Brian Panish with Rahul Ravipudi fast verdicts and strategies

Hello, and today we're honored to be joined by Rahul Rahva Pudi, he's the partner of the Shreem of Tana Shem Boil. Rahul has spent his entire spare representing plaintiffs in personal injury and catastrophic cases, sexually abuse, property damage, fires, and many, many others that you're gonna hear about. In 2017, Rahul was named the trial lawyer of the year for the Consumer Attorneys of Los Angeles. He presently serves as lead counsel on several Southern California fire cases and has involved in the executive committee in the California North Bay fires and the steering committee of the blice, Bruce Crash. Rahul, how you doing today? Doing good, how are you? I'm doing okay, but I didn't know, which I didn't know, that when you attend the University of California, not only were you majored in economics, but you had a minor in chemistry, and that, I think, must have been pretty hard. That was hard. What kind of classes did you have to take? You know, in organic chemistry, differential equations, multi-variable calculus, all sorts of science classes, physics, for engineers. - Wow. - I didn't enjoy it. - Has that helped at all in your legal career? - Oh, a lot. A lot. I mean, not just on the science issues that we have to deal with on a day-to-day basis, but even just distilling information. It's helped with the logic and sort of the analytics of distilling things. And I know that you've been a professor, an adjunct professor at Loyal Law School, where you attended, since 2008, where you've been teaching trial advocacy. Has that helped you with your practice? - Very much so. - Tell us about that. - So in trial ad, first of all, there's a connection that you get to make with all of the law students in teaching them how to try cases and how to communicate information. And a lot of law students, they don't have a lot of practical knowledge. And so they're learning these things, almost like a juror would, but with a little bit more information on the rules of evidence. And one of the things that we need to do is trial lawyers is we need to communicate complicated concepts in a simple way. And teaching trial ad, I get to watch as the students start to practice that and do that. And I get to teach them on how to do that. So it's always a constant reminder for me of what I need to do in the courtroom. - And I bet the students probably come up with some pretty good ideas and things, how to do things. - Really, I knew. - Really good. You know, one of the things I do, Brian, is one of the cases I actually don't use mock patterns. I use trials that we've done before. And one of the trials I use in a shortened transcript is the one you and me did, Dominguez versus South Central Los Angeles Regional Center. And so I get to watch and obviously we've got to put on a pretty good trial. But it's always fun to see those students put on that same trial in a little different way. - Yeah, that was quite an interesting case. Just a little back on that. I've been an older gentleman in his 40s who suffered from Angelman syndrome, which is one chromosome missing and had a very difficult time communicating was going to some services provided by the county. And he wasn't supposed to be dropped out by the bus. He wasn't dropped out to us, taken to a safe home where he had a difficulty communicating. They gave him some food. They thought he was hungry. He took some sandwich, lunch meat and sandwich and choked to death. And in fact, as he was choking to death, there was a 911 call being made with the actual people. Same thing, Zoom, like, "Oh, come on, "to quit faking or things like that." And it was a tough case, but it turned out, well, what do you think was the key to winning that case? - Well, so the one thing that was interesting about that case and the safe house they were taken to, there were three different defendants that were too present. And the two were telling very, very different stories about what happened. And that allowed us to polarize the case. No one would agree they made them the sandwich. They said the other person did. No one agreed as to how rescue measures were done and we're blaming the other person on that. And so then it became a big credibility issue and that helped polarize it and get the jury focused on the misconduct of the defendants. - I know you talk about that polarizing and I know a good friend of ours, Rick Friedman, has authored a book polarizing the case, which I think is invaluable. Did you use that? How was that helpful? How are other sources of information like books and stuff valuable to lawyers learning their traits? - I think books are critical. Knowledge is only gained from learning from others and learning from the best and Rick is one of the best in teaching. Also, one of the things that's great now is like with courtroom TV. You can watch other trial lawyers practice their trade at such a high level and learn from them at any time just sitting at your laptop. And so anything you can do to see how practices are done in action and see how questions are asked, how cross examination is done, how to get a jury to connect with your client and direct examination. That's how you learn. What's that saying? It's not practice makes perfect, it's perfect, practice makes perfect. - All right, what was it that made you want? I don't think there's any lawyers in your family. I know you have some of your brothers and doctor and your parents are scientists. And what is it that drove you to the law? - So my mom is, both my parents are scientists. My mom got her double masters in nuclear engineering and environmental engineering nuclear physics over at Vandy. But she was always a passionate advocate for the environment, worked for the California Energy Commission and always had to find a bunch of oil companies and other refineries and had to deal with lawyers a lot. And so I got to learn what she did. But from my perspective, I really wanted to go into the field of law to really help people and to advocate and to fight for people's rights. But what really got me to where I am now in doing plaintiff personal injury, wrongful death cases and being on the plaintiff side was exposure at your old firm and seeing you in action. I was actually there as a law clerk in '99. - Oh, I'm just kidding. - Don't say I want to say that. - But so we met more than 20 years ago. - We did. - When you were working as a law clerk in the firm, I don't remember. I think it was at the time. - Green brilett. - Green brilett, Taylor, and no, no, no. Green brilett, Taylor, Wheeler, Panish, maybe at the time. - He had to go through various name changes. So you're in law school. I assume you're second and third year, you're working. - Correct. - And we had a good firm and a lot of trials. And then where did you go after that? - So after that, I ended up at Inx from Lipscomb and Lack, another plaintiff firm, which you used to work at back in the day too. - And it's got a vironication. - Yeah. - Both have actually the only two jobs that you've had in the law field are the only two jobs that I've had in the law field. - Wow, that's pretty unique, I guess. So you mentioned 99, and this is not a Brian Panish brag show, but what was it that happened in 99 that really energized you, energized me and energized a lot of people? - So I'd been at the firm as a law clerk for about a year and a half at that point, and had gotten to work on and help lawyers on some pretty significant cases, which really opened my eyes to the field of plaintiff, personal injury law. And then in July of 99, there was this case, Anderson versus General Motors, which Brian tried along with other lawyers, and it was a tragic case involving product liability and a fuel fed burn of multiple passengers, and the verdict came out, and including punitive damages, it was $4.9 billion, and that was the largest personal injury verdict. In the country, it feels like it's always been the largest personal injury verdict of all time, and it was a monumental event. It's one of those things where you know where you were when that happened. - By, in fact, we just had the 20 year anniversary of the verdict. It seems the time has gone so fast, but there's been so much that's occurred. So then you went to the interim firm, and this is, I'll tell this story on you. And so then, and I won't use all the names, there's an old lawyer friend of mine and my family, Jerry Rams, you know, that was working there. And one day, he called me, and he said, "Rahul is going to work on another firm, "I'm not gonna say the name, "and you need to call him and talk to him." So I called Rahul, we met, and what year was that? - It was 2006. - So that was 13 years ago, you joined the firm, and you started out, you know, you and I did a trial, and then you started doing trials on your own. And I think your moment of, my Anderson moment was your moment in the Maradi versus the Cosmopolitan hotel, the Marquis Hotel in Las Vegas. And just for full disclosure here, initially a lawyer in Las Vegas that we were handling. in the case with, introduced us myself in another lawyer in the firm, to a lawyer that was handling this case for a hedge fund manager or owner who had been claimed to have been assaulted in a nightclub and it suffered a head injury. And to be fully honest, myself and the other lawyer, we didn't really like the case. So we rejected the case. Then later Rahul took the case in, we didn't know I think he slipped it in through the back door and we were still always complaining why we were doing this. But the case goes to trial with a minimal offer and take it from there. What happened? Tell us about the trial, the events that went forward. There are some confidentiality provisions that treated one of violates. So tell us what was public, what was known about this. So our client was at the Marke Night Club where he incurs a giant bill for a bottle service and a little over $10,000 pays it. He's got his credit card and ID in his pocket. He's walking out and as he's walking out, he gets surrounded by the general manager and three bouncers who demand that he gives them his credit card and ID again. He says, "No, I've already paid. I want to leave." Then they grab him, they take him into a place where there's no video cameras and they beat him up. But initially when they took him out, he was on a video. He was on a video. And the video, it's a nightclub with a bunch of flashing lights. And so it's difficult to sometimes see exactly what's going on. So there still was a lot of he said, she said, looking at that video. General manager says that our client had butted him, which is why they took him away and that he hurt himself afterwards. The case was hotly contested. As we started trial, we had 400 prospective jurors given that this was on the Las Vegas strip involving one of the premier hotels and nightclubs. Everybody in Las Vegas may have some sort of bias connection to the club. So we ended up going through 140 jurors before we were able to find eight and that would not get dismissed for cost. And tried the case, went for about a month. And before he gives the verdict, let's talk about some of the issues. Number one, they were totally fighting the case, right? That every issue was hotly contested. Nothing agreed to. There was minimal offers before the trial. The client who I know doesn't strike me as the kind of person that would head by a balancer. Was that kind of your take on that? Definitely, definitely. He was a mild manner. He was a very intelligent man. He was successful in his business. He paid his bill and he was behind on his business. He got dragged into this. Yep. Now obviously he suffered a traumatic brain injury. That was contested. Contested. The fence was saying he had a concussion. Did they say that or leaves? They barely agreed that he had a concussion after the event, he went back to his hotel, started playing Blackjack for a period of days before he ended up going to the ER to get checked out. So delay and treatment, which is common that people will argue that, well, if you're so hurt, how can we even go see the doctor? Right. And then after that, he returned back to work and didn't see another doctor for about 18 months. So he had gap in treatment and another issue. Yep. So how did you deal with those issues with the jury? So the way we dealt with it was from minute one, starting with jury selection. We did a mini opening. And in the mini opening, I explained to the jury what happened, what resulted, how he went home, tried to run his hedge fund, failed doing so, and ultimately sought treatment. And now that he's lost his ability to be a hedge fund manager, he suffered a significant loss in earnings and earning potential, and it'll be over $100 million. So that must have got some strong reactions? That's got some very, very strong reactions. And so we get through the big trouble points and the things that I was concerned about in the case, which is you've got a highway, Turner. You've got a significant income claim. You are a, he was a VIP guest. So there's this potential that maybe he's just the jerk. He's a New York hedge fund guy. Maybe that means he's a jerk. And we're talking about losses that are based on the stock market. Even in Nevada, some people think that's gambling. So how speculative is that? And started to expose and unfold all of those issues. And so by the time we actually started jury selection, or the trial, which was six days later, it took five days to pick a jury. Those ageurs were already acclimated to those concepts and were open to them. Let me bring up a point you mentioned, the mini opening statement. That's something that not every state has, but it's more of a coming in kind of thing. Tell us what, in California, it's in the code, I guess in Nevada also. And some other states, you may be able to request it. Tell us what is the mini opening statement? And why do you think that's important if it is? OK. So there's two ways that the jury panel is informed about what this case is about. The normal way is by a statement of the case. And in a statement of the case, there's like four lines that are read. This was a car accident. Plain of claims they were hurt. It happened on this street, defendant denies everything. And that's what the jury hears before you start inquiring on issues of bias or whether they have some opinions on the case. The another way to do it and what's allowed here in California and in Nevada as well is to do a mini opening, which is about two to three minutes long, where you summarize what you believe the evidence will show in the case. And the other side gets to do the same thing. And when we do opening statements, we're there to win. And we start our trial. And we're presenting the case in what we believe is everything that's going to happen. In many openings, that gives you the opportunity to really identify what your concerns are and what you think the jury will be latching on to. So you can help identify bias, expose that, and maybe get more jurors eliminated. So the strategy behind it may be for some people they want to win this case in mini opening in that two to three minutes. Other people want to try and expose all their fears and concerns so that they can actually get a jury to embrace those if they're going to anyways and then expose those cost challenges. OK. So now you go through the case. Just tell us a little bit about the evidence from highlights of the case. So when we-- some highlights, some of it was good. Some of it was bad. Cross-examining all of the security personnel went very, very well. There were no reasonable explanations for what they did to our client. However, on cross-examination of our client, as a lawyer sitting there and listening, going through all of the finances of this individual, all the money he'd earned, all the money he'd earned on his personal trading in the years after. That was significant. There were mountains of evidence put on in that regard. With respect to the brain injury, this was a highlight, at least for me, was the defense put on this neurologist. They flew him in from New York. And within the day he was going to testify, I get emailed, a number of demonstrative exhibits, things that he's going to use to say, here's what my opinions are. One of the things he used was an MRI of somebody else. And it looked like Swiss cheese. The biggest dark spots all the way throughout this brain, which looked nothing like the MRI of our client. And he said, this is what a brain injury looks like. I fought the issue and fought, and the judge said he gets to use it. The jury gets to see this image of Swiss cheese and saying, this is what a brain injury is, and that's not what the plaintiff has. I then send that image to our neuro radiologist. And find out that the defense expert was not talking about a patient of his or anything, but pulled that image off a Google. And it had nothing to do with brain injury. It was a genetic condition. And then I brought in on rebuttal the neuro radiologist to then explain the fraud that was being perpetrated on this jury, by the defense expert. I think that was a huge, huge moment in getting that jury to realize who's the truth teller in this case. So then the jury goes out. You make your final arguments. They return a verdict compensatory damages of how much? Well, just to finish the story. OK, so the jury was out for two hours. After two hours, it's a 14-page question, a list of questions. I'm sorry, about 14. questions that we're being asked. And after two hours, they had a question. They asked the judge, well, how many votes does it take to reach a verdict? And the judge says six out of eight. So I call Brian up. Okay. - So I wrote this back on me. - I see it coming. - You know what happened. So I call him up. I'm like, hey, I think they may still be on question one. They're just asking about how many votes for an issue. I think we're gonna be here a while. And then 15 minutes later, get notification that there's a verdict. So I call Brian up. He's like, oh, man, you lost, right? And I go in. - Let me just interject there. The same thing happened in the Dominguez case that you mentioned. - Yep. - There were multiple questions on the verdict form. The jury comes back in just a couple hours. - And you said we lost that time too? - And I went and told the clients, you know, this is probably not good. It was so fast. - It was. - So what you teach is you never really know. But like Dominguez where they came in our favor and everything, the jury did what? - They came and they awarded compensatory damages of 160.5 million. And then they found Males and that the plaintiff was entitled for punitive damages against a nightclub. When we started the punitive damage phase trial. - And then at the end of the punitive damage phase, the case got resolved confidentially. And that was it. - That was it. - That was it. - All right, we have a little time left. I'd like to talk a little bit about the fire litigation. I know you're spending a lot of time involved in that. These are the wildfires that occurred in Napa and Sonoma counties in Northern California. And the Thomas from Wolsey Fire that happened in the Ventura, Santa Barbara, Southern California area. Just give us a little bit of a lay of the land. What are those cases and what's going on? - So the North Bay fires, there were 14 fires that started in October of 2017. There are over 40 deaths. Some of the most tragic burn cases I've ever heard of in my life. And they started from PG&E power lines and the mismanements of them. And there's so much evidence and it continues to unfold even on a daily basis how horrible they were in maintaining their power lines. What contributed to that were also the weather conditions with dry, zero humidity and lots of fuel, whether that be dry brush, things of that nature along with high winds. So I remember December 4th, 2017. I remember where I was that evening, standing on my driveway, the wind was coming fast. Santa Ana winds here in Southern California. Very dry, very fast winds. And I thought, man, I hope Southern California Edison does the right thing. We just had fires up North and low in the hold, they didn't and the Thomas fire started. And the Thomas fire started in Ventura County. It then started to spread all the way into Santa Barbara County. And thousands of properties and thousands and thousands and thousands of acres of land were destroyed. Shortly thereafter, now you've got these hillsides with no trees, no vegetation, no integrity. Then there were some heavy rains. And then in Montecito, there were huge debris flows, mudslides that came down the mountain at three in the morning. And it took the lives of 22 people. And that case, then of lawsuits were filed against Southern California Edison, the Cal Fire in Ventura County Fire Department investigated it and found that Edison was responsible for causing the Thomas fire and the resulting tragedies. And everything is now consolidated in Los Angeles Superior Court before Judge Buckley. And we're litigating those things and have trial in January 13th. - And the Woolsey Fire has set for one, for that's the fire that happened a year later. One is that set for trial. - That's set for February 24th, 2020. - So it's a big year of fire litigation. - Yep, we know where we're gonna be. - Well, that's good. We're looking forward, hopefully we can help these people. But we're running out of time. I wanna thank you for joining us. And we're gonna have you back after we are successful in these fire cases and to tell people about how to do it and how these people got the compensation that they deserve. Raul Ravel Pudi, thanks for joining us. - That's a lot of fun. - It's a pleasure. - Thanks for having me. - This is Brian Panish from Get In The Game Podcasts about lawyers in the legal field. Hope you like what you're hearing. If you do, remember, sharing is caring. Subscribe, share, share, and share. Thanks and get in the game.