“I’m 100% confident that the fact that we won was in no small part due to Kyle Sherman and Charles Bennett of Trial Structure. Before they came, I don’t know where I would have ended up as far as opening went. It certainly wouldn’t have been where we did. It was just like being in a dark room looking for a light switch. That’s how it was. I needed someone to say ‘This is what you need to do.’ Once I’m shown it, I’m fine. But being shown that light switch by Kyle and Chuck…Was it worth it? Absolutely!”
-Justin Walker, Trial Lawyer, San Diego, CA.
Total Past Lost Income: $354,234
Total Future Lost Income: $800,000
Breach of Employment Contract Damages: $1050
Labor Code section 203 Penalties (Failure to pay wages upon termination): $17,118
Total Past Non-Economics: $1,500,000
Total Future Non-Economics: $1,000,000
Punitive Damages: $400,000
Total Verdict: $4,072,402
In a case that took them all across the country, from Hackensack, NJ, Chattanooga, TN, Dallas, TX, and Las Vegas, NV over two years, and that needed six motions to compel, two motions to quash, and a motion for summary judgment, among the many other battles fought, Justin Walker and Jared Veliz finally got a chance at a trial for their client, Mrs. Qiu, and in October of 2019 delivered with a more than $4M verdict in San Diego County.
In April 2017, Ms. Qiu was hired as a controller by Defendant Three Rivers Provider Network, Inc., a company that facilitates out-of-network medical claims. Ms. Qiu was hired to make sure the company “did things by the book” and to avoid further issues with the IRS. After just a few months on the job, the owner, who had been previously convicted of tax fraud, promoted Ms. Qiu to Treasurer and gave her a significant raise.
But then a fellow employee tells Ms. Qiu the owner had sexually harassed him. After reporting the harassment to human resources, Ms. Qiu is told to “keep her mouth shut.” A few days later, the Owner tells Ms. Qiu to transfer money from a subsidiary that had not filed taxes in several years. Ms. Qiu refuses and writes an email to the company executives about the ordered transfer requesting input by the legal department. One week later, after about 5 months on the job, Ms. Qiu is fired and told “if you want to get paid for the last month, you need to sign a confidentiality agreement that states ‘I am aware of no accounting irregularities, nor have I reported any.’”
Ms. Qiu refuses and eventually files a lawsuit before the company releases her final payment.
The best offer by the defense was $25,000 up until 30 days before trial when they delivered a 998 for $500,000. In California, the 998 offer sets the bar for cost shifting by the court. If Justin and Jared would have won $500,000 or less at trial, Ms. Qiu would have been on the hook for all of the defendant’s costs of litigation.
A few months before trial, Justin and Jared hired Kyle Sherman and Charles Bennett of Trial Structure for 4 days of intense consulting and trial training.
Recently, Trial Structure’s Katonya Johnson (KJ) sat down with Justin (JW) to discuss the case and the Trial Structure consulting.
KJ: Congratulations on an amazing verdict for your client!
Justin Walker
JW: Thank you. It’s been an incredible couple of years working on this case, and getting a result like this, which is what we had always hoped for, is really amazing. For more than two years this company offered us only $25,000 and essentially laughed at us throughout the litigation process. But my co-counsel Jared and I kept believing in Ms. Qiu and her case, and the jury saw through all the defense smoke and mirrors and got to the truth.
KJ: That’s great. Tell us about your trial preparation and how you spent your time leading up to trial.
JW: I think our biggest issue with this case was that, like most employment cases, the record is just so massive. So, a few months before trial, we made the decision to hire Kyle and Chuck after we met Kyle at a seminar in California. We got a chance to sit and talk to Kyle for a long time, and he really made us see that there was this whole world of trial preparation that we were missing and that could help us. Kyle and Chuck flew in and spent four long days with us stucturing the case and really helping us develop a way to get such a detailed story, with so many characters, into a digestible version that a jury could understand without their eyes glossing over. Kyle and Chuck were awesome. And this verdict is in no small part due to their help on this case. We are forever grateful and would highly recommend their services to anyone else.
KJ: Our number 1 question by lawyers looking into Trial Structure consulting is “What’s the Trial Structure process? How does it work?” Can you tell us a little bit about that?
JW: Sure. Before Kyle and Chuck got here to structure our case, Chuck wrote us this very cryptic email where he asked us to make the most exhausting list of all the bad things in our case. What are all of the issues we have in our case? What are all of the possible things the defense will stand up and say why we should lose? And to think about “the value of the case, not the price, but the value.” So, we did that, and we came up with 50 things and we tried to figure out what he meant by the difference between price and value.
When Kyle and Chuck first got here, I was eager to tell Chuck the story of the case because I had only told Kyle when we met him at the seminar. But Chuck said, “I don’t want to hear that. I don’t need to know that.” I’m sure he could tell I was looking at him crazy, thinking, “You don’t want to hear about the case?”
Instead, Chuck started telling us about the Trial Structure of the opening statement and the boxes and their purpose. We then started working with particular boxes and digging into the issues in our case. Once we started to identify the issues, we started to break down and categorize those issues.
After 4-5 hours on the first day, I started to realize that I had been telling Kyle and Chuck about the case the whole time! Somehow, they had been pulling out the important parts of the case without even knowing the story. It was fascinating. The Trial Structure guided us to identify the important parts of the case without Kyle and Chuck even knowing what the case was about.
KJ: That’s amazing. I’ve actually heard other Trial Structure clients talk about that experience during the first day of consulting. So then what happened?
JW: Once we finished with the defense arguments, we then started to lay out the important events and the chronology of events. That really gave us an idea of what we were working with. And then from there, it was identifying “what is this case really about? What are we talking about here?” We’re talking about, corporate bullies ruining careers. We’re talking about what good companies should do, what this company did instead, and why they need to pay for all of the harm they caused. That was something that really stood out to me on the first day or two. It was really trying to change the way we look at the case from being “woe is me” as a plaintiff to “Look at what they did!” And that was the first fundamental change in the way we thought about the case. In this whole process, it really was seen as a funnel to get rid of things that were noise, things that didn’t matter that we may have thought mattered. We began to really hone in on what does matter, because in a case like this there’s a lot to talk about. A jury can really get lost and begin to gloss over with boredom.
KJ: It sounds like Trial Structure simplified your case for you and focused your message to the jury?
JW: That’s right. Absolutely! We needed a way to tell the story in a super easy way and convey a ton of information without losing the jury. For at least a day and a half, maybe more, we’re talking about these vignettes, these different scenes that we created based upon the evidence, and we packed those scenes with tons of information in just a couple of clips. A few lines can really convey 100 times more information when you sit down and really put your mind to it. Kyle and Chuck showed us how to do that within the Trial Structure. And that was humongous. Once we did all that, once we identified what are the weaknesses in our case, what really happened and what is this all about? Then we put it all together, and we’ve got this opening that’s awesome!
I mean it is really fabulous and that is a roadmap for the case. That is about what evidence do we need to present at trial? Well, is it in our opening? if it’s in our opening then we need it, and if it’s not, it’s noise and get rid of it. So that’s what we did. The Trial Structure opening planned all our witnesses and each individual witness’s lines of questioning. Of course, there certainly is going to be a little more going into detail, obviously, because that’s just the nature of it. But we never really needed to say more than Kyle and Chuck asked us. So that really kept us in check, and it kept us from trying to add information for the sake of making sure the jury gets it.
KJ: It sounds like you relied on the opening statement for the other parts of the trial too?
Yes. It was like creating a map. We created a roadmap for the case through the Trial Structure. And it was equally applicable to closing. When we got to closing, it was just a mirror image. We went through what happened here during trial. We basically retold the opening again, but this time we were telling the jury what witness said it, where did they hear it, and what do they answer on the verdict form: “Because of this, this, and this, you answer yes.” That just flowed and it was awesome. It really was.
KJ: That’s great. I heard that Kyle spent time with you all working on the trial presentation? Tell us about that.
Kyle is an incredible presenter, and he really enjoys teaching it. It just seems so natural when he does it. But then Kyle broke down what he was doing into little pieces. I had no idea there was so much to learn about how to present in front of an audience. Kyle was really teaching us how to tell a story with multiple characters, how to change from one to the other so the Jury can keep the story straight, and how to connect with the jurors. He worked on us with our tone of voice and recalling the scene in our mind while we’re telling our client’s story, which allows us to start conveying a much more vivid picture to the audience. Kyle would get up and take one of these vignettes and tell a compelling story every time, with multiple characters and scenes. Each time conveying massive chunks of information and using his voice tone or his facial expressions or his hand movements conveying the importance of a particular piece of evidence or the nature of the character that’s speaking, or the heaviness of it.
He was showing us how we can say so much without saying so much. It is about the delivery of it all and we spent a great deal of time after Kyle and Chuck left practicing that. I still don’t know that we got to where Kyle had it, he takes what we put on paper and then puts it into practice. There’s so much more life added to it and that life just tells so much more of the story. You can put someone out there that’s monotone reading our opening statement off the paper, and it’s not going to do it without the presentation that Kyle taught us.
KJ: Last question, did you ever figure out what Chuck meant in that email about the difference between price and value?
Jared Veliz and Justin Walker after closing arguments
JW: Oh yeah, I did actually. A few weeks after Kyle and Chuck left, I was sitting at dinner with my wife and Jared. We had just finished dinner, and the waiter left the dessert menu on the table. Jared reached for it, and said, “What about this chocolate-strawberry cheesecake? You guys want to split it?” I picked up the menu and said, “A $12 cheesecake? That’s crazy!” Without thinking, Jared goes, “It’s not about the price it’s about the value!” All three of us had this light bulb go off at the same time, like we got struck in the head by lightning. We were like, “Oh my goodness! That’s what Chuck meant!!!!”