Steven Bryan, CEO and Doug Marcello, Chief Legal Officer, of Bluewire join the podcast to talk about their new company that uses software to help trucking companies identify reputational vulnerabilities in the defense of their litigation. Steven provides some background on how the company came about and their areas of focus. Bluewire has identified reputation as a key contributor to nuclear verdicts and Steven and Doug share how leveraging technology, data, and a network of experts helps give the trucking industry the tools to defend themselves against Reptile and nuclear verdicts. They also discuss the Motor Carrier Reputation Survey on their website and how trucking companies and insurance carriers can participate and benefit.
Doug and Steve talk about the importance of information exchange and educational programs within their network of trucking companies and how addressing vulnerabilities ahead of time is useful for underwriters and excess carriers who are looking for ways to reduce their reputational risks in litigation. The group also highlights how this technology and data can help reduce nuclear settlements by resolving cases early through early identification of vulnerabilities.
Lastly, Steve, Doug, and Bill discuss the exposure created by internal company documentation about safety that paint trucking companies into a corner and how they would benefit immensely from a proactive review of all company materials to identify and address these vulnerabilities, which are potential attack opportunities for plaintiff attorneys.
Full Episode Transcript
[00:00] Bill Welcome to another edition of the Litigation Psychology Podcast brought to you by Courtroom Sciences i’m Dr Bill Kanasky and my guests today two very good friends mr Steven Bryan and mr Doug Marcello uh Steven how you doing today
[00:20] Steven doing great bill how are you
[00:23] Bill out in the great northwest uh excellent uh doug is a frequent flyer on the podcast doug how’s it how’s it going there in the great state of pennsylvania
[00:29] Doug doing great here in the center of the universe carlisle pennsylvania
[00:32] Bill yeah exactly well at least you’re not shoveling snow at this time of year that’s a positive right
[00:38] Doug not this week
[00:41] Bill not this week um yeah you guys have come together this is a very very exciting um uh podcast and we want to talk about a new um a new company a new philosophy and that company is called Bluewire um steven tell me where was the uh ignition for this for this idea because what what you’re doing we’re gonna talk about it for this whole podcast i mean i’m looking at your website right now and it says our mission is to champion your company reputation where did you get this great great idea from
[01:17] Steven yeah boy it was a it was a bit of a path i have to tell you bill it was a journey to get to get to what now looks to be simple you know and and seemingly powerful this is this message has really resonated out in the industry just in the short time since we you know it’s just over a month since we really announced the company so yeah so without without getting too far down in the trees i so i had a company i founded back in 2007 called vigillo i sold it to a another tech company called samba safety in a private equity back deal in 2017 and i stayed with samba for three and a half years up until last august august of 20. and it was right about there where i i was i think the spark of this the ignition for me came about a year previously and it was at the american trucking association’s annual conference it was in san diego that year and i remember it was in one of the general sessions and the ceo of ata chris spear got up and he said to the audience this year meaning the coming year 2020 this is the year we will declare war on the nuclear verdict and on the reptile theory and on the trial lawyers that advance these things and i started thinking about it so when i left samba i started in earnest wondering you know i’m a data guy i’m a software guy that’s all i’ve ever done um and i started thinking i wonder if there’s a way to collect analyze deploy data in in some way that gives the industry better defense tools so it was it was really that vague you know and so along the way you know uh doug and bob boyce and peter rowe the four of us are the co-founders now of Bluewire and the four of us came together late last year fall of 20 and really as we turned into the beginning of 21 decided we better write this down let’s write a business plan and that’s when you know there’s a great story bill i’m sure you’ve heard it about the um the whys digging into the whys and you keep asking yourself why why why it’s amazing what you can get to and that’s the journey that we really went through we wrote a business plan version one we floated it to a lot of people got a lot of great feedback and we just kept refining the message and came down to reputation that’s where these attacks happen you know as we say there’s there is no nuclear verdict that ever rose from the facts of a specific crash it is always simply a way for then the plaintiff’s firms to come in open the door and find these vulnerabilities and attack the reputation and that’s what the reptile theory is it inflames the emotions of the jury and gets them all angry and and that’s what leads to these huge huge outcomes so you know that’s really i guess a short story of how we got here it was all it was interesting it was actually a lot of a lot of fun working with the guys and and you know batting ideas back and forth and you know you if you if you’re looking at our website you can see our board of directors it’s just a impressive group of industry rock stars and so that’s there seems to be a movement um you know that’s underway here and we’re we’re really excited to be a part of that
[04:32] Bill yeah now doug um as you know all too well the defense bar as a whole they’ve been terrible communicators and they tend to hide everything and they want to protect everything rather than disseminate um information is is Bluewire the type of company that’s going to try to do the opposite and really particularly obviously for transportation and trucking really bring people together to share ideas and to relay information back and forth in an effort to stop the plaintiffs bar who as you know all too well again they share information
[05:09] Doug yes which is an interviewer’s nightmare bill when i just gave you a one word answer uh yeah that’s sort of our that’s one of our primary purposes we we have several uh main functions and i think steve has broken them down well to four one of those four is what you spoke about we’re looking at developing what’s called the Bluewire forum and the Bluewire forum will be a closed defense trucking industry information exchange when somebody does a focus group you know we’re not looking for case specific details but hey let’s share the general jury mentality of it you know some of the information like you shared on the previous podcasts we’ve done together what what are attitudes you know during the time of the unrest and the uh covid uh the election results we talked about the bill you know what you found and your results on there well let’s share that and exchange that among defense attorneys different uh strategies tactics that we have other information you know a college football coaching staff can call up somebody go and sit down and meet with them on a one-on-one basis yet we have no sharing among defense attorneys on this uh steve and i were just out at the uh ata mid-year that steve was on the litigation panel and it was interesting out there while there was an agreement that there should be sharing there was reluctance among certain individual panel members out there to to give it up for somebody else so i think that’s what we need to do and to share that and to flip the script on the plaintiff attorneys in that very regard
[06:36] Bill i completely agree and i think more industries need to do this maybe they will learn something from from from your efforts but this is uh long overdue and uh it is very exciting uh stephen i love this story i want you to tell it how did you come up with the name Bluewire
[06:57] Steven yeah it was a i’m not sure it just came to me but you know it’s uh in every action movie ever made bill the the hero uh diffuses the bomb with the seconds left on the timer of course by cutting the Bluewire so uh i i actually there’s actually quite a lot of uh i guess debate if you if you go look at you know diffusing bombs and action movies and things like that there’s quite a quite a division between whether people think you actually cut the Bluewire or the red wire so i can tell you in very short we were unable to get any reasonable implementation of red wire as a domain name so we went with Bluewire
[07:33] Bill sometimes you have to cut those wires like simultaneously right at the same time but you’re right it happens at the end of all of those uh movies tell me about the survey that you have up and what your goal is uh for the survey and kind of because this is it sounds like this was really this is really the first step of a multi-step uh process and what you’re trying to accomplish and how people in the industry can find it
[07:56] Steven yeah do you want me to take that doug?
[08:00] Steven absolutely Steve
[08:02] Steven all right so so bill what’s what we’re trying to do so we have a survey we’ve just posted it’s been up over maybe a little over a week it’s on our website it is free and it is completely anonymous we don’t we’re not collecting emails or trying to create leads this is really about us gathering perspectives so we’re asking people if you’re a motor carrier if you know a motor carrier if you work closely with one if you’re an insurer and you have motor carriers that you’re very familiar with run through the survey and answer the questions and what we’re trying to do is build a kind of a foundation of how people perceive reputation and how in the context of how we intend to collect data and measure it so that’s that’s a big part of what Bluewire is actually proposing to do is we think for the first time is collect data and create a reputation score so that’s brand new for people that’s kind of like a little bit of a you know little little head scruncher there you know it’s like what what are you guys doing again and i think if if we encourage people to look at the survey it’s a hundred questions might sound long but if you’re knowledgeable about the motor carrier 15 minutes you can get through it and they’ll give give you again whether you’re a carrier or one of their partners will give you i think a real good idea of how Bluewire’s thinking about uh monitoring data and compiling that down into an analysis of individual motor carrier reputation
[09:24] Doug and i think one of the big one of the big things bill is that it just gives you or gets people thinking just to go through the survey it makes them question in terms of you know things that may not have been thought of before or areas that they have because i’m sure you run into it after the fact where people don’t know what they don’t know in terms of what their vulnerabilities are what the problems are and all of a sudden they’re confronted with it after the fact instead of we’re trying to look at it proactively preemptively you know because after the accident occurs it’s backfill at that point
[09:59] Bill that that’s a really that’s a really good point doug on some of the preliminary data i’m sure you’ve taken a peek at any surprises any kind of head scratchers
[10:07] Doug i can’t really say there’s surprises in it bill but i think what it is is the nature in terms of the individual variety of what the responses are in terms of a lack of consistency or uniformity uh and there’s differences on that and between the survey and it having talked to a number of people since uh we’ve launched this the information has been interesting in terms of what people themselves see as their own vulnerabilities and particularly the degree to which they are secure that they have no vulnerabilities uh and i think the question is let’s go through the process and think about it and not from a defensive standpoint but let’s look in terms of an honest evaluation and what do we need to do what would we like to present on the witness stand and let’s develop it now ahead of time so that we can say during if we’re subjected to the reptile question you prepare people for you know they could say the best answer which is i’m glad you asked that question here’s what we do and here’s what we have
[11:12] Steven couple things bill if i could just weigh in on that question and again it’s early it’s early results from the survey we don’t uh we haven’t compiled enough data yet to be doing scientific white papers or anything like that anything from your world you know um but but early uh just early review there’s some really interesting things one of them that has caught my eye is one of the questions we ask is what role are you what role do you have in your business in your company and you know it’s safety director it’s risk management it’s recruiting it’s business owner it’s thing you know it’s a pretty good legal insurance like what’s your role inside the business and the pie chart that our survey creates is a rainbow of everybody’s weighing in on this this is that was one of the things i expected well it’ll be a lot of probably a lot of safety directors you know that’s probably what we’re going to see maybe a few legal folks it’s people coming from all over the business and their perspectives i think are going to really help us and you know when you start to filter what do safety people think versus risk people versus insurance people within the organization that’s when we’re really going to start to see some valuable stuff the other thing that we actually this was actually part of when we wrote the business plan i think we had already identified that there’s a bit of a disconnect between what the data tells us about uh motor carriers i won’t say reputation but their their defensive posture how well are you prepared to fend off these attacks and i think there’s a disconnect between what they tell us and what reality is so that that’s another thing i think we’re seeing is maybe a little bit of overconfidence in the in the survey results
[12:50] Bill that’s interesting yeah hopefully it provides a little bit of a um a look in the mirror a wake-up a wake-up call how does i mean what i run into a lot is um the insurance companies um not wanting to be as proactive because you know they they like to save uh money and oftentimes that creates a real mess for defense counsel who’s trying to vigorously defend the case and they can’t pay for that maybe that better expert or they can’t hire a guy like me because they’re they’re not getting approval how are they going to fit into this formula
[13:34] Doug i think in terms of the analysis bill it’s part of the overall evaluation of this and there’s several reasons on it one of the the things we talked about the evaluation we talked about the Bluewire forum one of the other four things is the expert network that we’re looking to develop and a lot of this development is primarily before the accident it’s totally before the accident identify the vulnerability uh identify an expert who can help them or sets of experts who they can choose from to address that vulnerability and then have that expert be proactive involved not only to close the vulnerability but if there’s an accident to be able to say you know this isn’t something i got a stack of papers and reviewed the file after the fact i’ve been intricately involved this is where they stand and this is why we’ve done this as opposed to what i refer to as the plaintiffs casablanca experts you know they get the usual suspects bring them in and that’s where they happen on that so i think that’s the big thing the other part of it though is as you know the the increasing insurance rates have given rise to insurance companies having to assume more of their responsibility and i think when you and i spoke before you talked about the difference in attitude between the company looking to obtain the experts and do what’s needed as opposed to the insurers so you know using the uh the sage wisdom of my grandmother the lord helps those that helps themselves you know this is a situation where the trucking companies can get the experts and get into this based on the analysis without having to wait for the insurance company to get involved to to protect that retention that they have the deductible that they have on their end of the insurance to protect themselves
[15:10] Bill yeah steve same question to you um with your early discussions here with insurance folks how those how how is this being this idea being received by the insurance industry as opposed to the the actual trucking companies
[15:26] Steven yeah it’s it’s being very we have gotten uh overwhelmed with interest we have held zoom meeting after zoom meeting after call since the mid-year meeting when we kind of announced ourselves with i think nearly every insurance group brokerage underwriter captive out there it’s been a steady stream and it’s been really interesting and really energizing and surprising that the the consistent tone is what can we do to help how do we in the insurance community help what Bluewire is trying to do i don’t know if we 100 know the answer to that you know it may be participation in the forum it may be more openness with claims data you want to talk about cloistered secretive you know we don’t want to share kind of a mentality forget about the defense attorneys how about the insurance companies we actually started our first thought of Bluewire was maybe what we’ll do is we will mine claims data we will get into the claims data and apply all this advanced cool new ai and machine learning and stuff that tech people like to talk about that’s what we thought we might do and we were dispelled of that rather quickly when we learned just how unbelievably difficult it is to get at the claims data so uh it’s it’s behind it’s behind iron walls at some of these insurance groups but in contrast to that when we came out with this reputation idea it you know now we’re not asking them for data necessarily we’re asking them to help how do you help and and that’s going to be an interesting journey for us i think it’s just to see how can we how can we click the insurance companies into this puzzle and make an important part of it
[17:11] Doug and one of the big responses i think steve has been uh or the comments people have had to us has been from the underwriting side that you know you you’re addressing the vulnerabilities ahead of time uh not that they’re going to reduce the rates or anything but from the perspective of the underwriters at least it gives an analysis of what is really there instead of a just a quick snapshot they do at the time of renewal or the time of initial application
[17:35] Steven yeah there’s a that’s one of the there’s a few things bill that i tell people that you’re never going to hear us say at least you’re certainly never going to hear me say them one of them is buy Bluewire and you’ll lower your insurance costs you know i’m never going to say that uh we’re never going to say we can help you predict your next crash you know there’s too much of that kind of pie in the sky stuff that goes on and especially in the software world we get enamored of all our cool charts and graphs and think we can solve the world’s problems so there there may be a long long looping connection back to helping with renewals and insurance and maybe over time efforts like Bluewires can help but there’s never you’re never going to hear us say that that’s the direct connection um again i come back to somehow we’ve got to get the insurance people and the motor carriers thinking more like partners in all of this then and they get adversarial sometimes they see themselves as their own enemies so as you guys well know so yeah it’s all part of maybe this forum idea where we can get people into an environment where you feel a little safer a little more guarded and you can share a little more effectively i think that’s gonna help
[18:48] Bill yeah doug how so what would be the role um i work with a lot of excess insurance providers and the problem you have there is by the time they get put on notice something’s wrong a lot has happened already um have you talked to any excess folks and how could they benefit from Bluewire perhaps
[19:08] Doug we’ve discussed this with the number of carriers who talk in terms of the excess because that’s among the biggest financial uh exposures they have or big exponential challenges they have and they look at the potential of particularly from the excess carrier is if we can address the vulnerabilities ahead of time keep this from rising to those levels so much the better for the excess carriers and i think that’s where the main benefit comes in there it also has been interesting bill we’ve had carriers tell us about how they market themselves to the excess carriers kind of kind of the reverse of what you think of but to tell their story and what they do and see Bluewire as an element of it like seems that we’re not saying it’s ever gonna reduce your rates or anything but but it’s part of your story and at the end of the day what we’re looking at is to give you a reduction of vulnerabilities more than anything else
[20:02] Bill yeah um i love the forum idea i think that’s been used very effectively in other in other areas to share information whether it be you know health and fitness or various products and um i mean for example if you have this forum up i mean you could literally just have an anti-reptile section right and hopefully people and i would be uh one of them can put down their experiences their their their tactics maybe even some examples from say you know a recent deposition obviously not going to identify any of the parties but i think it’s that would be um really really important to have the reptile um focus in the forum so people have this area they can go and look up whether again whether it’s discovery issues trial issues and hopefully get some um some good feedback from people that are in the trenches is that part of the forum plan
[21:04] Steven yeah absolutely i love that idea so i you know we go to a lot of conferences all of us do and in in recent years or so there’s been you know the reptile theory has been a probably the name on a session of at almost every conference right and you go and you sit there and some really sharp defense attorney or a couple of them get up there and they’ll they’ll have a presentation sometimes they have little video clips and they’ll some of them are you know they’re they’re entertaining let’s just put it that way when you see how how bad some of the witnesses are you know and how you know and they’re in a role-playing mode so this is not live video but they’ll do role-playing with these these uh you know these witnesses who are being deposed in a mock setting and and it’s just hysterical how bad some of them are you know at responding so if we can capture some of that the problem is you’re out at a conference and you see that and then you leave and then you know it’s gone it’s just not there at your fingertips as a reference for you again in a year from now or 18 months from now you have a situation like that so that’s a very much a part of what we want to do with the forum is gather that kind of of information and organize it and present it maybe even develop trainings maybe give certifications i don’t know you know there’s no way to know where this will go
[22:16] Bill yeah that was that was my next question i mean doug if you think about um you know the types of podcasts that we have done a number of webinars we have done together um it sounds like this would be an opportunity to put educational sessions on um for lack of a better term like these ted you’ve seen the ted talks right um to to get people in the industry to do those 15 to 20 minute clips and then you can go on to your website i would imagine log in and can to consistently update those you would have a place like you don’t have to wait for dri you don’t have to wait for clm you can go to Bluewire have you have you thought about that
[22:59] Doug absolutely and on several levels bill uh first off in terms of the educational piece you know you other people to be able to provide that education ahead of time because you know and you had noted it when you and i spoke the last time is how many times do you get called before trial after the deposition has been taken and say hey we want you to help prepare this person for trial well the cement dried you know uh so so let’s get out you know and and part of it also Bill is for people to know that there is a potential issue there rather than find out after they’ve gone through the deposition so yeah the educational piece on there uh the uh addition the uh library of potential depositions that have been taken by plaintiffs that we can exchange because you know the the script’s not to change that much and with all those seminars out there on reptile you and i are at a disadvantage bill because we actually read the book unlike most of the people who are given the seminars you know so to be able to share this information to educate folks and then part also is our uh Bluewire expert uh recommendation engine that would recommend in those circumstances whomever you’re gonna have your designee to be the face of the company and you talk often about how important that is so that person gets training ahead of time before the specific case comes up or anything like that so they’re sensitized to it so that when they deal with a specific case you’re just dealing with the specifics not educating them from ground zero at that point
[24:32] Steven yeah bill i love that ted talk format i think something like that could be really powerful i just and and it can be it can be thought provoking even if it isn’t right on target we don’t have to get up every single time and talk about the reptile theory right you can you can be thought provoking i i’m thinking of an example doug yesterday we were on a call with an insurance group and we got talking about this and i’m not i’m not giving away information because it’s an article that he sent me but it’s about how airbnb responds when there’s an incident at one of their their properties somebody’s injured or attacked or has a heart attack or something bad happens at an airbnb airbnb has a squad they have a response squad that goes out and they have a system they go out because they know a lawsuit’s coming so again not not a it’s not trucking it’s not reptile it’s not any of that but you know looking at how other people respond to things to prepare in advance for the coming attack i think all of that kind of stuff and then the more that we can do in a kind of a ted talk kind of a quick format like that i think that’s an awesome idea
[25:35] Doug yeah i think part of it bill is is and you get the cross section from the work you do of different industries and i think that we need in a lot of the seminars we go to and the trucking seminars it’s great because we get the information in terms of what’s the best practices in trucking but let’s look outside our industry in what have other industries developed in terms of defense tactics in their area we can apply to trucking
[25:59] Bill i cannot tell you how many trucking cases that i work on where i’m bringing tactics from product liability medical malpractice construction because i know they work we just have to tweak them a little bit and again i think uh sharing knowledge of that information uh is important also i think another really key part of this forum um which people just call me randomly like what are you seeing we want the reptile 2021 update and i have all that stuff well if that was in a central location and you could you could upgrade it let me let me share a very dirty nasty uh trick with you that i’ve been running into lately and our audience members can benefit from this you have a certain section of reptile attorneys that now are printing out the reptile questions on sheets of paper very large font and it says you know for a driver or safety director isn’t it an important safety rule that a trucking company always does blank right and they fill in their reptile stuff there and there’s two check boxes one’s yes and one and they hand it to the witness and say put your initials on on the answer that you select now guess how i came across this i’m working on a case and the attorney shows this to me and there were already initials in the boxes meaning they had they had to get to their third witness to figure it out but that’s an example um of what’s happening both via zoom and and live where if you’re not ready for that and you’ve never seen that you may be very slow to respond any other dirty tricks you’re seeing out there doug because i see him every week
[27:41] Doug it’s along that line though it’s the same thing is you know the witness in that instance isn’t just answering questions they’re creating an exhibit you know that is that that you can just visualize it blown up on a powerpoint slide in front of the jury the whole way down through it so that’s the type of thing that we need to exchange and give the heads up sensitized folks for to look for ahead of time and how to deal with that as well
[28:04] Bill yeah i give fair warning so when you’re doing your witness prep you know this is one of the potential um things that that could happen so we’re all trying to suppress stop nuclear verdicts um nuclear settlements uh as well that’s a that’s a i think i coined that phrase nuclear settlement because i think the i honestly think uh and doug i love your opinion on this i think that’s just as big of a problem if not more of a problem because the nuclear settlements are very expensive and a lot of a staggering amount of money is being wasted because the plaintiff has badly outmaneuvered the defense but you don’t necessarily see that on the front page of the paper or on twitter or or whatever can you speak to to that ish and how Bluewire can maybe help resolve cases earlier which would be again a substantial cost savings
[28:58] Doug absolutely several ways the first thing is by identifying the vulnerabilities it just limits the leverage on those because you know what they’re looking for is one or two leverage points that they can twist in order to do that secondly get out the education that we talked about jurisdictionally you know how can we keep for uh cases from being in what is designated by ATR as judicial hellholes well we can do that by applying and uh kurt ruiz from uh crete carrier brought this to my attention various supreme court cases to limit jurisdiction over trucking cases to uh you know where their uh the corporate headquarters is or where they’re incorporated keep them out of there case things situations i’ve used we’ve sued the plaintiff first we have an argument on uh liability on the case to anchor it in the rural jurisdiction as opposed to letting them drag us into the judicial hellhole to take on those certain things and then to use the information that we have to limit the attempts by the plaintiff to try to exploit these vulnerabilities and like you said you know part of those chapters that you and i’ve read in the reptile theory is just how to leverage not just the facts of the case but the vulnerabilities of an insurance adjuster their career and their ability to feed their family and it goes into depth on the one chapter how to do that uh and i think that’s what we have to address on that is identify these and develop the strategies and take that away by using and identifying the vulnerabilities that allow them to do that
[30:29] Bill yeah that’s i think after that’s chapter 16 page 173 doug
[30:35] Steven i don’t have the courtroom experience that you guys do i’ve served as a as an expert a few times never went to court because i crushed it yeah you know that’s what i choose to believe but um you know i think so again i don’t have i i can say things and you guys can just roll your eyes and go steve that’s not how a courtroom works but i think there’s a way for us to perhaps present our own check boxes you know that we come back and and you know it’s kind of like we’ll check one of these boxes like i’m so glad that you asked that question now here you check my box you know and and let’s talk about things like you know one of we’ve been talking to a couple of different uh places we can get some really good data on things like congestion and the state of roads i mean look it’s a topic nationally right now our infrastructure is in terrible shape and you know maybe things like that are something we position back and say well yeah that was a that was a bad accident and it happened because the bridge fell down you know let’s talk about the state of infrastructure in your county taxpayer of that county you know i i don’t know i’m just i think there’s a way to doug likes to say you know the defense doesn’t have to be defensive and i think there when we get into the data and start looking at this i’m hoping that there’s ways with following the courtroom rules uh which i have no knowledge of i have a law degree on my wall but it’s very old and i never took the bar exam
[31:59] Bill well yeah i i like i do like um um i like the idea of being uh more aggressive and going on offense as opposed to always going on defense you know first and one of the areas which i would love to get on this forum is the whole concept of turning the tables and doing what i call the reverse reptile um doug i’m sure you’ve you’ve done this before i see those tactics now finally growing in the defense bar the problem is there’s so many defense attorneys that don’t understand reptile like they come to me to learn how to do reptile i’ve had plaintiff attorneys call me saying i’ve read all your articles you’re you know you’re you’re great and i’m like what why are you calling me and they’re like because you just saved me five thousand dollars in the reptile training i just read your articles now i know how to do reptiles like oh my gosh but um doug do you see that continuing uh to grow um um as a not in all cases obviously but i think if you can learn reptile as a defense attorney turn the tables either on an adverse co-defendant or or a plaintiff that um that didn’t do things very well that can be highly effective but you got to have training to be able to pull that off or it can explode in your face
[33:19] Doug you got to know the choreography of it it is a choreography to go through that whole step-by-step in order to do that what point you want to make in the footwork in doing it not to overstep each point of it uh i don’t see it being done much at all bill and you’re one of the developers of this uh bob tyson a good friend of ours is one of the advocates of it and and it’s something that we need to do and to develop to go through this as well as other tactics you know the the plaintiffs so that as uh steven said earlier they’ve got you know publications of all these you know different uh tactics theories the focus groups they do that’s what we’re looking to do from the Bluewire because what we’re looking to do is kind of on a double level the strategic level of let’s identify the vulnerabilities and address them before the accident and the tactical level of here’s the Bluewire forum what can we do to counter the tactics that the plaintiffs have on that
[34:16] Bill absolutely well i want to i want to wrap this thing up with a topic speaking of vulnerabilities and there’s many vulnerabilities for trucking companies um but the one that is rearing its ugly head on a weekly basis it’s absolutely making me nuts i got a story for it so i’m working on this case and they send me ahead of you know they’re prepping for the witness prep for deposition so they’re doing step one is the right thing they send me a copy of their operations and safety manual you know where i’m going with this Doug the language talk about setting yourself up for disaster i mean the safety is our number one top priority above and beyond everything i mean crazy crazy stuff in black and white so then i’m in the middle of this witness prep and i said who in the hell wrote that like somebody should be shot and like i want to know who wrote this you know what they said they said we hired a safety consultant company they they author they author all of our i was shocked i’m like you let an outsider someone not even in the industry come in who knows nothing about litigation and authored this document and now it’s being stuck up your ass repeatedly during the deposition there’s got to be a way to address that and maybe Bluewire is a way where you can go to this centralized location maybe look at the good and the bad examples to because i really think some of this internal documentation there’s no way out of that is there
[35:54] Doug yeah and and what it is is this a couple things and uh the question i ask uh and i’ve asked several safety vice presidents and officials and companies do you need manuals yeah i mean who reads them you know number number one you know are you better off with it with an app with a number of things on them and just go from there the second thing bill is is and you you’re the best person i have to ask this one of the thoughts i have is what if we explain safety less has an absolute which is often made too much but it’s aspirational that that we aspire to safety it’s a notion of you know i mean along the lines of and not to equate the two but it’s like religion you know but religion’s aspirational because someone has sinned does not mean that they have stray from religion and the same thing is just because that they haven’t been uh following the the edict of the safety policy doesn’t mean that they they’re unsafe and while a lot of people talk about the reptile theory one of the ones particularly with the manuals that they miss the point on is the whole uh rules of the road theory that kind of predated it and then got got lost in there but if you put it in your manual the argument is you have created your own regulation law on there and you’ve created a rule of the road just like stopping at a stop sign and based on that if your driver hasn’t done it that’s negligence per se is the argument on that so i think we need to look at a way and i think it’s part of the things we’ll have to develop or want to develop in the Bluewire forum is how can we express the desires and intents of safety with without making it such an absolutism that anything short of perfection is automatically uh you know abhorrent it it’s of course you know we all want to be safe to the most possible but the reality is the best we can do is to aspire for that high level
[37:58] Bill yeah i agree steven thoughts on that
[38:00] Steven no i think that’s i remember uh early on when we were we were working through identifying what we call these attack vectors these are the gaps through which the plaintiffs attack the vulnerabilities and uh you know it could be uh we don’t have cameras it could be we don’t have an electronic eq file system and we don’t do psp reports on drivers these are the kinds of things that the absence of these best practices uh are are these attack vectors examples of them and uh i remember i was talking to a friend of mine he’s the vp of safety of a large carrier and he said steve you know what our biggest attack vector is is our own safety policy manual exactly what you guys are saying he goes he goes we can’t we i’ve begged our company to get rid of it and they won’t and it’s impossible for us to actually follow it’s too complicated it’s too long it contradicts itself it’s so yeah i think it’s a self-inflicted wound you know that we need to address for sure
[39:00] Doug well yeah in a deposition bill how many how many times have you seen a driver say oh i’ve read the whole thing
[39:06] Doug yeah i’ve read the whole thing um yeah that’s i think that’s a main vulnerability and what what i’ve been seeing a little bit of which i think is an excellent idea so so after i reamed everybody in the room over this policy they on day two of the witness prep one of the witnesses like went to one of the c-level executives and they’re like can you help us rewrite these policies or maybe we should hire an attorney just to come check out all of our stuff before there’s litigation and so um my good friend carlos rincon who’s out in el paso texas he has several companies trucking companies he’s working with but they have simply hired him to come in and say look at our stuff if you were a plaintiff attorney how would you attack us i think that’s a very brilliant and proactive idea and hopefully we could also work some of that in on the forum to provide some resources so if people did want to do a little housekeeping check you know they hire like the internet security guys right and they pay them they pay him a hundred grand they say i want you to hack into my system i just do whatever you can to hack in and then they come back and they go here’s how we did it what do you think about an idea like that to protect companies to kind of simulate what you know what litigation would be simulate the type of attack on their documents and solve these problems ahead of time isn’t i mean isn’t that a a good idea
[40:00] Doug what do they call those guys in IT steve are they white hats
[40:37] Steven yeah so we you you’ve identified exactly one of our little uh kind of our marketing uh positions here so we have this thing doug described as recommendation engine the recommendation engine is a well-known thing netflix uses them amazon uses them you know what should i buy next or watch next that type of thing so we’re gonna we we are deploying that technology we call it the white hat recommendation edge and if i was in my home office right now there’d be a white stetson hanging on the wall behind me so we we see ourselves very much a parallel to exactly what you describe you hire white hat hackers to attack your systems and your data and try and steal credit cards and that kind of stuff we see ourselves in a way as a white hat trial lawyer you know that Bluewire will be attacking you just as aggressively and thoroughly as any plaintiff would but of course we’re working for you so very very parallel to what you just said
[41:30] Doug but bill we do the same thing we’ve had a fortunate number of companies have come to us and my partner’s the main one that does it she goes through that and looks at all those but that’s exactly the type of vulnerabilities we’re looking to identify in a company before the fact so so that they can get that corrected before the accident happens
[41:47] Bill yeah between that i mean training methodologies for drivers and other i mean that’s really amazing well guys um thank you so much for being on the podcast i see this as being a a very special and pioneering effort by your group um i’m so happy to be an advisor for you guys and i can’t wait i really really can’t wait to get started particularly with the forum uh doug thank you very much as usual uh steven i’m gonna give you the last word um where where can folks in the industry um find your website and your contact information if they’re interested again
[42:21] Steven just just uh Bluewire.ai and right there on the homepage the middle of the page is a button to take that survey that is where i would recommend people uh engage with us and start to get a feel for what we’re doing and of course all of us are available i think we’re all listed on the website our our emails are pretty straightforward and friendly i’m steve he’s doug at Bluewire.ai
[42:47] Bill there you go what a great episode thank you guys i really appreciate to our audience you know thank you again for participating in the Litigation Psychology Podcast brought to you by Courtroom Sciences we will see you next time
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