Trial War Stories - Medical Negligence with Steve Crandall

What happens when a world-renowned hospital turns on one of its own?

In this episode of Trial War Stories, host Andy Goldwasser sits down with legendary trial lawyer Steve Crandall to unpack one of the most unforgettable cases of his career — a high-stakes medical malpractice and wrongful termination trial against the Cleveland Clinic, brought on behalf of one of its elite neurosurgeons.

Steve walks us through the case from start to finish:

• A groundbreaking neurosurgeon performing cutting-edge surgery
• A catastrophic eye injury in the operating room
• A routine procedure that turns devastating
• A powerful institution that denies responsibility, fires its own doctor, and fights back hard
• A missing handwritten note that resurfaces like something out of a legal thriller
• A two-week jury trial Steve tried entirely on his own against one of the most formidable defense teams in the country
Along the way, the conversation dives deep into trial strategy, credibility battles, ethical crossroads, witness coaching, devastating defense missteps, and the emotional toll of carrying a case that can define — or destroy — a lawyer’s career.

This is a raw, behind-the-scenes look at what really happens beyond the verdicts and headlines — the pressure, the chaos, and the moments that turn the tide inside the courtroom.

If you’re a lawyer, law student, or just fascinated by real courtroom drama, this is a trial war story you don’t want to miss.

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Transcript

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What happens when the mothership is brought to its knees by one of its own? 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. All right, so my guest today is the one and only Steve Crandall, someone I've known for a long time. And I am so excited to have you on for a lot of reasons. First of all, you really are one of the top, if not the top medical malpractice lawyers in the state. Steve, thank. You. And very. Kind of. You. Well, you know how I feel. I feel that way. And I mean it sincerely. You're absolutely incredible. So thank you so much for doing this. You know, it's interesting when I come into these podcasts and the idea is to talk about a single trial, I'll have a little my little note cards right here, and I'll have 1 or 2 things written down that I want to make sure I hit on the topics for you. Ten. So we have we have a lot to cover my life in a short amount of time, so I want to jump right into it. First of all, we're going to talk about a cool case today. We're going to talk about what it's like to handle a case on behalf of a Cleveland Clinic neurosurgeon against the Cleveland Clinic. Pretty unique. Pretty unique. The mothership of all hospitals in Cleveland, Ohio. Tell us about the case. I want to start with the position I was at in my career. I had started my own firm at the beginning of 2011, and within a few months, I received a call from Doctor Hsiao Dy, who was a neurosurgeon at the clinic. And I'll never forget, I was driving to Cincinnati as he's telling me this story. He emigrated in from China, so his English was a little broken up, but I stayed with the story. The more I heard this story, the more I felt like either this was one of the best cases I've ever had, or he was just exaggerating because it seemed to be like something from a movie. But as we talked, I agreed to meet with him, sign him up, and then handled the case that honestly, I think will go down in my career as the most interesting and successful case I've had. Well, that's saying a lot, because you've handled a lot of cases over your career and tried a lot of cases. Tell us about the case itself. So the facts of the case started with doctor D, who was an expert in the world of endoscopic Arnold Chiari malformation surgery. And that is a surgery done through the skull with a very small tube. And they're looking up on a screen and they're fixing a congenital defect that occurs. Most of these surgeries result in fixing the situation, but with a lot of side effects. Doctor D was the only one in the country, literally the only one in the world, who had perfected being able to do these surgeries successfully through a tube. Mazing. So when he came to the clinic, they actually had a annual report where they talk about all the amazing things that happened at the clinic. They feature doctor D as someone who had done these surgeries, and the only one in the world doing them, unfortunately. Well, he was performing one of these surgeries. He had a bleeder that came up straight up directly from the patient and into his eye. What is? I don't even know what is a bleeder. What does that mean? That would be when you're performing surgery in either, a small artery or capillary around the area is hit inadvertently and blood will explosively shoot upwards. And so he was using the goggles that you're supposed to use during surgery. But he got up under the goggle into his eye. At that point in time, he handled the controls of the surgery to a fellow, meaning a physician who was a doctor, had undergone neurosurgical, internship, but was taking an additional year of training in a specific area of neurosurgery. So he handed him those, tubes that they used to operate. But he couldn't do anything that that fellow could not perform the surgery. So Doctor Dee arranged to have a consultation done with the Cole Eye Institute there at the clinic. Got a physician on the phone who gave him some advice on how to treat his eye injury, which they did by washing out some of the blood. Okay. Doctor Dee was able to continue with the surgery, but one of the charge nurses inside the O.R. wrote down the advice given by this Cole Eye Institute physician to Doctor Dee and then handed that to him. He went to his office that night and put it in a stack of materials and went home. So this was a note that was actually written contemporaneously with the advice that he was given. Correct. Because they pipe them in on a like a speaker phone. All right. And so the instructions were to rinse it out, get up in the morning. If everything felt fine. You're good to go. No need for an additional exam. And and that's what Doctor Dee did. Okay. But unfortunately, unbeknownst to him, a piece of what we believe is a bone fragment came up under his glasses at that time when the blood came up and it actually punctured or lacerated his iris, and that ended up becoming a scar about six months later. Okay. And Doctor Dee was not aware of it until one day he got up in the morning. He thought he saw something in his field of vision. He looked in the mirror and there was a whitened small sliver of a scar in the upper portion of his iris. Horrible thing for anyone, but especially a neurosurgeon. Correct. So he immediately saw a consultation with an ophthalmologist. There at the clinic. And really, the second part of the case takes over. And that is the doctor. Dee, if you can believe it, a neurosurgeon of that much prominence is going, is going to now have cataract surgery at the clinic, and they give him essentially a very inexperienced, unproven ophthalmologist to do this procedure. Okay. That ophthalmologist fixes the cataract, which is a pretty simple procedure. People have them done around the United States thousands of times a day, right? Unfortunately, he was trying to be a hero, and he went into that wound that we spoke about, that it occurred at the time of surgery, and he tried to tease out some of the scar tissue. The doctor did know that that was going to take place before the procedure. He did not. That was a point of contention. The surgeon said he had described that to Doctor Dee. Doctor Dee said under no uncertain terms. Would I have allowed that? I thought I was having just a routine cataract. And if I was going to allow it, I would have looked to see who should do that procedure. Correct? Someone who has more specialty there at the clinic or elsewhere in the world. Makes sense. So unfortunately, when he tried to tease that scar out, it literally blew apart Doctor D's iris. Oh my gosh. There was a huge, I guess, really tear. And then he tried to sew it and it tore more. So the result was without with a huge gigantic hole in your iris. All of the light that we see floods into the back of your eye and makes vision completely impossible from that eye. So immediately postoperatively after they realized they couldn't fix it, they gave him a black eye contact lens. Okay. So he didn't have a patch over his eye. But essentially he had a patch in his eye which was the black contact lens that would stop eye from flooding into the back of his eye. Okay. What that did for him again, he operates using small tubes, 3D vision on a television. Was it he could no longer operate for the remainder of his career? A terrible, terrible thing. It was a terrible outcome. And here's the strangest thing about this case. You would think the clinic at that point one of their own, someone they touted in their annual report, would have taken care of doctor de. But the opposite occurred. What happened? Not only did they fight the medical malpractice case, which will talk about the many layers there, but he was also fired. They fired. Him. They fired him. All right. We are definitely going to talk about that because and I, I am surprised that they did that. I did know a little bit about the circumstances involving his separation, only because there was a really interesting point of the trial that we're going to get to. Okay. Related to that, that I read about that I want to talk about. But but please continue to to tell us about sort of the workup of the case and then what happened at trial. The workup, the case, really, you know, I guess was centered around what happened in the O.R. that time. Right. We have this note. Where is the note? We have the recollection of all the people inside the O.R.. And I instituted the lawsuit. Really? Less than a year after this happened. So this being such a significant issue, I mean, things like this don't happen every day. One would think that the O.R. staff would remember what the Cole Eye Institute physician said to doctor D, what was written on the note, and exactly what happened in the O.R.. Okay. What I found when I started taking depositions of the clinic O.R. staff is that they all had had a convenient case of amnesia. Every one of them. Consistently could not remember. They had no idea what happened that day. Really didn't remember it. Didn't remember this event happening? Didn't remember someone calling in. I don't understand that, Steve. From a defense strategy standpoint. I mean, first of all, it's obvious that they're being coached in that way. It's just unbelievable. It's unbelievable. Right. And then I don't know how that helps them either, because when you put them on the stand and they don't remember anything, it they lose all credibility. I agree. At the time my thought was no one. And the jury is going to believe that they have conveniently forgotten an incident so large. Luckily for me, there was someone inside the O.R. being the fellow who took the controls, who was not an employee of the clinic. He was a fellow. So in that sense, he was an employee, but he was not dependent upon the Cleveland Clinic for a job. And luckily, I took his deposition on video. I asked him very specific questions during this video, and he was, in my opinion, the first one that was truthful about not only that he had a memory, but what his memory was. And that really kind of changed the complexity of the case, I'm sure. So now you have this witness who's consistent with your own doctor. Correct. Right. And and all these nurses and our staff who just conveniently can't remember anything. I can't remember which to your. Point is like, why? Right. This is a Cleveland Clinic physician. Why not just be intellectually honest to this process? One of the strangest things about this case was that the defense lawyer who someone I respect, actually tried cases with this defense lawyer when I was a defense lawyer. For whatever reason, this defense lawyer believed in their heart. The doctor was faking. Faking his injury could do surgery, wasn't as bad as he said. And it seemed like the emotion of that interfered with some of the judgments that they made from the defense. I get that, Steve. But, but but if you believe that to be true, then why coach witnesses not to remember? So that's where the struggle in that. Yeah. Thinking lies. Right. I think trial lawyers are competitive people. They are. We want to win. I got some good advice early on. That said, don't take a case and let it ruin your career. Meaning don't get so competitive that you throw something away or you tell someone not to tell the truth. Those are things that the competitive spirit will try to bring out of you. That if you're not ethical, if you don't stop yourself, that could wreck your career. Why was it so important that what happened in the O.R. originally? Why was that so important for? For what? The ultimate outcome in the case. Because to me, the real damage came from the the procedure that was performed where this doctor went too far to try to repair part of the eye that he shouldn't have touched. I agree with you. Sometimes when you're putting a case together, you think about a certain issue, like the advice given in the O.R., let's say, and you ask yourself, is that the most important issue? Or is it when he essentially blew his eye apart, trying to tease out the scar? The O.R. issues were not the crux of the case, but if a defendant is going to give you issues that hurt their credibility, make them not believable, and really kind of bolster your credibility, you can take all that into the next portion of the case, which was that surgery. Yeah, that's what I looked at that that issue for. I understand why you looked at it. Right. It's a plaintiff lawyer's dream, right? If you could find something that is seemingly not that important and turn into turn it into more than what it is, that's another lie. Now they're. Lying. They're lying about something. Maybe it's not the most important thing, but if they're worth. If they're willing to lie about that, what else are they willing to lie? Exactly. So this note that was written in the O.R.. I mean, why was that so important? Because is the defense there just saying that the doctor is lying about what occurred in the O.R. originally when he was performing the procedure? Correct. They were saying that his the advice given to him was, I guess, more geared towards him taking the advice and seeing somebody like, the next day. Okay. And admittedly, that was a weakness of mine. It would be like if you had something hit your eye, why wouldn't you go see the doctor in the morning? He was adamant that the charge nurse had written out clear instructions that included, no need to see anybody. If you get up the next day and you feel fine. So that portion of the note, which we later found was very critically important, that. The person who wrote that note, you took her deposition? I did at the time that you took her deposition. Did you have the note? No. Did she remember writing the note? My recollection of it, because it's a few years ago, was basically there may have been her note. There may not have been a note, but I certainly don't remember what was on it. All right. So what? How did it. So tell us what happens with this note ultimately. So this note gets on Doctor D's desk. And when he gets relieved of his duties wrongfully terminated, he packs up his whole office and moves to Florida. About halfway through the litigation, if not two thirds, he called me and doctor D firmly believed that the Cleveland Clinic Foundation had private investigators following him in Florida on a daily basis. They just didn't believe this guy. They did not believe him. And so he was, you know, rightfully paranoid. And he said he had something to tell me. He could not tell me over the phone, over email. And so I flew down to Florida. I got off the plane, met him in a cafe near the baggage claim in the Fort Lauderdale airport, and he handed me the note that he had found. Oh, he didn't want to say. He was afraid that someone was going to actually try to steal that note from. Steal the note, intercept our communication lines. This is right out of a John Grisham novel. It was incredible. All right, so. So what? Now you have the note. The note? It says exactly what he remember was the Cole Eye Institute physician giving him. By the way of advice. When you have this note in your possession, do you tell the defense that you now have the note. Pretty instantaneously? But anyone who's done trial work understands that note now is rife with other questions I have to answer. Whose handwriting is it? I've got to authenticate it if I'm going to use it. The clinic was less than cooperative in trying to identify. Was this handwriting the handwriting of the charge nurse in the O.R.. Eventually, after many months, I broke down that it was okay. So it was in her handwriting. And they did try to, I guess, question the validity of that note. But I told him right away, hey, the truth is, he went through his boxes in his garage. He went through one box he'd gone through a million times, and lo and behold, it was tucked under a flap of the box. Here's the note. It substantiates what he and the fellow said, not what. The amnesia riddled people inside the ordered. And that was a big turning point from a credibility standpoint. Yeah, I, I could imagine. It makes me wonder. And I don't know what happened at trial. We're going to talk about it. But I mean, if I'm defending the case now, this note comes out. I'm not sure I would even fight that issue at trial. I think I probably would focus more on the big part of the case, which was the explosion. And frankly. Yeah, thankfully for me, they they didn't take your advice, sound advice, and they did fight and continue to try to attack the credibility of the note and exactly what information Doctor De was told in the O.R. that day. I know I'm jumping around a little bit, Steve, but it's so amazing to me. Did they actually end up? They end up firing him? They did. They fired him and I was able to get internal emails which illustrated the doctor deal, unfortunately, was being paid significantly less money than his counterparts. Other neurosurgeons. And, there was one inflammatory email that originally was not allowed into the trial, that said some very derogatory things about doctor De. It eventually did get into the trial and I think assisted me, in making the clinic look mean, which they were to him. But, shortly after the injury and I and I appeared on the case, they terminated his employment. Doctor D was unemployable. No one else would hire. I hate to be mean, but a one eyed neurosurgeon. Well, I mean, did they give a reason for firing this guy? I don't recall it. If they did it, it didn't certainly hold water. Yeah. It was it was just like where the Cleveland Clinic, where the mothership. We can do whatever we want to do. Yeah. You go against us, you're gone. Right? You go against us for malpractice, you're gone. An incredible. I'm going to jump ahead, and then we're going to go back. So I'm reading after you get your verdict in. The case goes up to the Court of Appeals. And there are a number of issues in the Court of Appeals, one of which is this, this, I guess, email that came in about your doctor and a really that went to how much he was making right and correct. I understand why that would be important. Right. Because he's getting paid $150,000 a year, but you're claiming his lost wages are much higher because he should have been making more and therefore correct. His lost wages are higher. Right. So the Cleveland Clinic fights you about this internal email, about what he should be making and says, you can't use that, but then they're dumb enough at trial to actually go in and say, well, this, this email that says you should have been making more. They kept it out. They were successful in keeping it out. Correct. But then they take the position at trial. You can't talk about what he should have been making because he was only making X, which according to his w-2s and that's much less. They opened up the door. They did when they were crossing my economist. The important thing about the email, it had two things. One, in some language they were using, it made clear what doctor D should have been making. So that was an important number for my economists to reject lost wages. But buried in the email was a very, very inflammatory statement. I have it right here. It says might also get us off the hook if he sues us under the US anti-slavery laws. I mean, that's not something that you want the jury to see if you're defending the Cleveland Clinic. Correct. They were just admitting that they were essentially using him as a slave to paying him slave. Wage slave wages. And yet they opened up the door to something that they had already gotten excluded. You must have been in heaven when that happened. I was so they had convinced the trial court that that inflammatory statement was so inflammatory that it should be kept out. But buried in there was the the number that I needed for my economist. Right. So while my economist was up on the stand giving testimony based on that number, that was in the email that I just asked him to assume, because, remember, I have to act in front of the jury like the email doesn't exist, right? One of the defense lawyers gets up to cross him and starts using portions of the email that they asked the judge to excuse. Me, what a mistake. And these we know the Cleveland Clinic lawyers, including the lawyers in this case, they're good lawyers. Lawyers. They don't make mistakes like this. Right. This well gosh. All right, let's get back to the trial. So so tell us about the trial itself. The trial was about two weeks. Again, I was pretty new in my law firm. I didn't have the staff and other attorneys to assist me that I do now. And so it was a two week trial that I tried all by myself. And I'm going to talk to you about that, because I can't imagine trying a major case alone. I don't think I tried a case alone in maybe a dozen years. So to think that you try a two plus week trial against the Cleveland Clinic with multiple experts, wherever every single issue is being fought and you do it alone, is is just remarkable and really a credit to you. You must spend it. Thank you. Lasted it was it was very stressful. I recall every morning calling my wife and basically saying like, this is a lot. I feel a lot of pressure. And she would be like, you got this. And so I would just keep driving, get to court and just do the best I could. But those two weeks felt like about six months. They had to they had to be brutal. Yeah. I also didn't have the kind of funds that we have now to have, you know, it's common now to have people who would assist you with putting records up in front of the jury exhibits, helping you with your PowerPoint. I was my own, you know, AV specialist that entire trial, it's incredible. It was nerve racking. You're running the exhibit, you're managing the exhibits, you're coordinating witnesses, which is a full time job in and of itself. Yeah. Just to coordinate people as to when they should be in court. And and I know the judge that you had, he wasn't screwing around either. You wanted this case in and done. Yes. He did. All right. So tell us keep going. Tell us about what happens at trial. So the two biggest things that I noticed, we had talked about the credibility issue in the O.R. with that note. Unfortunately for the clinic, they did two more things that I thought really destroyed their credibility. One was they had the director of neurosurgery take the stand and essentially try to characterize Doctor D's employment. They're different from that email that we talked about. Okay. And his cross examination, I thought was pivotal because they had let the email in. And now I could cross-examine him off some of the material. And he looked like someone who was not being honest to the jury about how good doctor D was when he was there, about his employment status and income, and especially about his prospects of being a surgeon after this eye injury. They were just attacking your client. They were. You mean you talk about polarizing the case, and here you're polarizing the case with one of your own. With one of your own? I mean, you just it's so crazy to me. You think they'd get up here and say, we feel horrible about what happened to him, and we want to do the right thing. But Mr. Crandall and his client are out of their mind with how much money they want. Yeah. I'll never forget, that there was a cross of doctor D from the defense lawyer again. He was from China. He and his wife Nan. Sweethearts. But he had been in the United States for a number of years, and he had trained, passed all the exams. I mean, he was here. And at one point during the cross, it was implied or stated, why don't you just go back to China at this point? Oh my. God. And I heard an audible gasp in the jury box, which was my first indication that they weren't necessarily jiving with the clinic defense. Yeah. One of the other aspects I was very surprised about, there was a very, very experienced, noted, neuro ophthalmologist there that's a specialist who looks at not only Doctor D's eye injury, but how it would interplay with the brain to determine whether or not they could operate again in the future. Okay. Before a case was brought after doctor D had his eye blown apart, this neuro ophthalmologist treated doctor D, treated him nicely, honestly, fairly, and like a colleague. His notes made clear the Doctor D's eye injury was due to that surgery that blew his eye apart, that there was nothing that he could do to fix it, or no one could do to fix it, and then he could no longer operate as a neurosurgeon. Now, to my surprise, when I went to take his discovery deposition, fully expecting him to be consistent with his records, he did it a 180, sat there, calmly, looked me in the eye during his deposition and said, the opposite of all three of those things. The eye injury was not caused during that surgery. He believed it could be fixed and doctor D could operate again. It's it's remarkable. I was stunned. There and there was a lot of talk about that in the Court of Appeals decision. I mean. You can you can read in that opinion that they were very disappointed with how that surgeon or how that neuropathologist testified. Yeah, there was it was interesting because you don't see in court of appeals decisions often where the Court of Appeals talks about a witness credibility because the Court of Appeals obviously isn't there for trial, right? And not the trial. The fact they're not the Trier fact and they're not the sitting judge at trial. I mean, the sitting judge is going to make some decisions based upon the witness itself, and it's not even know that it's not their job to weigh credibility. Credibility is always part of the decision making process. But you don't hear the Court of Appeals talk about it in your case. Steve, what I found really interesting in reading the Court of Appeals decision, they talked a lot about the damaging credibility of the Cleveland Clinic witnesses, which is really I don't think people appreciate. I think it's a big credit to you because in order to affect the credibility of a witness, you really need two things. You need a witness to not be credible. Right. And the second thing is you need a qualified and skilled enough lawyer to be able to pull that out of a witness. So, I mean, what a credit to you to be able to get that out. So much so that it's reflected in the underlying record that the Court of Appeals is making note of it. Really, really well done. I appreciate it. I'll tell you when you try a case on the defense side, you can be a little aggressive. You can be even a little mean or kind of forward. I learned quickly as a plaintiff's attorney, you cannot do that. If the jury feels that you're at all being too aggressive or too mean, you probably sunk your entire case, not just with that witness. So when that witness took the stand, the neuro ophthalmologist, I had a choice to make. The choice was to try to stay calm and try to draw it out of him, as you suggested, or essentially take it head on and kind of beat it out of him. And I chose the beating approach. Wow. Which was pretty risky. I knew if the jury, the jury was going to like one of us when he got off the stand and that was going to control the whole case. And luckily, I think it was really his records that assisted me is that I could say, like, I'm not just saying that you're making this up. Here is what you wrote. And there were so many of those that after a while, they just went with me and against him. What a pivotal cross. How did you use those notes during your examination if you don't have help with people? Because usually what we do is we have someone who will actually put that note up on a screen so the jury can see it. During your cross-examination. Here, you're cross-examining an experienced witness, someone who is obviously very, very smart. You have to think about not only what their answer is, what their next answer is going to be, what your next question is going to be, what exhibit you're going to use, and then how to present that exhibit to the jury at the same time. That's a lot for one person to do. How did you do that? Yeah, especially when I was the one putting the exhibits up. That's my point. But did you do this? You know, all joking aside, what I decided to do when you think about an opening statement, you want to start it off with a grade point. You want to capture their attention. Right? So I took that theory and moved it to his cross. And I just started with a matter of fact assertion of what he said in his notes. For example, doctor, you and I can agree his eye injury was caused directly by the surgery done, you know, by the clients, the two physician. Actually, no it isn't. Then I go to the note, right. And then we'd fight about it because he wanted to wiggle out of his note and kind of say, it depends on what your definition of the word is. Is. And then I would just I kept going through the note and kept going back to it. I think one of the, the things I'll never forget is when he was trying to say like, what are you talking about? What are you talking about? I said, it's right there. And we pointed it was up on the board. So great. And the jury looked at it and he looked at it and he had no response. I mean. You talked about bad credibility. They did it with another witness, two, where they had this one witness who was trying to disparage your client as far as his his abilities and his work at the Cleveland Clinic. But you pull out the letter of recommendation that the same doctor had written about your client. Correct. And then he says at the bottom, well, I invited people to call me if they had any questions. That means I really didn't think that highly of them. Correct. I mean, what a ridiculous thing to say. Yeah. That one. I was a little bit more careful and kind of let the records and his letter play out, because he was the director of neurosurgery at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation. Yeah. Like there's he do that, though. I mean, it's just such an arrogance. Oh, tell us about your client. We're we're getting up on time. So tell us about the closing argument. And then I got it back in. Some questions I have for you. The closing argument was something I'll never forget because the judge wanted it done on a Thursday. Everything's to the jury so they could deliberate on Friday because he was going out of town. Okay. The defense lawyer knew it wasn't going well. And so that defense lawyer was desperately trying to prolong Thursday. So it bled into Friday. And then hopefully, maybe she'd have the weekend to kind of cool things off, so to speak. At one point, the judge said, we are closing in about an hour, move your exhibits, and she's going to move her exhibits in and I want you're ready for your PowerPoint. And so in that hour, I was moving my exhibits in facing multiple objections because both defense lawyers decided they could object together, not just one. Okay, I was doing my PowerPoint and then I was objecting to their evidence exhibits. As I was completing my closing. What about. Jury instructions? Are those done? Are you. Those were done. Okay. Those were done. We still had some things we were fighting about, of course, but that all took place in probably when I think about it, the most stressful hour that I've ever had in trial. Did you have a closing argument prepared like the day before, or did you have to try to do all this at one moment? We took some testimony that day, so there was some fresh things I had to put in there. Yeah, but I had, you know, things where I was moving slides around as he was asking me questions to move exhibits. And tell us about your final argument. I mean, I read about it. It was actually the subject of one of the sections of the Court of Appeals that you. Yeah, you went pretty hard. I did. All right. Tell us about it. What was your thinking? What did you do? You know, I really believe as a plaintiff's lawyer that again, I talked about how you can't be mean. You can't be too aggressive in other than a witness or two. I was it, which is hard for me. It was hard for me to kind of take my personality and, and really kind of shift down in a second gear. But I was fairly successful at that. But what I feel like is, is there's momentum that you're building so that if you've earned the right, in closing, to be aggressive, you can and it will work. And I felt I guessed and I was right. I felt like the jury was with me, that they respected me, that they thought I was credible. And I absolutely unloaded on the Cleveland Clinic Foundation in my closing, did you load it? Did you unload in? So for those that don't know, as a plaintiff lawyer, you get to go twice, right? You get your opening, close the defense then goes and then you get a rebuttal close. Did you do this in your opening close? You went after him or or did you hold back or did you go after? And so you did it twice. I really I would say my opening was was pretty forceful. The beginning portion, it was like, you know, maybe 40 minutes long, 30 minutes long. So we had a time limitation. I spent less time on my evidence and more basically mocking what we had just gone over. You and I just got over or went over here and I would say in my rebuttal, I felt like I had the jury. So I was a little bit more measured, and just kind of cleaned up some of the things that I saw from the defense. You actually took it down a notch. I did, which is unusual. I mean, usually it's the complete opposite, right? Yeah. I thought it would have been too much if I got up twice, you know, and was too aggressive. Yeah, well you must you obviously did a great job. And so now the jury has the case. The judge wants to get the hell out of there. Yeah. Do you remember how long the jury was out? Do you remember? We sent them home. They came back Friday, and I would say by like two, 230. The judge called us in, before reading the verdict form. He called the defense lawyer and I over to the sidebar, and he wanted to show us that he thought there was a discrepancy in the jury verdict, but it turned out there wasn't. But in the process of showing us that he showed the two of us the verdict, something that I'll never forget. And I take no joy in this. I'm just saying, this was a defense lawyer who really gave me a hard time every step of the way and did some things that I wouldn't have done myself. When that defense lawyer saw that number, they reflexively it was like all of the air was sucked out of their body. And I heard it. And I'll never forget that noise. And it was a noise of shock and despair, which again highlights to me that they never looked at the case. Objective way. Right? They looked at it with emotion, and they never saw coming right to that last minute. That, that that's amazing. And what was the verdict, Steve? It was 7.7 million. It turned out to be once they applied the caps, most of it, I would say 90% of it was his future, lost wages. So the jury believed that he could not operate again and that he should have gotten the higher wage that was contained in that, email that we spoke of. Incredible. What an incredible verdict. And and a wild, wild trial it was. I could go on for another hour about the trial itself, but I have to ask you a few questions that I like to ask all of my guests. One of the things that I, I find so fascinating about you is your start. You started out as a medical malpractice defense lawyer, correct? You were trained by some of the best. Who were some of your mentors? When I was at Jacobson Manor, which is a now defunct firm there, the incredible training program, you know, John Jackson. And for those who don't know, I'm sorry to interrupt you, Steve, but for those of you who don't know, I mean, Jacobsen, Maynard and the REM and your firm were the two premier, correct medical defense firms. I mean, there was there was it was those two and no one else at the time. And so I started at Jacobsen, Maynard. I had a great mentor named John Jackson. He's no longer with us. But the thing I'll never forget him teaching me is when you're sitting in court and things are going well. He used to say, if they're sticking a pin in your eye, no one can tell how bad it hurts to just sit there with a straight look on your face. And I've used it a million times and then went over to remedy your and my much, much older mentor. There was a man named Bill Meadows, of course, who, Greg. Incredible job training me at Rominger. Great lawyer. I mean, you couldn't work with a better, better lawyer and a better person. I mean, Bill is just for those who don't know him. He is hilarious. Yes, he is a hell of a trial lawyer and just a terrific guy. And then there was a couple others. There's a guy named Gary Goldwasser. I'm not sure if you know Gary. Thank you. For who he was actually instrumental in having me hired at at Rominger. Steve Walters did a great job. Jim Malone help with some of my training. So I really had a great training program as a defense lawyer. Did you do work for the Cleveland Clinic when you were a defense lawyer? I did when I was at Jacobson. And, you know, I work with John Jackson. I was actually, at that time the youngest non partner allowed to do clinic work under John's kind of guidance. Then when I moved to premature, I began handling cases on my own. I've tried cases for the Cleveland Clinic. I want to emphasize I have the most I have the utmost respect for many, many members there at the clinic, both physicians and in-house counsel. They're really a great institution. I just think they were misled by the defense lawyers in the case that we discussed. Yeah, and that's a good point of emphasis. I mean, there we are so blessed and lucky to have the Cleveland Clinic here in Cleveland. And that should not get lost on this podcast. Absolutely. And it is true that those that represent the Cleveland Clinic are top notch lawyers. And for the most part, they do a great, great job. And my father represented the Cleveland Clinic for years. It was an honor to represent them. It really was. Yeah. But then you stopped doing defense work and you started doing plaintiff work, which is what you do now and build a hell of a firm. What? We had a really interesting conversation before this podcast started. Can you tell our listeners what you think the differences are between plaintiff's work and defense work? Absolutely. Here's something that I don't think people realize is when you're a defense lawyer, as you gain experience and as you gain a reputation for being a good trial lawyer, you actually your cases actually, factually are worse. Meaning when you're young, you get cases where the medicine's on your side and they'll let you try those cases as you get older and a reputation for winning cases, when bad medicine occurs, they turn to you and say, like, get us out of this. And I found myself not being proud of the fact I was on the wrong side of medicine and, really struggling with the difficulties and complexities in terms of I'm taking a case that I probably should be paying somebody on and I'm and I'm going to beat them many cases. I did beat the plaintiff. Conversely, when you switch sides to the plaintiff's bar. And you're not only beating them, you're sometimes beating them where these are catastrophically injured. Oh yeah. Individuals who's personally and from a family perspective, they were really wronged. And that's something that you probably feel as a defense lawyer when you're forced to. Not that force is the wrong word. When you're defending these people because it's your job. It's your. Job. To advocate on behalf of the defendant and you do it really well. But to your point, that's a hard thing to do for many, many years it is. My kids were getting older and I kept thinking of myself when they ask me, what do you do? You know, I don't want to explain to them that I sent a family home whose 18 year old died from meningitis with zero money, even though in my mind they probably were right medically that I had, you know, kind of outmaneuvered and now tried the case against their lawyer. Yeah. So I know I interrupt you. I'm sorry for doing that, but your point's well taken that as you get better in your career as a defense lawyer in the cases that you're handling are actually worse. I mean, they're more difficult. Yeah. And they expect more out of you. Good point. So when you become a plaintiff's lawyer, the converse is true in the sense that as you gain a reputation of having success on behalf of patients and their families, people come to you with medically true cases for the patient. They come to you and say, listen, this is a horrible outcome. Horrible medicine will you handle it? So when I walk in to a conference room, let's say to take depositions, I might have 5 or 6 defense lawyers against me, but they're all experienced enough to know that I'm on the right side of the medicine. And I feel very proud going in and doing what I'm doing for the family in that instance. Yeah. I want to ask you one other thing before we sort of wrap this up. In your cases, when you work up a case on behalf of a plaintiff and you're taking the depositions of adverse witnesses who are medical professionals, these are smart people. You're not a doctor. They know the medicine right inside and out. You're typically dealing with them in their specialty. So it's not just medicine. It's their specialty. Yeah. They speak a language that most people don't speak like how did how did you learn that? How do you feel comfortable doing that? All the time. You know, I'll say that part of the job, like when I go to take the director of neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins, which is the number one program in the country, when I go to take their deposition, it is just incredibly intellectually stimulating. This is my 31st year in practice, and I would say that each area of medicine that a case touches upon, you learn. And by your fifth or sixth year, it all starts to fit together. But another segment that I don't think people appreciate is it's not just the medicine, it's the inner workings of a hospital. For example, when a film's ordered what really happens to get it to where the film is taken, and those are things you have to pick up along the way, because a lot of times those internal processes and protocols will be as important in the case as the medicine. And so I think it's just a gathering of experience. That's why I say, like, you know, there's only a handful of us who really, really just do medical malpractice. I have tremendous respect for all my colleagues. I think when you've been doing just this, you start to slowly develop knowledge that is hard for someone to just pick up a case and and say, I'm going to run with this case. 100%. I mean, I know if I had to go take the deposition of a neurosurgeon at Johns Hopkins to talk about neurosurgical issues, I'd be scared to death. Yeah. I mean, do you even get nervous anymore? Or is it just I. Do, do I really do I get I get so nervous before these depositions because they matter and I put I'm a believer some people are like, oh, I'm not going to take the defense experts. I think that's being lazy. I just don't think they're being honest with themselves. I already know what they're going to say. You know, whatever baloney. If you take that deposition and prepare for it like you would trial, you're going to get some huge admissions that cripple the other side's case. And I've often find defense lawyers saying, like, we're trying this thing at the end of their experts depositions, like 8 or 9 of them, they're done. Yeah. There's a there's a movement right now. It's this book. Depositions are trial. You may have heard of it. It's a big, big movement now amongst the plaintiff bar with that thought in mind. Right. You prepare for deposition like you would trial. Yes. Days and days. And so consequently, I am nervous because I've really spent an intense few days getting ready. I mean, my wife knows. Oh, she'll be like, I can tell, you know, when I'm home, she'll be like, I can tell you, you're thinking about the deposition. So when you put that much thought into it, it's just natural to be a little nervous. But they're good nerves. The other thing I would say is when I'm deposing another expert, I'm always nice. Okay. If they want to take it in the gutter, I'll go there. But they have to take me there. I'm very nice and I think after a while they start to see that, hey, you're a nice person, but be, you know, your medicine and you can't kind of they can't get you off track by using some big phrase. And I've noticed there's like there's a, like a rhythm to a deposition. And two thirds of the way through, I'm starting to get a lot more of like, yes, I agree, because I'm like, all right, this guy's legitimate. He's classy, he's nice, he knows his stuff. I can't, you know, I can't fake him out. And you're asking good questions. Does that in your experience, has that eliminated a lot of the objections and the interruptions during the course of these depositions? Are they still par for the course? No, I think it does. It does. I guess it would. There's a certain there's a personality of some defense lawyers out there who are just going to try to get you off your game. And, you know, when I was younger, I would get so angry and I would go back at them. I think, you know, now I'm in my 50s. I just ignore. It. And I was going to ask you what you do see ignore completely ignore. You know, maybe once in a while I'll put like a, you know, kind of a sarcastic thing, like, be careful, doctor. He's objecting as much because he's really nervous about what you're about to say. Right. You know, maybe that once in a while, but I just say, go ahead. You know, they have Jack. Go ahead. And I need you to rephrase it, so I'll just rephrasing it. Go ahead. It's a great tip because you just stay laser focused into during the course of your deposition. You lock in your trial nuggets. And if the case doesn't settle, you have everything that you need. Yeah. I also think like, let's say there's a dispute later about a deposition in terms of those objections you're getting, I imagine the judge reading the transcript or their staff attorney in trying to determine who is more reasonable if I let them object like crazy for an hour and a half and didn't say anything. But at the hour and a half, two hour mark, I say something, you know, sharp. They're like, okay, he gave them the rope. This is a fair guy. We're going to decide in his favor. Well, that's fine, I think that's helpful. I do too, Steve. I could go on for hours. I enjoyed this conversation so much. And like all of these podcasts, I really learn a lot from great lawyers like you. I, I just enjoyed this conversation. Thank you so much for doing this. Absolutely. I just wanted to say I was really excited to go on here. I know I'm one of the newer guests. Everyone likes to come out here because they're so jealous of your hair. Mike, thank you, thank you. Steve will edit that out, but I appreciate your comments. Thank you.