ACTS LAW hour – Episode 7

Episode 7 – December 2nd, 2017

Episode Highlights:

• • • Nutribullet
    • Trainning for a trial
    • Jury Poisoning
    • Pain and Suffering
    • Assumption to the Risk

ACTS LAW hour today with:

Danny Abir

Partner
E-mail Attorney

[player id=1882]

Read the Transcript

[music]

Lorraine Love: Good Afternoon Los Angeles. This is Talk Radio 790 KABC. Welcome to the ACTS LAW Hour, heard every Saturday at noon, providing you with solid information from our good friends at Abir Cohen Treyzon and Salo, the ACTS LAW firm. That’s A-C-T-S Law. Find them at actslaw.com. Knowledge is power and power is knowledge. The ACTS LAW Hour wants to empower you today and here he is, the managing partner at ACTS LAW, Danny Abir, along with me, Lorraine Love.

Danny Abir: Good Morning, Lorraine. How are you?

Lorraine: Good Morning. Good. How are you?

Danny: How was your Thanksgiving?

Lorraine: It was great. How was yours?

Danny: [sighs] Don’t even go there. [chuckles]

Lorraine: Ate too much, right? [laughs]

Danny: How can we ever get away with Thanksgiving and not eating?

Lorraine: I know.

Danny: We should do something about that, right?

Lorraine: Well, you know, it’s one day a year.

Danny: Yes, but it’s one day and then you’re going to have to work out every single day for the next month, just to burn off that one day. I mean, it’s crazy.

Lorraine: Right, and fit in those holiday dresses. Well, you don’t have to wear the holiday dresses. [laughs]

Danny: You don’t know that. I’m happy to welcome my partner, Boris Treyzon, finally to the show.

Lorraine: I get to meet the Treyzon in the ACTS.

Danny: He’s the Mr. T is A-C-T-S.

Lorraine: You’re the T. Hello.

Danny: I’ve been meaning to bring him on the show, but he keeps refusing because he was in trial up in Madera up to a couple of days ago for about four to six weeks. This was supposed to be a four to six-day trial, which ended up being a four to six-week trial. He told me when it got to the second or third week, that either I find a good divorce lawyer because his wife was not going to put up with this anymore.

Lorraine: She was tired of it.

Danny: She was tired of–

Lorraine: I want my honey home.

Danny: He kept going back and forth. Three-hour drives. How are you Boris?

Boris Treyzon: Back and forth. Three-hour drives. [laughs]

Lorraine: Boris, I feel your pain because I did radio for a long time in Fresno and so, Fresno is not too far from Madera.

Boris: Well, it wasn’t the pain. It’s a lovely town. It has lovely people. It was a fascinating experience. It was a very complicated case. To this day, having done this for 20 years, I never stopped be fascinating that at the end of the day 12 people in a box who know nothing about law, end up getting it right.

Danny: It’s crazy.

Lorraine: It is crazy.

Danny: It’s funny. Every single trial is different. The fact pattern are different, but also people sitting in the jury are different, so their take is different.

Lorraine: That’s what makes your job different daily and exciting, right?

Danny: Boris gets to enjoy that, right?

Boris: Actually, I can’t imagine doing anything other than that. My wife laughs that if I will ever retire, my first post-retirement activity will be to go to another trial because this is what I really love to do.

[laughter]

Lorraine: You’re going to sit on the jury if you ever retire.

Boris: Actually, it’s funny. While this trial was going, I received a jury service summons, which I would never miss, but I had to call the presiding judge and said, “But I am on trial.” He goes, “That’s okay. Stop by right afterwards. We’ll find a place to put you in.”

Lorraine: We usually start the show with some current events. I just wanted to bring up, since I have both you guys here, I continue to see the NutriBullet all over the news. I saw it. What’s the latest going on with that? I know we spoke about it last week and we’ve talked about it in the past weeks, but what’s going on now with the NutriBullet?

Danny: I think last week we were at about 30 cases, if I’m not mistaken. We are at over 55 now.

Lorraine: I have a question.

Danny: Go ahead.

Lorraine: How many does it take to do a class action lawsuit?

Danny: Actually, just one.

Lorraine: Really?

Danny: Yes, all you need is one class rep. In order to start a class action, you need one class rep. These cases are not a class action. These cases are a mass action or mass tort. This is a number of people who’ve all been injured by the same machine, by the same company. Their injuries are different because they’re basically personal injuries. Somebody got a second degree burn. The other person may also have a second degree burn, but different parts of the body. It may affect one person one way, another person another way. Because of that, because the injuries are different from person to person, each person has an individual case against the defendant in that matter.

Lorraine: Some of these injuries are severe.

Boris: Some of these injuries are nothing short of horrific. We have people whose entire lives were not only upended, but essentially ruined. We have one client who is one of the most wonderful human beings I’ve ever met and her life has been nothing, but destroyed by it. Not only did she lose the use of her hand, she lost her career. The level of depression that she has is nothing short of extraordinary. I think she went through– What is it? five, six surgeries.

Danny: Five and one more coming, actually.

Boris: There’s talks about all kinds of post-treatment things that she has to continue to do.

Lorraine: Can you talk about what her injury was?

Boris: Basically, a machine that she was using, according to the way a machine is to be used, malfunctioned and the blade essentially chopped into her right hand and the end result looked something out of Phantasmagoria, for those people who still remember that.

Danny: I think Freddy Krueger for our generation more. Boris is from an older generation.

[laughter]

Boris: I see. [inaudible 00:06:00]

[laughter]

Having said that, we always understand that the injuries to our clients do not stop with this bodily injury. It goes way past that. There’s psychological injury that happens and it affects their families, affects their loved ones. What is even worse is, this particular person was actually she was on TV. I don’t remember what show, but she was on TV and she was an on-air support personality. That ended. Our jobs are part of our identity. We get up in the morning, we brush our teeth, we put on clothes, we go to work. This is part of who we are and what makes us. You take that out of existence and you take an attractive, vibrant woman who was a ball of energy and you reduce her to dealing with pain of a destroyed right dominant hand and then you go from that and you go, “Why does it happen?” People have a lot of free time. They begin to wonder why it happened. What’s going to happen with my life? There’s just a black pit spinning down into oblivion.

Lorraine: How sad. Poor thing, and that’s one case.

Danny: That’s one case. Also, the psychological pain is one thing. This is almost two years later and she still has physical pain. She’s in constant pain. The surgeries have not been able to eliminate that and the options she has in order to be able to eliminate the pain without pain medication, which as we know, have their own issues.

Lorraine: She’s had five or six surgeries?

Danny: She’s had five surgeries. There’s a sixth surgery coming up and she’s still in pain.

Lorraine: Are they hoping that the sixth surgery will be her last?

Boris: We know that’s not going to be her last. She will require medical treatment for the rest of her life. More importantly, the fact that she has an on-going pain, there is post-surgical intervention. There’s pain management. There’s a spinal nerve implant that has to be done. There’s all kinds of stuff that needs to happen.

Lorraine: Would you say she was the most severely injured?

Boris: This kind of goes back to your question, why is it in a class action? In order to have a class action, you have to have injuries that are similar. Because we’re human beings, all of our injuries are very different from one to another. Your pain tolerance can be different than my pain tolerance. I would probably say the results of these injuries are one of the most severe we have seen, but our other clients–

Lorraine: I’ve seen pictures. The poor lady with her face.

Danny: One of the things you have to look at is you brought a blender. We talked about this last week. It’s like a ticking time bomb. People are using and using and using, that at some point it’s exploding. Do you ever think that when you’re buying a blender, you’re buying a bomb? You never expect your blender to explode on you. That’s one of things we have to look at. That’s the way you look at this. A product that is exploding and the consumer’s expectation is never that it will explode on you.

In the next segment, we can talk about the anatomy of trial and how jury trials are so interesting. We have someone who was in a jury trial for the past four to five weeks right here with us and Boris, so we can talk about it. Boris was pointing out to me, it was six weeks, not five. He counted every single hour.

Boris: It’s six weeks, one day, two hours, and 17 minutes, but who’s counting.

Lorraine: But who’s counting, besides your wife. [laughs]

Danny: I promise you, it’s going to be very interesting because what you see in the movies is nothing close to reality. I think it’ll be fun to hear from Boris about jury trials.

Lorraine: Yes, it’ll be really fun. We’re going to take a quick break and when we come back, we’ll continue our conversation with our guest lawyer, Boris Treyzon. If you have any questions, go ahead and give us a call, 800-222-5222. We would love to hear from you. You’re listening to the ACTS LAW Hour with Danny Abir and me, Lorraine Love on Talk Radio 790 KABC.

Lorraine: This is Talk Radio 790 KABC, welcome back to the ACTS LAW Hour, heard every Saturday at noon, providing you with solid information from our good friends at the ACTS LAW firm. That’s A-C-T-S Law. Find them at actslaw.com. If you have any questions or you’re looking for advice, go ahead and give us a call right now, 800-222-5222. I’m Lorraine Love, and I’m here with your host, Danny Abir. Also, we have got Boris Treyzon with us today.

Danny: Mr T, it is so interesting we were talking on the break about how this was a six-week trial. It is like Gilligan’s Island. It’s supposed to go on a three-hour tour and it ends up being like a lifetime confinement in an island. Boris, was supposed to go for four or five-day trial then it ended up being six weeks which I’m sure it wasn’t anything short of incredibly fun and fantastic.

Boris: Yes, there’s just so much things you can do in the middle of trial, but when you don’t plan for it being that long, it certainly throws the rest of your life into upheaval. We had a amazing judge who was really smart and introspective. He took longer than we expected. We started with a prospective pool of 170 people and to whittle that down to 12 with a couple of alternates, that took a little bit of time.

Lorraine: That’s what’s so fascinating to me. What’s the number one reason would you say that you get somebody out of the jury? That you don’t want somebody sitting on your jury?

Boris: Because I don’t think they’re good for my client.

Lorraine: Sometimes they say, “If somebody is married to a police officer or is a police officer or married to an attorney,” or any of those things, does it vary from case to case?

Boris: Well, of course. It depends how you try to understand if a person has a predisposition to believe something, like the case I dealt with is a case involving horrible brain injuries to a 22-year-old who decided to go bull riding. Now, the number one question people said, “Well, he decided to go Bull riding,” right?

Lorraine: Yes.

Boris: The answer is yes, he did and he is responsible for it, because at the end of the day, all questions come down to personal responsibility. Our jobs as lawyers and as protagonists for our clients is to put on the jury that gives them the best outcome. Frankly, that has the most open mind. The reality is we all have biases. You might be biased against black cats or you might be biased against people who limp or you might be biased against people from a particular country.

Not going to the questions of racism or going into the question of sexism, people have biases that what’s makes us human. It’s part of our anatomy. At the of the day, the whole process of selecting jurors is trying to understand their biases. Things like being married to a police officer. Well, I guess it can be part of the determination, but I’m happy to take any 12 people of the street as long as they have open minds and they’re willing to follow the law.

Lorraine: Okay, was the guy that you were up there during the trial for, was he a professional bull rider or he just decided to hop on a bull and ride a bull?

Boris: That was his second time getting on a bull in his life. He just thought it looked cool. Now he’s missing the frontal lobes of his brain.

Lorraine: How sad.

Boris: Yes, it is very sad he had no business being permitted to be put on a bull, but the same way he has rights to bring his claim the people who put on the rodeo really should have done more to prevent this from happening. It’s not that they allowed him to get on the bull. If that was the case, there would be no case, because he voluntarily got on the bull. They did everything wrong and we had actually a terrific witness. This guy was a rodeo champion. He is a professional stuntman in Hollywood, his name is Dale Gibson who was nothing short of an incredible guy. He testified in the trial and I think that what’s really moved the jury. He said, “Look, me in my best years or any champion bull rider could not have gotten out of that ball without being seriously injured because of all of the errors the rodeo promoters did.”

Lorraine: Okay.

Danny: That’s one of the things Boris get pointing out the fact that he had done this. This was the second time he’s getting on there. The promoter or whoever is there, they are supposed to create a condition where at least someone who is an expert and a professional, would not get hurt. These were circumstances that it didn’t matter how good you were at bull riding. You would still have an issue. That’s a big thing.

Lorraine: Yes, that’s scary.

Danny: One of the things by the way, Boris says is the fact that we have 17 lawyers in the office was such a fantastic thing in this situation, because when we have you and two other attorneys away for six weeks, the firm was still going forward and everything was going as planned, right?

Boris: I’m glad you say that because I came into my office and my desk looked like it was basically recycling bin from paper company. I’m going to take your word for it, I’m going to hold you to it. If we can have recording of this part of it so I can play it back to him later on, that’d be great.

Lorraine: Next week when you’re still going through all the papers that are all over.

Danny: One of the things I thought is interesting to talk about is basically, the concept of jury poisoning which is a concept very familiar to us as plaintiff’s lawyers. It started, I think with, the McDonald’s case, McDonald’s coffee case which a lot of people, a lot of people and I mean that unless you’re really familiar with what happened, a lot of people have this idea that, “Oh, my God, who doesn’t know that coffee is hot and it would burn you if you are driving or putting it between your legs and it is going to burn you significantly.”

Anybody who would actually be going after McDonald’s for something like that, is just after money. That concept was planted in their head. That’s the concept of poisoning by big corporations against basically so that plaintiff lawyers when they go in front of the jury in a situation when there’s liability, they would be facing bigger hurdles. The reality of that case is something that I think Boris can talk about and how the reality was so different than what was projected to people.

Boris: Well, it’s interesting in this particular file that we did. The first question I asked the jury was, “Well, how many of you think there’s too many lawsuits?”

Lorraine: That is a great question.

Boris: Everybody raised their hands. I think if somebody would have asked me, I would have raised my hand. I asked the gentleman who was sitting in the chair and I ask him, “Well, why?” He said, “Well, think of McDonald’s coffee,” and McDonald’s coffee has become a rallying cry, but the question needs to be asked, rallying cry for who? What people don’t know is that the woman who got injured, she did not buy the coffee. It was bought by, I think, it was her nephew her grandson. The coffee was at something like 185 degrees which is capable of causing injury and I think she got third degree burns to her genitals. This is an elderly woman, she needed massive amount of surgery and I think three. The only thing she asked for for McDonald’s is to pay for the surgeries and they refused.

At the end when the verdict came down she said, “Look, I still only want you to pay for my surgeries. I don’t want all of this money,” and that’s when the Justice actually got done because at least when the final settlement came down, I’m sure somebody paid for something, but having said that it became a rallying cry, but it’s essentially a PR stunt by large corporations who are trying to put it out for the public at large because public at large is what is the jury.

Lorraine: Everybody’s always so worried about pain and suffering, what do you get for pain and suffering. How do you determine what pain and suffering is and what someone’s pain and suffering, how it relates to the dollar amount?

Boris: It doesn’t but the only thing we can do is to give people compensation for what they have suffered and the truth of it is I have never asked for money for pain and suffering alone. Money has to have a purpose. If you’re going to give somebody a bunch of money for pain and suffering it doesn’t make sense. As I was told at this particular trial and the jury who actually gave me a lot of money, but they said but we feel pain everyday, nobody’s paying us for it. If you think about it, it’s a fair statement, but having said that these people usually don’t ask for this to happen to them.

I feel the most comfortable if I can tell the jury what the money is for and it could be for rehabilitation, it could be to allow the person to continue their life the way they used to live or it could be of something completely unrelated. In cases of death, very often our clients set up foundations, so the death of their loved ones is not in vain and something good comes out of it, but the defense will always come in and they say, “Well, how will the money make the pain go away?” It doesn’t.

Lorraine: It doesn’t and never will.

Boris: It never will, but what it does it allows something constructive or productive to be put together from the person who got injured.

Lorraine: Is there a formula you go by to try to figure that out? Obviously, it’s case by case.

Boris: There is no formula, it’s all individual.

Lorraine: Interesting. It’s very interesting.

Danny: Why don’t you tell us about how you came up with the formula of the pain and suffering for the bull riding case.

Boris: I asked the jury to give me 50 cents an hour for every hour this young man is going to suffer each of the injuries he suffered.

Danny: He’s 22, he’s going to have to live with traumatic brain injury for the rest of his life, so that is something to look into. Funny enough yesterday, we were brainstorming about another case and we’re saying this woman is going to have pain and suffering for the rest of her life and she’s 40 years old. Let me ask you, let’s say you have some disfigurements on your hand. Being an attractive woman you’re going to be out there and you’re going to have a disfigurement on your hand. What is that worth? The thing is we can’t ask what can I pay you to disfigure your hand.

That’s not the way to do it, but the thing is how you justify that, how do you quantify that and that’s again the difference between a man and a woman. For a man having cuts or disfigurement in their hand, may or may not be as big of a deal as a woman and that makes a big difference, don’t you think?

Lorraine: I agree.

Boris: It absolutely does but more importantly I think it goes to the next question and the next question is without exception if I will ask any of our clients, “Would you like to have the money or would or would you like to have the hand back?”

Lorraine: They’d all say, hand back.

Boris: Without a hesitation, without even a pause, but the one thing jury can not do, it can not give them the hand back. As a society, we have different value system. The old question the plaintiff’s lawyers always ask when the pilot is flying a plane and there is a malfunction, we don’t tell them please try to save the plane. We tell them eject, save yourself because you’re worth more than a plane at any price.

Danny: Boris mentioned assumption of the risks, so let’s got to our break and then when we come back we’ll talk more about the concept of assumption of the risk and how does that play into a trial and a case like this.

Lorraine: Perfect. We’re going to take a quick break and when we come back, we will continue our conversation with our guest lawyer today, Boris Treyzon. If you have any questions call us at 800-222-5222 and you’re listening to the ACTS LAW Hour with Danny Abir and me, Lorraine Love on Talk Radio 790 KABC.

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Lorraine: This is Talk Radio 790, welcome back to the ACTS LAW Hour, heard every Saturday at noon, providing you with solid information from our good friends at the ACTS LAW firm. That’s A-C-T-S law. Find them at actslaw.com. If you have any questions or you’re looking for any advice or you have a NutriBullet and you have any questions about that, give us a call here at the station. We’d love to hear from you, 800-222-5222. I’m Lorraine Love, along with our host, Danny Abir.

Danny: Actually before talking about assumption of the risk, one of the things that I forgot to talk about is the fact that you’ve had two major civil rights cases in 2017 that you dealt with. One was in South Ford, the other one was the Abrego trial that we went through. South Ford ended up in a settlement Abrego had a verdict. Why don’t we talk about civil rights because we have a couple of very big civil rights cases still in the office that we’re going to be dealing with I think more in 2018 which we can talk about as well.

Boris: Sure, we have two cases in the office right now that are both death cases. One involved a beautiful young woman who graduated law school. Her name was Michelle Shirley. She was killed by Torrance Police Department. Michelle suffered from bipolar disorder and we don’t know what happened, but we do know that when she was driving in Torrance she was pulled over by the police. They stopped her. We have a video of her stop and then police fired 32 shots into her car.

Lorraine: 32?

Boris: Yes, 32. They hit their own cars which leads us to believe that’s not exactly–

Lorraine: Was she by herself?

Boris: She was by herself. We know she was involved in some sort of an auto accident immediately prior to that because there’s a video of her being involved in an accident driving, but what we don’t know is, she was a lovely African-American woman driving in Torrance and the next thing that happens is police fires 32 shots into her car. Now, at the time that happened on October 31st and a police said they did that in order to protect the children who were coming out of school and they said, “We’re going to trick and treat.” so apparently, an immobilized car is significantly more dangerous than 32 shots flying around.

Lorraine: Well, exactly. Can you imagine 32 shots? That could hit any one of those children. Now, did she have any guns or anything like that?

Boris: She had nothing. She was in a car. She was driving. From what we can tell, she was not armed. She wasn’t a danger to anybody other–

Danny: She didn’t have any even a parking ticket as far as her history is concerned.

Lorraine: Wow.

Danny: This is a completely innocent person.

Boris: This is a woman who went to Loyola University Law School in Chicago, graduated. She has a son. This is one of us on any day. We don’t know. The District Attorney is still investigating, but that’s one of the cases. Another case what happened in the office is Tashii Brown Case and that’s an African-American man who was choked to death in Las Vegas casino by a Las Vegas police officer who used an illegal chokehold on him.

Danny: First he tased him.

Boris: He tased him eight times, I think.

Lorraine: Oh, my gosh and why? What were they saying this poor guy did?

Boris: The police said at the time that he was trying to carjack somebody. The small problem with that statement is that the people he was supposedly trying to carjack said, “He wasn’t trying to carjack us. He was asking us a question.”

Lorraine: Oh, my gosh.

Boris: Those are the cases that just pull at your heart strings because those are unnecessary death. No death is necessary obviously, but those are sad and obviously avoidable death.

Lorraine: Right.

Boris: Our goal, whenever we do civil rights cases, is I think it’s part of our, I’m not going to say service to the community because that sounds grandeur than it’s meant to be. It’s part of what plaintiff’s lawyers do. They make sure that everybody is treated equally. The constitution is followed and if there is a violation, the party that caused that violation is held accountable.

Danny: Well, and the Tashii Brown case, the Las Vegas Police Department actually fired the officer who did this and they did say that this was a murder basically and is all forward the case that we settled for 1.5 million last year. One of the good results of that is the body cams and the retraining of the officers.

Boris: Well, I was much more gratified by the retraining of the officers part and even though LAPD says it has absolutely nothing to do with our case. Now, there’s mandatory training instituted for all Los Angeles Police Department officers about how to deal whenever they interact with a person who has a mental disability. The interesting part about it we got to take the deposition of the Chief of Police back. I think the only other time that we got to take the deposition of the Chief of Police was by one of the lawyers in our office Federico [unintelligible 00:34:00] when he represented Rodney King in that case.

Lorraine: That’s right.

Boris: We’re two for two as far as deposing the Chief of Police so far.

Lorraine: [laughs] Wow, that and of course the Rodney King case was unbelievably huge and very much life changing for so many people.

Boris: That’s why we do what we do because plaintiff’s lawyers, a lot of people have their opinions about plaintiff’s lawyers, but I couldn’t be prouder with what I do because as a result of the verdicts that come out or as a result of the community speaking out through the jury, verdicts changes happen and think about the changes that took place after Rodney King. Think about changes that took place after Gizzell Ford. Things about changes hopefully will take place after Michelle Shirley.

Lorraine: So now, because of you guys then the cams are in all of the cop cars, basically?

Danny: Not cop cars, on their uniforms.

Boris: I think Los Angeles Police Department finally deployed body cameras.

Lorraine: Body cameras. Okay, got it.

Boris: Everybody actually, there’s a question that has been always asked is, “Why is it that there’s so many more police shootings recently?” Our answer is, “There’s not more police shootings, everybody has a camera in their pocket now.” There is more recordings on the police shootings.

Lorraine: We know about more of the shootings.

Danny: Even with Michelle Shirley, if you go online, you can find a YouTube video of somebody who was standing across the street taking a video of this woman getting shot and all the cops, all the cars that are surrounding it. This is a mother, again, sitting alone in a car. One of the questions I always pose when we talk about the Michelle Shirley case is she was bipolar and I think she had an episode and that’s probably what was going on, but the key is if this woman, Carrie Fisher, God rest her soul was also bipolar. My understanding is Catherine Zeta-Jones is also bipolar. If either one of those two were sitting behind the wheel of that car, how much do you want to bet that not only would they not draw their guns out, there’s definitely would not have any shooting going on?

Lorraine: Yes.

Danny: Unfortunately and sadly, I think race did have something to play with this.

Lorraine: Sounds like it, and now were the police officers put on probation? Were they fired?

Boris: We’re not aware of them being disciplined in any manner. In fairness, we learned of their actual names only last week.

Danny: About a week ago.

Boris: A week ago because there’s something called Peace Officer Bill of Rights that shields them until there’s mandatory disclosure and our battle always is, “Please identify who are these people? Why they are being hidden from the public introspection? Why aren’t they being held accountable?” That’s one of the things we have to go through.

Lorraine: How many police officers were there involved?

Boris: Three, there were three police officers.

Lorraine: Three and 31 bullets?

Boris: Correct. My assumption is and it’s an assumption, it’s not supported by fact, but somebody had to reload just by the sheer number of bullets.

Lorraine: Yes. That’s a lot.

Boris: I’m making that assumption and it’s possible I guess mathematically that they didn’t, but you fire that many shots.

Lorraine: Yes, I thought you were going to say like 10 police officers or something, but three?

Danny: There were a lot of police officers surrounding her, but the three that were basically shooting are the ones that we’re talking about.

Boris: Or at least the three that were identified by the Torrance Police Department saying they were involved in this. They’re the ones who were shooting.

Lorraine: Okay, wow. Well, I know we’re going to talk about the assumption of risks, so in talking with that I just wanted to know, you’re representing the client, you represent the plaintiff what if something that the client did maybe could be misconstrued or what if something the client did, they have fault in?

Boris: Here’s how we approach it. The truth of the matter is the jury is like a finely tuned BS detector for lack of better word. They will know if you’re dishonest with them so one thing we never do and then say it’s something we drum into every single one of the lawyers word for us is, you can never lie to the jury. You can never mislead the jury. You can’t even try to be less than straightforward honest. What we do is we tell them the brutal truth and like in the trial that we just finished is my opening statement to the jury was, “Bull riding is dangerous. Our client knew that it was dangerous and he got the bull voluntarily.” So you own the bad.

Lorraine: Right.

Boris: You tell them the truth and that’s why we tell our clients under no circumstances, no matter how bad or painful it is, do not lie to the jury, do not lie to us. If you do it will come out, you will lose your case. We will not represent you if we know that you’re being less than honest with us and with the jury, so the greatest lie in the world is the truth as my father always taught me.

Lorraine: Yes, that’s true and if you always tell the truth you don’t have to remember because you’re always telling the truth.

Boris: Just because we bring the claim, doesn’t mean we’re always right. It means we will ask 12 people who are essentially 12 judges sitting in little black robes for practically speaking who are going to be there. They’re going to pronounce the truth and the truth is what the truth is.

Lorraine: Interesting.

Danny: Let’s talk about cost. Let’s talk about basically expert witnesses in the next segment and the last segment. Also, I think a question that’s probably on the minds of anybody listening and anybody who has a problem that goes to an attorney is, “How do you determine who’s the right attorney for you? Who to go to? Who to talk to and who you want as your trial lawyer?” Because being a trial lawyer is a skill set that is acquired and not every attorney has it.

Lorraine: That’s a great point.

Danny: Those are things that I think that goes through the minds of anybody picking an attorney, so we’ll talk about that in the next segment.

Lorraine: Perfect. We’re going to take a quick break and like Danny said, that’s what we’re going to talk about. We’re going to continue our conversation with our guest lawyer, Boris Treyzon, and if you have any questions about NutriBullet, about any cases, if you feel like you are looking for an attorney, give us a call: 800-222-5222. You’re listening to the ACTS LAW Hour with Danny Abir and Lorraine Love on Talk Radio 790 KABC.

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Lorraine: This is TalkRadio 790 KABC. Welcome back to the ACTS LAW Hour heard every Saturday at noon, providing you with solid information from our good friends at the ACTS LAW Firm. That’s A-C-T-S Law. Find them at actslaw.com. If you need any advice, you have any questions, you’re looking for an attorney, let me tell you, these are the guys. Give us a call now: 800-222-5222, I’m Lorraine Love, along with our host, Danny Abir.

Danny: Again, we go on these breaks and we think about all these gems that Boris has had over the past just in 2017 and I forgot to talk about Tyga.

Lorraine: Yes, I want to know. What happened with Tyga?

Boris: Well, Tyga was not really a case, case. What happened is Tyga who is a music performer owed a bunch of money to a bunch of people and people were having difficulty collecting. I think what got everybody excited is he was dating, I think, Kylie Jenner at the time.

Lorraine: Right.

Boris: Any time you have Kardashian or Jenner in the news, well, publicity follows. For us it was a regular case. We didn’t care that it was Kardashians or whether it was Kylie Jenner and frankly, we didn’t think she was that involved in it. However, what happened is because there was a lot of publicity, we had to be extra aggressive and extra quick than probably the case warranted, but we collected the money right away. We got everybody paid and everybody’s happy.

Danny: Twice. One of the areas of practice in the office is judgment collection and we do large judgment collections.

Lorraine: Okay.

Danny: See, when you sue someone and you get a judgment, if you have an insurance company on the other side, you get paid pretty quickly and that’s not an issue. When there isn’t an insurance company on the other side, and sometimes there is an insurance company on the other side by the way, but the insurance has refused to do what they’re supposed to do and then you have a bad faith claim against the insurance company which is also an area of practice for us. Usually when you have a judgment against someone other than an insurance company, collecting is difficult. So, one of the areas of our practice and a specialty of Boris specifically is large judgment collections and these were both very large collections. One of them was close to half a million dollars.

Lorraine: Wow.

Danny: The other one, and the way it happened is that we had a client by the name of Jason of Beverly Hills, Jason the jeweler, you have probably heard of him.

Lorraine: Yes.

Danny: He had basically lent jewelry and sold jewelry to Tyga who had not paid for it or returned it and he had a judgment and he saw us collect on the half million dollar judgment.

Lorraine: Okay.

Danny: He called us and he said, “I’ve had this attorney for two years, we haven’t been able to even get the guy served. Can you guys please come and help me?” I think we collected in what. 3 months?

Boris: I think we collected very quickly and the reason for that is because Tyga had, I guess, a posse around him that prevented him from being served with any summons that we have. We have a great, great process server so what he did is he went to a Tyga show and he got good tickets and he was in the front row. When Tyga was slapping the hands of the infatuating crowds, when he slapped his hand he handed him with a subpoena right there in the middle of a show.

Lorraine: I think I saw that on TMZ. I’m not kidding you. I did, I saw that on TMZ because it was so funny. Now, I know that Tyga always is, “He doesn’t have any money” when he was dating Kylie Jenner, I know I heard that she had paid some of his debt as well.

Boris: We don’t know who paid the debt.

Lorraine: Okay.

Boris: We know that there was a wire that was sent, we received it, our client got paid, we signed documents and it was done.

Lorraine: Wow, so what do you different? You just have the great process server to collect the money and–

Boris: You know what it is? What we do is we have an amazing infrastructure. As Danny mentioned, we have 17 lawyers and you need the depth of the field in order to truly try a case in order to truly handle large cases because you never know when you’re going to go to trial actually because the courts are backed up.

Lorraine: Right.

Boris: So you might start with a five-day trial and end up spending six weeks doing it.

Lorraine: Right.

Boris: You need to have the staff, you need to have experienced staff who will be able to handle the running of the firm because we have cases that go on and it’s never one case. It’s a number of cases. So, the way you need to present yourself and the way you need to probably select the person or the firm that’s going to represent you in a case, is you have to ask them questions. Do you have the depth of the field? Do you have the experience? Do you have the financial wherewithal in order to handle the case? Because cases are expensive.

Lorraine: That’s for sure, and experts cost a lot of money. Also, think about it, you guys have 17 lawyers, how many lawyers were with you in Madera?

Boris: There was me and there was two other lawyers with me in Madera but-

Lorraine: A lot of law firms wouldn’t be able to miss three big lawyers and not be able to continue on and you guys having 17 lawyers, that’s huge.

Boris: It is and that’s what it takes to try a case. You need to have the depth of the bench because while you are out there trying a case, the rest of the cases go forward. As an example, I came back from Madera on Thursday night. On Friday I reported ready for the next trial.

Lorraine: Right.

Boris: Because every trial keeps going and if you’re available, they’re going to put you out there and that’s what it takes. It takes somebody who knows what they’re doing and a firm that has the money to actually properly put on a case. More importantly, has to have other lawyers behind it who are going to be working your case when the trial lawyers are actually trying a different case.

Lorraine: I’m not going to say how I know her, but somebody in my life and she’s in the middle of a lawsuit right now and if I could turn back time, I’d send her to you guys because you guys are awesome.

Boris: Well, thank you for that. Hopefully she is with a law firm that, once again, knows what they’re doing and is handling it well. There’s a lot of wonderful, talented lawyers out there.

Lorraine: Yes, that’s for sure, but thumbs up to you guys for sure.

Danny: Thank you.

Boris: Thank you for that.

Danny: One of the things you asked about how do you do the collection in Tyga’s situation which is if you know how to collect, I think that’s really important. The process server just served them at the summit, but at the same time, after the person comes to a vet or exam, if they don’t come to their exam, you have to know what to do. Like in Tyga’s situation, we got a bench warrant against him and what happened is we timed it in a way that he was in Turks and Caicos with Kylie and had he actually stepped foot in the United States at the airport, he would have been arrested in front of Kylie and all the-

Lorraine: Yes, paparazzi and all that.

Danny: -Paparazzi, so knowing how to and when to time things, knowing what to do at an ORAP or a debtor exam, these are all the different factors that go into collecting a judgment. Doing your background search on the debtor to make sure that they have assets, where the assets are located, if they’ve shifted assets to somebody else throughout the time. These are all different factors that you have to be aware of.

Boris: Well, also an important thing, it comes with a certain knowledge of the business because a lot of these debtors they have corporations and shall set up to move the assets. You have to be able to track it through. You become like a sleuth.

Lorraine: Sneaky, sneaky

Boris: It can be very sneaky, sneaky and especially given the size of some of our cases and some of our judgments. There is a lot of motivation for them to try to move the money offshore or to try to move the money away from our reach. We just persistently and consistently we have experts whose job is to sift through this thousands and thousands of pages of data to look for a needle in the haystack in order to find where it is that they’re hiding the money, how do we recover it for our client. It’s never the same thing. It’s always somebody always comes up who has a new creative way to do it and when they do it, it’s our job to figure it out and just bring it back.

Lorraine: That’s awesome.

Danny: One of the thing about with regards to how you pick your attorney.

Lorraine: Yes, how do you pick an attorney? You said ask the right questions, make sure that they’ve got probably a really good reputation. Google them because nowadays you can find anything out, but what other advice would you give for picking an attorney?

Boris: Well, what I would do is I would say an attorney is like picking a spouse. You have to like him. You start there.

Danny: It’s so funny. You actually read my mind. I wasn’t going as far as the spouse, but how your relationship with your attorney, how you click with them because on your trials, I’ve seen you do this where you spend the month and you spend time with the client, getting to know the client, understanding how the client functions on a daily basis. They become almost friends, family. You have dinners with them, Boris is going to be in trial again in a couple of months, he’s going to dinner with a client this week just to spend time with them, to understand how they function and this is very important.

Boris: We actually do a lot more than that. One, when I have a client, I will go to the client’s house, I’ll shut off my phone, I will talk to a client for days. I want to have dinner with his family, I want to understand what it is that the client lost. What are we trying to compensate for? Think about it, unless you have been gravely injured, you can never put yourself in that person’s shoes because you can’t and you don’t know how. What I do and what other lawyers in our firm do, we come as close as possible to our client.

We go to their houses, we talk to their families, we look for pictures of what life was like before, what the life is like now. We replicate their days in the videos. We said, “Hey, let me see your calendar” and you will see that there, “I went to the get a manicure, I went to a workout, I went to see my grandkids and now I want to see a pain doctor, I want to see an orthopedist, I want to see a neurologist.” The joy of life that comes with everyday activity has been replaced with the search for a pain relief.

Lorraine: You know that’s unbelievable because you’re looking for the sympathy, you’re looking for the empathy, you’re looking for all of that.

Boris: Actually we don’t. I never ask for sympathy, because that’s not the rule. I’m asking for an understanding, I’m asking for justice, I’m asking for just compensation for what our clients lost and that’s what we try to accomplish. One thing I tell them, I go, “I never want your sympathy. I want your empathy, but I certainly don’t want your sympathy.”

Lorraine: It’s good that you’re sympathetic.

Boris: Listen, you always want to have a sympathetic journey because my job is to put the jurors’ minds inside my client’s suffering. If I can do that, that’s when the justice for my client will be achieved.

Danny: Yesterday, I had a meeting with a new client and I was sitting there, she had a previous attorney. We were talking about it and I was saying to myself, “I have no idea how this attorney had treated this person.” She’s all like, “Well, I didn’t have this relationship. When I sat down I met with the attorney it was very boom business like and he really didn’t care about what he was going to do to me.”

The word to the wise, when you’re picking your attorneys, go beyond that first phone call. Get to know them, understand if this is someone who really cares about your case and what’s going on in your life. We’re almost at the end the show less than a minute left. I want to thank Boris Treyzon for taking time after a six-week trial to come to the radio station with us and spend time with us.

Lorraine: Yes, thank you, Boris.

Danny: I will look forward to next week and a new show on a different topic.

Lorraine: Perfect. Thanks for joining us today at the ACTS LAW Hour. Knowledge is power and power is knowledge and I hope we’ve empowered you today. Make sure you keep listening to Talk Radio 790 KABC. Thank you to our host, Danny Abir and to our guest, Boris Treyzon for the great content and of course to you, our listeners. We do it for you. I’m Lorraine Love, and this is Talk Radio 790 KABC.

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