Bill Kanasky, Jr., Ph.D. and Steve Wood, Ph.D. are joined by NYC trial attorney Tony Battista of Condon & Forsyth LLP in the second part of their discussion about a high profile trial they recently worked on together. The group talks about their approach for opening statements, how many drafts of the opening they had, how many versions they tested with mock jurors, and how they dealt with all of the bad stuff in their case in the opening. Tony shares his strategy for cross-examination and his philosophy on dealing with judges. Tony also discusses how he developed his closing for a 14-week trial and the group talk about how to define a win in any case. Bill, Steve, and Tony share how they maintained their mental and physical health during this lengthy trial preparation process and what some of their key takeaways were from working on this huge case. Lastly, Tony shares insights on how he gets the younger attorneys in his firm training and experience.
Full Episode Transcript
[00:15] Bill Welcome to the Litigation Psychology Podcast, brought to you by Courtroom Sciences. Here is part two of our discussion with New York trial attorney Tony Batista. And then we went to the opening state. So, Tony, describe—um, again, there’s a lot, lot of disagreement uh in the team, this—but this happens um with the opening statement. We—this is very important to me because I’m now I’m gonna do my rant right here. And this is a rant I have. This is like the seventh time I’ve given this rant. It makes me crazy when defense attorneys call me and go, “Hey, my trial is in 30 days, 45 days, I need to hire you, blah blah blah.” Okay, I go, “First thing is send me a draft of your opening.” They’re like, “Draft? Draft of the opening? Well, I mean, I—I got 30 days, I got…” I’m like, “Are you out of your mind?” Tony, talk about how early we got started on this. How many drafts, how many iterations of this opening? How many times we moved things around to perfect this because to—to—to get where you need to be? The—I gotta say the amount of effort we put into that opening was incredible and absolutely necessary. And I see a lot of defense attorneys not—either not putting in that time or they get started way, way, way too late.
[01:33] Tony So, we had—we had four very capable trial attorneys on the—any four of them could have done the opening. And when we did our mocks, we tested attorneys to see which—which one would—would play the best. So, we did that, and then that mock was months in advance of the trial. That’s when we started on our opening. We had the first draft at the time of the mock—we tested it, we saw what worked, what didn’t work. We tested exhibits, we tested people, we tested attorneys. And then two months out, we started drafting again, drafting openings. And I think we went through—I’m not kidding—probably 16, 17, 18 drafts. Yeah, and—and everyone had great ideas. Um, some of the ideas we couldn’t use and other things we had to—we had to pick and choose which—which were better than others and what story did we want to tell and what were the three themes and what was psychologically going to have the most impact given that we were going third and that we were going to be in the middle of the day. And we needed a bit of creativity and we needed Kabooms, right? We needed Kaboom. We need—we needed people to be awake, we needed people to be excited. We needed to desensitize the jury to this tragedy. And how do we do that? How do we desensitize them to the videos? How do we desensitize them to the graphic nature of a case like this? And that’s—that was um—I mean, some of the changes were, you know, three or four days before. Yeah, and some great ideas. But practice, practice, practice and feedback and—and drafting and revising and a lot of effort, a lot of practice.
[03:27] Bill Yeah, le—let’s talk about Kaboom because that—that’s my word and I tell my clients, I said, “You can’t have a boring opening statement. You better lead with Kaboom.” And Kaboom means like you better throw a hand grenade in the courtroom because everybody’s gonna wake up. And when you’re go third in the lineup, this is a little tricky. Um, can you—because I think your style is really good—talk about um your style and what you were trying to do to connect with these people during your opening as far as your tone, your body language, how you interacted with them that I think was um quite different from the other attorney’s um styles?
[04:08] Tony Sure. So, so one of the things we did is—is we had a number of different exhibits that we brought in and some of them were larger than others. We had a big screen TV. We had a multi-dimensional presentation, not a PowerPoint. No PowerPoint, no—no—no reading from a book, no script, no nothing like that. But we had exhibits in the middle of the courtroom and they were so big we had to take the jury out of the box, and we put them in the audience. So, number one creative move was getting the jury out of the box.
[04:39] Bill Yep.
[04:39] Tony Nobody would ever think of doing it.
[04:41] Bill No, that was cra—that’s crazy.
[04:43] Tony We wanted to move them. We wanted the jury to remember it. And—and what did we do? We took all the bad stuff, all the bad stuff that they were going to see, and we put it in there. And we—we—we were up front. We desensitized them and then we told our story the way we wanted it to be. And we used exhibits, we used video, uh and we got lucky because we actually got to do two openings. We went on at about 11:30 and the judge—we were—I was an hour and a half in and the judge said we got a break for lunch. And it was at right—right at the point where I was about to give another kaboom. And I said, “No problem, give me five more minutes.” I did the Kaboom. So, I had two in the beginning and then I said, “This is great, we go for lunch.” I get to do another opening to opening in the afternoon. I did another 45 minutes, and we advantage of the break, which was wonderful. But it’s—it’s—it was about explaining to the jury the case, it’s about desensitizing them to the bad things, and it’s about being remembered.
Youwanted them to remember your presentation and you wanted them to think during plaintiff’s opening case, go back, what did Mr. Batista say? Oh, that’s what he said. He showed me that exhibit, he showed me that video, he showed me that—that tape and—and build credibility with the jury. The other piece I had is I was the only New Yorker.
[06:24] Bill Yeah, that was interesting. Yeah, that helped. Talk about—but so sticking with the opening, the—because this is a big, big deal, I think—talk about the importance of identifying and embracing the bad stuff during your opening to—to really own it. Because I—I see another mistake of—yeah, every case has weaknesses and I think a lot of attorneys want to avoid those weaknesses. And we knew we—we couldn’t be dancing around. We—we knew we had some bad stuff, and you came right out and said, “Hey, this is bad. This looks bad, it smells bad, it tastes bad, it’s bad.” And lay it right out there versus ignoring it, which I think a lot of attorneys want to do. They don’t want to deal with the bad stuff, but it’s actually quite important to deal with it in your opening.
[07:14] Tony I think I went over the top with the bad stuff. Yeah, so I wanted to remember how I explained the bad stuff. I was very theatrical about the bad stuff and—and—and how it was tragic and how it added to it. And there was enough bad stuff in this case to go around. Painted—paint broad strokes, painted everyone with bad stuff. Everyone had bad stuff um—and—and doing it in a way that people could understand, appreciate, learn from, and remember. And not—we didn’t hide from anything. Didn’t hide from any—we—we were going to be the party that told the truth: the good, the bad, the ugly. When we got up, our witnesses got up on the stand, they were going to be truthful, credible, and believable and rememberable. They were never going to forget our witnesses.
[08:03] Bill Yeah, yeah. Speaking of witnesses, let’s go over this again. Another thing Steve and I see all the time and um—this can come back to bite you if you don’t have the self-discipline. It’s back to the confirmation bias. And I think when attorneys are cross-examining witnesses, I think they often—they get—they get in the zone, right? And—and—and they often lost in the process, which part of that’s good because I think getting in a rhythm, getting in the zone—listen, when Michael Jordan was in the zone, you weren’t stopping him, right? He’s shooting the ball, he’s shooting the ball. I mean, he’s gets the ball, he’s shooting it. Why? He’s in the zone. And I think there’s times in cross-examination, which came up in this case, comes up in a lot of cases where—uh, and you and I have talked about this extensively is when you’re cross-examining an adverse witness, you got to know when to stop.
[08:58] Tony Yep.
[08:59] Bill Cuz more is not—you got to know when to walk off the stage, drop the mic, and sit the hell down. Because if you keep going, you can open up a can of worms you never expected and you lose the impact of the cross. And it dil—we talked about this: dilution. You dilute all of your most powerful stuff by going too long. Can you talk about your strategy on knowing when to shut up as a cross-examiner and let it go because you got what you want?
[09:27] Tony Hardest thing to do is to sit down. Hardest thing to do because you want to keep going. You have an adrenaline rush, um, feels good, you feel like you got the witness on the ropes. But you got to stop. You got to stop um—and it’s hard to do. That’s why you have teammates. Yeah, and your teammates—you have a code. They tell you to sit down, you got to sit down. But it’s—it’s the hardest thing to do. It’s the biggest mistake trial lawyers make is—is not stopping. And it’s probably the biggest criticism people sit in the audience saying, “Why didn’t you ask that one question? Why didn’t you keep going? You had them on the ropes!” You got to stop. The jury knows. Jury knows. And then the other—the other—the other kind of funny rule we have is um—because that there is such an adrenaline rush. It’s like you’re, you know, it’s—it’s like you’re playing a sport and you have that adrenaline flowing um—you don’t want to do two witnesses in a row because you lose—you lose your self-discipline, you lose your self-control, you lose your perception. So, you always want to have another teammate do the next witness. And in this case, because it was so adversarial um—we’d have motion arguments every morning um—we—we alternated. So, we alternated not only arguments—we didn’t want to have—we didn’t want to do arguments and then do witnesses so, yeah, one lawyer do arguments in the morning, then the next lawyer does the witness and you rotate. So, it’s—it’s about having a team because your—your mind plays tricks on you. And um, you know better than I, but when you’re in that emotional state, it’s hard to think rationally.
[11:21] Bill It re—it really, really is. Let’s—let’s talk about this another thing I—I think I just saw, I just thought was brilliant by you. And this was kind of a slow burn strategy. You—you got this judge on your side. Talk—talk about the importance because obviously you want to advocate for your client, you want to do your best, at the same time you don’t want a judge that’s ticked off at you. You want a judge that in key—in key areas of this trial may give you—may give you some latitude. How is your—not just in this—this case, but in any case—your philosophy and kind of how you interact with the judge so as this trial goes on, you’re in the best position uh possible? And if there is a coin toss, you have a really good shot at—at winning it during a motion or something like that.
[12:16] Tony Oh look it, I’ll go back to the sports analogy. Judge is a referee. Judge got the hardest job in the world. Hardest job because—because he has—he has to corral five different groups of lawyers, or six or seven, however many parties there are. And they’re all good, they’re all outstanding lawyers, and they’re all going to push the envelope to zealously represent their clients. And they’re going to push it. Philosophically, I learned very early in my career to show difference and—and—and to be upfront and admit when the law is not on your side. And explain the law to the judge in—in an accurate, meaningful way and—and don’t hide from the bad stuff. Explain it so it helps the judge make the right decision. And if you do that consistently—these cases, like I said, are years in the making—if you do that consistently throughout, you build credibility and—and you—you build the respect. And you—you give the judge the information that he or she needs to make the right call. And they do. They do. They do the work. It’s the hardest job in the room um—you know, I over my career I’ve seen many judges do—go above and beyond and—and—and getting it right and—and making sure that they do all the work and do all the research. So, it’s—it’s about difference, it’s about doing the right thing, and—and being there and answering the questions accurately. Then that goes a long way.
[13:58] Bill So 14 weeks. You got COVID twice.
[14:02] Tony Yes, that was unpleasant. And my colleagues got COVID too.
[14:05] Bill The colleagues got COVID. Steve, I swear—Steve and I should like sell our—our—our blood plasma to side. I mean, we’ve, you know, we—I’ve been exposed to it a hundred times, I’ve been test—
[14:13] Tony You kept telling me there’s no COVID in Florida.
[14:16] Bill Well anywhere else, I go. Apparently, it’s just not—I don’t know, I just—I never had it. I’ve never tested positive. Steve either. So maybe—maybe we should donate our bodies to science or something uh like that. So, after 14 weeks, um, kind of the final challenge here which you got to put a 14-week trial into a very strict 45-minute closing. The judge gave 45 minutes for the defendants. 14 weeks into 45 minutes and a very strict 45 minutes. And the funny part about this story is um—we’re walking to the courtroom and there’s news and cameras everywhere and I’m thinking, “Hey, you know,” no uh P Diddy was being arraigned that day. Remember? Next door. Every—every news outlet. We couldn’t—we could hardly get into the courtroom, right? Because the P Diddy stuff’s going on right next door. It’s like you can’t make this stuff up, right? We—this is of course going to happen on the morning of closing uh arguments. Um, can you talk to me about um I guess the struggle? The struggle to—to fit a 14-week case into 45 minutes. Because you can’t cover everything, can you?
[15:31] Tony No, you know, and it—it—it goes back to teamwork and creativity and—and—and what’s the storyline? What’s the most important bits and pieces? And what how do we—how do we draw a roadmap that the jury can follow? And that’s—that’s ultimately what we did is we drew a roadmap. We went old school um to help the jury. And it’s, you know, it’s every trial that you do you have to think about what—how do we connect with these eight people? What—what did you see? What—what—what was their body language? What—what worked? What did they react to? What exhibits did they react to? What witnesses did they really like? And it’s about tracking the progress throughout and then taking that information and trying to give them something that they can use when they deliberate in that room. And, you know, I think—I think we did that as best we could. It’s never perfect, but, you know, um that’s what a trial is all about. I think these—these particular jurors, they worked really, really hard for 14 weeks and I think they did a great job.
[16:38] Bill Yeah. Um, and I’ll let you discuss the outcome as you—as you—as you see fit. But I—I know in this case, in other cases, I think the defense bar kind of has to look in the mirror is like how do you really define a win? Um, and it’s a “bet the company” case and the company’s still alive. Uh, I guess one could argue, you know, that that’s a win. This is a very, very um difficult case. Um, how—how—how do you, given your career and—and the types of—these are very difficult cases that you work on in aviation um—I think the old days of, you know, getting a full defense verdict is the only win, I don’t—I don’t think that’s accurate. I think there’s many—
[17:19] Tony It feels really good though when it works.
[17:21] Tony Yeah, it feels really good. But there’s other outcomes that can still be uh defined as a win. And in this particular case, and other cases, how do you psychologically, you know, get your head around that and your clients and insurance carriers to understand a win can be defined in—in—in several different ways, particularly on a case where you know you’re going to have some liability?
[17:49] Tony Well, look, first things first, you want to put the best case forward that as you can. And if you feel you did the best that you could, the witnesses perform uh to the best of their ability and the evidence went in in a way that—that you wanted and you got the jury that you wanted and you did everything that you thought you could be done and, you know, the result is the result. You have to trust in the jury system. I trust in the jury system. The jury trials that I’ve done have done a lot—for the most part, they’ve gotten it right. And—and I do believe this result was the right result for—for um, you know, for that jury. Um, now whether it gets changed and whether the law does something different, that’s a different issue. But did—it is it a win? I don’t really look at things as wins and losses. It’s—it’s—it’s degrees of—of success. I think we were successful in what we wanted to do. Yeah, um, the company’s still in business, which is—which I take a lot of pride in. Yeah, but, you know, every case is different and um every client’s different. There’s different goals, different expectations. And the—at the end of the day, you can only do the best you can and then that’s—that’s—that’s how you deal with it. Yeah, there’s been, you know, many trials over my career. Unfortunately, we only get involved in really bad cases um so uh you’re not going to have many defense verdicts. So, you’re—you—you scale—you’re—you’re grading yourself in a different way. Um, yeah, so I don’t know if I answered the question, but that’s the best I could do.
[19:38] Bill No, no, that’s—no, that that—that that makes perfect sense. Le—let’s—let’s talk about how we um we all stay—try to stay mentally healthy. Steve and I went back and forth to New York City countless times. My—our families—I told my family—like, listen, this is the biggest case I’ve ever worked on. They’re like, “Go, go, go, go, go.” And Steve did the same thing. Uh, so at the hotel, there’s a couple things uh that we had. We had the uh Serenity Porch. We had the Serenity Porch. So, on the second floor of this hotel, there’s a very nice uh porch. And we—we got—and the weather was nice. It was the summertime in New York City and uh it was a good place to kind of go and—and clear our heads. We had the breakfast routine and in the evening, we were two blocks away from Little Italy and uh had some uh some amazing Italian food. Uh, talk—talk about how the off hours, particularly in the evenings and—and—and on the—on the weekends, you still got to work, but it’s also a good chance to kind of let go, you know, get rid of some—vent a little bit. You know, talk—talk to team members uh enjoy—enjoy a good—a good meal and—and not necessarily run yourself into the ground every single moment.
[20:51] Tony A couple things you gotta—that—that were so important. One was was food and—and—and downtime. So, we had—we had a number of restaurants that we would frequent and we became regulars. We’d have a—we’d have a regular table. We—we had an Italian restaurant in—in the village, Monties, that we went to often. And—and we—we’d enjoy the food and the laughter and you—everybody kind of knew our name. Another one in Little Italy, Il Corti, we went to yeah quite frequently. They all knew us, we had a table. Uh, and the diner every morning, yeah, you know, we—we became regulars. Um, the serenity lounge was—was pretty important because—because it get—it gets heated. You know, there’s debates and there’s, you know, what strategy you’re going to use or how you going to attack this witness or what’s the outline going to look like and what exhibits you going to use. And there’s—there—there’s differences of opinion and sometimes it gets too hot. You need a place to go and unwind a little bit. In this case, we had a Serenity Lounge. And I—I had—I’ve had cases around the country, sometimes it’s pool, you know, we—I made a case in—in LA where we would go sit poolside for a little while to cool off. And then uh another case we had in Miami, we had a Staples button where we—when somebody got too hot, somebody would hit the button, and it would the buzzer would go off, and they’d be putting time out for a while. Yeah, but you got to do things to—to create um, you know, some—some laughter, so release attention. You know, we would watch the ball games at night. Yeah, big screen TV in the hotel. We—we—we’d set up a video showing and, you know, we’d have pizza and—and some beverages and just relax on a Saturday.
[22:30] Bill I—I gotta say I—I really missed the—the pizza was just—Yeah, oh Steve, Steve, Steve, Steve.
[22:34] Tony Pizza was good.
[22:36] Bill Oh man, the pizza and yeah, I’m watching uh we watched the Mets go on a great run, that was fun. We watched some college—College World Series games.
[22:46] Steve Watched the College Station, watched A&M lose it.
[22:50] Bill Yeah, yeah, it was uh uh we definitely uh we had a good… So, Steve, I mean Steve, as a jury consultant, I’m pretty sure this uh was the biggest case you’ve worked on. What uh I guess were your key learning points? I know I—I learned a ton. Oh my god, did I learn a ton. Um, what were I guess your key takeaways for—for such a complex case that lasted so long? And then—and by the way, Steve and I have a full caseload of other cases we’re working on. So, it—very, very difficult emotionally, physically, mentally. It—it was—it was brutal.
[23:27] Steve I think if I could, you know, probably about four different things. Uh, first and foremost was, you know, keeping the mental health there, right? Staying in shape, us hitting the gym, doing a lot of stuff.
[23:38] Bill Worst hotel gym. Worst hotel gym ever.
[23:40] Steve I wasn’t gonna go there, but—
[23:42] Tony Come on. It wasn’t that bad.
[23:44] Bill No, it was terrible. It was terrible, Steve. It dead last. It was awful.
[23:53] Steve But I mean, we—we did our best because like I said, you need—you need to do that as we were eating at all these good restaurants, we needed to stay in shape. Uh, that was the first thing just to stay mentally healthy. Also having support from our family, realizing that we’re gone all the time, that life goes on. You know, Tony, you can say the same thing, right? You were staying in a hotel for weeks and weeks on end. Your wife’s out doing other things too, right? And—and kind of life has to go on. But we have strong females in our lives that are supportive of us. So that was another—another thing.
[24:19] Tony Yes, I was—I was lucky because—because my family, my wife, my children would come in and meet me for dinner from time to time, which was really, really helpful. And—and every once in a while, I got to go home. So that was nice.
[24:32] Bill Yeah, and I—and I uh because of the way it worked out uh I had to come up on Father’s Day. And I spent Father’s Day with the—with—with the full Batista family. And I—I gotta tell you though, first of all, you have a great family uh Tony and—and your family totally took because I had to sit there at Monty’s and just watch you open gifts for 45 minutes.
[24:52] Tony That was hysterical.
[24:53] Steve While I eat, while I’m eating my cannoli. Uh, yeah, they—they really, really um um took care of you. And you’re—tell us—tell us a little bit about uh your—your daughter’s an attorney, isn’t she?
[25:04] Tony Oh, Britney. Yeah, my—my uh oldest is um she’s an attorney in Nassau County. She’s an assistant district attorney and she would give me feedback on my opening and closing and my examinations. I’d practice in front of her and she’d say no, I got it wrong, I got to do this way, and my body language was bad and she’s very, very helpful. Very helpful.
[25:28] Steve Yeah, well, I was going to say the other—the other—the other things too is, you know, the research, right? I mean, obviously we do research all the time. But I think you realize the importance of the research. Importance of making a switch and tailoring it despite the fact that maybe it doesn’t feel good to do it a certain way, but if jurors have told you that’s the way they should go, then listen to the jurors um—is one of the other things. But I think one of the things I take away definitely from this that I was going to uh ask about Tony earlier was that—I mean, I think one of the things I took away is that you need someone who keeps calm, cool, and collected when the fire is going on around you the house is burning down and we always remember, we always would joke, Tony was always kind of the silver lining guy. Like, we would—we’d be complaining about stuff and then Tony would always come in with like some positive statement, we kind—
[26:17] Tony Chicken nuggets. Chicken nuggets, we used to say.
[26:20] Bill I lost my mind a couple times, we’d be at dinner and I’d be just steaming and he—Tony look at me like, “What’s wrong?” “What’s wrong!? Today sucked, that’s what’s wrong!” He’s like, “Relax, just part of…”
[26:32] Steve But I think that was one of the key takeaways is that, you know, you—you need someone to be able to do that. So, whether that’s, you know, someone that you take on that role or someone in your organization that you look to to kind of be that person who keeps it cool when everybody else is losing their minds, I think is—was very helpful to this team. Because I think if all of us would have kind of gone into that mode, I think it would have been a different case. But to have Tony kind of be the voice of reason, to kind of every—chill everybody out, I think was—was something that I—I—I saw a lot of value in.
[26:59] Tony Well, I had—I had really great teammates. I mean, my partners Dave and Diana were fantastic and they were, you know, everybody—everybody had ups and downs throughout the trial and—and we all picked each other up and, you know, we’ve all been together for a long time. So, we’ve all practiced together for more than 20 years. So, it’s—it’s a different environment when you know someone for that long and then you’re working so closely with them. You—they know you, they understand, and it’s okay. You can—you can show them the emotion. You—they can pick you up and you can lean on them. So that’s—that’s a nice thing about working in a firm that—that’s close-knit and, yeah, um, you know, everybody’s rowing in the same direction. That’s—that’s the beauty of it. And then you can—you can have good days and bad days, it’s okay.
[27:48] Bill So—so my last real question, this is—this is my last work-related question, I think this is really key. Tell—because this—I think this has played a huge role. Uh, a lot of young attorneys uh listen to this podcast, and you were able to get some your young attorneys some fantastic—I mean, if you’re a young attorney and you worked on this case, like, you’re already legendary, right? Talk about the importance in kind of your approach to working in some of your younger attorneys to take various roles in this case to get them experience. Because um that’s so important to this young attorney development, and particularly on a case like this, uh you—you know, there’s a lot of help that was needed. And kind of talk a little bit about how your young attorneys played such a key role on the trial team.
[28:38] Tony I was—it—they really, really did an amazing job, some of the—the—the associates on this case. So—so we—I had COVID, right? Day before jury selection, I’m coughing and sneezing. So, one of our associates, Britney, drops a COVID test at my hotel door and calls the hotel room and says, “Take the test.” I was, you know, being stubborn, I said, “Ah, come on.” “Take the test, take the test.” So, I take the test and I got COVID, right? And Dave, my partner, it’s my second chair, he’s sniffling too. He takes a test, he’s got COVID. And we’re supposed to pick a jury. So—so we called Britney and Diana and said, “All right, you guys are up. You’re picking the jury, let’s go.” And Britney did a bang-out job, went with Steve, and—and the three of them took the first week of jury selection. It’s fantastic.
And—and Britney um was fourth—was the fourth trial lawyer on the team. So, she did witnesses—remember we rotated throughout because there was so many witnesses that were on for so long—she did her own witnesses. Now what’s going on in the background, right? You got four lawyers in the courtroom alternating two and two every day, and then all right, you have all these witnesses, who are preparing them? We have another team of—of junior associates. Now think of this, you’re—you’re a law firm, you’re a second, third, fourth, fifth year, now you have to—you have to prep—you have to prep the experts, you have to prep CEO, you have to prep all these high—high-profile people and get them to the point where they need to be.
Now we had—we had an expert who’s an Apache helicopter pilot, famous pilot, one of the best ever.
[30:29] Bill Who listens to this podcast.
[30:32] Tony Listens to this podcast. I’m not gonna say his name, no, he’d get mad at me. He comes in and—and he’s—he’s—we—we’re going through the direct, we’re preparing all the documentation, and man, he is God-awful bad. God-awful bad, right? You—you looked at me and you said, “Oh holy, what—what are we gonna do here? This guy’s terrible,” right? So—so Alex and Samantha dig in and, you know, I would come back at night, five o’clock, we—we’d have a debrief and I—I look at them, I said, “How’s he doing?” And they—they’d be noncommittal, they never wanted to say anything bad. And I used to say, “All right, we started at Joe Biden in 2024, where is he now?” “H—he’s 2020 Joe.” Said, “All right, keep working, keep working.” Three or four days later, I said, “What are we doing? Where is he?” “He’s uh—he’s Ronald Reagan, 1988.” And I—”Oh my god, that’s still not too good.” And then the day before, we come back and—and they go, “All right, he’s Reagan in the 80s, early 80s.” Early 80s, he was dynamite. He—the jury loved him. He—they just worked so hard in getting the body language and getting the tone and the movements and getting him comfortable. They were great and—and they had fun, they had a lot of fun doing it. And that was the nice part, they see the excitement and the energy. And I mean, they were working—I mean, they were working 12, 14-hour days, yeah, some of them, just to get this—get it to where it needed to be. And research and get all the writing and the briefs and the motions—there was motions every day, and they were doing—they were knocking it out. They were excited and learned a lot and then getting to, you know, prep CEOs and high-profile individuals. A lot of fun.
[32:35] Bill Yeah, yeah. What an incredible case, Tony. Thanks for coming on. So, let’s—let’s finish with, I mean, really the number one question is: what in the world is wrong with the New York Jets? Now, this is coming from a Bears fan who, by the way, it’s been on TV all week, the Bears are the worst organization. And I—I mean, maybe they’re tied for the worst with the Jets. But what—what is it then? I want—I want the local story, Tony, in New York City. Is it ownership? Like, what’s—what’s—because I know what the Bears—the Bears, until the McCaskeys sell this team, they’re just going to wallow in just last place. They’re horrible, it’s just a terribly run organization. What is going on with the New York Jets and how can this be fixed?
[33:17] Tony I think it’s the curse of Broadway Joe. Joe Namath.
[33:20] Bill You’re gonna blame Joe?
[33:22] Tony I’m gonna—I’m gonna blame Joe Namath, it’s his fault. We’re cursed. We—we—we haven’t had a quarterback since Joe Namath. And you bring in Hall of Famers—we brought in Brett Favre, that didn’t work, right? Didn’t work. Brought in Aaron Rodgers, supposed to be a savior, that didn’t work. We have a number—number two draft pick, Zach, never works. Quarterbacks come to New York to do terribly.
[33:47] Bill Steve?
[26:17] Steve Chad Pennington?
[33:48] Bill I think—I think—I think the Mark Sanchez butt fumble,
[33:55] Tony Yeah, you gotta go right there. Right there.
[33:57] Bill I think that sealed your fate right there. I think that sealed your fate. Well, Tony, Tony, stick around so we can talk afterwards. Steve, thanks so much for coming on. What—what a great episode. We’ll probably split this up into to two parts because this was a long one, but I think this deserved the time uh it got because it was such a complex case. Tony, you did an exceptional uh job, you and your team. And uh I gotta tell you, I—I—I kind of miss eating Italian food most nights of the week in Manhattan in Little Italy. Uh, but I’m coming up in a month.
[34:30] Tony I’m sure Peter would love to have you and see you and the family.
[34:34] Bill We’re gonna—we’re going to—we’re going to come up and I’ll be going to the Garden—I’m gonna go to Madison Square Garden to watch my Tar Heels play uh right before Christmas. So, looking forward to that. And uh to our audience, thank you so much for participating in another edition of the Litigation Psychology Podcast, brought to you by Courtroom Sciences. We will see you next time.
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