News

Trial Guides congratulates lawyer and long time Trial Guides author Rick Friedman of Friedman Rubin for obtaining a $72,000,000 verdict against Monsanto today in Seattle.

For the past few years Rick has been trying cases against Monsanto for injuries caused by Monsanto's polychlorinated biphenyls "PCB" products.  This verdict follows prior verdicts of $275 million, $185 million, $82 million and $62 million.

As opposing counsel examines your witness, as you object to leading questions, and as you challenge the defense witness’s credibility, you may notice feelings of frustration, uncertainty, or even panic. Cross Examination expert Patrick Malone discusses how to identify and address these feelings.

Trial Guides is announcing a new customer success story for one of the largest personal injury verdicts of 2023.

Trial Guides Founder Aaron DeShaw has obtained a $77.5 million verdict in a recent amputation case using multiple influences from Trial Guides. His $77.5 million compensatory damages verdict is the largest personal injury verdict in Oregon history, and believed to be the highest single leg amputation verdict in the United States.  As with other customer success stories, we asked Aaron for some insights on how he obtained the verdict that might help other Trial Guides customers.

Trial Guides contributing author uses lessons from Don’t Eat The Bruises, Trial by Human, and Witness Preparation for an outstanding plaintiff outcome. This verdict is considered one of the largest slip and fall jury verdicts for a lumbar spine injury that did not result in quadriplegia.

Trial Guides congratulates author/presenters Zoe Littlepage, Randi McGinn, and Deborah Chang for an outstanding $10.5 million verdict on the tragic case Esther Nakajjigo, a Ugandan activist who was decapitated in Arches National Park in 2020. The case went to federal court, where the US admitted full liability. This outcome marks the largest federal verdict in Utah history.

A $9.5 million judgment was awarded on April 23, in a wrongful death case in Hampden County, Massachusetts. The trial team consisted of Nicholas Rowley and Benjamin Novotny of Trial Lawyers for Justice and Charlotte Glinka and Karen Zahka of Keches Law Group, P.C.

Trial attorney Nick Rowley was kind enough to share a few details from the case:

Plaintiffs’ attorney Chris Madeksho shared with us strategies from From Hostage to Hero that he used to win the case:

Sari’s book helped me organize my voir dire so that I could examine the panel in an organized way given the time constraints (30 minutes per panel) that parties were given. Further, Sari’s book gave clear advice on how to “make it about the jury” by using their language and their ideas in opening and closing. The jury “got it” because of this advice.

In Hidalgo County, Texas, attorneys Michael Cowen and Malorie Peacock of Cowen Rodriguez and Peacock obtained a just multimillion-dollar verdict for the widow of a man who died during a trench collapse. Read more about how they obtained the verdict.

Nick Rowley has done it again, this time obtaining a $21 million verdict in a contested liability motor vehicle case.

The Collision

Nick’s client, Danielle Laws, was a European fitness model who had just moved to California on a work visa. Humble and soft-spoken with no family and few friends nearby, the twenty-eight-year-old had just begun to make a name for herself in the states. She had lived frugally in her tiny apartment, a small motor scooter her only means of transportation. The same scooter she was driving the day Dr. Andrew Chen struck her with his Range Rover. She had been in America for only four months.

Last week, Trial Guides author Rick Friedman obtained a $21.5 million verdict in a difficult traumatic brain injury case. We wanted to share how Rick obtained the outcome despite extremely challenging facts.

Rick’s client was a fifty-seven-year old self-made multimillionaire on a cruise with Holland America Lines. He, his wife, and his daughter were scheduled for an eight-month around-the-world cruise. One day on the ship while he was walking through a doorway, the door closed suddenly and struck him in the head.

Book Review: Twelve Heroes argues that all humans—including jurors—are "wired" to use stories to make sense of the world around them. But to effectively appeal to jurors’ story sense, attorneys must first understand story structure itself. To that end, Twelve Heroes elucidates the most fundamental components of story such as: heroic story structure and classic story characters and elements like the Hero, the Villain, the Victim, the Mentor, and the Lie.

Attorney Chris Stombaugh of Wisconsin recently obtained a $7.05 million verdict on a construction site accident verdict in Iowa. He credits a substantial factor of his success to David Ball's "Uber Rule" discussed in his Trial Guides Welcome to the Revolution CLE.

In his own words:

"I listened to your Trial Guides presentation [Welcome to the Revolution].

In his book Polarizing the Case, Rick Friedman teaches us not to fear allegations or insinuations that our client is malingering or exaggerating injuries. Instead he provides, in his own words, "a guidebook for wrapping the malingering defense around the neck of the defense lawyer and strangling him with it."

Here is what one young lawyer did with his copy of Polarizing the Case:

Trial Guides is now distributing "Closing Statements in Child Injury and Child Wrongful Death Cases Volume 2."

This book is a “must have” for any lawyer representing injured children. This book is a compilation of closing statements in child injury and wrongful death cases by 15 of the nation's best personal injury lawyers. Each lawyer is a member of the Inner Circle of Advocates, an organization comprised of the 100 best plaintiff trial lawyers in the United States. Most of the closing statements in this book came from cases in which the jury returned verdicts in excess of $1,000,000. The following trial lawyers who contributed to this text:

We recently received the following lawyer success story using Rules of the Road:

"I recently tried a bad faith case here in Kentucky that was supposed to be a very conservative jurisdiction. The judge, as well as everyone else, warned me not to turn down the offer of $300,000. We did, and the verdict was $755,000 plus $195,000 to be added for attorneys fees. Not a big verdict for California, but very respectable for here.

Trial Guides received the following customer success story from David Ball.

"I just wanted to follow up with you regarding the method described in your book, CDs and seminars on Damages. Thank you for your help.

When I went to the ATLA Damages College I had already read your book on Damages, and listened to your CD. I was comfortable with your method and was looking to refine my skills. The case I worked on at the ATLA Damages seminar was a dental malpractice case where an oral surgeon severed my client's lingual nerve while extracting a lower wisdom tooth, leaving half of his tongue permanently numb.

We recently received the following lawyer success story using the information in From Good Hands to Boxing Gloves - How Allstate Changed Casualty Insurance in America.

“David Berardinelli's book From Good Hands to Boxing Gloves is an essential tool for any trial lawyer handling bad faith claims against Allstate. The book details how Allstate redesigned its claims handling process to offer policyholders a very simple choice: accept less than fair value for your claims or face a battery of lawyers and years of costly litigation.