EP 713 – Fines, Fees, and Civil Rights Part 1

Episode Notes

Transcript

Tim Cronin [00:00:02 – 00:00:18]

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.

Erich Vieth [00:00:21 – 00:00:24]

Welcome to another episode of the Jury Is Out. I’m Erich Vieth.

John Simon [00:00:24 – 00:00:25]

I’m John Simon.

Erich Vieth [00:00:25 – 00:00:31]

Today we’re here with Brendan Roediger of the Saint Louis University School of Law. Welcome, Brendan.

John Simon [00:00:31 – 00:00:31]

Welcome.

Brendan Roediger [00:00:31 – 00:00:32]

Thanks for having me.

Erich Vieth [00:00:32 – 00:00:47]

You’re one of these people that wears a number of hats. So let’s see, where shall we start? You know, for those who don’t know you, let’s talk about your litigation. For instance, you’re. You’re a trial attorney, and I’ll just provoke you to talk about your recent verdict, Edwards versus the city of St. Louis. Can you talk a bit about that?

Brendan Roediger [00:00:47 – 00:00:53]

Only a very bit, because it is recent enough that there’s still much to happen.

Erich Vieth [00:00:53 – 00:00:53]

Oh.

Brendan Roediger [00:00:53 – 00:01:07]

So, yeah, primarily civil rights law. That’s mostly lawsuits against police and prisons and jails with some colleagues. I recently tried a case against the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department that resulted in a $37 million verdict.

John Simon [00:01:07 – 00:01:08]

Wow. Fantastic.

Brendan Roediger [00:01:08 – 00:01:35]

Before that case, most of the cases that I had been involved in in the last six to seven years were prison sexual assault cases. Sort of a strange thing to specialize in, but sort of fell into it and spent a number of years primarily doing that. But my real job, as you know, is that I work at Saint Louis University and I run a clinic. I teach a class called Civil Practice, and I sometimes teach a class called Client Counseling.

Erich Vieth [00:01:35 – 00:01:39]

All right, so let’s go back to how long you been a teacher?

Brendan Roediger [00:01:39 – 00:01:52]

I’ve been at St. Louis University for 17 years, and I was a legal aid lawyer before that over in Illinois. Madison, St. Clair, Greene county, sort of just running from rural courthouse to rural courthouse.

Erich Vieth [00:01:52 – 00:01:59]

So I thought it would be fun to have you on. We go back, I’m guessing seven, eight years, something like that. Or maybe earlier.

Brendan Roediger [00:02:00 – 00:02:01]

Yeah, longer than that.

John Simon [00:02:01 – 00:02:04]

So, Brendan, do you. Are you from the east side originally?

Brendan Roediger [00:02:04 – 00:02:18]

No. Born in Chicago, lived in Minnesota the longest. Came to law school at the school that’s not St. Louis University, and I stuck around after that. I picked Washu because both of my sets of grandparents were local.

Erich Vieth [00:02:19 – 00:02:32]

Okay, just circle back. You mentioned the warrant fee cases. You want to just describe that in a sentence or two because, you know, a lot of what you touch is not something that lawyers typically work on. What was going on there? And I say that knowing that I was part of that, too.

Brendan Roediger [00:02:32 – 00:03:07]

You were. You were more a part of it than I was. I mean, that was quite a run that we had. So in, as a lot of folks know, In August of 2014, after the killing of Mike Brown, there was a sustained period of protest in St. Louis. And it resulted in sort of a close look at a lot of parts of our legal system. And one of the parts of our legal system that suddenly journalists got interested in was municipal courts and whether there was enough oversight of those municipal courts, particularly in St. Louis County.

Brendan Roediger [00:03:07 – 00:03:48]

Although once journalists started to dig in, they found that some of those rural towns outside of the county were, in fact, worse than the St. Louis county municipalities. And one of the things that you and I and John Campbell discovered early on, and Alicia and maybe John Ammon actually figured it out before any of us, was that some of these municipalities were using fees that had no basis in law whatsoever. Just one day they dec. They said, what would happen if we charge people an extra 50 bucks? And we just kept it. And nobody in the room where that came up thought to stop it. And it just went ahead. And I guess she’s been gone long enough that I’ll tell the story about how it actually got uncovered.

Brendan Roediger [00:03:48 – 00:04:14]

There was a wonderful city councilor in the city of St. Louis, who will remain unnamed, who was pissed off about it. She was the prosecutor in these cases, but she thought the fee was illegal. And she went to her bosses and she said, we shouldn’t be doing this. And her bosses said, hey, it’s good money. So she called and she said, I think somebody should do a little bit of research about this fee. And so the city was actually the first place that we sued.

John Simon [00:04:14 – 00:04:17]

How were they charging it? Were they just as part of a fine or a penalty?

Brendan Roediger [00:04:17 – 00:04:22]

So what they would say is it was called a warrant recall fee.

John Simon [00:04:22 – 00:04:22]

Okay.

Brendan Roediger [00:04:22 – 00:04:32]

So if you had a warrant and you went down to the city municipal court and you said, I missed my court date. I want to get rid of my warrant, they would say, that’s great. $50.

John Simon [00:04:34 – 00:04:34]

Ah, okay.

Erich Vieth [00:04:34 – 00:04:34]

Yeah.

Brendan Roediger [00:04:34 – 00:04:45]

And there was no statute authorizing that. There was no ordinance authorizing that. There was nothing to authorize it, and they were keeping the money. So that prosecutor brought that to our attention. And how many did we end up filing?

Erich Vieth [00:04:45 – 00:04:47]

I think we filed about a dozen.

Brendan Roediger [00:04:47 – 00:04:53]

Yeah. And then I think some other lawyers stole the idea and ran with different municipalities. Correct?

John Simon [00:04:53 – 00:04:53]

Yeah.

Brendan Roediger [00:04:53 – 00:04:53]

Yeah.

Erich Vieth [00:04:54 – 00:05:22]

And most of them settled. There was an early. An early phase where there were some sticky legal questions, questions that were raised by the other Side, they, they raised their, you know, they did their due diligence. Yeah. And we got through that and then they all started moving our way eventually. But it was there, there was a moment where, you know, we’re hoping it all worked and it worked. The bottom line is that a lot of people got money back from something that they were all surprised. You know, a lot of them are people who are not wealthy.

Brendan Roediger [00:05:22 – 00:05:22]

They’re.

Erich Vieth [00:05:22 – 00:06:06]

They’re people who, you know, 50 or 100 or 300, because sometimes they tack that on repeatedly to a number of offenses. But it was a good feeling that a lot of money actually went back to the folks who’d paid it. And if I could just tack on. You mentioned the Michael Brown situation. I had a moment where it all felt so good because there was a client who was the class representative in one of those warrant fees in Ferguson. And that fellow who is as nice as can be and has lived a very hard life. I went out to talk to him about the case and he was mentioning to me, yeah, it’s different now, you know, with all the reform and I know you were central to that. It’s different when we see the cops.

Erich Vieth [00:06:06 – 00:06:20]

We used to see the cops and we used to go, oh shit, you know what’s going to happen now? And it’s different. They’ll say hello. And it was really amazing. You know, that’s what happened. You know, there’s an attitude change.

Brendan Roediger [00:06:21 – 00:06:46]

Yeah, I, I am such a pessimist that I always worry that those things reset. But I will say that a few years ago the Post Dispatch ran an article on incarceration rates from municipal courts. And the incarceration was just down so dramatically. And it forced me to sit with the fact that there were some successes that came out of that. I mean, you can’t deny the fact that there used to be a lot of people incarcerated on municipal ordinance violations and there aren’t anymore. That’s a win. That’s a good thing.

John Simon [00:06:47 – 00:07:16]

So how many aren’t there, like 90 municipalities in St. Louis County. That is the craziest thing. Like, I lived in a, in a municipality that had 200 homes and we had our own like police officer and our own judge in court. And I say, my son Johnny got two tickets the same day from the same single police officer. But that was my only, only interaction with the municipal courts there. But 90 something. And it’s, isn’t it mostly revenue generated?

Brendan Roediger [00:07:18 – 00:07:38]

You know, there were places like Calverton park that 40% of their revenue was coming from these violations. And to Me, the sad thing was, and I know this shouldn’t matter, but, you know, in Rock Hill. Have you guys been pulled over in Rock Hill? Probably most people have been pulled over in Rock Hill, but the. In Rock Hill, if you live in Rock Hill, you’re not getting a ticket.

Erich Vieth [00:07:38 – 00:07:38]

Right.

Brendan Roediger [00:07:38 – 00:07:44]

That’s always been the deal in Rock Hill is that that’s for those of us who are driving down Manchester too fast.

John Simon [00:07:44 – 00:07:46]

We are seven miles over, right.

Brendan Roediger [00:07:46 – 00:07:58]

We’re paying a little bit of money for Rock Hill. I’m against it, but it makes a little bit of sense. The sad thing in Pine Lawn and Calverton park in these places is they’re hitting the people that live there, right? So it’s, you know, these people are going to jail in their own town.

Erich Vieth [00:07:58 – 00:08:06]

A block away, there’s a corridor along 70 that was like especially egregious. You know, everybody parked up their little municipality along.

John Simon [00:08:06 – 00:08:11]

There’s been a couple municipalities like where some of the main drags run right through them.

Brendan Roediger [00:08:11 – 00:08:12]

Where they have.

John Simon [00:08:12 – 00:08:14]

They’ll pull you over if you’re five miles over or seven miles over.

Brendan Roediger [00:08:15 – 00:08:21]

So I came from Illinois and John Ammon, I was working with John Ammon over at the, at the law clinic. You guys know John?

John Simon [00:08:21 – 00:08:22]

Sure.

Brendan Roediger [00:08:22 – 00:08:48]

And John said, you know, if you want to do poverty law in St. Louis, you have to do municipal cases. That is what is affecting poor people on a day to day basis. So I said, okay, I’m going to do what, you know, John had just hired me, I’m going to do what he says. And so that’s all night court. I had no experience with that in Illinois. And you would drive out to these places, places in the courthouses above the drugstore or the courthouse is in somebody’s basement or it’s in the middle school. I had never experienced anything.

John Simon [00:08:48 – 00:08:53]

I’ve been like a house, you know, they’ll have a brick ranch, you know, two bedroom home and, and the, and

Brendan Roediger [00:08:53 – 00:08:55]

there’s a drive set in the living room, right?

Erich Vieth [00:08:57 – 00:09:26]

So I went out to one of those proceedings early on. I worked with Arch City for a couple years and MJ took me there. I followed him around and it occurred to me, if you had been a trial lawyer all your life, like for 30 years, and you knew how to go all the way through the circuit court, you knew all the rules of evidence and procedure. You know nothing about the Indonesian municipalities. It’s like, where am I? Who, who’s in charge? What are the rules? It’s, it’s perplexing.

John Simon [00:09:26 – 00:09:28]

Each has their own I, you Know,

Erich Vieth [00:09:28 – 00:09:48]

and so somebody comes in and they, you know, they got to. Well, you never get one ticket. I mean, that’s. That seems to be a good general when they, when they pull you over. This is before Michael Brown. You get, you get many tickets and then you can’t pay them and then you end up. That’s another story with the fan case. You want to say a little bit about how that ended up in federal court.

Brendan Roediger [00:09:48 – 00:10:18]

So the. And I was going to mention it because the warrant fee cases provided us with a really good sort of serious look, the discovery in those cases into municipal courts in general. And there was this other set of cases at the same time that we collectively developed that were. Have sort of now been called debtor prison cases. And these are equal protection cases. And the core. I won’t go into the detail, but the core argument in those cases is just that people are being incarcerated because they’re poor. Right.

Brendan Roediger [00:10:18 – 00:10:38]

If a middle class person was in the same position, they would not go to jail. They would pay the ticket. And so you’re actually incarcerated because you’re poor. We brought those cases. Well, first in Jennings and. And then in Ferguson. Those cases took a lot longer to ultimately resolve. Keith Henson.

Brendan Roediger [00:10:38 – 00:11:03]

Do you guys remember Keith Insurance defense lawyer Keith Henson had the Jennings case. And I’ll just. Keith recently passed away, so I’m going to tell this story. So this is the first debtor prison case, brand new. And Keith Henson called and the first thing he did is he said, this is complicated. Can I have a stay? I want to figure this out. Don’t get that from defense counsel very often. We were a little bit like, what’s the play here? But we let him have it.

Brendan Roediger [00:11:04 – 00:11:15]

He spent three weeks and he called and he says, yeah, that’s illegal. Can I talk? And we had a series of meetings in which he brought people who worked for the court. And we worked through it.

John Simon [00:11:15 – 00:11:15]

Wow.

Brendan Roediger [00:11:15 – 00:11:41]

First the injunctive portions of it. And then we had a series of meetings to reach a financial resolution. He took, God, I want to say, four months. Now, the class stuff took a little bit longer after that. And he got that case done. And everybody, every other defense lawyer thought he was nuts. And they fought and fought and fought and fought. What do you think the attorney fees on those cases? And they must have paid $10 million.

John Simon [00:11:41 – 00:11:41]

Yeah.

Brendan Roediger [00:11:41 – 00:11:47]

And they settled for the exact same amount as what Keith settled for in a few weeks.

John Simon [00:11:47 – 00:11:50]

So were they. Were they mostly class or some individual? Okay.

Brendan Roediger [00:11:50 – 00:11:50]

Yeah, yeah.

John Simon [00:11:51 – 00:11:57]

You know, I saw somebody presented at an Inns of Court meeting when when all of this was going on and I don’t. May have been you, it was me.

Brendan Roediger [00:11:57 – 00:11:58]

Yeah.

John Simon [00:11:58 – 00:11:59]

Yeah, it was. Yeah. And the whole.

Brendan Roediger [00:11:59 – 00:11:59]

The whole.

John Simon [00:11:59 – 00:12:23]

The thing that really struck me was how, like, the snowball effect, somebody gets a ticket for a light out. Yeah. And he’s. And I remember one of the stories was a single dad with, you know, two or three little kids, and he misses his court date because he’s working at Walmart and he can’t, you know, and then there’s a warrant out for him, and then. And he ends up, like, in jail with, you know, 800 worth of fines that he can’t pay, and his three children have nobody. It was like, crazy.

Erich Vieth [00:12:23 – 00:12:24]

Exactly.

John Simon [00:12:24 – 00:12:35]

You know, over. I think it was a parking light or a brake light that was off on his car. Who does that help? You know, that. That’s. That’s like a terrible result for all concern, you know, for society, for the city, for.

Erich Vieth [00:12:35 – 00:12:43]

You know, these are not bad people by any stretch. They’re just people who don’t have a lot of money and they’re being treated so badly.

Brendan Roediger [00:12:43 – 00:13:22]

You guys ever read that old the Process Is the Punishment book? This old book about how in the misdemeanor and petty offenses world, the process itself is really the punishment. Right. It’s supposed to be bureaucratically enough of a nightmare that you don’t want to do it again. And they’re. One of the things that I noticed about municipal courts is there was just no sense that the process was enough of a punishment, even though it was. So I remember really clearly being out in Bell Ridge one night, and my client was late, and my client had ridden. You guys know, if you want to take buses in the suburbs, it takes a long time. My client had been on a bus with a child with autism for four

John Simon [00:13:22 – 00:13:23]

hours just to get to the courthouse.

Brendan Roediger [00:13:23 – 00:13:37]

To get to the courthouse, and she was there. Now, most judges, a good judge would say, all right, that’s serious. That’s serious business you’re respecting. This court just screams at this woman, and then they’re still the fine.

John Simon [00:13:38 – 00:13:38]

Yeah.

Brendan Roediger [00:13:38 – 00:13:39]

That’s beyond punishment.

John Simon [00:13:39 – 00:13:47]

What’s. What has been the resolution? Like, what were the equitable changes? What did they do, like, in the class cases? I’m assuming they made some changes. Yeah.

Brendan Roediger [00:13:47 – 00:14:03]

So the class cases, I mean, there. There were some changes, but ultimately mostly monetary. SB5, which was the legislative fix, made some inroads on the incarceration front. SB5 basically created a category of petty offenses that. Where incarceration’s just off.

John Simon [00:14:04 – 00:14:11]

I just don’t see putting anybody who’s not a danger to other others in prison, you know, have them do something productive. Yeah.

Brendan Roediger [00:14:11 – 00:14:19]

You know, I mean, Mike Wolf always says, can we at least start by agreeing that we shouldn’t incarcerate people we’re not afraid of? Yeah, that’s a good. That’s a good starting point.

John Simon [00:14:20 – 00:14:22]

That’s a good starting point. Yeah. Yeah, it is.

Erich Vieth [00:14:23 – 00:14:28]

And so what was the typical resolution before SB5? Someone’s in.

John Simon [00:14:28 – 00:14:29]

What is SB5?

Erich Vieth [00:14:29 – 00:14:33]

It’s the state. State reform.

John Simon [00:14:33 – 00:14:33]

And what is it?

Erich Vieth [00:14:34 – 00:14:34]

What did it do?

Brendan Roediger [00:14:35 – 00:15:04]

The first thing it did is it said these traffic offenses we are declaring to be not serious enough. And so we’re just not going to have incarceration be a part of the equation at all. And we’re not going to suspend people’s driver’s licenses for these things. It just sort of created that category. And then the second thing that it did is it created sort of a new set of procedural rights that made it a lot more difficult for a court to issue a warrant. So the first time you miss court, there’s not a warrant, there’s a letter, those sorts of things.

John Simon [00:15:04 – 00:15:05]

Okay.

Erich Vieth [00:15:05 – 00:15:07]

And that came along with a cap, Right.

Brendan Roediger [00:15:07 – 00:15:09]

There was also a cap on revenue.

Erich Vieth [00:15:09 – 00:15:10]

So do you recall what that is?

John Simon [00:15:10 – 00:15:11]

I remember that.

Brendan Roediger [00:15:12 – 00:15:26]

That ended up being the source of a bunch of litigation that ultimately changed the special law analysis in the Missouri Supreme Court. I won’t get into that. But they. They tried to get away with a different cap for St. Louis county than for the rest of the state.

Erich Vieth [00:15:26 – 00:15:29]

What were some of those numbers before the reform?

Brendan Roediger [00:15:29 – 00:15:39]

Oh, how high did it before? Yeah. Oh, man. Some of these. What was the town that the law was named after? The law? It was actually named after a town. It was at 60. Calverton park was at.

John Simon [00:15:39 – 00:15:41]

Their revenue was.

Brendan Roediger [00:15:41 – 00:15:46]

60 of their revenue was from municipal Max Creek.

John Simon [00:15:46 – 00:15:47]

Yeah. Wow.

Brendan Roediger [00:15:47 – 00:15:55]

Calverton park was over 40%. Yeah. I mean, it was. There were a lot of places that were between 30 and 50, hence the

Erich Vieth [00:15:55 – 00:16:05]

term for profit policing, that it’s just a revenue generator. You’re just taking the next poor person that comes along and saying, you’re paying for our salaries.

John Simon [00:16:06 – 00:16:27]

Wow, good stuff. Here’s what I wanted to ask you about. You mentioned sexual assault, prison cases. I can’t imagine a more difficult case to pursue. I mean, you’re starting out with somebody in prison, right? So what. What. How many of those did you do? Several or just. Was it a class case? Were they individual cases?

Brendan Roediger [00:16:28 – 00:16:31]

I believe I’ve done nine individual cases.

John Simon [00:16:31 – 00:16:35]

And it’s daily in prison. Is it city, state?

Brendan Roediger [00:16:35 – 00:16:37]

Both. Okay, I’ve done both that.

John Simon [00:16:37 – 00:16:43]

I guess you’re pretty. Pretty selective about what you take or. I mean, how have they been resolved? Did you try. End up trying them or.

Brendan Roediger [00:16:44 – 00:17:26]

So we tried four of them. Four individual cases consolidated. There was another case that was a part of that group that resolved itself separately. And we had a lot of questions because of my clients. I’m not going to go into extraordinary detail, but I will say that we had a lot of questions about what a jury would make of a case in which it was primarily our client’s word against the words of a jailer. It was clear to me that our clients were telling the truth. The stories were horrific. The guy was as creepy as you can imagine and just couldn’t quite not be creepy.

Brendan Roediger [00:17:26 – 00:17:36]

You know, he could hold it together for about 15 minutes and then the creepy would start to spill out. That happened in the deposition. And we sort of had to hope that that same side of him would come out.

John Simon [00:17:36 – 00:17:36]

Yeah.

Brendan Roediger [00:17:37 – 00:18:08]

In. In the trial. So I can tell this story in the. In the deposition, he just pretended that he didn’t know that everybody’s just a number to me and they’re all the same. And then at a certain point, it slipped and he started talking about one of them and it was just so clearly obsessive. He remembered the first moment that he’d ever seen her in a level of detail that was just extraordinary. And we thought, okay, if we can get him, we can get him back here. Yeah, at trial, if we can take him to this place.

Brendan Roediger [00:18:09 – 00:18:34]

And luckily he did. We also, we had very little. But what we did find was eventually, about two thirds of the way through the case, we found a burner phone that he had purchased for the purposes of having conversations, which allowed us to then go and request new. They keep every phone call forever in the Department of Corrections. So we ended up with a little bit of evidence. The jury hated it.

John Simon [00:18:34 – 00:18:36]

Was it the same guy that salted all.

Brendan Roediger [00:18:36 – 00:18:37]

Same guy.

John Simon [00:18:37 – 00:18:37]

Holy.

Brendan Roediger [00:18:37 – 00:18:38]

Same guy.

John Simon [00:18:38 – 00:18:39]

Well, that’s got to help you a ton.

Erich Vieth [00:18:39 – 00:18:40]

That helps.

Brendan Roediger [00:18:40 – 00:18:51]

Yeah, it helped. And so they, you know, they. They really tried the case on a. Sort of like, the women got together to make it up because of greed sort of theory. And it just.

John Simon [00:18:51 – 00:18:52]

Was it in federal court.

Brendan Roediger [00:18:52 – 00:19:25]

It was in the Western District, and it just did not have legs. And Sue McGraw was lead trial counsel on it, and she crossed him and, you know, the case, it was a. It was a well tried case all around, but her cross of the defendant was just. The case was over at the End of that. So we got a, got a substantial verdict and. But the most incredible thing, you know, we stuck around to talk to the jurors and we had had them from, from day one. And in fact, that, you know, you always have the juror that you’re the most afraid of, the one who you think, man, I should have paid more

John Simon [00:19:25 – 00:19:26]

attention to that person.

Brendan Roediger [00:19:27 – 00:19:32]

He said the hardest thing was going home and not talking to my wife. So I would just cry in the shower.

John Simon [00:19:32 – 00:19:34]

No. Yeah. Wow. Yeah.

Brendan Roediger [00:19:34 – 00:19:36]

And I was like, wow, did I misread.

Erich Vieth [00:19:36 – 00:19:37]

Wow.

Brendan Roediger [00:19:37 – 00:20:02]

And we had a client who, she wouldn’t mind me saying this because she is, she is kicking butt in life. We had a client who was really in a bad place and they could see it, and they gave her an enormous amount of money and they were terrified of giving her that money. And they cornered me and, and sue and they said, you have to promise that you won’t give her that money. We think she’s gonna die if you do that.

John Simon [00:20:02 – 00:20:03]

Yeah.

Brendan Roediger [00:20:03 – 00:20:06]

And it was the sweetest. Yeah, it was the sweetest thing.

John Simon [00:20:06 – 00:20:12]

What a great jury. So were these clients long term incarceration or was it short term? Long term.

Brendan Roediger [00:20:13 – 00:20:14]

Long term, yeah.

John Simon [00:20:14 – 00:20:17]

Were they still incarcerated at the time of the, the trial? Some of them are.

Brendan Roediger [00:20:17 – 00:20:28]

1, 1, 1 was. The rest were out. Everybody has their horror story about somebody they got a lot of money that blew it. And if you don’t have your own, you’ve heard it from.

John Simon [00:20:28 – 00:20:28]

Sure.

Brendan Roediger [00:20:29 – 00:20:48]

A friend who got somebody a lot of money who blew it. And so the word that gets around between lawyers is like, oh, you know, people get money and they mess up their lives. I think the more common story is that for the first time ever, people get to relax, they get to get good therapy. These women, to a woman, their lives are incredible.

John Simon [00:20:48 – 00:20:50]

Every one of them, terrific.

Brendan Roediger [00:20:50 – 00:21:01]

Every one of them bought a small house on a few acres. Right. He wanted the piece of that. Every one of them is in therapy. Every one of them is doing well.

John Simon [00:21:02 – 00:21:04]

That’s a, that’s a great, great, great result.

Erich Vieth [00:21:06 – 00:21:08]

Do you have more pending cases of this sort going on?

Brendan Roediger [00:21:09 – 00:21:46]

So we have, you know, the, the oddest case that I have right now is this highway patrol, stolen nudes. This is a trooper down around the Arkansas border who was pulling women over in order to demand their phones. So a significant number of people keep their insurance on their phone. With this particular officer, even if they didn’t, he would say, well, I need to see that it’s current, so I need to see it on your phone. He would take the phone back to his car. He would. He learned to very quickly do a deep search of phones, and he would attempt to find intimate images. And then he was smart enough.

Brendan Roediger [00:21:46 – 00:22:15]

I did air quotes there, which don’t work on a podcast, but he was smart enough to. To take pictures of it instead of sending it to himself. And eventually, a couple of women on the same day had the same feeling. It really got uncovered because of a feeling. So they both left the traffic stops and went, that. That guy’s off. That was weird. And they both did the same thing, which is they looked in their iPhone at the thing that tells you what activity.

Brendan Roediger [00:22:15 – 00:22:31]

I don’t have an iPhone. I’m an Android guy. But there’s an activity log. And they saw what activity took place while the traffic stop was going on, and they called the troopers. And initially the troopers said, no way. No way. Good guy. I know him.

Brendan Roediger [00:22:32 – 00:22:42]

But they started a Facebook campaign of sorts, of forced the troopers to take it seriously. They launched an investigation. Ultimately, the FBI took it over. And he’d been doing this to a ton of people.

John Simon [00:22:43 – 00:22:43]

Wow.

Erich Vieth [00:22:43 – 00:22:48]

You mentioned Sue. Sue McGraw. She’s your colleague at St. Louis University as well.

Brendan Roediger [00:22:48 – 00:22:51]

She is my colleague and my favorite lawyer. That is correct.

John Simon [00:22:51 – 00:22:52]

Yeah.

Brendan Roediger [00:22:52 – 00:23:25]

So sue runs the criminal clinic and has been running the. So I’ve been at SLU for 17 years. She’s been there maybe 25 years, doing both state and federal criminal cases, teaching students how to do misdemeanors all the way to death penalty cases. And a few years ago, I convinced sue to dabble in civil cases with me, because I don’t know if you guys feel the same way, but trying cases with a friend is a good.

John Simon [00:23:25 – 00:23:26]

It’s a great thing.

Brendan Roediger [00:23:26 – 00:23:26]

It’s a good thing.

John Simon [00:23:26 – 00:23:27]

It’s a great thing.

Brendan Roediger [00:23:27 – 00:23:31]

And it has to be a friend that you can yell at and get over it.

John Simon [00:23:31 – 00:23:31]

Yes.

Brendan Roediger [00:23:31 – 00:23:47]

And sue is that we fight, including in front of students. We fight. And that’s good for students to see. Right. That you. You care about this stuff and you fight. But in the end, she’s the best lawyer I know. And it’s, you know, it’s my honor to be able to do cases with her.

Brendan Roediger [00:23:47 – 00:23:52]

And, you know, I talked about the Kansas City case with the. The women that result is because of her.

John Simon [00:23:52 – 00:23:58]

That’s. I mean, the. The. Shared. Just the shared experience of going through trial once with somebody. It’s pretty cool. Yeah, it’s pretty cool.

Erich Vieth [00:23:58 – 00:23:59]

Great. Yeah.

Brendan Roediger [00:23:59 – 00:24:04]

We have a. A case in the. In the city in which the.

Erich Vieth [00:24:04 – 00:24:04]

You.

Brendan Roediger [00:24:04 – 00:24:17]

I mean, everybody sees the news about the St. Louis City Justice Center. So this case, get this, this young woman, she’s picked up on a trespassing charge for urban exploring. Do you guys know what urban exploring is?

John Simon [00:24:17 – 00:24:18]

Oh, yeah.

Brendan Roediger [00:24:18 – 00:24:21]

Eric, go ahead. You’re. You’re an urban explorer. Tell us.

Erich Vieth [00:24:21 – 00:24:22]

You’re talking about the photography.

Brendan Roediger [00:24:23 – 00:24:25]

They go into abandoned places.

John Simon [00:24:25 – 00:24:25]

Yeah.

Erich Vieth [00:24:25 – 00:24:26]

Okay, I’ve done this.

Brendan Roediger [00:24:26 – 00:24:27]

Technically, trespassing.

Erich Vieth [00:24:27 – 00:24:28]

Yes.

Brendan Roediger [00:24:28 – 00:24:31]

But nobody’s there. Nobody’s been there for 20 years. And they take cool pictures.

Erich Vieth [00:24:31 – 00:24:34]

Okay, so that’s what some of them, most of them just there for the images.

Brendan Roediger [00:24:35 – 00:24:45]

Just the images. They’re not stealing copper. They’re looking at old stuff. And of course, St. Louis is full of old, empty stuff. So she gets arrested for this. It’s a crime. I’m not denying it’s a crime.

Brendan Roediger [00:24:45 – 00:25:15]

She goes to the St. Louis City Justice Center. She is in the pre admission part of the St. Louis City Justice Center. So the City justice center, you got the cop part, you got the sheriff part, you got the city part. She’s in pre admission. The place is so dysfunctional that she is in a cell next to a male cell, not supposed to be the case, separated only by a glass partition. You can imagine what that results in without me saying anything.

Brendan Roediger [00:25:15 – 00:25:31]

Men take advantage of the glass partition. They leave the cell door to the men’s cell open and the cell door to the women’s cell is open from the outside, but not the inside. Meaning she couldn’t get out. But they could get in. But they could get in.

John Simon [00:25:31 – 00:25:31]

Oh, man.

Brendan Roediger [00:25:32 – 00:25:48]

And she is sexually assaulted. And the city of St. Louis is arguing official immunity. And so that’s the. I’m sure you’re familiar with that battle. So that’s the battle that. That we’re currently in.

Erich Vieth [00:25:48 – 00:25:54]

So the whole reason for her being there is that she was found taking pictures in a building.

Brendan Roediger [00:25:54 – 00:25:58]

Correct? Correct. And she has. She. She’s just gotten there. She’s in the pre admission.

John Simon [00:25:59 – 00:26:05]

What the hell were they thinking? Just put her in that situation to be. I mean, we were describing it. I’m like, yeah, bad. Something bad’s going to happen.

Brendan Roediger [00:26:05 – 00:26:11]

Their answer, I mean that, you know, their answer is we messed up. Wasn’t on purpose.

Erich Vieth [00:26:11 – 00:26:15]

I didn’t know that something like a trespassing would end up with someone in a. In confinement.

Brendan Roediger [00:26:15 – 00:26:26]

Yeah, I think people are, you know, routinely jailed for things that would surprise us, at least for short periods of time. I mean, so much is left to officers discretion in those situations.

Erich Vieth [00:26:26 – 00:26:32]

You know, I’ve got some beautiful. I’ll say it this way, I have Some beautiful pictures of old buildings in my home.

Brendan Roediger [00:26:33 – 00:26:35]

I know I’m calling on you as soon as I leave here, and,

Erich Vieth [00:26:37 – 00:26:47]

and I, and I thought this is my little, you know, fantasy that if I’m in front of a judge and they say, well, you shouldn’t have been in that building, I would just say, judge, can I show you these cool pictures?

Brendan Roediger [00:26:48 – 00:26:49]

That it wouldn’t.

Erich Vieth [00:26:49 – 00:26:50]

That it would never end.

John Simon [00:26:50 – 00:26:54]

Depending on the judge, maybe that might work. I know some judges that might not, you know, float.

Erich Vieth [00:26:54 – 00:26:58]

So I just, I just didn’t know. I mean, it’s a terrible, terrible story.

Brendan Roediger [00:26:59 – 00:27:30]

And as you know, from, you know, the type of work you do, the, you know, there’s sort of two ways around the official immunity and the, the one is malice, and the other is that it was not discretionary, that it was a ministerial requirement, and the court has just been chipping away at that ministerial now for a decade. But in our particular case, you got some good facts. There are some very serious rules. So there is a state statute that says men and women shall never mix. Yeah, right. Which does not feel discretionary. Right, right. But who knows what the Supreme Court would say about that these days?

John Simon [00:27:30 – 00:27:34]

I mean, the facts, the facts carry the case, even in my opinion.

Brendan Roediger [00:27:34 – 00:27:34]

Yeah.

John Simon [00:27:35 – 00:27:42]

You know, when you’re in front of a judge, a court of appeals panel or a jury, the facts carry the day, you know, and that case has

Brendan Roediger [00:27:42 – 00:27:58]

some facts, but that one. So the sort of, you know, the men and women shall not meet. That one feels. Feels good to me. What feels even better to me are the particular rules for the Justice Center. So doors have to be locked. That feels ministerial.

John Simon [00:27:58 – 00:27:59]

Door wasn’t locked.

Brendan Roediger [00:27:59 – 00:28:13]

Door wasn’t locked. The women are supposed to be separated from the men by cinder blocks. So there’s a cell that’s particularly for the women, which is not visible. That’s an actual regulation. That does not feel.

John Simon [00:28:13 – 00:28:13]

No, I.

Brendan Roediger [00:28:14 – 00:28:18]

Discretionary. I agree with you. And so I, you know, I, I’m with you.

John Simon [00:28:18 – 00:28:20]

I think we’re getting pretty concrete to me.

Brendan Roediger [00:28:20 – 00:28:23]

I think we’re getting to a jury, and I think a jury’s going to be angry.

John Simon [00:28:23 – 00:28:25]

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

Erich Vieth [00:28:25 – 00:28:48]

So tell me, let’s put all your pieces together. You teach at the university, but you’re a practicing lawyer, and there’s a clinic. And so I’m, of course wondering to what extent, if any, do the students help you with any of your cases? And then I believe you’re associated with another firm in addition to all this. But can you, can you put all that together? What, like, how do you fit in the world of law here as far as.

Brendan Roediger [00:28:48 – 00:29:14]

Yeah. So my, my full time, you know, most of my life job is. Is St. Louis University School of Law, and I run a clinic. And that clinic does a combination of what you could call short term and long term litigation. So I love civil rights cases. They are terrible for students because they take forever and they have huge periods of time where nothing happens.

John Simon [00:29:14 – 00:29:14]

Right.

Brendan Roediger [00:29:14 – 00:30:09]

There are interlocutory appeals in most federal civil rights cases, and those interlocutory appeals with the sort of rate at which the 8th Circuit is deciding things, you can have just months and months and months where not much is going on, or at least not much visible is going on. So I. I try to have this perfect mix that I never, ever get to of complex civil rights litigation. Complex to me, and consumer and landlord tenant cases. So that there are cases that students can see the beginning and the end of and have a lot of client contact. And then there are cases where students can learn how to write long briefs. And I have not had a single semester where I got that balance right, but someday I will get it. So we do a fair number of those serious jail, death, prison death, jail, sex assault, prison sex assault cases with students.

Brendan Roediger [00:30:09 – 00:30:50]

That means that clinic has to be both about law and about trauma. Making sure that students have the ability to enter into that world of very traumatic litigation with a lot of reflection, a lot of opportunities to talk about things I’ve had, you know, over the years, that’s probably the thing I’ve learned the most about is, you know, like, they’re not getting the chance to ease in. They’re like, one day they’re coming into clinic and if they happen to go through a file folder, they might see autopsy photos. And so I need to spend the beginning of the semester making sure that students know what they’re prepared to do. And frankly, because some students come with their own experiences, have the opportunity to opt out.

John Simon [00:30:50 – 00:30:51]

Right.

Brendan Roediger [00:30:51 – 00:30:51]

Of certain things.

John Simon [00:30:51 – 00:30:56]

How many students do you oversee at 8 to 10? 8 to 10? Yeah. That’s a good number.

Brendan Roediger [00:30:56 – 00:31:07]

It’s a good number. Yeah. So eight is sort of the magic. All the clinical folks around the country agree that’s the. That’s the right number. But inevitably there’s one or two that I want and you add them on it is.

John Simon [00:31:07 – 00:31:19]

That’s. That’s a whole different issue with, you know, we have the stress of doing what we’re doing just time wise and all of this, but it’s almost like, you know, PTSD with you. You live with clients and like, oh,

Brendan Roediger [00:31:19 – 00:31:32]

I was so bad at it, John, for so many years too. I think about the students I did harm to because I just, I wasn’t soft enough. And I’m not, you know, I’m not saying that I, you know, that everything needs, the kids need to be coddled or something, but it’s, it’s, you know,

John Simon [00:31:32 – 00:31:47]

I just, I, I have, I go back. Like one of the first med cases I ever handled as, as an attorney was a death case of a young woman. And, and it was a husband, wife, two little kids. And the, the, the woman was my age, you know, and I had two kids. I mean, it’s just, and it affected me so.

Brendan Roediger [00:31:47 – 00:31:48]

Oh my.

John Simon [00:31:48 – 00:32:19]

Significantly. I was at, I couldn’t even like get it off my mind. And the Sad thing is 10 years later I’m going through horrific stuff and I don’t have a, I don’t have the same feeling. Is it bad, you know, that I’m able to go through it without having the same, you know, effect? Am I emotionally numb, I guess, from seeing it so often? And so, you know, so, so much. But I think I kind of just compartmentalize it or set it aside and it certainly has an effect. And I, you know, that’s a great point of getting students adjusted to that.

Brendan Roediger [00:32:19 – 00:33:00]

And I had this tough guy crap that I think we all hear about, you know, like, oh, these new lawyers, they need to be tough kind of stuff. And the truth is some of these students have survived things that I couldn’t imagine. I had a student, and I won’t go into detail, but that survived an act of violence that most of us know about that was, you know, very public. And you know, people come with their own experiences of sexual assault, of gun violence. I had a student that was from a country in South America where their, their father had been assassinated. I mean, you know, they come with a lot already. And it is, it is my job to make sure that I, you know, I am spoon feeding them to some extent, keep moving forward.

John Simon [00:33:00 – 00:33:34]

And it’s, it’s, it’s what we all do. You know, it’s. Think of what we try to do. It’s. And we have somebody very smart, educated, well funded, resources on the other side trying to prevent us from doing what we do. It’s, I tell, I tell some of the younger lawyers, it’s like trying to build a house from nothing. And the difference is you’ve got four or five other contractors on site trying to, to disrupt you, you know, get rid of the logistics, send the materials home. Two teams going, right? Exactly.

Erich Vieth [00:33:34 – 00:33:35]

One is putting in the wires.

John Simon [00:33:35 – 00:33:41]

One’s ripping it out. Ripping it out. It’s. Yeah, if we could just do it in the vacuum, it’d be a lot

Erich Vieth [00:33:41 – 00:33:54]

easier, you know, Brendan, thank you for being here. It’s been a great conversation so far and we will be continuing it. Thank you for agreeing to come back and talk some more with us. This has been another episode of the Jury Is Out. I’m Erich Vieth.

John Simon [00:33:54 – 00:33:56]

I’m John Simon. We’ll see you next time.

Tim Cronin [00:33:59 – 00:34:39]

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 commentshejuryisout Law and subscribe today. Because the best lawyers never stop learning.

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