Trial War Stories - The Trash Truck

What happens when the judge says, “Forget the photos—bring in the trash truck”? 🚛⚖️

In this episode of Trial War Stories, host Andy Goldwasser sits down with legendary trial lawyer Roger Williams, who has tried more than 223 civil jury trials. Roger shares the unforgettable case where a full-size trash truck rolled up to the courthouse as evidence—and how it all led to a shocking defense verdict.

They also discuss why civil trials are disappearing, the lost camaraderie among trial lawyers, and Roger’s transition from courtroom warrior to mediator.

👉 Subscribe for more real-life courtroom drama and behind-the-scenes trial stories.

Transcript

0:00

You know, the evidence is really big. When the judge says, forget the photos, bring in the trash truck. Every trial lawyer has that one case. The one that pushed them to the edge, changed how they practice or kept them up at night. This is trial war stories. And I'm your host, Andy Goldwasser. I sit down with great trial lawyers to unpack unforgettable cases the strategy, the chaos, the pressure, and the moments that turn the tide beyond the transcripts and verdicts. And now to the show. I am really excited. Today my guest is the one and only Roger Williams. Roger and I have known each other a long time, and I must say, Roger, I think you're the most prolific civil trial lawyer in Cleveland. Really, I mean that. So you you've been practicing, what, 40 years now? Yeah, I practice 40 years total. 45 years as an attorney. All right. And I know at one point in time you kept track of the number of trials that you had. That's right. Yeah. How long of a period are we talking about? 20 years. 25 years? 25 years. The final 25 years. I kept all of my calendars, for those 25 years. Believe it or not, I don't know why, but I did. And then, after I retired, I was asked to join this organization of boda, which is the American Board of Trial Advocates. So I had to compile at least 100 trials. And so I went back through all of them to get a, idea of how many I had done. And also because I started to do mediations, it's good to put in my CV. But in the final 25 years of my practice, I tried to verdict 223 civil jury trials. That is so unbelievable. And I know we were talking in one year. You tried 25 cases or started 25 jury trials in one year. Yeah. 1995. I remember that year I started 25 jury trials and I finished 22. Which is just amazing to me. I remember Roger, I was telling you this as we were walking, literally walking into this podcast. I remember you driving this big sedan. You used to have a cigar hanging out of your mouth, and you would literally drive from courthouse to courthouse across all of Ohio smoking that cigar. You'd open up your trunk, you pull out the file and bam, you'd walk right into a trial. Yeah, that's pretty accurate. I mean, I, I smoke cigars primarily early so that I wouldn't fall asleep while I was driving. I was very conscious about not getting the ashes on my tie. But I traveled throughout the state of Ohio. I never kept track of how many of the 88 counties I was in, but I've tried down in Marietta, all over the state, and and, had a lot of experience because I represented, Giant Eagle when I was in practice, throughout the state of Ohio. So I had a lot of traveling. It is amazing. I know that both of us practiced primarily in Cleveland, which is Cuyahoga County. The case that I actually tried again, she was in Trumbull County, right. You don't even remember it. I do, I was a young lawyer and so proud of it. And you just you just beat me up something, so I so but it was a it was a fun experience for me. So before we get into this amazing trial, which I can't wait to talk about, but I got to ask you a question. So here you are, this prolific civil trial lawyer. Now, it seems like the civil trials don't go to trial anymore. These civil cases just don't get to a jury very often. And I know you're not actively trying cases anymore right now. Mediator. Why is that? I mean, what is going on? Why aren't these cases going to trial? I think a couple of things. Number one, I hate to say it, but to a certain degree, Covid was probably to a certain degree, best thing that ever happened to the judiciary. Because it shut down everything. But the criminal case is there was a backlog and initially after Covid, you know, cases, civil cases were getting bumped. And so as a result of that, because of the criminal docket, not many civil cases went to trial recently. I would say that most of the cases that I see, you don't see many automobile cases go to trial. It's primarily nursing home cases and medical malpractice cases. I also I know we talked about before, Chief Justice Sharon, I think Sharon Kennedy came in and indicated that there would be no visiting judges. And in those years where I was trying ten, 15, 20 cases a year, Cuyahoga County had at least five visiting judges, which is an acronym for retired judges. So you either went to trial that morning, that afternoon, or the following morning, and it really cleared the civil docket. Now, I've gone on record, about my opposition to that because, yes, it's a it may be a financial thing, but the civil docket is just so backlogged. And the problem is financially, particularly in automobile cases, if a case is worth less than $100,000, it is just not worthwhile to take it to trial. Yeah, I 100% agree. And it isn't just for those people who don't know. The visiting judge system was an interesting system that we had used quite a bit in Cleveland, where these retired judges would come back, they'd go to a different courthouse. We called it the Old courthouse, and they would their job was literally to take cases and try them. Sure. And so the the judge who had the case would then what we call spin it, you go across the street, there'd be a mad rush to get across the street because you wanted to right seat at the table. Right. And you could talk about that in your case in just a moment, and then you'd off be off and running with your trial. So let's get into it. You've had all these trials. I came to you and I said, tell me about one of your most interesting cases, because that's the case I want to talk about. And you say, Andy, I got a doozy. One with the trash truck, truck, trash truck. So tell us, what is that case about? Okay. That case came to me at that point was pre giant eagle, but it was rice or foods at that point. They had another, former defense lawyer followed by the name of al more hard. They wanted to transfer the case to me. Cases coming up for trial. And so I was retained to represent Ricer Foods and the, trash. Well, the trash hauling company was represented by George Lawson, who at that time was a legendary defense lawyer. And and a character. And a character. And he was, one of the principals, along with Marty Murphy of Davison Young. So the case guy, I don't know. And I have to admit, I don't remember the caption of the case, but I remember the case because it was an interesting one. And so the case got spun off, just like we discussed to Judge Robert Walther, who tried a lot of the cases that I had. So now you have George, who's a character. Yeah. Judge law author, if I remember correctly, he was a character. Yeah, he was a character. And, so the trial we will I will tell you the first, the most interesting one of the interesting things about it was on the first morning of trial, the plaintiffs were represented by Jim Lowe, who is still in practice, at the Lowe law firm. He's now probably in his 80s, but he was at the peak of his career. He did a lot of Ford, rollover cases as a product liability guy, primarily, and a young, not so young. Now, Dan Smucker, was with him. And so I just have to touch on that. Yeah, because those are great guys. They're great lawyers. And, James Lowe is one of my mentors. I actually worked for him years and years ago. So that that that's that's good. So continue. Please. I'm sorry to interrupt. What am I, credos, for want of a better word. And when I went to trial was I always wanted to get to this side of the counsel table furthest away from the jury. Because if you sat at the table closest to the jury, you always had to turn around in your seat to look at the jury. Whereas if you are at the opposite end of the table or the opposite side, you could sit kind of like you and I are right now, and look at the jury. So I always got there early. Well, I got there early that day. It was at the old courthouse and I walked in. This is going back how far it was Jim Lowe had set up a carousel projector. Slide projector. My gosh. With a screen. And he was running through a couple of slides. And I have to tell you, I was like, oh, shit, what is this technology? Wow. Yeah. They said and that, that shows you how long I could talk about that later, but shows you how far back we go. So the trial starts, we pick a jury. And Jim Lowe wanted riser and the trash company to bring the trash truck down to the courthouse. The old. Courthouse. Oh my gosh. So for those that don't know, the old courthouse is indeed an old courthouse. Oh yeah. It's old. You're you're right in the heart of downtown Cleveland on the lake. You have you walk into those courtrooms. There's one table, which is what you were talking. Right? Share the counsel table with your opposing counsel. And only one side of the table is facing the jury. The other side's back is to the jury. You rushed over to face the jury, and sure enough, you're back up to the jury. You see a slide projector, which was unheard of in those days. And the plaintiff, lawyer, James Lowe, is saying, let's bring in the truck. Right. Exactly. And of course, Judge Walther said, okay, so we bring in the truck that was on the front. Be similar to having a jury view, say, in a criminal case. So they have the truck be brought down. I don't think it was the identical truck. It was a similar truck. And so the jury is out there along with myself, judge, law, author, who I knew really well in the lawyers. And they have the guy that I have with me at the counsel table is Riser Foods representative. Open up the trash truck. Before you do that. So where do they pull this truck? Do they just pull it right down the street? No, the side parking lot, so on. Is your face in the old courthouse to the right hand side? They pulled it in that lot or that driveway right there. And so they bring it in. This was the first day of the trial. In the afternoon, they bring it in and my guy opens the door. And the allegation was the plaintiff who was a driver for the trash company. He had picked up this compactor or compacted trash. This is like a huge thing you put on the back like a winch, draws it on to the truck. And so he takes it out to the landfill. And the allegation was that this particular device we have sitting on the table was not ratcheted sufficiently to keep the trash under pressure, or perhaps it had been ratcheted too tight. And so when he gets to the landfill, he up of, you know, he opens the door and the thing blows open and hits him in the head. Oh my gosh. And he had very, very serious injuries. And so that's basically what the case was about. So the idea was to show the jury how the whole thing happened. And so I'm standing there with Judge Luther, my representative opens the truck. Did you know they were going to bring a truck down, or you had to make a phone call to your client and say, hey, bring this truck down. Eight judge's ordering it be shown to us. I think it might have been something that we covered earlier in the trial, like, well, we started the case. Low probably said, I want the truck here. And no one law thought he probably gets a truck here by this afternoon. Got it, got it. So we got the truck down there. So I'm sitting there with Judge Walther and this thing opens up and it kind of blows open. But it's very similar to kind of what happened to the plane. Not a good thing. Not a good thing. The judge turns to me and he goes, you're dead. And I turned to him. No lie. This is my ex. Pardon? A little more eternal love this. But I said the judge law. I said, listen, by next week this will be fucking history. There you go. And there you go. We just then started the trial, and one of the interesting things about the trial was, though we had voir dire to everybody, you know, and asked them how they felt about a corporate defendant and all those kind of things. During the course of the trial, George and I, George watching and I discovered, I guess, when we were watching the jurors come in and out for a break, that one of the jurors, who was a young female, was either reading like dos copy tall or some like Communist Manifesto. Gosh. And then I said to George, we're dead because this phone is going to vote against us and maybe get everybody else to vote. Yes, yes. So the trial went on. George was, historically well known for not asking any questions, on cross-examination. I love that. And the funny part about that is you're probably thinking to yourself, George, we have to prolong long this trial so that the jury forgets about the demonstration that we just had. Right. Let's push this thing out as long as possible. Yeah, yeah. So, it did go into the following week. I think we saw it on a Thursday. Went through the weekend. There was a lot of medical testimony because of the nature and extent of the injuries. But eventually we got to the jury. I don't know how much Jim Lowe asked for. Probably in those years, like,$1 million was a lot of money. But the jury went out in the afternoon, and we kind of figured they'd be back the next morning. We weren't sure, but I was there in the morning

and about 930 to 10: 14:48

00. We got the they came out and said they had a verdict. So George shows up. His office was downtown. I was my office at that time was out, I think, either in Twinsburg or Hudson. So I was there and the jury came back and lo and behold, they rendered a defense verdict. You must have been blown away. I was, because, you know, Jim Law was like a legend. He was like a god, particularly in the products liability and a really fine lawyer and a very, real gentleman. In fact, I had dinner with him at one of these, functions in November. Still practicing, still sharp. Good man, terrific guy, terrific guy. But I was I yeah, I was I was pretty surprised, but pretty happy. Yeah. And, so George, who was, as you indicated was a character, said to me, let's go get a drink. And I'm like, George, it's 1030 in the morning. He goes, don't worry about it. Come with me. All right. By the way, Roger, I got to tell you, I'm so happy to hear this because, you know, we try these cases, right? We get our verdict, good or bad. Yeah. And we in, especially if we win, we never celebrate. We never say. All right, I got to enjoy this for a minute, so I'm glad George said let's go celebrate. Yeah. And I was the same way. I mean, I could I remember this case because, I remembered the facts and so much that I won because I'd be the first person to say as far as, like, victories are concerned. I could not tell you many of them, if any. But I can tell you every loss I had, of course, and every butt kick, and I got every million dollar verdict against me and my old mentor, Austin Kelly, used to say, when you come back and you get hit for a million or more than a million, well, at least you showed you can try the big ones. And that didn't make me feel any better about that. Was that so? Anyway, so George says okay. And at that time, there was a race. It's not I don't think it's any longer. There was a place called the Lincoln Inn, and there was an alleyway at that point you could get out onto would be Saint Clair from the courthouse, from the new court, or the justice Center. You could walk directly down this alley. And there was this restaurant called the Lincoln Inn in the alleyway, had a little wooden door with a window in it. I remember it was it was very. If you didn't know it was there. Yeah. You would. Never. Find it. You never find. But all the lawyers went there. Yeah. All the judges went there. Yeah. Before that it was the theatrical, of course, which was famous for some other reason, criminal element and some other things. And then it became the Lincoln. And so please continue. I follow George down there and it was it was about 1030 in the morning. So it certainly wasn't close to opening. And he pounds on the door and there was a little window, and I see a gentleman's face in the window. He looks he sees this. George opens the door. Come on in love. So we had a couple of Bloody Marys and, so that that was one of my most interesting cases because of the people involved. Certainly. And as we talked to, brought back a lot of memories because Lincoln in like you've said, a lot of judges went there, a lot of lawyers went there. It's big guess since your, lunch item was the Lincoln burger, which was, of course. A hamburger. And a piece of bread with some with fried or with, Cheez Whiz on it. Yes. But that was, where everybody went. And, so it was a great it was a great experience. But, you know, the fact that the civil cases are not getting tried. Now, a lot of that is because of the visiting judges, and there's a whole slew of stories about that. I you just don't we don't have that here in Cleveland anymore, right? Right. We don't go down to the courthouse like we used to. I don't there is, to my knowledge, there is no place that lawyers go. The civil lawyers, I know the criminal guys have their own thing with civil lawyers. We used to go all the time. Either. I mean, 2 or 3 times a week. We'd go there, we'd go to John Q's and we'd go to just a couple places and we would just talk about trials. And it was so much fun. Oh, yeah. Don't do that anymore. Yeah. And when I was. Yeah, this is going back 45 years ago. But during my law school days, I clerked for a firm called kitchen Mesner and Dearie, and they were in the superior building along with Meyers Henderson, which was in the superior building. And every night, without fail, everybody went down to the leather bottle, which was down in the on the basement of the superior building. I mean, it wasn't just like 1 or 2 people. I mean, it was everybody pretty much went down there. And it went in such great camaraderie because you're you're with your opponents, right? You're with the judges, you know, everyone. It makes for a much more comfortable process right now. We barely even pick up the phone when we talk to other lawyers. It's all email. It's uncomfortable. So are you seeing so you you transition your practice and now you've you're one of the go to mediators. Really. Oh thank you Ohio I know I use you and love using you. Yeah. When when you mediate a case. Now do you notice that like there's a difference between the relationships between the lawyers than some of the older lawyers, like, yeah. It's interesting. It's funny you should mention that because just, yesterday on LinkedIn, Steve Crandall, who does a lot of medical malpractice work. Great lawyer, a great guy. Posted a rather lengthy post about that exact issue about in the malpractice field, medical malpractice. Feel that the defense lawyers don't get back to him, don't talk to him. Don't, you know, exchange your information freely. And and on that point, I wrote, like, I wrote a little thing. It was in June's bar, Ohio Bar Association magazine. The caption was, pick up the phone. And because I see that now as a mediator and I told as much as people ask for my advice, you see that all the time. And the problem is, is that young lawyers, and maybe not so young lawyers, everybody wants to email and no one picks up the phone. I mean, years ago, you could call up someone and say. Or I could say to you, and what are you looking for on this case? And you could say, Roger, I could. It really need to get X, but if you get something close to Y, I might be able to move it. That's right. And so you could have that conversation and then I could go to the company and, and of course I represent the insurance industry and say, listen, I talked to Andy. He's looking for this. But maybe if we got close to this or a little beyond, we may be able to resolve it. The problem with emails or texts is that then it's set in stone and people are reluctant to go back or, you know, some of this stuff and also this civility issue. Two, I mean. 100%. Rule. I said to lawyers, you know, when people would write me like a nasty, email about something like, I'm going to kick your ass or I don't know, you know, and I had the standard stock response, which was duly noted. And that's all I said. That's, you know, because you can't get into this back and forth. It's so true. And, you know, I've been practicing almost 30 years, so I'm, I'm sort of that in between her. But I think now I'm a more experienced attorney. And I agree with you picking up the phone would be really helpful. The struggle that that we have as plaintiff lawyers is twofold, really. You pick up the phone and you call the defense lawyer, and sometimes you just don't have confidence that the defense lawyer is reporting things right. The right way to the insurance company. Or if you're going to call the insurance company directly, it's difficult to get the adjusters actually on the phone. Yeah, it's takes 20 minutes just to go through the State Farm system, for example. And it's just so much quicker just to email them and say, here's my demand. Sure. So sorry for digressing, but a little, a little frustration and part of the practice. Now. I think the other issue is too realistically, is that the defense business from a financial standpoint, is very tough. It's very hard to find good lawyers that want to be insurance defense lawyers or represent corporations. And as a result of that, you know, people are hard pressed for their time. And this fee schedule as such without going into great detail, but a lot of these carries on are on what are called flat fees. And so people if you call a defense lawyer, he's not going to be able to bill for the telephone call. Yeah. What were you doing those were you doing flat fees? The flat fee system came in in the year that I retired in July. Okay. So I was not as it you know, I saw it come in. And what happens is fees are set at a certain level based upon what the client thinks the case is worth. And it's a bureaucratic nightmare to try and raise the fee. You know, as discovery continues. And I think that has a lot to do with it. I mean, it's just one of those things that people where they should call you back just for these very reasons, we discussed. They don't. And a lot of that has to do with, you know, they're looking to keep their hours up and Bill for things they can bill for. And maybe in some cases they can't bill for a phone call. So you went from this guy who's trying cases like crazy, right? And now you're doing something totally different. The end really the antithesis of trying cases, right? Trying to resolve cases. Tell me a little bit about that. Hey, how is that working for you as a mediator? Tell me what the how the good, the bad, the ugly, maybe even the secret sauce. If you could tell it. I don't know if there's a secret sauce. A couple of things. It took me a while to lose the insurance defense moniker. I mean, that was the hardest thing. There was a mediator out in, Mahoning County, Rick Blair, who I think is still doing it. You know, he said to me, it's going to take a while to get moving, so to speak, but thanks to you and others, last year I did 30, the whole year. Tuesday, I did either the 36th. The 37th this year. Wow. And I have one tomorrow. I have several into September, October and November. So it has picked up quite a bit. I work LinkedIn quite hard. And I tell people, one of the things I tell, and this is my wife, bugs me about this, but I tell people I'm in this not to pay my mortgage, just to keep my hand in the business because I enjoy working with people like you and other plaintiffs lawyers that I've known. And defense lawyers I don't charge for travel. Though I do a lot by zoom. And that's usually at the request of the defense lawyers so they don't have to go anywhere. But it's been interesting. It's, It's an interesting to see different in, different insurance carriers in the sense that some are more generous than others, are more realistic than others. I think the biggest thing and and I, I did last week, I did four and I settled all four. Wow. And one of the lawyers, the plaintiffs or he did a really nice presentation with his client in my presence, before we actually got started, about the pros and cons and litigation expenses and all of that and those on two successive days, two different cases, same plaintiff's lawyer. We settled both of them. And I thought that that was really nice way to kind of lay the groundwork because, if you do that at the front end, then when you get down to the, you know, the tight end, so to speak. And I had to talk to both plaintiffs myself. You know, the recommendation was that they accept the settlement, but from their lawyer. But I had to more or less weigh in and say, okay, and you enjoy that in the sense that I can tell people these are the realities of the situation and a big part of it. Without getting into too many detail per se, is that you have to have young lawyers understand the realities of going to trial number one, about expense is and juries. Part of the problem is no one's trying any cases or not that many. Whereas used to be able to go to a mediation and, you know, Craig Scott was a good mediator down in Columbus, used to have a loosely book of verdicts where you could say, all right, this is how much somebody got this. No. Versus the report reported. Not anymore. There's no verdicts. And the verdicts have really trended upward in my view. So you know, one of the I really think that there's three approaches amongst plaintiff lawyers. And tell me if you agree with this. And then I know we've been going a while. So we'll sort of move it along. But there's three I guess the tracks that I've seen most plaintiff lawyers make in mediation. The first is I want to do an opening presentation because I want to educate the other side. The claims adjuster, the person who's making the decision, the person with the authority. I want to educate them about the strength of my case. Right. And sometimes that works brilliantly and sometimes it fails miserably. Right. I've seen other lawyers who say I don't want an opening, but I do want to educate my client throughout the process. And I want my client involved in every aspect of the mediation, because I think it's helpful if they're engaged so that they know that their case may not be worth what they believe it to be worth. Sure. And then I've seen the third approach, which is Craig Bastian's approach, and he's a fantastic lawyer. Sure. Which is sometimes I don't want my client engaged in the process, because all it's going to do is get my client angry, right? Right. What are your thoughts? Is there a better approach or is it really case dependent? I think the first approach, which is the, what I refer to as the Kumbaya session, where you have everybody in the room, I, I don't do that. I mean, my practice is not to do that. And the reason why I don't do that, I don't do that is not so much from the plaintiff's perspective. But the problem is, if I give the plane of time to make that presentation, then the problem becomes, what is the defense? Either the defense lawyer or the defense representative, going to say and when I was in practice, I always tell the story. I was down in Akron and there was a insurance, the, insurance representative that everybody would know. But they would say plaintiff would give an opening statement, they would turn to me. And my stock line was, we're here to settle the case. We've fully evaluated. And I look forward to doing so. And then they would say to Joe Flabebe, so whoever that was next to me, well, what do you think? And the guy would call the plaintiff a liar, a cheat, thief. And that's not the way to put, you know, to start things. Yes. Seek, your approach like the education. A lot of times, though, in my discussion with the plaintiffs is I may talk to your lawyer alone. And that's not to say, you know, we're doing anything behind your back, but I got to get to the parameters, right? You know, because I do pride myself. Somebody told me years ago, and I said this when I was in practice, automobile cases, unless they are really significant, major cases should not take 7 or 8 hours in 2 or 3 hours. I have a two hour minimum. Most of them settle within 2 or 3 hours. You shouldn't be there exchanging nickels and dimes. You should. And that's what I use. My personal conversation with the lawyer to get it into a. And that makes a lot of sense. And that's one of the reason I'll end it on this note. That's one of the reasons why I love using you is you're efficient. You know how insurance companies work well-founded cases for a lot of years. You know, the risk of trial. You've tried more civil cases than anybody I know, and you're really just a pleasant person, which is so helpful. You may not see this, but when you're talking to the plaintiff, the individual, that you have a certain warmth about you, which is really comforting and makes our job as plaintiff looks. Like. Easier to settle. The case. Yeah, you do great work. Don't retire anytime soon. I'll try. I love. Having you. Thank you for this. It was so fun for me just to sit back and just bullshit about cases, including the trial. Well, I'm honored to be here and I appreciate it. Andy. Thank you. Thank you.