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John G. Simon’s work as Managing Partner at the firm has resulted in hundreds of millions of...
Alvin Wolff has practiced personal injury law for nearly 40 years. During his tenure, he has handled...
| Published: | March 18, 2026 |
| Podcast: | The Jury is Out |
| Category: | Litigation |
The Jury is Out hands this week’s episode over to The Case Doctors, John Simon and Alvin Wolff. With more than 80 years of combined legal experience, Simon and Wolff have seen it all—and now, they’re sharing their insights into real-world legal questions submitted by fellow attorneys. In this episode, the veteran plaintiff’s attorneys break down practical issues litigators face every day—especially the two most common case-killers: unprepared clients and unprepared experts.
Special thanks to our sponsor Simon Law Firm.
Announcer:
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.
Christine Byers:
I’m your host, Christine Byers of Simon Law, and I’m joined by the case doctors, John Simon and Alvin Wolf. Now, between them, they have more than 80 years of experience as plaintiff’s attorneys, so there really isn’t a scenario they haven’t already encountered on a case and figured out how to handle it or how not to handle it, as John says. Now, they’re offering you the chance to tell them about the various problems or issues that are coming up in your cases and hear how they would handle it. But first, let’s turn to some of the civil cases making headlines and hear what the case doctors have to say about them. So our first topic brings us over to New York. This is an interesting headline. A New York man admitted that he posed as a lawyer to steal over $290,000 from people who thought he was doing class action, discrimination, and other legal work.
He even hired a lawyer to work for him at his fake law firm, telling the unnamed hire that he had been practicing law since before she was born. Now, gentlemen, what would be some tips people should keep in mind to make sure that the lawyer they are dealing with is in fact a lawyer?
John Simon:
Wow. What do you think, Alvin?
Alvin Wolf:
Well, first I think the guy really set his sights too low. If he was going to steal, he should have stolen a lot more money. Because if you’re going to steal, you may as well make it worth your while. But if you aren’t sure if someone’s a lawyer, you can always check with the state bar. I mean, when Abraham Lincoln was a lawyer, you didn’t have to go to law school. When my dad was a lawyer, he went to Knight Law School. He was 21 years old when he got his license. Maybe lawyers should go back to becoming lawyers by training rather than
John Simon:
Going to law school. And the other interesting thing is he did have another lawyer you said with him.
Christine Byers:
Yes.
John Simon:
And I’m wondering, I guess it was a newer lawyer. I mean, it sort of legitimizes him in some … I mean, certainly the lawyer that’s with him would be able to handle cases and represent clients. So I wonder what his background or education is. Maybe he’s gone to law school.
Alvin Wolf:
Acting school.
John Simon:
Yeah.
Christine Byers:
That’s more like it.
John Simon:
And I’m just thinking of interviewing with a client, a potential client, and having one of the questions be, “Can I see a copy of your license?”
Alvin Wolf:
That’s never happened to me.
John Simon:
I was going to say, the interview’s probably going pretty poorly if that’s one of their questions. Give me five minutes. I want to just call the state bar and make sure you’re actually an attorney. Yeah. I don’t instill confidence in the client.
Alvin Wolf:
A friend of mine put something on LinkedIn last week about how he poorly he did in law school and how he- I
John Simon:
Think I read that.
Alvin Wolf:
… groveled for his first job and everything. I said, “After your first job, no one really cares how you did in law school.”
John Simon:
True.
Alvin Wolf:
It just doesn’t matter.
John Simon:
I agree.
Alvin Wolf:
And it seems like most of the really successful plaintiff’s lawyers were really good underachievers.
John Simon:
Getting out of law school is like someone handing you the keys to a brand new car and you’ve never driven. You’ve never been behind a wheel driving. And that can result in some really bad, bad … It can be some really bad results from that. And so what I do and what I’ve been doing for 40 years, way more than 90% of it, I didn’t hear anything about it in law school. You learn as you go.
Alvin Wolf:
And everything you probably do right now, you probably did wrong the first time.
John Simon:
Absolutely. Where I’ve learned most, most everything I’ve learned has come from two places. One is screwing it up myself. And the other way I learned it is watching other lawyers who actually knew what they were doing. And unfortunately for me, I learned most of it by trying to do it on my own, messing it up, and then trying to fix it and not do it again.
Alvin Wolf:
And as long as you make the same mistake only once, you’ll be okay.
Christine Byers:
Moving right along, this case brings us to California. Two former Gree USA executives were sentenced to approximately three years in prison each by a California federal judge after being found guilty of conspiracy to defraud the US Consumer Product Safety Commission by failing to report defective humidifiers in a landmark criminal conviction under the Consumer Product Safety Act. Now, my question for you guys is, how many defective product cases have you all done and have any of those led to similar investigations by the Consumer Product Safety Act?
John Simon:
I’ve done a bunch. A lot of times the investigation starts the litigation. A lot of times it’s the other way around. There’ll be an investigation and then it alerts people that there’s something wrong with the product that they bought or were hurt on, and then they’ll contact attorneys. A lot of the stuff, I think most of that is self-reporting if it’s the company that gets complaints. And a lot of cases that I’ve seen, not only are they not reported, but they don’t even keep track of the ones that are reported. I see that a lot.
Alvin Wolf:
And it seems like a lot of these defective product cases start with the company knowing about it and just being on the hook for the defect. They’re not trying to cover it up except for something like the Pinto case. I think they knew for a long time that for 10 bucks you could fix it so the gas tank wouldn’t explode. But those cases are pretty few and far in between.
Christine Byers:
I mean, it just was interesting to me because I thought about with you guys specializing, of course, in product liability cases, in this particular case, if they failed to report these defective humidifiers, now they’re looking at criminal charges.
John Simon:
That’s unusual. And
Alvin Wolf:
Maybe something like that happened that there’s got to be mold or some sort of illness that would happen as a result of the humidifiers malfunctioning. I think people really have to get hurt really bad and they have to have a really bad coverup and there’s got to be a pretty good smoking gun to levy criminal charges against someone.
Christine Byers:
Well, thank you, gentlemen. Time now to turn to our email inbox for the cases our viewers have sent in for the case doctors to diagnose. Now, just so everyone knows, we’re not going to reveal where these cases came from. We’re not going to name any names or firms to protect the confidentiality of the cases. Instead, the case doctors are just going to focus on the issue in each of them. So as they say, the case doctors will see you now. So first up, this was very short and simple, but to the point. Dear case doctors, experts are expensive. What do you think about going to visit an expert before hiring one?
John Simon:
I think it’s a great idea to meet your expert. I think you ought to have dinner with your expert. Have lunch with them. Find out as much as you can about their background outside of the area of expertise, their personal life. I think, especially in a case where your expert is a make or break for the case, I don’t think there’s any way you can spend too much time in getting to know the expert, getting the background, getting a good feel for them. What do you think?
Alvin Wolf:
I think there’s no way to better learn about your case than to hang out with the expert. I mean, if you send the expert the records, they’re going to call you up and give you an opinion. If you go meet the expert and you bring your MRIs or your CTs and the records, first you’re going to see if your equipment works right because you’re going to be going through the films with your expert and you’re going to be learning everything you need to know to get ready for your depositions. And that will help you win your case in deposition. I think what John said is really important. You have to see if your expert is, one, bullshitting you because a lot of them are out there just to make the money. They’re not going to do the work. But if you get in a room with someone and you see that they’re sincere and they’ve taken the time to learn the case and they’re taking time to answer your questions as stupid as they may be, you’re going to be in much better footing than if you just go out and get an expert and you accept their opinion.
John Simon:
The things that can blow up your case more than anything are two things. It’s your client or your expert. And I’m always kind of at the edge of my seat in my client’s deposition and my expert’s deposition. And it all goes to preparation. Your client needs to be prepared, your expert needs to be prepared. And what I’ve done, and I still do it, just because I don’t think experts mess up mostly because they’re trying to take money from you. There’s some of them out there that do that, but I think they’re all busy. They’re doing surgery, they’re teaching classes, they’ve got other cases they’re working on and they’re in demand if they’re good. If they’re good experts, everybody wants to use them and you’re on their list. And the biggest danger is they don’t really look at the materials, they’re not sufficiently prepared, and then they’re vulnerable in the deposition.
They’re going to say something that’s stupid that you got to live with. So what I’ve done and still do, I started doing this years ago, is I will actually get them to come the day before. It’s expensive as hell, crazy expensive with some experts. And if nothing else, I want them out of their office, out of their environment, and I want them sitting in a conference room with me for the better part of a day going over what we need to go over. And if nothing else, even if you could say, “Well, they could use that time just sitting at home reading the materials.” I think what it does is it reinforces in that expert’s mind how important you believe your case is and how important you think they should take the case. Because I don’t want them just … I’ve had this happen, especially with treating doctors who you’re really at their mercy.
I send them records organized in a binder, their own records, chronologically in the order that I’m going to go through them in the depo when I take it, and you’ll see them. Typically, this is what happens. I’ll go in and you sit there and the depo’s just supposed to start at 10:00 and the doctor doesn’t get there until 10:20 and he’s on the phone and then he’s asking you what client, what patient was this? So I think all of those things are dangers of not your expert not being prepared.
Alvin Wolf:
Treating doctors are the biggest problem because, well, the medical school or the institutions don’t let the doctors even meet with you before the deposition. And like John said, they’re busy. They’re going to give a deposition that you’re probably videotaping and their noses in the file the whole time going back and forth with records and really just reading what’s in the records.
John Simon:
Yes. And you say, “Well, doctor, can you describe…” A question I’ll ask is, tell the jury what you did, what was the name of the surgery you did and explain to them what you actually did. And they’ll look up and go, “It’s in the report. Do you want me to just read the report?” And I’m like, “Well, no, doctor, not really. I want you to explain to the jury what you did during the surgery.” And then things usually go downhill from there.
Christine Byers:
Interesting.
Alvin Wolf:
Yeah, I’ve got that tomorrow on Friday. On
John Simon:
Friday. Actually, there was one case where it was a automotive product case. It was a lap belt only case where my clients were almost cut in half
Two young boys, 15, 16 years old in the backseat. And this was a surgeon who literally did these multiple complex surgeries, hours of time and saved their lives and did a really good job putting their intestines back together and their spine, all of this stuff. And so we had boards made up graphics to show the injuries and where the bell, all of this stuff. And this guy was a very well-known, accomplished surgeon who did a great job on my clients and he really was too busy to give us the time of day. We came in and I showed him some of our visuals before we started and he was like, “I don’t need those.” And I was like, “Doctor, you don’t need them, but the jury sure as hell might benefit from looking
Christine Byers:
At them.”
John Simon:
But he was happy about the work that he had done, and they’re not all like that, but I think more than half just don’t want to be bothered. And it’s a pain in the ass for them to be pulled away and give a deposition. But they don’t mind charging you eight grand for a deposition or $6,000. And they
Alvin Wolf:
Always have great results and your patient’s doing fantastic.
John Simon:
Wonderful.
Alvin Wolf:
They’re doing great. And you’re going to have no problems going down the road.
John Simon:
And that’s so much so that I have a voir dire question I ask in cases where my client had surgery and the doctor said exactly that, “Doing fine.” And the person’s walking with a walker or whatever and the surgery went fantastic. There were no complications, no follow up. And what I’ll do is I’ll ask, because anybody ever had orthopedic surgery or whatever the surgery is? Yeah. And I’ll find somebody who looks like they’re not doing too well and say some older person my age and say, “When did you have that? ” Oh, 12 years ago. “What leg was it? Right leg? “Yeah, yeah, okay. And did it go okay? It’s been 10, 12 years since you’ve been back there. Surgery went. It was all successful. Doctor told you it went great. Yeah. So you don’t have any problems with that leg now, do you? And they’ll say,” Hell yeah, I have a problem with every morning.
“And people will start laughing because they know the doctor’s goal is to save your life and put the leg back together. If you’re walking, it was a good day. Remission accomplished if you’re walking.
Christine Byers:
What makes a good expert? Is it an expert that’s going to prove your point and take your side always or is it- Two
John Simon:
Words, good teacher or just one word, teacher. The teacher. They need to be a teacher.
Christine Byers:
Okay.
John Simon:
And you can tell right away, like the good experts are ones where you ask them a question, they look at the judge and say,” Can I go to the board? “And they’ll go up to the board and start explaining to the jury and the jury’s leaning forward listening and nodding and it’s teacher. It’s being a teacher explaining things.
Christine Byers:
Interesting.
Alvin Wolf:
I would say a knowledgeable teacher. Well, that helps. Someone can come in.
Christine Byers:
So here is another short and sweet question we got in. “Dear case doctors, my client has made a great recovery from her injuries. The only thing left is pain from the hardware.”
John Simon:
Well, you know what? I think this. I think it’s one of the most difficult things to ask a group of people, a jury, to give money to your client for pain.That’s just tough
Christine Byers:
To
John Simon:
Begin with. What’s even tougher is for your client to … Really, it’s hard for somebody to talk about themselves and their pain without it looking like, “Well, I’m telling you this, ” and it is. They’re telling you that your client’s talking about their pain to this group of people that they don’t know them in order to get money from them.
Christine Byers:
And
John Simon:
That whole concept is not very … Awkward. It’s awkward. And it’s the hardest thing to do is to get people to give money. And so I think you need to approach it by not so much concentrating on your client talking about how horrific the pain is, but giving them some background about your client and some good things so that they get to know your client, can relate to them and like them, and then sort of minimize the rest. Like for instance, I think it’s better for the client to say, “Does it cause you any problems or pain?” Yeah, it does, but I do okay. I do my best. It really hasn’t bothered me with my work, but it’s still there. Something like that versus somebody saying, “Oh Jesus, I can’t get out of bed and all of this kind of stuff.” I
Alvin Wolf:
Can’t do anything. Yeah,
John Simon:
I can’t do anything.
Alvin Wolf:
Everything hurts.
John Simon:
So I had a case decades ago with our friend, George Casta, and I had a wonderful client who was … Actually, he was 64 my age now and he was a carpenter and he was injured like literally the last month of his employment. Okay. He was ready to retire
And had a horrible back surgery, multiple levels. And this guy was in pain. I mean, he was in pain constantly and he was somebody with … He didn’t miss any work, but it was a surgery went fine, but he was in pain all the time. And so he didn’t sit with me at the counsel table. He sat in the pews in the gallery and every once in a while he would get up and he would go to the back of the courtroom and walk back and forth holding his back like this. And he did that two or three times during the first couple of days and we had a break. The jury was out of the room and the other lawyer, George said, “Judge, can we have a sidebar?” I didn’t really know what it was about. And George, good old George said, “Look, Judge, I know Mr. Simon’s client is hurt and he’s hurt bad, but does he have to do the baton death march in the back of the courtroom?”
Christine Byers:
No.
John Simon:
And I said, “Judge, what do you want me to tell him? It’s his try. It’s his case. He needs to be here and it’s killing him to sit. He’s got to get up and move around.” So the judge compromised and said, “Well, let’s do this. If he needs to go out and do that, he could just walk outside and walk out in the hallway and come back in. ” And then it was even more like of a spectacle because he’d get up, hold his back.
Christine Byers:
So it backfired. The
John Simon:
Door would slam. Everybody would watch him walk out. So again, that was a guy, if I asked him, and I think I did, I don’t remember exactly what he said, “How’s your back?” He’d say, “Oh, I’d deal with it. “
Christine Byers:
But
John Simon:
You could tell he was hurt real bad. And the other thing too, I think concentrate on … Never say never. I mean, as Alvin was saying, “I can’t do anything. What are you talking about? ” The problem you have with that is half of the people are more on that jury have pain every day with things that might be worse than what your client has. You got to be careful how you present it. You don’t want to overdo it. Well,
Alvin Wolf:
You also want to have people talking on his behalf or her behalf.
John Simon:
That’s a great point.
Alvin Wolf:
Have a spouse talk about how your client gets up and they’re limping in the morning or whatever. One thing I like to do, and I represent a lot of athletes and they all track what they do. So it’s good to get into whatever the program is, whether it’s Strava, which is an app that you can track your running or your bicycling or cross country skiing, whatever it is you do. And I like to see what their performance was before. Let’s say they could ride a bike 30 miles in an hour and 45 minutes, and now they do it in two hours and 15 minutes. If they’re doing a lot of these things and a lot of athletes do these things for social reasons, this is affecting them socially because the friends that you drive with, they can’t
John Simon:
Keep up with them.
Alvin Wolf:
Right. They’re not
John Simon:
In that group
Alvin Wolf:
Anymore. And they get dropped and they think they’re less of a person and instead of being with the A athletes, they’re now with the B athletes, which for a lot of people, that’s a big deal still, but for the person, it’s really depressing for something like that to happen.
John Simon:
So that’s a great point. And I think what you do is it’s not just having the pain. Everybody’s got pain, but as Alvin suggests, talking about how that pain affects their daily life,
Christine Byers:
How it
John Simon:
Affects their activities, what they can and can’t do. There was one case where I had a guy in his 30s who had a fall off the back of a truck and he had back surgery and he was okay.
Christine Byers:
The
John Simon:
Surgery went fine. He could up, he could walk, he could do things, but he lost his job during the pendency of the case and he moved back in with his mom and dad. And he was in his mid to late 30s maybe at the time of trial. And I was trying to think of a way to convey to the jury what this whole incident meant to him, how it altered his life and turned everything upside down. And he lost his job, lost his apartment, moves back in with his parents. And what I did is I elicited from him all the things, the joy in his life literally was very close to his parents. I think he was an only child and he would take his mother grocery shop and he cut the grass for his mom and dad did all the handywork around the house and he was able to take care of his parents.
They could always call him and he would be there to do it. And that’s how I argued it to the jury is that was the best thing in his life, one of the best things that really gave him happiness and pride and satisfaction was taking care of his parents. And now it’s flipped. He’s living back with his parents. He can’t mow the grass.
And I said, “The worst part of all now is this guy, his independence was taken away.” And I said, “The worst part is he’s 38 years old and now he’s back in the same bedroom he was in when he was 12 years old.” Wow. And you look at it like that and it’s not just somebody sitting there saying, “My damn back is killing me. It’s killing me now. It hurts me all the time.” But as Alvin suggests, how does that affect what you can or what does it cause, what harms has that caused? What things in your life has that affected?
Christine Byers:
And I
John Simon:
Think that’s a much better story, especially if you’ve got other people to tell it, not somebody … It’s hard to sit there.
Christine Byers:
Okay, gentlemen, that will do it for this episode of The Case Doctors.
Announcer:
The jury is Out is brought to you by the Simon Law Firm. At the Simon Law Firm PC, we believe in the power of pooling resources in order to create powerful results. We often lend our trial skills and experience to lawyers around the country to achieve better results for their clients. Our attorneys welcome the opportunity to work with you on your case, offering vast resources, seasoned litigators, and a sterling reputation. You can contact us at 314-241-2929. And if you enjoyed the podcast, feel free to share your thoughts with John, Tim, and Erich at [email protected] and subscribe today because the best lawyers never stop learning.
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The Jury is Out |
Hosted by John Simon, Erich Vieth, and Timothy Cronin, 'The Jury is Out' offers insight and mentorship to trial attorneys who want to better serve their clients and improve their practice with an additional focus on client relations, trial skills, and firm management.
