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He Fights for Forgotten Crime Victims With David Thiruselvam · find your cause

• Joseph Smalzer: 14 year old undergoing rape, just messes up their whole situation. I mean, they can't sit in classrooms anymore, they can't be surrounded by people anymore. Everything is just, you know, they just can't function in the way that they did previously. They're completely different people. And to expect and go out and work and make a living and things like that, it's almost impossible. Alrighty, so thanks everyone for tuning in to this episode of Find Your Cause. Today we have David Thruselvam, who's the founder of Victim Recovery Law. David, thank you so much for your time today. Thanks Joseph, thanks for having me. So we had a quick chat before we started rolling here, but I'm excited about this interview because it's an industry that I think a lot of people are intimidated by because of the complexity, because of the nuance, because a lot of times people aren't engaged with this industry unless it's for a lot of times more negative reasons than positive. And we'll get into all that. But before we do, David, what is victim recovery law? So our law firm, Victim Recovery Law Center, is basically a law firm that's designed to help victims of crime recover some kind of award aside from what they have to do in the criminal area. Usually when a crime is convicted and you're a victim, you're expected to go and testify or help the prosecution get the charges to stick against the person that did that to them. And very often after that, the victim has forgot They may have a few programs here and they go and check this out, but nothing really is geared towards the victim. It's more geared towards putting this person away. And that's, I think, the void we fill. We try and actually get some kind of measures of relief for the victim so that they can go about their lives without just having their broken lives and some kind of measure of access to care and things like that, that they can get. That's what we do. And why you? Why is this something you're dedicated a large portion of your life towards? Well, I got to tell you, it's not something that came at me from the beginning. It was not even something that came at me when I started my legal career. As a matter of fact, for the first 10 years of my career, was criminal defense. Then I went over on the civil side and I worked in various different firms. And there was this, the last firm I worked at, saw there was a particular attorney that was handling cases like this. And I was fascinated by it. He was actually helping victims of crime. And then I found out there's an organization, national organization made up of attorneys similar to that around the country that were all in touch with each other and helping each other was also functioning in this way. And so I left the firm and started my own firm with the idea of providing this kind of service. And it's not something we do at a lot of firms that they have various different branches to what they do, plaintiff firms, personal injury firms, whether it's car. motor vehicle accidents or what is it, medical malpractice. They have all these different areas for personal injury. We pretty much, this is all we do. They might have this as an extra case that they do in order to go ahead and bolster their whole caseload, but these are all the cases that we do and we've dedicated our firm to just this particular practice. Yeah. So I'm sure a lot of people listening have also felt this as well, but I, as I'm driving down the highway, I don't remember ever seeing this many law firms advertising to me. And I think the international basis will probably attest to this that the US comes off as a very litigious country. I'd to hear your point of view and philosophy on that and where that's a very positive thing and where it might not be as positive of a thing. It started way back during the early parts of this country when there was a case Marbury versus Madison, which basically said, listen, all questions as far as whether it's constitutional or not, it's for the Supreme Court to decide. They took those powers upon themselves. Now, if you go to other countries like Britain or some of the other countries that have democracies, they just go on some kind of back room and, hey, listen, does this new rule adhere to the constitution? Yeah, we think so. And they come up with that and they make their own judgment of it. Whereas with our form of government, with the legislature, with the executive and with the legal, the legal branch said, No, we're going to be the final arbiters. And they took that power for themselves as unique actually in most countries. Now, because they did that, it's flowed from that, that any ultimate question has to go to the courts. And this is not just for regular people. This is actually for the legislatures. If they pass a law, there have been several, actually probably hundreds of examples over the years where they passed a law and the Supreme Court said no. No, this violates the Constitution. So go back and do it again. Or go back and come up with a different law that counters what you're trying to do and will be more in line with the Constitution. So they make that kind of ruling. And once you have a power like that deciding that there, when it trickles down lower, anything you want to do ultimately is what do the courts say? You have to go to the courts and have the... So our system is designed that way to where the courts have the final say. And because of that, there's good and bad in that. Because of that, it drew a lot of people to say, let's go ahead and work in this system. And a lot of lawyers came out there. Now, also the civil side that draws a lot of obviously the most obvious thing is the criminal side where you got people defending people, prosecuting people. the whole civil side does not exist in a lot of other countries. For example, you had a building that, that burnt down, I believe it was in Miami. And there were lawsuits because of the design of that building and the way it came down and all those kinds of things. Now, at the same time, you had a building in England, in London that burnt down. Those people had no recourse. Okay. They courts and say, hey, listen, this person did something wrong. Now, I knew the firm that handled that. And they even tried to go to the extent to say, hey, wait a second, the person, the architect was located in Philadelphia. ⁓ yeah. We see if we can sue them. In fact, they had to go to that extent to bring that case that happened in England over here in order to get some kind of recourse for those people. So not all countries look at it the same way. Some countries really frown and say, what do mean you're going to sue for civil justice? What do you mean you're going to sue for monetary damages from this corporation and things like that? In the US, say corporations have liabilities too, and they have responsibilities. And if you don't take those responsibilities seriously, there's a price to pay. That's the difference in this country. I don't think everybody else feels that way necessarily. Yeah. Yeah. And yeah. And I think that's the examples you shared about the building collapsing is a great example of bringing a story to explain this. And I think how how how the pros and cons and I love your opinion on this too is I feel like it makes justice, depending on your opinion of justice, more approachable and more possible because, like you said, people in London example didn't know that was something that they could do. So there's like an education gap there. If somebody lost a family member or at the very least their home, they could file and they have a process of getting that back. On the other hand, you have the examples of, I think the expression is like ambulance chasers or something where it's such a litigious society that people are trying to take advantage of the system. Sure. The coffee was too hot. That's one of the examples that everybody heard about coffee. You've got hot coffee. What do you expect? Of course it was not. Right? Oh my gosh. That was of the examples that stand out there. Oh my God. These guys are just doing anything. yeah, that would be an example. And how do you draw a line in that example? Like how do you draw a line between like really people that was like a bonehead mood, the coffee says hot. Like how do you draw a line? And it's probably a philosophical question. And how have you maybe in your since this is your career, how have you been able to determine if people come to you and be like, that is a stretch, that is taking advantage of the system, or this is a really serious thing that we absolutely need to to file a lawsuit or example from? How have you drawn that line and how has that evolved over time from your experience? Well, one of the things to understand is some of these cases that sound ridiculous, that they win. And when you read the paper and you go, ⁓ my God, this is ridiculous. Coffee was too hot. Right. Then if you just leave it at that person ordered a coffee that's supposed to come hot. They got burnt because he spilled it on themselves. Now, what is the problem? Right. And naturally you go, Jesus, these people are abusing the courts. If you go a little deeper and this is where people don't go, it's like, how could that possibly have happened? Because the jury appears, there's 12 people sitting up there and they made that decision. They weren't all a of crazy people that were just leaning to one side. What happened was is that they found that the temperature was so extreme, it was hot enough to melt plastic, right? They just made that coffee so hot that it did not need to be that way, right? It caused second degree burns and things like that and all that. You don't need it that hot, right? You have to take into consideration. unless you hear something like that, right? You go. Okay, all right. Yeah, if it's burning and melting plastic, maybe that was a little too hot, right? Yeah. Things like that. You get into a little bit more into the cases. Now, I will grant you, there are examples out there of just ridiculous verdicts of cases in which there's people like, can't believe number one, you brought that case and number two, you actually won that case, right? Yeah. are examples of that. Those are fewer than you would think. That's what I would guess. Yeah. You have a corrective measure today. You got a pellet. courts, you got all those kinds of things. And usually the jury gets it right. Sometimes you have heartening. That's heartening to hear. We hope that right. We hope that they do. Now there are different but there are Jews in certain jurisdictions and jurors and other jurisdictions, right? There's certain jurisdictions with a lot more conservative. They might go, Oh my god, you were really injured. Here's $20,000. The person hearing those same cases in in a more liberal or a different minded citizenry. they might say, ⁓ my God, you were really hurt. Here's $100,000. So you've got the same case, right? Same set of facts, but just because of where you brought it, the jurors in that particular area felt the worth of it. Yeah. Yeah. And this is huge. And I want to dive into that specifically is I think the reason why, at least me personally, before this conversation, lean towards us being litigate like a litigious country. and people are to be taking more advantage of it is because I think of the small business coffee shop where they, somebody saw that McDonald's example and was like, I'm going to take advantage. I'm going to go buy a coffee. I'm going to small business. I'm going to drop it on myself, maybe get a burn somewhere else and then go to court and literally cause a small business to close down. So that's what I am concerned about. And I'm sure other people are as well. But at the same time, you use the example of the same outcome could be 20,000 versus 100, and that could be like a business closing and going bankrupt versus not. All this to say the question, how is that amount determined? Before I get to that, let me get to your first part of your question. And that is that people pull off these kind of things like, oh my God, I'll spill it on myself or I'll fake an accident, right? And go make a claim for it, things like that. these things do occur, okay? They're not as much as some people will claim. But they do occur, right? And there are attorneys that may represent them anyway, right? But what you have to understand is in those particular situations, a lot of times, the people on the other side will say, you know what, this is a pain. Let's just go ahead and it real quickly and move on. And when they do that and concede that, you're encouraging the behavior of the person. Because the other side might say, in order to go ahead and fight this and take it all the way to court and win it, and we think we can win it, it's going to take twice as much to get a zero verdict on it. And so a lot of it is a, it's a calculation based on what's it worth. When do we draw the line and things like that. And, but that unfortunately may keep people doing the same kind of behavior, the same kind of actions. And I worked for an insurance company at one time on the defense and I would see that over and over again. What are you settling this for? This guy's so obviously either faking it or they fake that there was no real injury or anything like that. But the company was like, hey, we could just let this go and go by. It's frustrating. Yes. Yeah, it is. Unfortunately, they drummed that up to to make it seem more as a norm than it is. Those are the exceptions to the case. There's always somebody abusing the system in any kind of situation. And yeah, those do agree. But I think that the only way you cut that out is by standing firm and go, look, bring it on. We're going to fight this. We think you're full of it. We think you're making this up and things like that. If you really believe that, then you fight it. You don't reward them just for the sake of saying, ⁓ let's just move on to the next one and give them a few pennies. It doesn't work that way. But going on to the second part of your question, which I'm sorry, I forgot. Yeah, no, it's like you gave the example of the 20,000 versus 100,000. Two very different outcomes, but the same instance or occurrence. It happens all the time. that's forum shopping. Lawyers know where the big verdicts are, whether or not they'll try and find a way to. bring it into a county or into an area where the jury pool is more likely going to be favorable to a larger verdict. That's all part of lawyering. That's all part of what they do. Right. When you sit back as a juror, you may think that, hey, how did this happen? How did this get such a big verdict here? And how is it here? It just happens to be the people and the people decide in this particular, let's say a big city, they might be used to more numbers and higher numbers and things like that. And so maybe a million dollars is not that big a deal. Right? Whereas you go out to maybe a rural area, right? Where a guy's just doing a blue collar job, where he's working as a farmer or whatever it is and everything like that. Million dollars is something he doesn't think about very often. Right? So he might be like, Hey, that's 50,000. Right? That's a lot of money. Go ahead. And that same case got such a big different result. question, then we'll get into some of the examples, cases that you've worked on is where is the intersection between in some of the much more severe cases where there's loss of life? between insurance and the legal proceedings that come after that. I'm trying to understand. Yeah. So for example, if have life insurance and I were to pass away in some freak accident, like a fire at a business or something, and my family will get the life insurance check from me passing away depending on my life insurance. But my wife then wants to press charges because maybe there was some malfunction or maybe the exits of the building weren't clearly where it was like blatant. Yeah. Is that and they come to you for representation and you win the case, is that usually just, the insurance claims in that whole process are completely separate, I'm guessing, right? They're not overlapping at any means. Yes, and I can speak for the jurisdictions that I practice in. True, they have specific rules saying that, listen, the person that lost that case that has to pay cannot say, ⁓ by the way, you got paid $100,000 by the insurance, so I should get credit for that and pay you even less, even though you got, let's say, a $500,000 verdict, right? but you got a hundred thousand from your insurance. So I should only have to give you four. No, it doesn't work that way. You don't get to get credit from another person that's already paid out to you. You have to pay out exactly what it is that you were found liable for. So they don't get to do that mostly in the jurisdictions that I practiced in. I imagine there's probably some jurisdictions that allow them to go ahead and have a set up, right? But the example you gave is exactly right. If they go back and say, hey, listen, they had the doors blocked off, they couldn't leave, or hey, the alarm didn't go off. people didn't even know until the fire came up. And those kinds of things are cases that happen all the time. They don't even consider whether the individual had insurance or not. That's really part of the situation. right. All right. Thank you for that. And thank you for that baseline foundation of this sector in this industry. So victim recovery law, what are some of the cases that you all focus on? I know you mentioned that you wanted to found this organization having a very specific focus. So what are some of the example cases that maybe you started with? And how has that evolved to today? The cases that we primarily deal with are victims of violent crime, shooting victims, primarily. We have quite a few sexual assault cases, rape cases where there were opportunities to prevent it from happening and a duty to prevent it from happening by either a nightclub or a bar or for one instance, a mall, two 14 year old girls that happen to be at a mall 30 days apart and still able to go ahead and do this. He got convicted of raping 10 girls. But two of these were on the mall 30 days apart, 14 year old girls. And they did not even know that they had any kind of ability to bring the case like this. I think the mother of one of the girls ran across our ad or something like that, like four or five years later. Now, because they were so young, it was a viable case. OK, the statute of limitations hadn't run out. Right. So we were still able to bring a case. And the thing is, look, a woman undergoing rape is one of the most horrific things anyway, but a 14-year-old undergoing rape, it just messes up their whole situation. They can't sit in classrooms anymore. They can't be surrounded by people anymore. Everything is just, you know, they just can't function in the way that they did previously. They're completely different people. And to expect and go out and work and make a living and things like that, it's almost impossible. We were able to get a significant enough result in that case to where the girls were able to purchase. Homes and get a check for the next 50 years. Yeah Why do you think that mother did not know this was an option? And why two questions and I'll bring him like and why do you think that the mall in this example was responsible for that? okay, three's first question why did the mother know that those as option because Most people don't know that there's an option. I'm sad to say even some lawyers don't know that this particular relief exists. Okay, that you can actually sue on behalf of crime victims, right? It's an idea or it's a practice that's not really out there. It's not as common as a medical malpractice somebody may left the forceps inside the person. It's not as common as that. So because of that, a lot of people don't know about it. She just happened to come across something that alerted her and contacted us and she would be in the norm of most people out there. Yeah, no idea. And I can't tell you and it's heartbreaking the number of people that find out about this. after the statute of limitations has expired, and we can no longer bring a case. What is the statute of limitations and what is the time? Okay, so that varies with every state. Okay, for example, in Pennsylvania, it's two years, okay, from the time of incident up until the expiration. And that's what statute of limitations is from the time of incident and when you can, okay, gotcha. From the time instance that right, New York is three years, right? Florida used to be four years, I think they've cut it back to two years now. But it varies. in your state and it's very important to know it about your state. Some states I think are as short as one year. And within that year, you've got to get a lawyer and they got to file a suit and they got to bring an action. If you don't, that's it, you're done. And the other thing is there are other scenarios where it's a different case. For example, if you're a minor, you have up until your 20th birthday, two years after your majority. An exception to that would be a minor who has been sexually assaulted by a person who is an adult, right? In Pennsylvania anyway, you have up until the age of 30. So they've expanded it more for people in that kind of situation, right? And there are various exceptions like that all over the country where they deal with different scenarios. So it's very important to find out how much time you have and get to a lawyer right away because that's the worst thing in the world. I can't tell you how many people. Right after it expired, they came to me and said, I'm sorry, I can't help you, there's nothing I can do. This is bringing me to just a thought on, probably because I've been reading it recently, but pros and cons of smartphones. I think one of the pros, especially with this conversation, is I hope that these, like getting raped in broad daylight are happening much less than they have in the past because People are recording always. CCTVs are more so than ever. I don't know if you've been in industry long enough to see that, but I'm hoping that there's a trajectory downwards of these things happening because of the advances in technology, especially smartphones and cameras, et cetera. I don't know if it's a downward trajectory so much as they're just getting caught more. I think your question implied was because they can get caught, there are a few of these events happening. Yeah, you'd hope. I wish I could say that. Yeah, I wish you could say that, but the numbers really don't support that. The numbers just show that they're just getting caught more. Nobody thinks they're getting caught. Everybody commits a crime. They don't think they're getting caught or they don't care about getting caught. For the most part, they don't think it's being recorded. And then somebody records them and out of the blue, here you have that. It starts with even with police cases, police abuse cases and things like that. for years or decades or whatever, it was their word saying, no, it didn't happen like that. And people tended to take the police officer's viewpoint, right? Yeah. Case after case after case coming up from video going, this is not what you said at all. That has changed the behavior of the police. That's changed behavior police departments. But now they have cameras themselves and things like that. And I think that has restored the of the public in the police a little bit more because they, okay, now you guys have been held accountable to. Yep. And then great transition accountability for the mall. Part two of the question was, why do you think it was the mall's responsibility? Was it like a lapse in their security camera coverage? Was it a, this is a repeat offender yet all like knowledge to prevent something like what, where does that responsibility get attributed? Okay. So one of the keys is notice. Does the defense, are they put on notice that something could happen? Okay. Are they put on notice of crime in the area? in general of crime of this particular nature, right? Do they happen to know maybe if this individual in this particular case, it was all of the above. There was crime known to be around in the area and we could prove that based on crime statistics that we got from the police. Number two, this particular individual is known to them. He was causing mayhem all over the place. They actually posted his picture and said, do not let him on the premises. Okay. Now we have security patrolling around. But yet he was able to do this in broad daylight. This wasn't a nighttime thing that he did. Broad daylight, he lured one of the girls out there, shoved her behind an object. And all of this also at the same time is all within their video cameras. So you have video cameras trained in this area. Supposedly they have somebody watching the video cameras. So their own security measures failed. The only thing is they didn't have enough security measures. And the other thing is that the security measures that they did have failed. Okay. Well, we were able to show that they just went, they didn't care. They went up to snuff. This guy, matter of fact, was caught in the bathroom inside with an underage girl, right? Previously, he was stopped by the guards and he, they just let him go. They didn't even check to see if the girl was underage and she was. They just let him go. There was just a very lax feeling about that. Part of our settlement with them was that they were supposed to have cameras placed on the outer rim area. where something like this could happen. We put that as part of our demand when we actually settle the case. Yeah. Wow. ⁓ I'd love to hear some other examples and stories of people that you've worked with and outcomes you've helped achieve. Yeah. Okay. Just to give you some different situations, we've had people shot now a recent phenomenon within the last, I'd say, five years that we've seen is that gas stations, right? People have learned, at least I'm talking about the city of Philadelphia. that, hey, people are pumping gas. If I want to go rob somebody and get their car, here I got a guy putting gas in the car with the keys in his hand. I can just go up there, get the car and drive off with a full tank of gas, right? And this is happening over and over again. A lot of times if they resist, they were getting shot, right? The gas stations were just ignoring it like it wasn't happening, but you could see the trend go up. Some of the gas stations actually hired a security guard company. Right and their numbers went down but not all of them did even though they had incidents happen So we've had incidents against gas companies gas stations where they just failed to protect their people even though incidents have happened priors Previously in the area and they could be in really bad neighborhoods where crime happens all the time You have a duty when you invite somebody at least in, Pennsylvania When you invite somebody onto your premises to do business you have a heightened duty Maybe you have to go ahead and make sure that these people are protected of both dangers that you should know of or you actually know of. And that could go to, what are you doing as far as a should know of? What are you doing as far as figuring out what's going on in the neighborhood around you? What are you doing as far as making sure that if somebody comes up to assault one of your customers, that you have the ability to respond? And they usually don't do that. Businesses, that's an expense. Yeah, that's where my mind is going. Is he mentioning heightened duty? Yeah. That expense is not necessarily returning, giving them a return in their pocket, right? For example, you buy certain items for your store in the gas station, you're going to get something back from it. If you expend for a security guard, you're not necessarily getting back, right? But that's a requirement to protect the people that are out there. And maybe eventually people say they have guards there. I'm going to go ahead and go there. There's one situation I've heard of recently where they did have guards. They figured it was too expensive and they let him go. A week later, somebody was shot and killed on their property. So you have these kinds of situations all the time. We have various different scenarios. We've had some pretty strange scenarios. We've had one where a man and woman were in a hotel room and at night, midnight, she said something really upset him. He walked across the street to the gas station. He got a coffee cup and he asked the woman for dollars worth of gas in a coffee cup. She sold him a Donald's worth of gas in the coffee cup. comes back over. He goes to the same woman and asked her for matches. She gives him matches. He walks back, goes into the room, pours it on her face and lights her a fire. She burnt to death. The building burned down. It was just a horrendous thing that happened. And you start out with the gas station, right? Come on. What were you guys thinking? First of all, there are certain containers by law. that you can only fill in gas with, right? So that was an obvious thing. then even then, look, if the guy pulled up in a car, maybe you can say maybe he needs a little gas for restart the car or something like that. But he didn't pull up in a car. He walked over there. So what does he need matches for? All those kind of things. And we found out there were other locations that he was supposed to be in that he wasn't supposed to be out. And the woman had four children. And so, yeah, that was actually ended up being quite a big case that we had. As far as a different kind of situation, we've had a domestic terrorism case. We had a police officer just sitting in his car in an area in West Philadelphia, and it was on film. There was a man dressed in full, a white Muslim garb, ran at him firing the gun until his gun was inside the window. He shot him six times. And this kid, this young police officer, he's all banged up. And the guy ran away and he shot him while he was running away and he shot him in the tail. So. he survived, the police officer survived. And they said one of his friends, your latest that they can you help him out? The guy claimed to be for ISIS, right? He said, when this for ISIS, he got convicted, he got a lifetime in prison. But I'm like, who am I supposed to sue his case? His police officer sitting in the middle of the street? What do you do? We did a little investigation, we found out that the gun that the ISIS guy used belonged to another police officer. That police officer said, I went to a bar and I've seen this girl and I got drunk, I lost the gun. so we got his homeowners, right? But then we really stepped out of bounds. We decided to do something we'd never done. We talked to the FBI and we sued the mosque for radicalizing the guy. Something really you don't see down a whole lot. Yeah. There a lot of ups and downs with that, but we had one chief witness who really got concerned. He thought he was going to get killed. so, yeah, so we couldn't proceed with that particular theory. So we had so many different areas where, you know, more than just a regular shooting or something like that where scenarios we've confronted. Yeah. So thank you for those examples. I think these are stories that people just don't hear in their day to day question. We kind of touched on the lack of education of people coming forward if they have been a victim other than lack of knowing that this is something that you could come forward about. What have what would you advise to the girl or woman or boy that maybe has been sexually harassed or physically sexually abused as to kind of make finding a law firm to help support them just more approachable. What advice would you give somebody to alleviate their concerns? Yeah. first thing you can do, obviously you can do, is just simple Google search of firms that represent victims of crime. A few firms will pop up, you can start calling them. Now they will tell you not every case is something that's actionable. Okay. For example, there's harassment that they really may feel offended. I've had ladies have called me, this person's harassing me, this, that, and everything else. I feel offended, this, that, and everything else. But it doesn't rise to the level that you can actually have an actionable case or isn't a target where they can actually go recover from. That'll be explained to them because these cases also, there's a reason why a whole lot of lawyers don't do these cases. For example, let's take the car accident case. For example, you've got a lot of lawyers that do that, right? It doesn't take a whole lot of money to complete one of those cases. You can do those cases for 500 to 1500 also you can finish a case and settle in and keep moving on and that's your investment, right? Cases like these very often you're in the 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, $70,000 that you put in out of your pocket. And if you lose, you eat that. Right. You don't necessarily contribute to that. And not a lot of people want to do that. Number one, take that kind of a risk. And number two, and this is a very important part, and this is something that that we really do at our particular firm. you have to be prepared to go to trial. Not a lot of people either want to go to trial or to tell you the truth are equipped to go to trial. Because you see, the defense usually has a book on you. Okay, so this is the kind of firm that just talks a lot and then they just take whatever you give them or is this a firm that will try a case? Now when I first started my career with my own firm, I noticed that a lot of the awards, the offers were not very high. And I knew if there's a certain firm, across town that they had come to them, they would have been a much higher and it really upset me. Right. And I had to change that. I had to change that view about our firm. So we started going to trial. We started going trial after trial and we had started winning enough to where that changed their attitude towards us. we take a very listen, there is no client that has ever wanted to go to trial that I've talked them out of and said, no, I don't think you should or whatever. If they want to go to trial, that's their day in court or wherever we go to trial. You have to have that as a strong base. And unfortunately, and this is what I would say to people out there looking for firms, look to see if the firm has a strong trial background, right? Because ultimately the defense said, go pound sand, we're not giving you anything. What are you gonna do that? Right? You're go back to your clients, say, listen, they're not gone. Just why don't you just take this a little bit here so they can keep moving on and recoup some of their, that's what it comes down to a business decision. It should never be. It should be, listen, you want to go to trial, let's trial, let's go to trial. These guys are not taking this seriously or they're not giving it the value that it should be. Let's try the case. We will go to battle and our firm, our particular firm is designed for that. The people that we have in the firm, when we go to trial, we go to trial as a team. Each person has their own designated duties. It's a division of labor and we go in there and our aim is to go in there and kick some butt. ⁓ We want our clients to know. that they have that behind them, right? Yeah. Quick question on that. Related to a sexual assault victim, say some minor girl was sexually assaulted in the past. They got justice from the perpetrator. And very similar to the story you shared, the trauma of going through something like that has just impacted them in all aspects of life. Like financially, for example, they're maybe they can't handle the job or they're suffering from a lot of other PTSD trauma. Can they come back then and have a conversation with you and see if there's something that maybe was missed in the example of the mall that they should reevaluate or somebody in that instance, what would you advise them to do? Usually when you settle a case, that's it. There's no revisiting it. No, hey, I didn't consider this. Oh my God, now I've got this situation to consider. All of those considerations should be taken place. right before you settle, okay? And the settlement paperwork will contain language that would prevent this person to come back and do that. So that's gonna be negated right away. That's gonna be explained to the victim, listen, this is it. If you're satisfied with this, that's fine. But if you're not, then you have to think of some alternative. But you're not coming back after taking the money and saying, listen, how about a little bit more? No, that almost never ever exists. Okay, got you. Yeah, that's helpful clarification there. Somehow it's been 37 minutes of talking with you, David. Time is flying. The future we have for victim recovery law. What do you hope to look back 10 years from now and see? I don't know. don't look. There are cases that we have big verdicts on and that we like to help people. Obviously, a big verdict is a big boost and everything like that. But there are certain things where we actually help change society. Let me give you an example. I don't know if you heard about ghost guns, ghost guns. What happened about eight years ago, ghost guns started appearing in society. And these were called ghost guns because there's no traceable number on them. There's nothing to say, ⁓ this gun was responsible for that killing. This gun was responsible for that shooting, because there's nothing on them. They're ghost guns. That's why all guns must have markings on them. Ghost guns came into existence in a very real sense when it was under the first Trump administration, people, they decided to manufacture these guns. as a kit and would sell them as kits all over the place. Now you had a huge spike in shootings, especially by a lot of juveniles in all these cities. So these cities saw this huge spike and they decided to sue the Ghost Gun manufacturer. And they were doing that. then what happened was, I believe our firm was the first in the country. was one in LA that came soon after. We started soon on behalf of actual families of victims who got killed. We had three different victims, took 10 bullets each, juveniles, one was a 14 year old, right? Shot by another 14 year old, right? Got a hold of this ghost gun. So we started soon to manufacture. Now they've stopped production and now they're like not paying for their lawyers, meaning they're running out of money. So while our clients, recently we just won an award where they did not come to court and the judge awarded this family $30 million. Right. It's unfortunate on behalf of the family began collect this right. But all of these and we have two more coming up. They have enough of a force against this company. There's no more ghost gun manufacturers by this manufacturer, which is polymer 80. Those aren't out there anymore. numbers have gone down of shootings by ghost guns in general have gone down around the cities around the country. So that's one of the big things I think I look back and say we had some kind of measure in actually. yeah, 100%. Why was it allowed for GhostGhost to be manufactured? I thought they had to by law. Were they finding a loophole of making it called a kit that allowed that or what? That's exactly it. They were making a kit. would almost be like 80 % of the kit, but with instructions and other guidance how to make it complete. So they got, if I'm not mistaken, I think it was a nine millimeter. where you can use bullets like that. They use it, there's no way of tracking it, and was all these kids were out there shooting each other. It was just a real mess. The public in general, may hear about shooting this, that, everything else. You don't know that it was done by a ghost gun. don't know it was proliferating and things like that. But no, we made enough of, I think we contributed to all the efforts by everybody else. And that was a definite good feeling. That'll take away. I think that's another side of the coin of ⁓ a business being put out of business for really lack of morality, whatever it is, however you want it, lack of ethical decision making as a business to be like, this is probably going lead to some bad outcomes. Sure. Either we change the behavior because of the lawsuit or for example, there was another case recently, there was a bar in a very popular section of town. This bar was popular for decades and they were known as a venue that had a lot of bands, these young bands that come plan. had a following following come in and bring more business for the club. What happened was the there were two young ladies 118 and 121. It cues the bartenders of putting something in their drink. And I'm upstairs and sexual assault case. So we sued them and it was enough of a deal where the bands did not want to they did not want to play at their venue anymore. they got shut down. And we managed to get a nice award for the young ladies as well. So that's a way we're impacting, we're changing these gas stations. They all better, they need to have guards out there. And I'm sorry, you think, my God, what kind of a world are we living in where you're talking about guards and gas stations? I'm sorry, I wish we weren't living in that world like that, right? But that's where we live. And people are getting shot. You can't just ignore it and say, ⁓ come on, you can't expect them. No, we can. You bring it, inviting people on there to do business with you. You have to be able to keep them safe. And if that means spending a little bit money. I'm a security guard on that. That's what you got to do. Yeah. And you mentioned kind of in that example, when you initially mentioned it duty as a business. And I feel like just, if I put myself in the shoes of business owners, like how is it, how do you measure that? Like, how do you determine at this point, we should take actions to add a, and I, the answer, the simple answer is probably, you know, your area it's happened before. These are instances and data points that should lead you to taking precautions yourself, but like defining duty is so I feel hard as a business owner. What do you like, I'm going to create a product and sell the product or in focus on that. But yeah, obviously. Yeah. No, that's a good point. It's the, could be the product itself, like the ghost gun. It could be the area that you're operating in, where you're inviting people on, right? It could be the nature of the industry that you're working in, right? Where these things happen all the time. All these things are keys to put an owner on notice. Hey, listen, you got to take these into consider. You can't just ignore them. and say, I'm just going to sell as many products as I can the heck with whatever happens. And ⁓ it's unfortunate. Isn't it terrible? And going about your life. You can't do that. Right. You do have a responsibility for making sure your customers are safe. And yeah, they, are experts out there that will do what's called a security audit. You get this guy, you pay him, whatever you pay him to, Hey, let's do an audit of this whole area and things like that. Let's see what kind of crime there is in the area. What kind of hours that the crime tends to commit. So you may not want a security guard at eight in the morning. Right? But you may want him to be there after 7 p.m. on going into the night. So that right there cuts down on your costs and things like that. You have them later on when it's more likely to happen. But that's an audit that it shows that you made the effort. And if something happens, they can say, listen, we made this effort. We did this. This is what we did. We had a security guard when we thought it was going to be dangerous. And a lot of times it'll be probably found in their favor. They made the effort. do you expect? But unfortunately, more often than not, they did nothing. Yeah. David, I really appreciate your time and handling some of my random questions throughout this interview process. People that are listening and want to learn more, get engaged with you. Where should they go? Should they just Google kind of victim recovery law or what's the best Recovery Law Center is our law firm. You can reach us through that. There is a National Crime Victim Bar Association. This is an organization made up of lawyers like us around the country, but they do various different things like... Boy Scouts, the Catholic Church and things like that for sexual assaults that happen in those kind of situations all over the place, all around the country. And we all come together usually once a year and we share ideas and things like that. That's when we're gonna be in Chicago this year. And that's another source you can go to if you'd like in your particular state ⁓ because there's somebody in every state that's doing this kind of stuff. Is there anything you wanna leave us with or anything we missed before we wrap up the interview? Nothing, I just wanna say that I really hope you don't need our service ever. Life doesn't happen when you ever need our service. But if you do, please reach out and we happy to talk to you and be happy to give you whatever advice you need and actually point you the direction. If we're not the right people to do it in your particular state, you can probably find somebody in your state to do. Okay. Yeah. All righty. David, thank you so much again for your time. We're really honored to this story and thank you for the work that you're doing and helping these victims and have some semblance of justice after. terrible things have happened. So thank you so much. Thanks for having me, Jeff. Thanks. Take care.