Winning Premises Liability Cases

Welcome to the Effective Lawyer, a podcast for ambitious attorneys who want to improve their practice. My name is Jack Zinda, and I'll be your host. Today, we're going to talk about handling premises liability cases. These can be some of the most complicated and difficult cases to handle, not only because they can be difficult to win, but also they can be difficult to even decide if you should take the case or not. And to help me discuss that, I have with us one of our top trialers at the firm, Jason Aldridge. Hey, Jason. Hey Jack. It's great to be here. Thanks man. Well, before we get started, why don't you tell me a little bit about the types of cases you've handled involving premises liability cases? Yeah, I'm glad to. I've had quite a few premises liability cases and some that I'm very proud of. We've had customers in a popular lumber store or maybe a hardware store is a better description that suffered a permanent lifelong injury while shopping there. I've had a client that lived at a retirement community and suffered again a pretty catastrophic injury on the grounds there. Those are the two biggest ones that encompass all of the elements that you're going to run into in a premises case. Well, and I think you generally break these down into a few different categories. You have ones that happen at a store like a customer, then you might have one that happens on somewhere that someone is traveling. So if you have someone going through a construction site or going through a walkway, somewhere where they're traveling from one place to the next. And then I still consider these premises liability cases, but they're really active [negligence 00:02:03] cases, and that's where something falls on someone, hits something one or some sort of malfunction causes an injury on a piece of property. Or adjacent too even so, right. So we've recently had, or I'm aware of one recently where the injury took place adjacent a construction site, but because of elements leaving the construction site. But yeah, that's a great point. Another one I didn't even think of was something falling on someone in an establishment. What I know when I first started practicing, I made the mistake of taking every premises liability case that called me, and that was a huge, huge mistake. I realized very quickly that you're going to have a five to 10%, maybe even lower. I think last time I calculated, it was 3% of our firm of an acceptance rate, and that's of cases we look at 97% we do not take. Well, let's start at the beginning. Maybe you could walk through the elements on the liability side that you're typically trying to prove, and we could talk about how to investigate a case to establish that. Yeah. So you want to look at what happened, how it happened and then what happened because it happened. So for example, you have to figure out what the person who was injured was, what their relationship was to the property, right? So there's different levels that you will be considered; invitee, licensee, trespasser. And depending on which one you are, that will dictate what level of duty is owed to you. Everybody's heard the story that the trespasser; the burglar breaks in and cuts himself on a kitchen knife, right? That's a trespasser. And then in law school, there's the famous one with the shotgun that's all rigged up to shoot out the door. But that's what you got to figure out first is what were they doing there? And then second, what was the mechanism of injury? So you have slip and falls or trip and falls, and they're not the same thing, right? Slip and fall is like a liquid type; you slipped on something. And trip usually is you'd fall over something that's left out. And then of course, there's the third category, which is the catchall. Did a ceiling fan fall on your head, did product fall off of a shelf, something sticking out that you tripped over, right? And then you have to figure out the... You got to go a little deeper. Like with a car crash, someone runs a red light and they hit you. That's kind of the end of the facts. But in a premises case, take for example, if I was walking through a grocery store, and the person in front of me spilled their drink and I slipped on that drink. That's a terrible thing that happened to me. It's not my fault. But to make it or to figure out if the store had a role in it, you have to know how long, what kind of time passed between the event and the injury, and did the store... could the store reasonably have discovered it and cured it? And oftentimes, you're dealing with an educated animal, right? They have surveillance, they've been sued. They have procedures. Maybe if there was as many procedures to keep the people safe, we'd have a tougher time, but there are a lot of procedures keeping them safe from us; helping our clients. Well, and so when a client comes in the door, one of the things I think about is trying to get a clear understanding of what the client's story is from their point of view. And I like to use a method that I call setting the scene, where I'll do a frame by frame with the client a little bit of time before the incident happened to the incident and then after the incident. Some of the questions that we'll ask are, what did you see? What did you hear? What did you feel? What did you smell? Who else was there? And you try to bring them back to the place to have them look around to see if they can understand all of the different pieces of evidence and different things that they experienced at the time that the incident occurred. Well, let's talk about... So someone calls you up. They say, I've been hurt, and it's a case like this. Let's start at the beginning. How do you decide if you're even going to sign up the case? What are some of the things you look for? Well, you'd want... what we look for at our firm is to make sure that we're going to add value, that we're going to help the person. So, unfortunately, the level of injury comes into play in that determination, right? If it's a very minor injury, what it's going to take to win will not leave them better off. And so that's often a hard conversation to have, but you've got to be able to do that, because otherwise, you're, like you were saying in the beginning where you're taking everything, Like you said, a serious injury, right? So you need a serious injury in a case, and I think that's something that I would pay close attention to is, do you think you could just based on the injury itself, go get a big verdict? And then the next is, is what you will need to prove it, does it exist? If somebody's in a store with no surveillance and there was no other customers, right, then you're just... It's going to be your person's word. Is there going to be anything else? And you know, when you think of a car crash, you were talking about the list of questions that we ask. There are so many other defenses that get thrown at a premises person. What shoes were you wearing? How fast were you going? What things did you have in your hands? And a key role in my, one of my bigger ones, was we used a human factor expert to talk about the signage in a store and how that there are literally books after books and studies about merchandising. And the design of the store is to lift the person's eyes up. And so there was surveillance, and they said, well, your guy's looking up. He's not looking where he's going. And it was only because we consulted an expert that could explain to a jury that they're looking where they're supposed to be looking. So a human factors expert, that's an interesting expert. And I know you know I've used those in several cases and they can be really helpful for establishing what [inaudible 00:08:08] it was designed and how it would affect the human experience. So if you want to think about it this way, there's ways that a store or a piece of property can be set up that will promote safety in ways that won't, and there's best practices. And so a human factors expert can really help you understand what a human would experience. Like what would they see? What would they hear? What would you expect them to see? Would you expect them to do in that circumstance? And we've used those to a lot of success in a lot of our cases. Yeah. And then they can also add to it what the elements, what the store is doing to affect that human experience. Like I was saying, in my case with the signs, drawing your eye up with the end caps that are designed specifically with larger products and where they're placed and that sort of balance between safety and affecting the shopping experience. It was really fascinating. So someone comes in, you want to first establish that the case is large enough to pursue. The next piece of the puzzle, I think, is, based on just what the client's telling you, do you think you have a strong liability case, because once you get into the case, you may realize the case is not as strong as you thought. So I think figuring out the whole 360 point of view from what the client experienced. Now, I think it's really important that you set expectations correctly with a potential client and explain that these are very difficult cases to win. You don't want them leaving your office, thinking that any premises liability cases is a slam dunk, because there's not. Even if you have a great liability case, there's going to be a percentage of jurors that are going to pour you out just because they're going to think, that wouldn't have happened to me, you should've watched where you're going. So they're always a little bit of a crap shoot on what's going to happen at the end of the day. Yeah. We focus group our cases and I was really blown away by the first few premises focus cases. I actually had a member of our focus group who worked in a grocery store and whose job it was to clear aisles. And he was the worst one on my mock jury. Just had no sympathy whatsoever for people not seeing the things that are there to be seen. So you'd be really surprised that I would've seen it or watch where you're going, I think, is a 40%, you got to count on that reduction. And you were saying about keeping the expectations. Something I found interesting is that a lot of people are really altruistic and they want... that's been their main motivation, is why I want this to not happen to someone else. And sometimes that's the harsh reality. You have to tell them is that this is going to be insurance companies. The store's not going to change what they do necessarily. It's even difficult to talk about cases because almost always there's a confidentiality clause and you've got to tell them, hey, look, the store's not going to come to this case and they're not going to be part of it. But usually, like I said, like we [inaudible 00:10:57], if they're really hurt, this is a life changing thing in all likelihood. And the other thing I like to look for in, and I kind of rank these cases. Ones were something that clearly should not have happened happens. We had a case where a piece of furniture fell from the ceiling and hit our client in the head while they were standing there and making a cell phone call. That shouldn't happen. That's a good liability case because no one expects that to occur. A leak from a air conditioner. That can be a pretty good case because it shouldn't be leaking. Where you get a little more difficult and a little more tenuous, our case is where it's not clear where the substance came from or it's something that everyone is aware of. And that brings me to another practice tip that I would give you when you are deciding if you're going to take one of these cases, make sure that you believe in the case and you're willing to go try the case. You don't necessarily have to feel that way in the beginning. I think really the first 90 days you're really evaluating that case. But I think once you've evaluated it, you need to be prepared to go to the distance. These are not cases that typically settle early in litigation or settle with a demand letter. For sure. In my first one, I remember being really frustrated at how long it was two years and almost 20 depositions. And you could get a big car crash case or a trucking case that settles in half the time for twice as much. But there's something pretty satisfying about going up against a big company who did something terrible and pushing them until they tap out. No, I completely agree. And I think that brings up another point is when you're litigating the case, you may have to take more than a couple depositions to establish the facts. I would also look for prior employees or existing employees. I think those are great fact witnesses for your case. They're not going to be as well coached or well prepared, especially if you're dealing with a big box store or something like that. And we've got some of our best evidence. We had a case recently where the store employee said, yes, I've been warning them about this issue for months. They won't do anything about it. That object is a hazard. She literally used the term, it's a hazard. Which is great if you're going to play that before a jury. Now, if we had stopped short and not taken that witness's deposition, just done the corporate rep, we would've never gotten that evidence. And one of the key depositions in my bigger case was the, I would've seen it or watch where you’re going. The particular thing that my client was injured on was brightly colored. And of course, when you look at a photograph of it, it's it, you're looking at it. It's plain as day, but I had footage from eight or nine hours of the store being open. And I interviewed every employee that walked past this hazard. And they have a rule, you don't leave the hazard out. And so I would ask them, did you see it and not care? Or did you not see it? And they all didn't see it, which cut hugely against the company's assertion that my guy should have seen it, because none of theirs did. And that didn't come until way into the depos. I love that question, because they were probably assuming that was the right answer. Now, so we’re talking about the investigation stage, the client hires your firm, we're starting to investigate the case. Let's start off by asking, what experts might you hire early in the case, if any? Have you hired any experts? Yeah. So it may depend on what, so I'll just list the ones I've hired. We've hired an expert really on store safety. He literally wrote some of the books on mat usage and on wet floors, on the friction coefficient of stores, on merchandising and marketing, store setup. I've hired an engineer a couple of different times for sidewalks or anything that's outside that's problematic. So let's get into the nuts and bolts in some of the tactics. Let's start with tracking down witnesses. Okay. So what are some of the experiences you have with tracking down witnesses and some of the tactics you've seen be effective? So if you take a typical store as a setting, you're going to find some of the witnesses through discovery, who was working that day, who was working that week. You'll find out some of the witnesses in depositions when you walk through it. I took stills from video. We had gotten the video from the moment the store opened until an hour after my client was injured. And as each employee went by, I took a still from it, in the depositions, I asked them to identify each person. There are companies that will professionally find former employees. Some of the best witnesses come from that group of people. They're not currently employed, so they're not afraid of revealing things that would be beneficial to your case. Sometimes they're eager to. Sometimes they're quite eager to. You want to think outside the company too. If you think about, let's say for example, it's a major hardware store and think of who delivers to that store. Like, I've had clients that were injured on two by fours that fell or boxes that came from a high shelf. You might want to think about who would be stocking those shelves or delivering because sometimes they'll give you pretty good information. Yeah, we deliver all the time to this place and they never have the right stuff or they never do the right thing. I had a client injured on a fire extinguisher and we went to, as a great witness, was the fire inspector. Ironically, the company held the tag-out to say, look, it was inspected. So therefore we couldn't have done anything wrong, but it was quite the converse, in fact. When I spoke with the inspector, they revealed that they had on multiple occasions, warned the entity about the dangerous condition. So you want to think, of course, with the employees, but then former employees and companies that may have interacted. Well, you had a really interesting case recently involving, someone was hurt very badly at a facility. And you were able to track down a ton of witnesses through open records request. Yeah. So we have an excellent investigative team and we requested all 911 calls to this facility or this address for, you had to narrow the scope [sum 00:04:31]. So we put falls and we got to 20 different 911 calls for falls. We've also, of course, gone door to door, asked people that live there. Yeah. And I think that's something important to keep in mind. One thing you're looking for in these cases is to establish a pattern of conduct and you want to make it seem like it's a movie where there was all these warning signs of this terrible thing that was going to happen and then the inevitable occurred. We're firm believers that the case does not begin at the incident, it begins way before the incident happened. Another area that you can look for witnesses is going to be on the time sheets, both digital and physical of the workers. And I am not sure if this is an intentional tactic or unintentional, but I've been amazed by how many companies still use physical paper to monitor checking in and checking out of employees. So getting that list, and I think you want to try to jump on it early because people disappear, especially if in their low wage positions, there may be better opportunities available or they may be transitory in nature. And if you don't jump on it fast, they may not be around for when you need them for trial. Yeah, and reviews as well. In that same case you mentioned, I had done a bunch of research on social media and found some scathing reviews on their Facebook page and reached out to those people. In one instance, the person had complained on the Facebook page of the company and had put photos of- Oh, that's great. A tree that had fallen across a walkway and flooding and leaking, and they were listing all the complaints that they had made and almost made my whole case for me on just the Facebook page, of their own Facebook page. When I remember the 911 tapes that you found, just playing those at mediation of all of the people complaining about the exact same issue that occurred, it made it much more difficult for them to go to the, oh, stuff happens, defense, which I find is the typical defense they go to. Let's talk about video footage for a second. How valuable is video footage? Where do you find it? How do you go about making sure they hang on to it? Yeah. So I think that also will grab major mistakes or things that people do wrong. In one of my first cases, I was slow to go to the property itself and inspect it, and that was a lesson that I didn't repeat that mistake, but you want to get there right away. You want to spoliate, you want to send notice so that they preserve it and you want see it, because if it's good for your case they'll try not to show you, but you want to see it. If it's bad for your case, of course they'll show you. And if it's neutral or if they view it as negative, but it really isn't. Most of the time in my experience, the video is not as good as you would hope so it doesn't really make or break your case in most instances. But if it's there, you want to see it and you want to see it fast. And you want to see the store because no matter what kind of description you get, or even a photo, there's nothing that can replace being in that position. I hired a private investigator once to go and take photos of the five other stores for this national chain. And to specifically look for violations of the specific rule that cause my client's injuries. And so when they said, hey, look, we care about safety and this was a one off, I was able to show them five other stores where it was not a one off. And in fact it was common. I had gotten into the habit during that case, which lasted quite a while. Every time I drove past one of these stores, when I was going to do depositions or anything, I would stop and go in and take my own pictures. So the video's huge, going to the scene is big. I find once you do this line of work for a while, your mind changes. Have you ever seen the movie, Terminator? When the robot's walking around and it zones in on certain issues, I feel like that's what I do for rule violations. I'm like, that's violation. It drives my wife crazy. But I see the danger everywhere. Yeah. I remember where I was recently, but I was eating and I was like, hey, you guys are going to want to do something. Oh, and I was also walking around my neighborhood. We were going to talk about manholes. There was a manhole that was ill fitted, and I thought, you're going to find out the hard way. A funny, well, not a funny story, but an interesting story about video footage. We had, one of the very first cases I worked on was a premises liability case against a very large grocery store chain. And our client was hurt very badly, had a fractured femur. It happened early in the morning, hardly any witnesses. And we were trying to get the video footage. And they said, well, there's no video footage of this, which didn't make sense to me because this happened at the entrance of the store. And for those of you who don't know, stores have cameras in places to prevent theft. That's the objective of the cameras. So entrance and exits is one of the most common places that are going to have a camera. So this particular store had a reputation of not disclosing video footage in litigation that actually existed. So we press for it. They say it doesn't exist. We say, we want to go inspect the store and sure enough, there's a camera pointing right at, and they said, well, it wasn't on at the time. So we file a further motion to compel to actually go to the place where they store the video with an expert. And they say no way in heck, the judge grants our order, we go there and sure enough, there was video, it was recorded and it was present. And now of course they say, oh my gosh, I can't believe we missed it. I'm so sorry. That's terrible. In this case happened to be like two months from the statute of limitations. So we play the video footage and we're in litigation and it turns out a third party vendor had waxed the floor right before our client fell. And I think the defense was planning on making them an RTP after the statute ran to sink our case. But luckily we were aggressive and were able to get that footage and it all worked out. So just some tips, don't necessarily take, there's no footage for an answer, because I'm with Jason, they will gladly share footage when it's bad for you. And if they say there's no footage and they won't share it assume it's good for you. Yeah. And the other thing is, if there is footage, you can get it even without a lawsuit. Worst case, you do a pre-suit deposition, but you'll get the video. And the other thing is the first site inspection I did for premises case, a senior attorney, a mentor of mine advised me to go into the back of this restaurant where they have the monitors, because if they had said, well, there's no footage that captured this part of the store- This is with the court order. This is not on his own. This is absolutely in litigation. And so we went in the back and I could see the monitors and sure enough, there was a monitor that covered that area, which means there was a camera that covered that area for sure. Yeah. You don't want to take their word for it. Some interesting cases we've worked on, we've worked on a couple drowning death cases, which I consider premises liability cases. And in those, the rules become particularly important. And I think of all these involving drowning or fire or someone falls in something or trips on them, it's kind of the same premises liability bucket of looking forward, what is wrong with the facility or the area which the person was harmed. And I think when you're looking at the more catastrophic, a death case, those sorts of things, you really want to make sure you're checking off every box on what you're looking at in those instances. And the drowning case, it was a real tragic case where someone drowned in a home of all places. And it took a long time for us to really figure out what the liability on the case was, but it had to do with egress and ingress having enough space and room to get in it out of the place. And I remember us doing three different inspections with three different experts because we were trying to figure out what went wrong here because someone shouldn't drown in their own home. Yeah. And if you think about it, the common theme in all premises cases is money over safety, right? Or money over profits over people or whatever the theme is because it's always a corner cut. And it's almost always a for-profit entity that's cutting that corner at the peril of our clients. Well, and when you're in litigation, I think one mistake attorneys make is being afraid to take a lot of depositions. I think we get it in our heads that a deposition has to be six hours long. A deposition can be 15 minutes. I remember we've had cases, I think there was some that you had like this Jason, where we said, okay, we're going to take these 10 employees’ depositions if you're not going to tell us what they know and we'll just line them up. What do you know? Nothing? Next. What do you know? Nothing? Next. And then the third one, boom, you get a lot of good evidence on them. Yeah, you cannot in advance know who's going to be your best depo. The best depo I had in one of the cases we've talked about today was a depo that they prompted the other side did. They brought a witness who turned out to be incredible for my case. And another one, which we've also discussed, it was a fourth or fifth or sixth employee in one day. That was the break point, I think in the case. And I wouldn't be afraid of doing that early in your case because a lot of times the defense won't have prepped them as much, because they don't know where you're going with it. And just a few good excerpts of, yeah. I saw that coming, can really make a big difference in the outcome. What are some of the key depositions that you want to always take in a premises liability case? And let's just use the example of a trip and fall or what people traditionally think of as a premises liability case. Yeah. So you start, I think at the incident itself and you work outwards in a circle. So if you've got a wet floor, then you want to start with the employee that caused the floor to be wet. Then you go up the chain from there, who was their supervisor, who was the person that hired them and trained them? And then potentially you go up to a corporate person who's in charge of safety overall. Because in all likelihood, there's either a rule that they had that they broke or they don't have a rule that they should have. But if you start at the point, that's common sense, but how far back you go, and sometimes you want to really consider the order as well. You may not always want to start with the guy or girl that was mopping. You may want to start higher than that, because it gives them a chance to make their bed and then lie in it. Because it's going to be somebody's fault. Floors get wet and they shouldn't. Well, what are some of the cases that you've worked on or types of cases where there's maybe a heightened standard of duty, where like the premise would have more responsibility than they would ordinarily? This podcast is presented by Zinda Law Group, a nationwide personal injury firm. For over 10 years, the experienced lawyers at ZLG have been partnering with outside counsel across the United States on all types of personal injury and wrongful death cases. With over 30 attorneys, Zinda Law Group has paid out millions in referral and joint venture fees since 2015. To learn more about partnering with Zinda Law Group, please email us at referrals@zindalaw.com. We'll schedule a time for you to meet with Jack Zinda or one of our trial lawyers to discuss your case. So for example, one of my cases involved senior community, and that honestly was the theme, you couldn't have pushed that theme out of the way. It was so omnipresent, the focus group thought so, our firm did, I did, the family did because this company had profited off of senior citizens and specifically targeted to them. And so some of the depositions we took, or in every deposition we took of a resident, we asked them, what were you looking for in this age restricted community? And it was just this perfect list of heightened safety, you expected handrails, you expected safer conditions, and of course, in my case, they found the opposite. Well, and I think you did a great job in that case of comparing and contrasting other facilities the company owned because this is a larger company and they had three different types of facilities. One was for senior living. The other was for high end and the other was for middle income, and the high end ones, correct me if I'm wrong, they had every safety thing and you can imagine, it was perfect handrails everywhere. They had handrails that led to the handrails and in the senior community, they had wobbly sidewalks and no handrails and old faded paint. Yeah. They had directed their resources, just like we said, the theme, to the most profitable property. And another tip is get the marketing materials if it's a premises facility where someone's living. A lot of times, they'll have these amazing pictures and how safe it is and how great it is. And then you compare it to reality and it makes a great exhibit. Here's what you marketed when you wanted their business. And here's what it actually looked like when our client was hurt. Yeah. And look at everything. The lease in that case was informative. When you talk about getting at something earlier, we had a case where a light fixture fell. That's so obvious, right? Light fixtures should not fall. And when they do it's someone's fault. But if you get into more sophisticated business entities, you may find four, five, six, seven different people touched that thing. And it takes a lot of work to get them all involved in a lawsuit. So. What about cases you want to avoid? What are some of the things, when you look at a case, like, okay, I don't want to take a case like this, or a damage threshold, what are cases you want avoid because these can be money pits and time traps, if you're not careful. Yeah. Unfortunately, there's a misconception about personal injury attorneys, and this idea that a case may not be “big enough”. For us, the anticipated result, what a win looks like has to be factored in, in a premises case because you are going to spend a lot of time and a lot of money on the case. One of the ones we talked about today, we spent $50,000 on experts in depositions. And that's money that's fronted. So, if a win is $75,000, if we think that's what a jury would award, then you're not helping that person by winning that case. So oftentimes the injury is informative. And then your ability to prove the case. So unfortunately, if two cars crash in the middle of the night on a road and no one sees it, that's one thing. You're maybe not going to gamble as much, but on these kind of cases, you could really frontload and you don't want the jury deciding whose fault it is, just how much. Yeah, I think that's a really great point. And what I try to think about is, what's the story that you're going to tell that shows this was a disruption, what people would expect? Typically the more something is close to water on the ground and someone slipped, the less likely it's going to be a strong case. The cases I like to look for, ones where say an air conditioning unit has been leaking for days and someone falls. I like to think of what's the abnormal, and does this match up with something someone didn't expect? We had a case where a really nice woman was walking on a sidewalk, carrying some boxes. She was working as a delivery driver. And there was literally a big piece of the sidewalk missing with rebar and that they hadn't finished constructing. And you could look at that case and say, well, she should have looked where she's going and not fallen in this obvious hole. But it's at a mall where people are walking with boxes, that was her job, they told her to come deliver here. And when you start breaking it down, that should never be that way in a million years. It should be marked off. There should be tape, something to warn someone not to hit. I'm not as big of a fan of the cases where it's, slipped on a grape or wet water because those are really difficult to establish should they have known. And then I think you always have to have a consideration, the jury in those cases might say, yeah, but that's not that dangerous. Right. The jury's going to put themselves in both parties’ feet. So if it's reasonable for a grape to fall to the floor in the grape section, you're in trouble because it is. If it's reasonable that the floor’s wet after you mop it, that's reasonable. But if it's not reasonable for an air conditioner to leak day after day after day in a store or any of the other examples, a manhole not fitting, a light fixture falling from the ceiling, et cetera. So it's a balancing scale, right? The more egregious the activity is, the easier it is to get behind it, or conversely, the more terrible the injury is, then you can maybe find your way there. And I think you've got to really map out your liability case. I think this is the type of case, especially I encourage you to put the charge out from day one. So you establish, okay, are they a licensee, a trespass or an invitee, and really figure out. Can I tell you how many attorneys get into litigation they don't know what the classification of their injured party was, which really can make a huge difference in the outcome? Yeah. One of the things that we do here is we will actually draft our response to the motion for summary judgment that, of course, hasn't been filed, because you haven't even filed a lawsuit yet. But if you don't know what their motion for summary judgment's going to be, you are already losing. They do, and they're setting it up in all the early depositions. And even if they've got a real flimsy argument, if you haven't already defeated it, you're going to get to mediation and find out that their adjuster believes that they're going to win that summary judgment. It will delay, if not destroy, your case, if you're not ready for it. And we do that right out the gate. No, I completely agree, 110%. And the other thing that can be really helpful is to do a focus group and you don't have to do a dedicated focus group just to your case. A lot of times we will double and triple up focus groups and say, let's carve out five minutes to give the facts of a difficult case that we're considering pursuing and see what they think. Ask friends or family. I've got a few friends that are particularly, I wouldn't say they're anti-plaintiff, but they would not be people on one of my jury and they will give me honest feedback. And I always tell them, a friend of mine has this case. Don't tell them it's your case because they will not be honest with you. They'll say, oh, that's an amazing case. My dad, for example, I don't think I've ever had a case he didn't love that wasn't worth $10 million, because I'm the best lawyer ever and I could get it. But get their advice of what they think of the case. And there's been several cases I've walked away from. When I do that five times, there's like, no, that's not a good case at all. Yeah. And you said the term and you may not have coined it, but you don't want to win the focus group. And so find people that will beat up your case because it will give you insight to the areas that are wrong just as readily as the good areas. And ask them, what do you want to know? The focus group, what else would you like to know? I think that was really helpful in the senior living facility case in getting that information. Yeah, for sure. Well, Jason, this has been an awesome discussion. I could geek out on this stuff for like 10 more hours, but I know you're a busy guy. You've got a family, you've got cases to work on. If the listeners wanted to get ahold of you, how could they do that? Well, on our website, I'm listed obviously one of the attorneys and my email and phone numbers there, call me at the firm anytime. You find me, I will respond and help anyway I can. Well, thank you very much. It was great talking to you. Thank you. Thanks for listening to today's episode of The Effective Lawyer. You can learn more about our team and find other episodes of our podcast at zindalaw.com. As always, we'd appreciate that you subscribe, rate and review the pod. Thanks.