Episode 257 – The Power of the H2H Method: How a $250k Offer Turned into a 6 Million Dollar Verdict

💰 A $6 MILLION DOLLAR VERDICT FROM A $250K OFFER. 💰

In today's episode of the FHTH podcast, I interviewed Bruce, a seasoned pro with 28 YEARS of experience, and his team, to dissect how they scored a $6 MILLION ver-🍆-t using strategies straight from the H2H Method.

When I asked Bruce for ONE piece of advice he'd give to trial attorneys, he said…

Well, tune in to find out. 😉

Xo,
Sari

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"In addition to not using notes, what you talk about in the book and the podcast is the use of non-verbals. You hold your hands to be authoritative but not pointing at them. I can tell you there were probably six or seven times that opposing counsel was pointing at the jury, and not in a way that I felt was helpful, let's just say that. So, using the nonverbals, not using notes, keeping your witnesses tight, using the themes, and getting the principles from the jurors— all of those things I clearly took from the H2H Method."

bruce inosencio

EPISODE 257 TRANSCRIPTION

Sari de la Motte:
Welcome to today's podcast, everybody. I'm very, very excited to welcome Bruce Inosencio because that's such a cool fucking last name, and his team to talk about their recent win of $6 million in a case, that before trial had an offer of 250K. So welcome to you Bruce, and Kristina, and Ryan. Thank you so much for being here.

Bruce Inosencio:
Thank you for the invite.

Kristina:
Thanks for having us.

Ryan:
Thanks for having us as well.

Sari de la Motte:
I'm so excited. So excited to talk about you. So before we get into this, Bruce, tell me about you and your team. Where are you guys located? What kind of law do you specialize in? What kind of cases are you normally doing?

Bruce Inosencio:
Yeah, so our primary office is in Jackson, Michigan, and we have another office that Kristina pretty much handles up in Northern Michigan in Cheboygan. And then we have offices also in Florida and in Texas. I'm admitted in both Florida and Texas, and have been in Florida for about, I think it's 18, 19 years now, and in Texas for just a couple years. And I've been admitted to practice since 96. Met Kristina, she was a job applicant, kind of just worked out here in 2000. We've been working together for 24 years. She became a partner.

Sari de la Motte:
So she started when she was like eight years old apparently. That's not possible.

Bruce Inosencio:
Yeah, she's pretty young and young looking, but it's been a great partnership and we try different cases, but we try a lot of cases teaming up. That's kind of our approach. And then Ryan's been with us for a number of years. He started with us while he was in law school, actually transitioning through Covid and everything. So he's been with us for a while as well. And we try different types of cases, but we try to implement your methods here since I learned about them through Trial Lawyer Nation through Michael Cowen.

Sari de la Motte:
Oh, Michael Cowen. Yeah. I love that guy. So Ryan, you've always been plaintiff side then, yes?

Ryan:
Yes. This is the only firm that I've worked for and I've been here I think since 2018.

Sari de la Motte:
Well, that's wonderful that you started on the side of the right. Love that. Kristina, your background before you met Bruce.

Kristina:
So I grew up in Alaska. I'm originally from Michigan, but grew up in Alaska, moved back for college and I started with Bruce right out of law school as an associate. We became partners, I think, in about 2009, maybe a little. Right. Yeah. And we've been partners since. I've never worked for anyone else, with anyone else. Bruce and I have a great partnership. It is very, it's just very fulfilling to be in a firm like this where we've all stuck around for the long term and we have great staff.

Sari de la Motte:
Oh, yeah.

Kristina:
Our associates are amazing. Ryan's been fantastic and it's just a great place to work. So I practice a little bit differently than Bruce. I help and assist with his injury cases, but aside from that, I also do a lot of business real estate and some general litigation as well.

Sari de la Motte:
Got it. Okay. Well let's dive into this case. So give us a little bit of an overview. What kind of case was it? What were some of the things that you had to overcome?

Bruce Inosencio:
Yeah, sure. So Kristina first met with our clients in 2018, and then I met with them shortly thereafter. And our clients were four adult children of Mrs. Taggart, and she was 87 years old at the time. And she had had a stroke and she was a stroke rehabilitation resident at a nursing home in Lenawee County, which is just South of our county near Jackson County. And Lenawee County is a pretty conservative venue. We knew that going into the case. Her doctors expected her to come home after a few months of rehabilitation. This is not a situation where she was put into a nursing home and expected to live out her days there. And she was expected to come home and her daughters all expected her to come home. And what ended up happening was she became severely dehydrated, she was at risk for dehydration, and she was on some medications that suggested that it was easier for her to become dehydrated.

But here's the key. She had a tracheostomy. And so she was 100% dependent upon the facility for maintaining her nutrition and hydration, and she couldn't communicate with them if there was a problem. So they had to take very good care of her and monitor her needs. And they didn't really do that. They were indicating that they were, but they didn't really. And so during her first 10 days at the facility, she went without a bowel movement and after three days, all the experts in this case said that you should probably have some type of an intervention, some type of a change in status would be noted. After 10 days passed, she had a situation, where she went for a couple days where it was normal and then she went for 17 days again without a bowel movement.

And so again, she had another instance where clearly something should have happened and nothing happened for her. And so the jury eventually realized, hey, this is negligence. You can't say that you're doing something and monitoring someone when you really aren't. She ended up having severe dehydration, severe fecal impaction, and then she also developed as part of her dehydration a brain injury known as toxic metabolic encephalopathy, which is a situation where your brain is just drying up and you're not able to function as well. And she lost her ability to communicate when she came in. Even though she couldn't speak, she could point to things or she could make hand motions or gestures.

And so it was a situation where she had functions and she was expected to go home with those functions and improve. They were giving her all kinds of therapy, speech, occupational, physical. And at one point, one of the physical therapists actually administered therapy to her, determined that she was non-responsive and went ahead with a therapy session anyway. And so there were a lot of instances where we just felt this was a fairly clear cut case of abuse and neglect. But the defense fought us hard on it for a number of years and we ended up having to go to trial on this because the offer was just really, really low.

Sari de la Motte:
Well, yeah. And so what happened? Did she actually die there or?

Bruce Inosencio:
So she ended up being transported to a hospital directly across the street, 50 yards away. And at that hospital, that's where they diagnosed her with laboratory evidence of severe dehydration. Her markers were just off the charts low indicating that she was severely dehydrated and the severe fecal impaction, she had a 10 centimeter wide, for lack of a better term, basically her abdomen was full. Right. And so they determined that she was so badly dehydrated and her kidney function was so poor that she likely would not recover from it. And she ended up in hospice and she died 17 days later.

Sari de la Motte:
My goodness. So let's talk about what you had to overcome. I'm going to go over to Kristina now. So obviously right off the bat, in all of these nursing home cases, we have to overcome the fact that the person was 87 or whatever years old, and they're going to die anyway. Right. And she had a stroke. So there's all of that we always have to overcome in these cases. What are some of the other issues you had to overcome in the case, Kristina?

Kristina:
Sure. So that was absolutely one of the biggest things there, and they focused a lot on that during the trial, and we tried really hard to give the impression that this wasn't just a person of older age. This was a person who had years ahead of her in life. Her family expected her to come home, and for all intents and purposes she would have recovered, but for the lack of care that she received. One of the other things that I think was something, a hurdle that we worked really hard for, unfortunately we didn't necessarily overcome, was the difference between a standard negligence situation and a medical malpractice situation. In Michigan, there are different claims for those two types of things.

And in our opinion, this was a clear cut case of negligence versus a medical malpractice issue. There was a lack of care, no care versus a breach of some standard of care.

And quite frankly, that's something I think that needs to be addressed and hopefully is focused in the future on nursing home cases because I think this happens pretty frequently where it is just a straight-up lack of care versus a failure to meet a certain or breach a standard of care. Aside from that, I think there was a perception on opposing counsel's part that there was some perceived fault of the sisters in how they proceeded with her,-

Sari de la Motte:
Always.

Kristina:
They perceived her care while she was in hospice, and an ultimate decision on whether or not to withdraw life-sustaining care at a point where doctors advised that she would not recover. And that was really unfortunate that they focused on that at trial because I believe based on our observations of the jury, that it did not go over well with them, that they were trying to flip that onto the sisters. And Bruce did a great job of refocusing the attention away from that and explaining that at that point she was so far gone because of a lack of care that this was inevitable and they didn't want her to suffer any longer at that point. So I would say that was just an interesting focus.

Sari de la Motte:
So it was actually fortunate.

Kristina:
Yeah.

Sari de la Motte:
Fortunate that they did that because I mean, as painful as that would be for the girls, they will stoop to any level in many of these cases and oftentimes in nursing home cases, they end up blaming the family or there is a perceived that we think the jury's like, well, if you actually loved your loved one, you would never put them in a nursing home. Right. Those are horrible places. So there are lots of things to overcome. Did you also have to meet a different standard? I know in many nursing home cases, you have to meet the standard of malice oppression fraud…

Bruce Inosencio:
No, we didn't have to do that. The issue was whether or not there was medical judgment, and our approach was that there was not medical judgment. These were discussions that we were having outside of the jury's presence with the judge relative to whether or not there was a medical judgment to do nothing as opposed to you knew of this risk in the face of a known risk with a person who has ongoing issues of dehydration or a known risk of dehydration, you did nothing. And doing nothing is not medical judgment, doing nothing is ordinary negligence.

Sari de la Motte:
Yeah, and it reminds me of Rick Friedman's Rules of the Road where he says, "When something is particularly dangerous, you have to have care even more." Right. So she was particularly fragile, so they needed to be more careful than less.

So talk to me about who did what in the trial? What were everybody's roles?

Bruce Inosencio:
Yeah, so I'll start. So one of the things that we really like about the way we approach cases, and some firms will do this too, we're not the only ones doing it.

But we really try to be interactive with the jury. We recognize that jurors have short attention spans.

I know how you feel about the duration of an opening statement, and I did my absolute best to keep it under your perceived perfect cutoff point. And I got close.

Sari de la Motte:
And how did it go?

Bruce Inosencio:
Well, I got close. It wasn't exactly there, but one of the things we really try to do is we do try to engage the jury. And so we used a lot of foam boards that were specific aspects of the medical records. We wanted them to see one particular sheet and we'd highlight it and I'd stand in front of the jury and I'd walk in front of each one of them pointing at it. So they were looking at that and I wasn't talking. So they're seeing it and Ryan's sitting there next to me looking at them, "Hey, are they engaged?" Right. Then we used a Vibe board, which is a 55-inch flat screen television that's touchscreen. And we would broadcast different rules from the regulations, the federal regulations to the board, or we would broadcast something from the medical records to that, or the video deposition transcripts that were cut and pasted as far as exactly what we wanted the jury to see that we agreed upon with opposing counsel.

Ryan did a fantastic job of taking the lead on getting all of those video transcripts. I can tell you a couple of different times we were on the phone at 1:30 in the morning from the day before to the next day saying, "Hey, listen, we need to tweak this. We need to tweak that." And having the commitment to getting those pieces of information in front of the jury in a video is critical as opposed to just saying, "Hey, you said this, didn't you?" But let the jury see it themselves. Right. Let the jury see what the person actually said, and so they can make their own assessment without me leading them to it. Right. So that was really helpful. Another thing that we did is we bounced around as far as who was at the table. I was always at the table and we started with, did we start with Ryan at the table? Yeah, we did. Didn't we?

Ryan:
Did we? For opening?

Bruce Inosencio:
Yeah.

Sari de la Motte:
A council table?

Bruce Inosencio:
Yeah. And the reason we did this is because my thought was this, I want the jury to see that it's not just me trying the case. It's a team. Okay. And so we had me, I'm obviously older than Ryan, and we had somebody younger and then Ryan stepped back, and then we had Kristina come up and she was there for part of the trial and we're all there for the whole thing. But then what's happening is they're seeing it's not just two guys trying this case. It's not just the older partners trying this case. And then we also had a paralegal who is studying for the bar right now, Val, who also was there for the entire trial.

And when a decision needed to be made, we paused, we kind of huddled up and it would be a four person decision. And so the jury saw that we were working together as a team. That wasn't fake.

Sari de la Motte:
I love that. I love that.

Bruce Inosencio:
We weren't just doing it for the jury's perception.

Sari de la Motte:
And did you do the voir dire, opening, and closing?

Bruce Inosencio:
I did the voir dire. Yeah, I did the voir dire, opening, and closing. And I can tell you that, and this is not a shameless plug for your book, your podcast, all this stuff.

Sari de la Motte:
I'll take it.

Bruce Inosencio:
But I'm about to. But I'm about to. So what was really cool about the voir dire in this case was we were allowed to ask whatever questions we wanted after the judge did his opening questions.

And we really used the voir dire to establish the principles and get some feedback from the jurors, and we could feel, I think right away, that they were coming along with us and that they were allowing me to lead them in this tribe.

Right. That was coming through. But when we knew we had, it was our client, we only had one of the four daughters in court the whole time. She happened to be sitting over by the door of the courtroom and when voir dire was over and when the jury was impaneled, the judge said, "Okay, the rest of you are free to go." They all got up, they walked out, and as they walked past her, many of them said, "Go get them. Don't back down. Stick it to them."

And so she told us that out in the hallway and I thought, wow, okay, that resonated. And they hadn't heard any facts other than the way we explained what we were trying to convey and what we would be conveying and the rules.

I think the voir dire, the approach that you have with this inclusionary voir dire was critical to the outcome of this case. No doubt in my mind.

Sari de la Motte:
Well, and let me ask you this. Have you tried the H2H voir dire in a case before? Was this the first time?

Bruce Inosencio:
So I had tried it in another case and got a great outcome, and then Kristina also, without having read your book, I said, "You're going to do this voir dire. Just trust me on it. You're going to love it. I will write it out for you." And I even went to the point where I put it into the explanation. Okay, at this point, hold your hands up a certain way, make sure you're breathing. And I put in there, "I know you think this is crazy, but just please trust me on that." And she did. Right Kristina?

Kristina:
I did. And it worked out very well. And one of the components I thought was amazing was the concept of having the jury give you words.

So my case was dealing with a real property issue and damage by the neighbor to my client's property. And they came up with words like unfair, justice, all these different key phrases, and then using those in my opening and my closing to wrap it up. That was amazing because those words are their words. They're describing the situation exactly how it existed. And I thought that was a great technique. So it did work.

Sari de la Motte:
I love it. I love it.

Kristina:
I was very skeptical. I have to admit.

Sari de la Motte:
Well, yeah because you all are trained the different way, right? So we were just on a call right before this, in the Crew in the H2H Playground, talking about Cause Challenges and whether or not we use them in the H2H method. And the consensus is yes, there's a time to use them, but when we say inclusionary, we're not saying, well, we just accept everybody. What we're saying is that we go with forming our group first, that that's always the primal first thing, and that we are going to get them to tell us what the principles are, and then we're going to get them to rally around those principles. And then we'll deal with people who are not in our group, but we're always first going to be like, where's my group? And where do I find them? And how do I know that they're there? And it's all about having them give us the principles in the case versus the other way around, and then asking if they agree. And did you get any blowback in either of these cases from the judge? Because I think a lot of people are really fearful. 

Bruce Inosencio:
We did not get any blowback. But I think the judge allowed us to go with it a little because opposing counsel didn't object. And frankly, even if they had objected, what's the basis for the objection? Right. You have to have a legitimate basis for the objection.

I think people are so often just afraid to try something different, whether it's voir dire or cross-examination of an expert. But if you don't attempt it, then you're never going to know.

And I will say one of the questions that we asked here at the very beginning was, how many of you here have ever known someone that's had a stroke? And almost everyone in our panel had.

And so we started asking questions, and one of the jurors had a son that had a stroke when he was four years old.

Sari de la Motte:
Oh my goodness.

Bruce Inosencio:
And so the fact that he was four, and I think she said he was 31 at the time of the trial, if I'm remembering this correctly, and he lived for 27 years. Right. And so to get the sense that, okay, this person's old, sick and dying, she's had a stroke already, she doesn't have any quality of life, that would be completely refuted by that juror. And we had a number of other jurors who talked about loved ones, whether it was a dad, or a grandpa, or an uncle that recovered from a stroke. And they were doing fine because they went through rehab and they were cared for and they had the care they needed. And so we used that. I used, you probably don't remember, but about a month before we did this trial, I did a Voir Dire Circle with you.

Sari de la Motte:
I was just going to say, yeah.

Bruce Inosencio:
You got on me for not doing my Devil's Advocate question with enough snark.

Sari de la Motte:
I was just going to ask, did you do it?

Bruce Inosencio:
I did. And it worked.

Sari de la Motte:
Yay! Okay.

Bruce Inosencio:
It worked because then when people are saying, "Yeah, we would expect that there's a high level of care, even if someone's 87 years old." Right. Those are like Kristina said, those are now their words.

Sari de la Motte:
How'd you use the Devil's Advocate question? What did you say?

Bruce Inosencio:
Well, something to the effect of… “You wouldn't expect that they'd still have a high level of care and need to be monitored, even if they were already at risk for dehydration and 87 years old, would you?” Yeah, we would. I remember the juror at the far right hand. I remember her saying, "Yeah, that's probably even more important of a time to monitor her care." Right.

Sari de la Motte:
And you still need more snark, but I love that you did it.

And for those listeners who are like, what the hell's a Devil's Advocate? So that is when we never funnel a defense point. Right. We're never having the jury give us defense points or refuting defense points. We're always going for our principles, but then once we have the principle and only then, we'll shake the tree a little bit and go, “Yeah, but I mean she was 87. And she just had a stroke. She's going to die anyway, right?”

And then the jury is like, no, and they come roaring back because we've done this defense point. Ryan, you were there watching this. What were you noticing about voir dire or opening, that you observed?

Ryan:
Yeah, I think I have a unique perspective in that this was actually my first trial. So every aspect of this was a new experience for me. I've heard Bruce and Kristina's past experiences, but literally being in there and seeing them for the first time, and with regard to jury selection, there's two things that stick out to me that I think kind of really benefited us and that I think Bruce did well with.

One, I think once we already had our team, right, our jury that we liked, they were really engaged and comfortable with. There was one individual who had a conflict relative to an out of town funeral and the concept of being inclusionary as opposed to exclusionary we talked about, but Bruce let her off or at least advocated for it. And it came across as though it's sympathetic, right? 

Sari de la Motte:
Kindness.

Ryan:
But we recognize what you're going through and we don't want you to miss that. And I think that really hit home with a lot of the jurors because when they go back into the jury room, they're a team, right, they're friends, or they become friends. So I think that held a lot of weight.

Sari de la Motte:
I think that's the point, is that it was so genuine and jurors feel that, they get that.

Ryan:
Right. And I think the second one, I think Bruce can probably speak a little more too, but there was one juror that was, I think the last to sit, and it was a younger gentleman who just outwardly didn't necessarily look like he would want to be involved or would be too engaged. And Bruce, you can probably explain how you brought him in and made him a focal point where he felt really important.

Bruce Inosencio:
Yeah. So I remember this juror. He's 22 years old, and all of our other jurors were probably mid-30s or older. A couple of them were probably in their late 50s, early 60s. And I kind of felt like, okay, he's going to feel like an outcast. Right. How do we bring him in and make him part of the tribe, so to speak? And so asked him a little bit about what it was that he did and what was his role at work. And he worked for a company that deals with brakes, automotive brakes, and he talked about quality control and how important it was. And he talked about doing something and then checking the box, not just checking the box and not having done it. Well, in our case, it was almost like this was planned, right, but in our case, we had these medical records that included these Xs or check boxes indicating that someone had checked on our client or our client's decedent their mother for purposes of checking to see whether or not she had been checked for constipation or dehydration.

And all these boxes are checked. Well, nothing really happened, but so we asked him, “So how important is it? What would happen if someone were checking the box and they weren't actually doing that? Tell me more about that.” And he walked us through how important it was to not just check the box, but to actually do it. And then what could happen if people are not doing what they say they're supposed to do and they're just checking the box? “Well, gee, my whole plant would shut down. Everything comes to a grinding halt. So even though you're just one little small cog in this entire operation, you're important to the outcome.” Well, yeah. Okay. And if someone doesn't do what they're supposed to do and they're checking the box anyway? “Oh, I'd get in trouble. I'd have a huge problem on my hands”. Well, that played right into our theme, and I brought that back in opening, and I brought it back again in closing.

Kristina:
You brought it up with witnesses too frequently, which I think was important, drawing attention to that issue.

Sari de la Motte:
Yeah. And pulling it all the way through. So opening went well, it sounds like.

Bruce Inosencio:
Think so.

Sari de la Motte:
Kristina, did you do any part of the trial or was it all Bruce with direct and cross exam as well?

Kristina:
I did not do any of the trial functions in the way of questioning witnesses, voir dire opening, closing, any of that. I was a casual observer and an assistant, to be honest. So Ryan did a lot of the hard work in the way of providing Bruce with information at the table, Val our paralegal, and I sat behind them and we observed the jury, listened to the witnesses, and took notes. It's very difficult, obviously, when you are the lead on something like this to hear all of the answers, to digest everything, to think about follow up questions and all of those things. And so I was texting Ryan profusely, I thought through every witness, "Tell Bruce to ask this, tell Bruce to ask that, maybe we go into this." And so it was that kind of contribution.

Sari de la Motte:
Love it.

Kristina:
Convening after every day and talking through different issues, things of that nature. So I was very much a support person in this whole thing.

Sari de la Motte:
Which is so helpful for the person out there performing, “to have those extra eyes and ears, seeing things”. People now say, you come help me pick a jury. And it's like, if I don't know your case, I'm not going to show up. I'm not going to be helpful. But for people who worked with me, and I know their case, I said, I'm really just there to confirm your sanity, to say you're seeing things the right way. Yep. I agree with that. Just to be there as that extra set of eyes to say, “Yep, this is going well.” or “Let's shape it this way, or let's do it that way.” That's so incredibly helpful. How did you feel once you handed it to the jury and they were off to the verdict room? Did you feel like you had it at that point? What was the feeling there?

Bruce Inosencio:
Well, I think Kristina and Ryan were still in shock from my ask of the jury…

Sari de la Motte:
Oh, you didn't even tell them until it flew out of your mouth?

Bruce Inosencio:
No.

Sari de la Motte:
Oh, wow.

Bruce Inosencio:
I changed it up a little bit that morning. I kind of had a little bit of an epiphany about how I wanted to structure it, and then it went a little bit further because their expert witness testified last. And fortunately, he said that her life had value. He had said something the day before that did not make him look good. I'm sure he was chastised and told, "Hey, you need to correct this somehow." One of the last things he said was, "Her life is always going to have value." And I seized on that and talked about the fact that they're only thinking that she was going to live three more months. Well, let's talk about those three months, and in Michigan we can do a per diem argument.

And so I broke it down and I got a little choked up telling a story about my grandma, and it was legitimate. I wasn't faking that. And I talked about that even in voir dire and about the value of something that no one can put a price on, but you and mine was an old 50-year-old plastic water pitcher that no one would pay anything for. But to me it's priceless and it truly is.

I think the jury sensed that I was not making that up, that that was sincere, and that that's how our clients, all four of the daughters felt about their mom and that you cannot put a price on that. And that's what I tried hammering home. In voir dire I asked about that, talked about it, talked about it again in opening, and then talked about it again in closing.

Sari de la Motte:
Love it.

Bruce Inosencio:
I think another thing that helped me connect with the jury a lot that was helpful I think from Ryan and Kristina's perspective, is they're feeding the information. Right. And they are giving me notes periodically, "Hey, you're losing the jury on this topic. Move on with witnesses." But during the opening and during the closing, I did not have notes. I followed your lead on not having notes. And I've been doing that for a number of years, and I think it works really well because you're now looking at each juror, not staring at them, but you're getting eye contact and you're moving from juror to juror and you're looking at them saying, "Hey, sometimes you can have someone that has a stroke and they can live for decades beyond that." You're looking at the particular juror that talked about that,-

Sari de la Motte:
That's right.

Bruce Inosencio:
During voir dire, you're looking at the juror that talked about you can't just check a box. Right. And you just pause and you look at that juror and that juror is like, yeah, they're nodding their head. If you're looking at your notes, you're not doing that.

And I think having the ability to know enough about this case and having lived it and trusting that you don't need to talk for three hours. You need to talk for maybe 18 to 30 minutes and understand your main points that you want to get and connect the jurors.

Sari de la Motte:
Sitcom, sitcom.

Bruce Inosencio:
Yeah. 22 minutes is the sitcom, it's the TED Talk, right? I think that that is critical, and we were able to do that here.

Sari de la Motte:
Well, and I think that it's so great that you did without notes because the other thing that it does when you have notes and you're really stuck to your notes, it says, “I don't know this case very well. I'm just here for the money”. Instead of, “I know that this is in my bones and I'm just going to talk to you about it because just wait till you hear about this. It's just crazy. And you guys are going to want to fix this”

 All right. It's a more connective thing versus, okay, well, I gotta get through this so you guys will give me the money, right, and have my notes in front of me. Not that there's anything wrong with an outline and whatnot.

How did H2H help? How do you think this assisted you?

Bruce Inosencio:
So I would say in addition to not using notes, what you talk about in the book and the podcast is you talk about the non-verbals, right? How you stand, how you're breathing.

I remember distinctly, I know Ryan would remember this. Legal pad right between us at the table, we're about to get started. I'm starting to get a little nervous. Right. Because I know how important this is to this family. We've been dealing with this issue with them for six years. I don't want to screw anything up. And the mindset is, hey, we're taking this thing to trial. We're not backing down. We're not going to settle and walk away. And what I love about working with Kristina is Kristina is the same way. We're not going to back down. If we think that we should take this case to trial, we're taking this case to trial, but-

I remember writing on this legal pad in all caps and underlining it,

“BREATHE”

Sari de la Motte:
Breathe.

Bruce Inosencio:
And Ryan's looking at me like, "Is that for me or is that for you?" And I said, "Well, it's really for me," right? Because you start to forget, hey, you got to breathe and you got to just relax. And one of the things you talk about is breathing through it and getting some comfort so that the jury is breathing with you and they're comfortable. I felt like once we started, we were doing that. And the nonverbals about, and this is one of the things I wrote in the things to Kristina about her trial. Hey, the way you stand, the you hold your hands to be authoritative, but not pointing at them, I can tell you there were probably six or seven times that opposing counsel was pointing at the jury and not in a way that I felt was helpful, let's just say that. And so using the nonverbals, not using notes, keeping your witnesses tight, using the themes and getting the principles from the jurors, all of those things I clearly stole from H2H. 

Sari de la Motte:
There's no stealing. They were given to you and you're part of our crew, our H2H Playground. And when you mentioned the Voir Dire Circle, that's where people can come in and get a hot seat. And I coach you live doing your voir dire. And it sounds like that was helpful.

Bruce Inosencio:
Very helpful.

Sari de la Motte:
Say one thing that that breathe is for Ryan and anyone else there, because if they're breathing, that's going to help you. So their number one job when they're there before the jury comes in is just to focus on their breathing so it will help you, right?

We want all that good breathing in the air because the jurors are going to come in and be like, oh my God, I don't know what I'm doing. I don't want to be here. And if you're also like that, then we're all like this versus I got this. And so Kristina and Ryan are behind you going, even if you make a noise, guys just like that. So he can hear that. That's going to remind him to calm his nervous system down and really get grounded. So I mean that quite honestly. The whole team needs to be breathing, especially for the person who's out front.

Well, I just want to congratulate you all again. I just love seeing teams that work together so well. I love that Ryan is learning the right way from the very beginning by being with you all, and it sounds like he's loving it and that you and Kristina have such a great partnership. I love seeing you in the crew, Bruce. I want to see you there more often. Of course, Kristina and Ryan are also welcome, but congrats again.

What would you say your big learning from this, if you had to put it in one sentence from this case that maybe another attorney listening would be like, that's great advice, what would it be?

Bruce Inosencio:
Trust the jurors to give you the principles that you need to win the case.

Sari de la Motte:
That's right. And that's a hard thing to do, trust the jury. That's where we start, as you know, in H2H. Well, thank you so much for being here. And to those of you listening, I hope you enjoyed it, and we will talk to you next week.

Kristina:
Thank you.

Ryan:
Thanks for having us.

Sari de la Motte:
Thank you.

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