EP 505- Nitrous Oxide Trial Part One

Episode Notes

Transcript

Speaker 1:

Welcome to The Jury is Out a podcast for trial attorneys who want to sharpen their skills and better serve their clients. Your co-hosts are John Simon, founder of the Simon Law Firm Tim Cronin personal injury trial attorney at the Simon Law Firm and St. Louis attorney Erich Vieth.

Tim Cronin:

Welcome to another episode of The Jury is Out. I’m Tim Cronin.

John Simon:

I’m John Simon.

Tim Cronin:

And John, we have your middle child, your son Johnny, here with us today. Johnny, how are you? Doing? Well, what we’re going to talk about in this session and subsequent sessions is a nice little result that you guys got recently. Don’t spoil it by saying exactly what happened, but did you guys just have a recent trial with a pretty good outcome?

Johnny Simon:

Yes.

Tim Cronin:

What was the name of the case?

Johnny Simon:

Karen Chaplin versus Trenton Geiger at Al.

Tim Cronin:

So from a high level, what was the case about what happened?

Johnny Simon:

So in October 18th, 2020, a 20-year-old kid named Trenton Geiger, who was living at home with his parents working for Postmates, he was in college. He went to a smoke shop or head shop called Coughing Cardinal, and he bought nitrous oxide, which is otherwise known as Whippets, specifically the Whippet brand of nitrous oxide. He got in his car, he started driving, he inhaled the nitrous oxide, passed out at the wheel, drove off of the roadway and into an urgent care and standing right outside that urgent care was a young woman named Marissa Pale, our client’s daughter, who was struck by Mr. Geiger. She was thrown through the building and succumbed to her injuries about four hours later.

Tim Cronin:

She was a nurse?

Johnny Simon:

Yeah, she was a nurse At urgent care or radiology tech? Yeah,

John Simon:

Radiology tech. CT tech.

Tim Cronin:

Okay. If it was just getting off her shift, trying to go home, 12

John Simon:

Hour shift.

Tim Cronin:

What time was it again?

Johnny Simon:

Eight 15.

John Simon:

Eight 15 in the evening.

Tim Cronin:

How old was she?

Johnny Simon:

25.

Tim Cronin:

Well, that’s terrible. Did she pass right away or was there conscious pain and suffering?

Johnny Simon:

No, unfortunately she survived for a couple hours. That area of, was she conscious, was she not? It’s always murky, but there was pretty clear video evidence that she was fighting for her life, or I’m sorry, body cam. Body

Tim Cronin:

Cam.

John Simon:

And there was also security cams, cameras inside the, it happened in the waiting room at the urgent care and they had one camera mounted in there looking out toward the wall where the car had come through. So all of this was on video,

Tim Cronin:

How long between the time of the incident and when they declared her debt?

John Simon:

About four hours.

Johnny Simon:

Yeah, three to four

Tim Cronin:

Hours. So the kid went and bought Whippets, got high and drove. So that part similar, like a drunk driving accident. And did he drive, was he on a street like in town? Was he on a highway? Did he drive through a parking

Johnny Simon:

Lot? So it was in St. Louis County on Clarkson Road, which if you’re not familiar with Clarkson Road, it’s a pretty major roadway. It’s not a highway, but I think speed limit’s about 40 miles an hour, but kind of cuts through a big, almost like a vein through St. Louis County, like West County, but I think there’s two or three lanes in each direction. So he was going northbound and he immediately starts going southbound. So there were witnesses who were going either behind him or in front of him, and he suddenly swerved. That’s what I mean, falling asleep or passing out. Yeah, it was unconscious. It was consistent with him suddenly losing control of

Tim Cronin:

The car. Did he go through any stoplights?

John Simon:

Well, he went through, he crossed over into the next lane in front of oncoming traffic up a curb over some grass, down another curb, up another curb over some, a mulch grass, drove over the top of a small tree, down another curb, up another curb, took out a light post, then went back up, another curb hit Marissa and then drove her and the vehicle through the wall. Through the wall. And the witnesses, the two eyewitnesses at the scene, the first two arrive, saw him unconscious behind the wheel, leaning forward with his arms over the steering wheel. And that’s important because one of the issues in the case, one of the defenses was he had simply fallen asleep. It had nothing to do with

Tim Cronin:

Any kind of

John Simon:

Substance that he had inhaled

Tim Cronin:

And or any other substance, which

John Simon:

We’ll to Right. And one of the eyewitnesses actually, I mean they were there, the car was still running. Keys were still in the ignition. His foot was foot still on the gas. You can hear it on the videotape. And they literally clapped their hands in front of him a couple times. And he came to, when he came to, you can see it on the video, he wasn’t drowsy. He wasn’t stumbling or mumbling. He was very alert. And that was one of a key piece of evidence was how he looked and how he acted right after the accident, because it was on videotape.

Tim Cronin:

And so this will unfold that his particular conduct was not really the focus centerpiece of the trial, correct?

Johnny Simon:

Not from our perspective.

Tim Cronin:

Okay. Well, I understand. So to kind of tease it, how much fault did Mr. Geiger who became intoxicated and drove into your client and a building, how much fault did he get a trial?

Johnny Simon:

10%.

Tim Cronin:

So that leaves 90, what happened after Mr. Geiger was awoken or came to, what did he do before the police arrived?

John Simon:

One of the things he did was go back, he got out of his car, then he walked around to both sides of the car, the passenger side, driver’s side, and started taking items out of the car. And this was eight 15 at night. It was dark, it was rainy, it’s in October. And in front of witnesses went into the car and started throwing items into the woods. And the woods were behind the building. So he’d gather some things up out of the car, walk about, I’d say about 75 yards, 50 yards to the back of the building where there was a fence and some heavy wooded area behind the fence. And then he was, according to the witnesses, chucking items, items baseball style into the woods. And more than one witness, at least two of the witnesses saw what some of these items were. And they included small, bright green canisters of nitrous oxide.

Johnny Simon:

Okay. Which if you’re not familiar, they look like little CO2, but they’re bright green. I mean, can’t really,

Tim Cronin:

Were there any left in his car? By the time the police arrived,

John Simon:

There were nine left in his car, one empty, eight full. When the police officers arrived, a couple of the witnesses told him what they saw this guy doing, taking stuff from his car and throwing it out in the woods. They go look in the right, and they saw him do that multiple times, three times at least with multiple items in his hands each time. And so of course it’s raining, it’s dark out. There’s a fence thick. I mean unbelievably thick woods, you can barely stand in the woods. And so one of the police officers started a search of the area where he was reported to have thrown items out of the car. And his testimony was that he searched an area of about 15 feet wide and about 30 feet long immediately on the other side of the fence from the parking lot. So in other words, he didn’t go deep into the woods, but he was able to find even what that limited search, three of these whip it cartridges found

Johnny Simon:

What they

Tim Cronin:

Were looking for enough that they

John Simon:

Stopped. Yep, exactly. Found what they were looking for and stopped. Now all three of those were empty, all three of them. Okay,

Tim Cronin:

Now it’ll become important later. Was there anything else that if they’d looked further, you guys were saying they may have have also found

Johnny Simon:

Something

Tim Cronin:

To open the

Johnny Simon:

Exactly. So you cannot inhale nitrous oxide from these canisters without something to open them. And they’re typically open in two ways. One is with a whipped cream dispenser, which varies in size. Can be two liters, can be half a liter, six ounces can be six ounces cracker. And a cracker is a cylindrical device. But essentially there’s a head on top of the CO2 canister. You poke the head, the air is compressed, so it kind of spurts out and you cannot inhale it from the canister because you can get frostbite because it comes out very cold. So what folks who are wanting to inhale the nitrous do is they either use the dispenser and kind of use that as a buffer and just inhale it from the dispenser or they can get crackers and balloons and pop it open, fill up a balloon and inhale it. And an issue at the trial was none of the items that none of those tools were found in the woods

Tim Cronin:

Were any of the police officers did then even testify by deposition are live.

John Simon:

Two of the police officers came in live. We took depositions of most of the cops who were at the scene. And two, we had come in live and one of the officers was the officer who actually searched the woods. And the other one was the detective that was sort of in charge of the investigation. And so the defendants in the case were trying to show that it couldn’t have been the nitrous, the whippet because he didn’t have anything to open it. Obviously they’re arguing that these police officers did a great job and searched the entire woods. And the reality was in his deposition and in trial, he said, look, I spent about 15, 20 minutes searching. It was dark out. I kind of knew what I was looking for because they did give him a description of these small, bright green cartridges. And he found some and he found some, but the real key was he admitted that he only searched an area, and this is a parking lot with a fence between it and the wooded area. And he admitted that he only searched an area of about 15 feet wide, in other words, from the end of the fence outward into the woods. And the witnesses all said that they saw the driver Geiger throwing these items, baseball style. And I think the three actually that they found probably he dropped them. Yeah,

Johnny Simon:

That makes sense. He didn’t go far enough to find the one. Wouldn’t

John Simon:

Have been Chuck, if you’re trying to get rid of evidence, you’re not going to walk to a fence with a wooded area on the other side and just drop ’em on the other side of the fence.

Johnny Simon:

And what witnesses were saying, he was filling his pockets with stuff. He was filling his pockets and his arms and running behind.

Tim Cronin:

So we’ll get into what Mr. Geiger, what Trenton Geiger’s position was in the case and admissions he made and stuff like that in a little bit. But when Johnny, you first found out about this case here, correct? Yeah.

Johnny Simon:

I found out about this case as I was handling another nitrous oxide case against the same distributor.

Tim Cronin:

You had handled a prior case where against United Brands who ended up being the manufacturing distributing defendant in this case that will get to in a prior case.

Johnny Simon:

So what I was approached about three or four years ago by the parents of a young man who was addicted to nitrous oxide and their primary concern, a lot of our clients wasn’t getting money. It was how do we put a stop to this practice of selling nitrous oxide as a

John Simon:

Drug,

Johnny Simon:

As a drug at head shops? Well, their son had been going around to head shops all across the state where he was going to college in Kansas City and then back in St. Louis where he moved

Tim Cronin:

Head shops being stores like smoke shops where you can buy tobacco and then like drug paraphernalia.

Johnny Simon:

Yeah, smoke shops, head shops, I think the terms ball pipe

Tim Cronin:

Papers,

Johnny Simon:

Vaporizers, all kinds of stuff. And he obtained hundreds and hundreds and hundreds, thousands of these chargers at a time and would sit there doing all, because it is not physiologically addictive, but it is psychologically addictive. I mean, it is an addictive substance. And so I remember the brands, one of the brands he preferred was Whip It brand nitrous oxide, and it’s very distinctive, has a little lady on it holding up a whipped cream dispenser. It’s blue and bright green. And that was one of his preferred brands. And what I found out in that case is that these distributors aren’t even hiding this practice. They’re just selling directly to the smoke shop.

Tim Cronin:

So to be clear, nitrous oxide is not, per se, illegal to sell like heroin

Johnny Simon:

Or no, it’s not cocaine. So it’s such a goofy regulatory issue, but it’s not a drug and it’s not classified as a schedule one drug, like a narcotic or

Tim Cronin:

Because it has a legitimate purpose other than to use as a drug.

Johnny Simon:

And because this particular nitrous oxide can be used as food grade

Tim Cronin:

To make whipped cream,

Johnny Simon:

To make whipped cream, they put it under the FDA regulations, which themselves say you cannot sell this as an inhalant. And if you do so misbranding or it’s illegal.

Tim Cronin:

It’s illegal. And so they claim they’re selling it to make whipped cream head shops. How much sugar and milk do they sell?

Johnny Simon:

Not very much. Someone says,

Tim Cronin:

What do they sell the nitrous next to?

Johnny Simon:

So it’s bongs and dispensers and vaporizers and dispensers. I mean all kinds of stuff that

Tim Cronin:

Nitrous oxide, dispen

Johnny Simon:

Dispensers. And in this case, and in this case, we found out at trial beach balls.

Tim Cronin:

Oh, that’s interesting.

Johnny Simon:

Beach balls and other memorabilia, of course. So everybody has whipped cream with their beach balls or green balls with their whipped cream just in case you want to make gourmet whipped cream

Tim Cronin:

With your friends. So you handle a prior case where you learned all about this practice of these big manufacturers, distributors, one of the main ones being United Brand. Are they the biggest market leader?

Johnny Simon:

They’re not. And that was a big point at trial was that there’s other players out there who were doing the same thing,

Tim Cronin:

Maybe not for much longer,

Johnny Simon:

Hopefully not. But they were corporate representative who hemmed and hawed. But he said, we’re about 10 to 15% of the market is what he said.

Tim Cronin:

So you had taken the owner and corporate representative’s depot in that prior case, right?

Johnny Simon:

Yes.

Tim Cronin:

And then you gathered thousands of documents about marketing and sales and all kinds of stuff in that prior case.

Johnny Simon:

That prior case it was filed in the city of St. Louis, transferred to Kansas City, Jackson County, and it was a really big fight. But their position in defense really opened up the discovery in the case to show, alright, if they’re really saying this is for whipped cream, we get to do discovery on that defense and show that it’s not Yeah,

Tim Cronin:

I remember I took a depo in that case. Yeah,

Johnny Simon:

Yeah.

Tim Cronin:

They retained a marketing expert, which is a marketing professor at some college

Johnny Simon:

Business ethics.

Tim Cronin:

It kept saying over and over again, it’s okay and ethical because we’re selling a legal product in a legal manner. And I think by the end of the Dhir was admitting, okay, but if you’re selling an illegal product in an illegal manner that’s unethical, immoral, negligent criminal. Criminal, you should be doing it. So you had all of this information and you learned all about this industry from the prior case and how did you learn about this case chaplain during that

Johnny Simon:

Case? So it’s really a crazy story. So I was preparing for the deposition of one of my experts in my prior case. And on the news going into the deposition, I learned of this death and front page on the news, there’s a picture of a whippet and one of my experts opinions was this practice doesn’t just cause harm to the user, it can cause harm to the community. I mean the resources spent cleaning up the discarded nitrous oxide, the inhalation deaths, the huffing and driving death. I mean emergency resources. Emergency resources, I mean just astounding. And as he was giving the deposition in St. Louis, the morning of his deposition, he sent me the article and was like, see this is exhibit one. I said, bring it to your depo. And he actually brought it to his deposition and showed it to everybody and said, this is what I’m talking about.

Tim Cronin:

So you reached out to an attorney that was representing that family already on other claims regarding that case? Yes. And offered our firm services to help out.

Johnny Simon:

Well, I brought it to his attention. I said, Hey, there’s another aspect of the problem here. I think the original case was filed against Trenton, his parents, the urgent care for not

Tim Cronin:

Having, it’s like a premises

Johnny Simon:

Premises because in a case like that, you’re looking for avenues to compensate your client look for coverage. And this one, I was like, I mean take a look at the head shop where he bought it. And so we were able to get that information and lo and behold, they were buying it from United Brands.

Tim Cronin:

So was the case already filed at the time you called and Steve Grable an attorney here in town, good lawyer who was co-counsel with you guys on the case. Had he already filed the

Johnny Simon:

Case? Yes, it had been filed, but not in a whole lot of discovery had been done.

Tim Cronin:

So where did you go? Where did you go from there? Did you enter and then amend the pleadings to add

Johnny Simon:

Who? I mean, I think that really changed the whole focus of the case because it went from focusing on this kid and even though they wanted to call him an adult, and I think during closing argument he was 20, right? Yeah, he’s 20. And when you’re 20 years old, your kid, rather than focusing on the kid and what the parents knew about the kids using substances, it became the focus on, hey, look at this distributor in this marketing practice of they’re making money off this stuff. They’re selling it. I mean, he’s their target market. And so

Tim Cronin:

In other words, he’s kind of a victim too, not a very sympathetic one based on what happened.

Johnny Simon:

And I think that’s the difference between my prior case in this case was in the prior case I represented the individual who was huffing the substance, which is a major problem. It’s almost an insurmountable

Tim Cronin:

Problem. And in this case, you were representing the family of the young woman who died as a result of someone else who was huffing

Johnny Simon:

It. And so they were saying Trenton misused the product, just like they were saying, or my prior client was misusing the product and our burden was to show and prove that he was not misusing it and he was using it exactly as they intended.

Tim Cronin:

So you brought product liability claims, strict liability negligence, right?

Johnny Simon:

Yes. So we pled strict liability on a design defect theory, which it’s very simple and I don’t know why it’s so hard for folks on the other side to wrap their mind around this. It’s like selling a poison. It’s not selling

John Simon:

A poison to inhale.

Johnny Simon:

And what they were arguing were, and I think this is a gross misstatement of Missouri product liability law, is that he literally did this in close. He’s like, there has to be a flaw in it, like a design flaw. Do you see it? I mean, you can hold it in your hands. I was like, that’s not the point. The point is it’s the intended use of the product. You’re selling it for use that is not intended

Tim Cronin:

Defective and unreasonably dangerous for its intended use

Johnny Simon:

And for its intended use,

Tim Cronin:

Reasonably anticipated use.

Johnny Simon:

And for its

John Simon:

This was the intentionally intended use. Yeah.

Johnny Simon:

Right, right.

Tim Cronin:

So let me back up. I assume Mr. Geiger left the scene of this crime and incident in handcuffs with the police.

John Simon:

He did.

Tim Cronin:

So where was he at the time of trial?

John Simon:

He was in prison. And that was a really big issue initially as to whether we could even go forward with the case because we anticipated that he was going to take the fifth. And he did. And he did. And there was zero information for us other than through witnesses watching his physical activity at the scene.

Tim Cronin:

You had to establish that he took this drug and it caused him to be intoxicated and this is the reason he passed

John Simon:

Out and all of that without any testimony from the person who was involved in it

Tim Cronin:

And with two other parties actively trying to prevent you from being able to prove

Johnny Simon:

That. And they had taken the position in pleadings and with the court that we were entitled to no discovery about it until we were able to at least present evidence to the court that this happened.

Tim Cronin:

So there was a very good attorney in town who represented Mr. Geiger, Tom McGee? Yep.

Johnny Simon:

He’s from, he

Tim Cronin:

From Heppler Broome. And we’re going to talk about the various positions people took at trial and what they said in closing and some things that may have helped you guys out or from one party or another. But at some point was Mr. Geiger’s prosecution over with where he no longer had to take the

John Simon:

Fifth? Well, we thought so he pled guilty and he pled guilty to manslaughter. I guess what destroying evidence was that the

Johnny Simon:

Other one? Yeah, tampering with evidence. With evidence. I dunno if it was manslaughter. I think it was criminal negligence, which may be a, I thought it was manslaughter another way of saying manslaughter.

John Simon:

But one of the things he did not plea was intoxication at the time inhaling the intoxicating substance. And I think it was because, I don’t know, I’m just completely guessing, but the criminal case, I think the standard being higher than in the civil case that they initially charged him with that, but then it wasn’t part of his, what he pled guilty to. And I think for that reason, well, I don’t know. I don’t know that the criminal law aspect of it could still be right. But when we asked about taking a deposition after he had pled guilty and was in serving his sentence, which is where we took the deposition, I was told, look, he’s still going to take the fifth. There’s still some exposure out there. And that’s what happened. We went into the prison to take the deposition and the main issues, the main questions dealing with the main issues in the case, he took the fifth. But

Johnny Simon:

There was what I thought was the best question in the case, and it was not asked by myself or my dad, it was by a lawyer for one of the other parties, which was Did you ever use your whipped cream dispenser to make whipped cream?

Tim Cronin:

A

Johnny Simon:

Brilliant question to which he said no.

John Simon:

I mean, the other thing too is we did establish things like he did say, I went to the head shop immediately prior to the accident. He admitted to buying a box of 24 of these canisters into cartridges. And they

Johnny Simon:

Were full.

John Simon:

And they were full. He didn’t have any in his car. He said, I didn’t have any in his car, in my car when I left the house. So we could establish through circumstantial evidence, some pretty solid circumstantial evidence. He bought 24 filled cartridges, they find him in his car with nine one empty and three empties in the woods. And by the way, the one empty that they found was in the driver’s side door compartment in the car. So we had enough, but it’s just

Tim Cronin:

Always between buying them at the headshot accident.

John Simon:

But the thing of it is, it’s just one of those things you just want to nail down. And it made me nervous to have it hanging out there because some people need absolute proof on things, as we all

Tim Cronin:

Know. I mean, if absent the ability to establish the link in that chain, you don’t get to the other defendants at all. So the other defendants were

John Simon:

Who? Johnny.

Johnny Simon:

So the name of the head shop where he bought the whippets from was called aptly named Coffin Cardinal. And then the distributor defendant was United Brands Products, design Development and

Tim Cronin:

Marketing Inc. So three defendants at trial. Yes. Assessment of fault between three defendants. Yes. You had all of this information already from your prior case, really everything you needed to know about United Brands? That’s correct. You had to first figure out how to establish this link to get to the product claims.

John Simon:

Yes.

Tim Cronin:

And John, I understand you went to the prison to take Trenton, Geiger’s Depot, and had you already taken the police officers and the witnesses at

John Simon:

The scene? Yes. Before that, yes. We started out by taking all of the police officers. I think we took six or seven of the police officers and kind of piecing it together. One of the things that was pretty helpful was they all had body cameras. They all had a pretty good recollect. I mean, who forgets something like this? A car driving through a person and through a building. And typically a lot of times you’ll take a police officer’s deposition a year, year and a half later, and they’re looking at the police report trying to figure out what they’ve written. Not on this one. I mean everybody hands down was remembered every aspect of it.

Tim Cronin:

So you developed all this circumstantial evidence, you go to the prison to take the deposition. Did he plead the fifth on everything you asked him or were you allowed to ask things that really kind of all pointed the arrow at he did it without the

John Simon:

Direct. The closer we got to the main issue is the less response we got, but just about everything other than actually inhaling is what as soon as we got to the point. Where did you inhale? I don’t even think. Think as I recall, even on questions about whether he inhaled previously at any time, whether he used it as an inhalant, whether

Tim Cronin:

He had any

John Simon:

Medical issue, medical issue, and those things weren’t answered.

Tim Cronin:

Now you still get to ask him. Yes. And he pled the fifth and for him there’s then an inference that the answer’s bad for ’em, right? Correct. How does that work for the other defendants? Are they beholden to that adverse inference as well? It didn’t end up mattering by the end, but we’ll get there.

Johnny Simon:

There’s not a good lot of great case law in Missouri about it. There’s some federal, a line of cases developed in federal court that there’s a three-part test, and I don’t want to say it wrong, but it’s like the lab booty or some test from the second Circuit that is kind of taken over at least the federal case law. And it has to do with whether the interests of the parties are aligned and if they’re not aligned, the

Tim Cronin:

Interests of these defendants were not aligned.

Johnny Simon:

Our instructions say if a party admits something, it is binding against the party. I mean, so that’s all I could really say. And if they

Tim Cronin:

Plead the fifth and we haven’t gotten to an admission yet, we’re still at the plead the fifth.

Johnny Simon:

Yeah.

Tim Cronin:

If he pleads the fifth, the jury can presume his answer about whether he inhaled nitrous oxide while he was driving is bad for him. But I imagine the head shop seller and then the manufacturer distributor were saying, we’re not beholden to that. Sure. You still have to prove a causal connection

Johnny Simon:

As it concerns

Tim Cronin:

Us, as it concerns us. And wasn’t there argument for most of the way through the Litigation, you can’t do that. You’re never going to be able to do that through trial nonsense. Yeah,

Johnny Simon:

Through trial. I mean, it was really mean. There was a hard stance taken in opening by United Brands that there will be zero evidence of a lot of things.

Tim Cronin:

Well, on this one wasn’t that kind of a tough pill to swallow given that what happened with Mr. Geiger regarding admissions by the time you got to trial?

Johnny Simon:

So in Missouri, we had to file a motion for leave to add punitive damages against all of the parties, including coffin, Cardinal and including United Brands, which we did. And our second amended petition that we filed, I think Mr. McGee was put in a tough situation because he is not Trent Geiger, he has to file a pleading with the court. And so he was required as an officer of the court to admit a lot of our allegations, which included he inhaled the nitrous oxide and that caused him to pass out, which was his answer. That doesn’t waive the fifth or the Fifth Amendment protections of Mr. Geiger’s client because Mr. Geiger’s not signing that pleading,

Tim Cronin:

But as an officer that his legal representative didn’t have a good faith basis to dispute it. Correct. And so that’s binding to Mr. Geiger, but it’s also evidence for you, for your claims against the other defense. I

Johnny Simon:

Mean, it put him in a position of saying, Mr. Geiger isn’t admitting it, Mr. McGee is not telling the truth. And I think during open, didn’t he say I can’t speak on the motivations of that to which Tom objected as if there was some ulterior

John Simon:

Motive? I mean, it would be something I think I can’t even comment on that or I don’t know why he said that, but

Tim Cronin:

It kind of implies that you guys struck some kind of Exactly, which you didn’t.

John Simon:

But here’s the thing too. You got to look at it in the context of the other evidence. I mean, wasn’t right. He wasn’t throwing bales of marijuana out of the car. The first thing he does, well, first of all, he passes out, there’s no question he had passed out, he didn’t fall asleep just based on what he went through. And they find him behind the wheel still unconscious. It’s

Tim Cronin:

Undisputable. He just bought these things,

John Simon:

Right? He just bought ’em. They can. He chucked him in the woods, empty, empty, empty. It’s known that they can cause you to lose consciousness

Johnny Simon:

And rapidly regain consciousness

John Simon:

And rapidly regain and he’s coherent and not sleepy or tired or high afterwards at the scene.

Johnny Simon:

As you can imagine, folks were right in his face too, like talking to him with body cams. I

John Simon:

Bet. And the other thing too is what is his first, I always thought that even though it was circumstantial evidence, I thought it was as strong as it could be. It’s the first thing he did, right? What’s the first thing he does? He gets out of that car and he starts gathering up the whip it cartridges and tossing them as far as he can out into the

Johnny Simon:

Woods. I mean, I think after the police officers took the stand, that issue was done. Now

Tim Cronin:

You mentioned not tossing bales of marijuana, and you mentioned that for a reason didn’t United brands try to point the finger at other substances?

Johnny Simon:

So Trenton got blood tested. Obviously after doing this, his blood came back positive for two substances, one and not nitrous oxide, which I can explain in a minute why that is marijuana and a really high amount. And venlafaxine, which is Effexor. It’s Effexor, it’s an antidepressant, which they falsely claimed was a, what is it called? A psychotropic drug, just implying that he was abusing his medication without basis, but he was prescribed that by a doctor and he was depressed, 20-year-old, depressed kid, not really knowing where he is in life, living with his parents coming home from college and finding a way to escape with nitrous oxide. But nitrous oxide wasn’t in a system because it is never in your system if they don’t blood test you within about 30 minutes of inhaling it.

Tim Cronin:

So it didn’t show up, but that’s not surprising.

John Simon:

Well, and they did actually send a sample of his blood to an out-of-State Lab that specialized in testing for nitrous oxide. The accident happened at about eight 15. Blood wasn’t drawn until about 4:00 AM about eight hours later, and they still fought to try to get the negative test in when meaningless. It’s meaning it was meaningless. You mislead the judge. We fought about that and ended up, I think the judge made the correct decision. And that is, well, if you admit that, it wouldn’t have shown anything anyway. What’s the benefit of waving around a negative test?

Johnny Simon:

But

Tim Cronin:

They wanted to point at another drug, right? Johnny marijuana. And so how did they try to do that, and what did you do about

John Simon:

It?

Johnny Simon:

So in his possession in his car was a whole bunch of marijuana paraphernalia. There was

Tim Cronin:

No dispute he was a regular marijuana

Johnny Simon:

Smoker. Well, I mean there was no evidence of it. So we tried to keep it out for the simple fact that marijuana is a way different drug than nitrous oxide marijuana chronically, it builds in your system. There’s a whole lot of controversy out there. So the per se limit in say, Illinois across the river of marijuana that you can have in your blood where if you’re stopped and you have this amount in your blood, you get charged with a driving under the influence. It’s five nanograms per liter, which he had 25 in his system, but it really might not be that much if he’s a, it might

Tim Cronin:

Not be acute. He might not have just

Johnny Simon:

Smoked it.

John Simon:

His baseline. His baseline. And that’s what the experts said in the case. I forget which one it was. I thought both of the experts on CAU and the marijuana issue did fantastic. So

Tim Cronin:

Did you have experts? And the other side had experts about

Johnny Simon:

That. So we retained a toxicologist and we retained an addiction medicine specialist, both who gave opinions about why nitrous oxide not marijuana. And just very convincingly because marijuana doesn’t cause you to pass out suddenly at the wheel for folks who are listening who’ve smoked marijuana maybe while you’re driving. I mean,

Tim Cronin:

Which we do not endorse,

Johnny Simon:

Which we do not endorse. But I mean actually the evidence is, and it was not funny reading it, but it says you actually drive a lot safer when you’re high because you slow down and kind of chill out and don’t take any sudden movements.

John Simon:

Who was the addiction specialist?

Johnny Simon:

Dr. Dr. ov

John Simon:

Ov. So Dr. ov I thought did a great job. He said, been there, seen everything, hundreds, thousands of nobody passes out too much marijuana.

Johnny Simon:

Well, and you don’t pass out without being super sick, right?

Tim Cronin:

Yeah. And again, the kid when he was woken up, started chucking nitrogen.

Johnny Simon:

If you’ve consumed so much marijuana that you are

John Simon:

Called out of there in

Johnny Simon:

You’re vomiting, you’re slurring your words, you can’t focus. And yet

Tim Cronin:

They wanted to focus on, they had experts trying to point the finger at

Johnny Simon:

Marijuana, which they had a toxicologist and a psychiatrist who they ended up not calling because his testimony was ridiculous.

John Simon:

No, that

Johnny Simon:

Was hni.

John Simon:

Yeah.

Johnny Simon:

Dr. hni, who he blamed it was a perfect, perfect fit for United Brands blaming everyone except themselves. He blamed everybody except the party that retained him. There was the prescribing doctor of the Lexapro fault. It was the police’s fault for not doing an adequate search. And he’s giving all these opinions in his deposition. It was the parent’s fault for not looking at monitoring their child more closely. It was Trenton’s fault. And I was like, doctor, how do you feel about, I don’t know, selling a drug in head shop selling this inha in head shops? And he’s like, I don’t have enough position on it. And I was like, excellent.

Tim Cronin:

Now did call their toxicologist, right?

Johnny Simon:

Yeah. They called via

Tim Cronin:

Video. You took the toxicologist and the psychiatrist depot that they had to try to talk about marijuana and you had a motion based on admissions you got in that deposition where there was a lack of foundation, essentially the toxicology test, it can build up in your system. It didn’t mean he’d smoked it and they had no tie to it.

Johnny Simon:

And outside the context of the civil Litigation, when the burden was beyond a reasonable doubt, they could not charge him with marijuana impairment because the toxicologist did not know his baseline. There was enough doubt because you don’t know his baseline. You can’t sit based on this level that he’s impaired at all.

John Simon:

The level itself by itself doesn’t tell you anything.

Tim Cronin:

And so I think with their retained toxicology expert, was it United Brands and Coffin? Cardinal retained?

Johnny Simon:

It was just united brands,

Tim Cronin:

They coffin cardinal just kind of take a back seat,

Johnny Simon:

Which is in my opinion, probably the right move. I mean, in my opinion, the more attention you call to yourself, the worse and that in a case like this. But as

Tim Cronin:

It turns out, which we’ll get to, so you moved to exclude the marijuana completely at trial and the judge initially agreed with you, but then let it in,

Johnny Simon:

Which probably was the right call.

Tim Cronin:

Well, it means you don’t have to worry about it

Johnny Simon:

On appeal. But it was a huge red hearing where, I mean you cannot, if everyone is agreeing that there is no evidence of how often this person uses marijuana, then there is no way to connect up the amount in his system to when he used it. So that’s the foundational problem. And I think Missouri case law supported that it should get excluded and it’s a developing area of the law. I mean it’s now back in 2020 it was illegal. And 2023 when we tried the case, it’s recreational and you can buy it. And

John Simon:

I thought that they made a good argument on that issue that judge finally allowed it in. And that was, here we are, and the plaintiff is allowed to get in, they’re evidence of nitrous oxide and they don’t have levels. And here we are. We do know he was smoking marijuana. He admits that he had smoked it, and we

Tim Cronin:

Don’t have the burden of proof and anything we can put up to try to dispute the plaintiff’s claim.

John Simon:

And I think, again, I think overall I can understand the ruling and

Johnny Simon:

I can understand why the ruling why it wanted to get in, what they should have been thinking about is what is it going to look like to the jury because it really does. Dr. Marlin, who is our toxicologist, he’s out of the University of Mississippi, nice southern guy, and he said, this is what I call a spaghetti argument. Throw it at the wall and see what sticks. And I was like, that’s really what it is.

John Simon:

The thing I kept coming back to on the marijuana was there was probably a very, very good chance that the majority of our jurors smoke marijuana.

Johnny Simon:

We half half have

Tim Cronin:

And have not passed out and driven into an Iraq

Johnny Simon:

And people

Tim Cronin:

Have not to make light of what happened.

Johnny Simon:

And it’s

John Simon:

Legal now. People have experience with it. It

Johnny Simon:

Was in a center council, it was dabbing and dabbing is a way of smoking marijuana. But I guess the idea is that you heat up, it’s in a wax and you heat up the THC and that activates it and then you inhale it, which increases the potency tremendously, which

Tim Cronin:

Dramatically increases

Johnny Simon:

The potency. I don’t know why anyone would need to do that, but apparently that’s what he was doing. That was all found though in his center council. He didn’t throw that in the woods. It was not what he went for immediately. And I was like, put two and two together. Gee, I wonder why he was throwing out the nitrous oxide and not to the marijuana.

Tim Cronin:

Yeah, I mean I think it probably ultimately helped you add heat into the case with the jury, with them trying to point at marijuana. Okay. So we’ve talked about what Trenton did, what happened to the client’s daughter, and I’m going to ask you to tell me about the clients in a minute. Establishing the causal connection that he had purchased these nitrous canisters from this head shop and you were able to establish in discovery that they got them from United Brands. Was there difficulty in the case

Johnny Simon:

Originally in the case I had offered in writing to United Brands to stipulate that as long as I can use the evidence from the Snyder case, I won’t do any discovery as it concerns their

Tim Cronin:

Client. I was going to ask about that. I mean that was a regular pain in just trying to use the evidence you already had, which obviously they were going to be ordered

John Simon:

To give. One of the motions that I argued was a motion to compel discovery that you had drafted. And the attorney for United Brands talked about how it was overly broad and it was discovery motion and it was motion to compel. And I said, well judge, that’s interesting because the documents that we’re arguing about are in a box in my office.

Tim Cronin:

You had all of these documents already subject to a protective order, but you’re allowed to keep custody of Yes, in keeping our client’s file. Yes. From the prior case they knew you had them. The lawyer that represented United Brands had eventually come in at some point in the prior case and entered in that case. He knew you had them and you repeatedly went up to the judge saying, order them to deem them agree they are deemed reproduced in this case or to reproduce them and you had to go up over and over and over again

Johnny Simon:

And they were

Tim Cronin:

Ordered. And they ordered and they kept, then they finally would produce some, but not all of ’em. And you knew it wasn’t the most egregious emails and stuff like that.

Johnny Simon:

I mean, we had taken the prior case up to the pretrial through, we were on the courthouse steps when it got resolved. So I had created my exhibit list, I had created my hot docs list. I knew what I was going to use with every witness.

Tim Cronin:

You knew where the meat was.

Johnny Simon:

And so when we would do discovery in this case, which I served after, they wouldn’t stipulate. I served discovery and it was pretty

Tim Cronin:

Much the exact same discovery request

Johnny Simon:

Pretty much. I mean the identical discovery, I think I didn’t even need ’em to produce anything. No, they said we already have

Tim Cronin:

’em deemed to produce. Right.

Johnny Simon:

So we’re sitting there and we’re like, I mean, why can’t we just agree to use these documents? And so clearly

Tim Cronin:

The court is going to let you do it.

Johnny Simon:

I mean, because we know what’s in there, right? It might’ve worked had they had a different lawyer who didn’t have all the documents, especially not producing all of them knowing we have the rest of them. And so we get through the first round of discovery and there’s all kinds of objections. I mean, they had been sued and what we were able to show is that they had been sued in 2012 in a case called Jason starn versus a hundred head shops, including United Brands. They limited their discovery response to three years as if that case doesn’t exist. And I mean having conversations when you know what it is out there makes the discovery conference a lot shorter and a lot more interesting.

Tim Cronin:

Why isn’t this email from your marketing director to the CEO in your production?

Johnny Simon:

And I want to say, I guess Warren is not the right word, but I caution them that because of your stipulation, I mean this is no holds Barr, I’m going to ask for much, much more because I know I used it as an opportunity to make the case

Tim Cronin:

Because they wouldn’t enter the stipulation you proposed. You then sought more discovery than you gotten before.

Johnny Simon:

Sure.

Tim Cronin:

Yeah. So how many motions to compel did you or motions for sanctions? Did you have to go up and argue before the St. Louis County judge?

Johnny Simon:

I think there was about six motions to compel.

Tim Cronin:

And correct me if I’m wrong, your judge in this case was the same judge that had overseen the criminal case about Trenton Geiger?

Johnny Simon:

Absolutely. He oversaw. He knew all about it. He knew all about the facts, the issues, the parties involved. And I think we all have biases. But he also, you could tell that Trenton, this 20-year-old kid who was an honor student in the choir, he wasn’t the court’s typical criminal defendant who he sentenced. And the judge made a point every time we were up there to indicate, he said it more than once, that Trenton and I find this hard to believe. I don’t handle any criminal stuff, but that at sentencing, very, very rarely does the defendant say anything. They just sit there silently and don’t say anything and accept their sentence. But he said Trenton gave a very moving, memorable speech to the family about, I know you hate me and will hate me forever, that you’ll never forgive me, but I’m very sorry for what I did and I will never know the pain that I’ve put you through, but I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me.

And so I mean the judge, it was kind of interesting was figuring out, okay, who was the problem? Who was the problem in this tragedy? What happened to this kid? Yeah, who was the problem? And we figured out, but your original question was the issue about United Brands selling this particular nitrous to coffin car, was that an issue they had produced? And maybe this is laziness on their part. They had produced a stipulated list of items that they sold directly to Coffin Cardinal in a spreadsheet from my prior case. But yet the invoices that we got in this case didn’t really match up to what’s on the spreadsheet. So that came out during trial is that they had produced these redacted invoices that kept off the quantity, but not really the whole quantity. Just like the list on the right where it says quantity, the number of boxes, but you could tell, well there’s one of these, one of these on May 15th, 2017, but yet on the entry of the spreadsheet, there’s only two listed. So how does it match up? It doesn’t match up. And so that came out in the middle of trial, but also that the invoices said things like beach balls that the spreadsheet didn’t account for. So that came out in the middle of trial too, that they had been dishonest in the prior stipulated spreadsheet or in the invoices or both? Kind of both. They’re hiding safe. I

John Simon:

Wouldn’t say, I would just give them the benefit of the doubt. There were inconsistencies in the documents that they gave us. Their summary of the document didn’t contain all of the

Johnny Simon:

Information while they’re contesting. What you brought up is that they even sold it, that they even sold it to coffin Cardinal because what they said was the spreadsheet contained a year’s worth of sales. I mean, did Coffin Cardinal say Yes, we bought this from them. Coffin Cardinal said we bought it from them. We didn’t buy it from anywhere else. Yeah. How did we have it still after a year and a half of not buying anything, two years, I guess we didn’t sell as well as we thought it

John Simon:

Did. And remember that issue came up in one of the depots, the coff Cardinal Depots where, and that was a real turning point in the case where they took the position that they didn’t Coffing, Cardinal did Coffing Cardinal took the position. We haven’t sold any of this in

Johnny Simon:

Two years. No, what they said and sworn interrogatories was, and this was the benefit of having handled the prior case. So in the prior case, I had sent a private investigator to non-party head shops just to get some evidence of how these transactions work, how they’re sold. Because my client was like, you walk in and you say, I want 600 nitrous oxide charges and a cracker and a cracker. And they go, can I get you some balloons with that? Or I’m going to a party, can I get 24 of those? Your prior clients? Yeah, yeah, man, be safe. Things like that.

Tim Cronin:

You had investigators go either in the prior case or this case, go

Johnny Simon:

Buy some in the prior case and in this case at trial, but we’re

Tim Cronin:

Going to talk about the investigator at trial. We’re going to save that

Johnny Simon:

One. So Coffin Cardinal sends me interrogatory answers that says we’ve been sued before. But you know about it, it’s the Snyder case. We stopped selling nitrous oxide at our store in 2019 after we were sued in the Snyder case. And I didn’t have a way to prove that they didn’t do that. And so we were in this conference room, I think, and we were, oh no, the other one we were thinking about, there’s got to be a way to show that we know it’s not true because Trenton bought it from there in 2020. We know it’s not true, but how do we show it? And I was sitting, I think having a beer on my couch on a Friday night after, no, it was after I took the CEO’s Dhir, the corporate representative. I went all day with a guy not answering questions and telling obvious untruths, I guess I can say

Tim Cronin:

We will get to

Johnny Simon:

That. I remember it. I was sitting there and my kids are screaming and I was like, I know I sent an investigator to Coffin Cardinal. I think he bought Whippets. I bought the same brand. And so I pull up my laptop where my kids are getting ready for soccer. I’m like, I have to figure this out. And I watched the video. And

Tim Cronin:

This is your video of your investigator from your prior case, right? Going to the same head shop as in this

Johnny Simon:

Case, same head shop

Tim Cronin:

Around the same time period that

John Simon:

Three months. Three months. The month. The month.

Johnny Simon:

It was August. August. So it was August 28th. So what did the video show? He goes in, he asked him, do you guys have any cream chargers or no? He goes, do y’all have any whippets? And they’re like, oh, cream chargers. Yeah, we have those. Goes to the back and pulls out from a pile of Whippet brand nitrous oxide that’s stacked up like this and holds it up. And I froze it and I zoomed in and it’s the same box, same quantity

Tim Cronin:

With United Brand’s logo

Johnny Simon:

On it with United Brand’s logo. And I immediately produced it produced, and they put this man up for a deposition, the corporate rep of Coffin Cardinal, and he swore under oath, we didn’t sell it, we stopped selling it. And I pulled out the video and his jaw just dropped. It was like, he’s looking at his lawyer, what did you do to me? He’s like, clearly I was mistaken. The thing I told you was not true. It was actually false. I didn’t

Tim Cronin:

Say that knowingly.

Johnny Simon:

Looks like we were selling it, I guess. And there went that issue. I mean that’s

Tim Cronin:

Pretty important. Otherwise you can’t tie in

Johnny Simon:

Product

John Simon:

At all, especially with no direct evidence of we’re trying to put it together with circumstantial evidence to begin with. And part of it was at that point, I think had we taken Geiger’s deposition at that point, we didn’t even have information that he didn’t buy it from somewhere else. Didn’t have. We needed information from him as to where he bought

Johnny Simon:

It and that became United Brands like. Last point was Coffin Cardinal must have bought it from somewhere else. We didn’t sell it to him,

Tim Cronin:

But Coffin Cardinal was saying that’s the only place we bought

Johnny Simon:

It. Yeah, coffin Cardinal was like, look, we go to the distributor, we don’t go to a middleman. Why would we do that?

Tim Cronin:

So before we get to leading up to trial, were there any other major hiccups, problems, speed, bumps in the discovery, workup, the case, other things you had to tie up to even be able to make a permissible claim against the product defendants Coffin, Cardinal, the retailer, and United Brands?

John Simon:

I think the one thing that was a real turning point was getting some admissions from Geiger in his deposition that he bought it that night that he bought it from Coughing Cardinal that he had gone there. What’d he say? Eight times before, 10 times before or maybe five times before.

Johnny Simon:

So I agree. I think that was the turning point, was establishing exactly what he was doing before that he did buy it from Coffin Cardinal, that he did buy a fresh box that he didn’t have any in his car because they all

Tim Cronin:

The circumstantial evidence you were able to get from Trenton Geiger and his depo that he wasn’t pleading the fifth about.

Johnny Simon:

Yes.

Tim Cronin:

And then your video that you had Lee. Yeah, from the prior case where Coffin Cardinal was selling this stuff during that month.

Johnny Simon:

Right. And that they only got it from United Brands that was locked, basically Coughing Cardinal in, I mean coughing Cardinal looked ridiculous. Another fact that made the case a lot better was that he admitted not only to going that night, but going five to 10 times in the last eight months. So it wasn’t like a single sale because you might be able to forgive a head shop for making a single sale to a 20-year-old at 8:00 PM of enough nitrous oxide to make 40 cupcakes, like maybe one off. But the kid had been there five to 10 times in eight months. He’s going on a monthly basis buying nitrous oxide. Like

Tim Cronin:

Ask you this. How much of this stuff was the retailer coffin Cardinal, the head shop selling?

Johnny Simon:

They produced no documents and said, we have no evidence of how much we’ve sold like our point of sale system.

John Simon:

They have no documents.

Johnny Simon:

No documents. But

Tim Cronin:

The video that month showed stacks several feet high.

Johnny Simon:

And that their explanation was, if it’s true, I guess that’s the truth. It made ’em sound really silly. They start selling another brand of nitrous oxide that sold way better. Oh

Tim Cronin:

My goodness.

Johnny Simon:

So that was their explanation as to why they still had the Whippet brand on the shelves and

Tim Cronin:

Yet that’s the one they went

John Simon:

Not much of a defense.

Johnny Simon:

No, it wasn’t. I mean, if it’s true, I mean now kudos to them for telling the truth. That doesn’t happen very

Tim Cronin:

Often. How much was United Brands or does United Brands sell, which says they’re 10 to 15% of the market.

Johnny Simon:

Oh, how much are they selling? How

Tim Cronin:

Many canisters do they sell? A hundreds

Johnny Simon:

Of millions. So they’re contracted to sell 150 million a year and have been for the last five years. Before that it was 80 million a year. So they doubled what they had contracted to sell. So that tells you kind of where their position, they wanted to downplay and make themselves sound like. And

Tim Cronin:

They were trying to say, we sell it for industrial restaurant

Johnny Simon:

Restaurants,

Tim Cronin:

But you got lists of their customers.

Johnny Simon:

And that was another big turning point in the case, which would not have happened, I made an offer to not do discovery as a concerns their client on the condition that they stipulate we could use the documents. They refused. They refused. So I served an interrogatory that said, please list all head shops or smoke shops that you’ve sold to in the last 10 years

Tim Cronin:

Into the St. Louis area or anywhere,

Johnny Simon:

I mean nationwide. And so they came up with an objection that became important during the trial. They said, we don’t keep that information. We have a list of all retailers we’ve sold to. And so they listed all the retailers based on the

John Simon:

Names. I think almost all of them

Tim Cronin:

Were. Was it like a smoke shop that

Johnny Simon:

Was in

Tim Cronin:

Different

Johnny Simon:

It’s just six to 800 or something. I think it was an A to Z list. I meant to do that before trial. It was 40 pages. It was 40 pages of

Tim Cronin:

Did you stand in front of the jury and read them?

Johnny Simon:

A lot of them Tim to the point where I was like, enough

Tim Cronin:

Dad, sit down. I

Johnny Simon:

Was like, well, wait a minute. Aggravating everybody. Everyone gets it. I actually said,

John Simon:

Let’s see if we can find any on this page.

Johnny Simon:

Well, to his credit, the witness,

Tim Cronin:

Can you give me some examples of the names? Yeah.

Johnny Simon:

Choke Smoke, the Studio four 20. Mary Jane’s House, slut House. Was there

Tim Cronin:

Occasional commentary I imagine by you, John? Oh maybe that one’s a restaurant.

John Simon:

No, I would say, do you think that might be a smoke

Johnny Simon:

Shot? And we talked about this beforehand, my dad and I. My dad said, this trial has to be like a funeral. I mean it’s a wrongful death. The evidence sometimes the heaviness. The heaviness, the names of the shops. One was my favorite was nitrous oxide is used as a psychedelic drug and it’s a hallucinogen. It allows you to hear things differently. And one of the shops was the psychedelic shack,

Tim Cronin:

Which

Johnny Simon:

Just, I mean, rolled your eye like, come on man. And to my dad’s credit, when he’s reading, I think you did read like 25 pages of it. It was fast. It was, this reporter was through, is there any smoke shop, did you see any smoke shop? Do you think

John Simon:

Any of those might be

Johnny Simon:

A smoke shop? Do you think any might be smoke shops? And she was saying, no, I can’t tell. And I think her testimony was, I don’t know what a smoke shop is because I’m not a smoker.

John Simon:

I think more than anything, what that did was it showed because they took the position, this was the entire list of all of the retailers they sold to. It showed everybody, because we went page by page that that’s really their business model. I mean, selling, there weren’t, there weren’t many people on, many organizations on there that didn’t sound like smoke shops. And

Johnny Simon:

When you think about it, and this was, Kevin originated the first case, and I had talked with him about how to prove some of this stuff. And originally I was looking at obtaining, retaining an economist to interview the market and just to see the numbers that they’re selling. It’s not sustainable. Selling it to the proper locations. You cannot sell 150 million of these things. If you’re selling it for

Tim Cronin:

Whipped

Johnny Simon:

Cream, you cannot. And so I was like, I think

Tim Cronin:

That’s kind of common sense.

Johnny Simon:

It is common sense. And so I decided not to go that route. But it was crazy because it’s purely profit driven. And in order to meet their purchase contract, they have to sell these things. And that is the inhalation market, in my experience, dwarfs the proper market for this stuff. And they had no problem. Not

Tim Cronin:

Much is needed to actually make whip

Johnny Simon:

Cream. You don’t need this. And I was learning that much whipped

John Simon:

Cream is needed.

Johnny Simon:

Right? Yeah.

Tim Cronin:

So I tell you what, we’re going to come back next time. I want to hear a little bit more about our clients and a little bit more about United Brands and how you presented that dichotomy at trial. And then we’re going to get into the trial. So for now, thank you for joining us for another episode of The. Jury is Out. I’m Tim Cronin.

John Simon:

I’m John Simon.

Johnny Simon:

I’m Johnny Simon.

John Simon:

We’ll see you next time.

Speaker 1:

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