Dan
Welcome to Sound Business Insights. I’m Dan Watkin. This episode is about War Starts. This podcast is not intended to provide legal advice.

Neil
Dan, this is going to be a really fun, entertaining and informative episode war stories. So let’s just get right into it. Can you tell me how’d the whole litigation thing happened for you? How’d you get into this?

Dan
Well, I’m excited about talking about this because I wanted to explain how the Watkins firm got from the beginning to where it is today. And I think the only way we can do this is to talk about some of the shaping and remarkable cases that we’ve had and I’ve had over the last 35 years. Let’s start from the beginning. My first trial was in 1985. I was a second year law student and the professor says, usually it’s your job to file a motion or file some papers on behalf of somebody who can’t afford a lawyer. And my turn came up, jury trial <laugh>.

Dan
And so I had to take a week off from school and do a jury trial with my professor and we won. So that’s when I got the bug. I got the bug for jury trials and then I went to work for a lawyer named Chris Popoff. I had jobs with large firms. I didn’t like it. I didn’t want to just sit in a room and review documents all day. I’d already done a jury trial. I really wanted to continue to do trials. So I got a job with a guy named Chris Popoff that only did transactions work for the last 10 years. And so I started doing <laugh> trial work right away. Like the minute I passed the bar, he had me in there making appearances and getting ready for trials. Now you have to understand back then, you’ll look at our website, you see I have over 60 trials, I stopped counting. We have more than that. Right. But back then we had a municipal court with lots more judges and you went to trial within 11, 12 months.

If you had a case in Muni court, <laugh>, you could be doing 6, 7, 8 trials a year, sometimes more than one trial in a week. If it’s a bench trial, it’s collection cases, mostly breach of contract, all $25,000 or less. So, limited jurisdiction. And they had a whole department with rows and rows of courtrooms and young lawyers like myself cutting their teeth on being trial lawyers before you got into higher and higher cases. And so that’s how I got to do so many more trials. So when I finally got into larger, more highly disputed and high dollar trials, I’d already had 10, 20 trials under my belt and I was ready to go as were most of my peers. So when you think of lawyers my age or my generation, eighties and nineties, think of them as somebody who’s probably had a lot more trials than the lawyers today because it’s very difficult to get a trial now.

Neil
And there’s an art to a trial, right? Let’s,

Dan
There is,

Neil
let’s start with voir dire.

Dan
Voir dire. You can take seminars, you can go to the best trial lawyers who teach classes, but you’ve got to learn by doing. And you have to know how to present your questions, how to identify the right kind of juror, how to see if they’re reacting to you, or your client. Sometimes they’re looking away. Sometimes they’re looking at them. Sometimes you just know from the last 10 trials you did that this particular type of person did not like this kind of case.

Neil
Your lawyerly instincts kick in and you just say, Yeah, number 12, you’re gone

Dan
Well, you’re looking for bias, that’s what you’re really looking for.

Neil
Absolutely.

Dan
So that’s what it’s meant to do. And it seems like it’s kind of unfair if some lawyers can spot bias quicker than others. But that’s the way it is. I mean, that’s the best system we have. You can hire jury consultants that can tell you the same thing. I got a degree in psychology from Loyola that helped a little bit. And then just doing so many trials and learning from what other lawyers did.

I just remember vividly one trial I was doing <laugh> and this lawyer used one of my own terms and my closing argument and twisted it against me. And I was just, I was devastated. I was like, Oh man, he got me. So yeah, just learning, from other attorneys, from judges, when you’re a young attorney, at least back then, judges would give you comments, positive comments, constructive criticism. You know, when you make mistakes and after a while you’re not so nervous. You’re comfortable, you’re confident, and then you can prepare your clients that way too.

Neil
So what was your first big case? Your first big break as it were?

Dan
I don’t know if it was a big break, but remember there was no internet and the only way you got clients was word of mouth. So a lot of law firms did press releases. And you also would do pro bono work for hot topic items in the news. And so when I first became a lawyer, there was a friend of mine who was, let’s say, involved in a lot of civic things around town. And he was also friends with this group called Citizens of Delmar, the friends of Delmar or some kind of group that was fighting the L’Auberge Hotel in downtown Del Mar. And he asked me if I could take it on. I go, I have a job <laugh> and they’re not paying. And he goes, Well, it’s an election fraud, developer and many other causes of action case and they need someone to stand up for their rights. So me and about seven of my friends volunteered and we litigated that case all the way till its resolution.

Neil
How did it come out?

Dan
Well the L’Auberge is about 15 feet lower to in the ground than maybe it would’ve been.

Neil
Where did it go from there

Dan
Then? I had some jury trials. I had a jury trial in 1990 that went really well. I mean, I’m talking about a large case. Yes. Where they wanted more than a million dollars for my client.

Neil
And was that the TGI Fridays case?

Dan
No, this is before that.

Neil
Before Fridays.

Dan
Okay. Now this was a case I handled in Los Angeles where my client was accused of doing some pretty bad things to this secretary of his. And he admitted that he pretty much did. And there were witnesses to see it. He would, you know, say and do certain things that were pretty improper. But the question was, was she offended?

Neil
Right.

Dan
And the question also was, what kind of jurors do I want on my jury that can determine whether she’s offended or not? And so I’m not going to tell you <laugh>, that’s one of the tricks of the trade I have had to learn over the last 30 years. But we did select some wonderful jurors who did not have bias against our client and you wouldn’t believe who they were. But they came out afterwards and said she was not offended. She was in love with him even though he was married, but we were offering a lot of money to settle because the things he did would appear at first glance really bad. Right. So we were offering a lot of money, but they wanted millions. And so that would be the end of the company. So we had to go for it.

Neil
That’s not the only case you’ve had where our client has come to us and said, “Yeah, I’m sunk. I’m dead to rights.” There was another one that involved sexual harassment as well.

Dan
Wasn’t, there’s been numerous over the years. <laugh> numerous because people are adults Yes. In the community. And you rarely get a sexual harassment case where somebody didn’t say something sexual to somebody. And it’s almost always the guys saying something to the women. But we’ve had plaintiff cases where we’ve had to worry about, you know, whether they were going to be proven to be offended or not. We’ve had all kinds of cases. The one you wanted to talk about was TGI Fridays.

Neil
Yes.

Dan
And that’s where I represented a manager and was able to get the worker’s compensation insurance company to pay for the manager’s individual defense.

Because otherwise, I mean he’s got nothing. The other lawyers were, they wanted $60 million in settlement, press releases the entire 11 week trial was on TV every night. And my client was accused of doing things that these women claim offended them. He would put his finger or wet finger in their ear or his tongue in their ear, have them all tell dirty jokes. And then they come back after the fact with some lawyers and say this was really offensive to them. And so it was quite embarrassing for him, quite embarrassing for the company, until we won. And we were able to show that all of these women were not as offended as they claimed to be. And if you get a bunch of reasonable adult jurors, they get offended when they see people make claims and try to exaggerate and boast and just stretch the truth for money.

Neil
False Indignation.

Dan
Yes, exactly. And so if you can just keep your eye on the ball during this 11 weeks of trial and take all the punches. Because when your client takes a punch, you take a punch.

Neil
Right.

Dan
You can do that. You can get the right message across to the jury and the judge. Because if the judge doesn’t believe you, you’ve got to at least a good case to present to the jury, they’ll take it away. But if you can go on this line, and also you’ve got to rely on the fact that judges see more of these cases than your regular lawyer. So they’ll, 99% of the time, figure out where you’re going and just watch it happen. And so we did that with the TJ Fridays case. We, there was another attorney who’s really well known, awesome trial attorney named Arch Stokes and he was doing the trial on behalf of TGI Fridays and he was amazing too. And that was one where I thought, Oh my God. And again, because it looks bad and you can’t predict what the jury’s going to do, we were offering a lot of money.

Neil
What was the final settlement before the not guilty verdict came back?

Dan
That’s confidential. But it was a lot of money. A lot of money and enough where we were shocked that they weren’t taking it. But their lawyers were really good lawyers, still are really good lawyers and were taking a shot at a really big company. So, and it didn’t work out.

Neil
So Dan, what was your next most memorable trial after the Friday’s episode?

Dan
Well, during the Friday’s episode and all the trials before that, Oh, let me tell you one other story before I go on.

Neil
Sure.

Dan
I had a case in municipal court down in Chula Vista and it was about some equipment that my client kept and didn’t pay for, but claimed he didn’t owe it because they said this and she said that and things like that. And it was heated. These were competitors, they were mad at each other. So the other side shows up and the owner and his office manager who’s also his bodyguard, this guy’s big. He was a big guy, looked like a bodyguard. He’s got to be six three all muscle works out at the gym a lot. So we cross-examined him on some questions and we knew there was a document in the file that we knew we hoped he hadn’t read.

Dan
And he just made up a big fat lie right on the stand in front of the judge. I handed him the document and he read it and goes, “Oh, oh oh.” And I go, So were you lying today? Oh were you lying back then? And they objected, said that’s argumentative. The judge goes, No, I want to know. And he turned all red and angry and he, and he couldn’t explain it. And then the judge chewed him out and then we did a quick closing argument. He just said, Case dismissed. He was mad, he was livid. My client and I were worried. We left the courtroom and they started yelling for us and we went, we went into another courtroom and asked for the bailiff to come over <laugh> and said, these guys are after us. And they came walking in into the courtroom and they were detained for about an hour or so while we got back to our offices.

Dan
That was back in the old days when you had had a lot of trials and a lot of passion things worked a little differently than they do now.

Neil
Yeah, I’d say a little bit.

Dan
Yep. They worked a lot faster back then, less computer work, but things went faster. They had a Judge Greer who ran the Superior Court, he convinced a lot of people in the legislature to make trials happen faster – the Trial Reduction Act – And it did. You went to trial everywhere quick and you had to be ready. So that’s another reason we did a lot of trials. So after the big TGI Friday’s case, I went on my own and had my own firm, I left Chris. When I was with Chris, we had associates helping me, but it was just mostly me and maybe one or two associates. I went on my own and I picked up a case for Pacific Bell.

Dan
Pacific Bell had been monitoring the TJ Friday’s case and had a lawyer in the audience. It was a full packed house, had a lawyer in the audience. And so they contacted me and said, We have a case up here in LA County, can you help us out? And I jumped on board and tried that case and had a wonderful time.

Neil
What was the essence of the case?

Dan
The essence of the case is sexual harassment. Again, some ladies were claiming that, who were also working and doing lines on the telephone poles, that some of the men were saying and doing sexual things to him. And so we tried that case for, I think it was three weeks up in LA County. And same thing, we knew what kind of jurors to pick. We knew what kind of arguments to make and we knew not to focus on whether they said something, but on how they reacted.

Neil
How they reacted.

Dan
That’s the big key. And we won defense. And that lawyer had a wonderful reputation for some big verdicts. He was not happy. And we won and the clients were really happy and I, I really enjoyed the experience Pacific Bell, fantastic client to have. Then another case came down the line that was not sexual harassment and it was probably the hardest case of my life.

Neil
What was that case like?

Dan
It was intellectual property and it was one company, pretty good size company, grabbing some investors and taking product and technology, patented technology from another. And this was a case where my clients really couldn’t afford to fight against the largest firm in town and this huge company. And they finally came to me about four months before trial saying, you know, can you help us? And I said, I’ll try. And luckily somehow we got insurance to cover it and then the insurance company hired us and we put on a huge battle, which we lost terribly <laugh>, but we appealed and filed more motions and more motions and it just tooth and nail.

Dan
And finally we convinced the insurance company to donate a bunch of money towards resolving it for my group of clients. And then our clients paid some too. But it was one of the toughest cases when you go into a case and you know that the evidence, the facts, the law are all against you. You’ve still got to try.

Neil
Right.

Dan
And you’ve got to do your best to stop everybody from losing everything they own.

Neil
What did you learn from that case?

Dan
I learned a lot about <laugh> business litigation, a lot about patents, trademarks, expert witnesses. We hired numerous professors from U C S D who were well known and highly regarded in the field of this technology. So it was a wonderful experience. There were a lot of lawyers we had to coordinate with. The trial lasted three months, being in trial for three months and it was a judge trial that was very difficult. And handling my co-defense counsel who always, you know, we got along but I never, I never thought he was taking the right path. And so yeah, it really was. It was a multimillion dollar case and then we got better results for our client after the judgment came down.

Neil
Right.

Dan
So we kept fighting it all the way until the end, but it was not a happy situation with anybody.

Neil
What do you think is the biggest difference between then and now?

Dan
Judges have to handle way too many cases. They have a docket that’s so full and for some reason their support staff is shrunk. And the working hours, I’ve tried cases everywhere, other states, and the San Diego County judges work harder than anyone, any judges I’ve ever been in front of. You don’t take that job because oh my god, it’s such an easy job. <laugh>. You’ve got to love the law and you’ve got to want to serve your community because that is a tough job. They get there early and they work long hours with not as much support as other jurisdictions.

Neil
So share with us a story about a shareholder or shareholders that might have been involved in an action where somebody tried to take advantage of them.

Dan
Well that’s a good question Because they had this other case. I had to hire a lot of associates. So I had 10 attorneys working for me. You do this, you do that. You know, breaking the work up, really learning how to organize my business right. And also trying to figure out which way it was going to go with my business. We had such a winning track record for trials. I didn’t want to do any more defense work. I was winning plaintiff’s cases. I switched teams, <laugh> and I started bringing plaintiff’s actions because what work on the defense would also work on the plaintiff’s side.

And we were ready to go to trial and we knew how to handle discovery and we knew which depositions to take, which experts to hire. All those things we learned. When I did the TJI Friday’s trial, one of our experts was an expert that never got to testify but was also was retained in the OJ Simpson trial.

Dan
And so I wanted to do plaintiff work. So I did. And then we were doing great winning cases. I was learning how to manage lawyers. But doing all that changed me as a lawyer.

Neil
In what way?

Dan
Well I learned from these associates I hired and I taught them things that I knew. So there’s a give and take. You have someone with an experience at this firm doing these things this way. And also learned from paralegals and administrators, all those people, how they put together a team to make things work. Because you can, a lot of lawyers learn is one thing. You can win every case and go bankrupt if you don’t respect the whole team and get it together as a team. So we did that and then Chris Popoff came back, <laugh>, we had it all tooled up to go plaintiffs and we were doing lots of plaintiff work.

Dan
We thought of ourselves as a pirate ship. We’re going after the bad guys taking their bounty and all that stuff. And then Chris came back, but he’s a transactions attorney at the time with 20 years experience and 20 years of clients. And he says, I want you to handle my stuff. I want to work for you. I’d always worked for him, <laugh>. So it was a weird situation, but I said, Are you sure? He goes, I’m positive you take all this stuff. I’ll work for you. You run the show. I like your operation, I like the way you’re doing it. Let’s just keep going. Well obviously he liked it. He taught me how to do it. <laugh>, I copied everything he did, so I’m sure he loved it.

Yeah. So we started trying cases for him again and that required a team and hiring better and higher quality lawyers and more complicated cases, more business related cases, more shareholder derivative suits, shareholder litigation, straight on every kind of case you could imagine. He was, his clients were in it. And so the wonderful thing about being a lawyer is they pay you to learn a little bit more about different areas of the law. So when you’re hiring a 35 year lawyer, you’re paying a little bit more because he’s been literally in school for 35 years researching more and more about different areas of the law or how that law has changed.

Neil
Of course. Like a surgeon who’s been a doctor for 30 years who’s an expert in their field, it’s the same thing.

Dan
Right.

Neil
That’s continuing education.

Dan
Absolutely. And training and teaching. And here today I have lawyers who are 25 year lawyers, 42 year lawyers. I mean 45 year lawyers with his 45 years experience (That’s Chris) … 25, 20, 23 years. These lawyers know what they’re doing. Published appellate published lawyers here and transaction lawyers. We had large months of business and we talk to each other. So we don’t just have to do research, we do the research and then we say, Didn’t you represent a company like this to one of our other lawyers? They go, Oh yeah, we did. Or didn’t you have a discovery dispute like this? Oh I’ve got a new trick. I learned this from other fellow lawyer. How to do discovery in a more efficient way or how to draft contracts.

Dan
Our contract base is 45 years long. I mean that’s a 45 years of different types of agreements that were used successfully in business on top of our database that we use to double check everything.

Neil
Right. To stay current.

Dan
Yeah. So what the product we give here today is way better than when I was young and young and dumb <laugh> uh, just swinging away. So that’s the fun thing about doing the war stories.

Neil
Awesome. We’re going to come back with another episode of war stories Because we’re only about halfway there. Kids. We’ll be back with you…

Dan
Okay.

You can learn more about the Watkins firm at https://watkinsfirm.com or call our office at (858) 535-1511.