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The World’s Deadliest Water Park (w. Seth Porges) · Brief Recess: A Legal Podcast with Michael Foote & Mélissa Malebranche

0:06
Speaker 1: Welcome to brief receas. I'm Michael pa. Please stay your
0:10
Speaker 1: name for the record.
0:11
Speaker 2: Melissa Albridge on Melissa Albridge and all charges.
0:15
Speaker 1: Thank you for joining us. We're going to talk about
0:16
Speaker 1: the craziest lawsuits, the weirdest things in the headlines, all
0:19
Speaker 1: the case law, all the amendments behind the actual lawsuit
0:24
Speaker 1: here today in court. That's the thing about nail polish
0:29
Speaker 1: for men though sometimes if you're trying to no, it
0:33
Speaker 1: is actually different because if you're trying to do nail
0:35
Speaker 1: polish on a man, yes, you actually need it to
0:38
Speaker 1: be like custom. Because I've tried to do like press
0:41
Speaker 1: on nails for Halloween costume.
0:43
Speaker 2: No, I understand, because the width of the nail.
0:45
Speaker 1: I'm at the dollar store buying big toes for my
0:49
Speaker 1: pinky because that's I'm serious, that's how big my figures
0:54
Speaker 1: I'm pressing. Don't fake toenails onto my giant let me let.
0:59
Speaker 2: Me find them for you. And because they have this
1:01
Speaker 2: array and I'm sure they have a array of sizes
1:04
Speaker 2: that would work for you.
1:05
Speaker 1: I want to know what like the dolls are doing,
1:06
Speaker 1: Like what's like the trans community doing with their nails
1:08
Speaker 1: because or like if they wanted to like press on
1:10
Speaker 1: nails or these like gel stickers.
1:12
Speaker 2: I think a lot of them are going out and
1:15
Speaker 2: getting their nails done and they're building a nail because
1:18
Speaker 2: you can build a nail, right, So there's like a
1:20
Speaker 2: little thing back in the nineties when I was getting nails,
1:23
Speaker 2: you could build a nail.
1:24
Speaker 1: To tell you about the craziest thing that happened in court, though,
1:26
Speaker 1: I forgot to tell you this earlier.
1:27
Speaker 2: Tell me.
1:28
Speaker 1: So first of all, I go to immigration court today.
1:31
Speaker 1: It is a seven am call time.
1:34
Speaker 2: They don't know you at all, do they.
1:36
Speaker 1: It is cattle call. It's checking out an Italian airport,
1:40
Speaker 1: trying to get in front of an immigration just in America.
1:43
Speaker 2: These you just done pissed off the Italians, continuous continue continue.
1:50
Speaker 1: By the time I'm called, yeah, it's like eleven thirty,
1:53
Speaker 1: and I'm watching as the other attorneys are litigating beforehand
1:57
Speaker 1: because it's open court, so you're just kind of sitting there.
2:01
Speaker 1: So this litigator goes up in front of this judge
2:03
Speaker 1: and I'm gonna be like really big here for just
2:06
Speaker 1: to be I mean, it was open court, so I
2:08
Speaker 1: can I'm allowed to talk about what I saw. This
2:11
Speaker 1: person was right out of law school. I could tell
2:14
Speaker 1: so a child brand new to the practice, Yes, not
2:16
Speaker 1: at all. Long new lawyer smell, yes, fresh new car smell.
2:20
Speaker 2: Okay.
2:20
Speaker 1: The judge really wanted specificity in this one situation that
2:26
Speaker 1: we were in, and the judge was like pretty reasonable.
2:28
Speaker 1: They're not always reasonable, and what they're asking, They're like, hey,
2:32
Speaker 1: your case hinges upon this one specific incident. We don't
2:36
Speaker 1: have any details. It just says incident in this report. Now,
2:41
Speaker 1: if your case hinges upon something like that, you better
2:44
Speaker 1: have an affidavit, witness testimony, a police report. You need
2:48
Speaker 1: to have like documentations, exhibits, a through z backing up
2:53
Speaker 1: that one incident. This person did not have that. This
2:56
Speaker 1: person had nothing and was like blinking at the judge like,
3:00
Speaker 1: why don't you just believe me? Just take it, take
3:02
Speaker 1: my word for it, okay, And the judge is getting
3:04
Speaker 1: more and more frustrated. At seven am. None of us
3:07
Speaker 1: want to be here, right, I don't have makeup on yet, Like,
3:09
Speaker 1: we're all tired, and so.
3:13
Speaker 2: Did you get for stumbling home at seven o'clock.
3:15
Speaker 1: Its forty five. I'm putting out a suit and so
3:18
Speaker 1: we hoprate in. The judge is freaking out on this
3:21
Speaker 1: attorney really leaning in, throwing the book at them. Yes,
3:25
Speaker 1: and okay, this attorney's giving it right back. And now
3:29
Speaker 1: I love pushing back. I will push back all the time.
3:32
Speaker 1: To push back on something where you don't have a
3:34
Speaker 1: life to stay. Yeah, it's like a wild choice. It
3:38
Speaker 1: better be you have nothing. This client won't give you
3:41
Speaker 1: that testimony. You can't get the police record, but like,
3:44
Speaker 1: enumerate the things you've done to try and get that information.
3:46
Speaker 1: At least, Judge, I've tried this, this, this, this, this,
3:49
Speaker 1: it got so ugly. So my advice, honestly, in any
3:53
Speaker 1: argument or any new lawyer, if you're not a lawyer
3:55
Speaker 1: and you're watching this, pick the hill you want to die,
3:59
Speaker 1: and maybe you're bad on it. Hell, choose your battle. Ryeah.
4:01
Speaker 2: Here's the thing. I think that that's something that you
4:03
Speaker 2: sort of learn with experience.
4:05
Speaker 1: Right.
4:05
Speaker 2: So if this person is straight out of law school,
4:08
Speaker 2: they have no idea what they're doing, and they feel
4:11
Speaker 2: like my job is to make sure that justice is
4:15
Speaker 2: served right and they're barely earnest and they want to
4:17
Speaker 2: make that effort. I think that's something that they learn eventually, absolutely, right,
4:22
Speaker 2: So experience, and I think even if you were to
4:25
Speaker 2: befriend this person and.
4:26
Speaker 1: Say listen, listen, cool your shit, listen and pop put
4:30
Speaker 1: it on ice.
4:32
Speaker 2: They're not going to believe you, do you know what
4:34
Speaker 2: I'm saying.
4:35
Speaker 1: I know because especially when you're first litigating, it's like
4:38
Speaker 1: all you've seen is Alicia Floric and the good Wife
4:42
Speaker 1: fighting for justice every day in course, and it's like, Okay,
4:45
Speaker 1: you're going to be in front of this judge fifty
4:47
Speaker 1: more times on this same case. You're going to really
4:51
Speaker 1: need this judge to.
4:52
Speaker 2: Us to like you right to you know, to at
4:55
Speaker 2: least not hate you.
4:56
Speaker 1: To at least not hate the evidence to back it up.
4:58
Speaker 1: For sure, the judge really has to to be on
5:00
Speaker 1: your side. They're going to just issue a ruling. Anyway.
5:03
Speaker 1: That was my weekend review so far. I mean, it's
5:06
Speaker 1: still ongoing.
5:07
Speaker 2: I know, the week is young. Yeah, So I've been
5:09
Speaker 2: thinking a lot about political violence, just because it seems
5:14
Speaker 2: that we're living in a time where it's happening more
5:16
Speaker 2: and more.
5:16
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's something that you used to hear about
5:19
Speaker 1: like in far off like Eastern European countries or in
5:23
Speaker 1: more developing nations, right like for the Haitians assassination that
5:29
Speaker 1: was absolutely all over my feed.
5:30
Speaker 2: I heard a lot about that, right, And now I
5:32
Speaker 2: think what's interesting in a scary way, is that it
5:36
Speaker 2: seems to be happening more and more in this country.
5:41
Speaker 2: Pelosi's husband, Pelosi's husband, Melissa Hortman and her husband and
5:44
Speaker 2: her dog, which I had to tell you, I really
5:48
Speaker 2: think that I thought that that would get more play,
5:51
Speaker 2: especially because of the dog.
5:53
Speaker 1: Dogs cut across the political spectrum, like period is one
5:58
Speaker 1: of those things where I think they even paradise it
6:00
Speaker 1: on deep where like they were drone striking someone's home
6:05
Speaker 1: and they were like animals in the home. And Selena
6:09
Speaker 1: Meyer took all this political heat because they killed the
6:13
Speaker 1: like exotic animals in this.
6:15
Speaker 2: American I mean, Americans love animals. You and I really
6:20
Speaker 2: would have thought that that would have gotten more play
6:23
Speaker 2: than it did, yes, But instead I think these other
6:27
Speaker 2: acts are getting more play, And I'm wondering what the
6:30
Speaker 2: difference is. Why is that happening? I mean, I can guess.
6:34
Speaker 1: I think that things get play when they are convenient
6:39
Speaker 1: for any particular party. I think when it comes to
6:42
Speaker 1: like political violence, certain parties are better at using that
6:46
Speaker 1: violence to move their cause forward. I mean, we keep
6:49
Speaker 1: circling back to this notion of like what conservatives are
6:52
Speaker 1: willing to do to advance their agenda and what liberals
6:55
Speaker 1: are not.
6:55
Speaker 3: Willing to do.
6:56
Speaker 1: Correct, And it's not the same sort of like gut check. No,
7:00
Speaker 1: it isn't the level of like how people are approaching it.
7:04
Speaker 1: It's just different with different parties for sure. So I
7:07
Speaker 1: think the hypocrisy tolerance level is like much higher it
7:12
Speaker 1: is among conservatives, where it's like we are going to
7:15
Speaker 1: completely make this entirely about this one person's death or
7:20
Speaker 1: this one person violence against this one person in our
7:23
Speaker 1: party and completely ignore what happened on the other side, right,
7:30
Speaker 1: or we'll barely talk about it, or we'll make some
7:32
Speaker 1: sort of canned statement that gets tweeted out or whatever.
7:35
Speaker 2: Through the make it seem like it's not a big
7:37
Speaker 2: deal at all. I think that's really what it is.
7:39
Speaker 2: Is the hypocrisy of it is so overwhelming. It's overwhelming.
7:45
Speaker 1: That is almost like more frustrating sometimes than like the
7:48
Speaker 1: actual situation we're dealing with, whatever it is. Sometimes I'm like,
7:52
Speaker 1: this is actually the thing that's pissing me off or
7:54
Speaker 1: upsetting me or like getting in the weeds for me.
7:58
Speaker 1: It's so interest. My emotional response to it is like
8:02
Speaker 1: not logical at all.
8:04
Speaker 2: Maybe that's what's happening to the other side as well, right,
8:06
Speaker 2: Like their emotional response to it is illogical because they're
8:11
Speaker 2: so vehement, right, They're so steadfast in their beliefs that
8:14
Speaker 2: they're just like they're determined to make everybody else understand.
8:18
Speaker 2: And how it's the liberals did this, the.
8:21
Speaker 1: Democratic saying when Charlie Kirk died, your friends at HBCUs,
8:28
Speaker 1: we're getting before they had released the race and affiliation
8:32
Speaker 1: correct of the shooter, right, your friends who worked at
8:37
Speaker 1: HBCUs were getting like death threats.
8:39
Speaker 2: Yep, they are bomb threats. They were shutting down campuses.
8:42
Speaker 2: But I think what is absolutely wild to me is
8:45
Speaker 2: that there is this sort of expectation that people should
8:51
Speaker 2: sort of now looking back at the life of this
8:53
Speaker 2: man and honor him in some way. And I think
8:57
Speaker 2: that I am obviously I am at his murder, at
9:01
Speaker 2: his assassination, but I'm wondering what it is that is
9:06
Speaker 2: expected of me. And I will speak for myself, I
9:08
Speaker 2: won't speak for anybody else, but as a black woman
9:13
Speaker 2: who is a first generation American who is married, that
9:16
Speaker 2: the idea that this man outwardly said that he did
9:21
Speaker 2: not think that I had that I had any intellect,
9:27
Speaker 2: and he thought that my husband owned me, basically. So
9:30
Speaker 2: I'm just wondering why it is that I am supposed
9:33
Speaker 2: to be broken.
9:34
Speaker 1: Up right, supposed to be saluting the flag at half masters.
9:37
Speaker 2: Why and why do why are we having moments of
9:40
Speaker 2: silence for this man? And I also think I've been
9:43
Speaker 2: hearing a lot that people are saying, this is our
9:45
Speaker 2: Martin Luther King and it's so And I'm oh, I
9:49
Speaker 2: have heard that, like this is our moment.
9:51
Speaker 1: This is a mess in our algorithms, right, Like you're
9:54
Speaker 1: getting certain messages that I'm not getting, and like your
9:56
Speaker 1: experience of this is going to be like totally different from.
9:59
Speaker 3: Them, for sure.
9:59
Speaker 1: I mean, like as like a gay dude, he had
10:02
Speaker 1: some really fucked up things to say about like being
10:04
Speaker 1: gay in America. Sure, Like what it's startling to me
10:07
Speaker 1: is that you know, there's all this ruckus around it, right,
10:10
Speaker 1: And what is always like a problem for me is
10:13
Speaker 1: when we can't talk about something like that is when
10:15
Speaker 1: I'm like, ooh, this is like tiptoeing into like secrets.
10:19
Speaker 2: It's the idea of like secrets, right, yeah, we're.
10:21
Speaker 1: Not allowed to bring it up. We're not allowed to
10:22
Speaker 1: talk about it. And if you do, you're doing like
10:24
Speaker 1: you're evil, you're bad, you're saying that you love you,
10:28
Speaker 1: you're ill the dead. Yes, So that's what's always concerning
10:31
Speaker 1: to me. But what I'm always curious, and this is
10:34
Speaker 1: where I'm a little bit more like, I guess disconnected
10:37
Speaker 1: from him as a person or his messages, where what
10:41
Speaker 1: I see as a complete lack of clips playing of
10:44
Speaker 1: him speaking, because most of the clips of him speaking
10:48
Speaker 1: are him saying something really fucked up. So all these
10:50
Speaker 1: like eulogies are like photos and there's there are no
10:53
Speaker 1: actual like roll the clip of him speaking because it's
10:57
Speaker 1: the wildest, most cancer every.
10:58
Speaker 2: Single absolutely yeah.
11:01
Speaker 4: So yeah, And I.
11:03
Speaker 2: Think people don't want to say the quiet part out loud, right.
11:07
Speaker 2: The fact of the matter is that absolutely again, I
11:10
Speaker 2: feel like I really want to to say that it's
11:14
Speaker 2: not okay that he was killed in the way that
11:15
Speaker 2: he was killed.
11:16
Speaker 4: Right.
11:16
Speaker 1: It is a difference between saying like, oh, I don't
11:19
Speaker 1: think people should be murdered for their opinions and saying
11:23
Speaker 1: like I disagree with hate speech. Hate speech under the
11:26
Speaker 1: Constitution is not protected speech.
11:28
Speaker 4: I like.
11:29
Speaker 1: I'm an attorney. I took a lot of First Amendment classes,
11:31
Speaker 1: so I litigated the First Amendment. The First Amendment. Hate
11:35
Speaker 1: speech is not protected, period. It's widely accepted in case
11:40
Speaker 1: other's Supreme Court decisions. You cannot incite violence with hate
11:44
Speaker 1: speech and then say, oh, well it was it was
11:47
Speaker 1: first amount. I was using my First amendmenty, right, that's
11:50
Speaker 1: unprotected speech.
11:51
Speaker 2: I hear you, rue, But I think that that a
11:54
Speaker 2: lot of people think that your opinion is protected.
11:58
Speaker 1: Right.
11:59
Speaker 2: I'm allowed to say what I want. I'm allowed to
12:01
Speaker 2: say that I think that black women are not intelligent.
12:05
Speaker 2: I'm allowed to say that I think that gay people
12:09
Speaker 2: are sick. You know, I'm allowed to say those things,
12:12
Speaker 2: and and and the other thing. What I think is
12:14
Speaker 2: really interesting is sort of listening to the folks that
12:17
Speaker 2: have been talking about him. It's that, well, yeah, he
12:20
Speaker 2: said those things, and he was right.
12:23
Speaker 3: You know what I mean.
12:24
Speaker 1: I need to get on the record and just say, like,
12:26
Speaker 1: condemning hate speech isn't condoning murder, no, period, Like that's it.
12:31
Speaker 1: But that is honestly, like the way people are reacting
12:33
Speaker 1: ABOUTE are saying I condemn hate speech. Oh well you
12:37
Speaker 1: love murder. Then you found this person deserved to be killed.
12:40
Speaker 4: No, not at all.
12:40
Speaker 1: That is not at all what we're saying.
12:42
Speaker 2: No, it isn't.
12:43
Speaker 1: Yeah, what happened after they found the shooter?
12:46
Speaker 3: I wonder rick nothing cricket, it just stops, right.
12:49
Speaker 2: I mean, the governor of Utah when they found the shooter,
12:53
Speaker 2: for Charlie Kirk, came out and was like, you know,
12:56
Speaker 2: I was really praying that it would be somebody from
13:01
Speaker 2: another country. I was really praying that it wouldn't.
13:04
Speaker 1: Be goes on the record all the time, like reporters
13:07
Speaker 1: call me for a quote to be on the record
13:11
Speaker 1: saying something so fucking crazy.
13:15
Speaker 4: I was praying that that if this had to happen here,
13:20
Speaker 4: that it wouldn't be one of us.
13:22
Speaker 1: Like when a reporter calls you, Like even when I
13:24
Speaker 1: first started, when I first started practicing law, and I
13:27
Speaker 1: had like a case that had the headlines, and I
13:28
Speaker 1: would get a call from someone you go like you
13:31
Speaker 1: do sort of snap into it. You're conditioned as a
13:35
Speaker 1: human in society to watch your fucking mouth in front
13:39
Speaker 1: of a reporter.
13:40
Speaker 2: Not these mothers. So but it's but it's what I mean.
13:45
Speaker 2: And he was so earnest right. He was like, I
13:48
Speaker 2: was really hoping that it wouldn't be somebody who was
13:52
Speaker 2: from Utah. I was really hoping that it wouldn't be somebody.
13:56
Speaker 1: Likes us Barby's dream house list of hollowing. Let me
14:00
Speaker 1: let's get the mac collor swatches from fucking us and
14:04
Speaker 1: you show us where you're cool with it being.
14:07
Speaker 2: And then I was looking at the picture of the
14:09
Speaker 2: of the shooter and the governor and is at the
14:11
Speaker 2: same badi.
14:12
Speaker 4: O it was?
14:14
Speaker 2: I was, so I was like, wow, you know what, though,
14:16
Speaker 2: there is also another part of me that is almost
14:19
Speaker 2: as disgusted as I am by the hypocrisy he said it,
14:24
Speaker 2: he said that ship, and now we know, I mean
14:28
Speaker 2: we knew, but now we really.
14:29
Speaker 1: Know, My Angela. When someone tells you who they are,
14:32
Speaker 1: believe them. You should believe them.
14:34
Speaker 2: Believe them. Still, though, disgusting, and.
14:39
Speaker 1: I'm actually really excited to give it to you, Melissa.
14:43
Speaker 2: Okay, And I'm so excited. I'm nervous that you're this
14:46
Speaker 2: excited about it.
14:48
Speaker 1: We haven't gone to great lengths to keep this case
14:50
Speaker 1: of secret from Melissa on the team. There have been conspiracies, cahoots,
14:56
Speaker 1: sidebar conversations, separate dogs blink twice if you need he
15:02
Speaker 1: we're going to be talking about Action Park.
15:06
Speaker 5: No really, Oh my god, sorry that I just yelled
15:17
Speaker 5: really loud.
15:18
Speaker 3: My bad, poor sound guy.
15:22
Speaker 2: I'm sorry, I'm really sorry.
15:24
Speaker 1: So Action Park is a famous, famous, infamous I'm sorry.
15:28
Speaker 2: Infamous, infamous.
15:30
Speaker 1: Do you want to introduce it?
15:33
Speaker 2: For those of you who don't know. In the eighties
15:37
Speaker 2: and nineties, there was this water park in New Jersey,
15:40
Speaker 2: and I can't remember where it was in New Jersey,
15:42
Speaker 2: but it was. It was called Action Park in New Jersey,
15:48
Speaker 2: and everybody wanted to go. We went, but everybody knew somebody,
15:54
Speaker 2: several somebodies. If it didn't happen to you yourself, who
15:57
Speaker 2: got seriously hurt at Action Park?
16:00
Speaker 3: Goods?
16:01
Speaker 4: Please?
16:02
Speaker 2: Was one calamity.
16:05
Speaker 3: After a no no.
16:08
Speaker 2: But you wanted to go to Action.
16:09
Speaker 1: Park, plaintiff party, you would get it hurt.
16:13
Speaker 2: I mean, I'm telling you people would come back like
16:15
Speaker 2: scrapes and like but like who serious injuries from Action Park?
16:20
Speaker 1: I want to set the stage for what the context
16:24
Speaker 1: in which Action Park existed. It's nineteen eighty eight, nineteen
16:29
Speaker 1: eighty eight. I why Sharona's playing on the radio. Oh
16:32
Speaker 1: the boys are in You Can't Sing. Other was William
16:35
Speaker 1: Morris himself will Come to the People in the West
16:37
Speaker 1: villagin though my Sharon is playing. The boys are in
16:41
Speaker 1: those cutoff, tight short shorts. The girls are in there,
16:44
Speaker 1: what is it? Brightly colored members only jackets? What are
16:48
Speaker 1: they wearing?
16:50
Speaker 2: But they were never members?
16:52
Speaker 1: No neon puffer like like the zip up joggery jogging.
16:56
Speaker 3: Suits carry paper Ricci's.
17:03
Speaker 1: I just imagine that Carrie Russell in Cocaine Bear. She's
17:06
Speaker 1: wearing like this, like one piece. Oh my, oh my god,
17:09
Speaker 1: I'm dead. Anyway, So Action Park was this crazy crazy.
17:13
Speaker 2: It opened in nineteen seventy.
17:15
Speaker 1: Eight amusement park, Yeah, and.
17:18
Speaker 2: Actually closed in nineteen ninety s but reopened in twenty fourteen.
17:23
Speaker 1: So there were so many, so many suits. Actually made
17:27
Speaker 1: a documentary about it and it's on HBO. Did you
17:30
Speaker 1: watch it? So on Friday, we were pulling together this episode,
17:35
Speaker 1: which is like a couple of days ago, and I
17:37
Speaker 1: reached out to exactly right, and I just mentioned, you know, CJ,
17:40
Speaker 1: we're going to be talking about this, and someone jumped
17:42
Speaker 1: in and said, we actually know the director and he's
17:44
Speaker 1: in New York. So he's here today and he's going
17:47
Speaker 1: to talk to us about the suption.
17:49
Speaker 3: He's now here here, Yeah, he's.
17:51
Speaker 1: Going to be here any minute's come out. We're going
17:54
Speaker 1: to talk about the Nervous Park.
17:56
Speaker 3: I'm nervous, you're shy.
17:59
Speaker 2: I don't know. My heart is beating really bad. You
18:02
Speaker 2: don't understand going into Action Park if you lived in
18:06
Speaker 2: the Tri State area.
18:09
Speaker 1: I was a Long Island kid, so it was Splash
18:11
Speaker 1: Splash for me.
18:12
Speaker 2: I we did that too, but Action Park.
18:14
Speaker 1: My husband's from Maine. It was fun Town. Splash Town,
18:17
Speaker 1: USA is where he went. Which think you is actually
18:20
Speaker 1: just fucking with me. That's not a real. Put that's
18:22
Speaker 1: not real. That's not a real There was a jingle,
18:24
Speaker 1: but for licensing reasons, I won't sing it. Okay, So
18:27
Speaker 1: we're going to bring in Seth, who's the director of
18:29
Speaker 1: the HBO documentary award winning.
18:32
Speaker 3: Oh my god, I'm real class Action Park.
18:40
Speaker 1: Hi, thank you for joining.
18:42
Speaker 2: Excited to meet you.
18:44
Speaker 1: Michael met.
18:47
Speaker 4: To me.
18:49
Speaker 1: Thank you for joining us. Thank you so much. Seth
18:52
Speaker 1: is the director of Class Action Park. It's a twenty
18:55
Speaker 1: twenty h P. Oh my god, that was crazy and
18:59
Speaker 1: what was it? Why don't you introduce yourself to the
19:02
Speaker 1: to the viewers to the audience, just tell us a
19:04
Speaker 1: little bit about who you are, how you sort of
19:08
Speaker 1: came to this park. We've got a couple of Action
19:11
Speaker 1: Park survivors in the room and Scars prove is there.
19:15
Speaker 2: I came out unscathed, came one of the.
19:19
Speaker 1: Few I guess future plaintiffs right now. But yeah, please
19:26
Speaker 1: introduce yourself. Thank you for joining us.
19:29
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm Seth Porgees. I'm the co director of Class
19:31
Speaker 4: Action Park along with my friend Chris Scott. I also
19:35
Speaker 4: made the movie How to Rob a Bank on Netflix
19:37
Speaker 4: and my next movies about Santacon.
19:39
Speaker 1: Oh my God, Courage of New York. I hope you
19:45
Speaker 1: take them down.
19:48
Speaker 4: You'll see, You'll see, you'll see them.
19:50
Speaker 3: I love father.
19:54
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it is actually where everyone comes to the
19:58
Speaker 1: city to just fucking pi.
20:00
Speaker 4: It's baby's first day drinking.
20:01
Speaker 1: Can we get Actually, I think you need to interview
20:04
Speaker 1: us for Santa Babies versus day drinking.
20:08
Speaker 2: Santa Coon is really it's like one of the worst things.
20:11
Speaker 4: I didn't mean to put such a damper on the mood,
20:13
Speaker 4: but I mentioned.
20:17
Speaker 1: Possible.
20:18
Speaker 4: I love too soon, Too soon to talk about Santacon guys,
20:25
Speaker 4: and it always sneaks up on you like a fun
20:27
Speaker 4: You don't know until you step outside and you're like, okay, one,
20:30
Speaker 4: Santa is fine. A second you see two or three,
20:31
Speaker 4: you go, wait, what what day is it?
20:33
Speaker 1: It's always like two guys and they're like chasing after
20:38
Speaker 1: each other.
20:38
Speaker 2: Is some poor unfortunate girl.
20:40
Speaker 3: Like is Angela?
20:42
Speaker 4: Everybody's a Tony and Angela? That's weird?
20:46
Speaker 1: Oh my god. Anyway, Santa Coon, Oh my god, you
20:49
Speaker 1: really got us on something great.
20:51
Speaker 2: And I'm actually really excited.
20:52
Speaker 4: That's great.
20:53
Speaker 1: But yeah, to talk about I'm sure there will be
20:55
Speaker 1: a Santacon class action suit one day, so just save
20:58
Speaker 1: your receipt if you bought a Santa soup because at
21:00
Speaker 1: some point we'll all be in court together. But we're
21:03
Speaker 1: here to talk about Action Park, which I thought would
21:05
Speaker 1: be a really cool episode as we're sort of talking
21:08
Speaker 1: about class action lawsuits and civil law and how people,
21:13
Speaker 1: you know, super damages. I'm a criminal defense attorney and
21:16
Speaker 1: immigration attorney, so there is a little bit of the
21:19
Speaker 1: vernacular that it will take me a minute to kind
21:21
Speaker 1: of adjust to because I'm just not in civil court
21:22
Speaker 1: that often. But I would love to hear just a
21:25
Speaker 1: little bit. Why don't you introduce Action Park to the viewers.
21:28
Speaker 1: They've heard a bit about it from Melissa and her
21:31
Speaker 1: personal experiences a little bit, but why don't you both
21:35
Speaker 1: go for it?
21:35
Speaker 4: Yeah? I mean so. Action Park an amusement park in Vernon,
21:39
Speaker 4: New Jersey, ninety minutes from New York City. It was
21:42
Speaker 4: the eighties embodied, is what it was.
21:45
Speaker 1: Right.
21:46
Speaker 4: It was simultaneously the most fun and exciting and thrailing
21:49
Speaker 4: place in the world and also very possibly the single
21:52
Speaker 4: most dangerous place in the world. And those two things
21:55
Speaker 4: didn't just coexist. They were, you know, two legs of
21:57
Speaker 4: a tripod, right like it was this and the more people.
22:02
Speaker 1: Is because New Jersey was propping up the most the
22:06
Speaker 1: state of the perverse.
22:08
Speaker 4: Thing about Action Park and the reason I became obsessed
22:11
Speaker 4: and fascinated with it other than I went there as
22:13
Speaker 4: a kid as well.
22:14
Speaker 1: Yeah I went there as.
22:15
Speaker 4: A kid as well. But the thing that really lingered
22:18
Speaker 4: in my mind was the fact that the more people
22:21
Speaker 4: experiences park and learned how dangerous it was, it was
22:25
Speaker 4: no secret it was dangerous. The movie is called class
22:27
Speaker 4: Action Park because that's a nickname the locals had for
22:30
Speaker 4: the park. People called it Action Park, Traction Park, class
22:33
Speaker 4: Action Park. It was no secret, right, Oh, so this
22:36
Speaker 4: was everyone everyone knew, right, everyone knew and the more
22:39
Speaker 4: people learned about it, rather than scaring them away, it
22:42
Speaker 4: just became more and more popular. And that to me
22:45
Speaker 4: was like what right, Like Moths to the Flame was
22:49
Speaker 4: sort of like, Okay, this place is crazy, I gotta go.
22:53
Speaker 4: And what does that say about us as people?
22:57
Speaker 2: We also want to be able to say I went,
22:59
Speaker 2: and I I came out on.
23:01
Speaker 4: The other side, especially as a kid in New Jersey. Rights. Yeah,
23:03
Speaker 4: you go to school and you don't have those scars,
23:07
Speaker 4: even living your lunch money is gone. Second second is
23:12
Speaker 4: the badge of honor. You're like, you know that Wedgie
23:14
Speaker 4: is going to be nuclear you if you don't have
23:18
Speaker 4: if you don't have scars in Action Park. Okay, And
23:21
Speaker 4: so it sort of found you and you found it, yes,
23:24
Speaker 4: and you sort of decided with your friend to make this. Yeah,
23:27
Speaker 4: well it was a lot of it was I think
23:29
Speaker 4: a desire to the fact check my own memories. You know,
23:31
Speaker 4: I went there as a kid as you did, and
23:34
Speaker 4: as I got older, I'm looking back and I'm like,
23:35
Speaker 4: did I really see that, that I really experienced that?
23:39
Speaker 4: And I had this moment where I really was questioning
23:41
Speaker 4: like whether that was real or something I picked up
23:44
Speaker 4: in a comic book or a cartoon, especially because this
23:47
Speaker 4: is an amusement park, right, and the whole premise of
23:50
Speaker 4: an amusement park. You got a Disney World, you have
23:52
Speaker 4: rides that are supposed to simulate terror, simulate danger, simulate
23:55
Speaker 4: fear within a safe, constructed design context like Tower of Terror.
24:00
Speaker 4: The whole idea is you're in an elevator and it's
24:02
Speaker 4: gonna fall, but it's not really dangerous, right, And you
24:04
Speaker 4: go to Action Park and you're like that riot actually
24:07
Speaker 4: could kill you as a kid? How do you tell
24:09
Speaker 4: the difference?
24:10
Speaker 1: Right? And also like I'm sorry, but my fear center
24:13
Speaker 1: didn't fully develop until I was like twenty six, And
24:16
Speaker 1: I think I remember it happening like at brunch and
24:20
Speaker 1: being like, oh my.
24:21
Speaker 4: God, brunch.
24:22
Speaker 1: What I've been doing up until this was so far?
24:27
Speaker 4: What was in't the holidays sauce?
24:28
Speaker 1: Like, I just like there was this one specific moment
24:32
Speaker 1: where I was like, oh shit, yeah, like I'm going
24:34
Speaker 1: to be afraid of everything now.
24:35
Speaker 2: Yeah, well that's the thing too.
24:37
Speaker 4: Right.
24:37
Speaker 2: When you're a kid, you have no fear, right, you
24:40
Speaker 2: have absolutely no fear, and if you do have fear,
24:45
Speaker 2: it's fear of being left out right. Everybody wants to
24:49
Speaker 2: be able to at least at the time when I
24:50
Speaker 2: was growing up, everybody wanted to be able to say,
24:52
Speaker 2: have you been to Action Park? Yes? Of course its
24:55
Speaker 2: Action Yeah, yeah, yeah.
24:56
Speaker 4: I'm sure there are kids lying about going to Action Park,
24:58
Speaker 4: you know, I mean called out on it.
24:59
Speaker 1: Yeah, So why don't you tell us how you ended
25:01
Speaker 1: up at Action Park.
25:02
Speaker 2: I've been to Action Park twice, and I want to
25:06
Speaker 2: say it was like two consecutive summers. Maybe I was
25:12
Speaker 2: fourteen or fifteen or fifteen and sixteen. I went with
25:16
Speaker 2: some friends. I can think of their names right now,
25:18
Speaker 2: because you know, I remember everyone's name that I went
25:19
Speaker 2: to high school with. And the first time I went,
25:22
Speaker 2: it was I had this friend who had a boyfriend
25:24
Speaker 2: who was older, and he drove and didn't tell my
25:28
Speaker 2: parents where I was going because I was a lying
25:31
Speaker 2: liar who lied, and.
25:32
Speaker 1: Your parents wouldn't have let you go probably.
25:35
Speaker 2: Probably not, but I will say that my parents didn't
25:38
Speaker 2: want me to go anywhere ever, which is why I
25:42
Speaker 2: was a lying liar who lied, and we went to
25:45
Speaker 2: Action Park and I had to tell you in my memory,
25:49
Speaker 2: it was great. I had a great time. I didn't
25:53
Speaker 2: get too badly hurt, you know what I mean. I
25:57
Speaker 2: think maybe I got scraped. Sure, I feel like maybe
26:01
Speaker 2: at one point my inner two wasn't so to be,
26:05
Speaker 2: you know what I mean?
26:06
Speaker 1: When you said that, And as the lawyer in the room,
26:09
Speaker 1: I do have to kind of say this. When you
26:11
Speaker 1: said I got scraped, my literal first thought was soft
26:15
Speaker 1: tissue damage. Right, we think in damages, and so as attorneys,
26:19
Speaker 1: we think in damages and like scales of damages. So
26:21
Speaker 1: there's something called the CPLR. It's the Civil Code for
26:24
Speaker 1: All Damage for loss. I'm sorry, but no, no, we'll
26:29
Speaker 1: get there. So there's this thing in the CPLR where
26:32
Speaker 1: they scale what your damages owed are based off level
26:37
Speaker 1: of injury. And it's flesh like tissue wounds and bone breaks.
26:43
Speaker 1: A tooth is considered a bone. I worked on a
26:46
Speaker 1: lawsuit where someone broke a tooth in a car accident
26:48
Speaker 1: and they got bone damages which are higher than just
26:52
Speaker 1: like a flesh ones.
26:53
Speaker 4: This is really useful information.
26:54
Speaker 1: See. Yeah, So like if you get in a car
26:56
Speaker 1: accident and you're suing for damages, they're going to look
26:59
Speaker 1: at the injuries scaled on that level based off the CPLR. Anyway,
27:03
Speaker 1: go ahead, you're killed. Sorry, I really really are.
27:07
Speaker 2: But I mean but it was a bunch of us
27:10
Speaker 2: went and we had a great time. And I will
27:12
Speaker 2: say this though, I do remember feeling like I feel
27:16
Speaker 2: like I'm older than the people running the rides.
27:18
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, I mean that's just the riots probably running
27:21
Speaker 4: the whole park, the whole part, the whole yeah, for sure.
27:23
Speaker 2: And I remember sort of thinking to myself, if I
27:26
Speaker 2: lived in New Jersey, I could probably work here, right,
27:31
Speaker 2: I could probably work here.
27:32
Speaker 1: That was the ideal.
27:33
Speaker 2: That was like that because I was like, I was thinking,
27:35
Speaker 2: to myself, it'll be fun, right because it's Action Park.
27:39
Speaker 2: At some point my friends will come through.
27:41
Speaker 1: Yeah, like the whole teller of your peers absolutely. Yeah. Okay,
27:45
Speaker 1: So when why don't you sort of tell us a
27:47
Speaker 1: little bit about what did you discover? Right? Because Action
27:51
Speaker 1: Park clearly was epic. It was the sort of place
27:54
Speaker 1: that people knew about. It was you know, they speak
27:58
Speaker 1: legend of this place. So you took on this project
28:02
Speaker 1: to make this film, which we've seen love a great job.
28:05
Speaker 4: Yeah, what made you even want to do this?
28:08
Speaker 2: Like where did the idea come from, Oh, you know
28:10
Speaker 2: what I'm going to make a movie about.
28:12
Speaker 4: Well, it really was, like I said, a desire to
28:14
Speaker 4: fact check my memories, because you know, I was a
28:16
Speaker 4: journalist before as a filmmaker, and I had done some
28:19
Speaker 4: light reporting into it, realizing that there hadn't been really
28:22
Speaker 4: any reporting, and you know, this thing had had entered
28:25
Speaker 4: the rum of urban myth, of suburban myth, this is
28:28
Speaker 4: New Jersey right of legend, and it became really hard
28:32
Speaker 4: to determine what was real and what was some random
28:36
Speaker 4: Internet rumor about this place, right, And I had my
28:40
Speaker 4: own memories, which all felt like random Internet rumors about
28:43
Speaker 4: this place. And I was like, I want to fact
28:45
Speaker 4: check this thing. And everywhere I looked, I realized, not
28:49
Speaker 4: only is that crazy story actually true, but the truth
28:52
Speaker 4: is ten times crazier. Oh no, every rock you look
28:55
Speaker 4: under an answer is yes, it happened. And then some
28:58
Speaker 4: right like it was just escalation, and it got to
29:01
Speaker 4: a point where like I could believe anything could have
29:04
Speaker 4: a action park, because the craziest stuff that I ever
29:06
Speaker 4: could have you could imagine.
29:08
Speaker 1: So if I can't even imagine, No, this is like
29:10
Speaker 1: when I drink te quilla em serious. I go back
29:12
Speaker 1: through my camera roll and see what actually happened the
29:14
Speaker 1: night before, and I'm like, it's way worse than I remember.
29:19
Speaker 3: You're a mess.
29:20
Speaker 4: And if peoples, if people, I mean if people knew,
29:22
Speaker 4: I mean, I wonder if they would be more attracted.
29:24
Speaker 4: It seems like they would have or less. But the
29:25
Speaker 4: place was, I mean truly truly insane. And this was,
29:30
Speaker 4: you know, no accident. It was run by this guy
29:31
Speaker 4: named Jean mulbile Hill, who was sort of a cross
29:34
Speaker 4: between Tony Soprano and Donald Trump, the New Jersey embody.
29:40
Speaker 1: I was thinking, like that Chris Christie sort of like yes,
29:43
Speaker 1: Bridge Gate energy, Chris Christy was definitely he was definitely
29:47
Speaker 1: quoted in his obituary, I'll say that, but like like
29:51
Speaker 1: an aspirational quote like on the tombstone.
29:55
Speaker 4: It is like you know, obituary in the newspapers, you know,
29:58
Speaker 4: lauding the entrepreneurial spirit that a gene brought.
30:01
Speaker 2: Yes that I did not know that. I don't think
30:04
Speaker 2: that's unbelievable to me. But this man was responsible.
30:09
Speaker 1: Meant for multiple deaths, right, I mean.
30:11
Speaker 2: Quite a few deaths.
30:12
Speaker 1: I mean, is responsible a legal term?
30:13
Speaker 4: I don't know if I could say any kids. That
30:20
Speaker 4: was the thing about Gene that I found so fascinating
30:22
Speaker 4: as a person is he was this complex person, incredibly charismatic,
30:28
Speaker 4: probably brilliant, definitely had ideas, sort of visionary guy who
30:32
Speaker 4: seemed to draw people to him, and he I think
30:36
Speaker 4: became this incredible example of something we see happen of
30:39
Speaker 4: course today, about how people with power and personality make
30:43
Speaker 4: problems go away. And the big question everybody asked me
30:46
Speaker 4: is how did this place stay in operation so long?
30:48
Speaker 4: It's not like it was opened for one season. Action
30:50
Speaker 4: Park under the name Action Park has opened from nineteen
30:52
Speaker 4: seventy eight to nineteen ninety six. That's was busy, yeah,
30:55
Speaker 4: and it never shut down because some regulator was like
30:58
Speaker 4: this death trap has to close. It was financials bankruptcy
31:01
Speaker 4: is what shoot that place.
31:02
Speaker 1: It wasn't like oh no you'll.
31:05
Speaker 4: No, no, no, they could have they could have kept going,
31:08
Speaker 4: but you know, times to change money whatever. And that
31:10
Speaker 4: to me was was real mystery is how did this
31:14
Speaker 4: place stay in operation? And it's I mean there's not
31:19
Speaker 4: just one answer to that. It's everywhere you look, like,
31:21
Speaker 4: you know, people are getting injured every single day, and
31:23
Speaker 4: they were get injured. They were getting injured every single day.
31:26
Speaker 4: One ride the Alpine Slide on a busy Saturday, could
31:30
Speaker 4: you injured? All right? You go down this like shady
31:34
Speaker 4: plastic toboggan sled thing, down this track that's made out
31:38
Speaker 4: of a mixture of asbestos and cement and concrete, and
31:42
Speaker 4: you're wearing a yes, it's very useful material, I'll have
31:46
Speaker 4: you know. And you're wearing a swimsuit because it's largely
31:49
Speaker 4: a water park, right, And your break probably doesn't work,
31:53
Speaker 4: and the guy going behind you, his break probably doesn't work,
31:56
Speaker 4: and he's probably a little high and drunk, and he
31:59
Speaker 4: slams into you, and you fall off this track and
32:01
Speaker 4: you lose all of your skin, all of your skin,
32:04
Speaker 4: and then to deal with that, assuming you survived, because
32:08
Speaker 4: not everybody did this ride, they would take you to
32:11
Speaker 4: this really shady infirmary tent booth shed type thing where
32:16
Speaker 4: a nurse and I am using air quotes for the
32:18
Speaker 4: people listening, a nurse type person would spray your wound
32:22
Speaker 4: with this orange windex bottle type thing full of what
32:26
Speaker 4: we later learned was a mixture of idine alcohol. And
32:29
Speaker 4: everybody who experienced decided it was the single worst pain
32:31
Speaker 4: in the world and this is true story. After the
32:33
Speaker 4: movie came out, jod Avatow tweeted that the screams you
32:38
Speaker 4: guys seen the movie, the four year old version, you
32:40
Speaker 4: know the scene where Steve Carell gets his chest wax
32:42
Speaker 4: and he's screen screaming bloody murder. Jed Avata tweeted that
32:47
Speaker 4: the screams he was directing out of Steve Correll were
32:50
Speaker 4: inspired by the screams he heard out of the infirmary
32:52
Speaker 4: tent next to the Alpine slide.
32:55
Speaker 1: In the film.
32:57
Speaker 4: And then you go about then a throw you back
33:00
Speaker 4: into the park and now you're, you know, wearing a swimsuit,
33:02
Speaker 4: your shirtless, and half your body is covered with this
33:05
Speaker 4: like blood that's got this weird orange goo on it,
33:08
Speaker 4: and that everybody can see. So you can just look
33:09
Speaker 4: around and see everybody who's got who got Yeah.
33:12
Speaker 1: You did on that side for those listening and not watching.
33:16
Speaker 1: So you're just gonna throw up a photo of the
33:19
Speaker 1: Alpine slide. I would describe it as just like one
33:22
Speaker 1: of those hot wheels tracks, and it's and it's just
33:25
Speaker 1: literally made of cement and you're on what I would call,
33:30
Speaker 1: I guess just like a like a literal piece of
33:32
Speaker 1: plastic like a shopping bag. Stuff up shopping bag, and
33:36
Speaker 1: this ride was lying down a hill in this ride.
33:38
Speaker 4: The problem with this ride, like the problem with many
33:40
Speaker 4: of the other rides, wasn't that the concept itself was
33:43
Speaker 4: a bad idea, although often they were. There are alpine
33:46
Speaker 4: slide rides at other places.
33:47
Speaker 1: We see them. I'm like, I've been on something like this.
33:50
Speaker 4: The problem with this one is that it wasn't actually
33:53
Speaker 4: designed in an intentional sense. They have this mountain, they
33:56
Speaker 4: throw this track on it, and they kind of see
33:58
Speaker 4: what happens right, right right, And so the idea that
34:00
Speaker 4: you're going to model something out and use physics and
34:04
Speaker 4: math or maybe software or these sorts of things to
34:06
Speaker 4: figure out what's gonna.
34:08
Speaker 3: Happen, engineering engineering, engineering.
34:10
Speaker 1: That was not happening.
34:12
Speaker 4: And so many of these rides, like the people riding them,
34:15
Speaker 4: were kind of serving as guinea pigs to figure out
34:18
Speaker 4: does this thing work or not? And then they make
34:20
Speaker 4: shifts on the fly based on whether or not it
34:22
Speaker 4: works or not. And so the outline slide on a
34:25
Speaker 4: busy Saturday, that ride alone would injure several hundred people
34:29
Speaker 4: every single day, and.
34:31
Speaker 1: So every day, every day every day. What's what really
34:33
Speaker 1: stuck I mean that is horrifying. Yeah, what really stuck
34:36
Speaker 1: out to me about what you said was the healthcare
34:41
Speaker 1: that was being provided. Yes, the notion that the notion
34:46
Speaker 1: that theme park run by teenagers yea, yeah, is providing
34:51
Speaker 1: health services to the people that they fucked, fucking injured. Well,
34:56
Speaker 1: I mean it's just happening and being like we're going
34:57
Speaker 1: to pull you into an affirmary, someone in a lab
35:00
Speaker 1: coat with a Windex model. It is going to take care, said.
35:12
Speaker 2: Someone Michael's young.
35:17
Speaker 4: It's a whole I mean, any amusement park has like
35:20
Speaker 4: an infirmary area that hopefully though it's rarely ever used, it's.
35:24
Speaker 1: Run by a medical professional, someone with some sort of
35:28
Speaker 1: an EMT maybe not necessary credential RN.
35:32
Speaker 4: So so you get injured at Action Park, they kind
35:34
Speaker 4: of do everything they can to make it go away
35:37
Speaker 4: where it doesn't reach a you know, a settlement or
35:40
Speaker 4: a payout or something like that. And so, uh, they
35:44
Speaker 4: would maybe give you a complimentary pass to the park
35:46
Speaker 4: if wasn't that bad. Now let's say you're digging. Let's
35:49
Speaker 4: say like I'm going to sue you negligence whatever it is,
35:53
Speaker 4: which probably valid all I can say is good luck,
35:57
Speaker 4: because they developed a reputation fair very intentionally say, cultivated
36:01
Speaker 4: a reputation for fighting every single lawsuit. These personal entry cases,
36:05
Speaker 4: as you're surely aware, are the kind of ones where
36:08
Speaker 4: they're almost designed to be, you know, negotiate out of court, right,
36:11
Speaker 4: and that's a stout.
36:13
Speaker 1: Well, if you say I'm.
36:14
Speaker 4: Never going to settle, well, good luck finding a lawyer
36:16
Speaker 4: who's going to do that, understanding that he's got more lawyers,
36:20
Speaker 4: bigger lawyers, better lawyers than you.
36:22
Speaker 1: What people need to understand about sort of civil law
36:26
Speaker 1: is that most cases are taken on a contingency fee basis,
36:29
Speaker 1: which is there are many different like fee structures that
36:31
Speaker 1: lawyers get paid, but specifically in civil court. And this
36:35
Speaker 1: is not something that I do in like criminal court. Right,
36:38
Speaker 1: if this proprietor came to me and said I've been
36:41
Speaker 1: convicted or I'm being charged with criminal charges, I would say, okay,
36:45
Speaker 1: we're going to do it hourly or for the whole trial.
36:47
Speaker 1: I'm going to charge you x amount. Contingency fees are
36:51
Speaker 1: I'm going to take thirty percent of whatever we make.
36:53
Speaker 1: So lawyers are almost incentivized to settle to get these pays.
36:57
Speaker 4: They get it done as quickly as they can, exactly,
36:59
Speaker 4: Like you don't want to spend months preparing for a trial.
37:01
Speaker 4: You want, then, you know, spend an afternoon in a
37:03
Speaker 4: smoky room and then move.
37:04
Speaker 1: On, unless that trial is going to be fifty million
37:07
Speaker 1: dollars versus fifty thousand dollars.
37:09
Speaker 4: Yes, exactly, And so you know he would never ever
37:13
Speaker 4: unless there's very few extenuating circumstances, Like you know, they
37:16
Speaker 4: would fight everything every single case. So let's say you
37:19
Speaker 4: find that lawyer, let's say you take it the trial,
37:23
Speaker 4: and let's say you get a payout. How are you
37:26
Speaker 4: actually going to collect physically collect that money? He just
37:29
Speaker 4: would not give it to you unless you had the
37:32
Speaker 4: US Marshals show up at their door ask for the cash.
37:35
Speaker 4: And this became a regular occurrence to the point where
37:39
Speaker 4: the people worked at the park they knew the marshals
37:42
Speaker 4: and point them in the right direction. They kind of
37:44
Speaker 4: knew where to go right and literally what they would do.
37:48
Speaker 4: The marshals would show up with duffel bags and they
37:52
Speaker 4: would just like load cash in because this place was
37:55
Speaker 4: also was.
37:56
Speaker 1: It probably in a rear for many different settlements.
38:00
Speaker 4: Well, not so much that it was more this place,
38:03
Speaker 4: the detergent of the money laundering was rife in the air.
38:05
Speaker 4: Let's just say, you know, and so it was. It
38:08
Speaker 4: was all a lot of weird stuff going on in
38:10
Speaker 4: that regards for sure.
38:12
Speaker 1: Looking back now you're an adult looking back as to
38:17
Speaker 1: what you were doing as a teenager, knowing what you
38:20
Speaker 1: know now about the park. What do you feel when
38:25
Speaker 1: someone says Action Park? Do you feel excited or you like? Oh? Fuck? Like?
38:28
Speaker 1: What is the like emotional response you have when someone
38:32
Speaker 1: brings up Action Park? Because Melissa screamed when I brought
38:35
Speaker 1: it up a minute ago, and cj our producer when
38:39
Speaker 1: he was a kid and he was so excited to
38:41
Speaker 1: talk about it. So this fucking masochistic like feeling that
38:45
Speaker 1: people get when they bring up Action Park, it's like, Oh,
38:48
Speaker 1: I want to do this dangerous thing, so I live
38:50
Speaker 1: to tell the tale. Do you still have that after
38:53
Speaker 1: making this feel?
38:53
Speaker 4: Well, let's just say, if I had a time machine,
38:55
Speaker 4: would I go see the Dinosaurs? Would I go see
38:58
Speaker 4: the French Revolution? I don't know, but I would definitely
39:01
Speaker 4: go to nineteen eighty five and Vernon, New Jersey and
39:04
Speaker 4: see Action Bark. And that to me is really what
39:07
Speaker 4: drew me into making this movie is the feeling I
39:10
Speaker 4: think we survivor so if I can use that term,
39:13
Speaker 4: all have about this place in that weird mix of feelings.
39:18
Speaker 4: And to me, you know, even if you didn't grow
39:20
Speaker 4: up in the New Jersey area going to Action Bark,
39:23
Speaker 4: maybe there's something that you look back at and have
39:25
Speaker 4: this weird mix of terror and fondness and nostalgia. To me, sure, yeah,
39:28
Speaker 4: And to me the story largely became about how nostalgia
39:31
Speaker 4: kind of fuzzes the darkness of youth and fuzzes the
39:34
Speaker 4: traumas and make us kind of look back at things
39:36
Speaker 4: fondly because that was our childhood, whether it was good
39:39
Speaker 4: or bad.
39:39
Speaker 1: But that's so interesting. I'm trying to think of like
39:41
Speaker 1: an analog of something that I could point to and
39:44
Speaker 1: say like, oh, I feel like fear and nostalgia and
39:47
Speaker 1: excitement and joy and all these things around that.
39:51
Speaker 2: Really, I think, you know, I can look back on
39:53
Speaker 2: it and remember how excited I was to go, how
39:56
Speaker 2: much fun, genuine fun I had while I was there,
40:00
Speaker 2: but as an adult recognize how dangerous that was. And
40:04
Speaker 2: if I had a kid who was just like mom,
40:06
Speaker 2: I'm gonna go Action Park absolutely funny and you know.
40:09
Speaker 4: To us, like one of the things we sort of
40:11
Speaker 4: began inquiring about when my filmmaker friend Chris and I
40:14
Speaker 4: started making this movie was this question of why were
40:17
Speaker 4: the latchkey kids of the eighties, How are they now
40:19
Speaker 4: the helicopter parents of today? Because they were because of that,
40:23
Speaker 4: because of that, because of that, and that the pendulum
40:26
Speaker 4: swang because of that, and so you have this entire
40:28
Speaker 4: generation of kids who grew up you know, stranger things
40:31
Speaker 4: in it, right, like like so without without helmets on age,
40:34
Speaker 4: fighting demo organs and stuff. And then they get older
40:38
Speaker 4: and they have kids, and they look back and they're like, man,
40:40
Speaker 4: that was awesome. There's so much nostalgia and you're like, well,
40:42
Speaker 4: would you let your kids do that? Absolutely not, you know,
40:45
Speaker 4: And I think that was sort.
40:46
Speaker 3: Of really funny.
40:47
Speaker 2: I say this all the time. It's a miracle I
40:49
Speaker 2: made it out a lot.
40:50
Speaker 3: Yeah, truly.
40:51
Speaker 4: I mean, like you third a decade of the nineteen eighties,
40:55
Speaker 4: eighties nineties.
40:56
Speaker 2: Because a my parents never knew where I was because
41:00
Speaker 2: I lied constantly.
41:02
Speaker 1: And there was no fine your phone.
41:03
Speaker 2: There was no no and I could say whatever I wanted.
41:06
Speaker 2: I could say, oh, I'm going to Michael's house and
41:08
Speaker 2: my mom would be like, okay, home by dinner, be
41:11
Speaker 2: home by the time the street lights come on, and
41:13
Speaker 2: as long as you were.
41:14
Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly, that was it. And that's what eighties parenting was.
41:18
Speaker 4: And the story of Action Work I think really struck
41:21
Speaker 4: the movie. I think struck a nerve with a lot
41:23
Speaker 4: of gen xers and elder millennials who grew up in
41:26
Speaker 4: this time because even if, again they're not from New
41:28
Speaker 4: Jersey they didn't go to Action Park, they can relate
41:30
Speaker 4: this idea of doing something they absolutely should not have
41:32
Speaker 4: been doing because their parents weren't paying attention, right, Yeah.
41:36
Speaker 3: Yeah, nobody they were not paying attention.
41:39
Speaker 2: They weren't.
41:40
Speaker 1: Can you walk us through like the end of Action Park?
41:44
Speaker 1: What was the downfall? You know?
41:46
Speaker 4: So there's a lot of shady money movement with this
41:50
Speaker 4: park and its parent company, but more than anything, it
41:53
Speaker 4: was that the times had changed. You know, this was
41:56
Speaker 4: a product in the nineteen eighties, you're reaching too early,
41:58
Speaker 4: and then mid nineties, it's not as popular as it
42:01
Speaker 4: used to be. It's harder to cover up the weird
42:04
Speaker 4: financial massinations. It's harder to deal with the endless number
42:07
Speaker 4: of injuries interesting, and eventually the park just you know,
42:11
Speaker 4: this action park itself was a summertime attraction on the
42:15
Speaker 4: side of a mountain. It also housed a ski resort
42:17
Speaker 4: in the winter. Hi highly seasonal, and eventually it just
42:22
Speaker 4: doesn't open for the nineteen ninety six season, and then
42:25
Speaker 4: soon thereafter they sell the whole mountain, the whole resort
42:28
Speaker 4: to a multinational corporation, the same one that owned Whistler
42:31
Speaker 4: Mountain that really only cared about the ski resort. They
42:35
Speaker 4: didn't really want much to do the water park, and
42:37
Speaker 4: so the water park, all the creative rides, the fun rise,
42:41
Speaker 4: they were sort of stripped away and it became just
42:43
Speaker 4: kind of this generic seasonal water park called Mountain Creek.
42:46
Speaker 1: And it's open now and it's actually like.
42:48
Speaker 4: A really great little water park run by different people.
42:51
Speaker 4: You know, it's a very safe place to go, and
42:54
Speaker 4: people run it are lovely nowadays. They liked the movie.
42:57
Speaker 4: I was really happy about that. But it also the
43:01
Speaker 4: park where you go to today, there really is a
43:03
Speaker 4: sense of history and ghosts almost You walk around and
43:06
Speaker 4: you're like, not many of the original rides are there,
43:08
Speaker 4: but like, oh my goodness, that's still there, and that
43:10
Speaker 4: one is still there, and these are sorts of rides
43:12
Speaker 4: because I think about Action Park, it was one of
43:14
Speaker 4: the very first modern water parks in the country, and
43:17
Speaker 4: so the idea of what a water park was hadn't
43:19
Speaker 4: been fully defined, and so almost all of these rides
43:22
Speaker 4: were originals one Off's early prototypes of things that would
43:26
Speaker 4: then become standardized.
43:27
Speaker 1: And so I remember from the film that some of
43:30
Speaker 1: them were like his brain child, where he would draw
43:33
Speaker 1: something on the back of a napkin and then they
43:34
Speaker 1: would quite literally build it the next day with like
43:36
Speaker 1: a couple of teenagers with a hammer.
43:38
Speaker 4: Or a brainchild of some lunatic who no normal amusement
43:41
Speaker 4: park would speak to, right, And so these entrepreneurial ride designers,
43:45
Speaker 4: guys in their basement with a doodle pad and an idea,
43:49
Speaker 4: would come with trashing down and give them their ideas,
43:52
Speaker 4: and they would build these things and then test them
43:54
Speaker 4: by throwing teenagers then and so you had you know
43:56
Speaker 4: saw in the movie The Man and the Ball and
43:58
Speaker 4: the Ball which was one of the more infamous samples
44:00
Speaker 4: where you just roll a guy down a ball down
44:02
Speaker 4: a hill and a ball and maybe it falls off
44:04
Speaker 4: the track and ends up going over the highway and
44:05
Speaker 4: in the swamp. Who knows anything could happen.
44:08
Speaker 1: So please watch this film. I do have to say.
44:11
Speaker 1: Can I want to talk about the one that was
44:14
Speaker 1: just like a circle, the loopity loop, the loop loop,
44:18
Speaker 1: the loop, the cannonball, So you could you could probably
44:20
Speaker 1: tell this story better than I can. But essentially what
44:23
Speaker 1: I remember from the film was it was just sort
44:25
Speaker 1: of like this loop. It was like a slide. It
44:27
Speaker 1: was like a hot wheels track. It was a slide.
44:30
Speaker 1: One loop and you're out. And they couldn't figure out
44:33
Speaker 1: why people kept getting hurt in it, and so they
44:35
Speaker 1: kept sort of modifying it because people kept coming out
44:39
Speaker 1: with scrapes and cuts all over themselves.
44:42
Speaker 4: First, when they first built this thing, this ride, they
44:45
Speaker 4: would test out and of course the most rigorous scientific
44:49
Speaker 4: manner possible, which is Jeene, owner of the park, standing
44:52
Speaker 4: next to the ride, waving one hundred dollars bills in
44:55
Speaker 4: the air and tempting teenage employees to go down in
44:58
Speaker 4: exchange one hundred dollars bills and then seeing how injured
45:00
Speaker 4: they got.
45:01
Speaker 1: At one hundred dollars when you're nineteen eight is money
45:04
Speaker 1: and you're fifteen.
45:06
Speaker 4: You have any idea how many cars you can get
45:08
Speaker 4: that much money?
45:10
Speaker 1: Comic book by your teeth?
45:12
Speaker 4: Yeah?
45:13
Speaker 1: And so these how many lucies you're gonna buy?
45:16
Speaker 4: Yeah? So something?
45:21
Speaker 1: Yes, So do you remember this ride? The loop loop?
45:25
Speaker 4: The second you walk into the park.
45:26
Speaker 1: It greeted you.
45:28
Speaker 4: It was, it loomed over you.
45:30
Speaker 1: It was a landmark.
45:31
Speaker 4: It was a landmark, and it was the signal that
45:33
Speaker 4: the world you're about to enter was a different universe
45:35
Speaker 4: from You're not in Kansas anymore the second you see
45:38
Speaker 4: that loop, right, and so you they would send some
45:40
Speaker 4: teenagers bribed with one hundred dollars in cold heart cash,
45:44
Speaker 4: right down this thing. And first couple of kids they
45:46
Speaker 4: send down, well, they realized they hadn't put sufficient patting
45:49
Speaker 4: in a loop. So they get to the top and
45:51
Speaker 4: it's kind of like face plant against the fiberglass and
45:54
Speaker 4: their missing teeth and their mouths are bloody. Not a
45:56
Speaker 4: pretty picture. So you got to fix this, right, So
45:59
Speaker 4: they go in, put in some more padding, send some
46:01
Speaker 4: more kids down. These kids, No, we're missing teeth. They
46:04
Speaker 4: fixed that problem, but what are all these lacerations on
46:07
Speaker 4: their body? Where these scrapes coming from? So they opened
46:09
Speaker 4: up the thing and realizable looks like some teeth got
46:12
Speaker 4: stuck in the padding and it was just scraping into
46:14
Speaker 4: these kids, like some.
46:16
Speaker 1: Human teeth, human teeth.
46:20
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah, which is one of the most primarily
46:26
Speaker 4: like aggressively things crusty much And so this ride wicked.
46:35
Speaker 4: This ride was not open often. They spent many years
46:39
Speaker 4: trying to perfect it and make it work. They spent
46:42
Speaker 4: many years sending employees down and bribed one hundred dollars
46:45
Speaker 4: a pop. I spoke to some of them. I remember
46:47
Speaker 4: when I went there as a kid. I was told,
46:49
Speaker 4: I think it was not open to the public, but
46:50
Speaker 4: I saw people going down. Was told, those are employees.
46:53
Speaker 4: And the problem with this ride was that you could
46:56
Speaker 4: never fully control the experience to ensure somebody actually made
46:59
Speaker 4: it through to the other side, right, because you go
47:02
Speaker 4: on a roller coaster, you're stop shaking.
47:05
Speaker 2: And I think there probably were a lot of kids
47:08
Speaker 2: who were willing to go on that ride. I was
47:09
Speaker 2: not one of those kids, you know.
47:10
Speaker 4: I mean, like everything else seem normally like I'm not
47:14
Speaker 4: going that, but this other thing that's definitely death trap.
47:16
Speaker 4: I guess I got to go on that, yeah, you know, yeah,
47:19
Speaker 4: And so it really it changes the goalposts of what
47:22
Speaker 4: is normal from the second you step through.
47:25
Speaker 1: Knowing all that you know, seeing all that.
47:27
Speaker 2: You've seen, being a man of a certain age.
47:32
Speaker 1: You how do you enter the world from this learned perspective?
47:36
Speaker 1: How do you re enter society? After making this film,
47:39
Speaker 1: knowing everything that you've learned about Action Park? Does it
47:43
Speaker 1: change the way you approach life? Amusement parks? Risk? Are
47:48
Speaker 1: you just like, Wow, that was fucking crazy and you
47:50
Speaker 1: go back to the way you were well?
47:52
Speaker 4: To me, it was it was mostly sound, a hoity toity,
47:55
Speaker 4: but an investigation into human nature and why people, knowing
47:59
Speaker 4: that this was going to hurt them, still chose to
48:01
Speaker 4: do it. It's very interesting and and the biggest questions
48:04
Speaker 4: I was bouncing around and I think I was seeking
48:06
Speaker 4: answers for was about my fellow humans and understand what
48:11
Speaker 4: is it about us? Because I could relate to that,
48:13
Speaker 4: I could feel myself being drawn into this and wanting
48:16
Speaker 4: to go there and saying what is that? You know?
48:19
Speaker 4: What is going on? Yeah? And that, to me it
48:21
Speaker 4: was was really the biggest question. You know, everything else
48:27
Speaker 4: it's like, yeah, the world's a dangerous place, we get it.
48:31
Speaker 4: But also I think you know, asking me like, how
48:33
Speaker 4: does it change my life? Not nearly as much as
48:35
Speaker 4: it change that of the kids who who went there
48:38
Speaker 4: and the kids who worked there, you know. And I
48:40
Speaker 4: think meeting so many people from that area who either
48:43
Speaker 4: spent their childhoods with Action Park as their babysitter or
48:46
Speaker 4: spent their childhoods working at Action Park, childhood's working like
48:51
Speaker 4: a coal mine about.
48:53
Speaker 1: Trying child.
49:01
Speaker 4: And I think it explained so much about the you know,
49:04
Speaker 4: generational nature of gen X and the people who came
49:07
Speaker 4: from there, and the resilience, the great the weirdness of them,
49:12
Speaker 4: and that's kind of cool.
49:14
Speaker 2: Let's and I talk about gen X a lot do
49:16
Speaker 2: And I think now that we're talking about this, it
49:19
Speaker 2: makes me oftentimes as a member of gen X, I
49:24
Speaker 2: feel like nobody cares about us, right, And I feel
49:27
Speaker 2: like Action Park sort of exemplifies that. Like we were
49:31
Speaker 2: going to Action Park, kids were getting hurt all the
49:34
Speaker 2: time we went anyway, our parents, I mean the grants
49:37
Speaker 2: that I lie to my parents, I snuck out to go,
49:40
Speaker 2: But I mean, I think, but like you said, there
49:41
Speaker 2: were some parents who were using Action Park as the babysitter, right, Like,
49:45
Speaker 2: what am I going to do with my kid? This summer,
49:48
Speaker 2: go go to Action Park. But if you lived in
49:52
Speaker 2: the area, you knew that Action Park was dangerous, but
49:56
Speaker 2: you were sending your kids to go there anyway. It's
49:58
Speaker 2: really interesting, you know, like, but what does that say.
50:02
Speaker 2: It says something about you know, kizzillbee kids and some
50:04
Speaker 2: kids are sort of thrill seekers and they'll go. What
50:07
Speaker 2: does it say about the parents of the kids and them?
50:10
Speaker 4: And a lot of my kind of early investigation into
50:13
Speaker 4: the story was driven by trying to answer that question
50:15
Speaker 4: about my parents. My parents are extremely risk averse, Like
50:18
Speaker 4: if we went to some like Flyway Night Carnival, they
50:20
Speaker 4: would have been like, hell, no, you're not going on
50:22
Speaker 4: that ride. You know that thing. I don't trust that Carney,
50:24
Speaker 4: I don't trust that thing. But we went to Action Park,
50:27
Speaker 4: and I you know, I called my parents up when
50:30
Speaker 4: I got into I was like, Mom, what were you thinking?
50:35
Speaker 4: Like it was so out of character for them, and
50:38
Speaker 4: they said, well, they advertised on TV. It made it
50:40
Speaker 4: seem like a great place to take your family. So okay, okay,
50:43
Speaker 4: that explains the first time I went. When I come back,
50:46
Speaker 4: because I remember my dad making jokes while we're in
50:49
Speaker 4: line about his places called Accident Park, and I'm like,
50:51
Speaker 4: what is going on?
50:54
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's amazing to just think about like what branding
50:58
Speaker 1: or just a nice sign or the sort of perception
51:01
Speaker 1: of establishment can do to trust in a consumer. It's
51:07
Speaker 1: really interesting.
51:08
Speaker 2: I also think that, you know, we, I think we're
51:10
Speaker 2: also looking at this through the lens of today, right,
51:13
Speaker 2: having all the information in our fingertips, So we we
51:17
Speaker 2: know now today that just because something is on TV
51:21
Speaker 2: or on the news doesn't necessarily mean that you can
51:23
Speaker 2: trust it. But I feel like when I was growing up,
51:26
Speaker 2: if it was on TV, well, they wouldn't have it
51:28
Speaker 2: on TV.
51:29
Speaker 4: They wouldn't. They wouldn't let us go there if it
51:31
Speaker 4: was dangerous. They wouldn't. They wouldn't charge admission and say
51:35
Speaker 4: drop your kids off here if it was dangerous.
51:37
Speaker 2: Like Great Adventure. And it was nothing like Great Adventure,
51:40
Speaker 2: do you know what I mean?
51:41
Speaker 4: It was a wild time, it was.
51:43
Speaker 1: It was well, thank you for joining us.
51:47
Speaker 2: It was so much fun.
51:50
Speaker 1: Watch Class Action Park on HBO. Yeah it's you, Maxia,
51:54
Speaker 1: and be on the lookout for something Santacon related in
51:57
Speaker 1: the coming month.
51:58
Speaker 4: Absolutely, but that also Santacon watch the fuck out. Yeah, yeah,
52:03
Speaker 4: we're just plug it if that's school. We're premiering the
52:05
Speaker 4: Santacon movie November thirteenth as part of doc NYC Film Festival,
52:08
Speaker 4: so by this point that'll probably would be too late
52:11
Speaker 4: for you to see it, but look out for screenings afterwards.
52:13
Speaker 1: That sounds like an invitation for us to go. I
52:15
Speaker 1: think you should go. That's really good. Well, thank you
52:17
Speaker 1: so much, thank you for that invitation. Thank you, thank you.
52:24
Speaker 1: I love talking to Seth. That was crazy.
52:26
Speaker 2: It brought back so many memories. You have no idea.
52:30
Speaker 2: It was so good. It was so good.
52:32
Speaker 1: What a sweetheart too, I mean guy, Yeah, yeah, clearly survived.
52:37
Speaker 2: Something, as did we all did, as did we all.
52:41
Speaker 1: Now we're going to jump into Tales from the DMS,
52:43
Speaker 1: where we read all your burning questions that you submitted
52:46
Speaker 1: through my link tree, either in a voicemail or you
52:49
Speaker 1: wrote into the show. This should be good. So the
52:53
Speaker 1: first question is it deals a lot with immigration law.
52:55
Speaker 1: A lot of them deal with immigration line and that's
52:57
Speaker 1: what I'm sort of my special to you, which I'm
52:59
Speaker 1: happy to answer all the questions until I'm blowing the foe.
53:02
Speaker 2: You have to remember, while Michael is a lawyer, he
53:05
Speaker 2: is not your lawyer. And that you should find your
53:09
Speaker 2: own attorney in your own states so you can ask
53:12
Speaker 2: them your questions. It is just for informational and entertainment purposes.
53:18
Speaker 1: Thank you for doing that.
53:19
Speaker 2: Thank you.
53:19
Speaker 1: You'd think that I'm not a lawyer.
53:24
Speaker 2: I'm going to say that. You get really excited and
53:27
Speaker 2: passionate I do about the work.
53:29
Speaker 1: And also, like immigration law, it's federal law, so I
53:33
Speaker 1: can help people in other states, but it's you need
53:37
Speaker 1: a local lawyer. You do to go to your hearing
53:40
Speaker 1: with you. People are contacting me in California and I'm like,
53:42
Speaker 1: I can't fly to LA for your your bond teering.
53:46
Speaker 2: And also, I mean, you don't know the particulars of
53:48
Speaker 2: their case so exactly.
53:50
Speaker 1: So the first question is there a path to citizenship
53:53
Speaker 1: for people who have DAKA and are we left with
53:57
Speaker 1: marriage as our only option? It's kind of the question,
54:00
Speaker 1: just a.
54:00
Speaker 6: Good question, so, Michael, for people who have DOCA, is
54:05
Speaker 6: there a way to citizenship or are we just left
54:11
Speaker 6: with the only option of marriage? Also, are people with
54:16
Speaker 6: DOCA in danger of being deported by ice?
54:21
Speaker 1: Great question about whether or not DOCA is something that
54:25
Speaker 1: you know? How do you get status if you're a DOCA? Recipient.
54:29
Speaker 1: So DOCA is sort of like the Dreamers Act. You
54:31
Speaker 1: came here as a child with a parent. It's not
54:33
Speaker 1: a pathway to citizenship. It is a protected status. It's
54:39
Speaker 1: a temporary status. So the thing about DOCCA is that
54:42
Speaker 1: you usually do need some sort of other avenue to
54:45
Speaker 1: seek full citizenship where you're voting, where you are, you know,
54:49
Speaker 1: a US citizen with a US issued passport. So marriage
54:53
Speaker 1: is not your only option. I don't know your situation.
54:56
Speaker 1: I would need to know sort of like everything about
54:58
Speaker 1: your life to say like marriages only option. But I
55:02
Speaker 1: can't like advise people to get married for green card purposes,
55:05
Speaker 1: like that is just like totally not okay, it's technically fraud.
55:09
Speaker 1: But if you are seeing someone and you decide to
55:11
Speaker 1: get married and they are a US citizen, it is
55:14
Speaker 1: something that does lead to citizenship. I will say under
55:18
Speaker 1: the Trump administration, as of today, I am working with
55:22
Speaker 1: clients who are seeking Green cards through marriage and they
55:26
Speaker 1: are getting them. Like I had a client who went
55:28
Speaker 1: in front of their their sort of interview with USCIS
55:33
Speaker 1: and they said that it was like a lovely conversation
55:36
Speaker 1: with this person and that it wasn't this horrifying I
55:39
Speaker 1: mean draconian.
55:40
Speaker 2: Experience, gratifying to hear.
55:42
Speaker 1: USCIS is US Customs and Immigration Services. It's sort of
55:47
Speaker 1: like the government agency where DHS, Department of Homeland Security sits,
55:53
Speaker 1: and beneath that is what everyone knows, ICE, Immigration and
55:57
Speaker 1: Customs Enforcement. So USCIS is sort of like the big
56:01
Speaker 1: umbrella where all of immigration customs activity happened. So you
56:07
Speaker 1: pass through USCIS when you are going through customs at
56:11
Speaker 1: the border, your flight just landed from Aruba, you're coming
56:15
Speaker 1: back from a vacation. That's the government agency you're kind
56:18
Speaker 1: of passing through, and that's who all these ICE officers
56:21
Speaker 1: work for. Yeah. I can't say much because I'm up
56:26
Speaker 1: against these folks.
56:28
Speaker 2: You don't have to say anything. You don't have to
56:30
Speaker 2: say anything. I'll just quietly look and just I.
56:34
Speaker 1: Mean, you can say whatever you want. You have First.
56:36
Speaker 3: Amendment rates, do I still?
56:38
Speaker 1: I mean for now? I guess yeah. I mean I
56:40
Speaker 1: don't know.
56:42
Speaker 4: Every now and then maybe we don't.
56:44
Speaker 2: I don't know, have the jump.
56:46
Speaker 1: Every day the law comes out, it's a little different.
56:48
Speaker 2: Let me ask you a question about people like this. So,
56:52
Speaker 2: but these are folks who started the process a while back.
56:56
Speaker 2: These are not people who just started the process because
56:59
Speaker 2: I write the started under the Biden administration.
57:01
Speaker 1: Maybe in this in this situation they had gotten married after. Yeah,
57:07
Speaker 1: I just think it really is like again, I can't
57:10
Speaker 1: advise people like.
57:11
Speaker 3: You shouldn't be of course, not of course not, but.
57:14
Speaker 1: In from my perspective and the things that I have
57:17
Speaker 1: seen and I'll speak about like this is my opinion,
57:20
Speaker 1: it really is a fucking crapshoot sometimes, like we just
57:22
Speaker 1: don't know what's going to happen, and it's crazy because
57:25
Speaker 1: it's your life and it's like high stakes for many people.
57:29
Speaker 1: You might get deported back to a country where you
57:31
Speaker 1: know you might be unlived for whatever political reason.
57:34
Speaker 3: Or whatever there since you were too yes.
57:36
Speaker 4: Exactly right.
57:37
Speaker 1: So you know, I have this like kind of like
57:40
Speaker 1: separation from it because I'm not an immigrant, but I
57:43
Speaker 1: deal with it all the times from like yeah, like
57:46
Speaker 1: there there is possibility there still I am still seeing
57:49
Speaker 1: successful cases brought and it's very reassuring and like wonderful
57:53
Speaker 1: for me to experience. But like I'm not the one
57:56
Speaker 1: not sleeping and days leading up to the interview at
58:00
Speaker 1: the immigration office. So it is it's interesting.
58:03
Speaker 3: It's kind of like a so what's the answer.
58:05
Speaker 1: The answer is that there are many pathways to citizenship.
58:09
Speaker 1: DOCA is not one of them. Okay, marriage is one
58:12
Speaker 1: of them, right, But there's also asylum. There's also asylum
58:16
Speaker 1: based on like political claims. There's asylum based on convention
58:20
Speaker 1: against torture. There are many different sort of like avenues.
58:22
Speaker 1: So definitely work with an immigration attorney. I mean, if
58:26
Speaker 1: you want to reach out to me directly through my
58:27
Speaker 1: link tree, I'm happy to sort of hear all about
58:30
Speaker 1: your case and you're you as a person and then
58:34
Speaker 1: say like, Okay, these are what your options are. But
58:37
Speaker 1: marriage is not the only pathway forward for DACA. So
58:41
Speaker 1: this next question is going to be about how often
58:44
Speaker 1: does the search warrant lead to formal charges and how
58:47
Speaker 1: often do those charges lead to convictions.
58:48
Speaker 7: So, okay, hi Michael, what is the conversion rate between
58:55
Speaker 7: a law enforcement agency or if there's a difference between
58:59
Speaker 7: state life, local federal, what those conversion rates are between
59:04
Speaker 7: getting a search warrant searching a person's place and then
59:08
Speaker 7: that turning into real charges, and then what is the
59:13
Speaker 7: conversion rate between those charges being brought and convictions.
59:20
Speaker 1: So interesting, search warrants are one of my I like
59:23
Speaker 1: love nerding out about this. If you see me at
59:25
Speaker 1: a party, please come up to me and ask me
59:26
Speaker 1: about the Fourth Amendment. I check every single fucking class
59:29
Speaker 1: in law school.
59:30
Speaker 2: Remember that.
59:30
Speaker 1: And it's also one of these things that like kind
59:32
Speaker 1: of doesn't come up that much in court. So, like
59:33
Speaker 1: the Fourth Amendment is unlawful searches and seizures, and there's
59:37
Speaker 1: a long history to it. It was basically in England,
59:40
Speaker 1: we're trying to get away from this sort of concept
59:43
Speaker 1: of like we were able to just kind of grab
59:44
Speaker 1: people out of their homes and lock them up until
59:46
Speaker 1: they told us what they wanted, which is starting to
59:49
Speaker 1: sound like something that happens a little bit more often
59:51
Speaker 1: here in America, But at least for a really long time,
59:53
Speaker 1: we weren't doing that. And the Fourth Amendment is the
59:56
Speaker 1: one that people often talk about when we talk about
59:58
Speaker 1: stop and frisk and when we talk about people getting
1:00:01
Speaker 1: pulled over in their car. Those are like the two
1:00:03
Speaker 1: big scenarios. It's like what can they search and what
1:00:06
Speaker 1: can they not search? But this specific question was really
1:00:08
Speaker 1: coming from like whether a search warrant leads to formal charges,
1:00:12
Speaker 1: which is a really cool question to think about because
1:00:15
Speaker 1: a search warrant is just sort of a letter from
1:00:17
Speaker 1: a judge saying that you know, the police have authority,
1:00:21
Speaker 1: they have enough probable cause to believe a crime has
1:00:24
Speaker 1: been committed to then go ahead and search this person's home, car,
1:00:29
Speaker 1: into purse, whatever it may be. But the likelihood of
1:00:33
Speaker 1: charges is really like dependent on what evidence I guess
1:00:36
Speaker 1: they find in that search, okay, and what evidence they
1:00:39
Speaker 1: had to kind of get to a place where a
1:00:41
Speaker 1: judge was issuing a search warrant, So really depends on
1:00:45
Speaker 1: the situation here that might be they had like overwhelming
1:00:48
Speaker 1: evidence and they needed like one little critical piece, Like
1:00:52
Speaker 1: we had all these eyewitnesses, but we didn't have the
1:00:55
Speaker 1: actual like murder weapon, but we saw the murderer alleged
1:00:59
Speaker 1: murderer going to the house with the weapon. We're going
1:01:02
Speaker 1: to get the warrant for the house and go search
1:01:04
Speaker 1: the house.
1:01:05
Speaker 2: So somebody gets a search warrant, do they have to
1:01:07
Speaker 2: be very specific about the places they can search? So
1:01:10
Speaker 2: can you search someone's home but not their car? Can
1:01:13
Speaker 2: you search their car but not their person?
1:01:15
Speaker 1: This is I'm obsessed with this. I love this question.
1:01:18
Speaker 1: You have no idems. The way you got excited about
1:01:20
Speaker 1: action bark. Okay, I get excited about questions about the
1:01:23
Speaker 1: fucking fourth Amendment. So anyway, so it has to be
1:01:28
Speaker 1: reasonably within the scope. So there was this really cool
1:01:31
Speaker 1: case in law school, I like let up where the
1:01:35
Speaker 1: clothes that the murderer was wearing were like in a
1:01:37
Speaker 1: washing machine, and they weren't looking for the clothes. They
1:01:41
Speaker 1: were looking for the weapon. But the cops looked in
1:01:43
Speaker 1: the washing machine and it wasn't a reasonable place to search.
1:01:46
Speaker 7: It was.
1:01:47
Speaker 3: It was not, it was not.
1:01:49
Speaker 1: And so the court ruled, like it wasn't reasonable for
1:01:52
Speaker 1: them to like look in there and find like a
1:01:53
Speaker 1: blood stained shirt and use that as evidence. Okay, And
1:01:56
Speaker 1: so in court you argue something of it's the fruit
1:01:59
Speaker 1: of the poisonous tree. So that was an unlawful search.
1:02:03
Speaker 1: So anything you find is poison, so you can't use
1:02:07
Speaker 1: it to prove that.
1:02:08
Speaker 2: This person had a such weren't for the house, yes,
1:02:11
Speaker 2: but the washing machine that is in the house doesn't count.
1:02:14
Speaker 1: It wasn't reasonable. I can't remember the specifics of the case,
1:02:17
Speaker 1: but it wasn't reasonable that whatever the weapon was, maybe
1:02:21
Speaker 1: it was drugs, whatever they were looking for, it was unreasonable.
1:02:24
Speaker 2: And it would be in a washing machine.
1:02:26
Speaker 1: Exactly, and the cops went in there and found it.
1:02:29
Speaker 1: It was a pretty liberal decision, I would say, from
1:02:31
Speaker 1: the court's wild anyway, that has been tells from the DMS.
1:02:35
Speaker 1: Thank you for submitting your questions. Please continue to submit
1:02:37
Speaker 1: through my link tree. We love hearing from you, and
1:02:40
Speaker 1: I love answering these questions. Keep that Fourth Amendment comming, baby,
1:02:45
Speaker 1: really cool conversation today. I love talking to Seth. I
1:02:49
Speaker 1: love talking to you.
1:02:50
Speaker 2: I love talking to you.
1:02:51
Speaker 1: I love sort of jumping into like your We had
1:02:54
Speaker 1: very different like childhoods.
1:02:56
Speaker 2: Just for sure. For lots of reasons.
1:02:58
Speaker 1: Yeah, for a lot of different reasons, like graphic, generational, Yes.
1:03:01
Speaker 1: But I love sort of hearing a little bit about
1:03:04
Speaker 1: like that time capsule, that moment in time. The notion
1:03:07
Speaker 1: that the street lights coming on was like an indicator
1:03:10
Speaker 1: of time.
1:03:10
Speaker 2: I thought, everybody.
1:03:11
Speaker 1: I never knew that before.
1:03:13
Speaker 2: No street lights come on and you could see it
1:03:15
Speaker 2: like kids running home. Oh shit, thee yes.
1:03:20
Speaker 1: Yes, my parents didn't give a show where I was.
1:03:22
Speaker 1: So I also wasn't that cool. I wasn't anywhere. I
1:03:25
Speaker 1: wasn't going here. What do you mean, I don't know,
1:03:27
Speaker 1: I just I wasn't.
1:03:28
Speaker 3: I wasn't like out you were.
1:03:31
Speaker 1: I don't know you were anyway. Thank you for joining us.
1:03:34
Speaker 2: Thanks everybody.
1:03:35
Speaker 3: This is Melissa albrand and I'm Michael Foot.
1:03:37
Speaker 1: I'll see you in court. This has been an Exactly
1:03:42
Speaker 1: Right production recorded at iHeart Studios, posted by me, Michael
1:03:46
Speaker 1: Foot and.
1:03:46
Speaker 2: Me Melissa Albrant. Our producer is CJ. Ferroni.
1:03:49
Speaker 1: This episode was edited by Nicholas Galucci.
1:03:52
Speaker 2: Our associate producer is Christina Chamberlain and our guest booker
1:03:55
Speaker 2: is Patria Cottner.
1:03:56
Speaker 1: Our theme song was composed by Tom Brievogel with artwork
1:03:59
Speaker 1: from Charlotte Dellery MNSA Lilac, with photography by Brad Obono.
1:04:03
Speaker 2: Brief Recess is executive produced by Karen Kilgareff, Georgia hart
1:04:06
Speaker 2: Stark and Danielle Kramer.
1:04:08
Speaker 1: You can find me on Instagram at Department of Redundancy
1:04:10
Speaker 1: Department or on TikTok at Michael Foot.
1:04:13
Speaker 2: And I'm on both Instagram and TikTok as Melissa Malbranch.
1:04:16
Speaker 1: Got legal questions, reach out at Brief Recess at exactlyrightmedia
1:04:20
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1:04:23
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1:04:29
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