EP 607- Against The Odds with Dave Cates

Episode Notes

Transcript

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 Veith.

Tim Cronin:

Welcome to another episode of The Jury is Out. I’m Tim Cronin. We are without John and Erich today, but we have a wonderful guest here who is a dear old friend of mine, although I try not to say that too publicly too often. We have Dave Cates with us, who’s an excellent plaintiff’s trial attorney in St. Clair County, right just on the other side of the river in Illinois. Dave, introduce yourself.

Dave Cates:

Thank you very much for having me, Tim. I appreciate it.

Tim Cronin:

Dave, the name of your law firm is. And we’re going to, we’re going to have a couple sessions here. ⁓ Dave has another colleague, another attorney he works with Katie St. John, who actually law clerked here with us several years ago. And she ended up landing at Dave’s firm. We’ve worked with both Dave and Katie on a big case recently. And I’ve worked with Dave on a, a number of cases, and we’re going to talk about a few of them. But first, Dave, generally, why don’t you just tell our audience a little bit about yourself?

Dave Cates:

the Cates law firm.

Appreciate that and thank you for the introduction. So our firm is a plaintiffs law firm. typically handle medical malpractice, personal injury of all varieties, sprinkling of class action cases here or there if we get a wild hair about it. But generally speaking, we handle single event personal injury cases over on the Illinois side of the river.

Tim Cronin:

And Dave, you actually took your law firm over from it’s a family firm, right?

Dave Cates:

I did. My mother is, she’s an appellate court judge now. She practiced, she and I practiced a lot together for, ⁓ man, eight years before she was elected to the bench. Yeah. If she’s listening. Yes.

Tim Cronin:

Best date years of your life.

The honorable Justice Judy Cates. When did she get on the bench again? She’s in the 5th district in Illinois. Correct. And so you took over the firm in 2012 and have been doing it ever since.

Dave Cates :

2012.

That is correct. Been learning on the job ever since 2012.

Tim Cronin:

Well, they call it a practice for a reason. So Dave and I, we’ve talked a little bit on this podcast, I think, not in great detail about baby formula, the infant, premature infant baby formula cases that we’ve been involved in. And Dave actually approached our office and we work on all those with him. He approached us about the idea. We’re co-counsel on all of them, which is about premature infant formula given in NICUs to preemie babies.

how much it increases the risk of a devastating intestinal disease called necrotizing enterocolitis. I thought just to kick things off, the most recent thing that we’ve done with Dave is John and I and Kevin, I mean, this was a huge team effort and Dave and his partner, Katie, had a five-week trial back in the fall, which was also just a wonderful experience, right, Dave?

Dave Cates :

But we get to do it again. Yeah

Tim Cronin:

That’s the end of it. We get to do it again, not to get into much detail. It ended up being a defense verdict. We had two formula manufacturers and hospital in the case. It was a defense verdict. Throughout those five weeks, there was a litany of violated motion and limine orders, ⁓ intra-trial orders, egregious misconduct by counsel, ⁓ one of the lead counsels for one of the defendants. We don’t need to mention anybody’s name.

But it led to just a massive amount of prejudice and it was an intent to bias the jury and the court found an intent to elicit a mistrial. And recently, that judge has granted us a new trial and I thought it’s kind of an astounding order and a really impressively written order, I thought. So I thought we’d just talk about that a little bit. That trial, man, when did, was that the whole month of October?

Dave Cates:

October 31st was the verdict came down.

Tim Cronin :

was the verdict. Got a 13 page order last Thursday giving our client, who’s a little boy that has short bowel syndrome, which causes a whole litany of issues. He also has neurodevelopmental delay. That’s pretty extreme, which can be caused by this disease that it’s called neck for short. We were very disappointed by the verdict, but we’re going to get a chance to do it again. Dave, just kind of, there was a lot of stuff in it. Can you just kind of give our audience a taste for what the general flavor of the order, like what some of the main issues in the order were?

Dave Cates:

I have to start off by saying, as I told you, Tim, after we read the order, super impressed with Judge Noble. ⁓ It took a lot of courage to issue the order that he did issue, highlighting the various levels of misconduct. And really what it boils down to is the conduct of the defense for one of the defendants was so pervasive that it literally cost our client a fair trial. And that’s really what Judge Noble…

you know, came to the conclusion of to say.

Tim Cronin:

shook

the foundation of like our judicial system.

Dave Cates:

It was it was just it I’ve never seen anything like it quite frankly and I hope I never see it again

Tim Cronin:

I don’t think we will see it again next time. I certainly hope not. So our motion, do you remember what our motion and lemonade number one was?

Dave Cates:

Yes, I do. It was do not behave this way.

Tim Cronin:

And, or an attack opposing lawyers. Right. And it started in from this one particular defendant’s opening statement, just saying, referring to the attorneys by name and calling it our lawsuit and disparaging us constantly.

Dave Cates:

calling you out by your own name.

Tim Cronin:

repeatedly and it was very, very egregious. was an over and over. then throughout that opening statement, there was another like seven motions in lemonade that got violated. And that just continued throughout the case, despite repeated warnings from the court. was another evidentiary issue that the court was led to believe marijuana use by the mom would end up being relevant and be tied up with an expert that never came to fruition. And they rang that bell over and over throughout the case.

And Judge Noble again, courageously, I think, said in retrospect, you know, he doesn’t, he shouldn’t have let it in. And just, just an excellently written order by someone on the bench who I think felt like a litigant didn’t get a fair trial in his courtroom. And he was going to make sure that he did and found that the verdict was against the weight of the evidence.

Dave Cates:

Well, and as I told you, you know, I sat through your argument, which I thought you did a tremendous job of on the motion for the new trial. And as I told you repeatedly, one thing that resonated with me when you made the argument was. Judge Noble, do you think Kane got a fair trial? And if Judge Noble couldn’t answer that question in the affirmative, then we we needed a new trial for Kane. And I think that’s ultimately where he.

came down on it was, I cannot answer that question affirmatively, that Kane got a fair trial because he didn’t.

Tim Cronin:

I don’t think there’s a doubt that, know, hence we waited a few weeks for the order because he was working hard on it and we got it and he’s ordered a new trial. Nevertheless, I think we’re going to have to go through the appellate process. We expect it to be upheld and we’ll wait a little bit, but we get to take another shot. And we have a number of other cases about that, the exact same thing, different clients pending in different jurisdictions, dealing with different litigation frustrations holding things up.

Dave Cates:

Well, I think they’re super important cases, Tim. And one of the reasons that I came to you guys with these cases years ago was because your firm is the reputation that you guys have and the resources and ability that you have to work on these cases. I personally think it’s a super important litigation. talking about premature babies.

Tim Cronin:

the most vulnerable members of our society you could imagine.

Dave Cates:

And we’re talking about they know, like these companies know.

Tim Cronin:

wasn’t it like the early 90s showing like at least double increased risk of this disease when babies get formula as opposed to human breast milk, either mom’s own milk or donated.

Dave Cates:

Correct. And, you know, one of the things that we’ve confronted has been, well, all the doctors know this. No, they don’t. I mean, the reality is, as you’ve seen now, and you’ve taken some of these important depositions, when you actually talk to these neonatologists and you ask them, okay, what is the increased risk? don’t know. don’t know.

Tim Cronin:

Like, well, I’ve heard there’s some like, okay, well, you certainly, mean, you wouldn’t, you’d tell the parents if it was like double, right? Like, well, yeah, it’s not double. actually, it’s

Dave Cates:

It’s

much more than that.

Tim Cronin:

laughing,

but it’s like it’s not funny really, but it’s

Dave Cates :

No, I mean, you look at some of the literature out there and even some of their internal data. I mean, I don’t know how much we want to get into the weeds on it, but I mean, the. Well, so like, for example, what we constantly refer to as the pig study. I mean, these companies literally went out and built an animal model to say, does our product cause neck? And then they said, ⁓ crap, it does. And then they canceled the trial.

Tim Cronin:

There’s been three public trials.

And

then, right. And then they dump all over those studies that they funded once they’re in a courtroom. Correct. And there have been, I mean, one after another, after another, after another studies done that all show two times, four times, five times, 10 times increased risk for babies when they get cow milk based formula with all kinds of other ingredients that are in it. And, you know, there’s various indications they know what stuff that might be causing the problem.

But even if they don’t, you know, it’s the manufacturer’s responsibility to figure out what’s causing.

Dave Cates:

One of the things that we’ve been fighting against is that there’s this constant insinuation like we want baby formula out of NICUs. Yeah. And it just couldn’t be further from the truth.

Tim Cronin:

It’s I mean, that’s one of the things that happened in our trial that they kept saying that’s one of the reasons for the new order. We are trying to eliminate formula from the NICU from the hospital. Thousands of babies will starve to death if we win the if we win this case. It was directly set. Right.

Dave Cates:

And that’s never been our goal. mean, we understand at a fundamental level that premature babies have to gain weight, they have to eat, but parents should know what they’re walking into.

Tim Cronin:

So if there’s mom’s own milk available, everybody agrees you give that. Oftentimes when babies are born premature, mom can’t produce enough. That’s perfectly common. There’s plenty of donor breast milk out there for all preemie babies to get fed. But if that’s not available, formula can be there as a last resort, but everybody needs to go into it with open eyes. Parents need to be open.

Dave Cates:

Correct.

There’s a lot of discussion out there with neonatologists who will talk to parents and say, ⁓ donor milk and formula is the same thing. They’re not. They just are not. The risk profile is different. And all we’re saying is you just got to tell people what you know, because they know. mean, literally they have the documents in their possession.

Tim Cronin:

What I have always found to be the most stunning thing about the defense to these cases is the dichotomy of the positions that they’ve taken fundamentally. So they fight and say, formula doesn’t cause neck. Our formula doesn’t cause neck. doesn’t cause neck. It doesn’t cause neck. Hey, hey, it doesn’t cause neck. But if it does, the doctors already know about it. And it’s like, well, wait, hold on. Like pick one. Either it doesn’t increase the risk or cause neck.

Dave Cates :

Right.

Tim Cronin:

or you don’t have to warn because the doctors already know about it. By the way, neither one of those tells the parents who have the ultimate decision about what to feed their baby. And so, you know, there’s a lot of parents out there who might, who have some reservations about donor breast milk because they don’t understand the process and if it could be unsafe. I think there is internal market research that was done by these companies that there’s a mortality rate of like between 30 to 50 % if your baby gets it.

Dave Cates:

Yeah, I mean if your premature child gets neck, I mean the odds of them surviving are half. I mean and surviving without surgery is also, you again, as you just said, 30 to 50 percent of these kids don’t live and then those that do

Tim Cronin:

of the remainder.

Like over half have lifetime cut, right?

Dave Cates:

They have these horrible bowel surgeries that will impact them for the rest of their lives like Kane does. And it’s a devastating illness. And, you know, again, all we’re saying is just tell the parents what you know, tell them what you know, because the parents of babies deserve to have that information.

Tim Cronin:

It’s such a correct. So we’re going to get to try again in that one. And we have a number of other cases together, um, in that same litigation that I think we’re going to get to have fun in a, in a few of these. And the process should go a little bit more fairly and smoothly in the future, we hope. But Dave and I spent and others from our office and his office spent the better part of last year, almost exclusively working on that case.

Dave Cates:

getting it ready. was a huge lift.

Tim Cronin:

We took dozens and dozens and dozens of company witnesses, which were taken across multiple cases and then, you know, all the bunch of treating doctors. And then we have experts and then the other side named 26 experts and Dave and I were flying.

Dave Cates:

I forgot it was that many. I’m trying to block that out.

Tim Cronin:

And I mean, we were crisscrossing each other, you know, flying all over, jumping from one expert to another, because we had to do it all in a pretty in a four or five week time span. And then we moved into, oh, man, I don’t know how many pretrial issues we had. There was like 117 motions in limine collectively. Every expert had a dauber motion, multiple motions for summary judgment. So if.

Dave Cates:

call correctly, think it took us, was it three or four days of pretrial hearing? I mean, it was, it was a multi-day pretrial hearing just to wade through all of that stuff.

Tim Cronin :

It might’ve been three.

And then it didn’t matter because all the motions in lemonade, got granted, got violated. It’s repeatedly violated. But we’re not bitter about it at all. We got the new trial order. We’re grateful. So we’ll go back to the mat. So you and I have been, we became pretty close friends, ⁓ I’d say 10, 12 years ago, right after you, your mom got on the bench, I think, and you took over. You were working on some stuff with my brother.

Dave Cates:

They were just violating it anyway.

Tim Cronin:

some class cases, I think, and then we became friends and we started working on some stuff together. There’s one case, one of the cases you handled that I was I was particularly impressed by. was a MedMal case. think it was the Sharp case.

Dave Cates:

Yeah, that’s correct, Kathy Sharf.

Tim Cronin:

Can you, and that didn’t go to trial, you resolved it. It was a multimillion dollar, very impressive settlement here in Missouri where we have caps. I don’t think we could talk about the exact amount, but it was a multimillion dollar settlement. Can you tell them a little bit about that case?

Dave Cates:

Sure, be happy to. ⁓ And actually, that was one of the last cases I handled that was predated the caps. So that’s right. like we we snuck in under the wire for that one.

Tim Cronin:

We had caps, they were struck down and then they came back and there was a little window where we had cases.

Dave Cates:

Right. And my client, Kathy, was, she is a wonderful woman and she had gone in because she had noticed a lump on her breast and they did a biopsy at the hospital and they came back and they diagnosed her with cancer. And then they set her up with a course of treatment. And after they did the surgery, the pathologist who looked at the sample said, wait, I don’t see any cancer.

And so all of a sudden, you know, it set off this whole chain.

Tim Cronin:

End

of story, right? Right. No, not enough story.

Dave Cates:

No, it was not the end of the story. Unfortunately. How old was your client? She was 54 at the time. She was she was single. Her husband had passed away. She was widowed. Yeah. But so Kathy was a nurse. So she kind of understood her own health care. And she was like, wait, after the surgery, I’m supposed to go through radiation and chemo. And the doctor actually told her, you know, good news. We got it all. What? Yeah.

Tim Cronin:

very interesting.

Yeah, I forgot. Wait, I forgot this. You had a voicemail recording.

Dave Cates :

We did have a voicemail of that.

Tim Cronin:

of the physician who did the surgery, who’s a renowned physician. We won’t say her name, but renowned physician. Left a voicemail saying after she had the pathology report, we got it all.

Dave Cates:

Right. After she knew that there was never any cancer present. Voicemail, it’s good news. Well, I sat with her at her deposition, this physician, and we went through all of the course of treatment and I said, well, this should happen. That should happen because, you know, the hospital this was against, they are one of the top 20 leading cancer centers in the United States. And so they help actually set what the guidelines are for how you treat these things.

But we just went through it all and then I said, well, now wait a second. Turns out there wasn’t any cancer there, right? And the doctor finally looked at me and she goes, yeah, that’s right.

Tim Cronin:

You didn’t by chance tell my client that you got it all after you knew that, did you?

Dave Cates:

It was it was very tough for her to confront that voicemail

Tim Cronin:

Yeah, I would imagine so. you could did your client have any economic damage? Isn’t that any lost wages? Any? And the medical bills were probably just a surgery.

Dave Cates:

So you were going to submit on them? I she actually, mean, in hindsight, if you think about it, I mean, she got the best news possible that there was never any cancer present.

Tim Cronin:

And then, she had a, was she had a single or double mastectomy?

Dave Cates:

It was a horrible procedure. mean, I don’t know how many of your audience have actually seen a woman go through a mastectomy and then have to rebuild that tissue. is very, very painful.

Tim Cronin:

and she’d had surgeries to rebuild it.

Dave Cates:

So it’s what they do is they put in a device called an expander. And so when they sew up that breast tissue, because they take it all. I mean, that’s the point of a mastectomy is to make sure that there is no breast tissue remaining. And so they sew a pocket into the woman’s chest and then they use an expander. And over time, they stretch that skin out to make a new pocket for a new breast. it is a devastating surgery. I mean, it’s very painful for them.

to go through that and it’s multiple times of filling that expander to create the pocket that they’re trying to create.

Tim Cronin:

How many mediations did you end up having in that case? How many mediations did you walk out?

Dave Cates:

The first one, the first one, I think I was there for 20 minutes. Yeah, no, that is, that is good for me, but I do have. You probably didn’t even stay for coffee.

Tim Cronin:

Yeah. For you.

beaten that record a few times.

Yeah,

we haven’t offered you any money. I can tell by the look on your face.

Dave Cates:

You just

didn’t look like you came with a satchel of cash. That’s what I can just… No, I mean, it’s, you know, you and I have laughed about it many times. yes, I walked out of there very quickly.

Tim Cronin:

I don’t see double.

The mediator

was Judge Norton, who we’ve had on this podcast before.

Dave Cates:

It was Judge Norton. He did an amazing, amazing job. And in fact, I would be remiss if I didn’t give him credit for like when he ultimately settled the case, which we were standing in the courthouse at the time he resolved it, he was on top of a mountain in Napa Valley.

Tim Cronin:

that he settled your case from the top of a mountain on his cell phone. He did. And I think at the pretrial, you want a motion, a motion for leave to amend add punitive damages based on the evidence that you developed. I imagine the record.

Dave Cates:

I think that was the basis. mean, if we’re going to be if we’re going to be honest about getting punitive damages from a hospital or a doctor, I mean, you almost have to have that kind of evidence to to get a judge to give them to you. And I mean, playing that, I I played it in court for the judge.

Tim Cronin:

I mean, in MedMal, it’s very, very, very, very rare in the states that even allow punitives to ever be allowed to submit on it.

Dave Cates:

Yeah, I mean, I at the time that we went into the hearing on the motion for punitive damages, I mean, even with that recording, I still wasn’t convinced that I was going to get it because, as you said, it just is so very, very rare to get them against health care providers.

Tim Cronin:

And I hate to compliment you too much here, David, but one of the, one of the things I remember most distinctly is when you were working up that case obsessively, you were like, you were carrying around cancer diagnosis books, like in your car, they were stacked, stacked up on your desk. You’d talk to me about the case and I’d look you like, might be a little too in the weeds. I don’t know. It seems to be working. It sounds like maybe you should.

Dave Cates:

I still have them.

Tim Cronin:

should be diagnosing cancer. Do you have any other cases, David? But I remember that during the long process of seeing if that case could get resolved, which went on for months, I think, I and many of our other attorney friends thought you were nuts for not resolving it within the area that, you know, we expected you were being offered and you stuck to your guns and said, you guys don’t understand this.

This like what happened here is absolutely atrocious. We will not until we get to a number that allows my client to live the kind of lifestyle she wants to after fees and expenses. We will try it. It’s not enough and everybody called you crazy.

Dave Cates:

Well, that wouldn’t be the first time or the last time. But no, I remember those conversations and, obviously you’re someone whose opinion I value and respect and trust. And I remember talking with you through the case and about, you know, what is it actually worth and what do we think we can do here? And, you know, I was just I was committed to Kathy that we were going to get like we were going to make it hurt.

Yeah. Because of what they did to her. you know, it’s, it was just one of those, it was one of those rare cases. I still have those cancer books, by the way, but you know, I learned how to stage breast cancer. learned how all the guidelines for it. And I will say one of the things that, that I think helped me was when I went and took the defense expert depot, it was a, she was a breast surgeon out of New York and

I sat there with her and I went through all of the staging and got her to say, this is how this would be treated. This is how that would be treated. This is how this would be treated. And basically got her to admit you would have done the exact same thing. And since she said, yes, I would, I go, would you have also left a voicemail? And she was like, no, I wouldn’t have done that. Maybe. Right. So it was very beneficial. And, you know, look, one of the things that

Tim Cronin:

would you have told the truth,

Dave Cates:

You and I have, we’ve known each other for a long time and one of it, I have a lot of faults and flaws, but one of them is probably getting too far into the weeds on this medicine stuff. But I thought in that case, it was particularly important so that I could discuss this case with that doctor on equal footing.

Tim Cronin:

And you know, it’s a balance because in order to adequately be able to depose and cross examine the opposing sides expert in that mal cases or in any kind of personal injury case where you’re going to be talking to defense experts about medical issues for damages, you kind of have to learn. mean, you have to get in the weeds and be able to know it all to be able to talk to them and not let them like get one over on you. And then after that, you have to try to be able to take a step back.

And like, okay, I have to talk to a jury about this. So I need to be able to know all the weeds, but then I have to be able to talk to it on a level where I’m not losing people.

Dave Cates:

Well, and you know, if I can say again without complimenting you too much, compliment away, I don’t want you to get a big head either. But one of the things that I’ve always admired about you, your talent is is to take all of that complex stuff and make it into something that is digestible.

Tim Cronin :

It’s my secret, I’m not very smart.

Dave Cates :

You’re very smart. And in a case that comes to mind is a case that we worked on together that was a med mal case. And we had gone into this, all of these depositions and it was a brain injury case. was a traumatic. Right. was a surgeon had done this procedure that we thought was completely inappropriate. And one of the things that came out in one of these depots is

Tim Cronin:

Surgery case.

Dave Cates:

When you do this really complex brain surgery, you have to have these monitors on to show if there’s something, like if you cut the wrong thing or if you nick the wrong structure, it will show up on these monitors.

Tim Cronin:

it was in the brain stem.

Dave Cates:

And I remember when I when I took the depot after we got back, I called you and I’m like, you’re not going to believe this, but the brainstem monitor three wasn’t working and brainstem monitor four. Like here’s what we’re talking about. And you’re like, wait, are you saying the brainstem monitor didn’t work? Right. ⁓

Tim Cronin:

Kenny knew

it. Yeah. Awesome. Motion for leave to Amanda.

Dave Cates:

Yeah,

no, I mean, I’m sitting there calling you on my cranial nerve seven wasn’t wasn’t firing cranial nerve eight wasn’t firing. And you’re like, so you’re saying the brainstem monitor didn’t work. Yeah. And it was, I mean, it really, it was just a genius way to put it to say, and I really think that, your

Tim Cronin:

Because

they kept saying throughout the case, their defense was the brainstem monitoring didn’t show anything was going wrong. And we hadn’t and our expert hadn’t figured out that it actually there was a part of it that wasn’t really worth it. It kind of it was very difficult to figure it out. You figured it out. And I was like, that all sounds like it wasn’t working.

Dave Cates:

Yeah, no, was, was, mean, and, you know, truthfully, one of the things that, you know, I learned throughout that case that I didn’t quite understand beforehand was if you recall, that brainstem monitor company is a separate entity from the hospital and those records were not in the hospital medical records. We had to actually go and get a subpoena and track those down. Yeah. Because they weren’t.

Tim Cronin :

got it late and yet they had results in the medical records. Somebody listens to it or monitors, right? From a third person. And they give indications of if they see a problem to the surgical team and they didn’t do so. So the medical records indicated nobody voiced a concern. So our expert in the case had said, yeah, from what I see the brainstem monitoring,

like didn’t show a problem, but you know, there’s false positive, false negatives. I still, you know, if you look at the imaging post, and we won’t get too much into the case, it got resolved and we can’t talk, you know, we’re not going to talk about the parties or, or any details of its resolution. everybody in the case up until that point and said, yeah, brainstem monitoring was all a okay. And then we went to the third party finally got the stuff. You looked at it by getting into the weeds, thank God, and then talk to an expert about it. And that’s when we figured out like, oh, oh,

their whole central defense is bogus.

Dave Cates:

Well, and it’s just one of those important things, you know, that it just reinforces you got to you got to keep digging. You mean, you know, because even in the if you read that surgeon’s operative note, he said brainstem monitoring was fine. Put it in his his op note, which, you know, for most of us, that’s where we stop. like, OK, well, it’s in the op note. But I mean, thankfully, we kept digging and we kept digging and we said, OK, we need to see this stuff. And I mean, there it was.

Tim Cronin:

We got the second by second. There’s like emails going back and forth. Correct. Right. And they monitor all kinds of stuff. Right. And it just so happened to be very specific part that wasn’t working was the part for your brain stuff.

Dave Cates:

was literally the part that…

Tim Cronin:

he was operating in. Correct. Yeah. yeah, that was that we worked on that case for a number of years. We got that was we were supposed to start trial the month COVID hit and the country got shut down. Right. But we did not end up needing to start.

Dave Cates:

We did not, we finally got a fair verdict or a fair resolution, although not without some difficulty from your favorite expert.

Tim Cronin :

Yeah,

we’ll leave that for another day. I have encountered that expert in another case very, very recently, also about a pediatric brain surgery. ⁓ Maybe I’ll talk about him another time. The expert who told us we should go home and dismiss the case, and that’s why he decided to.

Dave Cates :

Yes, he was, he was there to educate us and tell us how wrong we were about the whole litigation and that, you if I recall correctly, I think he referred to himself in the third person a couple of but you

Tim Cronin:

He did like four times. He kept

saying people like you to both of us. People like you. in your profession.

Dave Cates:

lawyers like you.

Right. Yeah. He was, he was not very gracious.

Tim Cronin:

surgeons can tend to be a little bit full of themselves. So can lawyers. So just to tie that up, I had a recent case where that same expert got disclosed by the same lawyers and I went out and took his depot again and I might have been holding on to that grudge a little bit. And that depot went a little bit interestingly and ended very abruptly. But we’ll save that story for another.

Dave Cates:

I was going to say, I can’t wait to hear that podcast. Yeah. I’ve seen the transcript and it’s a very exciting story.

Tim Cronin:

That was different.

It’s

I got cursed at and called names and and other things. But you know, that case ended up getting resolved, too. So this will show you how close Dave and I how close we are as friends that the the the cancer misdiagnosis case that he had that we were just talking about that he resolved. I have cases against that same organization as does Dave. And I knew I had I had called him crazy many times for.

sticking to his guns, which thank God he didn’t listen to anybody except his own client. And so I felt like I had a little egg on my face. And about four or five months after that case got resolved, I had another case against the same entity and stuck to my guns in the mediation. Yeah.

Dave Cates:

Which I thought you were crazy. Yeah.

Tim Cronin:

everybody did. My clients did actually for a little bit during the mediation, but we ended up getting it resolved and for just so happens to be just barely a little bit over what David settled his case for. And the first phone call I made when I, before I even left the mediation was to Dave and Dave said, hello. And I said two words and hung up the phone and they were.

Dave Cates:

Beat you. That’s right. Yeah. And I knew exactly what you were talking about.

Tim Cronin:

I’m petty.

Dave Cates:

⁓

I mean, hey, you know, it turned out to be great for your clients and I’m really happy that you got it. I’m a little salty that, you know, that I just answer the phone and here beat you and then. Yeah.

Tim Cronin:

I called you back later.

I had other phone calls to make. Before that happened, at one point, the mediator had come in and said, here’s an offer and you know, it might be final. And we rejected it. And he walked out of the room and I realized like we didn’t have a robust conversation with my client. And they went, hold on, did we just turn down X dollars?

Dave Cates:

I’m glad that I was one of the first.

I thought I remembered that part of the story was that, you you were so focused on getting them to that number and then like the mediator had offered you a certain amount of dollars and you were like, nope, not taking it. And then your clients were like, wait a minute.

Tim Cronin:

They didn’t say anything until after he left and I thought we’d already talked about getting to a different number. But I mean, obviously we can’t do anything without their approval. So then I had to make sure I had the approval to make the move, which of which otherwise I would have ran and grabbed the mediator, but they gave approval and it ended up. They came up a little more, we came down a little more and we got it. So we’re going to continue this conversation, but Dave’s colleague, Katie, had a deposition this morning.

Dave Cates:

it up working. It all worked.

Tim Cronin:

that was running a little bit late and this is a good stopping point. So, but we’ll pick back up when Katie gets here and I want to talk about a recent verdict that you and Katie got, which it was a case that I flat out told you I didn’t think you could win and yet you won. So I got egg on my face again, Dave.

Dave Cates:

You know what it was. I will say this when I called you and told you about the case and you said don’t do that. Don’t try that case.

Tim Cronin:

Certainly

don’t ask for the amount of money that you’re going put in that.

Dave Cates:

I did revise my damages model after talking to you about it. But again, one of the things Tim that I truly value our friendship is because I can call you and have those conversations and you can say to me, don’t do that.

Tim Cronin:

Well, you did it, but you altered your plan a little bit. And then.

Dave Cates:

I got some good advice from Tim Cronin and Johnny Simon.

Tim Cronin:

Johnny.

Dave Cates:

Yeah, Johnny. think Johnny’s Johnny went, wait a minute. What’s that case about? Are you sure you want to try that case? But you won. So we will be back with with Mr. Cates joining us again to talk about that case because I find it fascinating in a tough venue, tough facts, but bad conduct by the other side. You stuck to your guns again. So until next time, this has been another episode of The Jury is Out. Thank you, Dave, for joining us.

Dave Cates:

Thanks for having me, Tim. I appreciate it.

Tim Cronin:

I’m Tim Cronin and we’ll see you next time.

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