“You have to have piss-off points for the jury or they’re going to trudge through the medicine and decide against you.” – Emily Peacock

Podcast Transcript

No, I won’t, won’t.

No, I won’t stay in my lane. 

And I don’t, don’t.

No, I don’t stay in my lane. 

No, I won’t, won’t.

No, I won’t stay in my lane.

And I don’t, don’t.

No, I don’t.

Emily Peacock 

I mean, you’re perfectly on point, Sari. If you’re arguing about the medicine, you’re losing, right?

Chrissy Hagen 

Oh, I was just going to say, and Emily, you talked to the foreperson after and wasn’t she like, “By the end of it, we just didn’t even care what burned her.”

Sari de la Motte 

Yes.

Chrissy Hagen 

[inaudible 00:00:26] they were so sick of hearing the defense fight over. It wasn’t this, it was that, it was this, it was that.

Sari de la Motte 

You’re listening to Sari Swear on the Sari Swears podcast. All right. Welcome to another episode of Sari Swears. I’m so excited to have Chrissy Hagen back with us and she’s brought her partner, Emily Peacock, to talk about another case. And I was just joking with these women before we started recording that there’d been a very few people have been on the podcast twice. So thanks for, or congratulations I should say, Chrissy, for that achievement of yours.

And they’re here for a very specific reason because those of you who may remember when Chrissy was on before, we kind of processed her trial on the podcast in the moment and kind of came to maybe, and again, we’re not totally sure why, but some reasons of maybe why we got a defense verdict in the last case. And she put those things to practice, along with Emily, in another trial and this time got a plaintiff’s verdict. So we’re excited to hear what worked and we want to talk with them today. But before we get into all of that, welcome Chrissy and Emily.

Chrissy Hagen 

Thank you.

Emily Peacock 

Thank you.

Sari de la Motte 

Yeah. So excited to have you. So let’s start by learning a little bit more about you. Chrissy, tell us where you’re located at and what your practice is focused on.

Chrissy Hagen 

I’m a trial lawyer. I practice in Berkeley, Michigan with Emily at Olsman MacKenzie Peacock, and my practice focuses on trucking and premises liability cases.

Sari de la Motte 

Okay. And Emily, obviously you’re in the same firm. Do you also focus on those two types of cases?

Emily Peacock 

I handle a little bit different type of case. I do medical malpractice, nursing home negligence, and adult foster care home abuse. And Chrissy is definitely my trial sister, having tried two cases already this year with her.

Sari de la Motte 

Oh, that’s wonderful. I first thought you said dog foster abuse, foster abuse cases. I’m like, “Oh my God, that’s like a specialty? That’s amazing.” And then my brain went, “No, sorry, adult foster care or foster home care.” But probably adults are probably more important than dogs, but sometimes you got to wonder. We love our dogs, don’t we?

I’m so excited to have both of you here. So Chrissy, why don’t you bring us up to date a little bit for those people who have not listened to the podcast that you were on before, and we’re going to put that in the show notes for those of you who want to go listen to that. You may even want to stop this now and go listen to that first. But for those people who are not going to do that and follow instructions, tell us a little bit about the last case and what we talked about. Just give us a little bit of overview on that one and what we think you and I processed of what went wrong there.

Chrissy Hagen 

Sure. So the last case resulted in a defense verdict that was a failure to diagnose prostate cancer. And I thought jury selection went really well. We got a lot of great things out there. We got everyone talking and then the defense verdict was a surprise.

So we talked about what could have led to that. And a lot of it I thought was defensive attribution where we talked about how I could have handled that better and voir dire. And then also the fact that we didn’t have a piss-off point.

Sari de la Motte 

Yes.

Chrissy Hagen 

And even though we talked a lot about this on the last one, how even though it’s a civil case, we need to be treating it like a criminal case with some sort of motive to get the jurors interested and to get them to that piss-off point where they want to find in our client’s favor.

Sari de la Motte 

Yes. So when you emailed me about this case and having prevailed here, you were like, “We had the piss-off point.” So we don’t always have it, but I’m always looking for it. Sometimes cases are between nice people who didn’t mean anything and still, people need to take responsibility. But when we can find it definitely is a motivator.

As I say, especially you hear me say this a lot in the crew, Chrissy, since you remember, that one of the hardest things for plaintiff attorneys is compelling jurors to do something because the easiest thing is to leave things as they are. So a piss-off point helps with that. It helps emotionally engage them so they want to do something. And in that case, it was this doctor, if I remember correctly, who kind of felt like he knew better than anyone and didn’t have to tell the patient anything and just make the decisions for the patient. Yes?

Chrissy Hagen 

Exactly.

Sari de la Motte 

Exactly. Okay. So we want to hear what happened in this one, but before we go there, Emily, I’m going to have you tell us some background. Give us a little background on this case. What was this case about? What were you up against?

Emily Peacock 

So our client was a breast cancer survivor, and this was her last surgery, her last breast reconstruction surgery that she had to go through and she was going to be done with her battle with cancer. So she goes into this surgery thinking that this is it, this is her day. Her and her husband talk about how this is the last time they have to go to this hospital, their last trip to downtown Detroit. And after the surgery, her husband gets a phone call and the doctor says, “The surgery went fine. It burned. There’s little burn, nothing to worry about.”

Sari de la Motte 

Wait, what burned?

Emily Peacock 

She had burned… Well, she wasn’t specific, but she had burned her on the left and the right breast during surgery.

Sari de la Motte 

Okay.

Emily Peacock 

So the doctor doesn’t tell the patient on the date of the surgery. And then at the first visit postoperatively, she talks about how she burned her but doesn’t note it in the record. And it’s also the burns are not in the operative note. And then when we finally get… And she doesn’t follow her very closely. She doesn’t do anything special for these burns, even though we learned through the case that when you’ve had breasts that are radiated, they’re not going to heal well, if they heal at all.

So Chrissy and I walked the jury through understanding that this should have been followed more closely because there’s this high degree of danger that the burn is going to open up, the implant is going to be exposed, which is exactly what happened. And then this poor woman had to start all over again. And in fact, they had to take the implant out, so she was without a breast for months.

Sari de la Motte 

What was the wrongdoing in this case? Was it the burn? Was it the fact that they didn’t follow up? I mean, it sounds like there’s a lot of wrongdoing in this case, but what would you say the wrongdoing in this case is?

Emily Peacock 

I would say there were two things, burning her during the surgery because you have to pay attention to your tools. I heard time plus heat equals burn in my sleep. I’m sure Chrissy did too because we said it so many times during trial.

Sari de la Motte 

Yes, love it.

Emily Peacock 

And then also the theme of sweeping it under the rug. The doctor didn’t want to face the problem that she had created and did not… The follow-up care was very poor.

Sari de la Motte 

So before we talk about the piss-off point a little bit more, what were you up against? How were they defending this? Chrissy, let’s go to you. So what was their big defense in this case and/or what were you worried about?

Chrissy Hagen 

Yeah, I mean, their defense was, I think, a little bizarre. They basically had a million different things that they were trying to say happened. So first, they tried to say that it wasn’t a burn, it was something caused by the patient’s clothing and it was due to friction or traction, rubbing against that area.

Then they switched and tried to say, “Oh, maybe it was a burn.” No, I’m trying to think, Emily. There’s so many different things that they threw at the wall. The surgeon herself, remember, she says it was a burn, and then her own partner testifies, “Nope, she’s wrong. I have a burn specialty. It actually wasn’t a burn. There’s no way this was a burn.” And then they hire a defense doctor who says, “I would defer to the surgeon as to what happened. She’s the only one in the room.” So it was kind of like a throw everything at the wall and see what sticks.

And that’s really just what we went with in our closing was they’re trying to create this campaign of confusion and let’s just focus on what the doctor said, what came out of her own mouth. This is the defendant. She says, “I burned her,” so let’s go with that.

Sari de la Motte 

I love that.

Chrissy Hagen 

That’s kind of how we tried to [inaudible 00:09:14] down.

Sari de la Motte 

I was just thinking, “I hope you said all this in closing,” about how they’re just being like, “It could have been all of these things.” As a breast cancer survivor, how does one get burned in a surgery? How does that even happen?

Emily Peacock 

So it’s such an interesting question because the doctor had told the patient it was with the lighted retractor, which is the device the doctor uses to look underneath the breast while they’re placing the implant and moving the skin around. So that’s never supposed to be placed on the skin. And they actually brought a lighted retractor to trial and tried to say that it didn’t get hot enough to burn someone, but it wasn’t the lighted retractor that had been used in her surgery.

And then they also tried to say, no, no, it wasn’t the lighted retractor. It was something called a Bovie cautery, and that does actually give heat, that it does have a light on it. And then they tried to say, no, no, no, it wasn’t the lighted retractor. It wasn’t the Bovie cautery. It was just the fact that she was pulling too hard on the skin and that can happen. So the campaign of confusion.

Sari de la Motte 

Yes, yes. So who did voir dire and opening and closing in this case?

Chrissy Hagen 

I did voir dire, Emily did opening and the first closing, and then I did rebuttal close.

Sari de la Motte 

Lovely. Okay, so let’s talk about how voir dire went and what do you think you did differently, either in voir dire or opening or closing, in this case than maybe in the last case?

Chrissy Hagen 

Sure. So first of all, in this one, we were limited even more in our time constraints. We had 30 minutes. And initially, the judge wanted to give us 15, but we had 30 minutes. So I had to really decide what to focus on, and so of course I started with funnels.

I mean, let me just give… That’s not what I started with first. I tried the conversational piece because I think that’s so important, creating the group in the beginning, but I didn’t have a ton of time. And it was a learning lesson that I asked who here has ever been in jury selection or seen what goes on, with an attorney on our panel. So of course the attorney’s like, “Well, I can tell you all about it.” And I was like, “Oh, dang it. Learning lesson. Don’t ask it when there’s an attorney on it because I don’t want to hear from him.” So I tried to brush past that really quickly and then of course get to the funnels.

In this case, my funnel was who here has ever undergone surgery under anesthesia or know someone who has? What were your expectations about how the surgery would be performed? What’s important about a doctor being careful during surgery? What can happen if a doctor’s not careful? And then I went on to say, another kind of spinoff funnel of that was would your expectation of how a surgery would be performed change if we were talking about an elective or cosmetic procedure?

Sari de la Motte 

I’m glad you said that because I was thinking the one thing that I would have on my fears list is it was an elective procedure. I mean, it’s just to beautify. I mean, I chose not to have reconstruction, but 99% of women do reconstruct their breasts after breast cancer. So I’m glad that you asked that question. So how did that go in voir dire with those funnels? It sounds like a beautifully constructed funnel, by the way.

Emily Peacock 

I just want to, to your point, we really wanted to make sure that from the last trial, because we learned that juries will find any way to blame your client.

Sari de la Motte 

Yes.

Emily Peacock 

That was one of the most shocking things is some of the comments the jurors said afterwards, like theories the defense didn’t even introduce. So Chrissy did a great job trying to make sure, one, planting the idea in their heads that, hey, our client’s blameless. She was under anesthesia. And that elective piece was something and just the nature of plastic surgery. We knew she would get sympathy because of the breast cancer factor, but I thought it was crucial that Chrissy, from the start of the trial, planted those two ideas in the juror’s head.

Sari de la Motte 

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Sari de la Motte 

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Yeah, I think that’s so important because it’s not that jurors will try to blame your client. It’s that, I was just talking about this in the training I just did right before podcasting with you both, is that that’s how all of our brains are wired. All of our brains are wired, when we hear something dangerous, to go, “Well, that wouldn’t happen to me,” because that’s what brains are supposed to do, are keep you safe. So they’re like, “I would do this. I would get a second opinion. I would never have the surgery,” whatever it may be. And it’s not because jurors are assholes, it’s because that’s literally how our brain is wired.

So knowing that, that’s why the H2H method doesn’t do exclusionary voir dire because exclusionary voir dire is here’s all what the defense is going to say. They’re going to say this is an elective surgery, she didn’t even need to have it, whatever it may be. And then we plant all those ideas in the jurors’ brains and then they come up with even more. So we come out with, “How would you expect surgery to go?” “Yeah. Well, good.” “And how would you expect your surgeon to operate?” “Well.” “And yeah, but what if it’s an elective surgery?” “I mean, surgeon can be messy there.” No, it doesn’t matter whatever kind of surgery, they need to be safe. So we’re planting the plaintiff principles versus trying to find people who think the defendant piece.

Chrissy Hagen 

Yeah, exactly. And I did have a DVAQ, which was kind of like what you just said. It was, “Yeah, but it’s the patient’s decision to undergo the surgery, so if something bad happens, that’s on them, right?”

Sari de la Motte 

Nice. Woo-hoo. Chrissy, good job. And what did you get from response from that?

Chrissy Hagen 

Really good feedback and comments like, “No, that makes no difference. They should still be just as careful.”

And then we also knew, of course, the other argument that comes from the defense in every med mal case is things happen absent medical malpractice. It’s a known risk and these things happen. So that dovetailed perfectly into the next part of the funnel, which was our next argument that there was poor aftercare done, that that was negligent as well. So I said, “Okay, well, what would your expectation be if something did go wrong during surgery?” And that’s where we got all the comments that didn’t happen in this case. I’d expect there to be documented, close follow-up, all of these things that didn’t happen in our case.

Sari de la Motte 

Look at you. This is just beautiful. And this is the work I think when people just go, “I’m just going to, the night before, throw some questions together to see where my rats are so I can kill them,” is very different than, “I’m really going to think through this and get the jurors to give me everything I need.” It changes the game. Absolutely.

So let’s talk about the piss-off point. So what was the piss-off point, I’ll go to you, Emily, in this case? What do you think that jurors really could rally around that was wrong here?

Emily Peacock 

I think the defense didn’t help themselves because she had clearly admitted that she had burned her twice during the surgery. And she admitted it at her deposition, and they tried to have their paid and unpaid experts come in and say, “No, she just doesn’t know what she’s talking about.” And then the follow-up care, just basically leaving the patient high and dry with no idea that this was going to happen.

Chrissy Hagen 

And then there was also the blow-up. Our best blow-up I though we had was the op report where it said complications, and it didn’t say none. It was blank. So our whole argument was that is a choice to leave that out. That is not an omission. You clearly are hoping people just brush past that.

Sari de la Motte 

Yes, I love that. So this piece, just all of this kind of seems like a coverup or trying to get out of taking responsibility for something you did wrong. So she did this thing that was wrong, and not only did she not put it on the post-op report, but then she didn’t really follow up with the patient. And one of you mentioned that too. Tell me a little bit about your thoughts of how those are connected, why she didn’t do the follow-up as well as she could have. One of you mentioned that when we started.

Emily Peacock 

I think she was just hoping, even though the medical evidence and everything in her brain told her the opposite, that this would just heal on its own, which wasn’t realistic. Another thing that I think was huge was she took pictures, but they had pictures of her breasts before all the other surgeries and after, and they did not have any photos after this particular surgery. And that was one of the things we said in closing. If everything went right and there was nothing to hide, why are there no pictures? They took pictures of everything else.

Sari de la Motte 

That’s right. That’s right. So what did you do differently, I would say, here than last time, kind of preparing to go into this? Chrissy, then I’ll ask you that one since you were with me last time.

Chrissy Hagen 

Yeah, so I made sure we had the piss-off point, for sure, like we’ve talked about. I made sure to frame my questions in voir dire to get ahead of any defensive attribution, any, “This wouldn’t have happened if it was me,” and made it more of the focus on the defendant’s conduct being a deliberate choice to do this and why it was something that never should have happened.

Their other argument was burns happen absent medical malpractice, and that’s true. So we had to make sure we had a very good argument as to why these two burns were different. And it was one, she was burned twice. Two, another one, one of them was a full thickness burn. And then three, you completely ignored it and didn’t do anything to make sure that it didn’t get worse and worse, which is exactly what happened. So it was a lot easier to argue a lot of what happened in this case was more deliberate, which I think helped us.

Sari de la Motte 

Yes. And I think in other cases like this, it would be very easy to get in an argument about, is it a burn? Is it not a burn? And where it sounds like what you did was more focused on the coverup aspect and the not doing the post-care aspect. And that’s very smart because I think we tend to, especially in medical malpractice cases, if we’re arguing the medicine, we’re losing. So if we’re arguing what happened, what didn’t happen, we’re losing, when really lots of times it’s about ego, it’s about arrogance, it’s about… Both of these cases really showed both of those things here. Or in her case, maybe even shame, which is ridiculous. Okay, maybe mistakes do happen, but take responsibility, make sure that you fix it when you did catch it. And they made the choice to not do that at every single place that they could have done it.

Emily, talk to me a little bit about opening. How did you maybe frame some of these things there and how’d you feel opening went?

Emily Peacock 

I thought Chrissy and I did a really good job of being cohesive in terms of having some matching between the ideas she introduced in voir dire. And it was so short, so I guess one of the benefits is we already had a gauge on the jury. I mean, Chrissy had tears in voir dire about-

Chrissy Hagen 

Not me.

Emily Peacock 

Well, not you, sorry. She had people on the-

Chrissy Hagen 

Yeah.

Emily Peacock 

Sorry. People on… Potential jurors crying.

Sari de la Motte 

Yes.

Emily Peacock 

So we knew there were some really strong emotions there, and even some of the jurors we got excused, there really was this theme from the jury about they expected doctors to be responsible and own up for their actions.

Sari de la Motte 

Yes.

Emily Peacock 

So yeah-

Sari de la Motte 

There it is, there’s the theme.

Emily Peacock 

And it was easy to incorporate, and I thought we both, in our questioning voir dire, openings, closings… I mean, you’re perfectly on point, Sari. If you’re arguing about the medicine, you’re losing. Right? We didn’t make it… Go ahead, Chrissy.

Chrissy Hagen 

Oh, I was just going to say, and Emily, you talked to the foreperson after, and wasn’t she like, “By the end of it, we just didn’t even care what burned her.”

Sari de la Motte 

Yes.

Chrissy Hagen 

[inaudible 00:23:17] they were so sick of hearing the defense fight over. It wasn’t this, it was that, it was this, it was that. So I think you handled that perfect in closing for sure.

Sari de la Motte 

Yeah, and what you’re talking about, Emily, there is the trial dialogue, about how you’re so synced. So we talk about in H2H quite a bit, is that we’re going to ask those questions in voir dire so we can answer them in opening. It’s really the juror’s answers that we’re giving back to them. Doctors should be careful and if they’re not, they should own up to the mistake, or whatever jurors gave us, we’re going to give back. So I normally say the same person should do voir dire and opening, but when you are so aligned, that’s helpful.

Emily Peacock 

[inaudible 00:23:54]-

Sari de la Motte 

Anything else from opening that you felt went well or you were really able to get across?

Emily Peacock 

I thought just having a better sense of personalities in terms of the jurors and being able to speak to them was really helpful. We also were able to play some of the video testimony of the defendant, which was fun because we knew she was a spectacularly bad witness. So just like that first impression, my mom always said you never get a second first impression.

Sari de la Motte 

Yeah. Yeah.

Chrissy Hagen 

Yeah, and going back to the personalities that you were talking about, so one that came up in voir dire, there was a juror who ended up being on a jury who was wearing a face mask. And this was one of my biggest questions I had for you, Sari, is how do you handle the two minutes you get to question the people as they come into the box, as others are struck? And it was so funny because our judge, they’d get in the box, they’d sit down, he would ask two questions to all of them. He’d say, “Do you have any family in law enforcement? And have you had breast reconstructive surgery?” And they would say-

Sari de la Motte 

Law enforcement.

Chrissy Hagen 

Those were the questions. And then he’d look at me and he’d be like-

Sari de la Motte 

What’s got to do with anything?

Chrissy Hagen 

He’d be like, “Ms. Hagen, do you have any follow-up?” And I’m like, “As helpful as those two questions are, I’d like to ask a couple more questions.”

Sari de la Motte 

You’re like, “Nope, that covers it.” Yeah, that’s crazy.

Chrissy Hagen 

Exactly. But so-

Sari de la Motte 

That’s crazy. So I think what you’re saying is you’re having this great conversation, but then people get pulled out of the box and then a new one comes in.

Chrissy Hagen 

Yeah.

Sari de la Motte 

Very similar to how we do it here in Oregon. So I’m assuming those people are in the gallery, right? Watching.

Chrissy Hagen 

Correct.

Sari de la Motte 

So what I like to do is, “You’ve been listening to this conversation. Is there anything that you would like to add? Where do you sit on some of these issues?” And just see what they say. Because sometimes they’re sitting there going, “I can’t wait to get up there to say what I want to say.” And if they say, “Well, no, not really,” then you can just come in and say, “Well, I’m going to ask you then, what are your expectations around…” You don’t have to start with the whole top of the funnel. You just come right to the expectation question. Any objections during voir dire?

Chrissy Hagen 

No objections.

Emily Peacock 

No, the judge was definitely trying to kill Chrissy with his eye darts because she was going to ask the questions that needed to be asked. So that’s a great suggestion about just trying to go for the short circuit there.

Also, Sari, the judge, if anyone said they had teensy-weensy… Can you think of an example, Chrissy, like a gentleman got up and said, “I had a bad experience once with a doctor. I don’t think I could be fair.” And the judge would basically be like, “Okay, you can leave now.”

Sari de la Motte 

Yeah. Yeah.

Chrissy Hagen 

Right.

Sari de la Motte 

Well, that’s actually kind of good for you. I mean, these people are probably not going to be great for you anyway, and you don’t have to use a peremptory on them. I love the idea, the 30 minutes. I’ve heard that before. Our Colorado attorneys only get 20, no matter state court, whatever, they just get 20. And when you come out here as a mastermind and we put you in front of our mock juries, we give you 30. But as you get better and better at it, we’ve had people who’ve come out and at 20 minutes they’re like, “I got everything I need. Do I need to keep going?” Because you get so good at knowing what you’re after, and it gets in the air, and you’ve got it, and then you just move on to the next funnel, and everyone’s jiving with it. It just becomes this fun, then you spend more time in price versus value or whatever other places you want to play. But-

Chrissy Hagen 

But there are questions that I ended up asking just because I was genuinely curious, to the people who would fill in when they’d get struck. And one was, so going back to the person who’s wearing the mask, she was a lawyer, but she wasn’t practicing anymore. She was doing animal policy. So I was like, “What does this mean?” So I go up there and that’s the question I had decided to ask her, and I was like, “Can you tell us what you mean by animal policy?” And she’s like, “Well, actually, I didn’t think I had any relevant information, but it’s really relevant to your case.” And I was like, “Tell me more.” And she says, “When I was younger, I got viciously attacked in the face by a dog and had to have all these reconstructive surgeries.”

Sari de la Motte 

Oh, my goodness.

Chrissy Hagen 

I was like, “Oh, maybe that’s why she’s wearing the mask. We’re assuming it’s a COVID-type mask.” But yeah, and so I know you teach this a lot and the crew is just to be curious, and that’s what led to her opening up and sharing all this stuff, and she was eventually on our jury and I think helped on the damages side.

Sari de la Motte 

Oh, they didn’t kick her off?

Chrissy Hagen 

Mm-mm.

Sari de la Motte 

Wow. Love that. I love that. There was something that I was going to say there. Oh, so was she the lawyer?

Chrissy Hagen 

She was another lawyer. The other lawyer was kicked off, but she was the one lawyer that stayed on. She was not the foreperson.

Sari de la Motte 

Full circle. So we started with animals and dog foster, and now we have a lawyer who’s in animal policy, so there’s a reason for that mishearing at the beginning.

Anything that either one of you would, to our listeners, say based on these two experiences? I’m so glad that you had these two experiences, because I think it really shaped you as a trial attorney. I think it probably was one of the best things that could have happened to you, as hard as it is to get a defense verdict. I just think this is such a great example of just going back in and going, “Okay, how can we reshape this and get…” But is there anything that you would say, based on these two experiences, to our listeners that you learned from this or to make sure to do or anything? I’ll ask both of you this question.

Emily Peacock 

I feel like we’re going to say the same thing, so I’ll go first, Chrissy.

Sari de la Motte 

Okay.

Emily Peacock 

I mean, I just think you have to do your best to make sure that you figure out every way they’re going to blame your client, that natural inclination to say, “Oh, this couldn’t happen to me. This had to be your fault.” And right from voir dire, get ahead of it because it’s-

Sari de la Motte 

Yeah, flip it on its head.

Emily Peacock 

No matter how tragic or awful the injury is, I guess that’s the tendency that you need to battle.

Sari de la Motte 

Yeah. We don’t have the luxury of assuming that, oh my God, this is so horrible, they’ll see over that. In fact, the more horrible it is, the more likely our brain is to go find ways that we would never be in that position. So yes. And Chrissy?

Chrissy Hagen 

Yeah, I agree with that, as well as focusing more in rebuttal on the challenges section and sound bites for the jury room. So posing all these questions that people are probably going to have.

So for example, I said something like, “And if someone says burns happen in the absence of negligence, tell them what you heard doctor so-and-so say on the stand,” which is, “Yes, they do. And here’s why this is not that case, because she was burned twice, because it was full thickness, because they completely disregarded any sort of proper aftercare.” So asking all those questions, which is basically the defense’s arguments, and then immediately following with an answer so that they can take that back with them.

Sari de la Motte 

Yeah. Arming them, arming them in the verdict room. So was there an offer in this case? I don’t know if you’re allowed to say that, but-

Chrissy Hagen 

I looked at Emily.

Emily Peacock 

I don’t think we’re allowed to discuss.

Sari de la Motte 

Okay. So what did the end result? What was the verdict?

Emily Peacock 

Well, Chrissy-

Chrissy Hagen 

Yeah, go ahead. No, go ahead.

Emily Peacock 

[inaudible 00:31:43] I was just going to say you had to add it up three times.

Chrissy Hagen 

Yeah, we had to do a lot of addition in Michigan, which I used to practice in Colorado and we did not have this, but there’s a line for every single year in the future. So it’s not just punitive damages, past damages. So there’s a lot of addition because we also had a loss of consortium claim for the husband too. So it came out to 1.98 million.

Sari de la Motte 

Wonderful. Excellent, excellent. Were you happy with that result?

Chrissy Hagen 

Definitely. Any offers that were made were much closer to zero.

Sari de la Motte 

Yeah, I would assume so. Wonderful. Any closing thoughts that you want to say before we end the podcast? It’s been so fun having you on again.

Emily Peacock 

I just think you’re 100% right. You have to have piss-off points for the jury or they’re going to trudge through the medicine and decide against you.

Sari de la Motte 

Yes, because it’s so much easier to just be like, “This is too complex and confusing. The doctors know what they’re doing, so I’m going to nope out. Who am I?” So when we can make it about something other than the medicine, which it almost always is, that’s where we tend to win more of our medical malpractice cases.

Chrissy, I’m going to ask you, you may have something else you wanted to say, but what would you say to attorneys who did get a defense verdict and they’re like, “Fuck it, I’m not meant to be doing this”? What would you say to that?

Chrissy Hagen 

Yeah, it’s not the case at all. I definitely think practice makes perfect.

Sari de la Motte 

Yes.

Chrissy Hagen 

And even Emily said, she’s like, “That was the most confident I’ve ever seen you do voir dire, is this last trial.” And I think it’s because I’ve been practicing more and recently and learning from mistakes and just getting back out there and trying more and more cases.

Sari de la Motte 

I love it. I love it. And I love hearing stories like this. Thank you so much for coming back on the podcast to share this recent win. And Emily, glad to have you as well. So fun. You two ladies kicking ass over there in Michigan. So thank you so much for being on Sari Swears.

Emily Peacock 

Thank you for having us.

Chrissy Hagen 

Thank you.

Sari de la Motte 

All right, we’ll talk to everybody again next week.