Latest / Coopers' Code / Parking While Black, Part II: What We’d Do Again (and Differently) After Winning $11M

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Parking While Black, Part II: What We’d Do Again (and Differently) After Winning $11M · Coopers' Code

• 0:00
  For anybody who's seen A Time to Kill with, you know, Jake
• 0:03
  Brigance in his closing argument, right?
• 0:05
  And it's the story of this young black girl who is beaten and
• 0:09
  raped and dragged and left for dead.
• 0:12
  And he then asked these jurors, almost all white, to now imagine
• 0:16
  she's white. And we did something similar
• 0:19
  where we showed the lager veils in the car, and then we
• 0:22
  transitioned it to a car full of 3 white women.
• 0:26
  Do you think that this thing goes down the same way if these
• 0:28
  are the people? And there just wasn't at that
• 0:31
  point, at least in the trial, I don't think there was any way
• 0:34
  for any juror to reasonably say, yeah, the cops would have
• 0:36
  behaved the same way. And so that got us to the point
• 0:39
  of isn't this crazy that this sort of thing is still going on
• 0:43
  just because of the color of somebody's skin?
• 0:46
  Howdy, and welcome to the show. I'm really excited about today's
• 0:51
  program. We're doing something a little
• 0:52
  bit different. What we're going to be doing
• 0:55
  today is one of the first of what we're going to call our
• 0:58
  after action reviews. And in that we're going to be
• 1:01
  taking a look at a verdict or other result, have the people
• 1:06
  involved and kind of parse through how they got what they
• 1:09
  got in this situation. We're going to be talking about
• 1:13
  the Lockerville case, which was a notable civil rights case.
• 1:17
  We're going to speaking with Joseph May, Brian Gehringer and
• 1:20
  Craig Peters, the lawyers who are involved in this outstanding
• 1:23
  verdict. They were also able to preserve
• 1:25
  when it went all the way through appeal.
• 1:27
  We've had a fairly robust conversation about the case.
• 1:31
  Are there any other learnings, points, pieces that you would
• 1:35
  want to share with our listeners as far as as things that are
• 1:40
  either successful or areas that you could have improved on the
• 1:43
  case? I mean, we tried the case in
• 1:44
  eight hours, so I'm not sure we could have been any more
• 1:47
  efficient. That was a bit of a gulp when we
• 1:50
  were told we had such a limited amount of time on top of having
• 1:54
  limited Fortier. I think we got, I think Judge
• 1:56
  Alsup gave me 30 minutes, 20 minutes, something like that.
• 1:59
  What I hear in that though, Craig, is that there are lots of
• 2:02
  lawyers who feel that they need to put on a big production of a
• 2:04
  trial in order to get a big verdict.
• 2:06
  And if you are given guidelines, you can try the case within the
• 2:10
  guidelines and still get a great outcome.
• 2:12
  That's true, Yeah. And actually, I've got this case
• 2:14
  coming up and we had our final status conference with the judge
• 2:18
  where this very conversation came up where I said, look, you
• 2:22
  limit me all you want on the evidence, just don't limit me on
• 2:24
  4, dear. Let me have enough time to, you
• 2:26
  know, find the right jurors for this case.
• 2:29
  You know, give us a couple of days, three days for that.
• 2:31
  And then, you know, you want to hamstring me on how much
• 2:34
  evidence I put on. That's fine, cause at least I've
• 2:36
  got the right people hearing the case.
• 2:38
  And I think that it is true that we, you know, our, you know, you
• 2:42
  go through all this discovery, right?
• 2:43
  And you've, you've turned over every Rock You, you know, where
• 2:47
  you know, every little fact is. And there's an inclination that
• 2:50
  you want to then show how many facts you know about, right?
• 2:54
  But the jury, that's not helpful for the jury.
• 2:56
  They, they're drinking from a fire hose.
• 2:58
  They you need to turn the water down, give them just the things
• 3:01
  that are most important so that those are the things that we're
• 3:04
  remembering. 8 was a little tight, I think for a, you know,
• 3:09
  for a civil rights case, 8's pretty tight.
• 3:12
  But yes. But I think the the take away is
• 3:14
  you can try your case relatively quickly and with a good jury
• 3:17
  they'll get it. One thing I thought was really
• 3:20
  helpful, Craig alluded to informal focus grouping with his
• 3:23
  colleagues and I. I've pitched it to people and I
• 3:25
  had thoughts of my own and I'm sure Brian did as well.
• 3:29
  And one thing we did, I think it was Craig's suggestion to do
• 3:33
  what's called a big data focus group.
• 3:37
  And that way we had, I think it was over 200 people online
• 3:42
  reviewing important portions of the case, the video, some of the
• 3:45
  legal facts, well, some of the law and the facts rather.
• 3:49
  And, and it was extremely helpful.
• 3:52
  I think it surprised us in a lot of ways because number one, the,
• 3:58
  the, the numbers they were coming back with were a lot
• 4:00
  higher than we expected. And, and not only that, but it,
• 4:02
  it should kind of divided it up based on where the jurors were
• 4:06
  at on liability. And, and one thing we learned
• 4:08
  was that if the jurors thought that it was OK for the cops to,
• 4:12
  to initially come up and, and start talking to the plaintiffs
• 4:14
  and demand the ID, we were kind of hosed the, the either they
• 4:18
  defense the case or the verdict would have been much lower.
• 4:20
  Because then you're just talking about a woman who's like causing
• 4:22
  problems. Why, why don't you just show the
• 4:24
  ID? You know that?
• 4:25
  And that was a big concern of ours the entire case.
• 4:27
  And So what the focus jurors, I think said was among the ones
• 4:31
  who thought that none of this was justified.
• 4:33
  This was all just a racial profiling exercise.
• 4:36
  They never should have even been approached in the first place if
• 4:39
  among those jurors that I think it was a like a $4 million
• 4:43
  verdict or something like 3 or $4 million, which was way more
• 4:45
  than we, we had ever expected for a case like this.
• 4:48
  And So what we knew and, and Craig can talk about how that
• 4:50
  played into his trial strategy, but we knew that we needed to
• 4:53
  really focus on the very beginning of this interaction
• 4:56
  and how there was no basis for it.
• 4:58
  All the, the proffered bases for it were pretextual and, and BS.
• 5:02
  And I think that's what we ultimately did.
• 5:04
  And, and by the time the jurors were deliberating, they were
• 5:06
  like, yeah, there's no point in doing this in the 1st place.
• 5:08
  This was some racial profiling and, and, and I think that's
• 5:11
  partly what led to a a bigger verdict.
• 5:14
  My practice pointer isn't specific to this case, but it it
• 5:18
  bore fruit in this case. And that's as lawyers,
• 5:21
  especially young lawyers, you need to invest in your
• 5:24
  professional relationships. I met Craig 25 years ago when he
• 5:29
  was a no Bunny, but I liked him. I think this guy's smart.
• 5:34
  And and I met Joseph 15 years ago when he was even less of a
• 5:38
  nobody. And I helped him out just by
• 5:42
  giving him a couple tidbits. His first trial is at the
• 5:44
  against the city attorney's office.
• 5:46
  And I just I, to me, I didn't do anything, but I, you know, I, I
• 5:50
  helped, you know, helped out the young lawyer a little bit drink
• 5:53
  before his first trial. And so you maintain those
• 5:56
  friendships. So by the time we went to trial,
• 5:59
  we were already friends before we went to trial.
• 6:02
  But now we've been through the Crucible of a jury trial and
• 6:06
  we're we're bonded forever based on that experience.
• 6:10
  And it's just, it's so much fun. Like, you know, I like I said,
• 6:15
  I've been friends for a long with Craig for a long time, but
• 6:17
  like to stand next to Craig and Joseph in trial, like, hey,
• 6:21
  should we strike that juror? Hey, what do you think?
• 6:23
  What do you think? And it was our collective wisdom
• 6:27
  that that really helped us achieve this great results.
• 6:31
  And the only time we, Joseph, when I have ever had a
• 6:35
  disagreement is at the end of a case.
• 6:37
  We always have an argument over the fees.
• 6:39
  And the fees argument goes like this.
• 6:43
  Hey, Joseph, I think you should take a little bit more.
• 6:45
  And he's like, no, I totally disagree with you, Brian.
• 6:47
  I think you should take more. So if those are the arguments
• 6:51
  you're having with your Co counsel where you're generous
• 6:53
  with each other and you're focused not on this squeezing
• 6:56
  every nickel out of this case, but you're looking at the next
• 6:59
  case and the next case and maintaining these relationships.
• 7:03
  And, and, and it can cover the gamut.
• 7:07
  I know this attorney, he's really good at premises
• 7:09
  liability or she's really good at assault battery cases and
• 7:13
  maintaining those friendships so that you can refer the cases or
• 7:16
  Co counsel on the cases. And it just makes, you know, the
• 7:20
  defense always has the advantage on these cases.
• 7:23
  They have deeper pockets, less risk.
• 7:27
  The the, the defense lawyers have less risk because they're
• 7:29
  getting paid by every month by the hour.
• 7:32
  So if you can team up with talented, good people, it levels
• 7:38
  the playing field and it's just, it's just fun.
• 7:42
  Yeah, I echo that. And as I think, you know, like
• 7:44
  when I, yeah, I was at some other firms before, before
• 7:47
  Altair happened. And the whole point of, like for
• 7:50
  me, the whole point of creating Altair was to be able to partner
• 7:55
  with other folks. In part, it's selfish.
• 7:57
  It's because I learned so much by working with other attorneys
• 8:02
  in every profession, but certainly in the legal
• 8:04
  profession, you know, we get used to doing things a certain
• 8:08
  way that feels like it fits us, particularly over time after
• 8:11
  we've been doing this for a long time.
• 8:13
  But having the experience of being with somebody who does it
• 8:16
  a different way or pushes back a little bit on, on on how they do
• 8:19
  things helps you to kind of constantly re evaluate whether
• 8:22
  what you're doing is the best way.
• 8:24
  And I think, and for me, that's exciting.
• 8:27
  I, I love being a lawyer. These guys love being lawyers.
• 8:29
  You love being a lawyer. Be and part of what makes it
• 8:32
  exciting, I think is the learning.
• 8:34
  And so being able to Co counsel, but in my experience has been
• 8:37
  one of the best ways for me to learn from other folks, new
• 8:42
  areas of law, as well as new ways of doing things, new ways
• 8:46
  of presenting, new ways of deposing people, new ways of
• 8:49
  doing discovery. You know, we're constantly
• 8:52
  needing to reinvent ourselves, I think to do the best for our
• 8:54
  clients. So I'm a big believer in it.
• 8:56
  In a similar vein, I, I went to an ADC Association of Defense
• 9:01
  Council conference where one of the lawyers was saying to me,
• 9:04
  you know, while we do this, we don't share in the same way that
• 9:07
  you folks all do. And, and one of the things I'm
• 9:11
  very appreciative of is the willingness of the three of you
• 9:14
  to sit down and talk about, you know, how this came together
• 9:17
  because by you sharing this with others, they will be able to
• 9:22
  hopefully have some of the same impact that you have had with
• 9:27
  your verdict. So it's a important piece that I
• 9:31
  think all of us in this community do is, is is giving
• 9:33
  back and Joseph's kind offer to to help people vet cases so that
• 9:38
  we can make an impact. Thanks for having us on.
• 9:43
  As we share pieces, Joseph commented on the big data focus
• 9:47
  that you did. I'd love to hear the piece of
• 9:50
  that, who you use and how you do it in order to to gather that
• 9:54
  kind of information. I think we used Krista Nove, if
• 9:57
  I'm not mistaken, right? Yeah, we used Krista Nove.
• 10:00
  It was one of two folks that I regularly use.
• 10:04
  Damages was definitely our biggest concern in terms of what
• 10:07
  was the valuation, the proper valuation for the case.
• 10:10
  But the other big piece that Joseph talked about that
• 10:14
  concerned me was getting over that hump of the ID, right?
• 10:21
  Like, I, I think particularly for a lot of white people,
• 10:26
  they'd be like, just show them your ID, right?
• 10:28
  Like, what's the big deal? Show them the ID.
• 10:30
  They'll look at the ID, they'll be like, OK, and you're, you're
• 10:32
  done, right? And this whole thing lasts 5
• 10:34
  minutes instead of 95 minutes. And so I was worried about how
• 10:39
  that might play out with the jury and getting a sense from
• 10:42
  people about that. And, you know, we got good
• 10:45
  information there that that that definitely could be a problem.
• 10:48
  And so we had to try to position in such a way where people
• 10:52
  wouldn't get get hung up on that piece that they'd be kind of
• 10:56
  incensed is maybe a little too strong, but they'd already be
• 10:59
  alerted to the inequity and injustice of even asking.
• 11:06
  And part of our pitch was, well, if you're a white person, you
• 11:09
  got to ask. Sure, you give your ID, but the
• 11:11
  point is you'd never be asked, right?
• 11:13
  That's the point is you'd never get asked.
• 11:15
  So saying, well, I would just give the ID is a little bit of
• 11:19
  a, it's a misdirect, right? It's you're not gonna get out.
• 11:23
  And we did. As lawyers, one of our greatest
• 11:26
  skills can be stealing stuff from other people.
• 11:28
  So as Brian mentioned, right, we, we stole from Martin Luther
• 11:30
  King, we stole from Rosa Parks. Those things can be very fraught
• 11:34
  with feeling like they're a little too over the top.
• 11:36
  This case, I felt like it, we'd earned through the hard work,
• 11:41
  you know, the whole team and the way we put on the case, we'd
• 11:43
  sort of earned the right to be able to go there and talk about
• 11:46
  it 'cause that's really where we felt like our clients fit in
• 11:49
  the, you know, in the arc of justice.
• 11:51
  That's where they fit. But the thing that gave me the
• 11:53
  most worry was I, I, for anybody who's seen A Time to Kill with,
• 11:58
  you know, Jake Brigance in his closing argument, right?
• 12:00
  And it's the story of this young black girl who is beaten and
• 12:05
  raped and dragged and left for dead.
• 12:08
  And he then asked these jurors, almost all white, to now imagine
• 12:12
  she's white. And we did something similar
• 12:16
  where we showed the lager veils in the car and then we
• 12:18
  transitioned it to a car full of three white women, a mom and her
• 12:23
  2 white daughters. Do you think that this thing
• 12:25
  goes down the same way? If these are the people And
• 12:27
  there just wasn't at that point, at least in the trial, I don't
• 12:30
  think there was any way for any juror to reasonably say, yeah,
• 12:33
  the cops would have behaved the same way.
• 12:35
  And so that hopefully took the sting out of the just show your
• 12:39
  ID thing and got us to the point of isn't this crazy that in, you
• 12:44
  know, 2019, this sort of thing is still going on just because
• 12:48
  of the color of somebody's skin. So it was really helpful.
• 12:51
  I mean, I think they're always helpful, right?
• 12:54
  We should know about the bad facts.
• 12:56
  We should know about what people think about damages and what
• 12:59
  type of people think about damages and what different types
• 13:01
  of ways so that we can try to get to the best result for our
• 13:05
  client. I'm still a big believer in
• 13:07
  doing in person focus groups as well, if for no other reason,
• 13:11
  it's just a great opportunity to get on your feet and give the
• 13:15
  pitch for the case. But I also think you get
• 13:17
  something a little bit different too out of having those in
• 13:20
  person ones versus the big data. But the big data can really
• 13:23
  drive the order of your presentation, what you're going
• 13:27
  to lead with knowing what you need to diffuse those sorts of
• 13:30
  things that are. That's really helpful.
• 13:34
  We also used a jury consultant, Karen Joe Coonan, who passed
• 13:39
  away shortly after we got this verdict.
• 13:42
  And she was critical in prepping our clients in their
• 13:48
  presentation. And our clients followed her
• 13:52
  advice to the letter. She was dying of cancer while
• 13:56
  she was helping us. And she was very gratified
• 14:00
  because she's been on the side of truth and justice for a long
• 14:05
  time. And she was really, it was
• 14:07
  really thrilling to, you know, call her and share that good
• 14:10
  news with her before she passed away.
• 14:14
  Yeah, Karen Jo is a Titan of the jury selection witness prep
• 14:19
  industry. I mean, she was at the forefront
• 14:21
  of that and doing lots of cases, criminal defense cases as well
• 14:25
  early on. And to have her on this case and
• 14:29
  have it be, you know, one of the last cases that she worked on
• 14:32
  was kind of was that was special for her as well As for us.
• 14:36
  In fact, she was Joseph had another case that he and I
• 14:38
  worked on. She was also on that case and
• 14:41
  had a client that was the exact opposite.
• 14:42
  She's like this client's, this client's unredeemable.
• 14:45
  But the, the lager vails, she's like, these people are amazing.
• 14:48
  They're gonna, they're gonna do great.
• 14:50
  So it was. Yeah.
• 14:52
  So she got both of those results before she passed away.
• 14:55
  Yeah, she she will be missed indeed.
• 14:59
  If you're enjoying what we're doing here with Cooper's code,
• 15:01
  please help us extend our reach by giving us a five star review
• 15:03
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• 15:06
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• 15:08
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• 15:10
  Have an interview suggestion? e-mail us at podcast at Coopers
• 15:12
  dot law. I will throw it again for any
• 15:16
  other learnings that you feel we have overlooked in this
• 15:18
  conversation. You know, we talked about how
• 15:20
  they acted at trial, but considering the liability on
• 15:24
  this site, you know, it's not the kind of case that ever
• 15:26
  should have made it to trial. So that to the extent defense
• 15:28
  attorneys are watching this, you know, the the strategies
• 15:31
  appeared. The strategy appeared to be from
• 15:33
  the beginning overwhelm browbeat us.
• 15:36
  You know, the first phone call with defense counsel.
• 15:38
  He he he said, you know, I can't believe this is even a case.
• 15:41
  You're, you know, this is so clearly a nonsense thing and
• 15:44
  you're just trying to be so dismissive and hoping that we
• 15:47
  would just kind of not, not care and drop it or accept something
• 15:51
  really low ball. The, the first settlement offer
• 15:53
  was insultingly low. I mean, just ridiculous.
• 15:56
  And that was the tone throughout the case.
• 15:58
  So I, you know, I don't know if it was the defence counsel's ego
• 16:01
  after that. He's, you know, he committed to
• 16:03
  this position that that is a nonsense case and he's going to
• 16:05
  defence us that he just couldn't change his view on that.
• 16:09
  But I mean, you know, looking back, I just don't understand
• 16:13
  how this wasn't brought into an early settlement.
• 16:15
  And and they just said, OK, we get it.
• 16:16
  We're exposed to fees, even if it's not a huge verdict.
• 16:19
  And we're going to at least want to account for that.
• 16:21
  And, you know, they just completely missed the ball on
• 16:23
  that. So I've never done defense work
• 16:26
  like Brian has. Maybe he can he can say more
• 16:29
  about it. But you know, to the extent they
• 16:30
  have influence on whether these cases get settled early, you
• 16:33
  know, take a stab at it. This this thing got way out of
• 16:35
  hand and and there's just no going back at a certain point.
• 16:40
  To amplify that, we went to a, a settlement conference with
• 16:43
  Magistrate Judge Beeler and she told the defense and the defense
• 16:48
  adjuster, you guys are going to, you're going to lose on
• 16:51
  liability. And she didn't predict a multi
• 16:54
  $1,000,000 verdict, but she told them flat out this is a case you
• 16:59
  need to resolve. And they they didn't listen and
• 17:02
  and Judge Beeler, you know, she is AI would call her a
• 17:07
  specialist in in police 1983 cases.
• 17:10
  She gets a vast swath of these cases.
• 17:15
  So she's seen more than than all of us combined.
• 17:19
  And they didn't listen to her. So, you know, who knows what's
• 17:23
  going on behind the scenes? Who who knows who was the shot
• 17:26
  caller? But Joseph, I say this with all
• 17:30
  all love and good intentions. Joseph's OCD on a good day.
• 17:34
  But when the defense lawyer mistreated him specifically, I
• 17:39
  was like, I'm just going to hang on for dear life because Joseph
• 17:43
  left no stone unturned. And Craig talked about our
• 17:48
  preparation. It was Joseph's preparation.
• 17:52
  You just you made us all look good.
• 17:54
  No, I don't have anything else to do.
• 17:55
  That's that's why that was my life.
• 17:56
  That's probably why I'm taking a break.
• 17:58
  It was. It went a little hard.
• 18:00
  Harder than normal. I've worked on other cases with
• 18:02
  Joseph. He's always prepared.
• 18:04
  But this one? What's the movie line now?
• 18:08
  It's personal. For folks out there who are
• 18:11
  considering taking a case like this where there isn't, you
• 18:15
  know, the physical harm that are more typical in civil rights
• 18:19
  cases, you know, I talked about comparison.
• 18:21
  And so I got to spend time on that.
• 18:23
  And, you know, one of the things that I think resonated with
• 18:28
  jurors who, again, were already sort of on our team, I think,
• 18:31
  but helped them when they went back to think about how do we
• 18:34
  properly compensate these harms for the breadth and the depth of
• 18:38
  the harm that's been done. The contrast that I think can be
• 18:43
  helpful for people to use. We came up with three.
• 18:45
  So one was, you know, a constitutional violation versus
• 18:48
  violations of like guidelines or local rules, right?
• 18:51
  Constitutional violations. Those require much more
• 18:54
  compensation because they're so much more significant and
• 18:57
  personal in terms of how they affect not only us, but the rest
• 19:00
  of our community versus, you know, a speeding ticket, right?
• 19:04
  That's a very different kind of case.
• 19:06
  So that was 11 contrast. The second contrast was that
• 19:11
  when we look at the the violation that's occurred, is it
• 19:13
  a violation where somebody's material goods are affected, you
• 19:16
  know, their their car was damaged or something like that?
• 19:19
  Or is it where their safety, security and privacy is put at
• 19:24
  risk, where they feel more vulnerable?
• 19:27
  And certainly when the people who are out there that are
• 19:29
  supposed to protect you are now instead causing you the harm
• 19:33
  that goes to the very issue of safety, security and privacy.
• 19:36
  So that's that was another contrast we used to try and get
• 19:39
  the jurors to think about again, what is the appropriate number?
• 19:43
  And then the other is one that we use frequently in personal
• 19:46
  injury cases, You know, is it a lasting harm or is it a minor
• 19:48
  harm? And here we said, you know,
• 19:50
  there's no time when the lager vales are going to see a police
• 19:55
  officer or go to a Starbucks and they're not going to remember
• 19:58
  this event. This is going to be with them
• 20:00
  forever in terms of the way that they see the world.
• 20:03
  And so that kind of lasting harm requires a different kind of
• 20:06
  compensation than something that's.
• 20:08
  A1 off. So those are some of the
• 20:10
  contrast that, you know, people can use from our case that might
• 20:13
  be helpful in making sure that their clients are getting full
• 20:17
  value in their cases when they have a, you know, some, some
• 20:21
  sort of similar fact pattern. That's excellent.
• 20:23
  Thank you, Craig. And with that piece of wisdom, I
• 20:28
  think we are at that time, I really want to thank you again,
• 20:32
  all three of you for for being willing to come on and talk
• 20:34
  about the verdict and for fighting the good fight.
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  there, happy hunting.