Welcome to this episode of the Justice Team Podcast on the Justice Team Network, where we give practical advice to lawyers. I'm your host, Bob Simon, and we are honored today to have Muhammad Ahmed coming to us from Southern California, live from Los Angeles, who also practices in Atlanta, some other states. He has a bi coastal practice. He also lives internationally and sometimes the United States, sometimes other places, which we'll talk about how to do all those things.
And also being an amazing trial lawyer, I know he's a finalist this year for Trialer of the Year for the biggest plaintiff bar organization. Mo, thanks for coming on the show. Thanks for having me. Um, first of all, what, what, what's this shirt you're wearing? I thought it was a hot dog cart, but what is this? Yeah, A lot of people think it's a hot dog cart. This is actually a, uh, Jerusalem bread cart.
So if you, I live in Jerusalem, part-time, and they have these ancient bread ovens, uh, like hundreds of years old, if not a thousand years old, where they cook. Uh, they bake bread every day in the morning. My father in law and my wife are obsessed with this type of bread. It's like sesame bread I'm not really a big fan, but it's it's tasty. So she got me this cool shirt in Jerusalem. So nice So yeah, that's talk. Let's jump into that then.
I mean, I know your wife and kids are in Jerusalem You're here in Southern, California. Sometimes Georgia. What's that like man? It's fun in a way because you you get to go to Jerusalem and Jerusalem is it's it's a city. That's locked in time You Yeah, like when you're there, if there were no cars, you would feel like you're back, you know, from the ancient times.
And there's actually some villages in Jerusalem and Israel and Palestine where you actually can experience what it was like back in the time of Jesus, where you have like the, and if you go to Nazareth, you get the, there's like a Christian village and they do this, they, they kind of, it's like a museum, but you really feel like you're back in the old day. They do all of press by hand and they have like donkeys and stuff like that. So it's a throwback time.
So, It's a throwback to time and it's also fun, you know, but it's also you also miss your kids, you know So it's been about two years now not the two year mark. That's when it really started being tough Being away from the kids for so long. Yeah, I just saw a missed call from my kids elementary school I know there's a problem. So I text my wife and say They just called me. It's likely our seven year old that's causing problems in school. Do your kids ever cause problems in Jerusalem?
You have younger kids too, right? You have twins? Yeah, no, they're nine and seven now. But my older kid always causes problems in Jerusalem. He got caught with a vape at school. Sounds very familiar to what I just got. Yeah, my wife, freaking out, and I don't really care. I'm like, whatever, where did he get it? You know, that's funny. Um, their kids, they'll, they'll do crazy things.
My younger kid, he, he initially had problems with the school, but then he became like the fan favorite at the school. And so my wife will go pick him up and he'll make everybody stop the game when he's leaving. And then my wife would be like, no, you can't be a dictator. And the teacher would be like, no, no, he, we call him the director. Like, so how do you like, I mean, how do you realistically do this? You have a litigation and trial practice. And you guys do some complicated case.
I mean, you, you do a lot of electric shock, burn injury cases. And then, I mean, I've seen the verdicts you've had, you know, eight figures, high eight figures on these types of cases. How are you able to, I mean, literally be what are they? 12, 11, 12 hours ahead in Jerusalem from Yeah, there are 10 hours ahead in Jerusalem. So I work on American times. So when I'm in Jerusalem, I go to sleep at five in the morning, six in the morning.
Sometimes I'll go to the ancient mosque, the Aqsa, the famous mosque at like five in the morning, pray, come home and I'll fall asleep at like 6am. And then I'll wake up at like one or 2pm there, spend some time with the family, and then begin my work day at like six or 7pm there. Wow. And then I'll stay up all night. You know, because if you sleep, you can't really sleep So I stay on American time. And that's how I make it work.
But so the, but you, how you still get family time in though, before the, your quote unquote workday starts back in America. Mm. Yeah. So like you get four or five hours of family time, which is realistically, that's what happens here, right? If you go to work early, you come home at six or seven, and then you spend two or three hours with the kids and the wife, and then you go to sleep. So it's kind of the same thing.
Obviously the, you know, the wife would prefer that I worked on Jerusalem time, but I just work on American time. And with, with COVID you can take depots. I mean, do you have any problems taking remote depositions from there? No, never. I mean, sometimes there's like sirens and shit going off, but like other than that, no, you know, it's pretty, it's pretty chill. And then what happens, you know, I mean, what's it like though? Realistically, you have multiple, multiple week trials.
I know you had one in Northern California earlier this year. I mean, how are you able to do that? That's easier, right? Because the family's not here. So I spent six, it was last year we spent six weeks in Monterey. And, you know, my business partner was flying home with his family, my associate was flying home to spend time with his wife, I didn't have that. So in a way it kind of makes it easier when you don't have the family to go home to, you just have trials.
So I stayed up there the whole time. Wow. You know, so in that way it made it easier. And then a month after that my friend got stuck in a crazy small case in Georgia and was like freaking out like hey, I talked shit to the adjuster and I can't try a case, can you help me? So we flew, I flew from Tel Aviv to Atlanta and we tried a case, you know? Yeah, you have an office in Atlanta as well. Yeah, and so that, so that, that's kind of fun and also stressful.
You know, where you're calling and you're like, dude, are they really not gonna pay the 25, 000? And he's like, yeah, they just offered 10, 000. So fly down. So it's like, alright, jump on a flight, fly down. But what was cool about that?
Cases they actually paid for my flight Even though it's not a recoverable cost He he just included it in the cost memo and they got scared because we got over the policy limit And so they just paid everything attorneys fees costs Everything well, thank you state farmer all state whoever it was for paying for your trip to tel aviv. It was progressive Yeah progressive. Yeah, you're also a very progressive guy. So look at that. We tied it in.
Well, no, so The the I I do say this all the time as a trial lawyer The only thing now that I physically need to be in person for these days You Or the trials. Yes. Yeah. And you're a living, breathing example of this. Yeah, exactly. I was literally in another country, 10 hours away, flew in, and then within 48 hours I was picking a jury. And since you're staying on American Time, you're not dealing with jet lag or anything?
Yeah. No. And then the one thing is that, you know, with points and with status and whatnot, I always get lie flat. And so. Yeah. That makes it easier. I think when you're sleeping on like, I can sleep on the plane the whole time. Wow. Yeah. So walk us through. So we talked about a little bit of the lifestyle stuff. Um, do you have to operate on the same consistent type of systems? I mean, you have Georgia's different practice law than California where you're practicing.
So how are you able to, to manage that? I mean, you guys on, on systems or anything like this. Yeah, in terms of like back end systems. Yeah. So what they're, they're very similar. There are certain things that are different. Um, what we try to do is make them the same, right? So for example, in Georgia, you have trial, you have fact depots and trial depots or they're actually distinct. Right. Um, and in California you kind of have that too. Unless it's like a doctor that's unavailable or not.
So what we try to do is, is take whatever exception or whatever there is and make them the same. And so for in Georgia, you can, you can do a trial depo, uh, if it's, you know, like the opposing party, you can use that for any purpose. So we convert those into trial depos instead of it being a fact that, but we make that a trial that on California, if the person's. You know, like my Monterey case, everything was more than 150 miles out. So every single depot was a trial depot.
And so you, you just try to make everything a trial depot and you take a deposition like it's trial and depots really lead the case, right? There's discovery there's back in discovery motions to compel, to kind of bother them a little bit, but depositions are, are basically trial. And so we try to treat our depots like trial depots, present them like trial depots and use any excuse to make them. Play that trial. All right.
So that's that's transition over into your your trial practice litigation practice and you're known for doing Catastrophic injury complex cases. Let's talk about the burn in electric cases. What are some things that I mean a lot of lawyers prefer you cases. Yeah to work on first of all, how do they find you? What's the easiest way for people to find you you just you know email or text? You know, I mean like I I don't know Probably text is better than email, you know, text.
Yes. I think I hardly check emails. I check our slack chats on justice HQ. I check my texts and that's about it. Yeah. Yeah. Even a voicemail. Like I'm not gonna, I check my voicemail. I'm like, Oh shit. I got, especially since I'm always traveling. So if I'm on the plane and I get a voicemail, I normally don't check my voicemails. So I just get the transcribed voice because there's no way I'm ever going to listen to it. Yeah. I know you call it. I saw the missed call.
You leave a message and if it's transcribed. Um, so. Uh, walk us through what, what we're, what we're missing on these electric shock cases, because a lot of 'em, sometimes they're public entities against Edison or some of the things like, what are we missing? The, the biggest thing people are missing is that, is don't be afraid if the symptoms are delayed, because that's when, you know the client is actually telling the truth is when the symptoms are delayed.
And so, so, you know, the defense counsel will tell me like, oh, your client didn't present with all these issues right away. And I go, dude, if he did, he'd be a fraud. You know, unless it's like a super catastrophic case, because you're going to have issues with like seizures six months out, you know, so if the, if the client's presenting with seizures right away, that's abnormal, but, but six months out a year out, that's, that is normal.
They don't know because with electrical cases, most people die, right? So if your client survived, it's either not severe or it's super severe and they don't know what to do with it. I mean, how many electrical cases are there? There's probably in history that, that survived a catastrophic electrical shock. And so doctors don't know what they're doing on those issues. Doctors sometimes don't know what they're doing on a neck issue, right? Like trial and error.
Yeah. Well, like we, um, we had one electrical shock case where it was so powerful. Guy lost his arm. Yeah, I mean, and you know, there's a I mean, that was one of the most contentious litigations We had and we resolved it for a lot, but it was their hard liability cases, right? Yeah So and I'm sure he had a brain injury too. Yep, but they disputed that and they're like, oh, this is just an arm case That's what they did in mind.
This is just so what because these are very In me because a lot of times we have electric shock cases. It's usually a premises case of something. Yeah Right. And then sometimes there's a public entity involved. Yeah. So walk us through the target defendants on these types of cases and what things you're looking for.
So the, the target defendants, like you said, it's going to be a public utility, which in California you need a six month notice in Georgia, you need a one year notice or six months depending. You have to file a claim. You have to file a claim. And in, in, in Georgia, they're very slick about that. Like in California, they're more loose with it. But in Georgia, they'll, they'll try to evade service and be like, Oh, you, you served it to my office, but you didn't serve it to my desk.
And that, and so it's. And they'll file a motion to dismiss. So whenever there's a public entity involved, you definitely want to get like a high level technical lawyer involved because you can mess those up very easily. Then you also look at like, even if they're not an actual utility, they might be a quasi utility. Like in our case, it was the largest manufacturer of solar panels in the world.
And the largest generator of solar power private, you know, so they're effectively a utility, even though they're not officially a utility. And they, they, there's a lot of lobbying involved so they don't get regulated as a utility. Um, and then so you, you, you go to them and you find out, okay, what did you do? And then obviously they try to disclaim liability, blame it on the employee, because workers comp in Georgia and California is a bar.
If, if, if the, if you can't sue your own employer, generally speaking. Um, and so that's what you're trying to do. You're trying to find the, the big entity, trying to define what they are. Are they public or private? And depending on what benefits them, they'll define themselves as public or private. If there's an immunity, they'll say, Oh, we're public. If there's no immunity, they'll say, Oh, we're private.
That's where you can't trip up and, You got to file the claim form, be safe, you know, yeah, you know, and that's where like a lot of people don't realize is there's a lot of target defendants. It's usually an employee that gets hurt. I mean, every case that I've had is the same way. And do you have that workers comp crossover? Crossover, yep. And a lot of times if you can actually show the employer was negligent, you can get big reduction or get the employee's medical lien waived.
Yeah. And so in our case, the jury found that they were, that the employer and the employee, my client was negligent or were negligent because both of them, but they were not the substantial factor. So we got a hundred percent liability. And that was worth, you know, the 160, 000 medical lien, you know, like it's like that, that, you know, if they got 10%, it would have reduced the verdict.
How do you prove that there was a surge of electricity that came from the public entity and not an employee severing the line? So. So for that, what I would recommend is first, the lawyer needs to kind of become an expert like in my office right now, in my actual physical office, there's a, there's the box that triggered the injury and, uh, and, uh, and another for, for the most re for that case.
And for the most recent case that we just settled for five, five and a half, nearly five and a half million. I kind of recreated the incident in my office again. Um, I think the lawyer needs to be able to explain it to. to the jury. So the lawyer needs to be the expert. So for my Monterey case, I was the smartest person in the room on that issue. And the jury kind of learned that right away.
Even though I'm not as articulate, I stutter like the defense lawyer was way more articulate, less stuttering, more polished, but he didn't know his ass from his elbow when it came to the to the actual incident. How did you learn this stuff? I physically went to the site. I went to Talk to my client endlessly, talk to other people endlessly.
And then, and I recommend you do that early on because then when you start talking to third party witnesses, like we interviewed dozens of third party witnesses, they're skeptical, right? They're like, who is this lawyer? They have their own lawyer cause it's the employer. So they're represented. But as soon as they talked to me for five minutes, even the, the, my, my co, the employer's lawyers were like, dude, this guy knows his shit. And so they all trusted.
me. And so they would, they cooperate it. And that's not, that's not always the case, but it took a lot of, uh, time on my part, like to, to understand what was going on. I talked to other lawyers, they helped me understand it. Um, and just workshopping the case. Like I, this, that case was an example of teamwork. Like Justice HQ met with dozens of lawyers and we talked about it. Um, Cala lawyers helped me on Cala, Gary Dordick helped me, um, . Sean Claggett. Mm-Hmm.
. You know Claggett. Matt Granda is on JJ hq. Sean Claggett. And Jordan Logan. I spent a whole day with them working on the case. Dan Ambrose from TLU weeks with Dan Ambrose prepping the case. 'cause Dan is like a freaking workhorse. So he forced me to work on the case. And then the Jerry Spence College, like, it was literally like a Jerry Spence verdict. There was four of us from the ranch there, you know. Wow. And you, I mean, what it was, how big was the verdict? Four 51 million. 51 million.
Yeah. And you know. You talked about the labor of love, the stuff that you have to do in the prep to get there. Now, one thing you did was very creative on, and it's very hard to understand, is the damages in this case. Yes. So how did you work up the brain injury, the general damages for an electrocution? So, so the, the way we did, the way we did it is we, um, one thing I don't like to use, I don't like to use lien doctors.
And so we used the workers' comp doctors to establish the dam damages and you can usually videotape their depositions Yes. As a treating doctor. Exactly. And then what I did is. I used before and after witnesses and I even used the defense witnesses to establish how badass my client was to the project. And I told the jury, I said, look, we're asking for, you know, 46 million in damages for Kelly. I said, don't look at the day before the incident.
You know, I want you to look 18 months before when this billion dollar project was on death's door and they called Kelly, my client to come save the project. I said, this is how the phone conversation would go 18 months before the incident. Hey, this project is in the hole. We need Kelly. And the CEO says, get Kelly, whatever it costs, get him over there to fix this project. That's a billion dollar project. We need him. And they'd be like, we can't, he's, he's damaged.
He's like, what's it going to cost to fix him? 46 million. He'll say, write the check. He's worth every penny. I was like, that's how you have to look at it. Don't look at it the day after when he's useless to the company. Look at it when the company needed him the most and he delivered. And that's who he was. Even the defense was like, we all knew who he was. He was a badass.
And that's what a lot of lawyers get, you know, they think they have to over expert the case, get a neurologist, a neuropsychologist, and I'm, I'm like you, I think before and after witnesses, and maybe a physiatrist that can piece it all together to meet the standard, and that's all you need. That's it, and that was our main witness, the physiatrist. Which one, if you don't mind saying? Topher Stevenson. Oh, he's awesome. And the reason I like Topher is he actually cares.
He met with the client. He legit cares. He was a smoke jumper.
So he himself is a badass physically What is a smoke jumper where they like go in and they I believe it's when they go in and they they try to like Uh prevent the uh limit the exposure of the fire So they they get dropped in they get dropped into like a danger site and they freaking she's yeah So he's a legit badass himself So he and my client was a badass so they could relate to each other I couldn't relate to my client my client could Bench more than me even after the injury, right?
So I was like, we can't relate to each other, dude. I'm going to do Eve, you know, like, so we're not going to relate, but Topher could relate to him. But Topher is also a bad ass. Yeah. I think physiatrist is the way to go. Treating physician. He gave them, and he didn't even do expensive stuff. He did like this cream. And my client's like, this cream is working. I was like, so we don't need a surgery then, you know, don't be afraid to do less medicine. If the, if the damage is there.
And in my case, the damage was clearly there. Anybody with the, Even a blind person could see the damage was there. Right. So, but it was just communicating that story and maximizing the damages. Yeah. So I know, um, I know how, I know how to find you by text or slack adjust HQ and to find you on attorney shared to refer you cases for those that are out there, but how do other folks find you if they want to get educated on.
You know how to how to have an international practice and family or to litigate these tough cases. How do they find you? Yeah, just hit me up or my business partner ray Uh rk at kermani lop or ma at kermani lop and you know, we're down to talk to anybody. Thanks Well mo thanks for coming on the show big fan of yours Uh, this is the justice team network justice team podcast and he's the go to for these types of cases Thanks for coming on buddy. Thanks. Thanks, bro