Client vs Crusade

In this episode of Summary Judgment, Josh and Aaron discuss the challenge of balancing a case's industry impact while maintaining the best possible outcome for the client.

 FVF Law is a well-credentialed, overwhelmingly 5-star reviewed personal injury law firm in Austin, TX. FVF strives to be the educational resource for the injured, available to guide those with questions about what comes next. It is FVF’s mission to ensure clients are prioritized and informed throughout the injury claim process, and to secure the best possible outcome. Josh Fogelman and Aaron Von Flatern founded FVF Law to offer a different kind of injury law firm, and a dignified alternative in the marketplace. They hope to show injured Texans that consulting a lawyer after an injury is a natural, and responsible thing to do.

Transcript

0:00:00.8 Josh: Hey Aaron.

0:00:01.4 Aaron: Hey Josh.

0:00:02.3 Josh: Say, hey Josh.

0:00:03.2 Aaron: Hey Josh.

0:00:04.4 Josh: Oh, hey Aaron.

0:00:05.2 Aaron: Have you ever taken it too far? 

0:00:08.3 Josh: Oh my god, in so many contexts. Yes.

0:00:11.3 Aaron: Legally? 

0:00:13.4 Josh: In so many contexts, yes.

0:00:16.3 Aaron: Legally, but not gotten yourself into jail.

0:00:19.5 Josh: I can neither confirm nor deny the accusation.

0:00:23.4 Aaron: I heard you're suing Wayfair.

0:00:25.2 Josh: I'm gonna sue not Wayfair but a third-party insurance sold by Wayfair.

0:00:33.4 Aaron: Tell me more about that.

0:00:35.2 Josh: Well, sometimes you buy patio furniture, sometimes you buy the warranty on that patio furniture. Sometimes a warranty company denies the warranty claim because they say that you did not notify them of the claim in a timely manner when none of that really matters. So sometimes you got to sue the warranty company.

0:00:58.3 Aaron: What about on behalf of clients where you've got a just cause because some corporation has done something horrible to them and also, you've got a duty to them to manage risks because if you keep telling them you won't take their money, you'll see them in court, eventually you will see them in court and eventually you're trusting the case to 12 strangers who may do something bad to your client.

0:01:21.2 Josh: Yeah. Yeah, this is actually one of the conflicts, all joking aside one of kind of the ethical conflicts that we, not ethical conflicts, but just general conflicts that we find ourselves in frequently in just the line of work that we're in where on the one hand our job is really to help our clients recover monetary compensation for some sort of tragic or traumatic loss that they have endured or their family has endured. And on the other hand the client has a strong desire to effectuate some sort of change within an organization that has caused or contributed to that loss or that trauma. So what I mean by that is picture that you've got a company who is routinely hosting happy hours and getting their employees intoxicated and then putting their employees behind the wheel of a car and sending them home or other than having some sort of a responsible culture of paying for Ubers or designated drivers.

0:02:29.7 Josh: And they kill someone and the client comes to you and says hey, we got to put a stop to this and you say, well, my job is to help guide you through this process and get whatever you want. You get into the discovery and you uncover corporate cover-ups and bad policies. And then the company is offering you a life-changing amount of money to compensate the client for their loss but they want confidentiality and they effectively want a gag order to stop you from going any further then you have to have this conversation with your client like hey, listen, here's what we have done. Here is the offer that's on the table. But in order to accept this offer, we have to stop our crusade. What do you want to do? 

0:03:15.4 Aaron: Yeah, and you've got an unethical duty to your client to present that offer in a way that maximizes their utility so you can't put your spin on it and say, hey, they want to pay you this life-changing amount of money but what I'd like to do is to go make some headlines, get my law firm's name on a billboard and go start screaming at a jury about their bad behavior. And I think that's what you should do 'cause ultimately the clients it's their decision, but they want you to make the decision for them. And ultimately our license requires that we put our clients interest above ours. And if the client, and a lot of our clients are, I think one of the great things about FVF Law is we have great clients, great Exhibit A. But a lot of them are very private people and they're very busy people. They don't really have time to take on a separate crusade on top of raising three children and getting their kids tutoring and to baseball practice and soccer practice and all that and doing their own careers. Sometimes they're like, oh, there's enough money to pay for my kids college.

0:04:30.2 Aaron: Great. Where do I sign? And frankly we have to follow our clients lead on that.

0:04:36.3 Josh: Yeah, it's challenging because I think part of what drives litigators and trial lawyers to want to get a law license is the very high high that comes after a trial victory and after you have gone through battle and won the battle and had an opportunity to effectuate change. But in the practice you are pulled in multiple different directions and ultimately the will of the client most of the times, for justifiable reasons, this isn't for a lack of courage. This is just practicalities of circumstances. For example, you might have a conversation with your client who wants to take a corporation down that says listen we can take this corporation down but what's gonna happen is, they're just gonna file bankruptcy and start a new shell corporation. So the opportunity to effectuate the type of change that you want doesn't really present itself as often as maybe the client thinks it might or you would expect that it might just the nature of the laws of Texas and bankruptcy and creditor protections in Texas.

0:05:46.3 Aaron: Oh, yeah, there's times when the only change that can be effectuated is, you go get a bunch of people and you go down to the legislature and you change the laws of the state of Texas. People, a lot of our clients are like, well, they should know that they have to carry more insurance. Like well, Texas law doesn't require them to do that and until Texas law does based on the way they're set up with their shareholders they just won't. And that's just how it's always gonna be.

0:06:12.4 Josh: Yeah, but every now and again were presented with an opportunity where you get to both have the crusade and have that crusade not be at the expense of the client because no meaningful offer has been provided. There's nothing, there is no choice for your client to make. There is only one direction and that direction is forward and I know that's happened to me a handful of times in my career. It happened when we had the opportunity to change the law on the uninsured underinsured motorist coverage bad faith handling of claims in Travis County in the Third Court of Appeals. You're having that opportunity right now. You're in the throes with a major electric car manufacturer.

0:07:00.3 Aaron: Self-driving cars. I mean, this is fun stuff.

0:07:04.5 Josh: Yeah, it's sometimes, sometimes when the stars align and you have the opportunity to best serve your client and best serve your community and effectuate some major major change or uncover a scandal as it may be. It can be really just the absolute most rewarding aspect of the practice of law. But we just don't get those opportunities all the time.

0:07:32.3 Aaron: Yeah. You know and it's especially sweet when it's a one-inch tear and a patio furniture from a website based offshore somewhere and you're able to teach them a lesson about the way they do their warranty claims.

0:07:50.3 Josh: Yeah. Yeah, that's right. Sometimes you're your own client and you get to take it as far...

0:07:55.2 Aaron: Too far.

0:07:55.4 Josh: As you want. Take it too far.

0:07:58.3 Aaron: That's right. Well, this is FVF Law we're taking it too far since 2014 and thanks for listening.