Clay Wire and Jason Wesoky – The Contract Dispute with a “Mean Girls” Plot
Text messages, complete with poop emojis, revealed that a charter school’s board members targeted the executive director because they just didn’t like her. “It was like ‘Mean Girls,’” recalls Jason Wesoky, who, with colleague Clay Wire, represented the director.
Tune into this case breakdown with host Keith Fuicelli as Jason and Clay describe how they framed the contract dispute as a set-up by board members hoping to boot their client off the job. In the end, she won a jury verdict of about $950,000.
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Episode Snapshot
- When he realized that he was making more as a bartender than he would as a political scientist or journalist, Clay turned to law school.
- Jason grew up in the legal world and went to college knowing he wanted to be a lawyer.
- Clay and Jason represented the executive director of a Colorado charter school when a new board refused to honor her contract.
- Because the team couldn’t bring tort claims against a governmental entity, they focused on a contract claim for economic damages through the Colorado Governmental Immunity Act.
- Their client used the state’s social security replacement for public employees to draw on her retirement and then return to work under the contract. The defense argued that their client had, in fact, retired and that she wasn’t honoring her contract.
- Text messages provided through the Colorado Open Records Act revealed the real story: that board leaders targeted their client because they didn’t like her.
- Clay and Jason were also helped by a former board member who had written a long email to the rest of the board, detailing problems he saw with how they treated their client. At trial, the board president testified that she had only “skimmed” the email.
- At closing, the team focused on showing how the board’s bad decisions were due to bad advice from their lawyer.
- Clay’s final line of questioning to the board attorney elicited the attorney’s personal interest in a good outcome – for him.
The information contained in this podcast is not intended to be taken as legal advice. The information provided by Fuicelli & Lee is intended to provide general information regarding comprehensive injury and accident attorney services for clients in the state of Colorado.
Transcript
Welcome to the Colorado
Trial Lawyer Connection,
Speaker:where Colorado trial lawyers share
insights from their latest cases. Join me,
Speaker:Keith Elli. As we uncover
the stories, strategies,
Speaker:and lessons from recent Colorado trials
to help you and your clients achieve
Speaker:justice in the courtroom. The
pursuit of justice starts now.
Speaker:Welcome back everyone.
Speaker:Keith Fuselli here for another episode
of the Colorado Trial Lawyer Connection
Speaker:Podcast.
Speaker:Super excited this week to have Clay
Wire and Jason wi Soki from the law
Speaker:firm of a mim.
Speaker:And what I'm really excited
about this episode is this is a
Speaker:very sort of cantillating,
Speaker:very unique fact scenario
that deals with a
Speaker:breach of contract. And normally
people think breach of contract.
Speaker:That doesn't seem very
tantalizing in this case it
Speaker:was,
Speaker:and I'm really curious to
talk to you both about how you
Speaker:formulated the story of this
case and presented it in a
Speaker:way that made jurors care.
Speaker:But before we jump into that,
clay, let's start with you.
Speaker:Tell us a little bit about yourself.
How did you come to be a trial lawyer?
Speaker:All right, well, so I
grew up here in Colorado.
Speaker:I'm one of the few Colorado
natives around still.
Speaker:I grew up in a little town just past a
little town called Red Feather Lakes up
Speaker:past Fort Collins. I don't have
any connections to law really.
Speaker:My parents were a bit of hippies.
Speaker:We lived out in the middle of nowhere
in a log cabin, no electricity,
Speaker:no running water. It was a
very weird way to grow up,
Speaker:but I didn't have any real connection
to a legal community. Right.
Speaker:I didn't have any mentors
or anything like that,
Speaker:so it wasn't even on my radar
for a long period of my life.
Speaker:I ended up going to college to
become a journalist and so I did
Speaker:all of that.
Speaker:Then I got interested in poli sci and
ended up double majoring in journalism and
Speaker:sci. It turns out though,
Speaker:that I was making more money bartending
than I would either being a political
Speaker:scientist or a journalist, and
so decided to go to law school.
Speaker:Where did you do your
undergrad? In my mind,
Speaker:I'm thinking it had to be Boulder just
based upon this story, but am I wrong?
Speaker:Was it Boulder or where
was that undergrad?
Speaker:I was at CSU up in Fort Collins.
Speaker:Oh, okay. I guess it makes sense
with Red Feather Lakes and, alright,
Speaker:so you're at Colorado State,
get your undergrad degree,
Speaker:and then where did you go to law school?
Speaker:So I went to du kind of
stayed instate again for that,
Speaker:but it was really at that point, I
think like a lot of law students,
Speaker:I had a false conception of
what being a lawyer was like.
Speaker:I wanted to do international law,
wasn't really sure what that meant,
Speaker:but I knew I wanted to do it and V
Nanda who was passed but was running the
Speaker:international law program at DU
made it one of the top programs.
Speaker:So wanted to get there.
Speaker:Turns out international law in Denver
is pretty limited and constitutes
Speaker:mostly just reviewing a whole bunch
of contracts and that sort of stuff.
Speaker:So it started to be
less of a focus for me.
Speaker:I ended up clerking for
the Benelli Law Office,
Speaker:the eye firm here in town that has had
some really great victories and got to do
Speaker:just an amazing amount of stuff. They
were super supportive of their clerks and
Speaker:so I was able to do a lot of
actual trial lawyer work from the
Speaker:backend as a clerk and worked
with Joe Lapham, Becky Albano,
Speaker:some great lawyers there.
Speaker:And so got interested in doing
more trial work and then did a
Speaker:clerkship at the Colorado Court of
Appeals with Judge Nancy Lichtenstein.
Speaker:And I graduated from law school in 2009,
Speaker:which was the height of the worst
point to graduate from law school.
Speaker:And there's probably five
or six jobs on the CBA job
Speaker:posting list.
Speaker:And one of 'em was Stars Mi Michael
Mim and Elizabeth Starr's firm.
Speaker:And so I just kind of threw my resume
out there and I was lucky enough to
Speaker:get hired there to do a
lot of employment work,
Speaker:employment and constitutional law
work. They had a partner at the time,
Speaker:Buca Smith, who is doing
a lot of that work.
Speaker:And so I just kind of
fell into it frankly.
Speaker:It was a really good situation,
good people to work with,
Speaker:and I ended up doing some really,
really important work right off the bat.
Speaker:Definitely a great firm that you
found yourself sort of landing with.
Speaker:So were you at then, well,
Speaker:I guess the Aborn MIM
predecessor was that: Speaker:2010 timeframe?
Speaker:I started with Stars Mim in June
of: Speaker:then what,
Speaker:almost 15 years later now I'm still
with the predecessor firm. Right.
Speaker:We went from Stars Mim to MIM when
Elizabeth Stars went on the bench,
Speaker:and then we merged with
Aborn Summerlin and Aborn,
Speaker:which is Mike and Marie, a born's firm.
Speaker:And then we've been Aborn MIM
for the past 13 years now almost.
Speaker:So then that first job,
were you in the Chancery?
Speaker:No, we at that point, God,
I can't even remember.
Speaker:What the name of the building was because
I remember when we first opened our
Speaker:firm, which I believe
was: Speaker:was the aor mim predecessor
in the Chancery. Oh really?
Speaker:We just had this little tiny office
on the floor and saw this great,
Speaker:amazing law firm doing these amazing
things and hoped someday to do such great
Speaker:things. One more quick
question before we ask Jason,
Speaker:how you came to be in this amazing world
of trial work before you went to work
Speaker:for Benelli,
Speaker:did you have an interest in doing trial
work or was it only by happenstance you
Speaker:go to work there that your eyes are open
to this wonderful world of trial work?
Speaker:I think that by that point,
my second year of law school,
Speaker:I'd started to realize
that there was this split,
Speaker:and it sounds kind of
naive now of plaintiff
Speaker:defense, those sorts of
things, but I had no context.
Speaker:So I went into law school with very
little information about what this field
Speaker:looks like other than civics
classes, that sort of stuff.
Speaker:And so I think what I came around to
was the realization that there's no
Speaker:way in hell I could ever be a prosecutor
or a insurance defense attorney.
Speaker:They're just not things that jive with
my personality and why I'm a lawyer.
Speaker:What interested me
about international law,
Speaker:and frankly this is coming from
the journalism perspective,
Speaker:is that I saw it as an opportunity to
do international human rights work,
Speaker:that sort of stuff,
Speaker:and stand up for the little guy who's
oppressed by large governments and
Speaker:horrible situations and advocate for
individuals. It turns out that's a very
Speaker:small percentage of what
international lawyers do,
Speaker:but I saw that outlet in doing trial
work and I think working at Benelli,
Speaker:it really opened my eyes to,
Speaker:you can have an impact on
individuals lives doing trial work.
Speaker:I retained a desire to do civil rights
work from just kind of who I am.
Speaker:And I think that ending
up at Starman doing
Speaker:1983 cases right off the bat,
Speaker:we had a huge whistleblower case in a
section: Speaker:and a police department from
a rape by the police officer.
Speaker:And so jumping into those types
of cases right off the bat,
Speaker:I think showed me that there's space
to really have an impact on individuals
Speaker:through doing this work.
And it just stuck with me.
Speaker:So I lied. I have one
more follow-up question.
Speaker:And how does your
background in journalism,
Speaker:does that help you find the
story or tell the story?
Speaker:Sometimes struggled with, here we are,
Speaker:we're supposed to be these trial lawyers
and we're supposed to be these great
Speaker:storytellers, but I don't know
if I'm a good storyteller or not.
Speaker:And I just wonder if your journalism
background sort of assisted you in being
Speaker:able to really trim down the fat to tell a
Speaker:compelling story, which I'm getting
ahead of myself here on the case here.
Speaker:Seems like you guys did
masterfully in this case.
Speaker:I think what it did is it forced me
to think about the inverted pyramid of
Speaker:storytelling. So in journalism
you're taught the inverted pyramid,
Speaker:your lead and the way that the story
starts is the most important facts at the
Speaker:beginning.
Speaker:And then because you have to be conscious
that news is a consumable product,
Speaker:and so headlines are very important,
sub headlines are very important.
Speaker:And then your lead,
Speaker:that first paragraph that tells as much
as the story as possible in a compelling
Speaker:way as somebody read the rest of the case.
Speaker:And so I think conceptualizing both
writing and standing up in front of
Speaker:a jury in that sense of how can
I do an elevator pitch in a way,
Speaker:a concise,
Speaker:straightforward way to tell the story
of this case in a way that encapsulates
Speaker:the important pieces that I want the
jury or the reader to know right off the
Speaker:bat, I think has helped. I will tell
you though, it's always a fight, right?
Speaker:I mean,
Speaker:we get so in depth in our cases and we
get so wrapped up in the minutia that
Speaker:I'm always having to go back over my own
work because I end up getting wrapped
Speaker:up in something that I
may think is important,
Speaker:but at the end of the day is that's
only important because of a very
Speaker:tangential legal issue
that I find interesting.
Speaker:And so that editing process
I think has helped as well.
Speaker:And I imagine your time at the
Court of appeals reinforced the
Speaker:importance of trimming the fat
and the legal writing aspect
Speaker:of the work you do, I'm sure.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And I think I'm a person who tends to
write when the page limit is 10 pages,
Speaker:I'll write 15 pages and
then edit down from there.
Speaker:And that's just kind of the way that
I've always written. But absolutely,
Speaker:if I'm not able to get my point across
clearly and concisely, then we lose.
Speaker:So it's always that battle.
Speaker:Alright, so Jason, tell us a little
bit about yourself, your background,
Speaker:which is fascinating and how it is
that you came to be a amazing trial
Speaker:lawyer.
Speaker:Well, thank you for the adjectives.
I don't quite claim native status.
Speaker:We did move here when I
was one years old in: Speaker:so close but not quite. And
I did just give away my age.
Speaker:I grew up here as well. My dad is
an attorney or he's now retired.
Speaker:He mostly worked his career here
either for the city attorney's
Speaker:office or the attorney
general's office here.
Speaker:I grew up obviously with the legal
world being part of my world,
Speaker:but as those listening or watching know,
Speaker:government attorneys don't get paid well.
Speaker:So while I did attend
Cherry Creek hold for booze,
Speaker:I was not gifted A BMW
on my 16th birthday,
Speaker:but I always knew I wanted to be
a lawyer and some of that was the
Speaker:natural selection process of
not having any other skills.
Speaker:So I went to college knowing I
wanted to be a lawyer. I went to
Speaker:undergrad at Miami University
in Ohio. As we like to say,
Speaker:Miami was a university
before Florida was a state,
Speaker:so you shouldn't confuse them, but people
do. And I went in as a PoliSci major,
Speaker:that's sort of the track,
Speaker:and I took PoliSci 1 0 1 or
whatever it was and I hated it.
Speaker:So I swam in college.
Speaker:And so I was talking with a senior who
was going to law school and I was like,
Speaker:this sucks. And he said, you
don't have to be a PoliSci major,
Speaker:you can major in anything,
so just do what you like.
Speaker:I changed my major to creative writing,
Speaker:which obviously being a good writer
is a huge asset. As an attorney,
Speaker:I did that.
Speaker:Then I went to law school at the
Catholic University of America,
Speaker:Columbus School of Law,
Speaker:it's the other law school in
Washington dc and went there
Speaker:because as many really
intelligent people do,
Speaker:followed a girl to my place of education.
But it all works out in the end,
Speaker:even though she did dump me right
as I arrived in dc. So a good start.
Speaker:But I did meet my eventual wife my
first year in law school anyway,
Speaker:so it all worked out. But DC is a
great place to go to law school.
Speaker:And I was there during a particularly
crazy time with both Bush v Gore and nine
Speaker:11 while I was living there.
So it was interesting, I mean,
Speaker:literally I walked by the Supreme
Court to get to my apartment every day.
Speaker:So there'd be huge protests,
some guy carrying a giant cross,
Speaker:somebody holding up an anti
circumcision sign for some reason,
Speaker:all the interesting protests.
Speaker:And then I was going to stick
around in DC for a while,
Speaker:but that didn't work out.
My wife, or not yet wife,
Speaker:but she moved to Colorado,
Speaker:her family lives here.
And so I moved back as well and started
Speaker:work at Perkins EY here,
Speaker:which had just opened up their Denver
office because my view of the world was
Speaker:you got to go to the big firm and
eventually be a partner there.
Speaker:And that's all I ever kind of thought
of or wanted other than a federal
Speaker:clerkship.
Speaker:So I did that for a couple of years and
I managed to get a federal clerkship on
Speaker:the 10th circuit. A new judge had
been appointed Judge Tim Kekovich,
Speaker:with whom my dad had
worked at the ags office.
Speaker:And actually those who have been around
in Colorado for a while will remember
Speaker:the amendment Two case, nothing to do
with guns, but having to do with Colorado,
Speaker:decided to constitutionally
essentially discriminate
Speaker:against L-B-G-T-Q folks.
Speaker:And that went up to the Supreme Court.
Speaker:My dad did the trial defending the law,
Speaker:and Judge Kovich was a solicitor
general at the time. He did the Supreme
Speaker:Court argument on behalf of the
state. So there was a tie there,
Speaker:certainly got my foot in the door after
that. I worked for Brownstein. Again,
Speaker:just sort of like that
typical big firm track.
Speaker:I grew up a little bit under Stan Garnet,
Speaker:who eventually became the
Boulder district attorney.
Speaker:And his view of litigation was not
the typical view of litigation for big
Speaker:corporate firms. His view was,
fuck it, let's go to trial.
Speaker:I'm not going to dicker back and forth
with discovery letters and all that
Speaker:nonsense. Let was just go
to trial and see who wins.
Speaker:And then 2008 recession hit
and a lot of layoffs happened,
Speaker:including myself. But during
my time at Brownstein,
Speaker:I had actually done a case for Frank AAR's
Speaker:firm. He was a client of Brownstein,
Speaker:and we had a case where he was our client,
Speaker:and I guess I did a good job because
when he knew I was looking for work,
Speaker:he said, Hey, come join
the firm. And I was like,
Speaker:nobody goes from Brownstein to Azar.
Speaker:I was just about to, there's a
joke there somewhere if they.
Speaker:Yeah, it was not a real
existential crisis, but I
did struggle with it. I mean,
Speaker:I spent all these years building
the resume, doing really well,
Speaker:trying to get on this track. I asked a
lot of people what they thought. My dad,
Speaker:my law school roommate, judge Tim Kovich,
Speaker:and eventually decided that
I'll take the leap of faith and
Speaker:realized while there,
Speaker:although I was doing mostly class action
mass tort stuff that representing human
Speaker:beings as opposed to corporations was
way more interesting and rewarding.
Speaker:So yeah. So.
Speaker:Let me just make sure I got it.
Speaker:So you did end up going to Azar
where you're doing mass torts.
Speaker:Were you on the wage claims
with the Walmart case?
Speaker:I think maybe a lot of people don't
understand the breadth and skill and
Speaker:knowledge that Azar brings to cases.
Speaker:So sometimes they might think,
oh, it's car crashes only,
Speaker:but there is a whole world of
amazing lawyering that is going on at
Speaker:that firm. Was that your experience?
Speaker:Yeah, so it's certainly like you've got
the public persona and the public image,
Speaker:which he's very much involved
in perpetuating. But yeah,
Speaker:behind the scenes there's
a lot more going on.
Speaker:I came in at the tail
end of the Walmart cases.
Speaker:They were resolving and settling.
Speaker:So I got to fly out to a
couple of objectors hearings.
Speaker:And so if people think personal injury
lawyers are really kind of bottom of the
Speaker:barrel, which I know that's
the public perception,
Speaker:it's absolutely incorrect because
the second that you get hurt,
Speaker:you got to call one of us and
you'll be thankful that you did.
Speaker:But in a class action,
Speaker:you can object to the class action
settlement and it can hold up the class
Speaker:action settlement for years and years.
So I had some involvement in that.
Speaker:But the main case I focused on,
Speaker:which was one that did not end up
successful was a wage claim against
Speaker:Hewlett Packard,
Speaker:and that was out in California in a
district court up in San Francisco. So
Speaker:worked on that and eventually found
my way to a firm called Darling
Speaker:Milligan Smith and Les,
which was a very small firm,
Speaker:and I was think the sixth or
seventh attorney mostly doing
Speaker:litigation, but a broad practice
and was there for 10 years.
Speaker:And then I had done some cases
co-counsel with folks over at Aborn mi,
Speaker:including Clay referred
cases back and forth.
Speaker:And when time came for a change,
Speaker:they were the only people I called
to see if they were interested.
Speaker:And fortunately they were. And I've been
here, what, three and a half years now.
Speaker:So.
Speaker:Fascinating, fascinating.
Speaker:You've sort of run the whole gamut
with your father 10th circuit.
Speaker:It's unusual.
Speaker:Is it not for attorneys to clerk for
federal judges after they've been in the
Speaker:workforce for a period of time?
Speaker:Or does that happen I guess when you
have a new judge that takes the bench?
Speaker:Yeah, I mean certainly it's
not the typical situation.
Speaker:Judge Kovich came onto the bench in the
middle of what is normally the clerkship
Speaker:cycle.
Speaker:And I had been out for a couple years and
he was looking for clerks who did have
Speaker:practical experience because
he was getting up to speed.
Speaker:And so that would
hopefully accelerate that.
Speaker:So I was his second class of clerks in
his first and second class of clerks,
Speaker:at least there were at least two out
of the four of us that had been working
Speaker:for at least a year in
the regular workforce.
Speaker:I had been working a couple of years.
Speaker:Got it. Alright. Well Clay, Jason,
Speaker:let's talk about this amazing trial
that y'all had in Denver who wants
Speaker:to give us the factual
backdrop of what happened.
Speaker:So in this case, we
represented Dr. Penelope er.
Speaker:Dr. ER's got an amazing
background as a geologist
Speaker:turned educator, just kind of
a very inspirational story,
Speaker:but I think what's most relevant to this
case and what's most impactful is her
Speaker:work with directly working
with science students
Speaker:in elementary and high school. So she
became a science teacher 25 years ago,
Speaker:30 years ago after a
career as a geologist.
Speaker:And then from that became the
leader of the entire science
Speaker:program for Arapahoe County School
District, if I recall correctly.
Speaker:And then from there started
a magnet school solely
Speaker:focused on stem science, technology,
Speaker:engineering and math skills for
Colorado students within Arapahoe
Speaker:County School district.
Speaker:And then from there became the executive
director of the charter school that we
Speaker:ended up unfortunately soon STEM
school down in Highlands Ranch.
Speaker:And so she became an executive
director there back in
Speaker:2012 when the school had just been
starting out and it was kind of
Speaker:failing. It wasn't doing particularly
well either financially or from a student
Speaker:performance perspective. And
she really turned it around.
Speaker:And over a decade of being
the executive director,
Speaker:the leader of that school made it
into just this incredible force
Speaker:within Colorado education.
Speaker:It started being some of the highest
performing students in the state started
Speaker:being nationally ranked and recognized.
Speaker:And then I think as is
all too common these days,
Speaker:STEM suffered a school
shooting in May of: Speaker:There was a horrible shooting there.
Speaker:And I think that for the STEM
community and for our client,
Speaker:that was a real game changer
and it forced our client to
Speaker:really commit to the
school in her entirety,
Speaker:help the school through
this traumatic event,
Speaker:be the school leader that she had always
been from an academic perspective,
Speaker:but now it was also from a societal
perspective and helping these kids who had
Speaker:been through this horrible traumatic
event become successful students again.
Speaker:So she goes through all of that and
she's been the executive director at the
Speaker:school for a decade,
Speaker:and the school decides that it wants
to start replicating, in other words,
Speaker:opening other charter schools
within Colorado and maybe
outside of Colorado with
Speaker:the same kind of curriculum.
Speaker:Let me jump in and ask a
question about that because,
Speaker:so when you have a charter
school, it is a public school,
Speaker:is that right?
Speaker:And that's an important
distinction, right?
Speaker:Because so charter schools
are essentially these private,
Speaker:usually nonprofit entities that
contract with a public school district,
Speaker:in this case Douglas County School
District to run a school to run a
Speaker:public school.
Speaker:They have this kind of unique entity
where they're not purely within
Speaker:Douglas County School District, they
have their own board of directors,
Speaker:they have their own budget, they have
much more latitude on their curriculum.
Speaker:That's kind of the whole point of it.
Speaker:And where a lot of charter
schools are focused on societal
Speaker:issues or things like that,
Speaker:or there's a specific reason for them
being that separate and apart from
Speaker:education,
Speaker:what was unique about STEM and what Dr.
Yer did there is that this was a school
Speaker:that was focused on stem, right?
Speaker:It was focused on unique
students who might not thrive in
Speaker:other situations,
Speaker:but because of the environment that she
had built at the school were exceeding
Speaker:all expectations.
Speaker:Correct me if I'm wrong, but one of,
Speaker:and I think that this becomes
relevant on your case,
Speaker:I thought is as a public school then
Speaker:she's eligible for para, is that right?
Speaker:And para for those that don't
know is an amazing pension
Speaker:plan.
Speaker:Do you want to kind of explain to
our listeners what para is and why
Speaker:if you are eligible for
it, it's a big deal.
Speaker:So Para is,
Speaker:it's the social security
replacement for public employees.
Speaker:So folks that are employed by the state
of Colorado, Denver school district,
Speaker:Douglas County School District,
Speaker:cherry Creek School District and a
number of other governmental entities
Speaker:all fall under Para.
Speaker:And what that means is that both
the public entity and the employee
Speaker:contribute a certain portion to
a guaranteed pension program.
Speaker:As pensions phased out,
this somewhat replaced it,
Speaker:and it's kind of this quasi 401k ish,
Speaker:but pension ish type of program where
you can get a certain percentage up
Speaker:to a hundred percent of your
average highest salary as a
Speaker:public employee.
Speaker:And so it's a real big incentive
for folks to take on these otherwise
Speaker:low paying jobs and work at them
for an extended period of time.
Speaker:So Dr. Eker is a part of this
and when she comes up and it,
Speaker:she's now been the executive director
for 10 years and they want to expand the
Speaker:charter school network
that they're developing,
Speaker:they offer her this position as the
CEO of this network. In other words,
Speaker:she would sit above all of the schools
as they opened other schools and she
Speaker:would be the visionary leader of
how are we going to extend this
Speaker:STEM-based curriculum to
all of these other schools.
Speaker:Still as an employee, as
a governmental employee.
Speaker:Right?
Speaker:There's a unique piece of para
though that you can retire
Speaker:for para purposes, begin
drawing your pair of benefits,
Speaker:and then return to work for a public
employer while still drawing your pair of
Speaker:benefits,
Speaker:these benefits that you've been paying
into throughout your decades long career.
Speaker:And so she was at the point
where that made sense for her.
Speaker:And so she goes through with this
process that she had talked with the
Speaker:president of the board of
directors at STEM about,
Speaker:and she signs a new CEO contract that's
this three year CEO contract that
Speaker:would've taken her out into
this year: Speaker:of STEM schools as a charter network.
Speaker:She signs that contract,
Speaker:then she goes through with this
retirement for para purposes,
Speaker:and then as a result of that,
Speaker:once a new president comes into the board
and before her contract even starts,
Speaker:they take the position, STEM
schools takes the position that,
Speaker:well you've retired and therefore
we're not going to honor your contract.
Speaker:It's a very simplified way of putting it,
Speaker:but essentially they refuse
to bring her back as a CEO.
Speaker:And were there ramifications
beyond just the income during that
Speaker:contract period of time that she's losing
or were you essentially filing suit
Speaker:just for the contractual
benefits of that CEO contract?
Speaker:We ended up at trial with just the
contractual benefits of the CEO contract.
Speaker:I mean, was there other
impacts? Absolutely.
Speaker:This is a woman who had dedicated the
majority of her professional career to
Speaker:educating students and building up
to this point where she could expand
Speaker:her vision for educating kids who
might not succeed anywhere else but
Speaker:under the STEM program that
she had built would succeed.
Speaker:And that's all ripped away from her.
Speaker:The impact goes far
beyond financial for her.
Speaker:The problem is this is a contract
case and we're dealing with a
Speaker:governmental entity. So because of that,
Speaker:we couldn't bring any tort claims
against the governmental entity.
Speaker:And so we did have the contract
claim though that got by CGIA,
Speaker:obviously the Colorado
Governmental Immunity Act,
Speaker:and so we kind of narrowed it down.
Speaker:We had hoped to go after
non-economic damages at trial.
Speaker:The judge unfortunately shut us down on
that and only allowed us to go after the
Speaker:economic damages, but we
were able to go after that,
Speaker:at least the economic
portion of what she lost.
Speaker:So educate our listeners because many
people might be thinking, well wait,
Speaker:I thought Colorado was a right
to work state or whatever it is.
Speaker:You can get fired for any reason. Anytime
too bad, so sad, go find another job.
Speaker:So how is your client able to bring a
claim for sort of sounds like wrongful
Speaker:termination or something like that?
Speaker:So Colorado is an at
will employment state,
Speaker:and what that means is the
employer or the employee
Speaker:can end the employment relationship
for any reason or no reason at any time
Speaker:without notice,
Speaker:so long as it's not for a
designated improper reason, right?
Speaker:You can't fire somebody for refusing to
engage in illegal conduct or you can't
Speaker:fire somebody because of their
race or religion, things like that.
Speaker:Protected class.
Speaker:Right,
Speaker:or protected activity that at will status
can be modified through a contract if
Speaker:there's an employment contract,
Speaker:then written employment contract or
verbal employment contract in some
Speaker:situations that governs right,
Speaker:and that limits the
ability of a company to
Speaker:terminate or otherwise change
the terms of employment.
Speaker:What's interesting in this case is we
didn't even get them right because they
Speaker:refused to even employ
her under this contract.
Speaker:So it truly was there
was a contract in place,
Speaker:they agreed to employ her and they refused
to abide by those obligations. What.
Speaker:Did you have to prove? In other words,
Speaker:what did the contract say they were
allowed to terminate the contract for
Speaker:and what was their reasoning for
not agreeing to go through with the
Speaker:contract?
Speaker:Jason, do you want to jump in
here and discuss that aspect?
Speaker:Yeah, sure. I mean, so again,
Speaker:and we're talking about a written
contract signed by both parties
Speaker:in March of 2022 with a start date
Speaker:of August 1st, 2022.
Speaker:So the contract was actually very simple.
Speaker:It's not a typical C-suite contract
that's going to be 20 pages with a golden
Speaker:parachute and anything like that.
Speaker:It was a couple pages and there were
three ways to terminate the contract,
Speaker:two of which were irrelevant.
Speaker:The only one that mattered was by
mutual agreement of the parties.
Speaker:And so there was no way for
either party including our
Speaker:client,
Speaker:let's say she just decided halfway
through her tenure under this contract,
Speaker:she just didn't want to do it
anymore. She can't do that.
Speaker:She was stuck in this contract. They
were, unless there was a mutual agreement.
Speaker:And so the school,
Speaker:like Clay said earlier
when she said, look,
Speaker:I'm going to step away
for short amount of time,
Speaker:I'm going to have no
involvement with the school,
Speaker:that's going to be my retirement. So I
can start collecting my para benefits and
Speaker:then I will start this
contract on August 1st.
Speaker:The school took this insane position
advocated by this other lawyer that was
Speaker:representing them at the time that was
just absolutely legally incorrect in our
Speaker:view that well, if you
retire, then you retire.
Speaker:And that somehow acts as her not
Speaker:honoring or repudiating the
contract. And so when she said, no,
Speaker:that's not what's happening here,
and said, before August 1st,
Speaker:before the start date of the contract,
Speaker:I have every intent to come back
and start my job on August 1st under
Speaker:this contract. They said
no. And our response was,
Speaker:where is the mutual agreement
to terminate? There isn't one.
Speaker:And we can get into sort of the Open
Records Act and the Open Meetings Act
Speaker:things, which really made it, in our view,
Speaker:impossible for the school
to make a good faith
Speaker:non frivolous claim that
there was a mutual agreement,
Speaker:but they did so nonetheless.
Speaker:Yeah. So let's talk.
Speaker:What was their in court excuse
for why they did what they did and
Speaker:then what's the real story and
how did you find the real story?
Speaker:Yeah, so I'll start briefly.
Speaker:So the story in court was you retire,
Speaker:that means you retire and this
contract is no longer in existence
Speaker:and they claimed that somehow the
para rules themselves prohibit
Speaker:a para eligible employee from
agreeing in advance of a retirement
Speaker:to come back. Well, that's
just not true. In fact,
Speaker:para documents specifically
contemplate this,
Speaker:and the school had done this with an
employee prior to Dr. ER doing it.
Speaker:The real story,
Speaker:which was discovered through core
requests and other documents and witness
Speaker:testimony in trial was that a lot
of people, for whatever reason,
Speaker:despite her extraordinary
success helping their children,
Speaker:didn't like Dr. Eker.
Speaker:They said she ran the school
like a business and they
thought she was overpaid.
Speaker:And it ended up being like
a lot of stuff is high.
Speaker:School all over again, right? Right.
It's like the cooler talk of people.
Speaker:I'm just imagining these teachers or
school administrators just sitting there
Speaker:talking smack and then it just
becomes this toxic work environment.
Speaker:And in my mind, I'm telling myself all
kinds of stories of how this went down.
Speaker:And I'll let Clay take over on what was
in the text messages and everything that
Speaker:prior counsel obtained through Cora
because it was like high school cliques.
Speaker:It was like mean girls.
Speaker:Oh my God. Yeah. And Jason alluded to,
Speaker:I mean a lot of credit goes to our
predecessor counsel over at Lewis Rocha,
Speaker:Angela Viic and Paige Johnson over there
who represented Dr. Ecker right after
Speaker:she was terminated they got right on
it and they sent out Cora request,
Speaker:Colorado Open Records Act
request to the charter school.
Speaker:Before the lawsuit was filed.
Is that right? Alright,
Speaker:so talk to us a little bit about that
and the ability to use core requests.
Speaker:So the Colorado Open Records Act
right is the state version of foia.
Speaker:Essentially what the Open Records Act
says is that any public entity who's
Speaker:conducting public business has to
maintain all the records regarding public
Speaker:business and public finances that
extends to charter schools who are public
Speaker:schools under public school districts.
Speaker:And so our predecessor council was able
to request things like the text messages
Speaker:between the president of the board of
directors and the vice president of the
Speaker:board of directors.
Speaker:They core requested all the email
communications between the board
Speaker:members who made this decision not to
allow our client back about that decision.
Speaker:I have a question about the text messages.
Speaker:We have a system here where we can
text our clients and it goes into our
Speaker:software. Did they have that or did
they literally take screenshots?
Speaker:I'm just wondering,
Speaker:you're just relying upon the honor system
of two people texting each other to
Speaker:actually preserve that.
Speaker:As much as we get into these battles
with opposing counsel, right?
Speaker:Eric Hall who was on the
other side of this case,
Speaker:a very straightforward honest
attorney to recognize that, look,
Speaker:there are these text messages,
they exist, they're responsive,
Speaker:we're not going to hide them, we're
going to deal with it straightforward.
Speaker:And a lot of credit goes to him of doing
something that I fear that there are
Speaker:less scrupulous attorneys
who would not have done,
Speaker:but at the end of the day they did.
They took screenshots on the president,
Speaker:took screenshots on her phone,
Speaker:and those were produced very quickly
as a result of core requests.
Speaker:I'm literally in shock. I feel like that
would never happen in one of my cases,
Speaker:but maybe it's just my luck in the world.
Speaker:Well, keep in mind it's got
to be the governmental work.
Speaker:So a lot of, particularly in the attorney
general's office here in Colorado,
Speaker:they are required to have two phones
like personal phone and government phone.
Speaker:And if you do any government
business on your personal phone,
Speaker:well that is going to bring everything
in your personal phone into the net of
Speaker:Quora requests. Part of the problem
here is as Clay talked about,
Speaker:is this charter school has
its own board of directors.
Speaker:It's not governed by the
board of directors of Douglas
County schools and it's a
Speaker:voluntary board and that obviously
is a difficult position to be in,
Speaker:and they may not really have all of the
experience that they need to understand,
Speaker:gee,
Speaker:you probably shouldn't text poop emojis
about somebody that you don't like
Speaker:because it's going to be found out.
Speaker:Or it's going to be blown
up as a huge demonstrative.
Speaker:And I'm going to be questioning you
about what you meant by that poop emoji,
Speaker:which is something that
happened in the case.
Speaker:It's just fascinating,
fascinating, fascinating. So,
Speaker:and I think I cut you off, clay.
Speaker:You were talking about the text
messages and other information.
Speaker:I think that we were going to
the real story of what was going.
Speaker:On. Yeah, I want to jump
back to that real quick.
Speaker:So we've used that in other cases
like civil rights cases for instance,
Speaker:and sending core requests to police
departments and other entities like that,
Speaker:that may be a target as a defendant.
And it's not part of discovery.
Speaker:It's much broader than discovery.
Speaker:So you can ask for any public
document regarding any issue and it
Speaker:allows you to do a pre-suit discovery
in a way that's much broader than
Speaker:you might actually get
it at the end of the day.
Speaker:I think this case would've looked a lot
different if Angela Viic and her folks
Speaker:over Louis Rocha hadn't
jumped on this immediately.
Speaker:It sounds magical,
Speaker:not having discovery dispute
hearings with your Cora requests.
Speaker:Well, and then I mean what
ended up happening is there
was very little document
Speaker:discovery in the case because they had
done such a good in those core requests.
Speaker:And I think any case,
Speaker:I feel in my gut that there's stuff
that we left on the table, right?
Speaker:I'm sure there was other documents
out there that we could have gotten,
Speaker:but at the end of the
day, there was enough.
Speaker:And I think that we were able
to tell a very compelling story
Speaker:of like Jason was saying, a mean girl,
Speaker:which is exactly what our client called
the situation on the stand where she
Speaker:was being targeted by a group
of board members who didn't
Speaker:want her around anymore.
Speaker:And they saw this as their opportunity
and they got really bad advice from an
Speaker:attorney who testified that they could
just simply walk away from this contract
Speaker:that obligated them to
employer for three years.
Speaker:So I want to come back for sure,
Speaker:to the excuse of our
attorney told us it was okay.
Speaker:But before I do that,
Speaker:how did you all formulate
the theme and story of this
Speaker:case to make the jurors care about this?
Speaker:It seems it's fascinating
because I'm geeked out by it.
Speaker:Definitely a wrong has occurred
here, but I'm a lawyer,
Speaker:maybe I like these things are jurors or
is there a concerned jurors are like,
Speaker:well, so what? Go get a different
job or something like that.
Speaker:I could show you our war room and
I don't know if it's been a race,
Speaker:but we have this huge one wall
that's all dry erase, right?
Speaker:And Jason and I filled up that entire
wall probably three times over trying to
Speaker:map out everything.
Speaker:It looked like a crazy person drawing
the string lines between two different
Speaker:things. But I think
what we ended up doing,
Speaker:and we went through so many
different iterations of this,
Speaker:and this is where I want Jason to jump
in here in a minute. On the focus groups,
Speaker:we found out that really people
got that our client cared.
Speaker:They got her backstory of being a caring,
compassionate teacher and educator,
Speaker:and that's pretty apparent on its face.
Speaker:What we needed to tell the
story of is that she got set up
Speaker:and there was a motive here and that
this was a decision that was motivated
Speaker:by a desire to get her out of there.
Speaker:That became our story because we
had some amazing testimony from a
Speaker:former board member that really
told this story of how they tried to
Speaker:take advantage of this situation that
shouldn't have in any way impacted her
Speaker:ability to return as CEO of the company.
And so we learned a lot of that.
Speaker:I think from the focus groups.
Speaker:I'd love to hear how focus groups help.
Speaker:It almost sounds like betrayal
or some kind of word that
Speaker:evokes intense emotional
response. How'd you find that.
Speaker:Betrayal is if you can
find betrayal in a case,
Speaker:it is one of those fundamental human
emotions that just triggers people.
Speaker:It really does. We all know that
logic and facts do not drive a case.
Speaker:They are sort of the cars
thinking about a train analogy.
Speaker:Those are the cars carrying the cargo.
Speaker:The engine of any trial train is a motion.
Speaker:And we did a couple focus
groups through Mojo Consulting,
Speaker:reach out if you want to
have your case focus group.
Speaker:But the first focus group we did was what
we call just a perception focus group.
Speaker:And we give them a very general neutral,
Speaker:maybe defense heavy slightly narrative
of the case and then just start
Speaker:asking open-ended questions much like you
would do during a voir dire if you had
Speaker:the time to do it, which you don't
Colorado, which is a problem.
Speaker:But one of the things that a
focus group member said was
Speaker:sounds like she was set up
that didn't come from us,
Speaker:that came from them organically.
And we knew there was some of that,
Speaker:but you don't want to look at the
world with a conspiratorial lens.
Speaker:But when focus group members just
average Joe's off the street,
Speaker:start looking at things and saying,
this just looks like she was set up.
Speaker:And then we had the evidence
to substantiate that.
Speaker:It really gave us a good insight
into we can use that betrayal setup
Speaker:as our emotional engine. And
so Clay alluded to one of
the former board members,
Speaker:a gentleman named James Hardy,
who in my view very courageously,
Speaker:he's a former board member.
He has no obligation to us.
Speaker:He actually quit at a protest
when all of this went down back in
Speaker:2022 because what he saw in his view was
Speaker:very problematic.
Speaker:He felt they were trying to manufacture
attorney-client privilege where none
Speaker:should exist,
Speaker:particularly with an entity
that is bound by the law
Speaker:to keep its meetings open to the public.
And his testimony
Speaker:was not dynamic, right? This
wasn't a Perry Mason moment,
Speaker:I really kind of had to draw it out of
him. But he had sent a, what was it,
Speaker:six eight page single space,
Speaker:10 point font email to the board
of directors long before any
Speaker:of this got hot with lawyers
laying out what he saw were the
Speaker:problems,
Speaker:and he sent it to the president of the
board of directors and the other board
Speaker:members. And during trial,
Speaker:when we asked the president of the
board of directors, whether she read it,
Speaker:she said, I skimmed it. It was very long.
Speaker:You could see the jurors
respond, are you kidding me?
Speaker:This man takes the time and effort
to lay out chapter and verse and
Speaker:you just basically slough it off
that dismissiveness or was sort of an
Speaker:undercurrent during the trial.
Speaker:So who's your first witness?
Speaker:Was it the board member that wrote the
six page letter or was it the president
Speaker:of the board had to have
been one of those two people.
Speaker:Right? It's the former,
Speaker:it was the board member who resigned
who sent the letter and look,
Speaker:every great trial lawyer knows
you need to start your case
Speaker:impactfully,
Speaker:but also with a witness who's
relatively uncrossable or unimpeachable,
Speaker:somebody who has no skin in
the game, those kind of things.
Speaker:And he turned out to be a
very good first witness again,
Speaker:although not dynamic in his testimony.
That was really interesting.
Speaker:And that letter, I mean we kept coming
back to it over and over and over again.
Speaker:Every one of their witnesses,
Speaker:we would ask them about phrases and
sentences and quotes from that letter and
Speaker:they had no answer to.
Speaker:It. Was it exhibit one?
Speaker:No, it wasn't. The contract
was exhibit one. Okay.
Speaker:Okay. That's fair Question.
Speaker:Talk to us a little bit about
advice of counsel as a defense.
Speaker:So sometimes we see this
come up in bad faith cases,
Speaker:things along those lines. How
does it apply to a case like this?
Speaker:What's interesting is it doesn't,
right? They tried, frankly,
Speaker:they pled very limited defenses
in this case and their defenses
Speaker:were a moving target.
Speaker:And I think if there's one thing that
I've taken from this case and working with
Speaker:Jason on this case in particular,
Speaker:it's being tenacious about those pretrial
motions and educating the court about
Speaker:what your objections are going to
be because they were all over the
Speaker:map on their defenses and they were
essentially trying to smuggle in an advice
Speaker:of counsel defense in a contract case.
Speaker:Advice of counsel is only a
defense to an intent-based claim.
Speaker:You have to have some sort of intent
or knowledge element that your
Speaker:counsel's advice negates that your
counsel advised you could do this.
Speaker:So there's no way I could have intended
to do anything wrong in a breach of
Speaker:contract case, you don't have that.
Speaker:There's no intended requirement.
And so we advocated for both in
Speaker:pretrial motions,
Speaker:in bench briefs in I think that
there was at least one hearing in the
Speaker:few days before the trial that Jason
handled trying to push this idea to the
Speaker:court of they can't rely on this
attorney to absolve them of a breach of
Speaker:contract claim. And slowly the judge
came around to us and we were able to,
Speaker:when we cross-examine that attorney,
when they put 'em on the stand,
Speaker:we were able to really box them in.
Speaker:And the judge issued a contemporaneous
curative instruction in the middle
Speaker:of this attorney's testimony
that you can only consider this
Speaker:testimony for the effect it
had on the board members.
Speaker:The advice of counsel is not a defense.
Speaker:And so we were able to really kind of
through what felt to me at the time as
Speaker:over objecting, right?
Speaker:Standing up in front of the
jury and objecting repeatedly,
Speaker:but also having educated
the judge so much before,
Speaker:and Jason having done so much work there,
Speaker:we were really able to box this guy in.
Speaker:And then we were also then able
to create this closing argument
Speaker:of what all of this is really the
result of is bad decisions that
Speaker:were the result of a bad attorney.
I mean, at the end of the day,
Speaker:it actually I think ended up benefiting
our case for them to rely so heavily on
Speaker:this attorney who was so obviously wrong.
Speaker:Just so I make sure that
I understand the law,
Speaker:I will confess that I am not well versed.
Speaker:So if you had pled or
had punitive damages,
Speaker:damages or something
like that on the table,
Speaker:then the advice of counsel
would be relevant to that,
Speaker:to the intent behind punitive
damages or like a fraud claim.
Speaker:But because this was just
simply a breach of contract,
Speaker:if a lawyer says you're
okay to breach the contract,
Speaker:the issue is just whether
they breached the contract,
Speaker:not why they breach the contract.
Speaker:And so I do a lot of whistleblower
work. And so in those cases,
Speaker:a lot of times it's
fraud on the government.
Speaker:And so you have to prove that
they knowingly committed fraud.
Speaker:And you'll see a lot of advice of counsel
defense in those situations, right?
Speaker:Because there is this knowledge element,
Speaker:there's an intent element that you have
to prove that doesn't exist for contract
Speaker:cases. And so we were very
much able to, I think,
Speaker:use that to our benefit where they thought
it was a big benefit for them of this
Speaker:well-respected attorney
that they had had for years,
Speaker:was advising them that they could do
this when in fact he didn't look at
Speaker:anything. He didn't do anything
to confirm his opinions.
Speaker:He was just shooting from
the hip and he was wrong.
Speaker:And so would a quick Google search tell
you advice of counsel does not apply to
Speaker:breach of contract claims.
Speaker:A pretty quick one, and Clay's
underselling it a little bit here,
Speaker:and I'll let him tell the story of his
cross of the attorney, Barry Arrington.
Speaker:But what you have here
during the depositions,
Speaker:what we heard over and over and over
again, the president, the vice president,
Speaker:other board members who were deposed
is you could hear them saying
Speaker:a literal talking point given to
them, I'm sure by counsel was, well,
Speaker:Barry Arrington told us this
was the way para worked.
Speaker:This is what Para said. Well,
Speaker:Barry Arrington in our view was dead
Speaker:wrong. And the fact that all
of these people relied on it,
Speaker:I almost
Speaker:feel bad for them as voluntary
board of director members.
Speaker:But at the same time,
Speaker:para rules and para pamphlets are
written in very plain English.
Speaker:They are intended for non-lawyers.
Speaker:And they lay out very clearly
what para allows you to do
Speaker:vis-a-vis retirement and coming back.
Speaker:And all they had to do
was read those themselves,
Speaker:but instead they relied on this
lawyer who just led them astray.
Speaker:And so during clay's,
Speaker:it was a joy to watch
because what clay did was
Speaker:box 'em in. And Clay, I don't
want to ruin the climax here,
Speaker:tell them what exactly this
guy copped to on the stand.
Speaker:Well, so we were able to run through
all the things that he didn't review.
Speaker:And my final line of questioning that
we had thought about beforehand was
Speaker:his interest in the outcome of this case
that he had a personal interest in this
Speaker:case being a good outcome.
Because if he didn't,
Speaker:then the school would have a claim against
him for the effects of his incorrect
Speaker:advice that he gave them the advice
that essentially embroiled them in this
Speaker:lawsuit. And so he hems and haws about,
Speaker:I don't know what you mean by personal
interest and things like that.
Speaker:And then I asked him
the final question of,
Speaker:well have you put your
professional liability carrier on
Speaker:notice your insurance carrier on notice
of a potential claim by the school?
Speaker:And I had no idea what
he would say, right?
Speaker:It's not a question I'd asked the
deposition, I just figured yes or no,
Speaker:it didn't really matter to me.
I just wanted to be out there.
Speaker:And he had put them on
notice of a claim and
Speaker:that they were under, I think under a
tolling agreement or something like that.
Speaker:And I just ended my
cross-examination right there.
Speaker:I had another page of stuff to go
through and I just looked at it and said,
Speaker:I have no further questions,
Speaker:because I think it drove home to
the jury this idea of they were
Speaker:grasping at straws to try to find
a reason to get rid of our client,
Speaker:and they found it in this attorney who
was just telling them what they wanted to
Speaker:hear, whether it was right or wrong.
Speaker:So what was the end verdict?
Speaker:And because I know the
answer to this question,
Speaker:did you get any interesting questions
from the jurors as they were deliberating?
Speaker:I'll do the end verdict and then I'll
let Jason talk about the juror question.
Speaker:So we had every dime that we asked for,
Speaker:so we went up there and we asked for
the three years of her base salary under
Speaker:her three-year contract,
Speaker:plus the value of the paid time off that
she was promised under the contract.
Speaker:And it ended up being, God, you're
going to put me on the spot here.
Speaker:I think it was
Speaker:$949,634
Speaker:and 60 cents, something like
that, right under 950,000.
Speaker:And so the jury, we asked
for that from the jury,
Speaker:we weren't able to ask for
the non-economic damages
that we had hoped for,
Speaker:but I think that it was a good
measure of the economic impact
Speaker:for, and I'll let Jason talk
about the deliberations.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So Clay gave a great closing
and continued to use these text
Speaker:messages in closing with the poop
emojis and the mean girl stuff back and
Speaker:forth. And so the jury goes out,
Speaker:they get the case Friday
morning just before lunch,
Speaker:and I have told everybody
I've worked with,
Speaker:if I had my druthers closing
argument would happen,
Speaker:and then I would fly to some remote
island and have no ability to access the
Speaker:internet.
Speaker:And then I'd come back six months later
and somebody would tell me the result.
Speaker:And because the waiting for the jury,
and then when the jury comes in,
Speaker:it's literally the worst
physical feeling I have.
Speaker:It's like driving by a cop doing 95
to the nth degree. It's way worse.
Speaker:But so we get a question. In all honesty,
Speaker:we were pretty confident
instructions had gone well.
Speaker:The defense counsel had agreed and
stipulated to an instruction that they had
Speaker:essentially the burden to prove that
our client terminated the contract.
Speaker:And a jury question comes back, and
I won't be able to quote it exactly,
Speaker:but it was,
Speaker:are we limited to the
$978,000 or can we give
Speaker:more money?
Speaker:In my dreams, it's like,
Speaker:can we have a calculator or what if we
want to award more than they've asked
Speaker:for? I don't know if I'll ever
get that question, but Oh my gosh.
Speaker:Yeah. I mean, certainly
by leaps and bounds,
Speaker:the best jury question I've ever
gotten, and this jury was smart. I mean,
Speaker:the questions they asked, they asked a
lot of questions of a lot of witnesses,
Speaker:and the judge allowed some
and didn't allow others.
Speaker:And the ones that they asked, even if
they weren't actually asked on the record,
Speaker:were smart.
Speaker:They clearly knew what some
of the legal issues that they
Speaker:weren't allowed to consider
were. They were insightful.
Speaker:And they came back basically after
finishing their sandwiches and gave us
Speaker:literally every dime we asked for.
Speaker:There's a couple of things that I
want to throw in there real quick.
Speaker:We got that question.
Speaker:We had stayed to tear down all the
stuff and all the monitors and stuff.
Speaker:So Jason and I are there helping and
working with our team to tear all that
Speaker:down. Defense counsel
had gone to eat lunch.
Speaker:And so we see the question come out
and we see the judge kind of look down,
Speaker:shake his head a bit and say,
we've got a jury in question.
Speaker:And then we had to wait for defense
counsel to come in from his lunch.
Speaker:And I don't know why he left
again, frankly after that question,
Speaker:but it was pretty impactful.
Speaker:I will say one of the big things too that
I learned in this case is to use your
Speaker:young associates. So Jason and I
had an associate from our firm,
Speaker:Ingram Wilkinson,
Speaker:who's got the most stellar resume of
probably anyone at our firm. He's just
Speaker:incredible background, incredibly smart
lawyer, but relatively young, right?
Speaker:This was his first witnesses. He
took a couple of cross-examinations.
Speaker:He did our Rule 50 motion when we tried
to get essentially a ruling in our
Speaker:favor, but the jury saw that, right?
Speaker:And they saw that we were
allowing somebody with a
little less experience to get
Speaker:up there and do their work and
get the benefit of this trial.
Speaker:And I think they really appreciated it.
Speaker:You could see them actually paying a
little bit more attention to him than
Speaker:opposing counsel who obviously had been
doing this for decades and was very good
Speaker:attorney.
Speaker:But I think they were appreciative that
we allowed a young attorney to have some
Speaker:time in court.
Speaker:What a just phenomenal result if
people want to get ahold of you.
Speaker:So my first question,
Speaker:how do they get ahold of you and what
types of cases does your firm handle?
Speaker:I mean, it sounds like you are doing
a lot of some business litigation.
Speaker:I know you all do super
complex product liability,
Speaker:personal injury cases. So real quick,
Speaker:what kind of cases should people reach
out to you and how do they get ahold of
Speaker:you? Start with you, Jason.
Speaker:Yeah, sure. I do not
specialize in anything.
Speaker:And so basically I help
anybody who's being screwed,
Speaker:and that can be personal
injury, it can be employment,
Speaker:it can be defending a small business
who is getting taken advantage of by a
Speaker:larger business, CanOx lanes,
Speaker:it's big business commercial
litigation fighting that.
Speaker:It does run the gamut. You
can email me at jason wa
Speaker:soki@omtrial.com.
Speaker:Our phone number is (303)
-: Speaker:I do want to make sure we get
the Lebowski story, but go ahead.
Speaker:Clay. Oh yes, the Lebowski story, and
I mean there was no disrespect, Jason.
Speaker:He knows this, that I have such
respect for Jason as an attorney,
Speaker:so absolutely phenomenal.
Speaker:So most of what I do is
whistleblower adjacent.
Speaker:I represent a lot of whistleblowers in
employment claims, retaliation claims,
Speaker:and then in keam and bounty actions.
Speaker:So folks who know about illegal
conduct or fraud on the government
Speaker:or fraud in relation to securities
filings, things like that.
Speaker:That's the majority of my work.
Speaker:I also do a lot of just run
of the mill employment work,
Speaker:like this employment
contract case, but we also,
Speaker:we've represented some pretty high
level folks in discrimination cases,
Speaker:things like that. Our
firm as a whole though,
Speaker:I mean we essentially run the
gamut on the plaintiff's side.
Speaker:We do everything from complex personal
injury with a focus on brain injury work
Speaker:to complex legal malpractice
cases. On the plaintiff side,
Speaker:our partner Michael Mim
and Nicole Quintana,
Speaker:they do just a phenomenal job with
these complex legal malpractice cases.
Speaker:We've got folks here who do
construction litigation for both
Speaker:subcontractors and general contractors
as well as on the homeowner side
Speaker:for construction defect. But we've
got folks who do wrongful death cases.
Speaker:Pete McClanahan at our office does an
amazing job with medical malpractice
Speaker:cases. Then we've got Murray
Aborn, who I think, I mean,
Speaker:he's in the office every day at, I
think he's 82 now, something like that.
Speaker:And he's just a wealth of
information, but he takes everything.
Speaker:So we do run the gamut. I will
say it's mostly on the side of,
Speaker:it's entirely on the side of
people who have been screwed.
Speaker:We do try to fight the man a bit here,
Speaker:even if we end up being
the man in some situations,
Speaker:I think our firm's real focus is on trial.
Speaker:That's why I appreciate this podcast so
much is gives us the story to tell about
Speaker:a trial that we were successful.
Speaker:So obviously big fan of the
movie, the Big Lebowski,
Speaker:and it's funny because Judge
Eff, who presided over this case,
Speaker:his trial management order
is his case management order,
Speaker:literally says in it, try to have
fun. This can be a fun profession.
Speaker:And so maybe taking that a little bit too,
Speaker:literally during the cross-examination
of one of the board members,
Speaker:an attorney whose name is Linda Davison,
Speaker:who worked with my father at
the attorney general's office.
Speaker:So I was asking her about
some of these text messages.
Speaker:And one of the text messages said, Linda,
Speaker:I agree with Linda that
Dr. Ecker is playing us.
Speaker:And so I asked Ms. Davidson, I'm like,
Speaker:did you say that my client
was playing you? And she goes,
Speaker:I don't know what you mean. And I said,
well, let's, at the text messages here,
Speaker:it says, I agree with Linda that Dr.
ER's playing us. Did you say that?
Speaker:What'd you mean? And she goes, I don't
know what you mean by playing us.
Speaker:And I said, in the normal
parlance of our times,
Speaker:which is a deep cut from
a Big Lebowski quote,
Speaker:but I know Clay got it because he had to
bite his lip. He was right next to me.
Speaker:And then I'm fairly confident at least
one of the jurors got it because he
Speaker:immediately leaned over to a fellow
juror and kind of whispered in her ear.
Speaker:So that was actually kind of
fun. And Clay had the great idea,
Speaker:which I probably will do in grabbing
that piece of the transcript,
Speaker:maybe sending it to the Cohen Brothers
or Jeff Bridges for an autograph.
Speaker:I just think they're such a
practice pointer, honestly,
Speaker:in that not taking
yourself too seriously and
Speaker:humanizing yourself to the
jurors. So I love that story.
Speaker:Clay, Jason,
Speaker:thank you so much for taking the time
out of your very busy lives to speak
Speaker:with us. And congratulations on an
amazing verdict. And until the next one,
Speaker:we'll look forward to justice being
served out there in the courtrooms all
Speaker:across Colorado. Thanks everybody for
listening. Thank you for joining us.
Speaker:We hope you've gained valuable insights
and inspiration from today's courtroom
Speaker:warriors. And thank you
for being in the arena.
Speaker:Make sure to subscribe and join us next
time as we continue to dissect real
Speaker:cases and learn from
Colorado's top trial lawyers.
Speaker:Our mission is to empower
our legal community,
Speaker:helping us to become better trial lawyers
to effectively represent our clients.
Speaker:Keep your connection to
Colorado's best trial lawyers
Speaker:alive@www.thectlc.com.
