Justin L. Jones from Hare Wynn joins us to talk Medical Malpractice Law and more.

Transcript

SPEAKER_03: 0:51

You're listening to Little Dam with Jenny Wingram. You're an Alabama lawyer on WERC 1055 FM. Today is December the 27th, 2025. Christmas is over. Thank God. We just got one show left for December. Coming back in January 26th, we go back to our two-hour uh podcast format starting in January. Folks, we we're glad to have you here today. Uh we get to officially announce some big news. Coming in January of 26th, we will be on in the Huntsville market, 102.5 WBHP Talk Radio from noon to 2. And we're also going to be on in the Tuscaloosa market as well. 105.9 WRTR Row Tide Roll will be on on Saturdays from 6 to 8 as well for 2026. So Huntsville and Tuscaloosa, welcome to the Legal Lowdown, being part of our broad podcast and show. Like, listen, download, share it with your friends. Anything you need, give us a call. We are glad to be a part of your markets as well. This is the Legal Lowdown with Joe Ingram. My office handles primarily family law, divorce, and criminal law as well. And we're going to go ahead and announce it. Yes, we're back. We're going back to start doing personal injury in 26. We are not billboard lawyers. We are not TV lawyers. We are real lawyers. And if you have a personal injury case, we are going to be doing personal injury cases in 2026. If you need representation, call my office, 205-825-5297. 205-825-5297. You can talk with Elizabeth or Hawley, my in-tech specialist. They can get you in for a consultation if you need representation. Now that Christmas is over and you just finished looking at your in-laws around the table and you weren't happy and you were drinking, now is the time to file for divorce, folks. Go get your tax returns, your bank statements, your 401k statements, your all your financial records. Call my office. It's time to file for divorce now. Okay. For those of you during the month of December that either went to the uh Christmas work party or you went to a party and you got hyped up and made some bad decisions, as Vince Vaughn used to say, uh, if you got a DUI and you need representation, call my office as well. Uh for those of you that did not take my advice, that you went to the party and you had anxiety, and you took somebody's colonopin, xanopin, all the good drugs we take when we have anxiety and we're around people and we don't like to be around them, and you got stopped with that DUI, and they said, Do you have any drugs in your system or do you have any medication in your purse? And you had that one little colonopin pill. Guess what, folks? You just got charged with possession of a controlled substance. That's a felony. And if you don't have a if you don't have a prescription for it, you're gonna need your representation for that. You're looking at some jail time, or probably doing a drug court program at least. Okay. So anyway, uh, that's us. We practice from Huntsville, Birmingham, Montgomery, Mobile, Tuscaloosa, and even the Dothan area. It's our little side joke. If you'll go back and listen to the very first very first podcast, you'll know why we joke about Dothan. So if you need representation, give us a call. We'll be glad to have you. We teased up last week. Um, if you listened, we had Senator Doug Jones, who is uh on his election quest to uh march toward the Capitol of Montgomery. We teased up that we were going to have a guest today, and he's here. His name is Justin Jones. He is an attorney here in Birmingham, Alabama. He is a partner with Hare Wynn, and Justin's here with us. Justin, how are you today, sir?

SPEAKER_02: 4:54

Good, my man. Thank you for having me. I really think it's really an honor. And I it's actually a crack up. So we met, what, probably a year ago. We did? Something like that. And um I actually enjoy every time I talk to you because it's always something super interesting. And some some weird, fascinating set of facts or circumstances you want me to look at, and and we haven't been able to tie one on yet, just for loosen. I mean, there's there's things you know, there's always problems that you gotta overcome in cases, but um we're gonna get a good one at some point.

SPEAKER_03: 5:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 5:22

And we're gonna knock it out of the park. We will. But thank you for having me. This is a huge honor for me. And um it's it's it's my second radio show. The other one was when I worked in radio sales, uh, Lance Taylor over at uh well, I guess whatever podcast he does now. I don't know. Right. I did a radio show with them then. It was probably terrible. I hope they destroyed the footage after I got done.

SPEAKER_03: 5:45

Oh, Justin. But I'm glad to be here. Well, thank you, sir. Tell tell the podcast and the audience a little bit about your history and uh being a personal injury lawyer.

SPEAKER_02: 5:56

Well, uh, without going too deep into it, uh so as you said and introducing me, I'm a trial lawyer, uh, we're doing civil litigation and a partner at Hairwind. And heroin's got a long extended history of um I I think frankly being on the front end of a lot of uh of big movements in civil litigation um for for a really long time. But we've been around 135 years. Now, before, long before I ever came to Hairwind, though, I was a um a pastor, uh ordained Southern Baptist minister at the age of eighteen. I'm from Jasper, Alabama, and I worked and went to Sanford for religion and then I went to seminary and did that for a couple of years, and I was a youth pastor down in South Florida for a while, and then decided that I was gonna switch to the dark side and become a lawyer. And uh and so I I I became a lawyer about um this is 2009, so I've been doing it for about 16 years. Uh, and the entire time it's been on the plaintiff's side, uh representing victims, uh, people that have been, you know, harmed in some way uh from someone else's negligence. I've been doing that for so I'm marking on 16, going on 17 years now, and uh wouldn't do anything else. Uh you said you do, you know, family law and and criminal law.

SPEAKER_03: 7:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 7:14

How about it, man? You're not gonna get any competition from me.

SPEAKER_03: 7:18

That's okay. It doesn't it doesn't bother me. Um, Justin, when you went to law school, did you did you always what what was your reason to go to law school or did you know that you wanted to do what you're doing?

SPEAKER_02: 7:31

No, I I actually had a very definite reason for going to law school, and it was to do like business transactions. I didn't even know if I wanted to be a lawyer. I just I I liked uh I liked sort of the the study, the the reading. I always found it actually remarkably uh law school to be remarkably similar uh similar to seminary. Uh you're looking at text, you're trying to figure out the meaning of the text, you're trying to apply it to somebody's life. I I actually always found that sort of overlapping uh dynamic there. But I I actually just wanted to probably run a business, start a business, be an entrepreneur, do something like that. Um and then uh not by the way, this is notwithstanding the fact that by the time I got to law school, I'd probably preached 300 sermons at that point. Um for whatever reason, that's what I wanted to do. But then I get into law school and um I was asked to try out for Cumberland's national trial team. And the tryout was just a closing argument. Well, that's just a sermon by another name.

SPEAKER_03: 8:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 8:35

So I was able to go in without even really any prep for anything else and just talk for 30 minutes and give my uh you know, rain down Byron Brimstone on whatever the facts of that case were. And uh the the trial team coach, the guy that was uh holding the auditions, everything else, is now Judge Jim Roberts over uh circuit circuit court in Tuscaloosa. In Tuscaloosa. Yeah. So he was my trial team coach. And so anyway, he asked me if I wanted to be on the national trial team, and I wound up getting partnered uh with a girl named Megan Head, who is now Megan Jones. Yeah. So we became trial team partners and we kicked butt everywhere we went, and then we got married, and the rest is history. We now have two boys, eight and six, and we're not gonna need your services anytime soon. Everything's going well. I just didn't.

SPEAKER_03: 9:22

That's okay. Um, your your lovely wife, by the way. I've had a couple cases with her. I'm sorry. She used to be a she used to be Huey Farnabuke, and now she now she's with her uh Clark May Price. Clark May Price. Clay Clark, yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 9:36

Uh and the interesting fact there is she does mostly Defense. Medical malpractice defense.

SPEAKER_03: 9:42

Okay. Well, at the time she was doing worker comp defense.

SPEAKER_02: 9:44

And she still does that with Clay Clark, yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 9:46

Yeah. And I had a couple worker comp cases with her. She was stingy with a dollar. She did not want to come off with a dollar. She didn't care if you had your whole spine refused. She didn't want to give you a dollar.

SPEAKER_02: 9:57

So listen, I don't get sideways with her about money on them either, so don't worry about it.

SPEAKER_03: 10:02

But uh she she's a very nice lady. Well, thank you. You you you you're a very nice man, but w as we always say, we married up, right? Married way up.

SPEAKER_02: 10:10

And and and look, we i it's actually so as I was gonna get into this, I you know, I do almost exclusively now, and it's just kind of the way it's turned out. It's not something you really choose to do, I don't think, but uh, I do almost exclusively medical malpractice litigation or medical negligence litigation. I and I guess tongue in cheek call it patient advocacy litigation, uh healthcare accountability litigation. But so I I do the suing and she does the defending.

SPEAKER_03: 10:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 10:36

And remarkably enough, and you've probably dealt with this in some of your past episodes, I mean, not having to talk about work, not getting to talk about work has actually been a huge boost for our you know, personal relationship. It's like you've got to find something else to to sit down around the dinner table and and sit around in the living room at night and and talk about. So we i it's actually strangely enough been the best thing for us. But that's what she does. So we we're on we're we're we are on two sides of of some of the most hotly contested litigation in Alabama. Right. It's pretty stressful.

SPEAKER_03: 11:11

So so the rule is that y'all don't talk about work at home or not at all?

SPEAKER_02: 11:16

I mean, i if it's if it's sort of just in general terms. I mean, we talk about you know our professional lives, but uh she just happens to represent too many clients that our firms are conflicted out of one way or the other, or we're conflicted out of it personally. I see. Even though our firms can technically take it on. And so we I mean I we have several pending cases where Clark may price their client is is being sued. Right. Um and so I I have to stay away from those and and they wall they wall you all. Absolutely wall you all stay off files. I can't even access those files. Right. And that's that's I guess the miracle of not having a big paper file to run downstairs and look at. You know, I mean now tall electronic and digital. We're we're largely paperless at heroin now. So Are you really? Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 12:06

I'm always amazed by that because um I'm I'm a I'm an old school guy. I'm still paper guy. So we still have all the paper files, all the pleadings, you know, all that. Well there's no getting around it when you go to trial.

SPEAKER_02: 12:19

Right? I mean we're we're printing off thousands and thousands and thousands of pages, but you know, I I I this week alone, um I probably I'm let's say two existing files and two or three potential files where somebody has referred to the case. I mean, I've looked at literally thousands of pages of documents, medical records in particular. And I mean, there's just no way to be a paper office with that. And look, frankly, I mean the way the the new apps on your iPad app or um with artificial intelligence now, whether it's you know using our in-house stuff, we use Copilot in-house, it's sort of walled off. Um or whether you're using you know ChatGPT or Claude or any of these other ones, I mean it I think it's nice actually. I mean, i i if you just bite the bullet and sort of sort of start moving in that direction, everything's in one place. I can be in um I was in Columbus, Ohio last week on a deposition. I can just pull up the entire file. I don't have to carry a truck around with me. I mean it's nice. I I like being payful listen. I think it's it it once you get used to it, it greatly improves sort of your efficiency. Right. And how you can uh sort of administratively manage a case, particularly the kind of cases that that we have where there are just medical records alone, and you could easily get five, ten thousand pages. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 13:37

Um we're speaking with Justin Jones. This is a legal lowdown with Joey Ingram 1055 W E R C. Uh I forgot to mention, folks, I forgot to mention our big uh uh partner in this. If you go to the little red app on your phone, the iHeartRadio, if you click on the iHeartRadio app, that's the Spy For Rent Hotline. Spy Forent Hotline. If you'll click on that and you have a text message, you can give us a call or send us a message and we'll talk about whatever you need to. We're talking with Justin Jones today. He is a partner at Hairwind. He is a premier trial lawyer. I've gotten to know him over the year, and um he was so gracious to give us an hour of his time today. I I I've gotten to talk to Justin half half half maybe a half dozen times this year, and he's such a nice man, and I asked him to do this. I I I think he's phenomenal. Justin, um, let's talk a little bit about your kind of practice you do. Sure. So, how do you get the kind of cases that heroin does?

SPEAKER_02: 14:35

All right, so let's let's kind of go back in history a little bit. Before I came to Heroin uh over the last decade to twenty years, they had actually been pretty heavily involved in a lot of mass tort or class action type things where you've either got hundreds of clients or you've got one client with hundreds of other people being represented through the action itself. And so they did that for a long time. Now, slowly over that say in the last 10 to 20 years, they're single event cases as opposed to mass tortures. So we we've we've got one car wreck or one product liability, one one medical malpractice, whatever. Um those started increasing exponentially, but particularly with medical malpractice. Um and for reasons we can go into in a minute, but but we just happened to be one of a handful of firms throughout the state of Alabama that spends a lot of time, a lot of energy, and frankly a lot of money on medical negligence cases. And so at this point, when I came to Heroin a little over a year ago, um I was thrust right into the middle of where basically all I have is medical malpractice cases. And all I review is medical malpractice cases. And I gotta tell you, um we we I don't know the numbers, but I I can tell you that, you know, a hundred come in over the last year. You know, we're only actually pursuing maybe two of those. I mean, we're spending a lot of time and a lot of money turning those down. Now, most of them that we wind up filing, I think it may be just by accident. I I don't know this. I'd like actually something we probably should look at a little bit more. Um, they come from referring attorneys. People that that say, I I know there's something here, can't really put my finger on it, or if I could put my finger on it, I don't want to spend the next four years doing it, and I don't want to spend$150,000. Let me send it to somebody that that does this. Because there are, I mean, it's every area of law. Like I I would I would dare not do a criminal case. I mean, I could I could go read about it. I'm sure I could figure it out, but it would take me forever, and I just leave it to the expert like you. You just know what you're doing when that happens. So we we get a lot of calls from from good lawyers that just say, hey, look, I I just got something here and it's it's not in my wheelhouse. You guys want to take a look at it.

SPEAKER_00: 16:57

Right.

SPEAKER_02: 16:57

And then I would say that's probably the bulk of what we filed, but but we get I'm we get hundreds of calls from people just had a bad outcome. Whether it was or mom had a bad bad outcome in a hospital or they were mistreated, and we we get a lot of those. So we spend a lot of time dealing with that, and that's th that's half half case review and half counseling is what that really winds up being. But um we get a lot of you know direct calls, and I don't know if that's a social media thing or if it's just a Google SEO because of the name and what we've done. And I I don't know. But we we we've got a good reputation for particularly for doing medical malpractice stuff. So that's that's largely what we focus on. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 17:36

So for every probably 10 cases well, for probably every 50 cases you look at, you may only take one. I mean, that that are really legitimate claims.

SPEAKER_02: 17:45

Yeah, but so this this is not an exaggeration. We we spent over a million dollars last year turning down cases. Okay. That's that's man hours. That's not just I mean, calculating just random hours. I mean that we have we have people on staff that we pay to vet things initially. We have people on staff that do nothing but get medical records. We have a nurse practitioner on staff with uh you know 30 years of experience. She spends a lot of time looking at these things. We have uh company, third party vendors that we use that that give us access to doctors throughout the country who they don't want to be testifying experts, but they're they're smart people and and on the side they're willing to sort of consult with us and give us an idea of whether we have something there or not. And by the time we bring a case file to them, it's usually worked up pretty well. But all of this costs a lot of money to do. So get just getting medical records alone, I mean, it's it's a lot of money. Right. Um and once we get the medical records, we spend a lot of time. Yes, we have a first level review. Hopefully, a paralegal can kind of pinpoint a few things just to kind of see what some of the issues are before they make it to my desk with a with a small memo. Or maybe they send it to uh the nurse practitioner in the office so she can get a little further deep into it. But by the time I mean we'll you know, we're talking a process of maybe three to six months down the road on a catastrophic injury where by the time we sit down, I'm talking to you know, endocrinologist, neurologist, uh, hospitalist, nurse practitioner, all the way up and down because I've got to prove a breach of a standard of care. That that not just somebody that made a mistake, it's not just a bad outcome, but I've got a breach of the standard of care, and that bad thing that was not standard in the national community among people just like you, whatever it is, you know, whether it's a neurologist or a ED doc. Um then I have to go and prove and link up a causation. And that's not always easy. You think it would be. You'd like to just point a gun at it and go there's just a straight line from one to the other, but that's not always the case. And then we have to anticipate the defenses that are going to come up because again, this is gonna take three or four years. They don't we don't just file these and they just lay down. That's just not how it works. Uh you you get that a lot with, say, a car wreck case. You know, the facts of Facts, you got video footage from the cameras. You know, this guy ran the red light, he ran over a pedestrian, case closed. You know, it's really a question of how much how much insurance do they have and how much, you know, are they gonna have to pay for this particular injury, but it's just not how it works in Alabama and medical malpractice. So they don't lay down. So we have to spend a lot of time uh being very, very detailed and very rigorous in our analysis on the front end so that by the time we file the case we're confident that we've got the goods. And we've got the experts that are, you know, the Johns Hopkins folks, the Mayo Clinic folks, whatever. We would these people are the ones that are telling us, hey, here's here's what's going on here, and this is why this is frankly out of bounds. And this is why this person died, or this person could have been saved if if but for just this small thing. So we we we have a real rigorous process that we go through. And so, yes, 49 out of 50 get turned down.

unknown: 20:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 20:55

When we're talking about the cost, we're we're speaking with Justin Jones on the legal lowdown. He he's a partner at Hair Wynn. When we're talking about the the type of litigation you do, um, and it's my limited understanding of this, and you're gonna tell me if I'm right or wrong. When you take a doctor's deposition, talk about what that cost. I mean, people don't have any any idea what you have to pay to take a doctor's deposition.

SPEAKER_02: 21:19

So, you know, I mean it's like all right, you you've you've had to do this. You go in a work comp case and the guy won't even come in the room and talk to you until you give him a thousand dollar check. Right. I mean, that's pretty routine. All right, well, so crank that up a little bit higher. If it's just a if it's just a treating physician um and they're associated with the practice group or if they're associated with the hospital in some way, sometimes you can go in there and they won't charge you anything. I mean, they're just they're in the records, they were part of the care. Uh it kind of is what it is. But you still, I mean, by the time you get done with a four or five hour deposition where all the attorneys in the room have asked questions, particularly if there's a lot of individuals and a lot of different places, you know, a lot of moving pieces in a in a complex case, I mean, you can easily spend five to ten thousand dollars per deposition if it's video and transcribed, and if you get in a fight and you have to come back and do it again a little bit or whatever. So it, you know, it I think some of it's the nature and purpose, and then sometimes you can get away with uh, you know, a couple thousand dollars. But that's that's kind of the minimum for just, you know, a r uh a treating nurse. You're gonna bring her in for an hour, everybody asks questions, you walk away by the time you get the transcripts and and you pay for the court reporter, and the you know, if you have to go out of town and rent a room somewhere, it's it's a couple thousand dollars just for the thing itself. Now, if I have to go take an expert like in Columbus or Boston or I was in Palo Alto not too long ago. I mean, uh these places, well, I mean, uh a flight to Palo Alto is I don't know, even in main steerage is I don't know, it's it's fifteen hundred dollars. Right. Hotel. You can either rent a car or pay Uber. Um gotta pay the expert. And these expert fees, man, they they they for a for a neurologist from Stanford, it ain't cheap. I mean, we're talking um probably seven fifty to a thousand dollars an hour just to look at the documents. Wow. Testimony for a deposition would probably start out at a minimum of four or five thousand dollars with a minimum of four hours to bring them to trial anywhere from ten to twenty thousand. That's just the fees. Not much less the plane costs, and much less putting them up in a hotel and everything else. So I i i i it gets real expensive real quick doing pretty much any case these days, but but medical malpractice for sure.

SPEAKER_03: 23:34

Yeah. And my understanding, Justin, is that you're not gonna find a doctor in the state of Alabama that's gonna testify to another doctor against in the state of Alabama. So you've got to go out of state to get your doctor if you're gonna put on one of these kind of cases, right?

SPEAKER_02: 23:48

For the most part. I mean, I uh we have some cases where something is so clearly out of bounds in terms of uh of the procedure that was done, the way it was done, that that that somebody will uh they'll step in and maybe give some testimony, but usually that's on causation, not standard of the care. Doctors don't like testifying against other doctors. There's this whole phrase conspiracy of silence that you hear sometimes. It's in every motion in limiting before we go to trial. And you know, keep that phrase out. Because the truth is, no, we cannot get an Alabama doctor to testify against another Alabama doctor in almost all cases, particularly when it involves saying they did something wrong. They breached the standard of care.

SPEAKER_03: 24:29

Yeah. All right, we're having a good conversation with Justin Jones. We'll be back after the break. We'll be back. Thanks.

SPEAKER_04: 24:46

Go in after it, we go out after go down, go into the BRC FM Birmingham.

SPEAKER_03: 25:26

We told you earlier, coming January, we're gonna be on in Huntsville 102.5 WBHP. We're also gonna be on in Tuscaloosa 105.9 W R T R Row Time Row. So welcome to the legal lowdown, Huntsville and Tuscaloosa for 2026. We are speaking with Justin Jones. He is a partner here when we were talking about medical malpractice cases, um, wrongful death cases, cases against hospitals and doctors. We were talking about deposition cost and things of that nature. During the break, I asked Justin a question that I want to talk about. Justin, explain to the audience out there when you file a case like this in a rural county in Alabama, and most people don't understand the judicial system out there, the judges do everything, meaning they do civil, criminal, domestic relations cases. Explain to the average person out there, Justin, why is it taking four years for my case to get to trial?

SPEAKER_02: 26:30

Yeah, you know, and that's that's actually, first off, it's a great question just in general, but it's something that every every client wants to know on the front end and a year later and two years later and three years later, and this it's it's not unusual for our cases to stretch into three and four years, and it really has nothing to do with anything other than it's just every issue is so hotly contested. And and before I could even get into the judges, I mean I just get into the fact that when you file a medical malpractice lawsuit, or really any any civil lawsuit, but particularly with with medical negligence, I mean, they want to dig into every illness, sniffle, headache you've ever had in your whole life to see if there's some other reason for the cause of your death or your injury other than what their provider did or didn't do. And so, you know, you you get this really slowed down process, and then we get to let's let's let's take um well, I don't want to I don't want to call out any particular judge and then they hear this one time. Well, I I have when you go to rural counties, well, I mean I I will say well you go to Etawa County, uh great judges, uh very conscientious, um move things along as best they can. But they also tend to see that these cases are complex. The medicine is complex. Um the largest employer in the county is being sued. The largest employer of the county's doctors are being sued. Some of these doctors are very, very well known, very well liked, and as they should be. I mean, we're not trying to punish the doctors, we're not we we don't hate the doctors, we don't hate the hospitals. They do good work most of the time. But you have some political issues there, and this is not Edoh County related, I just as an example. I mean, you when you when you go out there, you a lot of these towns where you're you're talking about the biggest employer, you're talking about some of the most famous people in town. You you get to a jury pool in in a small enough town, that doctor has treated either someone in their family or them. Yes, they have some connection to them. I mean, you're actually having a tough time getting a jury uh uh seated in the box because there's just too much of a connection to this man that's been practicing medicine and probably been doing it well and probably a pillar of the community for 30, 40 years. Uh and so you not only does it take a while to get sort of all the background records and the paper discovery going on the front end, but then they also are working night shifts. They are working, I mean, if you've got a specialist, they're on call a few days a week, they're doing surgeries on Tuesdays, they're doing rounds on Wednesdays or whatever. You can't just go up and just get a time to depose someone who's fixing backs or working on brains, right? I mean, they they are these are high-leverage people for the most part, they really are. And I mean, you have to kind of have some understanding going in. You can't make a lot of demands because they're out treating people. I mean, they may have messed this one up, but you know, they're still out doing the Lord's work in other cases, right? So, you know, you have a hard time scheduling depositions, and then like you talk about experts. We've got to put ours up first. That's pretty much just usual. It's not really a rule, but it's kind of just the custom and practice around the state of Alabama. Plan is put our experts up first, and that's just gonna take some time. Again, we've we're going to uh different states, we're going to Florida, we're going to New York, we're going to, or I've been Wisconsin, California, Oregon. I mean, you we're going all over the country because some of these issues are very specialized. I've got a guy up in Chicago right now, he's an endocrinologist, but it's a very specific kind of case that I'm dealing with over in uh in Tuscaloosa County. So I need a very specific type of endocrinologist. And so we'll have to schedule his deposition. You can't just call him up and get him to drop everything he's doing. He's, you know, talking all over the world, doing conferences, whatever. So you you have all these sort of systemic reasons just from the nature of the litigation itself that sort of cause the delays. And then you have the judges. All that to say, you can't you get to the judges, and they are doing mostly criminal work, mostly family law. They are getting calls at night to put in, you know, quick orders because somebody violated a restraining order kind of thing. I mean, they they and they are overworked and underpaid. That's just a fact. I mean, that they are. And most of the judges that we have in the state of Alabama, honestly, they are as good as they can be. They really want to get it right. But they're not specialists in any one thing. Right. They're general practitioners. And particularly a lot of my, you know, you don't have a lot of high-dollar civil litigators quit doing that to become judges. Right. Right? I mean, that's I mean, that's not a it's not a slight on anybody, whatever. But so what we have is uh a judge that may have never done civil litigation ever, for any reason, other than I guess you could call domestic work sort of you know civil litigation. Um, to the extent they've ever dealt with a medical malpractice case, it's our case is probably their first exposure. And the laws are completely different, not just from the rest of the Alabama laws, but from the rest of the country's laws when it comes to, I mean, Alabama's medical malpractice laws are very restrictive. I mean, we can't get insurance information, for example. I mean, it's just a no-no. The statute says you can't have it. Uh, I can't get into any other acts or omissions that a doctor may have committed in the past or a nurse may have committed in the past. I don't care how similar it was, and I don't care how many people might have died because of it. It's it's completely irrelevant according to statute in a in a medical malpractice case. So you you you you you get to in front of judges who, as hard as they're trying and as much as they they want to be engaged, they're having to learn a whole new specialty of law just to call balls and strikes. You're trying you've got to educate the judge. You have to. Right. And what they prefer to do then is just, well, I'll let the parties handle it. Well, if it's up to me, we'd be up and down in 16 months. But it's not up to me. I've got to work with the defense lawyers, and they don't like us being in too much conflict because it's already contentious enough, there's already enough motions to compel, there's already enough heat in the case, the day was filed. And so you have a judge that that is not specialized in this, has probably never certainly never filed one, but maybe maybe we've never even presided over a trial concerning these issues. So you've got to educate them, they'll they're more than willing to keep pushing and kicking the can down the road because it's it's a lot of oh, and by the way, all all these trials take, you know, a couple weeks. I mean, I I don't even want to sit through a couple week trial. It's just I it is what it is. I ha I have I've got a a case in federal court in front of Judge Heichler. Um we've got I think twelve to twelve or fourteen experts in that case. Wow. I mean it's a two or three week case.

unknown: 33:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 33:24

It's just a long time. I mean, it just you can't just put them up and down in a day. There's just a lot of information, particularly this one involves a stroke. And so, I mean, we've got to educate the judge and the jury about the brain before we even get started talking about the rest of the case.

SPEAKER_03: 33:38

Hey, Justin, I had a quick question that just came to my mind because to the average person out there, they're not on your level. Do you ever look over at the jury box and go, we're losing the jury in the minutiae? All the time uh of the testimony. You go, we got to get something back to meat and potatoes.

SPEAKER_02: 33:57

Makes sense. Yeah, no, that that all the time. And and because it happens all the time, what we really focus on, particularly in a brain case, or particularly in an ischemic bowel case, right, where you've got all this going on down in your stomach, it's all twisted and turned, it's weird. Who knows? I mean, the the language that these doctors use is just you probably even as a lawyer, that's been you still haven't heard these words sometimes. And so, I mean, not only am I having to learn medicine, but now now I've got to distill it down to folks that even if they're PhD level people, they're bored to death when you start getting into that kind of minutiae, which is necessary for me to prove my case. Right. I have to get it on record. Right. But they're sitting there bored to death. We we try to focus group our cases. The pr you know, the more catastrophic it is, the higher the damage numbers they are, especially, the more necessary it becomes to make sure that you are before you ever step in a courthouse. I want to have taken my case to twelve random people in their companies in Birmingham and elsewhere that do this, right? Um I'm gonna focus group it to them. I'm gonna present the defense's best case. I'm gonna present the defense's best case. Sorry about that, I thought I turned it off. And I'm gonna present just my case. I'm gonna try to shade it in in favor of the defense and just present just my case as it as I see it and see what the problems are. And then you get your feedback from those folks, and you kind of get an idea of how to go ahead and distill the information you need to down enough. But nevertheless, every trial, every time, you get in there and you're losing them. Yeah. And and that is the art of trial advocacy. Uh I was talking to Mr. Ashford, Leon Ash for the managing partner at our firm. He's giving a speech coming up at the winter conference for the uh Alabama Association for Justice. And part of it is the interplay between AI and trial work. And and the truth is, and we've we just had this conversation, it was yesterday. Um AI's been great for helping us prepare and do all the things that we need to be better, more efficient lawyers in terms of knowledge and and and workflow. But at the end of the day, you have to go and stand in front of a jury and and look 'em in the eyes. They have to know that you're sincere. That you're not trying to pull one over on 'em.

SPEAKER_03: 36:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 36:20

Because juries are smart. And and you know, AI's not gonna help you there. So yeah, it happens. I mean, you you that's that's really out of the gate, too, almost. I mean, it's kind of like when your first real chance to get up in front of an opening statement. And these opening statements, I mean, I mean, you need four hours. Right. But you really what's the attention span here? I mean, you know, it's it's in in reality, you got you got forty-five minutes, and that's if you're on fire and you got a lot of visuals going on with you behind you, and you're doing your best to make it like CSI on TV. Right. So that they'll just not tune out. And that's not including any of the other biases or any other things. They may not even want to hear what you have to say before you ever say it. So, yeah, you're you're you're constantly reevaluating where you are in light of how their body language reads uh or or how the judges reads. Right. Sometimes more important, they take a lot of cues from the judges. So, yeah, oh yeah. We're we're we're really trying to figure out how to make this as simple as possible from the outset of the case.

SPEAKER_03: 37:21

When um when I was in law school and I clerked at the DA's office and then became a DA briefly, the first question they asked me was Do you think you have to be believable or likable to the jury? That's a tough question because it's really both.

SPEAKER_02: 37:36

Yeah. I mean, even if they believe they don't like you, I'm not sure that helps you much. Yeah. Um but but if I had to pick one, I think believability. Yeah. I mean, if if and and I think you know I think we could probably relate to that. You can look at somebody and be like, I can't stand this, you know, but it but he's a straight shooter. I mean, I and that goes a long way. So he might still make a deal. Right. So they don't have to necessarily like you. And God knows if that's the case, I'm gonna do something in trial that makes me unlikable. I can't help myself. I mean it happens all the time. Or my client, frankly, might be unlikable. Right. And that makes it even harder. Because now I'm trying to advocate on somebody that no one really feels sorry for. Or no one, you know, they they don't what what why would I give this guy because we're always asking for millions of dollars. I mean, you ever seen a million dollars in a briefcase? It's a lot of money, right? And so, you know, people are what's my incentive? And and so I at the end of the day, they have to believe me in order to believe me, they have to trust me. Hopefully they like me at the same time. Yeah. Uh I think that gets you to trust a little bit quicker, just from a base psychology perspective. But um, yeah, if I had to pick of the two, yeah, believability. I mean, and and we have to particularly I feel like, and this is true in every bit of litigation that that I've ever been involved in, and I have done some criminal work poorly, I might add. But um, you know, being right and being fastidious about being right and and not making it up, the more I can give you the information, and it's not it's not just my opinion of how things are supposed to be. This is how it is. Look at the record. This guy, turn around and do all your theatrics in the courtroom, he he's the one that wrote it down. So you don't have to believe me. I've shown you what the answer is. So I I'm you know, the more we can point to something else and and the more our experts sort of lend credibility to our case, it does it makes my job a lot easier.

SPEAKER_03: 39:38

Have you tell me, have you ever had a case that goes to the jury, you feel like you're gonna win it, and then you lose it? What's that feeling like?

SPEAKER_02: 39:50

I had that feeling in August.

SPEAKER_03: 39:52

Okay.

SPEAKER_02: 39:53

Um that the guy has uh acute limb ischemia, which is so Sudden lack of blood flow to a limb, to a leg. In his case, it was a left leg. Uh we didn't I mean per se lose the case, but it hung. And I thought we thought we had 'em. And we did. We had ten of 'em. Two of them we didn't have. And surprisingly, one of the two I never would have thought. And of the per people I was most worried about, they were the ones going back into the jury room telling how much money they wanted to give. And they were I mean, they were pissed. That's how you get big verdicts. People were mad. I mean, that tends to be what happened. Um, but so yeah, I mean, that happened literally in in August. I mean, I I I th I was shocked that they kept coming back to the judge saying we're we're we're deadlocked. I mean, of course, that's not a law, so I gotta retry that case again this year. And we will, because they're not paying enough money. But uh, and I have no I I I feel like we can get them again. But only takes one in Alabama. You got twelve people on a jury. Yeah. Um I have to have all twelve. The defense lawyer has to have one. Yeah. And so, yeah, I got yeah that tends to how does it feel? It's tough, you know. I've got I'm really involved with my kids and my family. Um I think it's important to not let my job, as much as I love my job and as much time as it requires, I don't want it to have any real effect. I mean, my kids play baseball, they play football, they're doing all this stuff, and and so it's tough when you have to hole up in a gas uh uh Hampton Inn for a week, uh week and a half, and you're going to bed at one in the morning, you're waking up at five or six, r uh wash, rinse, repeat every single day. Um, and you gotta be on when you're in court. You know this. I mean, there's no breaks. It's that one minute that you're dozing off is gonna get you that you didn't hear the testimony right, or something like that. So that that sort of sunk feeling that that when I heard them say uh we're we're we're hopelessly deadlocked, is what they the the foreman said to the jur uh to the judge. And this was after he'd sent them back a couple of times, and and we we we basically gotten to the point where we he's gonna call it. He's gonna mistry the case. Um my first thought was I just spent ten days uh and and my kids they've probably grown up since I've been gone and and life just passes you by and and and and then I turn around and I look at my client. I can handle losing. Personally. You you if you do trial long enough, you're just gonna lose some cases. You're gonna win some, you're gonna lose some. You m you might lose more than you win. But you do it long enough, you're gonna you're gonna get your butt handed to you at some point. And I didn't feel like that happened in this case, but I look over at my client who does not have a leg. This is his one case. This is his one chance. Or her one case. You know, his his one chance. Now, thankfully it just mistried and we didn't just flat out lose, right? Right. But that's this is his his one chance. Right. And man, th that's a lot of weight on our shoulders. Um That's why I get offended by the you know, ambulance chase and talk and the tort reform talks and everything else. I don't think people realize how hard, at least the good ones, I I think we're the good ones, uh, how hard we we work to get it right before we ever even file the case. Yeah. How hard we work to make sure that we're following the law and that we're doing this for the right reasons for patient advocacy and for health care accountability. The money will come for these clients. It'll come. The jury j j jurors will get it, and they tend to, and they tend to get it right. And I'm not saying they got it wrong in the case I just you know got hung up in in August. But um it is t it is tough to watch your client walk away with their head down. Yeah. Uh and that's that that's what kills me. I can take the loss. I can't for them though. I hate it.

unknown: 43:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 43:56

I understand that. Any any any type of work you do in law, you always want to win. Nobody likes to lose because I had a case last year, Justin other side said, Joe, why are you so driven to win? And I looked at them and I they have a they're an incredible lawyer. I said, Well, let me ask you, how'd you make all that money all your lifetime? Did when people come in your office, did they say, How many times did you lose? No. They hire you because they say, Are you good at what you do? Yeah. And and we are in a very, very competitive profession. It's ultra competitive.

SPEAKER_02: 44:30

Yeah. All alphas hanging out. Yeah. Yeah. No, it is. And and you know, I I think my my very peculiar market is less competitive in terms of you know the number of people out there chasing for the same cases. Right. But, you know, I have done the social security and the work comps and the car wrecks and everything else, and and I mean it's kill or be killed. When it comes to that, I mean that's it's your it's your lifeline, it's how you make money.

SPEAKER_00: 44:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 44:57

Yeah. Why do I want to win? Somebody's gotta eat. Yeah. That's why.

SPEAKER_03: 45:01

You know, pay the mortgage. And we trade on our name. I tell people that every day. I trade on my name.

SPEAKER_02: 45:06

Yeah. You know. And I don't think there's anything, you know, look, I mean, I I we would there there are easier ways to make money, I'll say that too. So so I I don't want anyone to get the understanding from either of us that we're in it for the money, because there are much easier ways to make a lot more money than what we do. It without the stress. There I mean, there are. I mean, we all I mean I it's they I I know there are because those people out there doing that, they're calling me to help, you know, do I know a lawyer that helped him close this massive million dollar deal? Yeah, yeah, call this guy. So, I mean, I we we do want to pay, and we do want to get paid for what we do. Particularly I don't I mean, you're at least billing by the hour or getting a retainer. I've got uh on on every given case that I have, it's four years without a paycheck on that case. In the meantime, I'm spending a hundred thousand dollars or more on every single case. So, um yeah, I mean, we we have to win in that respect.

SPEAKER_03: 46:04

Let me ask you a question. We we've this is Justin Jones of Hair Winds folks. Uh he's a fascinating guy. I love him so much every time I talk to him. And I don't know how he feels about me. Uh after the day, I might never hear from the same. Justin, from my perspective, this is how I feel about practicing law. If you do what you love and you love what you do, you never work a day in your life.

unknown: 46:24

Sure.

SPEAKER_03: 46:25

I don't feel like I work for a living. And I really mean that. I agree with that.

SPEAKER_02: 46:29

I agree with that. But I I I that we are the exception to the greater rule, I think. I I I don't know a lot of happy lawyers out there. Honestly, I don't. I mean, in fact, they seem miserable all the time. I I I think um you know, going all the way back to the beginning full circle. I was in ministry and I said I switched to the dark side, but I I truly have always felt like it was almost a calling. That's why it doesn't feel like work to me. Uh uh it I feel like I'm doing some good and and I'm actually getting to help people in tangible ways. Um particularly, you know, I mean with somebody's you know we're we're dealing with desperate people a lot. There are really bad circumstances. And I mean, particularly I I don't know that I can handle being a uh divorce lawyer or family law guy. I mean the y you you are meeting you know women that have been abused, children that have been abused, coming into situations like that, the emotional toll that takes on you, the weight of the world that it puts on your shoulders, I I don't think people realize how nasty divorces get. I mean I hear stories hit on TV, but in in reality, there are small kids that are gonna be traumatized for the rest of their life by some of the behavior going on by supposedly two adults, right? Right. I mean, so it's no different. I mean it's it's a different type of catastrophic injury, and that's what we're both dealing with. And so um I do think it's a calling. And I think if you don't love doing it, you're in the wrong game anyway. Yeah. So regardless of how you feel about it, and I I agree with you.

SPEAKER_00: 47:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 47:59

You know, it doesn't feel like work. I I I enjoy going to the office every day. But at the same time, I feel like there's a higher purpose to it.

unknown: 48:08

Okay.

SPEAKER_03: 48:09

Well, we're about to wrap up, folks. Um, we've had a fascinating conversation today with Justin Jones. He's a partner at Hairwin. Uh, if you have a serious medical malpractice case or a case against a hospital, I would suggest that you call Justin Jones. He would definitely have your best interest at heart. And uh, folks, this is gonna be the last broadcast for the year for the legal lowdown. Uh as we teed up at the beginning of the hour, we're gonna be on in Huntsville in Tuscaloosa, and we're back in 26. And man, I'm gonna be back roaring and ready to go. I got some good stories for you. Uh my time off for the rest of the year. I'm gonna get in some serious runs. Uh I have y'all know how much I talk about running. I hadn't got to run as much lately. Uh, I intend to crank up my mileage next year. I have some really special goals set for me in 26. Uh I'm gonna get back to running some serious marathons again.

SPEAKER_02: 49:06

Stay out of crosswalks and mountain running.

SPEAKER_03: 49:08

Yeah. I got hit by a car uh year folks. I got hit by a car. Yeah, yeah, come on. Uh having talked about it. Uh John I got hit by a car running.

SPEAKER_01: 49:21

Did he did he stop?

SPEAKER_03: 49:22

He actually did stop after he hit me. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 49:26

Was he a former client or somebody you took to court?

SPEAKER_03: 49:28

No, no, no. I was running through Mountain Brook. The guy went through the crosswalk, crosswalk, and hit me. Bam, right?

SPEAKER_01: 49:35

Was it like he was looking to his left and didn't look to his right kind of thing? Like he was making a right, right on red kind of thing. So he's looking to his left, not thinking about where his car is going, just what's coming.

SPEAKER_03: 49:43

Yeah, so he's seeing me coming, and you know, he's looking left, he's looking right. I'm looking at his eyes. I kept running. He hit the gas, bam. He hit me. He had a big dodge ram.

SPEAKER_01: 49:54

Did you get a big settlement?

SPEAKER_03: 49:56

I hadn't been paid yet. Thanks to Justin. Nah. Justin's not doing the case. Uh Justin had a conflict. But um, anyway, um, gonna be back to running. Folks, a couple things I want to share with you quick. Make your goal list for 2026. One through ten are easy, ten through fifty are a little more difficult. 50 to 100 should not be pipe dreams. You can still knock some of those off. Make a list of 300. I make a list of 300 goals every year. I've picked off some between 100 and 200 and 200 and 300. You can do this. Be the best of whatever you want to be. We'll see you back next June 26th. Gotta go.

SPEAKER_04: 50:38

Go and remote. Go and remote. Don't forget to follow Go Legalflowdown Podcast. iH. If you need a private legal consultation, we've got to go on his website. Goandgremod.com. And again, next Saturday for the legal flowdowns with Go and Go presentation is greater than the quality of legal services to be performed. Is greater than the quality of legal services performed by any other lawyer.