Phil Parrish is on “Let’s Kill All The Lawyers” with Attorney David Heffernan

On Behalf of | Jun 9, 2021 | Podcasts

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Welcome to another episode of First off, let’s kill all the lawyers that often miss quoted phrase from Shakespeare in the 1500s. And unfortunately, a lot of people still hear it and go, that’s not a bad idea. I’m David Heffernan, and I’ve been practicing personal injury law in Miami for almost 30 years. And I’ve been teaching at u m, law school, in the litigation skills trial program for almost that long as well.

And what I do is I represent individuals, and for example, maybe it’s an auto accident, and we can’t resolve it, we go back and forth with the insurance company, ultimately, a couple years down the road, get to a jury trial, and then either get a nice jury results or badger result. And you would think that might be the end of it. But it’s not. That’s when I call in guys like Phil Parrish, my first guest here today. Phil is an appellate lawyer. And Phil, let me just welcome you to the program first. And let’s talk a little bit about and I not only call you after the fact because because I’m smart enough to call you ahead of time for the litigation support as well. But But let’s talk about what appeals mean, what an appellate lawyer does. So first off, let’s talk about you, Phil, welcome to the show.

Alright,

let’s, let’s try that again. All right, minor technical difficulties, that we’ve all it’s

so funny, you go back a year ago, and nobody knew what the hell zoom was, and people didn’t freeze here and there. The good news, Phil, is you’re not a cat. And so we can move from that premise on. But Phil is an appellate lawyer. He’s a Board Certified appellate lawyer. And let’s talk about that. So first off, how did you first off, let’s talk about why you went to law school.

Well, I, I didn’t want to go to med school.

And I, I had always enjoyed reading and writing

more than arithmetic or science. So and I just

thought that being a lawyer would be a rewarding career, try to help people out. I wasn’t certain when I went to law school, what type of law I would practice. So I kind of went in to it. A little bit open ended. But I then then clerked with the old Fowler, white law firm in Tampa, back when they had, you know, big clerking programs, and I got the opportunity to work with an attorney named Chris Alden Byrne, who was later elevated to the second district court of appeal. After I worked with him, I got an offer there and started working there.

And that’s how I got into the appellate field. I saw what the trial attorneys were doing day in day out, I wasn’t certain that that’s what I wanted to do, or that was my best. Sometimes I can tell you that. Right.

It seemed to be that

the reading and writing aspect of it,

you know, appealed to me, and to my skill set better than, you know, going out and knocking heads every day taking depositions. So that’s how I trended over to the appellate side. Right. And, and I’ve been, I’ve been lucky to work with film, going back a long time now on on a lot of different cases. And, and I want to kind of break this down into a couple areas. So let’s, let’s talk first just about appellate work, and then I want to get into trial support, because I think those two certainly go hand in hand. But But I think a lot of people understand and you know, right? Wrong or different through TV, you know, okay, we know what a jury trial is, okay, you go in there and jury comes back with a verdict. But that generally never ends it. So. So how does the whole appeal process work? And let’s just talk on the state court level at first. Sure. So I when people ask me, you know what I do I say that I complained to three judges about what one judge did. Or conversely, conversely, I explained to three judges why that one judge did the right thing. So what what you’re typically doing within an appeal is after the proceedings are done in the trial level, and it depends on on what stage of proceedings, the case is done in the trial court. Sometimes there’s a motion to dismiss, saying you have a state of claim that can occasionally be granted with prejudice, you can immediately appeal that and it’s you’re just gonna be talking about the law with the appellate court. Then there’s the next stage, which is the summary judgment stage. After all the facts have been discovered. One side, usually the defense can say, we think even if you take everything the plaintiff has brought here, they still cannot prevail. They have no claim to go to a jury. And if summary judgment is entered, that can be immediately appealed. There’s denied it cannot be appealed

except in rare circumstances.

With when the issues of qualified immunity, that type of thing. But for most personal injury cases that we’re talking about here, the denial of a motion for summary judgment can’t be appealed. And then of course, you have cases that have gone to verdict. And, you know, whichever side has lost, assuming they have exhausted their post trial motions can then appeal. That, and that’s a it’s a fairly long process, because the clerk has to get the record together, there is going to be three briefs, the party that’s appealing the party that lost the trial, is going to do an initial reply brief. And the party that one below is going to do just an answer brief, there may or may not be an oral argument, all these things take time there are extensions granted. So people often ask me, how long is the appellate process, and it’s typically one to two years. Sometimes it can be done in under a year.

But a year to a year and a half is,

is not unusual. Some of the more complicated cases can take over longer. Well, and that’s, and that’s one of the things I explain to clients when they come in is, is look, and we’ll we’ll put the pandemic aside for a minute, because it’s going to take a while for us to finally kind of get to normal on both the trial and the appellate level. But you know, it may take, you know, case can settle early on, but it might take a year or two, it might take three years. And then after that there’s no guarantee of anything, it might go up on appeal. So let’s let’s break down again, I think people understand the trial process, we go in there, there’s a judge, there’s a jury, we put witnesses on there, we present evidence to them. And then a jury, in most cases, ultimately decides what that question is, when somebody’s at fault, not at fault. Who’s owed money, who’s not? You’ve talked about the appeal. So that comes out and somebody disagrees with it one way or the other.

But what’s the process in the appeal court? Now, I know you said early on, you argue with with three judges. But but so how does that work? You take my case, we’ve either won or we’ve lost. And it’s going up on appeal, what’s going to happen from here on out?

Well, first thing is that, as I mentioned, the clerk has got to put the record together, which means all of the pleadings from below all the evidence that was entered if there’s a trial and the trial transcript is necessary, because if you want to argue that there’s an error, you’re going to have to let the appellate court read the entire record. And that can be you know, anywhere from a couple 100 pages to 1000s and 1000s of pages, depending upon how long the case was litigated how long the trial took.

So that takes, you know, the initial brief is due 70 days after the notice of appeal. Well, that’s just you know, the initial rule of thumb, sometimes the clerk doesn’t get the record ready on time, and you get extension for that. And you’re talking about a brief a brief is now your written version. Yes, whatever the argument is saying

the trial judge was right or wrong. Here’s why. Right, and you have to, you know, you have to take all of it could be again, it could be 1000s of pages, and you want to

raise issues that will, in essence, jump off the page at the to the appellate judges, the appellate judges have a tremendous workload. And these briefs, the initial brief can be, you know, as long as 50 pages now they’re doing it by word, not by page, but under the old rules, it was 50 pages, they might want to read, you know,

dozens of cases weak that they have to prepare for. And you have to hit them right up front with, in plain language, what it is that would make them go Oh, wow, that seems wrong. If you’re the appellant, you’re the one who’s appealing, you want to be able to put in essentially, the first paragraph were to grab their attention and say, Okay, I want to read more about this, because that seems wrong, what occurred below. And and so it’s a matter of, you know, telling the story. It’s obviously nonfiction because it’s based on the facts record. And again,

we as appellate lawyers are either benefited by or stuck with the record as this, we cannot add to it at the appellate level,

which we’ll get back into the lit support issue in a minute as to why that may be important to bring someone like myself on for let’s support but you are

pulling it all together in a in a story that like if you were going to read a novel that they said the first few lines are, are very important to the first sentence draw people into the characters. It’s the same except it’s in fiction. I mean, it’s in nonfiction, it’s factual and but you you want to make it a readable brief. So you want to write it in plain language.

And and yet still tell a compelling narrative as to why, if you’re the appellant why the case must reversed, if you’re the appellee. It’s why the trial court and the jury were, you know, absolutely right. They did everything right. Or if they didn’t do everything, right, the small things they did wrong, you know, don’t matter. They there’s the concept of harmless or there could be arable, though, but unless it really affected the outcome, and it’s clear to the appellate court that affected the outcome, they’re going to say, look, we you’re not entitled to a perfect trial, you’re just entitled to a fair trial.

All right. So this thing gets fully briefed. Everybody presents their story. And then I think you mentioned oral argument. How does that differ from, you know, again, jury trial, we argue for people that we bring in off the street that are selected as jurors, who’s this argument going to? So the argument is for the three, usually in a state appellate courts can be three, if you could get in the rare occasion to the Florida Supreme Court seven. And even the federal court as well. Typically, it’s a three judge panel. And they often do not hold oral argument cases, some cases they look at and they say so routine.

If we address it, we’re not going to really be addressing a novel issue or an issue that we think is important to write on.

And that includes occasionally they’re even without oral argument, they will reverse. But in cases where they decided they want oral argument, sometimes it’s because

there’s a little lack of clarity in the briefing, and they want to ask some questions. Sometimes they want to get concessions out of a party at an oral argument. But they’re they’re looking at the legal arguments you raise. And it depends on again, we I mentioned summary judgments before that goes up on de novo review. So they’re looking at the record, just like they’re putting themselves in the same position as the trial judge. They don’t have to give any deference to what the trial judge did. They can look at the record, and particularly if they’re looking at legal issues, legal document interpreting a contract, that sort of thing. If it’s a trial, and there is a there was a an evidentiary issue. The does judge, you know, declare that something was hearsay or wouldn’t allow a piece of evidence to be introduced. That is a abuse of discretion standard, although it’s modified by the actual rules of evidence. I mean, you can you can’t give so much deference to the trial court,

not follow the rules of evidence. So they give deference because the trial judge, was there a trial judge saw the witness at trial judge the interactions? I mean, sure, if it’s a if it’s an issue, for instance, an evidentiary hearing or a bench trial, the judge in the jury both are given the benefit of the doubt in terms of making credibility determinations that appellate judges do not do that they give must give deference to the determination of the Trier of fact whether it’s a judge in a bench trial or the jury in a in a jury trial, unless

it’s so obvious that there was some other error that affected the jury, or the trial judge and making those determinations, but they don’t look at the credibility determinations. Alright, one of the things I find fascinating, and I don’t think people understand a lot about appellate work,

the ability impact law, I mean, we know legislation, I mean, government creates laws and everything else, but but courts can through the interpretation of those have changes an impact in laws. And and one of the things that I think is fascinating about appellate work is I don’t think a lot of people understand what an abacus brief is, but you can have people that aren’t parties to this appeal. So the two parties or whatever, they take it up on appeal, but 30 or 40 different groups can send in their own briefs to the appellate court explain that process?

Well, so yes.

Oftentimes, not as much at the district court level, although there are exceptions when for certain issues. You see it most often in the United States Supreme Court. I don’t I doubt that they decide very many cases at all, where they don’t have at least a few Abacus briefs. And there’s been a lot of criticism over whether

the Supreme Court and other courts rely too much on Amazon’s briefs because amyx briefs are not based upon the record, they’re there to advocate a policy position. And they often you know,

rely on, let’s say, a study or or treatises or something that that’s not wasn’t part of the record. It’s not necessarily even, you know, peer reviewed, but the dependent

Upon the policy position that a court might decide to adopt, they’ll often utilize the AMA case briefs in that process. Sometimes you’ll see on personal injury, the

Florida

justice used to be the academy for trial or FGA

will, will come in on this side of the place. The problem with that is that if one side gets an abacus, then the other side’s guaranteed to get an abacus or two. So you can have the abacus wars and there could be like a nuclear proliferation of, of Abacus briefs on peels? Yeah, I mean, I just always sort of found it fascinating that you could have people because because you define this look, the appellate lawyers have to take the record, here’s everything that worked. In other words, your universe is limited to this record, applying the law to it and everything else. Whereas You’re right, these other people, hey, here’s our opinion on it. Yeah. So I find it interesting that that winds up there. So Alright, we’ve gone through you have this oral argument. And then what happens once the I mean, in other words, how do they decide an opinion? Right? Well, sometimes.

And I think most of the time, I believe that the panel, the judges on the panel have probably a pretty good idea of how they want to roll. Occasionally, I think they change their minds. At oral argument, the oral arguments, by the way, after all these years of litigation, and maybe 1000s of pages. Sometimes they’re only 10 or 15 minutes aside, some courts will give as many as 20. But so 10 minutes, and if the judges are asking you a lot of questions, you don’t, you know, it’s not like you have an opportunity to really

go through the issues fully. But as the judges will tell you, at the beginning of the oral arguments, we’ve read everything, we’ve read the briefs, and we’ve read portions of the record, usually there’s one of the three judges whose primary on the case, and that judge will probably have done a deeper dive into record than the other two judges have. Sometimes they’ve got clerks who have,

you know,

synopsize, the the briefs and given them the issues, but usually they’ve read the briefs, and at least portions of the record, sometimes it comes down to just a few pages of the record that are important. And in that in those situations, you hopefully, either attach that as an appendix to the brief, it’s small enough, even though it’s hard to get the record, or you’ve really highlighted it in your brief, so that the court is very familiar with it, but you might need to be able to reiterate there, then they go into a immediately after that warnings, they may hear two or three or four cases that morning, go go into a conference and usually have an initial book on, you know, whether yay or nay.

Or and or whether it’s going to be written or just what they call it purpureum affirmed, which means they all agree that should be affirmed. But they don’t think that it’s worth writing lengthy opinion on because they’re all in agreement. And it did, it didn’t merit. You know, it wasn’t such a new or novel issue or just didn’t merit writing an opinion. Because there’s they have so many cases, they wrote an opinion on every case, it would, you know, would overwhelm them. So if you’re the side that won, and you see that PCA that’s that’s a good thing. It’s all gone. Well, yes. We’re not touching anything. Right. Alright. So the other opinions, and there’s a lot they can do. I mean, obviously, they can send it back to the trial court, they can send it back to trial court for specific issue.

And then are we sort of in the same process? If it goes back to the trial court, however, that result comes out? They can take that back up on appeal? Absolutely. I mean, there are cases that get tried twice, you know. So I read recently that some case here in South Florida was being tried for a third time with a friend of mine a

10 year period. He says, I don’t get it. He goes, you know, you try it the first time the defense doesn’t really know all your arguments. You got to try it the second time, same facts are dealing with, they know you’re arguing to try a third time he goes I’m not sure what I’m going to do just yet. But but makes it very, very interesting that, you know, litigation. I mean, that’s that’s been around I think over 10 years now. Yeah. So, alright, so can you appeal something? Well, let’s break that. For Miami Dade, for example. It’s the third district court of appeals that would take your state court appeals to can you appeal the third district? You can but in only very narrow circumstances. And in a civil case, it’s basically two ways to do that. It the

decision would have to conflict with expressly conflict with a another District Court of Appeal decision from a different district.

Because if it conflicts with another decision within the third then that’s you take that to the whole third day.

Ca called on bog proceeding. So it has to conflict with a Supreme Court decision or another District Court of Appeal decision. And then you can you still have to invoke the Supreme Court’s jurisdiction, do a jurisdictional brief. And then the Supreme Court will rule on whether they think at least preliminarily that there’s a conflict, and then they’ll ask for briefs on the merits and hold oral argument. And the only other way I think to get a civil case up would be if he can be certified by the

Court of Appeal itself. Usually, you would request that in emotion, sometimes they do it sua sponte on their own.

And that is, if it’s an issue of great public importance, those are even probably more rare than

then conflict jurisdiction, but those are but it’s very narrow. There aren’t many cases,

you have an automatic right to appeal pretty much any civil case, criminal case, to the intermediate District Courts of Appeal, and they don’t really consider themselves to be intermediate, if they are the final word or less, unless you meet one of those two exceptions. So they there, there really are a few cases that make it to the Florida Supreme Court on the civil side. All right. Well, I actually was fortunate if I argued a case in front of the Supreme Court, and I don’t do much appellate work. But it was a very interesting experience. So and was fortunate my daughter was in Florida State at the time, so I got to go there. She did get a little mad at me, though, because she was there with two friends from Florida State. The justices hadn’t taken the bench, and I turned around through the U. Which was somehow going to get me in trouble in the Florida Supreme Court. But but they didn’t catch it. And it went well. So let me ask you this.

We’ve got a lot of great Trial Lawyers been doing this a long time. We study the rules, you study everything. We’ve got good judges, but how is it that almost no case ever comes out without an appellate issue?

No, there are just so many legal issues that that come up in a case, obviously, the parties are diametrically opposed as to what the facts are often, what even if they agree on what the facts are, they don’t always agree on how they fit within the area of law. If a case goes to trial,

you know, there are going to be objections, and some are sustained, some are overruled. So, you know, there are gonna be issues with jury selection, you know, did it should should a jury have been dismissed for cause I recently won an appeal in the third district on that issue. So there are so many areas where error can occur.

And,

you know, as appellate lawyers, and then as the appellate judges, we always get to look at things in retrospect. And, you know, with a clear eye reading transcript, when you’re the trial lawyer, this decisions are being made, at the moment, same thing with a trial judge. They don’t, sometimes they do, but a lot of times, they don’t want to take a recess and go research the law, they’re kind of,

you know, not, I don’t want to say shooting from the hip in a in a, in a negative way. But they’re, they’re having to make decisions in real time, and on a schedule. And so it’s just natural that the issues are going to arise. Now, that doesn’t mean that I mean, that the appellate judges would tell you, they see you, you know, many, many, many cases, and they don’t really see any real error, or they think the error is is de minimis, and not enough to affect the trial, they don’t really sit there thinking, Oh, boy, what am I going to reverse today? In fact, if he’s if you think that as the appellant, you’re, you’re wrong, you need to that’s why I pointed out initially, you need to grab their attention. And you need to have something to grab their attention with. I mean, you can typically make it up the there has to be

actual error. And it has to appeal to them both on an intellectual sense, and sometimes on a gut sense.

that those are the best ways to sometimes it’s both if it’s a yes, there’s a case that says that this was there, but also look, look at how this affected the trial. That’s just not fair. at bottom, the appellate judges are looking to see was that fair? Sometimes the law isn’t fair, and they’re following the law and, and saying, sorry, that’s the way the law was written by folks in Tallahassee or Washington DC. And we may not like it, but that’s the way the law is and so fairness doesn’t factor in as much but in your typical personal injury case, in terms of trial error, did the judge get something wrong?

Introducing evidence. Did you see the jury that shouldn’t have been seated? Because of bias, that type of thing? It’s really, ultimately a fairness issue.

So as an appellate lawyer, you’re the ultimate Monday morning quarterback who gets to look at trial lawyers like me and go like, why don’t you do this? Or why don’t you know? We’re still here, the fact litigations litigation support, and this is where you and I have met years ago, because

I think, not patting myself on the back, I think the better lawyers reach out and work hand in hand with appellate lawyers from the onset in an effort to try to say, how do we present all of this? How do we develop all of this? And how do we try to make it although near impossible, sort of appellate proof, so talk about your role when a lawyer like me calls you, and I’ve done it in cases with you, where I’ve called you as early on as the drafting of the complaint? I have? Is this is a right, you know, are these the right causes of action? And should we plead something else? So, but but talk about and you’ve done that, I mean, you’ve done that for over 30 years, helping trial lawyers, like myself, talk about your litigation support. So, as you pointed out, sometimes it’s as early as the complaint, because, I mean, people don’t call me on the easy cases.

wouldn’t make sense. So you don’t typically need a second set of eyes, or an experienced appellate attorney who might spend more time reading the law on those maybe knows the trends a little better goes back to what I was talking about, when I decided to become an appellate attorney versus doing what you do, which is, you’re out there all the time taking depositions, and meeting with clients and meeting with doctors and taking the experts i. So I, what I do is more of a look at this at 30,000 feet.

Where what are the possible trap doors that you could have in this case? And how can we avoid those? What are the

what are the bases, we have to tag in order to get home.

And so it’s kind of working hand in hand. And often I’m hired by,

you know, sole sole practitioners or people like stuffing a one or two person or small law office that don’t have, they don’t want to keep an pellet or support attorney on staff at all times, because that’s an expensive thing to carry. But in the important cases,

where they think it’s it makes sense, can bring me along on a contingency basis,

taking part of your fee, but hopefully, all you know, a rising tide lifts all boats, hopefully, and when everybody went to try and yes, you know, if

by two has been better than one, if we can increase the value of the case, or make more certain that that there is a value to it at all, then you know that there’s a settlement or a verdict, then that’s helpful to the client itself, which is the trial lawyer to have

a different set of eyes, and instead of eyes, it’s accustomed to perhaps looking at things a little bit differently.

And so yeah, you know, get involved in planning, the right causes of action, get involved with hoping to respond with summary judgments. And that’s gonna be, I think, very important. And now because we’re going to the federal standard.

Let’s let’s talk about that for a minute. So summary judgment is is a tool that, uh, that a judge can essentially, and the case on a judge can look at this and say, Look, judge decides the law. Judge aside the fact there are no issues of fact here to be decided. This is a matter of law and I as the judge, I’m going to decide this, and and you were talking about it, you know, the granting of that can ultimately wind up to an appellate issue. So So what’s changing in the state courts about summary judgment? Okay, so there’s a lot of hand wringing and cheese gnashing over the fact that the Florida Supreme Court announced it about a year and a half ago, it went into effect may 1

of this year has adopted the federal standard. for summary judgment, it’s often been

believed by most legal practitioners, that that’s an easier standard to as a defendant to have a summary judgment granted, I think it’s not nearly as big a change as some people think it is. I’ve been doing a lot of federal court work

primarily in the field of Admiralty on the cruise Cruise Line cases. And so I’ve got a fair amount of experience with the federal summary judgment standard. And I mean, first of all, procedurally, the big difference now in state court and everybody needs to be aware of this is that the

Motion must be filed at least 40 days prior to the hearing response. This is big change. And typically these are filed by defendants plaintiffs can file motions for summary judgment, and occasionally do so whether partial, usually partial,

is that the response by the non moving party, it has to be filed 20 days before the hearing, not as it was before, two days, actually 36 hours because it’s by five o’clock pm, or the old rule was by five o’clock pm two business days prior? Well, if your hearing was on a Friday morning, you could file something at 459. On Wednesday, your affidavit in response or whatever response you are filing.

Now, it’s 20 days and with us, for Supreme Court said in that regard is we want to make certain that the judge has more of an opportunity to

to review everything, and not to be making decisions when when something is filed 36 hours before the hearing. The court also says that judges have to provide not just the ruling, but the reasoning for their ruling now. So that does make it more like a federal courts just now, you know, the federal judges have usually two law clerks full time law clerks, who are

graduates of law school, I was just doing that prior to entering practice. State courts don’t have that resource. So it’ll be interesting to see how that works out. Obviously, what’s going to happen is all the orders will be written by the prevailing party and then the judge can probably look at them, maybe some judges will take the time to, to, to write out their orders, but will that’ll be See, but in terms of the law is not as big a change.

And as

as some people fear it is I think there’s a lot of concern amongst plaintiffs travelers out there that he, you know, just a completely different animal. But the

the Florida Supreme Court said one of the things that they wanted to do was to provide

the full body of federal case law on summary judgment to trollers now, I mean to draw, but that case law isn’t that much different. For instance, the 11th circuit, which is the federal appellate circuit that handles Florida, it also handles appeals from

Georgia and Alabama

has referred to the summary judgment as a lethal weapon, a lethal weapon,

depriving a litigant of a trial,

and therefore, caution must be used. So you know that there’s case law says that and that should be given to the state trial court judges. In any summary judgment response,

you’re still looking that all fashion references still have to be drawn in favor of the non moving party. In our scenario, the plaintiff, again, sub law is the same reasonable minds might differ on the references, then summary judgment should be denied. There’s 11th circuit case law that says that,

again, the judges duty is not to weigh credibility of the parties weighing evidence and credibility or jury functions.

Not for the judge. That’s the same law that we have always operated on in Florida.

You know, with the four Supreme Court adopted, called the celotex trilogy of cases, and

but this case, you say you look at the substantive law,

on the type of case that you’re dealing with. So the substantive law on copyright infringement or libel is far different than it is in negligence cases. We all know that there are state court negligence is that have always said, summary judgment should rarely be granted in negligence cases, because of the nature of what negligence is or isn’t what a reasonable person standard is? Well, the same law exists in the 11th circuit.

And it should be cited to the trial judge, if you are responding to a summary judgment.

Let former Fifth Circuit cases which which are adopted by the 11th circuit, let’s say that very thing. So

the other thing that is important to remember is that that is the 11th circuit case law that says you cannot simply disregard what the plaintiffs testimony is, because you think it’s self serving. There’s 11th circuit case called Feliciano versus city of Miami. It says courts routinely and properly deny sorry, judgment on the basis of a party sworn testimony, even though it is self serving. You basically you can’t discount it unless it is completely contrary to everything else in the record completely contrary to the laws of physics or, you know, that sort of thing. It’s not. So if you look at the case law, that’s developing

evansburg

it’s not that different of an animal. Are there differences? Yes, there are that the Florida Supreme Court said, we want to bring our summary judgment law more in line with a directed verdict standard. So some of the cases that said, you know, the, the moving parties, duty and a summary judgment motion is greater than the moving party is duty directed vertical, that case law can no longer be relied upon, under the standard, but what a lot of of it is, is really

just the same. So it’s important that we educate the state court judges who I think are under the most likely under the impression unless they did a lot of federal court work, when they were a lawyer, that that, you know, the floodgates for granting summary judgment be open. And we need to make certain that it’s just a, you know,

it’s a release of a little bit of relief, but it’s really not a sea change, if you were, as it were, in the in the law on summary judgment, they need to understand that. All right, well, you now get to see why lawyers like me call lawyers like Phil, because they’re much smarter than us. And they helped guide us through all of these things. There’s more time to read. That’s all.

Reading, we don’t let that slow us down as trial lawyers. I know this over the years, Phil prefers when the call starts like this. Hey, Phil, I got a question. What do you think I should do about this? As opposed to Hey, Phil, I did this what do you think?

So it’s good to reach out Phil is a great great trial support and great great appellate lawyer and and hopefully this morning, you got some insight into not only the complexities of trial work, but then what it means like on appeal, and just the overall complexity of litigation, and and you also got to know what I’ve known for a lot of years because Phil’s not only a great lawyer and associate that I work with, but a good friend and so maybe he’s one more we can take off the kill list and and realize that maybe we shouldn’t kill all the lawyers. But Phil, I really appreciate your time this morning. Thanks for spending it with us. Oh, my pleasure, David. Thank you. Alright, thank you. And we’ll see you guys next week.