I get this text

July 20th, 2023. Rahul,

I got my first million dollar verdict on

Tuesday! Trip and fall case in Virginia

with a possibility of contributory

negligence and the jury came back with a

million and a half dollar verdict,

some gratitude, which was super sweet.

But it was so exciting to see firsthand

and watching the transformation

of a young lawyer into a

fantastic trial lawyer.

And then it just became verdict

after verdict after that. So Sharif,

congratulations on all your

success and thanks for joining us.

Thank you both for having me. It's

been pretty incredible to look back.

I guess four years ago is when I first

became a personal injury lawyer and

shortly after, what was it?

I guess it was sometime in the fall

of 2022 is when I went out to TLU

and I benefited from a scholarship from

Sean Claggett and I got to watch both of

you guys.

And so to go from there to here and to

have the team that we have now at our

firm and to be able to

get seven figure verdict,

eight figure verdict and

numerous settlements in between,

it's really eye-opening and humbling

and certainly makes me hungry to want to

learn even more.

And so I was super pumped to be back

there this past weekend and it's crazy,

but every time I go to

one of these events,

I leave with just this

feeling of overwhelm of all

this stuff that I need to do

and read and all that stuff.

But anyways,

I'm very lucky to be in this profession

to have people to follow like

yourselves. So thank you.

Let's take a little step

back valedictorian at VMI,

University of Virginia Law

School, Richmond, Virginia.

You're a Virginia person and

lawyer through and through.

So tell us about your journey

going from VMI, JAG Corps,

and then finally becoming

a personal injury lawyer.

Yeah. So I'm half Egyptian,

so that's where Sharif comes

from and I'm half of Oklahoman.

That's where the American part comes

from. Ironically, actually funny enough,

I'll go back even a little bit farther,

but my godfather is actually from

Maine of all places and he is a lawyer,

but he did mainly banking transactional

stuff. And as a young kid,

I remember at least telling my parents,

I want to be a lawyer like Uncle David

so I could make $300 a day or something

like that. This is many,

many years ago. Fast forward,

I get to VMI. I'm still

thinking, you know what?

Law seems like something that I

want to do. I love the movies,

I love the TV shows.

And I had the opportunity at

VMI to be on the honor court,

which is basically a judicial proceeding

that adjudicates honor offenses within

the Corps of Cadets.

And in that role,

I got to be a prosecutor and got

to actually try cases. Granted,

I had no clue what I was doing,

but still just the going through the

reps of standing up in a courtroom and

there are actually other attorneys on

the other side and putting on a case was

just exhilarating. And so I

knew that's what I wanted to do.

Ended up joining the Army but went

on a delay to go to law school,

was fortunate to go to UVA,

then went on to the active duty JAG

Corps and I spent time at Fort Stewart,

Georgia, Fort Bragg, Newton,

North Carolina, and then

I deployed to Egypt twice,

once for just a command advisor

position and then wants to actually do a

criminal defense trial. While I was

in the Army, I mean, I was what,

25 I think when I started. The amount

of trial experience that I got was

just incredible, not

something that I appreciated.

I can't tell you how many courts martials

and administrative separation hearings

I did. And coming out of the

Army, I came to learn like, wait,

people don't just go try cases.

The norm that I was used to in the

military was somewhat of an anomaly.

And so I really benefited from getting

that kind of on my feet experience in the

Army. I left the military because I

knew I wanted to be a trial lawyer.

I still didn't really have a good sense

of what personal injury trial work was.

I knew at UVA that there was something,

there were these billboards and

there was this thing called torts.

But apart from that, I had no clue.

It was you go to big law and then some

people go to a DOJ and do some public

service stuff. But I went and I

clerked for a couple federal judges,

a district judge and a circuit judge

and then I got recruited and went off to

big law and I did not last long. I

mean, we're talking like three months,

both an eyeopening and

terrifying experience because

I thought, you know what,

this is it.

They want to pay me all this money and

they see my background and I'm going to

come in and hopefully get to add value.

And I learned very quickly after I got

there that doing trial work was just not

something that was frequently done.

And so I left difficult time because I'd

moved my family to Richmond, Virginia.

We grew up in Northern Virginia.

So despite being only a few hours away

was still very much a different place for

us and found a job at the

local prosecutor's office,

which ended up being a massive blessing

just by getting more on my feet

experience by getting to

know the community. And then

after about a year or so

of that, I heard about this thing

called personal injury, the David v.

Goliath aspect seems like

it's applicable there,

which is why I so much love doing

criminal defense work in the military.

I found a job at a large

personal injury firm here,

learned a lot and then

eventually broke off,

found my way to find a partner in Gray

Broughton and we've since teamed up the

last few years and it's been

wildly successful and a lot of fun.

And the funny thing was when

he made me his partner, I mean,

his name is Gray Broughton.

So the joke is that he just decided

to make the firm now his full name,

Gray Brott. But we were the Broughton

firm. Now we're Gray Broughton,

but we'll have seven lawyers by

September. Of our seven lawyers,

six of them are former prosecutors.

Of our seven lawyers,

five of them are former

military JAG officers.

So we very much have a certain

kind of mindset and ethos.

We are trying our best to be a trial

first firm, which is just not common,

at least in our area of the country.

We've had some great results both in

court and out of court I think because of

that and because of really

just the incredible people

that we have on our team.

Great story.

I'm curious because we've interviewed

a number of lawyers who have had

background in the military and got a lot

of reps like you did in that setting.

What areas do you see where there's a

lot of parallels and what did you have to

learn that was different when you got

into civil trial work compared to the

military experience?

So there's a ton of parallels.

I mean, in the military,

I mean a courtroom's a

courtroom, a trial is a trial.

So the experience of getting up

on your feet, making arguments,

that's directly something that translates.

And I always tell that as a young lawyer,

you at least need some time to at least

be comfortable developing your sea legs,

like to actually get on your feet

in a courtroom in front of a jury.

That in and of itself just takes some

time. So that directly transferable.

The mindset of the David v.

Goliath mindset of doing criminal

defense work up against the man

is also very much translates to

personal injury work. That said,

it's not been a one-to-one kind

of ... I've needed the training.

Personal injury, at least

to do it at a high level,

it's very difficult in the sense that

we have the burden of building the case

just like a prosecutor does in a criminal

case. We also have to recognize that

we're also at very much the disadvantage,

just like maybe a criminal defense lawyer

is in the sense that when we walk into

a courtroom,

I think it's fair and it's right for

us to assume or to presume that we're

already starting off maybe a little

bit behind because of just the

propaganda and the stigma when

it comes to personal injury.

So learning how to put on a personal

injury case while there's been a lot of

similarities to the courtroom

work in the military, I mean,

it's been a whole education.

Going off to TLU four years ago

and having my eyes open there,

seeing you guys and many others and

then continuing to go to the trainings.

I did the three week Gerry Spence. I

did the five of the Keenan courses.

I've done the AAJ. I mean,

I've done a ton. My wife would probably

give you the whole list and many more.

It's a nonstop learning.

And I would say that I've had to basically

reshape myself as an attorney and

personal injury because it

is just so very different,

especially as a plaintiff's attorney.

The one thing that we were thinking about

when Ben and I started this podcast,

this was right after COVID and

things started to shut down and part

of the goal was to create an

opportunity to spread the wealth

of knowledge on what people all

across the country are doing,

what trial skills and pointers they

could give to everybody to really steepen

the learning curve for newer lawyers

and for any lawyer to maybe become

better. I became better

because of this podcast.

You're kind of like patient zero

and then developing good habits from

learning from different lawyers at these

different CLEs. So just out of curiosity,

not a plug to any particular organization,

but what are some of the

things that you've learned,

good habits that you've learned that

have translated in the courtroom from

learning in the way that you have

with the exposure that you've had?

I think the best way for me

to answer that is, I mean,

there's been a million

things that I've learned.

I've had a lot of people influence

me in many, many good ways,

but for the first part of my

education as a personal injury,

I could sense that I kept

looking for the on approach,

the right method and thinking, oh, if

I'm a part of this kind of training,

then the Jerry Spence,

well, then that's the way.

I don't need to worry about anything else.

Or if I do the Kenan Institute

reptile stuff, then that's the thing.

And it wasn't until a couple years ago

where a friend of mine who you probably

know, Andrew Kaplshaw with the Art

of, is it the Art of Communication?

I'm blanking on the, but they do a lot

of witness prep around the country.

And I had him as an instructor at the

AAJ Advanced Depositions College and I

remember him and I talking

later on and he said, "Sharif,

there is no one right methodology."

The best trial lawyers learn from

everyone and eventually are able to

develop their own toolkit. And so I would

say what has impacted me the most, I mean,

if I'm going to tell a young lawyer

now, if you had to go to a course,

where would you go?

I would tell them to go to Phillip

Miller's depositions course first and

foremost. It's practical,

you get lectures and then you're on your

feet doing the exercises between the

lectures. If we're honest,

the work that we do as trial lawyers is

actually pretrial and depositions are a

big part of that.

And how we handle those depositions very

much influences how we put on and frame

the case at trial. And then second to

that, I mean, things like Gerry Spence,

I'm happy to be a part of that

organization. It's been excellent.

It forced me to get on my feet a lot

more than I think I was used to with less

preparation than I thought I needed

and helped me to realize that

at the end of the day,

what matters most is our ability to

connect and be vulnerable and true to our

cause more so than maybe even the words

that we intend to speak. The methodology

and the premise behind the reptile,

the Keenan approach is also critical.

The concept that damages

are driven by conduct,

by liability and not the other way

around and not to look at the trial as a

segmented part has been influential for

me. And then also just, I mean, again,

I'm not trying to suck up,

but I reached out to you after TLU and

you were kind enough to send me resources

and stuff. I mean, I've

reached out to God.

Joe Fried's been a very kind mentor to

me, Sach Oliver, Sean Claggett. My gosh,

I mean,

the list goes on and on for people who've

been willing to take their time and to

teach me and to answer my questions.

And so for any young lawyer listening,

and I hope I'm still a young

lawyer, I just turned 37,

so I'm getting awfully close to 40.

The big thing is get out there,

get on the plane, go to the

conferences, talk to people, learn,

get in the courtroom and try things and

be willing and open to take the risk and

then to recognize that you're not always

going to win and what do you call it

and be willing to learn from it. I mean,

the greatest experience I think I've had

as an attorney was a case that I tried

with a friend of mine in

Texas April, I think of 24.

I guess that's two years ago.

Can't even keep track anymore,

but it was a case against

Ford Motor Company.

We're in the Western District Court in

Texas federal court and it was a products

liability carbon monoxide poisoning case,

which we represented a police officer.

We lost that case,

but it was a two and a half weeks

some trial. And it's on appeal.

We're actually in front of the Fifth

Circuit here in August for a demonstrative

went to the jury room, which never

should have gone, which was excluded.

So knock on wood, the case comes back.

But even that loss and having the

experience of being up against three law

firms, high paid law firms on their side

to me gave me the confidence and said,

"You know what? You can do this.

" And that coupled with all the training

and the mentorship has made a world of

a difference, at least for me and my firm.

Yeah,

it's such a great lesson for anybody

who's trying to acquire the skills that

my concern with a lot of the

CLE or trial lawyer programs is

that they're a combination of

good information and salesmanship.

And it's sometimes hard, I think,

for lawyers who attend

things to distinguish one

from the other and to think

critically about what they're being

fed for techniques or information.

And I think too many people want kind

of a paint by numbers approach just,

okay, if we do follow these three steps,

then that's going to work in every case.

And I think your ability

to think critically about

that and to recognize that

it's ultimately up to you

to filter through all that

information and then decide

in each individual case how

to use that information,

that's where the real value comes in.

Anybody who's looking for

an easy shortcut solution,

generally that doesn't work very well

and then they get frustrated by it and

maybe move on. So I'm really impressed

with your insight into that and

ability to navigate all these different

approaches and to figure out what's

worked best for you.

And probably that's also required you

to find things that you've been taught

that don't work well or that approaches

that you don't want to follow because

it's not authentic to you.

I'm curious about that.

Have you had sort of stops and starts

where you've attempted something,

realized this isn't the direction I want

to go and then had to pivot and change

course?

Oh, absolutely. Yeah, many,

many, many times. I mean,

a good example is like some of the

stuff that Keith Mitnik does. Well,

I take that back. Most of the stuff

that Keith Mitnik does is exceptional.

His junkyard analogy for me has won so

many cases for us because we're in a pure

contributory negligence state.

So being able to provide that context to

a jury in a trip and fall or a slip and

fall, been incredible.

But there are things that Mitnick does

do that just don't fit with what I've

learned to be my approach.

Doesn't mean they're bad,

just they aren't a good fit for me.

There are things like going

through some of the Keenan courses,

which have been exceptional,

but some of the scripting and some of

the safety rules and some of that stuff,

while at one point that

was my Bible in some sense,

now it's not. But still the

underlying premise behind the why,

why that stuff matters still stuff.

Same thing with David Ball in his damages

book, right? He's got in his appendix,

right? If someone's really looking for a

shortcut, they can go to that appendix,

you've got an opening statement outlined.

At one point I thought

I got a copy and paste,

but I've come to learn that

that doesn't work for me.

Not to say that the why behind

his outline isn't important.

It's incredibly important.

And those concepts are things that

I think all of us need to apply.

It just takes time and trial

and error and a willingness I

think to really just quest and to be

open to learning new ways. I mean, gosh,

I went, again, as I mentioned when we got

started just the last few days at TLU,

I mean,

I left with all types of stuff that I

feel like we need to give our firm a shot

at trying at this point and who knows

what's going to stick and become something

that we stick onto and we use in every

case and some things that we realize,

you know what, this is just not

a great fit for our approval.

What about that junkyard analogy?

In what case did you use it and then

how did you kind of tweak it to make it

your own?

Can you explain what it is because I

don't know about it. Do you, Rahul?

This was my veiled way of trying to figure

it out and now you just called me out

on it. Let's hear them both.

It's an amazing analogy. Keith Mitnik

deserves all the credit. And I mean,

Keith Mitnick, an analogy is,

my gosh, that guy is incredible.

I'll tell you the junkyard one,

but have you heard of the one with the

soft tissue one where he hits a chair?

If you haven't, I'll share

that one too. It's incredible.

The point of it is to provide

context. So in a state where,

especially at state like Virginia,

where we're one of four states or one

of five jurisdictions in the country

that's pure contrib, meaning 1%

fault attributed to the plaintiff,

there is a zero recovery.

And so for that reason,

we don't really see trip and fall or

slip and fall cases tried very much or

taken very seriously,

at least by the plaintiff's bar

because there's such a risk.

And so for good reason,

those cases just don't get really

worked up. Keith Mitnick's analogy is he

basically puts it in context. If

you, for example, are walking,

let's take a case that

me and a colleague had,

or we'll take the 1.5 million one,

the first seven-figure verdict we got,

that was a lady walking into

a store, a retail store,

I believe it was a party city,

walking like a normal person,

just walking through the door,

ended up tripping on a mat.

What the defense wants to say is, "Well,

why wasn't she looking at her feet?" And

so it's our job to take a step back and

say, "Well, hey, let's look at the

context of this. If she was in a junkyard,

what would be reasonable?" Well, yeah,

it'd be reasonable to watch every single

step because you don't want to step on

something. Walking into

the front of the store,

what should a reasonable person do?

We literally have it where during trial we

show them. Are we walking,

looking at our feet? No.

Why doesn't the reasonable person do that?

It's because you're going

to run into somebody.

The reasonable person has the expectation

that the entrance of a store is safe.

This was a store. This wasn't a junkyard.

And so then the next step is

to weaponize what the defense's

argument against them. They're asking

you to believe this and then ultimately,

why are they asking you to believe that?

It's because they're not really

willing to take full responsibility or

accountability and instead they're

coming up with these excuses.

And so it's an incredible analogy.

The soft tissue one is also amazing

when there's minimal property damage.

The cases, and I think some of the

hardest cases for anyone to try,

and I have lost more than I've won, the

cases in which it's a car wreck case,

minimal property damage,

maybe a soft tissue injury,

not something that you can really see.

The criticism for those cases is, well,

I mean, if the jury can't see the

damage, how could the person be damaged?

And there's a million ways to

ultimately phrase this. I mean,

one way is to look to use,

and I've done this before,

is you take a football

helmet and you say, "Hey,

let's look at this football helmet.

People are having

concussions left and right,

but do you see any marks on

the football helmet?" No.

But what Keith Mitnik's analogy

is, is he takes a chair,

one of those rolling chairs,

puts it in front of the jury and then

runs up and punches the back of the chair

and then turns the chair

to the jury and says,

"Where's the damage?" You don't

see the damage. But meanwhile,

I think everyone would recognize that

an unexpected blow to the back while

sitting in that chair would really

hurt somebody. So those are just two of

Mitnick's many amazing analogies.

I really do like that junkyard

analogy. That's pretty great.

Then maybe possibly depending on how bad

the conditions were at that department

store,

it's like they're actually the junkyard

and they want to tell you they're a well

run machines, talk about who's

actually being unreasonable here.

And that's such an important point

because I think our number one job when we

walk into a courtroom, kind of

like we talked about earlier,

is to recognize that the presumption

is most likely that we're

in this courtroom because we, the

plaintiff's attorney are being greedy,

we're being unreasonable. We are

unwilling to take the settlement.

So whatever we can do implicitly to

shift that perception and that we're

here because of them, not us.

And what you just said is

a perfect way to do that.

It reminds me how much

fun this work is. I mean,

we're in trial next week and me and my

colleagues were chatting and we're like,

"Man, we're so busy with everything else,

but we got to find time to do this because

not only do we have to be prepared,

but this is the fun stuff.This is what

we like doing." Sitting at the hotel

going back and forth about what slide

we should use in opening and what we

should do in voir dire and all that stuff.

So I feel very lucky that we get to

do this type of work because

it's just so fascinating.

You get to help people and you

get to use your creativity.

What's trying a case in Virginia like? I

haven't tried a case there, courtrooms,

juries, voir dire, time

estimates. Are there limits?

Our trials are quick.

So we typically can get a

trial date within nine to

12 months for the most part.

Obviously depends on the jurisdiction,

which I've heard is very good compared

to most places in the country.

Our trials are relatively short

compared to what you all are used to in

California and some of the

other states around the country.

It's uncommon to get a setting for

more than two or three days. In fact,

if you're trying to get a setting on a

car wreck case for sometimes more than a

day, the judges will push back.

But I mean, for the most part,

at least at our firm-.

When you say two days,

you mean so you show up on a

Monday and you're done on Tuesday?

I say that the minimum days we should

be asking for two days in terms of

voir dire our law, correct

For a smaller, simpler case,

that's going to be our minimum,

at least in our firm that we're

going to ask for. But for example,

the 20 million we had back in

February, that was a five-day trial.

The 1.5 that I texted you

about a couple years ago,

we started that trial at 10:00

AM and we're done by five.

How many witnesses did you put on in that?

Which is insane, right? But between

both sides, we had 10 or 12,

just kind of insane. So it was very

quick. One of the things I've learned,

Joe Fried's been big on this is speed

trial and that's not move it faster,

that's cut for clarity.

One of the big things that I have a

crusade now with in Virginia is voir dire.

Our voir dire, as written in

our code section, is very broad.

It actually even has language that says

the council has the right to ask certain

questions related to a handful of

different elements. In practice though,

voir dire is incredibly limited.

I believe it's because judges,

they're used to a certain

level of voir dire.

They're used to who's been in a car

accident before? Raise your hand.

Who's relative this, this

and that? Raise your hand.

And so when they start seeing what we do,

and which I really have learned from

people like you guys is to ask the

open-ended questions,

to set the conditions to have a

conversation to get meaningful answers,

substantive answers. Judges I find get

wary of that because I feel like they

think that you're trying to persuade

or they're just doing something where

they're starting to feel a

sense of loss of control.

And so what we've done to kind of

battle that is we actually have a

motion that was once a bench brief. It

is now I've converted it to a motion.

It was a bench brief on the

law of voir dire in Virginia.

I've learned that judges don't read

bench briefs. We changed it to a motion,

basically ask,

it's now a motion for meaningful

voir dire consistent with the law.

And what we've done is we had a trial

a few months ago where we had a very

meaningful voir dire and it ultimately

led to significant strikes for cause.

We took the transcript from that voir

dire and took excerpts of it and embedded

it within that motion.

So now we file that and say, Judge, one,

implicitly we know the

law. Here's the law. Two,

here is what we are permitted

by law to do. And three,

this is why it's effective and why

this is not some trick. In fact,

here's the transcript of

what we're going to do.

It's been very helpful because it's

allowed us to get in front of the issue

versus what I find one of the

scariest times in trial as a lawyer,

especially as a lawyer without gray hair,

is you're up there and the judge is

like, "What are you doing? Move on.

" And you're at the very first part of

the trial and the jury's looking at the

judge like, "Oh, that's the guy who's

going to get us our Jimmy Johns for lunch.

He does no wrong." And

they're looking at the lawyer,

especially the young lawyer in the

middle of the courtroom and they're like,

"He's screwing up already because the

judge has ticked off at him." So we file

that now ahead of time so we can have

that conversation with the judge. And the

hope is that at least when

I'm up there asking questions,

I'm now not necessarily worried about

getting stopped or how things will be

perceived by the judge because

we've already had that.

Now in the verdict we had in

February, the $20 million verdict,

it submitted our questions in advance in

line with a complex pretrial scheduling

order and the defense objected their two

defense firms objected to every single

question that I'd proposed.

And so we spent three or four hours

the Friday before with the court

literally walking through every Every

single question that I had written,

rewriting it,

coming up with this blanket ruling that

I was not allowed to ask an open-ended

question in a group setting and then

also adopted the defense's reasoning.

The court didn't explicitly adopt it,

but the defense's argument was, "Well,

Judge,

there's a jury instruction on this.

Why do we need to talk to the jury about

this? " And our response was, "Well,

Your Honor, if that was the case,

then what's the point of voir

dire? Our jurors are robots,

you give them the law,

they're going to follow it.

" The point of voir dire is to figure

out or to get an understanding of whether

these people are open to the possibility

of following the law that you're going

to instruct them on. And so we ended up

filing a 15-page motion to reconsider,

I think that Sunday before

jury selection started Monday.

Judge did not change

courts, didn't expect that,

but because of how adamant we were with

voir dire and what we believed to be

correct, I believe we

ultimately got more leeway.

And while we didn't get much

leeway on the group questioning,

we ended up spending an entire day,

literally the entire day from 9:00 AM

to almost 70 PM doing jury selection.

We had a lot more latitude on

the individual questioning.

And the takeaway here,

and I know as I'm kind of getting off

track from your original question,

but the takeaway at least for me and I

think hopefully for others was there's

messaging power in just being adamant

about knowing what the law is and asking

for a certain relief because I think you

sometimes the court will step back and

give you latitude.

Anyways, long story short,

I think Virginia is a fantastic

place to practice law.

We've got a lot of great laws with the

exception of contributory negligence in

our punitive cap.

Our punitive cap is not fun and voir

dire is something that I am working on

slowly to try and open people's

eyes to the importance of it,

not just for plaintiff's

attorneys, but just for justice.

The verdict that we got,

we asked for 38.4 million. The feedback

from the jury we learned we have seven

jurors, five of the seven were ready

to give us 38.4, two of the seven,

one of them I don't know, one of

them wanted to give us nothing.

That person who wanted to give us nothing,

we never had an opportunity to ask some

questions about if they ever harbored

some sort of damages cap

or something like that.

And so voir dire very well could have

been the difference between nothing and

what we requested on behalf of our client.

And thankfully the jury ultimately

met in the middle with 20.

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and learn from the best.

It's amazing listening to you talk

because the patterns of what you're

describing feel like exactly my life

and probably many lawyers' lives who are

doing this because just the conduct and

behaviors of our brethren on the defense

side never changes. It seems case to

case or jurisdiction to jurisdiction.

Everybody's cut from the

same mold. The judges,

I guess just a reflection on human

nature is the same whether you're in

Virginia, California or Maine,

people are doing similar things.

Can you tell us a little bit more

about that $20 million verdict case?

Yeah. So it was a case tried

in Winchester, Virginia,

which I wouldn't say is rural,

but is certainly no Washington

DC or Richmond. I mean,

it's a smaller town in the

Northwestern side of Virginia.

And it was a case in which my

partner Gray took on. We were,

I believe, the fourth law firm to review

the case and the only one, of course,

to actually accept and work the case

up. It was a young man, 13 years old.

He was at a psychiatric residential

facility called Grafton in the Winchester,

Virginia area, was a few

days before Christmas,

a few years ago and a caregiver

is in the dormitory and

then there's some sort of verbal

exchange and ultimately she pushes

our child to the ground and then grabs

him by the shirt and then you can see on

video drags him across a dormitory floor

while the shirt is wrapped around his

neck and then ultimately leaves

him, kicks him outside the door,

leaves him in a hallway alone for

about 40, 45 seconds. The background,

which makes this egregious is that

this is a facility that exists

for, I mean, the most

vulnerable in our society,

children with just horrific trauma who

need the most care one could ever need.

And so our client,

he had been abused in ways that you

cannot even imagine starting at the age

of three. And so this institution

accepted him, of course,

knowing his background.

And so the case was,

and it's hard to put it in one sentence,

but ultimately the incident at

least was the pulling of this child

by the neck. The injury,

the physical injury was bruising

on his arm and some scrapes.

And the medical treatment was a

packet of Neosporin and that was it.

For the longest time, I think at our firm,

we looked at the case

and we were like, "Okay,

we got liability." Even though for

some reason the caregiver was found not

guilty at the criminal trial, even though

it was on video. We've got liability,

but what do we think in damages?

Is there something here?

And it wasn't until we put it in front

of a focus group where we focus grouped

three different cases and of the three,

two of them were good orthopedic injury

type cases, got kind of okay results.

But what stood out was that there was

one mock juror in the focus group who was

being a little bit, I think, unreasonable

on one of those orthopedic cases,

fairly conservative in how

he was attributing fault.

And when we got to this case,

the Clark case, the abuse case,

my colleague played the video and

provided a few facts and asked

what was the amount that the focus

group was willing to come to.

And that same juror who'd been otherwise

conservative and frankly just kind of,

we thought unreasonable, said, "Well,

what is the plaintiff asking for?

" And my colleague Zach said,

"$8 million." And then that guy

said, "Well, then give him that.

" And so from that point

on, my partner, Gray,

who's our managing partner, said, "You

know what? We're doubling down on this.

" And we realized that the traditional

framework just doesn't work for how you

evaluate a PI case.

And so our damages model had nothing to

do with the bruising and the scrapes,

but had everything to do with the

emotional damages, betrayal of trust,

the loss of hope, the loss of dignity.

And those were ultimately

the human values,

the universal human values that had

real value that we believe that the jury

could ultimately relate to. And

now I'm sure when I say this,

you guys will probably nod

your head thinking you see

this all over the country,

we don't get a verdict like that unless

the defense helps us out. And so why do

I say that? Defense challenged everything.

They said that he was

contributorily negligent,

that he in some degree caused this.

And one of the benefits of contributory

negligence, at least in Virginia,

is because all they need

is the 1%. It is so tempty.

And so the defense will salivate over

trying to get that 1% and in doing so

we'll lose credibility in the

process more times than not.

And so they made that argument.

The other argument they made was that

that caregiver wasn't in the scope of

duty. They were saying, despite her

being in the classroom, getting paid,

all that stuff, she was outside

the scope. And then the last thing,

which they never said, but we had to

bring to the surface was they said that,

well, this kid had a traumatic life.

There's no way that this one singular

incident really did that much. I mean,

from a diagnosis perspective, we can't

come up with anything. And in fact,

my partner and my colleague,

Zach, they hired an expert,

dropped I think 20 grand and that

expert came to a conclusion that said,

"I can't differentiate." And so we had

no experts because we couldn't even find

our own, differentiate our

client before and after.

And we frame that as they believe that

our client is damaged goods in the

sense that he was so damaged beforehand

that this abuse just did nothing to

him. And to extenuate that, I mean,

one of the attorneys in the workup of

the case when they were deposing our

client made comments,

two comments that we made a point

to bring up during trial. In fact,

I brought it up during opening.

And at one point when our client

responded during the deposition, "Hey,

I just want to be a normal kid." The

defense attorney looked at him and said,

"Were you ever normal?" But even worse,

the next thing that the lady said

during the deposition was, "Well,

you have a history of self-harm so you're

saying it doesn't bother you when you

harm yourself,

but it bothers you when

someone else strangles you.

" We were not willing to let

the defense be able to hide from

that. So we brought that up.

And then also at the end of the day,

the institution that we're up against

just never took real responsibility.

They had data that suggested that they

presented that suggested that after the

fact that our client actually improved,

they even had this fancy graph showing

that behavioral incidents were all off

the chart and then this incident happened

and then after the fact they had less

behavioral incidents.

What that graph didn't show was that for

the first time in his history at that

institution, he had to be physically

restrained six weeks after the incident.

The staff at Grafton, they never

actually reported the incident.

The first time any person other than the

caregivers knew about that incident was

when our client went to the nurse that

evening and the nurse asked them what

happened. They had 14 witnesses

testify, including two expert witnesses.

We had four lay witnesses and that

was it. Of their 14 witnesses,

they probably had four or five different

therapists testify that they met with

our client and that they hadn't

really noticed a difference.

And we came to learn that not one of

them had ever actually asked our client

after the incident how it affected him.

And the excuse for not having

asked him that they made was, well,

there was an ongoing investigation.

We actually learned during the trial,

we found a letter that the defense wanted

to put in and credit to our team for

this, but the letter was

complete hearsay. But the letter,

we looked at it in 10

seconds and we're like,

"This letter definitively

says the investigation

stopped in January a month or

two after a month or

two before, excuse me,

all these therapists started

talking to our client and we said,

you know what? Let it in. " And we

were able on cross to say, "Well,

you're saying the investigation basically

stopped the beginning of January." And

so we were able to argue to the jury the

excuse for this ongoing investigation

as to why they never talked to our

client about this incident is nonsense

because the investigation stopped a month

prior to them ever meeting with him.

So the conspiracy in

many respects was real.

There was two sets of video footage.

The video footage that you could see

of our client being dragged by the neck

across the dormitory floor was preserved.

The video footage of our client in the

hallway attempting to harm himself was

not preserved. It was deleted. I mean,

it was as simple as me being on cross.

I took a USB drive and I handed it to

the corporate representative and said,

"Do you have things like this?

" And I don't remember my exact words,

but basically to make the point that

this institution made the decision that

despite everything that had

happened, the investigations,

the criminal proceedings that this

portion where this child was attempting to

harm himself seconds after he was

abused by a caregiver wasn't relevant.

And so coming full circle,

I'm proud of, of course,

our team working the case

up, walking into trial,

spending the five days trying the

case, running the focus group,

and then also being willing to recognize

that just because your case doesn't

have the catastrophic physical injury

doesn't mean that it isn't worth

something. And when we said

it was worth 38.4 million,

when I looked at the jury and

said it was worth that much,

there was no hesitation by the jury.

And so really happy that we were able

to do it obviously for our client,

for our team, and also hopefully to

show others, especially in our state,

that you can go into courtrooms like

this and if you go in and you have the

knowledge coming full circle to what

you learn at places like TLU from people

like yourselves, you can

get real justice for people.

It's awesome.

One of the things that really hits home

and is so important that you've touched

on Sharif is really understanding your

client's harms and losses and that

comes from giving a shot at actually

spending time with your client,

first of all,

but then these focus groups and just

trying to see how people are impacted by

what they've seen.

You converted the case from what sometimes

people just get stuck in the box of,

well,

what are the physical injuries and harms

and how do I message that to a jury to

what are the actual harm and

how significant psychological

harms can be to an

individual, maybe the most significant

in a lot of cases, really well done.

Yeah, there's so many great takeaways

from that story. I think folks listening,

number one is just the conventional

wisdom is so often wrong.

And had the clients stopped looking

for a lawyer after the third lawyer had

declined their case,

they wouldn't have had the justice they

deserved and they would never have found

you. So fortunately they

were diligent enough,

but there are three lawyers who looked

at that case and turned it down because

they didn't see the potential

that you guys did see.

And we're so accustomed to trying

to categorize and put things in

boxes based on the conventional

wisdom that's been largely

dictated by industry and institutions

and honestly fellow trial

lawyers that are lazy and don't think

critically through these issues.

Because when you describe it the way

you did, why wouldn't human dignity,

why wouldn't your ability to trust

a care provider or the idea that

someone that you're putting your trust

in when you've lived a lifetime of abuse

and they're now abusing and betraying

that trust and doing this to you,

why wouldn't that be worth a huge amount

of money in the way our system values

things?

It quite obviously should be, right?

I think the conventional wisdom would've

looked at it the way other people did

look.

And then the other thing that I think

is so powerful about your story is that

you obviously had a core

foundation for the case,

which was very rock solid in the terms

of the video showing your client being

dragged across the hallway and so forth.

I'm sure that was disturbing and powerful

to watch, but that alone isn't enough.

You layered it on with

all of the misconduct,

all of the defense miscalculations,

their lied, cheating, stealing,

trying to obscure, run from the truth.

And that develops into a life of its

own that that becomes a huge part of the

narrative that you as the lawyer

are building that it doesn't even

exist before you start down your

journey. But by the end of the journey,

you've got a bigger story to tell than

just the video. The video alone is enough

to get you in the door,

but all the rest of the work is

stuff you guys did to layer that up.

So just really, really impressive

result and just so many great, I think,

great tactical and strategic points

that people can use for their own cases.

Yeah. Weaponizing the

defenses too. I mean,

it's that comparative fault and defense

lawyers just taking the bait and saying,

"Well, it's a 1%.

Let me just give it the old college try

and then just face planning on such a

case like this. " It's

crazy that it happens,

but the way that you actually weaponized

it is a really great takeaway for

folks.

Well, thank you. Yeah, our

team did a hell of a job.

And what's so amazing is again, all of

our backgrounds as former prosecutors,

again, six of our lawyers,

former prosecutors,

it's like we go after the conduct, right?

That means something. And ultimately,

even though it was a

compensatory verdict, well, one,

we lost punitives against the institution.

We didn't have sufficient evidence to

show that they had ratified or authorized

and rightfully so, the caregiver's

conduct. And then second,

while we could have kept punitives against

the individual because of our cap in

Virginia, when it came time, I

mean, I just said, "You know what?

We're just not going to stick with

punitive." It was a compensatory verdict,

but I imagine if we were to

sit down with the jurors,

I would imagine there's a part of them

or a big part of that verdict that

probably they meant to be punitive.

That would be my guess.

And I'm presuming that is that

case now wrapped up with no-.

Yeah, it's been settled.

Any trouble hearing our podcast?

Confidentially settled. That's to

the extent that I can talk about it.

And client is moving on, has a house,

they moved out of state. So really,

really happy that we're

able to get him a new life.

Well, Sharif,

it's so great to meet you and we really

appreciate you coming on the podcast and

sharing your wisdom with

all of our listeners.

Thank you for having me. I've

listened to you guys for years now.

So you've been a big part of my

education and will continue to be.

And so I hope that me being on here and

all the other young lawyers who listen,

hopefully they recognize that I'm not

terribly different from them. I mean,

I've been a PI lawyer for four years now

and the only reason I think we've had

the outward success that we've had

from a result standpoint is because of

the education to include this podcast and

because of the willingness to just get

out there and be willing

to take risk and try cases.

So you guys are doing something really,

really cool by bringing people on and

being open to sharing what works with

people all around the country.

Thanks, Sharif. And

congrats on your success.

And if folks want to reach out to

you, what's the best way to do that?

Our website is graybroughton.com.

My email is Sharif,

S-H-A-R-I-F, @graybroughton.com.

And my cell number is

434-962-7807. So if I can

ever be of help, reach out.

So I'm a big believer really in modeling

people like you all that what's the

phrase rising tie lifts all

boats, and I think it really does.

Thanks, Sharif.

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