January 17, 2025

“Mindset was the anchor that kept us steady during the storm. Recognizing and naming our fears didn’t make them disappear, but it allowed us to take control and refocus. We shifted to trust—trust in ourselves, trust in our preparation, and trust in the jury. That confidence transformed how we presented our case. The work we did on our mindset wasn’t just part of the process; it was the reason we walked into that courtroom ready to win.”

– Nick Loizzi

Podcast Transcript

Sari de la Motte: Well, welcome, everyone to another episode of From Hostage to Hero. Sari de la Motte here with some very, very special guests. We have Nick Loizzi and Shauna Reitz, along with Coach Jody because she’s here because I want her on all the podcasts, and no, she’s not in my basement this time. She’s actually back home. I’ve allowed her to see her family for a few days before taking her captive again. But we are here to talk about the amazing verdict that these two just received a few months ago and hear all about it.

So welcome, Nick, Shauna, and Jody to the podcast.

Nick Loizzi: Hi, everybody. Thanks for having us.

Shauna Reitz: Hi. Yeah, thanks for having us.

Sari de la Motte: Absolutely. So let’s start by talking about how you came into my world, into the H2H world. What brought you to H2H?

Shauna Reitz: Well, I’ll start. It was through our co-counsel on another case who happens to be one of your long-time followers, Tim Whiting. So we were co-counseled with him on a case, and we had this big medical malpractice case and we were really struggling with it, and we had a conversation with Tim and he said, “I know what you have to do. You have to get together with Sari. That’s just the bottom line.” He’s like, “That is what you need,” and so that’s how we came to you.

Nick Loizzi: That’s exactly right. And we really respect him. He’s an excellent lawyer here in Chicago, does trucking litigation, and I think he said something to the effect of you were a genius, Sari.

Shauna Reitz: Yes, he did.

Sari de la Motte: Oh, well, Tim, love you. If you’re listening, and I know you will be. No, the email came in from Tim saying, “I know you don’t work with people one-on-one any more unless they’re in your crew, but you have to take a call at least with these people. They’re amazing.” And so we had that phone call and I brought Jody in to help because I’ve been so busy this year and it ended up being an amazing, amazing thing.

Before we get into that, tell us a little bit, you mentioned you’re in Chicago, I should have said that first, but you’re based there in Chicago. What have you been doing up until this point? What kind of law are you practicing? Have you been to trial a lot? Let our listeners know a little bit about your background, backgrounds.

Nick Loizzi: Yeah, so we have been to trial a lot. We’ve tried a lot of cases. It’s actually interesting because Shauna and I met at a defense firm early in our career. She was actually my boss, believe it or not. And my—

Sari de la Motte: She still is. I mean, come on, let’s just be honest.

Nick Loizzi: My task was to follow her around and learn and watch her try cases. And I did that. And then obviously, we became just more than just co-workers and started dating. And fortunately, the firm that we were at, that was not frowned upon. So we were dating, and then eventually it got to the point where I just thought that we should probably go somewhere else, one of us should go somewhere else.

And so I did and I went and I started doing… And that was a defense firm, by the way. And I started doing plaintiffs work at a really good Chicago firm, and I learned how to do medical malpractice and just the larger cases. And then I received an opportunity to join with another attorney who’s well-established, an older person that had a really good firm, and he had gone through Gerry Spence’s class, and so we became partners. Meanwhile, Shauna was still at the old firm.

And so we got some good verdicts with that other firm. And then the individual was basically talking about retiring at some point, and we just thought that it was a natural point in time to separate. And so I went on my own and just started doing some of the cases that I learned to do when I left the defense firm. And then eventually, Shauna joined me, and that’s what we’ve been doing. So we do a lot of medical malpractice and just larger cases.

Sari de la Motte: Plaintiff work, plaintiff. Yeah.

Shauna Reitz: All plaintiff, 100% plaintiff.

Nick Loizzi: 100%. And the majority of our cases are medical malpractice and just larger catastrophic cases. We try to stay away from the smaller cases. And Tim was actually instrumental with that as well because I know you coached him to work on just what he knows best. And so that’s what we’re trying to do. We’re actually trying to get our caseload down to where we could just focus on just cases like the ones we just tried. And we’ve tried a lot of medical malpractice cases, but this was the largest, in our office at least.

Sari de la Motte: Well, Jody and I have done several podcasts in the last couple of months where we’ve talked about really the winning formula. And it’s so great to have you here because you pretty much did exactly and proved, well, you proved us right, so that’s why we love you actually, which is a couple things. So there was the collaboration part we just think is so huge because when you get so laser-focused on your case and you don’t have the outside point of views, it’s difficult to do what you were able to do here, but also, you put in the time.

And that’s what I keep hearing when we hear about reducing caseloads and niching down and really doing what you do well and taking on the bigger catastrophic cases. It allows you to put in the type of time that is required of these cases. And I see so many trial attorneys beating themselves up because they aren’t getting the results that they want. And I say, “Well, how many cases do you have?” “200.” “Well, okay, there’s your problem,” right? But it does take a lot of risk to be like, “Okay, we’re only going to have a certain amount of these cases, and so they better pay off,” right? So there’s that part as well.

How long have you guys been in your own firm now?

Nick Loizzi: We actually split off. I’ve been on my own since around ’97, I believe it was. And then Shauna eventually, after she left the defense firm, she was a partner at the defense firm, she left and raised the kids for a while, two kids, Kayla and Nick, grown up now. And so she used to do a lot of medical reviews and then eventually we’ve tried cases together, and so I’d say since then.

Shauna Reitz: Yeah, yeah. No, I mean, we’ve been at this for a long time. You know?

So I mean, we’ve been practicing a long time. We did have a couple of cases that didn’t turn out the way that we would’ve liked, but one of the things that we really focused on within the past couple years was just trying to keep learning and try to make ourselves better and do a better job for the clients. And so we’ve been collaborating, to use your term, which is nice. We really liked it. And Tim, the case that we’re working on with him has just been a wonderful experience. And then this time, working with Jody on this case was just amazing. That was something that we were really missing was that collaboration and that was essential.

Nick Loizzi: Right.

Sari de la Motte: Well, and that’s why I want to go to Jody now to get her voice in the room. So when y’all came to me, I was like, “Hey, if you guys want to buy out a trial lab, that’s how I can work with you, but I’d like, since you’re new to my method, for you to work with an actual consultant before you get here.” And so we brought Jody in on the scene who is med mal nursing home expert, and so she was just perfect for this.

And Jody, what did you think when you first met the Loizzis? Well, they aren’t both Loizzis, but that’s why. We call them the Loizzis around here.

Nick Loizzi: She came and met us in Chicago.

Jody Moore: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Sari de la Motte: She did, yeah.

Jody Moore: Yeah. Well, yeah, you keep sort of burying the lead that these two are married. We talked about all their partnership, and then the kids, and then she raised the kids. It’s like, okay, these two got married somewhere in that timeline, right?

Sari de la Motte: Yes, yes. They did.

Jody Moore: So that was super fun. I mean—

Nick Loizzi: Almost 30 years.

Jody Moore: Yeah, yeah.

Sari de la Motte: Yay!

Jody Moore: That’s right. Congratulations.

Nick Loizzi: Yeah.

Jody Moore: So it’s always interesting when folks reach out to Sari of Sari de la Motte fame and Hostage to Hero, for her to say, “Okay, well, you can work with Jody for a period of time and then you can come to a trial lab to work with me.” And there’s always this sort of initial, like, “Who’s that?”

So I do remember, I do remember our first Zoom where Nick and Shauna were sort of like, “Well, if I have to go through Jody to get to Sari, so be it.” So I had to work my magic a little bit—

Sari de la Motte: And then they were like, “Sari who?” after six months with you.

Nick Loizzi: Yeah.

Jody Moore: Yeah, yeah. So I had to work my magic a little bit, which was I did go to Chicago. We did a two-day workshop, and I do remember—

Nick Loizzi: No! It was… Jody.

Sari de la Motte: What?

Nick Loizzi: It was four days.

Jody Moore: Was it three days? Was it four days? Okay. It went so—

Nick Loizzi: Four days.

Sari de la Motte: No, it was only two days. It was only two days. Maybe it felt like four days.

Shauna Reitz: It felt like four?

Nick Loizzi: No, it was four.

Jody Moore: Yeah, yeah. Time flies when we’re having fun. But I think the biggest thing that stood out to me was you guys were really looking for clarity. You guys were like, “We’ve worked on this case. It’s very important to us.” That was really clear to me from the beginning, by the way, how much you cared about the case and how devoted you were to trying to get it right, if I’m putting right in air quotes, that there’s a right way to do things, but to really do right by your client. So there was an alignment there from day one of how committed you were and how caring you were for the case and your client.

So our time together was really spent, and what I thought my role was, was helping you get clear on what pieces of information and what story do you need to tell to be successful, and having that bird’s eye view or that 10,000-foot view. And I really related to it because I litigate my own cases, and in my own cases, of course, I knew. I’m like, “Everything’s important. I want all the information that I developed. Of course I need 12 experts and all 80 witnesses are going to come to trial.”

So I really had a lot of fun, if you will, coming in and stepping into your lives and into your cases and being able to provide that framework and architecture to get the clarity that you needed. It was really, really a joy and a pleasure to work with you.

Nick Loizzi: Yeah. Well, the case that we had, and I don’t know if you want to get into it, but it was just so many people did so many things wrong at so many different times that it was like, you know, the old George W. Bush, remember the “thousand points of light”? We had a thousand points of light, but they were going in all different directions, and we needed just a few points—

Shauna Reitz: Clarity.

Nick Loizzi: Yeah, just a few points of light to focus on what’s really important to present to a jury because if you presented every one of those points, the jury would’ve been… I mean, the trial took a month. So imagine what it would’ve been like if we didn’t cut a lot of stuff out, but you brought that to us.

Sari de la Motte: Well, and I think that’s true in medical malpractice in general, right? I mean, we only win, the last time I looked, 27%. We have a 27% win rate with medical malpractice. And I think part of that is yes, what we hear out in the ether, which is, “Well, people don’t want to hold doctors responsible,” and all of that kind of stuff. But I have to believe too that part of it is because people do not take the time to get as clear as you guys got and present it in such a way that was so clear that immediately the jury got it.

So yes, let’s get into the case. Tell us what this case was about. Give us the bird’s eye view, and then we’ll just dive into how you handled it at trial.

Shauna Reitz: Yeah, I mean, it was medical malpractice, but it was a little bit complicated because we had a case against the resident physicians who were in training, and that was a big theme, it became a big theme, and the individual providers and nurses, but then we also had an institutional claim against the hospital for failing to supervise and train their employees. So that in and of itself made it more complicated and convoluted than your typical malpractice case. So do you want to—

Nick Loizzi: Well, we also had, and there was also an attending that was implicated that was supposed to be supervising all of these residents. And the residents, by the way, the case was, it was literally the beginning of the residency year, the end of June. And a lot of people don’t know this, that the residency programs begin at the end of June and they go through the following year, and everyone is in a new role. All the interns are coming from medical school. The first-year interns become second-year interns. They’re in different positions, in different roles. So it’s just chaos, and it’s so important to make sure they have someone supervising these physicians to make sure that the patients are safe or kept safe.

Sari de la Motte: Well, this is what I love about this case is because if we look at the trajectory and where we came from to where we ended up, they were two totally different things. And for our listeners, this was the case about a man who came to the hospital for some very benign reasons. His salt levels, right, were not correct?

Nick Loizzi: Right.

Sari de la Motte: And they were keeping him, and he couldn’t sleep. He’s given an Ambien, he has the adverse reaction, which is to get, I wouldn’t say… What would we call it? It’s like aggressive.

Nick Loizzi: Agitated.

Jody Moore: Sari—

Sari de la Motte: Agitated, agitated. And so then they sedated him. Of course, they over-sedated him, and he ended up actually having…

Nick Loizzi: Cardiac arrest.

Sari de la Motte: He stopped breathing, right?

Nick Loizzi: Yeah.

Jody Moore: Respiratory arrest.

Sari de la Motte: Yeah, respiratory arrest. And so when we first started, the whole thing we were hanging our hat on was, “Well, they should have sent him to the ICU,” and it was very medical-oriented and who did what wrong and why? But as we peel back the layers, the story that emerged actually was quite different.

Sari de la Motte: Jody, I want to hear your thoughts on that trajectory because I don’t say that as, “Oh, whoa, we were totally wrong at the beginning.” We always have to start somewhere. “Well, maybe it’s this,” and then play with it, and then we get clearer and clearer and clearer and clearer, which is what was so fun about working with you two is we had six months to play with it before you brought it out here to the two juries that we had out here.

Jody Moore: Yeah, I picked up on the same energy, the story that Nick and Shauna just told about the hierarchy and the chain of command and the institution. That’s, of course, the story they told at trial, but that wasn’t the story we started with.

We started with this was an Ambien overdose, right? And so how do we reverse the effects of Ambien and how do we figure out what the—

Nick Loizzi: Ativan.

Shauna Reitz: Ativan, yep.

Jody Moore: Sorry.

Sari de la Motte: Ativan.

Jody Moore: Sorry, the adverse reaction to the Ambien.

Sari de la Motte: I said, “Ambien.” You’re right.

Jody Moore: Yeah. So they had Ambien to go to sleep, that made him agitated. Then they got Ativan, and then they got Ativan again, and then they got Ativan again, right? And lo and behold, he goes to sleep, and yay, he’s no longer agitated. Well, he’s not really asleep. Now he’s in respiratory depression, which turns into respiratory crisis, which leads to respiratory arrest.

So the initial conversations and rounds had to do with, well, was it appropriate to give him Ambien? And then if so, was it appropriate to give him Ativan? And then if so, could you redose it and could you redose it? And we had a lot of focus on when was it appropriate for him to move to the ICU?

And so in the arc of working on the case together, we initially thought the case tipping point, if you will, something we call the case clarity or the XY filter, we initially thought that was going to be, “We’ll send him to the ICU.” And so those were the stories that were being told. That was the evidence that was being developed and the focus of the case.

But when we really started to ask the question, well, why didn’t he go to the ICU? If it was so clear he was having respiratory depression, why didn’t he go to the ICU? And when we asked the five whys, well, then why? Well, because nobody actually ordered the transfer. Why? Well, because residents were calling residents. Residents on the med surge floor were calling residents on the ICU floor. Why? Well, because there was no attending supervising the student doctors. Why? Well, because this hospital really wasn’t set up to have student doctors who could succeed because they didn’t have the supervision and the policies in place.

And now we were like, okay, the real filter to get at the liability of the hospital and not the attendings, the poor attendings who are frantically calling each other, trying to figure out what to do with this guy, was that the system wasn’t set up for these unsupervised doctors to be successful.

And so the tipping point ended up being if the jury believes that the doctors needed to be supervised to prevent mistakes from reaching the patients, then we’re going to win. But if they believe, yeah, no, this is we just let interns and residents run the hospital unsupervised, then we probably lose.

And so that arc, if you will, took eight months and a lot of sessions and a lot of deep work to get to that piece of clarity to end up being the final story that was told at trial.

Sari de la Motte: Well, and what I love about that, what I love about that too is that we know in med mal when we argue medicine, we often lose. So if we’re like, “He should have gone, they should have sent him to the ICU,” well, not really, they didn’t really have to, and we just get in this back and forth of what someone should or shouldn’t have done. Where here, it’s, “You should be supervising student doctors.” Who’s going to be like, “Yeah, no, they don’t really need that”? And again, it falls right into the Rick Friedman thing of they either can’t argue with it, or if they do argue with it, they look stupid.

So I just love how you outlined how you got there, which is asking, “Well, why didn’t the thing happen that happened?” And we don’t always have a systemic failure, but we often do, and I think when we can find it, magic happens.

What was that process like for you two, going through that with Jody and hearing the evolution of where you started and where you ended up?

Shauna Reitz: Well, it was absolutely amazing because Jody is amazing. She’s our favorite and she’s so positive, too. So the whole process, even though we would get overwhelmed and we were amazingly fatigued because we felt like we’d been on trial just working that intensely on the case, but it was like when we would find these nuggets and when we found, oh my gosh, when we found our hook finally, it was like the biggest aha moment ever. And when we were struggling with whether we were going to own the fact that these residents make mistakes, these student doctors make mistakes, we’re like, “Should we? Should we?” But it felt so right. And when we owned it and we said, “You know what? Student doctors will make mistakes, and it’s the hospital’s responsibility to make sure those mistakes never reach the patient,” I mean, it just felt so good. Didn’t it? It just felt really good.

Nick Loizzi: Right, yeah. Because you’re never supposed to say it was a mistake. You know?

Sari de la Motte: I know. That hook terrified Jody, even after you left.

Jody Moore: I had hives. I broke out in hives.

Sari de la Motte: We’re never supposed to say, “Mistakes”!

Jody Moore: We don’t say the M-word in medical malpractice.

Nick Loizzi: And it was plain, the jury got it, everyone got it, and it fit this case. And in the beginning, when Jody first came out, honestly, we had probably a hundred flip charts of just notes and different thoughts and everything, and it was just kind of like, “Ugh,” just like—

Shauna Reitz: Like brainstorming.

Nick Loizzi: Yeah, just vomit on flip charts and just all kinds of stuff. And it just got boiled down, it got boiled down, boiled down. We had sessions every month with Jody to clarify additionally as even more evidence came in and as we worked up the case further because a lot of the discovery wasn’t finished yet when we first started with Jody. Like our experts’ disclosures, Jody helped us tremendously with that. We had the experts, but she was a big part on getting our disclosures down on paper and making sure they’re correct and serve them on the other side. And then when the defense disclosures, same thing.

But it was such a process because honestly, like Shauna said in the beginning, the hardest part for us was there was so much information. And if we would’ve presented it, I don’t know, maybe we would’ve gotten a verdict, maybe it wouldn’t have been as good, or maybe we would not have. When juries are confused, it’s a not guilty. You know?

Sari de la Motte: Always a defense verdict when they’re confused.

Jody Moore: Right.

Shauna Reitz: Yeah, yeah. And I’m convinced that the time we spent working on the opening, I mean, we had such confidence in our story and the way we were going to present it, and that was our touchstone. So we did our opening, and then everything through trial was like, “Okay, let’s channel Jody,” and our touchstone was our opening and everything fit back to the opening. So our story, we kept ringing that bell, and we just kept coming back to the opening in our outline.

And it was like it just, I mean, I’m convinced that that’s how we won the case.

Nick Loizzi: And the opening didn’t come together, obviously, when Jody first came to Chicago. It came when we came to Portland, when we finished up the trial lab in Portland, and we practiced it and it sounded good, and it felt really, really good. And so—

Sari de la Motte: Yeah, that was a magical, magical week when you were all here. And so what I wanted to talk about is yes, you did this great work with Jody. Okay, enough about Jody. No, I’m kidding. And yes, you won your trial.

However, I think one of the biggest, at least from the outside looking in, I think one of the biggest shifts that I saw in you both was mindset. Mindset was a huge… I remember when Jody came out to see you, and she’s like, “I brought the archetype cards.” I was like, “You did?” And she’s like, “Oh, yeah, I’m bringing it,” this weird, new-age stuff. I’m like, “How did they like it?” She’s like, “Nick was a little, ‘I don’t know what this is about.'” But by the time you guys left here, you were like, “Oh my God, this is so huge.”

So talk to our listeners a little bit about how you were able to shift your mindset and use that new shifted mindset in trial and how that did or didn’t help you here.

Nick Loizzi: You hit the nail on the head. When Jody came with those cards, I was like, “Huh? When are we going to talk about the case?” So it started then, but that was at the beginning, but it’s kind of, I don’t want to say force-fed, but it’s part of the process all the way through, especially at trial lab. Trial lab was mindset, mindset, mindset. And it helped me tremendously, during a month-long trial, to be able to go back to that and say, “Okay, we got this, we got this, we got this. We’ve done this already.”

One of the things you said all the time, Sari, maybe you don’t remember, but I remember it clearly, “Muscle memory, muscle memory.” There were times where I forgot what I was going to say. And then I just kind of close my eyes and say, “Muscle memory, muscle memory,” and it would come back to me.

So mindset was a huge part for me, and I know for Shauna, because we’ve talked about it. Obviously, we’ve talked about the case a lot since the verdict, especially living together, but mindset was everything.

Shauna Reitz: It was. And when we identified our saboteurs, which it was crazy because they would come out at different times during the trial and we were able to tell each other, “Nope, we’ve got this. That’s your inner saboteur coming out,” and whatnot. And then we’d always be able to anchor ourselves and recognize it. And to be able to recognize when it comes out is huge. You know?

Sari de la Motte: It is huge. And I think one of the things I said to you either in an email during trial or when you were here, maybe both, was, “Just because you do mindset work doesn’t mean that your saboteurs go away.” The fact that you’re doing something super risky means they will be there in your face, but if you can recognize it as a saboteur, it’s trying to help you, it’s trying to tell you, “Don’t do this risky thing,” and you can have it be calmed down and go, “I got this, don’t worry. We’re going to survive,” that that in itself, like you said, the recognizing is so huge in terms of the mindset piece.

Jody Moore: Well, I also wanted to piggyback on that and maybe ask Nick and Shauna to share a little bit about their allies. So we talk about saboteurs and allies. So saboteurs is the negative talk, the limiting beliefs, the, “Oh my gosh, stop doing this,” or, “it’s too risky,” but we were able to help you get in touch with some allies, which is the more positive attributes, and they showed up in trial. So I would love for you to share with our listeners about that.

Nick Loizzi: Shauna’s ally is better than mine, so I’m going to let her start.

Shauna Reitz: No, you’re fine!

Sari de la Motte: No, I love both of yours.

Shauna Reitz: Well, my ally is John Wooden, the coach, and it was just such an aha moment for me because I’ve always admired him. My father was a coach, he used to quote him, he had a signed a pyramid of John Wooden’s success, and it was just one of those things I had never really thought about bringing that positive aspect. And where it’s part of what you preach, sorry, is that it’s not outcome determinative. That is not how you judge yourself, which is what John Wooden always said, “You could have games where you may have scored more points than the other team and lost. And likewise, you may have games where you did not score as many and you’ve won.”

And so when I realized that and started applying those principles that I had preached to my kids during all their athletics and all along, and I had heard my whole life, I, for some reason, had never brought it into the trial. And so to do that was amazing.

Sari de la Motte: Yeah, and your phrase during trial was…

Shauna Reitz: Let’s fucking go.

Jody Moore: Yes!

Sari de la Motte: Let’s fucking go. I love it, yeah.

Shauna Reitz: But my mom might listen to this, so LFG, Mom.

Jody Moore: LFG.

Sari de la Motte: That was me, Mom. I said the F-word, not Shauna.

Nick Loizzi: LFG. That was actually on our shower window, “LFG.”

Shauna Reitz: LFG.

Nick Loizzi: Every morning. Yep.

Sari de la Motte: I love it. I love it.

Shauna Reitz: And then tell yours. How about yours?

Sari de la Motte: Yep. And so Nick, yours?

Nick Loizzi: My ally was Kitchen Table Nick.

Shauna Reitz: Spaghetti Nick.

Nick Loizzi: Spaghetti Nick, and that came about at dinner one night at Sari’s house and it was a wonderful time. And we were all talking, and I guess I did a lot of talking, I don’t know, but it came about that—

Sari de la Motte: Because you’re Italian! You talk a lot!

Nick Loizzi: “… We like this Nick,” and, “this should be the Nick that should be at trial.” And so that was my ally the entire time. And I’ve always been, I always felt that direct examination has been one of my strong points, as well as cross-examination because I like talking to people and I’m not afraid to ask a why question of a defense expert if I think I know where to take them, and the same thing with direct examinations.

Our direct examination of our client was Kitchen Table Nick that appeared out of nowhere. I mean, not out of nowhere, but he appeared and it was… I guess I could tell you. The jury, in our case, we could never figure out what our jury was. We had them for a month. We don’t know if we had a group or not. They weren’t interacting. They weren’t… It’s not what you, Sari, would consider a group. But the one time that they were in unison, focused, leaning in, listening was during the direct examination of our clients, the two times with Bob, and our client, of them.

Shauna Reitz: Yep, and Bonnie.

Nick Loizzi: And that was the one time. Also, the opening. I think the opening, they were engaged as well, but I really think that that was the big part of it. And I always kept thinking, “Just Kitchen Table Nick, that’s all. Just don’t overplay it. Just talk to them.” And that’s how I was with all the witnesses—

Sari de la Motte: We spent a whole day on mindset out of the five days that you guys came out. We spent a lot of time on mindset. And people at first are like, “Aren’t we just going to talk about the trial or the case?” And it’s so important once you’ve had that training to realize how much it helps you in trial.

I want to talk about opening for a few reasons. One is there was something that you told Jody that you would never ever do when you first met her that we ended up loving, and so it’s another way that Sari is right about things, but it had to do with flip charts. Right?

Shauna Reitz: Yes.

Nick Loizzi: Yep. That was me. I said, “I’m not comfortable”—

Sari de la Motte: Jody, what did he say when you first met?

Jody Moore: “I will never use a flip chart in the courtroom.”

Shauna Reitz: Yep. He did. I was there. I vouch for it.

Jody Moore: “I’m not, I’m not writing things down. I have terrible writing. I’m not writing things down in front of the jury, and P.S., I can’t turn my back on the jury.” It was, “No, no, and no.”

Nick Loizzi: Yes, yes. That’s true.

Sari de la Motte: Yeah, yeah. And it was so funny. At the end of our trial lab week, you were like, “Oh my God, I love the flip charts. It’s the best thing ever.” And so tell me a little bit about how an H2H opening is different than maybe openings you’d done before.

Nick Loizzi: For me, I thought the organization, the structure of it, was everything. We had a courtroom full of people in the opening statement, as usually happens on some cases, but we had a courtroom full of people, some friends, some people that… A friend of ours put out on our Illinois Trial Lawyers Association website that Shauna and I were going to be doing our openings on this date, and people showed up. So it was a decent-sized courtroom.

And it was filled with people. And afterward, after the verdict came back, so many people told us that the opening was spot-on. I mean, not just laypeople. Because we had a nurse in there that was a consultant of ours on other cases, and she said that, “You had the medicine, you had the structure, you had a message that was coherent.” And the jury, we felt we won it at opening. We really did.

Shauna Reitz: Yeah, absolutely. And we thought when we first heard you say that we had to keep it down to 30 minutes, we’re like, “There’s no way. There’s absolutely no way.” And yet, we got everything in. And then it was so great because the way you undermined the defense’s before they get up there, it’s like it just made the other attorneys, who were great attorneys, actually, defense attorneys, but we had already basically confronted what they were going to say, and it was amazing.

Sari de la Motte: Did you get to use some snark during that time?

Shauna Reitz: Oh, yeah. Yes.

Nick Loizzi: Oh, yes, yes, yes.

Jody Moore: Yeah, ask them about splitting it up because that was really interesting, and the difference between trial live—

Sari de la Motte: I was just—

Jody Moore: Yeah.

Sari de la Motte: I was going to say, so when you came out, the question was, “How are we going to split this up?” And so what we ended up doing here was having you go in and out during different times in the nine-part template.

What did you end up doing when you were actually at trial?

Nick Loizzi: The way we did it for opening was that Shauna did the… No, I—

Shauna Reitz: You started out.

Nick Loizzi: I started out.

Shauna Reitz: He had to do some of the teaching, and he did the defendant’s story, and then I took over and did the plaintiff’s story and then did the ask, which was like, I hadn’t practiced that.

Sari de la Motte: Yay! Yeah.

Shauna Reitz: I had not practiced that, and yeah.

Nick Loizzi: And so we broke it up into two parts—

Jody Moore: I was going to say, how was that switching from what you had practiced?

Nick Loizzi: It was a little disconcerting for me because we had not practiced switching. We had, the two days that we were on our feet doing the openings in front of the mock jury, we kept going in and out. So we had pieces, and I kind of knew my pieces, almost like an actor knows this is you come in, you say, “Good morning,” and then you get out. And so it was a little bit different. So then I had to… Shauna actually helped me with that a lot—

Shauna Reitz: I did, yeah.

Nick Loizzi: … for the organization that I did.

Shauna Reitz: The teaching part.

Nick Loizzi: The teaching part, yeah. But—

Sari de la Motte: I love that. I love that.

Nick Loizzi: And she did the ask.

Sari de la Motte: Now, in previous openings, were they longer than 30 minutes? Did you use notes?

Nick Loizzi: Oh, yeah. Yes, yes.

Sari de la Motte: Was it memorized? How did you work on it before?

Nick Loizzi: Yes. It was interesting because the judge asked us, “How long do you need for opening?” “44 minutes.” And she goes, “Huh?” I said, “44 minutes. We’ve timed it,” and we knew it. I’ve never done that before.

Sari de la Motte: I love it.

Nick Loizzi: So we knew exactly what it was going to be and how long it should have been, and it really worked very nice. The defense attorneys, they were against it. They didn’t want us to do it.

Shauna Reitz: Yeah, they objected to us even splitting it.

Nick Loizzi: They hadn’t seen it.

Sari de la Motte: Oh, going back and forth?

Shauna Reitz: Yeah.

Nick Loizzi: Yeah, yeah. It wasn’t going back and forth. It was just that—

Sari de la Motte: I mean, you’re just sharing it. Sharing it, yeah.

Nick Loizzi: I started and Shauna finished the opening, and then closing, Shauna started it and I finished. So they just hadn’t seen it before. We had done it in another case in a different county years ago, and it worked really well. I mean, we both bring different aspects to the case. I always feel like—

Sari de la Motte: That’s what we saw. Absolutely. You both had different strengths and things.

Nick Loizzi: Yeah. Shauna’s a natural teacher. I’m the one that I will argue with you to the end of the day, but Shauna will be over there and say, “Let’s be reasonable. Let’s talk about this, ladies and gentlemen.” And so she just… And you put a pen in her hand or a marker in her hand and a flip chart, and she just goes to work.

So it worked really well for both of us. It really did. And I think it worked well for the jury too. And as we saw—

Sari de la Motte: What was it like—

Nick Loizzi: As we saw in the trial lab when we did the mock juries, I think they liked it too, the contrast between going in and out.

Sari de la Motte: Absolutely.

Nick Loizzi: Not as much, but just the different voices.

Sari de la Motte: Absolutely. It keeps engagement. And so I think that’s great.

What was it like? So I want to be really clear that you didn’t have anything memorized. We didn’t ever write anything down on a piece of paper that had lots of words on it that you memorized. We literally just muscle-memoried this from the very beginning. I was like, “Just stand up and let’s try that hook. Ooh, let’s change this word. Let’s try that again.” And then we just were like, “Teach me.” And every time you guys did it, it was a little bit different, a little word here. And that’s what I kept saying to you, and I think that’s what you’re referring to, Nick, is it’s going to come out totally different every time you do it. And that’s okay. You know your case. You know your case.

So how was that actually in trial, just you’re up there and you’re just going for it?

Shauna Reitz: Well, that was great. It was a living, breathing thing, the opening, which is great. But that’s how we approached everything. And you also told us, which was one thing that we kept reminding each other, “Nothing was going to be perfect, and it’s okay. And you got to expect it. You got to expect things are going to happen that you are not planned for and everything, and it’s going to be okay.” And we had to keep reminding each other that.

And so it was really good to not get too vetted to, “It has to be this way. We have to say it this way.” You adjust. And so that was good. And we kept reminding each other. I felt it was very effective.

Nick Loizzi: I thought that that guidance was really important, especially for me, that you’re not going to be perfect. Let that go. And because motions in limine, we didn’t get a lot of our motions granted. They hit us with over 100 motions in limine that we had to respond to. And we lost some that we thought we should have won that were really solid. And I just kept telling myself, “That’s okay. That’s okay. We don’t need it. It’s not going to be perfect. We’re not going to win everything. Just go on to the next thing.”

And the same thing with opening. And the opening, I had notes. I had probably about 10 pages of notes. I don’t even think I looked at them—

Shauna Reitz: No, you didn’t.

Nick Loizzi: … once. It’s just we did it so many times and we knew the case, and it just comes natural. And if I forgot something, okay, it’ll come out somewhere else.

Sari de la Motte: That’s right. That’s right.

Nick Loizzi: And so I guess I forgave myself if I forgot something, but we were thinking about it and we probably… What did we say? About 85% of what we wanted to do, we did in this case, and the other 15% didn’t go our way or we didn’t do, and it’s okay. And we still won the case.

Sari de la Motte: Well, it obviously was okay because there was a very good verdict that we have not yet revealed on this podcast. So you were offered a high-low?

Nick Loizzi: We were, but it was a process. I don’t understand sometimes the other side, I just don’t. I always thought this case should settle for a long period of time. We struggled with the value of it. Before we even came to you, we did the big data studies. We did two of them because the first one, we didn’t ask for enough, and so we thought that or it was thought that we should do a second one. And we did it. And we asked for, even at trial, we asked for some that was… We had to get used to it. Okay?

So we told the jury in opening what we were going to ask for, and we could tell you, I mean, with the verdict. But the problem was that our client did much, much, much better understand than we anticipated. And so when we told the jury, “We’re going to ask you for this much” in opening, and then he did remarkably better—

Shauna Reitz: It was a good day for him.

Nick Loizzi: It was a really good day for him. And then we struggled at closing and we thought, “Should we still ask for that much?” And we told the jury we were going to, so we kind of stuck to our guns. And we just said, “You know what? It’s still that, the case is still valued that much. We’ve done the focus groups on it,” and so we stuck to it.

Go ahead.

Shauna Reitz: Yeah, but I was going to say when Sari, when you asked us, now there was a high-low, well, there was also a very, very moment—

Sari de la Motte: I was just going to bring that. There was an offer on the table.

Shauna Reitz: There was an offer. They had offered a substantial amount of money when they got into the eight figures and they offered us $10 million, and Nick and I looked at each other—

Nick Loizzi: They indicated.

Shauna Reitz: Well, yeah, yeah, indicated very strongly. And the judge is telling us we should take it. And plenty of other people were telling us, “That’s a lot of money.” And we looked at each other, we were like, “We’ve never gotten a $10 million offer and then we’ve never turned it down,” which our client was, the good thing was is our client was… We were on the same page with our client.

Sari de la Motte: Well, I have to say that that was probably Jody’s most proud moment because Jody was like, “Oh my God, they had an offer of $10 million and they didn’t take it! Look at those mindset motherfuckers.” Sorry, Mom. But I mean—

Nick Loizzi: Shauna’s mom will be happy with that.

Sari de la Motte: I mean, anyone in your position would have such a moment of, “What am I doing? $10 million?” So what made you say, “Nope, we’re continuing”? Outside of your client, I know your client supported you, but in yourselves, what made you decide that’s not enough?

Nick Loizzi: We thought we did the work and we thought that there was no way a jury was going to give us less than that. I really did not think that that was going to be a possibility. All the work that we did told us that… First of all, when that offer was indicated, or they were going to pull it, actually. We didn’t even tell you that part. Not that they were going to, they pulled it.

Shauna Reitz: They pulled it.

Nick Loizzi: They told us, “You have until Sunday night to make a decision on this and it’s gone. At 5:00 PM on Sunday, it’s gone.” This is the judge telling us on Friday before we had to make a decision. And she said, “I strongly advise you to take this. This is a lot of money. It’s life-changing money for your client.” And we didn’t understand where it was coming from and why the threat to take the money off the table.

One of the things that Shauna and I always kept going back to is, “Okay, everything’s gone in the way we wanted it to. Everything has gone our way for the most part, and they’ve threatened appeal.” And I said, “If anyone has appeals, it’s us. It’s not them, it’s us.” I said, “What has changed in this case to make them want to withdraw the offer?” And nothing had changed. And we could not pinpoint anything other than trying to intimidate us and force us—

Sari de la Motte: Ah, that’s exactly what it was. Yep.

Nick Loizzi: … force our client into taking money that wasn’t, in our opinion, fair or, his opinion, fair. So we just did not feel that, “Okay, this is not warranted.” It’s not like we put on a witness and that witness was terrible and all of a sudden you’ve got this ultimatum and you got to make a decision. Everything had been going really well for us. All our witnesses were spot-on, and they were likable, and good witnesses, and rational. And the jury, you could see, eating them up. So I didn’t understand it. So that made it easier.

But again, Monday came, there was no offer on the table and we had to go through the entire trial, the rest of the trial, which was another week until closing argument came on a Friday. And then Thursday night we had a conversation with defense counsel about a high-low agreement. And we went back and forth until we finally agreed on some numbers and we ended up at… Well, I don’t want to know, I don’t know if you want me to tell you.

Sari de la Motte: Yeah, yeah.

Nick Loizzi: Yeah. So the high-low was $7 million for a low and the high was—

Shauna Reitz: $20.

Nick Loizzi: … $20 million.

Sari de la Motte: Okay. And they also waived their right to appeal.

Shauna Reitz: Correct.

Nick Loizzi: Right, right to appeal.

Sari de la Motte: Correct.

Nick Loizzi: The case is over.

Sari de la Motte: Okay. So you let the jury go. Is there something you want… I don’t want you to tell us what the verdict is yet.

Shauna Reitz: Yeah, I want to bring up one thing that was just something that’s completely extraneous, but it did enter in is we were trying this case right when the election was occurring too. And so there was a lot of unrest and there was a lot of things going on there. And one of our concerns was because of that context that we could have a hung jury. We didn’t know what was going to happen with the election. We knew that there were people who definitely appeared to be on opposite sides of the fences from what we could surmise. And we didn’t know how that was going to manifest itself. And we were concerned with the hung jury.

So that was the other thing that the high-low addressed was that the low would kick in if there was a hung jury, which was a big concern.

Nick Loizzi: Right, right. And that was—

Sari de la Motte: And so we had a—

Nick Loizzi: You talk about saboteur, the saboteur came out the morning. I mean, obviously I didn’t stay up for the election. I go to bed early and I woke up early and I’m like, “What?” And when that happened, it was like a kick in the gut because I did not see that happening.

Sari de la Motte: Nope, I don’t think a lot of people did.

Nick Loizzi: I mean, I thought it was a possibility, but if you looked at all the polls and everything, but when I saw that that happened, I’m like, “What is going on?” And actually, Shauna and I, that was the one day that our saboteur came out and said, “Do we know our jury? Do we know? Do we have any idea what they’re going to do on this case?” We didn’t and—

Sari de la Motte: I can see why. Yeah.

Nick Loizzi: Yeah. And so we just kept trusting that we put in the work.

Shauna Reitz: The process.

Nick Loizzi: Yeah, that we put in the work, and we just said, “We’re going to see this through,” and we did.

Sari de la Motte: So you agreed to a high-low of $7 and $20.

Nick Loizzi: Correct.

Sari de la Motte: You released the jury. How long did they deliberate?

Nick Loizzi: They deliberated on a Friday for an hour—

Shauna Reitz: Hour and 45.

Nick Loizzi: Hour 45 minutes.

Shauna Reitz: No lunch.

Nick Loizzi: No lunch.

Sari de la Motte: Wait, that was it? An hour and 45 minutes?

Shauna Reitz: Yeah, yep.

Nick Loizzi: Yeah.

Sari de la Motte: So what are you thinking when you’re getting called back that soon?

Nick Loizzi: I was okay with it. It was a Friday afternoon.

Shauna Reitz: Actually, we were pretty good with it. You know? How many Post-its did we have when we were invested but not?

Nick Loizzi: Detached.

Shauna Reitz: But detached.

Sari de la Motte: Detached.

Shauna Reitz: We had Post-its all the time.

Sari de la Motte: I love it.

Shauna Reitz: So we felt pretty good and more relaxed than we ever had too, and so yeah.

Nick Loizzi: So the thing that was concerning, again, was the jury. We couldn’t figure out anything from the jury. Honestly, we spent so much time on forming the group. You yelled at me one time when I addressed the mock jury. “It sounds like this group believes this and that,” and, “you don’t have a group.” I’m like, “It’s been three minutes. You do not have a group.”

So our jury selection took literally 20 minutes and we did the H2H voir dire, and we’d never really got going because the judge cut us off. The defense attorneys didn’t know what to do, so they just started objecting without really having a basis other than, “We don’t like the question.”

Sari de la Motte: What’s happening? Yeah, “We don’t… This is too effective, Your Honor.” Yeah.

Nick Loizzi: Right. And the jury came back and the jury, they were giving us the answers, and they said, “Well, you’re putting words in their mouth.” I said, “I’m asking the questions. I have not suggested a single response by anyone.”

Sari de la Motte: That’s right, yeah.

Nick Loizzi: But the judge said, “No, you can’t do that.” So they cut Shauna off, actually, of all people. I was able to get a lot of my questions out, but Shauna was handling the liability and damages part, and so she was cut off at the knees right when she stood up, and she was able to go with it and still get enough out from the jury, I think, at that point. But we couldn’t read them. We couldn’t read them.

The defense attorneys had a jury consultant there with his computer entering all kinds of notes. We had no one. We had our team, just me, Shauna, Mike, and Christina.

Sari de la Motte: Well, that’s a bunch of bullshit anyway. “Oh, they’re crossing their legs, that means whatever.”

Nick Loizzi: Yeah.

Sari de la Motte: Okay. So they come back and voir dire, you did great, and then the judge cut it off. We don’t know if we have a group. We’ve got a high-low of $7-$20. They come back and they give you…

Shauna Reitz: $20.

Sari de la Motte: $20!

Jody Moore: Yay!

Nick Loizzi: We hit it on the head.

Sari de la Motte: $20 million.

Shauna Reitz: Hit it on the head.

Sari de la Motte: What was that like when they said that number?

Nick Loizzi: It was…

Shauna Reitz: It was perfect.

Nick Loizzi: Yes.

Shauna Reitz: It was the perfect number. You know?

Nick Loizzi: It was, it was.

Shauna Reitz: And our client, it was perfect. And for him, it was the perfect number and it was just, it was awesome. Yeah.

Nick Loizzi: And we had offered the night before to settle instead of doing the high-low, and said, “Just pay $15 on it and that will do it for $15.”

Shauna Reitz: Yep, “Buy it out for $15.”

Nick Loizzi: And they said, “Nope.”

Shauna Reitz: “No.”

Nick Loizzi: They’re not interested. And so when the verdict came back, they gave $5 million for loss of normal life, $10 million for pain and suffering, and $5 for—

Shauna Reitz: For life care plan.

Nick Loizzi: … for the life care plan. And when the first one came in at $5, I’m like, “Oh, we’re going to get $15,” which would’ve been okay. I mean, but—

Sari de la Motte: You always want to beat the offer though, yeah.

Nick Loizzi: Yeah. So I mean, we tried our butt off. We still wanted to win and we wanted to get a high verdict.

And just so you know, the question about how much we asked, the focus groups that we did, the big data told us to ask for $77 million, and that was our number. And so when we asked for that in opening, again, Shauna asked for that in opening. It was a little scary in closing because our client looked so good and spoke much better than he’d ever spoken with us. And we’d met him at his home before from prepping and everything, but he had a really good day, I mean, and the jury didn’t see the struggles that he had going from the car to the court to the actual courtroom.

So it was a lot. And then to ask the jury for that much, but we stuck to our guns. We stuck to our guns. And it wasn’t a failure to—

Sari de la Motte: I love it. I love it. And is your client happy?

Nick Loizzi: Yeah.

Shauna Reitz: Oh my gosh, yeah. Yeah.

Nick Loizzi: Yeah. He is. It is absolutely life-changing money for him. He has been a believer. I mean, this has taken five years for him to get his day in court and they promised to settle this case literally within the first year, first six months, they were going to make an offer. And so our credibility is on the line because I’ve told him that, “Well, we’re expecting an offer. We should have an offer at this point in time.” And then that comes and goes. Then, “Oh, maybe after your deposition.” And they liked our client and no offer. And then after the experts, same thing, no offer. So he had unbelievable patience and he stuck with us.

Shauna Reitz: Yeah. And I want to bring up one point that, to me, was really important. So our client’s wife did not, she did not want to pursue a loss of consortium claim. She never did. And she’d always been a more reluctant participant. And I thought this was kind of good too. We split it up. So Nick put on Bob, and then I put on Bonnie, his wife. So that’s how we did it. And she was really nervous, but I told her, just like we had talked about, I said, “Look, we’re just going to have a conversation. It’s going to be you and I. And yes, there’s these people here, but we’re just going to talk about Bob and we’re going to talk about that, and it’s just going to be like that, and just breathe,” and all this.

And I just have to share that afterwards, I didn’t even see this, but she did a great, fantastic job, by the way, she was very likable and very engaging, but afterwards, she went back and our nurse manager was there, told us that she just cried. It was just such a cathartic moment for her and it was just awesome.

Sari de la Motte: I’m sure. That’s what trial is for so many people.

Shauna Reitz: Yeah, yeah.

Sari de la Motte: She was heard. I love that. We’re running out of time, so let me ask you both, I’m going to give you an opportunity, I’m also going to give Jody an opportunity to weigh in here too, but just based on this experience you had, and congratulations again, what would you say to another trial attorney? What is your best advice after having gone through this and what you’ve learned and how you did things differently? What would you say to other attorneys?

Nick Loizzi: What I would say is be open to other methods and other ways of doing things. There isn’t just one way. Like I said, for me, I never thought I’d use flip charts. Now I think I will use them forever, but just different ideas. And that’s one of the things that Sean and I always thought with this case because it was so overwhelming, and you and Jody brought so much clarity to… Honestly, I keep going back, I know I said it already, but I thought the case was won in opening because it was so effective and just so coherent that the jury… And we kept going back to it with witnesses. “Okay, here’s what you’re supposed to do when a patient’s in distress, A, B or C.”

And we kept going back to that same flip chart. In closing, we used the same flip chart we used in the opening. The defense was all over the place. Meanwhile, we’re showing, “This is what we told you in opening, and this is what we showed you. And here it is again.” And we brought the flip charts out again just to show them. So I think it’s—

Sari de la Motte: It becomes this touchstone. It’s so beautiful. I love, love this

Nick Loizzi: Yeah. So just be willing to try different things and different just methods and get your head straight and no trial is going to be perfect. And that, for me, I’m pretty hard on myself as I know you guys picked up on in Portland, but I just said, “It’s not going to be perfect. It’s okay. You’re going to get the majority of it and you’re going to do fine.”

Sari de la Motte: I love that. You went in and you had your own back.

Nick Loizzi: Yeah.

Sari de la Motte: I just love that. I just love that. Shauna, what about you?

Shauna Reitz: My advice is the word that we started out with, and that is collaboration. So however you can get it, I think that’s just, it’s releasing, it’s just it’s freeing, it’s just it’s great to get in any form you can get it, even if it’s just by you doing it on your own, trying to listen to podcasts, like your podcast, which is great, or talk to Jody or talk to other people, just collaboration is key.

We feel like sometimes we’re taking on the weight of the world by ourselves with some of these cases, and the collaboration is just amazing to get a different viewpoint and just insights. You know? And so that’s what I’d say.

Sari de la Motte: We’re better together. We’re better together.

Shauna Reitz: Yeah.

Nick Loizzi: We’re great.

Sari de la Motte: And we are, we have a whole group, an H2H that can help, those of you who are listening, collaborate. That’s so huge. Jody, closing thoughts from you since you were so involved in this trial and case? Yeah.

Nick Loizzi: She really was.

Jody Moore: Well, yeah, I’ll just say it again. It’s just such an honor to have been brought into the circle. Because I know what it’s like to work on a case and to be dedicated to it and have it be part of your life for three or four years. You had lived with this case for so long, and I’m sure it’s not easy to bring an outsider in to the fold, and so I’m sort of appreciative and humbled by the fact that you let me come in and tinker with it all.

We’ve talked about a lot of themes, clarity and collaboration and curiosity and open-mindedness. I think I would add the word creativity. So at the end of the day, there’s an idea. We carry around this idea of what trial should be or should look like or what we’ve done before. And I think that when you do collaborate and are open to a different way of doing things, it really opened the opportunity for us to get really creative about how are we going to tell this story, and to have some fun.

I know it wasn’t fun those first couple of days. We were slogging. We were slogging through a lot of information, but part of our goal and one of the values in H2H is play. And so we were also trying to find a way to have fun and to release some of the tension that you were talking about, Shauna, about feeling like you’re carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders in this case, or Nick, the tension of feeling like you have to be perfect, whatever perfect might look like. You know?

So we injected some creativity and some fun in order to bring the case to life as well. I just thoroughly enjoyed working with you both. I can’t wait to pick the next case too.

Shauna Reitz: I know, likewise.

Nick Loizzi: Yes, it was, it was. It’s mutual.

Sari de la Motte: Well, congrats again. I’m so glad that H2H was here and able to assist. You guys did the hard work. You carried this, but as we always say, and we told you this many times, and I’m sure Jody said this to you, is we always, no matter who we’re working with, we always say, “You are the expert in your case.” We are here to tinker, as Jody said, or get creative or curious, but we want to, and that’s how I think we’re different, is we want to empower you to feel that you have the right story and that we’ve assisted, but that you really have owned it. And it sounded like that was exactly what you were able to do.

Nick Loizzi: It’s true.

Shauna Reitz: Absolutely.

Sari de la Motte: So congratulations to you and to your client.

Nick Loizzi: Thank you.

Shauna Reitz: Thank you.

Sari de la Motte: And we’re so excited for you. Thank you so much for being here.

Shauna Reitz: Thanks for having us.

Nick Loizzi: Great. Thank you.