Hey, it's Bob Simon taking a break to tell you about CallRail. CallRail is a product that my firm uses, and what CallRail does is it plugs into your phone calls with your intake and with your clients to record those phone calls as real time transcripts so you can get intelligence and with the attorney share. Plugin.
You can actually in real time be able to send a referral out through the marketplace to find the best match all made possible with CallRail being plugged into your firm's intake with real intelligence CallRail. I. Welcome to this episode of the Justice Team Podcast on the Justice Team Network. I'm your host, Bob Simon, and today we have a local LA legend lawyer, Michael Carillo on the show. Michael, how you doing? Good. Good. Thank you. That's a nice introduction.
Yeah, and you know, what's your, what's your Instagram handle at Lawyer Mikey? At Lawyer. Mikey, how did you get that? It had have been so early to the game and by the time I went to Attorney Bob, it laughed me off the stage. I got that very early, but I wasn't very active on it and I just held onto it and now that I'm putting out more content, it's great for it.
Yeah, I've seen it get a lot of um, a lot of traction in your social handles 'cause you're doing a lot of work in the community, you know, as a lawyer helping a lot of folks and for people wanna. Look up attorney Mikey, um, getting big verdicts in the courtroom. I saw recently, actually, I went to your trial when you were trying one in downtown Los Angeles for, um, for some sex abuse victims at school.
Um, can you just kind of break that down for us because that case was very long or very old for kind of what happened. That one is one that will remain with me throughout my legal career and even in my personal career. I mean, I, I. We, I got referred that case by a colleague that I trust back in, where are we? 2025. So this would've been 2018. Wow. And most of our practice now is focused on child sexual abuse victims. And it's really a passion of mine.
And this case, we started the trial in the middle of COVID in 2021. It, uh, it was paused because the Supreme Court intervened on an immediate stay. We went all the way up to the Supreme Court, got a published decision. We didn't like that. So then we drafted a legislator to help us, Senator Kaba Iro, to help us with SB 1386, which is, uh, further enhanced the Civil Rape Shield statute. So I'm very proud of that. Mm-hmm.
Uh, because it's, it's a mark that I'm leaving, not just on this case, but in future. Yeah. Talk to us about the, um, about the rape shield statute, which you were able to do through. Through the courts and being a lawyer.
Well, um, this judge, uh, in this particular case felt that other sexual assault incidents could be brought in, in, to allow the defense or the school district to argue that this particular victim, uh, we call her Susie, I'm not going to say her last name of course, but that Susie was later victimized, not only by her, her teacher in in fourth grade, but by a boy when she was about 14 years old. The judge felt that that evidence should come in to say, well, she's not as affected.
The laws was pretty clear, at least in my eyes, that it shouldn't come in. And we took that all the way up to the Supreme Court because she wasn't, she was going to allow that evidence in to say that our victim was not as traumatized as she really was. So we felt that was a total injustice. And it is, and I'm glad you changed that law. You know, I think, you know, I have a few cases where we've, we've been able to use that as well, and some judges first wanted to not apply it and then.
We are actually in the middle of, um, litigation when your yours came down. So what the Espb did, but I mean, so kind of walk us through like what does liability look like? 'cause you know, a lot of people watching or listening will get a call of something had happened to a kid at school and you know, first of all, what are their rights? What should they do and what do you kind of assess? Whenever we get calls first, I always tell them to contact the police.
We as lawyers can only do so much, but the police can do other things. And once you contact the police, you take your child through that process as traumatic as it is for your child, and to watch your child go through that. Uh, it's important to hold those people accountable, be it a coach, a teacher, whatever it may be. Uh, in order to get that accountability and to get that justice, that person needs to be put in jail first.
And then secondly, we have to look as civil lawyers at what accountability that we can hold the school district employees who allowed this person to be around kids. And most of the times in these cases, it's the coolest teacher, coolest coach. Mm-hmm. He grooms not only these kids to allow them, allow him to abuse them, but he grooms a community to say, well, I'm just gonna hug these kids.
It's totally fine 'cause it's Mr. Smith or Mr. Johnson, when in reality that's the one that is committing all these heinous acts. And they're also building that community to say, well. Coach Smith would never do something like this. We see that all the time, right? Um, yeah. But, but so what, walk us through that. Why is it, you know, how is the, the, the school accountable for the bad acts of Coach Smith?
Well, the school can be held accountable when there's all these prior red flags and say a principal or, uh, some other staff member knew that, uh, Mr. Smith was having kids in his classroom against the rules. Or he was having kids sit on his lap. And in the case that you just brought up that, uh, we tried this year, finally in 2025, we got a verdict after seven years, uh, eight years after this came to light.
Uh, in that circumstance, the teacher had been caught, uh, in the late nineties, early two thousands, uh, having kids on his lap, uh, grooming kids by having them be, or by becoming the kid's godfather. And this was like padrino of the first communion. So he would. Pay for something as part of the first communion for these kids.
And so we, uh, proved that the school district knew about his bad behavior as early as the late nineties, early two thousands, mid two thousands, and the school should have intervened and they never did. Wow. What happened to, uh, IIL? Padrino? Well, he got, uh, first convicted of eight years and then he was sentenced, uh, for little Susie's case for 20 years. So 28, uh, total years. And eventually your client did have civil justice as well through your verdict. She did have civil justice.
Uh, unfortunately it looks like they're gonna challenge the verdict, which happens in these cases. Especially with something like, like this, where we really hold the school district accountable. Yeah. And you know, it was an eight figure verdict. We'll leave it at that. We don't have to talk numbers. It's very impressive. But it's also impressive, the work and the dedication it took for seven years to even get there on the civil side. Right. Um, but walk us through like.
The school district on the other side, did they ever even offer you any type of fair compensation for what happened to Susie? Absolutely not. Their initial approach was to question Susie's statements about what occurred to say that when she first spoke to the sheriff's, uh, department. Well, she didn't mention all these horrific, uh, acts, even though later when she met with a detective that specializes in these interviews, she did reveal all of those, these heinous acts.
And that's classic victimology. It's it's classic, uh, victim symptoms where when you first disclose to a the first officer, you may not say everything. And that doesn't mean that they lied. It just means that they're slowly opening up. And then later she revealed more. And the truth actually came out finally once and for all. And so, no, the school district from the very beginning, they felt that Susie was lying. Uh, they tried to prove that at trial, which was a bad, bad gamble on their part.
And no, they didn't wanna offer fair compensation for any of these survivors. Yeah. And we see, you know, here in Southern California, there's people that say, well, we should limit the amount of damages that a sex abuse survivor can can get for no matter what the harm is to them, because it's. A public entity. How do you feel about that? Oh, it's, it's ridiculous.
It sounds like you've been following some of this recent push by the legislators to, uh, reduce the amount of damages, but it doesn't allow for justice for these survivors. Just because you think X amount is, is a lot of money to you, doesn't mean it, it pays for the suffering, the trauma that they've been through this victim and you don't know what their life is like when they go home and they, they, uh, clo turn the lights off. They're in bed by themselves. What. Trauma they're going through.
So who are you to judge and who, I mean, and for a lot of people watching or listening, you know, you hear about, wow, this, this is an outlier verdict and you know, it's eight figures. This is crazy. But what they don't realize is how many op reasonable opportunities to settle did you give the school district that were much, much, much, much lower than the verdict Multiple times. Yeah. Two mediations.
I sent a demand after we changed the law and after the Supreme Court decision didn't hear a Pete back leading up to the the 2025 trial. There was some rumblings of, of, I guess what they felt was fair offers, but it certainly was not. Yeah. And that's one thing that, you know, if you do any work with people's, their are survivors of sex abuse. It's first of all, hard for them to open up and tell their story, let alone go through a trial. Um, walk us through that process. I mean, it's.
It's gotta be hard and you feel like a protector, but, but what's that like for, for seven years, just helping that person through that journey? This, uh, this case, I've seen these kids grow up. Mm-hmm. They were maybe 10, 11 years old when I met them, and I've seen them over the years and we got them ready for trial one, emotionally, mentally, for only, only for it to be paused. And I didn't, couldn't tell him when we were gonna get back into it.
So, of course the parents and the kids were just on edge, anxious for years not knowing when it's gonna happen again. So then to get 'em prepared in 2025, I kept telling 'em, you know, things may, we don't know what'll happen, et cetera, but it's really just, uh, we developed a, a, an amazing relationship with these, with these folks. And I, uh, I really value and respect their courage, their strength.
And really just as long as you're compassionate with them, and I always tell the lawyers in my office lead with compassion. If you do that and you, you have their, their best interest in mind, their heart, and their mental stress in mind going into trial, I think you'll, you'll prepare them just fine. Yeah. And you truly do things as a team, not only at your firm, but during trial. I know when I was there, I saw your dad. I saw some other family members that are there.
So just tell us a little bit about your, your firm, the firm structure. 'cause you, y'all have been here for a while. Yeah. Yes. Well, my dad was a solo practitioner for probably 35 years, and then he and I joined together on, uh, one of these bigger, uh, cases in South LA where the teacher was caught. Uh, putting his semen on cookies and spoon feeding it to kids. It was horrific. I remember that case. I remember that story. Mira Monte and Mark Burnt.
Mm-hmm. Mark Burnt was the name of the perpetrator. And so we teamed up there and, and uh, before that I was doing family law and criminal defense. Uh, Bob Hope we've never done family law 'cause it's no awful. Yeah. I couldn't emotionally do that. Could not emotionally do family law. Mm-hmm. It's bad. But, so I work with my dad now and there's, there's he and I, and then we have five other lawyers that work in our office and. It's real, it's a family shop.
But, uh, I love my dad and I'm grateful I get this opportunity to practice law with him. Yeah, I love that. So, um, I mean walk, because you, I mean, you've been in Southern California for a long time. Like what is the general, you know, sentiment about you're going and you're going fighting against public entities. It's not all schools that you're going against. You go a lot of private entities and it's probably a different.
A different way we go into a private company as opposed to a school district. But when you're going against a school district or a public entity, you've gotta have a different way to like communicate to the jury. 'cause you know, jurors sit there and think, oh my God, this is gonna cost me so much money as a taxpayer, I mean, you know, that's what they're thinking. Absolutely.
And how do you, how do you get an eight figure verdict from an downtown LA jury that's paying LA taxes to the public entity? I mean, you gotta approach it head on in jury selection. And my big thing is. Whenever there's a school district employee on the jury, I always feel like it brings the verdict down. And lately I feel like I've gotten better at telling these jurors that, look, you cannot think about the kids' cafeteria food and their pencils and pens.
Like that's not for you to decide, for you to decide. It's just what does justice look like for this victim? Yeah, a lot of people don't realize that some of these public entities actually do have insurance, and you can't even say that. You cannot mention it during trial. The jurors will never know. But a little fun fact, a lot of the times they do in fact have insurance and a lot of it, very much so. A lot.
And there are certain, uh, insurance representatives, uh, for these school districts, I won't mention them by names, but some in particular that I feel deny justice to. Latinos and black kids more than white kids. And that's just, I've been very open about that. Yeah. And I actually wrote a letter to an insurance adjuster last week because they just revoke revoked somebody's coverage.
I mean, just like, it was unbelievable what they tried to do on some weird, his 80-year-old mom was living at the house. You didn't disclose her. It's like, well, mom has her own license and she's 80 years old and she had nothing to do with this crash. Like, not really. Then I found out they'd done this to a lot of other people who did some quick research, and then I just emailed back the insurance company.
I was like, did you just do the, uh, this is a Compton zip code, so we're gonna treat somebody differently. And you know, they do it. Absolutely. You know, they do it. Absolutely do it. Uh, that's a whole nother show on that one, man. I mean, it's, it's whatever they can get away with and a lot of times it's. Uh, people that are not as educated, uh, maybe English is not their first language. Mm-hmm. And so they try to screw our people without thinking of the consequences.
It takes people like yourself and myself that have a voice that can speak up for them. Yeah. And I think it's why it's so important for people to have direct access to attorneys, whether it's through the dms of lawyer, Mikey, whether it's through the justice team, app, whatever it is, you should be able to find the best. Warrior for you for your specific situation, right. Public entity, sex abuse case. I'm gonna call lawyer Mikey. You know, like that's how it is.
Should be. Well, and Bob, I gotta give you a lot of credit. Mm-hmm. I know I told you this off air, but just this team that you put together, justice hq and the ability for people to find a resource and attorney that covers that area or that topic, I mean, you deserve a lot of credit, Bob, for, for connecting the folks. But think about this, the people that, that you've represented. They don't know any lawyers, like people take for granted that because, oh, I'm, I'm with this in my life.
I know a lot of lawyers, most people know Zero. They know one is on tv. So you, I think you owe a a duty to folks to, to make it easier for them to access. Um, but anyway, thank you for coming on this episode of the Justice Team podcast on the Justice Team Network. We're definitely gonna have you on again. Um, I look forward to doing your bourbon of proof interview once because Oh, I love to drink. Um. Some high proof spirits with Mr. Carrillo and maybe your dad. That would be fun.
He hasn't drank in 35 years or something. Well then you're drinking double. I'll take his share. You got it. All right. Well, thanks for coming on the show. Appreciate it. All right. Thanks mom.