The following is a transcript of Episode 15 of Championing Justice. You can listen to the full episode here, or watch it on YouTube.

Darl: Thank you for tuning into the Championing Justice podcast. My name is Darl Champion. I’m the founder and owner of The Champion Firm. We are a personal injury law firm based in Marietta, Georgia, just right outside Atlanta. I’m honored to have Dax Lopez as our guest for this month’s episode. Thanks for joining us, Dax.

Dax: Thanks, Darl.

Darl: So Dax has a very interesting background. He was a judge for a number of years. He is now a plaintiff’s attorney and mediator. So I’m really interested to hear his perspective as somebody who has been on a variety of sides. I mean, so you’ve been on the bench, you’ve seen it from that perspective. You’ve seen it as a mediator, you’ve seen it on the plaintiff’s side. And then of course before becoming a judge you worked at a larger firm here in the Atlanta area.

So I’m interested to hear what kind of advice you have, but before we get started, tell us a little bit about your background, where you grew up, went to law school.

Dax: Great. Well thank you for having me. This is a great honor.

I was born in Puerto Rico, so I’m originally from Puerto Rico and I lived there until six years old and my family then came what I call the mainland. We moved to Augusta, Georgia in 1981. And I know this is going to be shocking to you and your listeners. It was not a Mecca of diversity in 1981.

We were the only Hispanic family in the neighborhood and no one would talk to us. None of the white neighbors, none of the black neighbors. It was kind of like we were on a little island. So I didn’t speak English at the time and we certainly didn’t speak southern. So the y’alls and the honeys and the sweethearts and things that kind of come with colloquial speaking were kind of foreign to us. But I’ve moved around to nine different states after that.

I’ve lived all over the south, some places in the north, but we always kind of kept coming back to Georgia. So Georgia was kind of a stopping point several times. And I actually ended up going to high school here in Georgia at McEachern High School in Cobb County and West Cobb. And then my parents were from Puerto Rico. In Puerto Rico, you go to the college that’s in your town, there’s not really a, let me look at what’s the best school is. It’s just there’s a college in my town and that’s where I’m going to go. So they really had no advice for me and I really didn’t know what I was interested in doing, but I wanted to go to a good school. I knew that.

And so someone suggested I look at Vanderbilt and I did and I loved it. And so I ended up going to Vanderbilt University in Tennessee and because I had moved around so much as a child, ultimately decided to stay in Nashville and go to law school there as well. So I did all seven years in Nashville. And that point, again, sort of at a crossroads, my family kept moving to different places while I was in college. So I went and clerked in Puerto Rico for a couple of years for a federal district court judge, which was great. I got to go back to where I was born. I got to spend time with my family that I hadn’t seen while I was growing up. Got to immerse myself back in my culture, which was wonderful, a good experience. And I got to work for a great—

Darl: Did you do it for one year or two years?

Dax: I did it, I did a year and a half. It was kind of this weird, it was supposed to be a two-year clerkship, but I also had a lot of school debt and so I kind of talked my judge into letting me—

Darl: Yeah, seven years at Vanderbilt will do that.

Dax: So it got expensive and so my judge was nice enough to let me do sort of a hybrid year and a half and so I could go and start making a little bit of money. So then I came to Atlanta and worked for Holland & Knight for a few years on the defense side. Yeah.

Darl: What kind of cases were you handling there?

Dax: So I was put on the product liability team. So at that time, this was early two thousands if you’ll recall, there were two really big recalls in the product world at that time. It was the Ford Explorer and then it was the Firestone Tires that were on the Ford Explorers. They were original equipment tires.

So I was on the Firestone team at Holland & Knight. So we handle hundreds and hundreds of tire cases. So that’s kind of prompted my love for product liability cases, which I still enjoy doing today. Was there for a few years. We kind of cleared out all those tire cases and it kind of died down a little bit. And then I started looking around and all the older partners were either retiring and all the young partners were leaving and I was like, Ooh, I need to figure something out. So I went to a smaller firm, which was an offshoot of Paul Hastings.

It was Ashe Rafuse & Hill, great firm. Went to work with William Hill, who I still to this day believe is probably the best trial lawyer I’ve ever worked with or ever seen live. So I learned to try cases with Hill, which was awesome. So we tried mesothelioma cases, we tried employment cases, we did a little bit of everything. I was there for a few years and then I went to a small firm in Buckhead. So interestingly, Ashe Rafuse & Hill and the firm I went to in Buckhead, Foltz Martin, are no longer in existence. So I don’t know if that had to do with me.

Darl: Maybe it was you leaving that caused them to implode.

Dax: I was the glue holding them together, but I went to Fulmar for a few years just to kind of build a practice. I had more rate flexibility at Foltz Martin. So if you’re a young senior associate trying to build your book of business, you kind of need that.

Darl: Sometimes that’s harder at Holland & Knight, right?

Dax: It’s much harder if you’re not bringing in a Fortune 500 company. It’s much harder to bring in those mid-level or smaller companies. So that was great for a few years and I was very blessed and fortunate to work with great lawyers along the way, and that I think helped shape me as a lawyer for sure. But then around 2009, a good friend of mine and mentor in the Hispanic community who’s always been Tony DelCampo, Judge DelCampo at the time, he became a judge of the year.

I moved to Georgia in 2002 and we became friends pretty quickly. We served on similar boards and the Hispanic community in Georgia is not huge, and particularly in the professional rankings areas, there’s just not a huge group of folks, especially back then. So Tony became a mentor and we’re really excited that he was the first Hispanic judge in the history of Georgia, which is crazy in 2002 having our first Hispanic judge. And so we kind of kept in touch and he gave me a call one day. I was the president of the Hispanic bar at the time, and he had been a former president, and so he calls me and says, Hey, I’m on the shortlist to be elevated to the federal bench.

The Obama administration is looking for some diversity, and I might be the first Hispanic federal judge. And I was like, that’s wonderful. That’s great. What do I need to do to help you? He’s like, well, I’m more concerned about my spot in state court. There’ll be no Hispanic judges in state court. So I really would like somebody to put in for my position. And I was like, okay, well who do you want me to call? I’m happy to do whatever you need me to do. He was like, well, I was really hoping you would do it. And at the time I was like 32 years old.

Darl: Had you thought about being a judge at that time?

Dax: Never. I clerked for a federal judge and Holland & Knight, Susan Edlein was there. She’s now state court judge at Fulton. Sara Doyle is there, she’s now appeals court judge here in Georgia. I had worked with all these folks who’d ascended to the bench and at no point had it ever crossed my mind to be a judge.

So Tony was like, I think you’d do a great job. I think you’d be great. I was like, man, I’d never considered, especially at 32 years old, you’re still trying to figure out how to be a good lawyer. And he is like, well, I was 32 when I took the bench and I’ve done pretty well. So that kind of planted that seed and I started thinking about it, but then he wasn’t elevated, so there was no position open, but now I really want to be a judge.

Darl: Yeah. Because it’s like, you didn’t get it right. You’re like, I want it now.

Dax: Alright. And so he’s like, well, let’s start thinking for the future. So I kind of forgot about it for a little while. So about a year and a half went by and Tony called me again and said, Hey, one of my colleagues is about to step down. No one knows, but it’ll be an appointment to the governor, so you need to start talking to who you need to talk talking to. And so I was like, all right.

So that is even a funny story. So back then, it’s not like this anymore. They would send, it wasn’t in the Fulton Daily like it is now. If there’s an opening, it’s usually in the Fulton Daily. People know about it. There’s press releases and all kinds of stuff. Back then they just sent an email to everyone who had an office with the state bar. If your office was listed in that county, you would get an email.

But I lived in DeKalb but worked in Fulton, so I never got that email. And so when the position became available, I’d never received notice. No one told me. And so Tony calls me, it was July 2nd, it was a Friday afternoon of a long weekend, and he’s like, Hey, the list came out with nominations and your name’s not on here. I was like, what do you mean? The list came out? I didn’t even know nominations were open. And he’s like, yeah, they were open. They closed yesterday and the applications are due Tuesday. And I was like, holy cow.

So Mike Bowers was the head of the JNC back then. So I called his office and luckily he’s a workhorse and he was not gone for the long weekend. And so I got him on the phone and he’s like, I’ll let you self nominate. You can nominate today, but your application is now due Tuesday, so I’ll send it to you. So I spent—

Darl: A fun July 4th weekend.

Dax: Spent the whole weekend working on my application, which is a very long application, turned it in and then kind of went through the process and everyone told me there was a state senator, a republican state senator who put in, and everyone was like, he’s going to get it. I mean, he’s connected to the governor’s office and he’s done a lot of things for the governor.

I was like, all right, I’ll go through the process and then if I get far enough in the process, maybe I’ll interview with the governor and I can be on the radar for the next one. But I’ll tell you, I’ll give Sonny Perdue a lot of credit. I made the shortlist, I interviewed the governor, and at the time I belonged to an organization, a Hispanic organization that had sued the state of Georgia and the governor on some voting rights issues. We had just—

Darl: Did that come up in the interview?

Dax: First question. First and only question, I believe the governor asked me. He had his executive counsel, now Justice Peterson was executive counsel, Nells Peterson at the time. But I walk in and he looks at my CV and he says, I see that you’re on the board of GALEO. I was like, I am. He’s like, y’all just sued me. I was like, we did. And he is like, were you in the room when you decided to sue me? I was like, I was. And he’s like, okay, no more questions. And he’s like, he asked me, he asked one other question, Nell has asked me a bunch of questions, and then the governor comes back. He’s like, he was very sensitive. He had appointed several people in DeKalb who had lost election. And so he was very sensitive to that.

So he is like, well, if I were to appoint you, how would you win essentially your first election? And I said, well, governor, I’m a Puerto Rican Jew. Most people think I’m a Democrat. And so I am a Democrat now, I was not at the time. I think it’s famously known that at the time I wasn’t in the Republican party, but yes, I am a Democrat now. But it was interesting. He was very, very aware of that. And I was like, so he laughed and next thing I know I’m getting appointed to the bench. So I guess funny, it overcame the fact that I sued him.

Darl: So you get appointed and how long were you in the DeKalb state court bench?

Dax: 11 years.

Darl: And in DeKalb County, are you trying civil and misdemeanor criminal?

Dax: Correct. My very first year on the bench, my division tried more criminal cases than any other division in DeKalb, and I thought that was normal. My solicitor had an award named after him. He tried 22 criminal cases that year, which I thought was just normal. Apparently was very abnormal for one solicitor to try that many in a calendar year. But yeah, so we were a very active bench and moving cases pretty quickly.

Darl: And just for anybody listening outside the state of Georgia, our court system is superior court. Every county has a superior court. Not every county has a state court. That’s correct. The more, I think there’s a population cutoff for state court?

Dax: Yeah, to help the superior courts who are absolutely backlogged. They’ll create a state court in those counties.

Darl: So your superior court’s going to be in counties that have a state court, your superior court’s going to handle your felony criminal, your divorce, and then just all civil stuff. Yep. Real estate equity state court is where a lot of plaintiff’s lawyers file here. For a variety of reasons.

Now, there’s some counties where that might be different depending on who the judge is there. That is correct. Maybe a backlog in state court. You might think you get a quicker date in superior court. Obviously we’ve got the statute with MARTA in Fulton County that says you got to sue Fulton Superior Court, which is just kind of interesting, but so when you’re trying cases in decap state court, you’re seeing two types. You’re seeing misdemeanor, criminal and civil. When you started seeing people trying tort cases and personal injury cases, your had you had a lot of experience with trying tort cases as an attorney? Not

Dax: Really. I mean, I did a lot of products work, but very few of those actually made it to trial, as you might imagine, particularly on a recall case.

Darl: And they’re at a big firm. You’re one big firm, a member of a huge team.

Dax: Right. So no, I hadn’t personally tried. I’d done some mesothelioma cases. We had tried some of those, but very few. So no, most of the trials I had had were employment related or small matters or business litigation condemnation cases. I tried a few of those.

So yeah, this is the first time we are doing day in and day out. And the bread and butter of the state court is car wreck, small car wreck, less than $50,000 in damages, and that is the bread and butter of the state court system in the metro area. We had great med cases and bigger cases, but those are fewer and far between. And obviously the lawyers in those cases tend to get along pretty well. And so you don’t really see them until trial and very few of those cases get tried. Although there was one year where in a calendar year I tried six med mals, which is a lot.

Darl: Wow.

Dax: There’s a lot of med mals trying a calendar year. But again, we just kept cases moving. But yeah, so these little car wreck cases, so I finally just sort of instituted a system where I could try one a day and I was trying four car wrecks a week for a period of time. And so there was two or three witness cases. Now everyone who comes in is like, we need four hours for voir dire and judge, we can’t do it in a day.

I was like, look, you’ve got three witnesses and we’re going to do voir dire in an hour. You get 30 minutes, you get 30 minutes, and y’all can agree to a six person panel, but they never did. It was always 12 people. But I was like, you got 30 minutes to ask your questions and we’re going to get this case rocking and rolling. And so we were charging jurors by three 30 most days. The cases moved pretty quickly. Every once in a while we’d get a two day or three day car wreck case.

Darl: So when did you get sworn in as a judge and when did you leave the bench?

Dax: So I got sworn in September 23rd, 2010, and I left September 1st, 2021.

Darl: So what caused you to leave?

Dax: I—

Darl: Opening a can of worms.

Dax: Again, another shock. I’m sure people would be very—

Darl:

Shocked if anybody listening in Georgia probably knows those people that know you.

Dax: Yeah, I’m sure you’ll be shocked and amazed to hear that judges don’t get paid as well as most people think they do. The chief justice, this is crazy. The chief justice of the Georgia Supreme Court makes $30,000 to $40,000—less than a first-year associate at King & Spalding. And that is a travesty in my opinion.

So the way judges get paid in Georgia is there’s a state pot of money, and then there’s county supplements. If you live in a metro area, you’re probably going to get a larger supplement than if you live in rural Georgia. So some judges, actually, superior court judges in DeKalb I think are at two 20 now, which is great for them, but they still make more than our appellate judges.

So state court when I was there, paid sort of one 50 to the one 60 range, which is perfectly fine, but not relative to the profession and certainly not relative to your years of experience. And you don’t get a—

Darl: The people appearing in front of you that you’re seeing correct, are making more than a lot more even the junior attorneys. So that’s got to be frustrating.

Dax: And there’s no pay raise. It’s not like there’s a scheduled pay raise every year. There’s no cost of living adjustment. I’d have to get a bill passed through the legislature just to get a pay raise, and it happened every five or six years, but you’re not keeping with inflation.

So I have four kids. My wife wanted to put some of the kids in private school, and I had kids going to college. I actually had two kids in college when I left the bench, so I already had two in college and two about to go to private school and just, it wasn’t financial feasible anymore. And then you start realizing, man, there are some not so good lawyers that appear before me that make a lot of money

If those guys can make money. I’m pretty sure I can figure this out.

Darl: You got nominated to the federal bench, right?

Dax: I did.  2015.

Darl: 2015. So tell us a little bit about that. You were a Republican at the time, right? I was, and of course in Georgia, I’m from North Carolina. Judge races are actually partisan, and Georgia, they’re not. They’re nonpartisan, but your political affiliation does have relevance to who’s appointing you.

And so even though Obama was president, the state, it’s my understanding, the US senators from each state have a large influence on who gets nominated. So Georgia had two Republican senators. You got nominated by Obama to be a federal district court judge in the northern district of Georgia of Atlanta. And you didn’t get, did you even get up for a vote?

Dax: I didn’t even get a hearing.

Darl: Didn’t even get a hearing.

Dax: So I was appointed, well, I was nominated in July of 2015, and so my name had sort of been kicked around since 2012. Interestingly enough, Senator Isakson, who was one of the senators at the time, who has unfortunately since passed away, great American, great statesman, I’d known him because I’d lobbied his office for immigration reform while I was an attorney, before I became a judge.

And so I got to meet him and his staff and I’d constantly go visit and we’d have some interesting discretions about immigration reform. And we ended up hitting it off. And I really enjoyed meeting him and his staff and always, even though he never agreed with me, I always felt like we were heard and had a fair opportunity to go at least have a discussion about our issues. And so 2012 comes around and there was an opening in the northern district, and so I kind of got a call at the time.

They were like, Hey, we’re kind of vetting some folks, and would you be interested? I was like, yeah, that’d be great. I’d absolutely be interested in federal judgeship lifetime appointment and not having to run for election. I was in the middle of a contentious election at the time, so I was like, anything that gets me out of this electoral process works for me.

Darl: Lifetime appointment.

Dax: Lifetime, yep. 

Darl: You had clerked for a federal judge.

Dax: So it’s not a bad gig, and they get paid a little bit more than state court judges. So I could make that work. But ultimately that position ended up going to now Chief Justice Mike Boggs was the nominee in 20 12, 20 13 timeframe, and we all kind of know what happened. And for your listeners, he went through a very difficult process. He had been a democratic state legislator in the early two thousands before he ever became a superior court judge, and then a court of appeals judge.

And some of his votes from that timeframe kind of came up and became very controversial. And he had a very difficult road to not get confirmed by the US Senate. And he had a very, very contentious confirmation hearing and got very ugly, and he was accused of lying to senators. It was horrible. It was a horrible process. And he was being maligned in the media and websites were dedicated to his destruction and all that good stuff.

And I was like, man, maybe I dodged a bullet by not going through that process. And so I kind of saw him go through the process, and unfortunately, he was not confirmed. I think it would’ve been an amazing federal judge. He’s been a great chief justice of the Georgia Supreme Court.

Darl: And your issue was your work with, was it GALEO?

Dax: Yeah, GALEO the same organization that had sued Governor Perdue.

Darl: The Georgia Association of Latino Elected Officials. Correct?

Dax: Yeah. So I was on the board, and that’s the same organization that sued Governor Perdue. So fast forward a couple of years, we’re in early 2015. That spot is still unfilled. No one. The process flamed out for Judge Boggs, and they’re looking for a consensus nominee, and I get another call.

And so this time now we have a different senator, so we have Senator Isakson is there, but now David Perdue, Governor Perdue’s cousin, is the US Senator for the state of Georgia. He’s the junior senator. So somebody from his office who had worked with Sonny, with Governor Perdue, calls me and says, Hey, would you be interested in this process? I know you were kind of vetted a few years ago. I said, no, thank you. I’m good now. I’ve seen what they did to my friend, and I do not wish to go through that process really for my family.

I had small kids and they’re like, no, no, no. We’re vetting a couple people and whatever names we sent to the White House are going to be pre-approved. What I was told, and pre-approved by both senators, meaning if the White House picks your name out of the three that we’re sending, you’ll be good to go. It’ll be a done deal. And I was like, so I thought about it for a little while, and then my wife sort of said, we’ve never had a Hispanic federal judge in the history of Georgia. If not you, what are we going to do?

So I was like, okay, I’ll do it. So I put my name in the mix. I knew there were two other people who were being considered, and I really thought one of those other two were going to be chosen. So I was like, it’s probably a low risk that I’ll be picked.

And next thing I know, lemme tell you, the federal process is interesting, and no one tells you anything. They just say, we’ve sent your name and you hear nothing for months. And next thing you know, I’m at Disney World with my kids, and I get a call from my office, my assistant calls and says, Hey, someone from the Department of Justice is trying to get ahold of you. And at the time, I was working on some access to justice issues involving interpreters, and I was working with the Department of Justice to develop protocols for courts to use interpreters to make sure that people are getting their day in court and having appropriate interpreters.

And I thought that’s what they were calling about. And so I was like, well, tell him I’ll call him back when I get back. And they’re like, no, he’s pretty insistent. He needs to talk to you right away. So I was like, all right, patch ’em through. So the settlement to my cell phone, and I answer, and I’m talking to this guy and he’s like, alright, we need you to start working on these questionnaires. And he’s rattling off about background checks and questionnaires, and I’m like, I’m sorry, what are you talking about? He’s like, well, vetting, we’re vetting you for the federal batch.

I was like, oh, okay. So are you doing a background check on all three of the potential candidates? He’s like, I don’t know what you’re talking about. He goes, we only do background checks on the presumptive nominee. And I was like, what? He’s like, has no one called you? I was like, no one has called me. He’s like, well, you’re the presumptive nominee for this position on the bench, so we need you to have a background FBI background check and all this other stuff. So I’m waving my kids onto Space Mountain while I’m trying to have this call at Disney World.

So they were like, look, we have a very short timeframe. We want to get you nominated in the next six weeks, which is an extremely short runway to do the background. And so again, just July 4th for my state court judgeship, I had to go back to the—

Darl: While you’re at Disney World.

Dax: —to the condo and work on my applications at night while my family slept. And so yes, I was nominated in July of 20 15, 4 weeks after Donald Trump had announced his run for presidency. And if you recall, his kickoff speech in 2015. Now it’s not different. It was very anti-immigrant. He accused Mexican immigrants of being rapists and murderers and all kinds of things. And immigration became the biggest issue in that presidential race. A

nd my work as a former member of GALEO and someone who had advocated for immigration reform really came to the forefront at that point. Once I was nominated, I immediately saw a pullback from Senator Perdue. He immediately jumped on on the Trump train, and all of a sudden his office started pretending they didn’t know who I was.

And I’m like, wait a minute, let’s be clear. You called me. So it got really kind of ugly from there. And then all the anti-immigrant groups started putting up websites against me. This one state, this little district court nomination in Georgia all of a sudden became this national flashpoint for immigration. And you can’t put this activist judge on the federal bench. He’s going to let all the immigrants into the country, which I’m like, alright. So it got pretty ugly from then on.

Darl: So you end up getting the nomination, but not getting up for a vote?

Dax: Correct. So I was formally nominated by the president in July of 2015, so I was actually nominated. So where my mentor Tony, actually never got to the nomination stage. He was sort of informed early on immigration issues, kind of killed his nomination too, which is really funny and kind of ironic way. And then I was formally nominated, so I was actually a nominee and had to go to DC and meet with the White House.

And you don’t actually go to the White House, you go to the OEMB and all that good stuff and you go meet with some of the senators and you start talking about some of the issues that they might have against you. So I went through some of that process, but again, you’re left on your own. No one from the White House is really helping you. No one in the senator’s office is you’re out there and you’re waiting for someone to call you and tell you what the next move is.

And usually in the process there’s a confirmation hearing. And that did not happen for me. And as you’ll recall, at the end of Obama’s term, 2015, 2016, Republicans sort of made this decision not to confirm any more of Obama’s nominees to any bench, including Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court. So there was about 16 of us that kind of got left in limbo with no hearings. My issue was a little different than everybody. But yeah, there were about 15 or 16 of us that kind of got to that last side. 

Darl: Did you get any satisfaction in David Perdue losing his election because he was on the Trump train? 

Dax: Let me tell you—

Darl: Because that’s essentially why he lost.

Dax: Leaving the bench has been liberating for many reasons. But now I can, before you’re on the bench, you can’t talk about these things. This is probably the first time I’m publicly talking about my nomination issues. But yes, it was, lemme tell you.

Darl: Can we leave this part in the podcast? 

Dax: Oh, absolutely. When DeKalb County came in, if you’ll remember, DeKalb County is always one of the last counties, and the votes in DeKalb County are usually the last votes that come in. And when DeKalb County votes came in and put Ossoff over the top to win that election, and Ossoff got Bar Mitzvah’d at the temple that I go to, it was a very nice feeling to see my county sort of be responsible for his political demise, if you’ll remember.

Darl: That’s awesome. 

Dax: That was awesome.

Darl: Yeah. Well, in hindsight now, do you think that that was actually a good thing that you didn’t get appointed to the federal bench? Are you in a position career wise where you’re like, man, this is, so you mentioned liberating. This is so much better than if I was a federal judge where I got to do all this stuff.

Dax: I’ll tell you, I struggled with the decision to go to the federal bench. I’d always thought I’d be a state court judge 10, 15 years, and I’d leave the bench at some point because of those financial constraints. We knew that when I took the bench, we were going to have to sacrifice for a few years while I was on the bench. So I was never intending to be a lifer.

I mean, again, I was 34 when I became a judge. It was great when I had small kids, but then your kids start growing up and they start going to college. Life started to get a little more expensive. So I never thought I was going to be a lifer from 30 to 60, 30 years on the bench. Seemed like a long time.

Darl: And I will tell you, I love the federal judge I clerked for. He passed away earlier this year, great guy. But I think generally speaking, when we look across federal judges, a lot of them are assholes. And if you’re a federal judge, I don’t think any, listen to this podcast. I’m not talking about you. But seriously, I mean, there’s people who have great reputations on the state court bench and then they become federal judges and all of a sudden they just become this curmudgeon. And it’s like—

Dax: Think about it. 

Darl: —What is wrong with you? 

Dax: You’re isolated. You’ve never been before. You are in this building in downtown. You hardly ever go—

Darl: By the way, that building looks like a place where justice goes to die.

Dax: Die.

Darl: Exactly. It’s so sterile.

Dax: It’s named after Richard B. Russell, who was the death of justice, that guy. I told him, I was like, if I become a federal judge, my first thing is I’m going to try to rename this damn building. But yeah, no, I struggled with it. I’m a social person. I like going to events. I like being around people. I like having lunch with folks.

The great thing about being a state court judge in DeKalb is you got Decatur Square right there, Judge Wong and I would walk out to Siam every second day. I always told the deputies, look guys, no one’s going to try to kill me inside the courthouse. If Judge Wong and I are going to die, it’s going to be on the square at noon. I am. We’re going to be really easy to find. But yet I struggled with the potential isolationism of being a federal judge, so I really wasn’t.

And then their retirement system would have required me to be there for 30 plus years before I could retire because it’s a really funky system. You can do 10 years and retire with full benefits depending on your age. But I was so young that I would have to be there a lot longer. And so I was like, I’m vesting in 10 years on the state system. I have options.

So I’ve been very happy with my decision and I’m glad it’s kind of worked out this way. One, it’s so liberating. I mean, I can say whatever I want. I couldn’t like my friend’s Facebook posts sometimes because you get in trouble with the j qc and now I’m on the jqc, so I’m the one who’s vigilant on that kind of stuff. But it is very liberating. I can see what I want. I can tell the stories that I want. I can go where I want and financially.

Darl: Financially, which is what we’re going to talk about next.

Dax: It is certainly a lot better.

Darl: Tell us a little bit about your practice now. So your firm, DelCampo, Grayson and Lopez, right? 

Dax: Yep. 

Darl: So Tony DelCampo, who is your mentor, after he left the bench, he became a plaintiff’s attorney. 

Dax: Correct. 

Darl: Which I love by the way. So many judges go and do the big firm thing, especially at the appellate level.

Dax:

He was a plaintiff’s lawyer before. He and Keenan Nicks were partners before he got—

Darl: So he already had a taste of that. So he gets back to being a plaintiff’s attorney. Did he recruit you to the firm when you were leaving the bench? 

Dax: He did. So I’d tell folks, I just do what Tony tells me to do. My whole professional career has been at Tony DelCampo’s suggestion. So Tony suggested I’d be a judge, I’ll be a judge. Tony suggested come be a plaintiff’s lawyer. I’ll come be a plaintiff’s lawyer. He and I have been talking about it for a long time.

My first five years on the bench were fantastic. I loved it. It was amazing. I couldn’t have thought of leaving at any point during that timeframe. But then the last five years, DeKalb politics are really difficult. Being a judge in DeKalb was starting to get really difficult. I wasn’t enjoying the job as much. 

Darl: You’ve got to run for reelection.

Dax: I’ve been contested twice.

Darl: You’ve seen lot of same things too,

Dax: And it becomes very rote at some point. While I love the big me mouths and product cases and trucking cases, those are few and far between realistically about what gets tried. Those are getting settled most of the time. But yeah, so I was trying hundreds of car wreck cases. I was trying hundreds.

Darl: Misdemeanor, criminal cases.

Dax: Yeah. And you could start doing that stuff in your sleep, wasn’t being challenged anymore. Loved the gig, loved my staff. Wasn’t loving being in DeKalb anymore, the politics surrounding DeKalb or difficult. My wife became a state rep in DeKalb, had sort of the same issues with the delegation in DeKalb.

And so I was like, I just wasn’t feeling satisfied in my job anymore. So Tony and I would always have lunch and he’s like, Hey, we’re ready for you whenever you’re ready to come. And so one day I was like, make me an offer. I don’t even know what to ask for. Just you tell me what you’re willing to do. And so they finally made me an offer. I couldn’t refuse equity on all the cases that they had.

And I was like, all right, I can work with that. And so I was a little, I’ll tell you, having been a defense lawyer, and when you’re a defense lawyer in a big firm, you get a steady paycheck every two weeks. You can count on your paycheck, you have benefits, plaintiffs work, sometimes there’s months, no money comes in.

Darl: The up and down.

Dax: The up and down. It wasn’t like you’re responsible for your own benefits, you’re a partner at this firm, you got to go figure that stuff out. And it was right at the end. This is 2021, so things are starting to open back up, but there hadn’t been trials in a while.

Darl: Well, the other thing too, I mean y’all are working on a lot of big cases. You’re not a volume, we’re not a volume firm. So the highs are higher, the lows are lower, and there’s really nothing in between. That’s right. That’s right.

Dax: And all our big cases had been stalled because of the pandemic, as you well know, there were no big trials going on. So when I joined, it was kind of the perfect time. But courts were starting to open again and we started getting, got put on a lot of trial calendars. And so we’re working on big cases, but it all hits at once. So everyone wakes up. Lots of motion practice right before trial, getting your experts ready, and then friends are calling and asking you to come on their cases and help them out with that kind of stuff. I have a case in DeKalb, can you come help me? Yeah, absolutely. That’s kind of my thing.

Darl: Yeah. Well, it’s like now I see a lot of the former Judge Melton showing up on a lot of—

Dax: He’s on a couple of my cases.

Darl: I mean, you bring him in, it’s like, Hey, this is where he sat. That’s right. He’s arguing before the bench he used to sit on. So I get it.

Dax: It helps you have relationships with the judges, which is always nice. And if you help train a couple of them, that’s also great. 

Darl: Yeah, you have instant credibility, right?

Dax: Right. And I’m not going to lose that. That is my—

Darl: A hundred percent. And that’s thing people think that people may think if they see judge, oh, this is an unfair advantage. You’re going to be towing the line even more because you don’t want to stick your neck out and do something that gets that judge reversed because then that’s the last, your currency’s gone.

Dax: Gone. That’s correct. And I tell folks, I’m never going to do anything like that. You can trust if you ask me a question, I don’t know the answer, I’m going to tell you I’m not going to make it up. And so I think that does bring me some credibility. And I’m also not going to, I know the law, I know where the line is. I know how judges think, so I don’t overreach when I ask for things. I’m very much a be careful what you ask for because you could create your own reversible error reversal player. And I don’t want that. I’ll say I’ve had some success in trying cases since I left the bench.

Darl: Your average plaintiff’s verdict is like $40 million or $50 million something. Yeah, it’s funny. We had you come and speak to the Cobb Trial Lawyers Association. You had just, and this is a case I want to ask you about, tried the case where it was what, $77 million, wrongful death verdict, which I want to talk a little bit about, but I kind of joked with you that your average plaintiff’s verdict, the $77 million.

Dax: One and done.

Darl: It’s all downhill from here, right? I mean, it’s like you hit a grand slam your first time at bat.

Dax: Did that. Yeah, the next was only $31 million. So…

Darl: Yeah, it’s like, man, you’re like $40 million short. Right. So tell us a little about your first plaintiff’s trial and kind of how your experience as a judge helped you tell us about the case and the result you got. I’d love to hear about it.

Dax: Yeah, that was a great case. And that was one of those, it was in DeKalb and Natalie Woodward, who was the primary leader.

Darl: High school classmates, right? 

Dax: High school classmate.  

Darl: Y’all grew up in Cobb County together, went to high school?

Dax: That’s right. High school. So Natalie and I were friends and we actually, it’s really funny. A few months before I left the bench, we were both members of the same community pool. We have sons the same age and who hang out and play together. And so we were at the pool one day and I sort of hinted to her.

I was like, Hey, I’m thinking about making a move. I’ll probably be leaving in the next few months. Not sure exactly, but it’s coming up. She’s like, when you do, I’m going to call you. I have a case I want to talk to you about. I was great. And I sort of forgot that conversation. And sure enough, within three weeks of me leaving the bench, she calls me up and says, Hey, I have this case that I’ve been working on for five years, and it was delayed because of the pandemic.

She goes, but it’s a psychiatric case, medical malpractice case. Very, very tough case. But everyone tells me I’m crazy. They tell me I’m going to lose. The mediator told me that it’s not worth a whole lot of money. We’ve mediated a couple times. My partners don’t love the case. No one really loves this case, but I think it’s a great case. Do you mind taking a look at it? Having come off the bench in DeKalb? It’ll be tried in DeKalb. So I’m like, sure. So she told me all about it, sent me some of the materials. I reviewed it. I called her back. I was like, Natalie, if you can prove half of what I just read, it’s worth $50 million. And she’s like, there’s—

Darl: You undervalued the case. Right?

Dax: —silence on the other side. And finally she’s like, how much? And I was like, $50 million. And she goes, you are the only person to have ever told me this case has that kind of value. Why do you think that? I was like, well, I think a lot of people think that DeKalb County is a plaintiff’s haven. I don’t agree with that. I think DeKalb County is a fair place to try a case. If you have a good case with good facts and good damages, a jury in DeKalb will give you appropriate.

Darl: It’s funny, I say the same thing about judges. When they say they’re plaintiff friendly, I’m like, they’re just fair. They’re just fair. They’re just fair.

Dax: It’s just a fair jury. That’s really what they are. They will just as quickly hurt you if you overreach or lie to them. Hundred percent. I was like, I tell folks, people don’t realize in DeKalb County, you don’t see the hundreds of defensive verdicts. Those don’t make the front page of the Fulton Daily, but then they get one 80 million verdict and filed DeKalb $80 million verdict, right?

There are probably a hundred defense verdicts that came before that. In the 11 years I was on the bench, I tried probably, I want to say between 20 and 30 med miles, which is a lot. And I would tell you two of those were plaintiff’s verdicts. So that means that the vast majority, over 95% were straight on defense verdicts. I’m going to start taking less med mal case. Now that’s changed though. I think post covid is a different world.

Post covid is a very different world, but it was very tough to get a good verdict to the med mal case. And she came from that. That’s what she did. So she’s like, you’re telling me something I’ve not ever heard before? And so the case is fairly straightforward, but it was very complex and in a couple of different ways that I can explain it.

But essentially my young man was 29 years old, had a 10 year history of bipolar disorder and drug addiction. And as you’ll learn is those two things kind of go hand in hand as you start developing the bipolar disorder, which typically happens late teens, early twenties for young men. And that’s exactly what happened to my guy. He starts developing these symptoms. People just think he’s acting out, not it was a mental condition. He was a gifted kicker. He had a scholarship to University of Georgia to be a kicker, Alabama, Tennessee.

He was a real athlete, ended up not being able to go to college because that’s kind when his mental illness manifested and it manifested pretty strongly. So he was not able to go to college, was not able to have a normal college experience.

He spent the next 10 years in and out of facilities and he develops this drug addiction because he figured out that marijuana and cocaine level ’em out. Whenever he starts feeling manic, those things would help him. And so he develops a pretty strong drug addiction. He tried heroin and meth. He tried all the hard drugs, but kind of landed on marijuana and cocaine. So for 10 years, his family is sending him in and out of facilities. And what we now know is that for a very long time, we misunderstood these, what’s called a dual diagnosis. So he’d go to a facility that would treat bipolar disorder but not drug addiction.

And then he’d go to a rehab center that would treat the drug addiction but not the bipolar. You have to find a facility that can treat both at once. And so the science and the medicine was sort of developing on this issue while he was going in and out of these facilities. But clearly he was a motivated person who wanted to get better. So he turns 29 years old. He tells mom, this is the year I want to get really good. I mean, I want to figure out how to get better. He had a small child. He was engaged to get married. He was not able to hold a job, but it was highly intelligent and was trying to find a way to hold a job. And so mom and dad were committed to helping him. And so the next time he had a manic disorder, his longtime therapist sends him to Ridgeview.

They lived in North Carolina. She’s like, you need to go to Ridgeview in Atlanta. So the family drives him to Atlanta, goes to Ridgeview, Ridgeview, figures out the right combination of drugs at the right dosages, how to stabilize ’em. For the first time in 10 years, this guy is fully stable with two drugs, lithium and Seroquel at the right dosages.

And he was, was in the midst of a manic, delusional attack when he was at Ridgeview. And they figured it out and they stabilized him for the first time ever. And so Ridgeview was also treating his drug disorder, but ultimately decided to send him to a facility. Now that we know, we’ve now stabilized, you completely keep you on your meds. Let’s send you to a rehab facility. So that’s the defendant in this case was a place called MARR in DeKalb County that dealt primarily with substance abuse disorder.

But they did have a psychiatrist on staff who claims to be an expert on dual diagnoses, like you could deal with the psychiatric aspects and these aspects. So very long story short, the psychiatrist completely disregarded the mental diagnosis. He even said in his deposition, I did not believe he was bipolar. I just thought he was a drug addict. I mean, he completely disregarded 10 years worth of medical data. I mean, he’d just come from the psychiatric unit at Ridgeview, never picked up the phone and called the psychiatrist over there and be like, Hey, what were you seeing? Why do you have ’em on these two drugs? Why these dosages didn’t do any, I mean, literally 40 minute conversation, you’re not really bipolar. I’m going to start taking you off your meds and starts taking, kind of weaning him off and discontinuing those drugs within a week.

Lithium was completely discontinued. So what happens is he starts decompensating very quickly while at the facility. Psychiatrist doesn’t tell anybody anything. And so all the counselors think he just has a bad attitude. He’s not following the rules. And so ultimately they discharged him. That’s the fancy word. They kicked him out. They kicked him out of the facility while he had decompensated.

He was in the middle of a manic delusional state when he’s thrown into the streets of Atlanta not being from here, mom and dad get a call and they’re like, can you just hold him please and we’ll come get him. We’ll be there in six hours. And they’re like, no, you need to stop coddling him. Stop babying him. We’re going to go ahead and discharge him. And the dad said, this was undisputed at trial. If you discharge my son right now, he’ll be dead within three days.

And sure enough, less than 72 hours later, this young man in a delusional, psychotic, delusional state, stripped out naked, walked out into the middle of I-85 at four o’clock in the morning, laid down in a lane and was run over by three vehicles and just a terrible, terrible death. So we sued the psychiatrist, the facility, the counselors, we sued everybody, and we went to trial. It was a 14 day trial.

I told Natalie, the reason I thought this case had such significant value is because in DeKalb, everyone has dealt with mental illness and drug addiction. There are very few people who’ve been unaffected by it. I ran the DUI court in DeKalb County for 11 years substance abuse court. I dealt with our populations. I know our people really well. My sister-in-law’s bipolar only by the grace of God has she not had the same issue happen to her.

We’ve had some close calls. And so I was like, everyone in DeKalb knows somebody who has drug addiction or mental illness or both. And so sure enough, we had a poll of 90 for our trial, 78 of the 90 had bipolar or addiction in their family. Several of our jurors ended up being former addicts themselves, who did AA every day. Several of our jurors had folks who ended their lives, family members who had ended their lives because of mental illness. So it was as good of a jury as you’re ever going to get. So it was a great experience.

Darl: And the total verdict, again? $70million.

Dax: $77 million.

Darl: And that’s up on appeal, right?

Dax: It is. So it’s funny. So we debated what we were going to ask the jurors at the end of a 14 day trial, we’re like, what are we asking for? We’re about to do our closings. And I was like, no, I told you day one $50 million. I’ve told you all throughout $50 million. We’re going to ask for $50 million tomorrow. And we asked for $40 million for the full value of life, $10 million in pain and suffering. The juries gave us $65 million more than we asked for. And then $11 million in attorney’s fees and a million dollars in punitives.

Darl: Excellent, great result that you and Natalie got for that family. It sounds like a horrific case, and one that sounds like it should have settled from the defense side.

Dax: We would’ve settled for half the policy limits in that case.

Darl: Can we leave that in?

Dax: Yeah, absolutely. We would’ve settled for less.

Darl: Who’s going to sue the defense lawyers for malpractice?

Dax: I think there’s a long line. There’s a line of folks who are lining up for that.

Darl: For sure. So your practice now is exclusively plaintiffs plus you’re mediating. Correct. What would you say your percentage mediating versus handling cases?

Dax: Probably do 10%—15% mediation. I’m still try to get in there and try cases. My partner, Tony, does a lot more mediations than I do, but we ended up trying a case together last year, our firm did and got a 31 million result in a premises liability case.

Darl: Brought your average down a little bit.

Dax: It did. It did.

Darl: From $77 million.

Dax: Well, we didn’t ask for $50 million on that one, so I think we we’re okay. But yeah, so I mediate probably 10%, 15% of the time I’ve mediated with you and some others. I tell folks, since this is not my primary source of revenue, I do it. I enjoy it. And I think I bring a perspective as a former judge and as a trial lawyer that I think has some credibility.

But I kind of just tell folks, just text me and I’ll come. I can give you some dates, but I don’t open a lot of dates on my calendar for mediation. But I kind of leave time for my friends and colleagues that I know well.

Darl: What do you like about being a plaintiff’s lawyer?

Dax: It was an interesting transition. As you mentioned, we’re not a volume firm, so all our cases are wrongful death or catastrophic injury. We do have some smaller cases, but really few, vast majority of our cases are the larger, more complex cases. And a lot of them involve the Hispanic community.

So a lot of my clients are undocumented immigrants, and there’s a whole set of challenges that come with representing that community. A lot of them are scared of the legal process. They don’t want to be part of the process because of their documentation status of their immigration status. But Tony and I both speak Spanish. We’re culturally proficient.

We’re obviously bilingual, but I wasn’t prepared for the emotional aspect of representing individuals who’ve lost a loved one or who are themselves catastrophically injured. You’re sitting with parents who’ve just lost a child, or you’re sitting with someone who their life has been completely turned upside down because of a brain injury now that they, they didn’t have before.

We’ve had some really, really sad cases with brain injuries where we had one client because of the brain injury he sustained accidentally self deported himself. So he did not realize, he didn’t understand his immigrant. He had status, he had TPS, but that only allows you to travel for a very short period of time. And he went back to his home country of El Salvador and overstayed because he didn’t understand the paperwork because of his brain injury and sort of deported himself.

And so he’s stuck in El Salvador. So my firm worked with Senator Ossoff and Warnock and several others to try to get him back into the country. We had to hire multiple immigration lawyers because we had to get him back into the country for trial. Did you him back? We did. It took us two years though. Wow. It is not a quick process, but we were able to get him back in the country in time for his trial.

And because he was back, we were able to resolve the case right before trial. But yeah, those are the kinds of challenges that we’re dealing with. But you’re working with a population that often is very vulnerable, more so than just normal individuals. And then they’re also dealing with this horrific, whatever the horrific issue is. And so you’re a judge, you’re neutral, you can’t get emotionally involved. And now I am emotionally invested in this person and their wellbeing and try to get them better and try to get them some help. And so that transition was interesting and certainly a lot more difficult than I anticipated.

Darl: Before we wrap up, I got to ask you some tips for plaintiff’s attorneys. So a lot of our listeners are plaintiff’s attorneys, and we love hearing from not only successful plaintiff’s attorneys, but somebody who has the perspective of being a judge. What advice do you have? And this could be anything from working the case up to discovery, getting issues resolved through your trial presentation.

Dax: Yeah, a couple things.

One, we do sort of look at every case as a case that’s going to get tried, and we prepare every case that way, and I know a lot of lawyers say that, but cases are lost or won in discovery. I mean, they really are, as I told Natalie, as I was reading hundreds of pages of depositions, you won this case in those depots. You got everything you needed to present your case and to really box in the other side where they’re going to have very little wiggle room. So really that’s really important is you can’t assume every case is going to settle.

So you got to really think about what’s your trial strategy early on in the process because you got to prepare and get that evidence ready. Also, this is something I’ve always done and I do it now as I’m preparing for trial. I ask everybody what their opinion is, the Uber driver, the checkout lady at the Publix, I’ll tell ’em here, here are the facts. And I try to give ’em the best defense version of the case and ask them their point of view. Because I think as lawyers, sometimes we get so in the weeds that we forget to take that step back and start thinking about a case as in a human level and as a lay person.

Darl: And the defense is the worst of that, by the way, in their echo chamber. Oh, absolutely. They’re not asking the lady of Publix, they’re going down the hall and asking the person.

Dax: Well, it’s so funny you say that because I mediate cases, so I’m in the room with them and I’ll in, I will not say that, but in my head I’m like, have y’all talked to a human being outside of your law firm? Because human beings are going to see this case very differently, and those are the people who are going to occupy those 12 seats in that courtroom.

And this is part of my tips to tell, I always tell folks too, is look at the number of lawyers who don’t look at the jurors during trial is staggering to me. Jurors give you everything you need to know whether your evidence is landing, whether they’re with you, whether there’s a point they’re confused about their body language is a tell all.

Darl: Do you recommend, and I’ve heard some lawyers do this, they bring somebody to sit in the gallery who can just watch and kind of give you a play by play?

Dax: I’m telling you my one little superpower, I tell folks I’m a mediocre trial lawyer on my best day, but I have one superpower. I can tell you what a jury in DeKalb County is going to do. I can’t tell you what cop or Gwinnett or Fulton, but you put 12 people in a box in DeKalb County and bring me to your trial. I’m going to tell you what they’re going to do. And you can ask.

We have some mutual friends, I’m not going to call ’em out on this podcast, but we have some mutual friends who, they’re very successful plaintiff’s lawyers now, and they’re incredibly successful, a hundred million dollars verdicts. But when they first tried their first trial as their current firm, they texted me and they’re like, Hey, we’re about to try this case in Judge Hydrick’s courtroom. Why don’t you come watch?

This is our first trial as our new firm. I was like, awesome, I’ll come down. And so I went downstairs. It was a car wreck case, and I just watched their opening. So one of the two of them, the two partners did his opening and I left and I texted the other guy and I said, Hey, this is a defense verdict all day, all day, every day. Is he like, don’t tell me this with, and he’s texting back. He’s like, you saw our opening. You didn’t even see the defense opening. I was like, I have sat and watched the cab juries day in and day out for years, and I’m telling you, this is a defense verdict just from the openings. And so he’s like, we’ll see. And so next day I get a text back, he’s like, plaintiff’s verdict. And I was like, okay, how much? And he is like 200. And I was like, $200,000. He’s like, no, $200.

So he’s like, how did you know? I was like, this is what I do.

I can watch jurors in DeKalb County. But so I always tell folks, have someone watch the jurors because the jurors really, they’re, and if present DeKalb County, that person needs to be you. Yes. Yeah, absolutely. How come try a case with you. And I did that in our trial with Natalie. I had crossed the defendant doctor in our case in chief, and then they obviously called him back in their case. And so I was debating whether I should recross him. And so when he took, I had crossed him pretty thoroughly and pretty hard in our case. So when he takes the stand to do the, lemme tell you about myself and all the wonderful things about me, what they do in directs, right? Try to engage with the jurors and connect with the jurors.

Half the jurors physically turn their chairs away from the stand and they were not facing him. Wow. So I turned it out. I was like, I’m not crossing him again. We’re done. We’re good. She’s like, you sure was like, look at the jurors. They’re not listening to the part which this is the direct. And I’m looking at the lawyer for the doctor.

I’m like, look at the jurors. They are not listening to him and you guys are losing badly. So that’s one thing I always tell folks. My third big tip, and I use this one in CLEs, and I learned this in a criminal case. It was actually a pro se criminal case. I think as lawyers, we have this tendency to want to, if they say something, we want to rebut it, right? This tit for tat. They said something, we need to rebut what they said.

We say something, they want to rebut what we said. And there’s this whole, you spend a lot of time, the last word, you spend the whole trial sometimes in the most irrelevant stuff because you’re really just responding to what the other side said or did or whatever. And this is what I learned watching hundreds of trials. But I learned this from a pro se criminal defendant, and this is a fun story.

So I had this little shoplifting case with a frequent flyer. This guy was in my courtroom a lot, always for shoplifting and always at Publix. He loved Publix. And so Publix knew him well. We knew him well. Everyone knew this guy. And so he walks into a Publix and sure enough, literally every camera is trained on him. The risk manager is immediately alerted because he’s a frequent flyer. So the risk manager comes out and literally follows him throughout the whole store.

So physically watching him, not through a camera, but physically watching, and he is literally just putting stuff in his pockets. And lemme tell you, you can do that. It is not soft lifting until you actually cross all points of sale and get outside. So they’re not stopping him. He’s putting stuff in all his pockets. He walks into the meat department and stuff, 10 steaks down his pants. I mean, he’s literally pants on zips, just steak after steak. And he’s got steaks in his pants, he’s got groceries up here, and he kind of waddles out of the store. Alright? So they wait till he’s outside the store, they stop him, bring him back in, they take all the stuff out, he kind makes a run for it. They tackle him and then they call the cops. Alright? So my solicitor, my prosecutor is feeling really confident.

Pro se doesn’t even have a lawyer. I think my prosecutor took the first six. He’s like, give me the first six in the box. Let’s go. Alright, so this guy did not participate in barn dire. And I was like, all right, let’s get started. He really didn’t do an opening. So prosecutor calls risk manager, risk manager, he takes a stand. Absolutely.

We know Mr. So-and-So all objectionable stuff, but he doesn’t object. We’ve seen him before. We know him well. He’s come to our store and stolen things in the past, things that should not be said. But again, no objection. And he’s like, yeah. And I watched him physically put all the stuff in his pockets. We watched him go through all points of sale and then we stopped him and called the police. Great. The defendant gets up and says, I saw there’s video cameras all over the store, and the guy’s like, yep.

He’s like, do you have the video? And he’s like, nope. He’s: where that video at? And the guy’s like, well, I think we recorded over it so we don’t have it. He’s like, thank you. And he sits down, okay, alright. Police officer takes the stand. I was called to the store, they showed me the videos. I identified the defendant. Okay, again, this is improper should not happen. You’re admitting evidence that should not be admitted because you don’t have the video.

But anyway, he’s like, I saw the videos. It was the defendant. I took him and I took him to jail. Easy. Defendant gets up and he says, you didn’t take me to jail. Where’d you take me? And the officer’s like, you’re right. You were hurt. So I took you to Grady, the hospital, to get some treatment. He’s like, thank you. And he sits down.

And so he gets up in closing. He’s like, ladies and gentlemen, these people hurt me and they don’t want you to see it. Where that video at? They’re hiding something. And he sits down.

Five minutes later, he’s acquitted. He’s acquitted. Five minutes. So what I started thinking is, wow, what a great lesson, right? He didn’t focus on the prosecutor’s evidence. That’s bad for him. He kept that jury trained on his issue, which is the video. Where is it? Why are they hiding it? He created some reasonable doubt by just focusing on his issue. So I tell lawyers, yes, there’s always things you have to rebut. I mean, there are going to be things that you’re definitely going to have to deal with in your case that the other side’s going to raise. But keep the jurors focused on your narrative. Don’t buy into the defense narrative.

Tell them your story. Defense lawyers love to misdirect and tell you all the reasons why your case is bad. I was like, no, I’m looking at my case. It’s pretty straightforward. You did this and it killed my client, and I’m going to keep the jurors focused on what you did. And they want, oh, well, your client didn’t have a job, or he was bipolar, he was addicted, or blah, immaterial. You did this and it killed my client. And that’s going to be my very simple narrative, and I’m going to have to rebut some things, and I know I have to work out in my trial, but from opening the close, here’s my narrative, and I’m going to keep the jurors coming back to all the reasons why they need to fight against the defendant. Where that video at is as easy as it gets. That dude asked four questions this whole trial and got acquitted. Now he got convicted on the next five. This one…

Darl: That’s an amazing story though.

Dax: So those are the kinds of things that I think we sometimes lose sight of. There’s a human side to what we do. Ask normal people who are not in law and don’t do this day in and day out, ask for their opinion. I know a lot of us focus group cases, I focus group everywhere I go. I’m at the pool with my friends. People who are non-lawyers. I have some really conservative friends. Those are the first people I call.

I’m like, Hey, how do you see this case? And we will talk through it and they’ll bring up some points. I was like, all right, I need to work through those issues and make sure this jury understands if I can explain it this way, that even the most conservative juror I can put on my jury is going to give me something. And so I’m always trying to figure out ways to, if I had 12 conservative jurors on that jury, how do I still win? And so you got to understand from lay perspectives what it’s important to people. And everyone wants the same thing. Everyone’s safety is an easy safety and making sure that people are held accountable. Those are easy things to convey in a certain way. So those are the kinds of things that I focus on. 

Darl: Amazing. Well, thank you. That’s a great way to end the podcast episode, by the way, that story, where the video at? That’s going to be my mantra for a lot of cases. So I can see Leticia in the corner rolling her eyes. She knows I’m going to be saying that all the time now: where the video at?

But thank you for joining us, Dax. It’s been a pleasure. This was a great podcast. Loved hearing more about your background and your stories and the advice that you had.

To our listeners, thank you for tuning in. Make sure you subscribe to our podcast so that you can get future episodes.

 

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