Record‐Breaking $77M Verdict: Strategy & Historic Case Analysis

In this special episode, Natalie Woodward shares the story of how she landed a 💥 $77.7 MILLION 💥 MED-MAL VERDICT for a mentally ill, drug-addicted plaintiff — one that became the LARGEST in Georgia’s state history.

READ THAT AGAIN.

If you’re ready to shatter old stereotypes and deliver results that surpass even your wildest asks, THIS is the game plan you need.

🎧 Listen now and discover how to turn what they call “impossible” into your next big win. 🏆

Xo,
Sari

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"That's what we talk about in H2H: you've got to own your number. This is exactly how we teach our clients to deal with the money issue in wrongful death cases, by talking about what it means—what does that verdict mean? Here, it meant that your verdict is a statement about mental health and addiction issues. When you communicate that clearly, it resonates with the jury and builds trust. It transforms a trial into a message that can change the way we view mental health care and substance abuse treatment."
sari de la motte

EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION

Sari de la Motte:
Hello, hello! Welcome to those of you who are coming into the room. We are here with Natalie, and we are going to be doing a trial debrief today on the highest-ever medmal verdict in Georgia history. And so, I am so excited that you are here. If you are here and you have questions as we are going through the trial debrief today, please load them up in the Q&A, and we will take them as we can get to them. But welcome, Natalie, and thank you so much for being here. Congratulations on your win.

Natalie Woordward:
Thank you, thank you. It has been a surreal experience, I think, in the past month, for sure. And this is the first deep dive conversation I'm having about the trial, so this is new for me too.

Sari de la Motte:
I'm so glad that we got you first. Before we get started, why don't you tell everybody what the actual verdict was? What was the number that you won in this case?

Natalie Woordward:
Well, the total of everything after was seventy-seven million, seven hundred thousand and some odd dollars. I should know it down to the penny, and I don't. It was ten million, nine thousand, five hundred dollars in pain and suffering, fifty-five million in the value of Nick's life. It was an additional million dollars in punitives and an additional eleven million in attorney's fees that we did in sort of a mini-trial later the day after we got the verdict. We got the verdict at 10:00 AM, and the judge said, "Okay, y'all come back at three o'clock," because the jury had selected "yes" on the question of attorney's fees and punitives. So, we had to have that follow-up sort of mini-trial that same day afterwards.

Sari de la Motte:
And as we were talking before we got started, your biggest verdict before this one was how much?

Natalie Woordward:
It was a million dollars in 2010. I was thirty-three. I had just started my plaintiff's firm after doing civil defense since law school and had just gone out on my own with my law partner at the time, Corey Stern. And it was our first trial. It was a false arrest trial in federal court—friend of a friend. Then had...

Sari de la Motte:
This was your first trial?

Natalie Woordward:
It was my first plaintiff's trial. It was.

Sari de la Motte:
Nice to get a verdict on your first plaintiff's trial—not everybody does that. I was just talking with another female trial attorney that was here this weekend working with me, and I said, "When most women trial lawyers quit, it's after their first loss." It's like they already believe, "I don't belong here," and then that first loss just tells them they're right, and they leave the profession, which is too bad. And I'm so glad that we're having at least a small part in turning that around.

Natalie Woordward:
It was weird for me, because then I went through this eleven-year, twelve-year drought where I didn't have anything of that level of success. So, you start feeling like, "That must have just been luck," or...

Sari de la Motte:
An anomaly, right?

Natalie Woordward:
An anomaly. And then you kind of get to the point where it feels a little strange to still be talking about your... You feel like that guy who's still talking about a touchdown he threw in high school at some point.

Sari de la Motte:
Right. Remember that verdict way back when? Well, everybody here, male or female, is always chasing the eight-figure verdict. And here you've gotten it. So, we want the details, my lady. Let's start by giving us, before we go into the actual details of the case—was this in person? Was it over Zoom? Set the stage for us, and then we'll actually talk about the details of the case.

Natalie Woordward:
So, it was all in person. We were not sure it was going to all be in person. We had gotten permission from the judge to have whatever kind of witnesses appear via Zoom that we needed to, but it all ended up being in person. The masks were optional for the jury, and the majority of them wore masks during the entire trial. At least half of them wore masks during the entire trial. There's masks in the courthouse, but as soon as you came into the courtroom, the lawyers could take off the mask, and we were all vaccinated. But within a few days, someone ended up COVID-positive. And so, we had a little scare with that.

It was definitely on the back of our minds. We'd gotten two alternates to try to save it because we were anticipating, with a three-week long trial, that we would run into issues. In hindsight, I think we should have gotten more alternates. We lost one immediately for another reason. And then we held our breath, but thankfully they all stayed the full three weeks, and we dodged a bullet. But looking back, I think that was a mistake. I think I should have gotten more alternates just to give me less stress.

Sari de la Motte:
And how many—since we're talking nationally here, and every jurisdiction is different—how many jurors did you have in the box or to try to...

Natalie Woordward:
You need twelve.

Sari de la Motte:
Twelve, okay.

Natalie Woordward:
And so, we started with fourteen, lost one immediately. And in Georgia, the alternate doesn't know they're the alternate. I don't know if that's the way it is everywhere.

Sari de la Motte:
Yeah, many jurisdictions—not all, but many—yes.

Natalie Woordward:
And I think that's the way it should be.

Sari de la Motte:
Sure.

Natalie Woordward:
So, we held our breath. But if we would've lost two—we'd have lost both alternates and then lost a third—then the defense would've asked for a mistrial and would've gotten a mistrial.

Sari de la Motte:
And how many did you need to win?

Natalie Woordward:
Unanimous.

Sari de la Motte:
Unanimous, yeah. With twelve, yep. That's tough. Alright, so let's talk about what this case was about. Thanks for setting the scene for us there. What were you up against? What made you bring this to trial?

Natalie Woordward:
Well, so this case involved a twenty-nine-year-old man who had a long history of mental illness and drug treatment and drug abuse issues. He had gotten diagnosed when he was nineteen with substance abuse disorder as well as bipolar disorder. And when he was great—when he was doing well, when he was clean and sober and taking his meds—he was great. And then he would start feeling good, go off his meds, start using, come to his parents, say, "I need help, I'm off, I'm not doing okay," and then they would send him back. He had been to thirteen different rehab facilities in his life, always willingly. He did not have any—he had some college and had done well. His mental health issues presented like they commonly do in young men—late teens, early twenties—but for him, he was much more comfortable with being called an addict than he was accepting his mental illness diagnosis.

It had taken him many, many years to get to the point where he was really willing to accept that he had both and struggled with both. And so when he came to this particular facility, he had just started Lithium and Seroquel, and his particular bipolar disorder would present itself with psychosis. So he would have hallucinations, see things that weren't there. The instinct when he would get to the hospital is, "Oh, he must be on drugs." They'd do a drug screen, and he'd have a clean drug screen. And that's how they figured out that he was bipolar—because whenever he had anything in his system, legal or illegal, it would stave off the psychosis. It was only when he was completely clean and without any kind of mental health meds that his psychosis would present itself.

Sari de la Motte:
Makes sense.

Natalie Woordward:
So yes, and no real work history, had very loving, wonderful parents, but had been somebody who had struggled for a long time.

Sari de la Motte:
So already, the plaintiff attorneys in here are like, "Okay, here's all the problems." We don't even know what happened yet, but we've got basically a mentally ill drug addict who is the center of this case. So tell us what happened.

Natalie Woordward:
So he had come to a facility from North Carolina. He was from North Carolina originally, heard about a facility here in Atlanta called Ridgeview—very well thought of; it's a psychiatric hospital. It also has substance abuse treatment abilities. He came there, he had just been placed on Lithium, which was a new medication that he had never tried before. During the time he was there, he was clean, and they had to keep upping the Lithium to get him to a stable level. They finally did get him to a stable level after about three weeks. At that point, because he was mentally stable, he was ready to go to a residential drug treatment facility, but he needed a dual-diagnosis facility that could handle the meds part as well. So he checked himself into a facility here in Atlanta that represented that they were dual-diagnosis and could handle both.

And the day that he checked in, they immediately cut his Seroquel down that first day. Within a week, they took him off his Lithium cold turkey, and within two weeks, they kicked him out for what they claimed was being caught with a cell phone. Within two days of being kicked out, or two-and-a-half days, he was naked in the fetal position on Interstate 85 at four in the morning and was hit by multiple cars and killed. He had a clean screen—his autopsy, the lab results—he had no drugs in his system, no illegal drugs in his system. And so it was very much, in a lot of ways, like a traditional malpractice case. We took the position that the psychiatrist had violated the standard of care by stopping his medication, and that the facility had violated the standard of care in discharging him just to basically a halfway house—sober living house without any care, without any medical care. And so that was the case.

Sari de la Motte:
And what I think is so incredible about this, besides the problems that you have to overcome with him being mentally ill and being an addict, is that wrongful death cases are some of the hardest cases—as you know—to try to verdict, because jurors are thinking, "Well, what the hell does money do? This person is gone." And so I know that our people watching today and those listening later are going to want to know how you were able to talk about the money issue here in this case. But let's pause here for a moment and talk about how you got to H2H before trying this case. You were just telling me the story when we got started, and I stopped you and I wanted you to tell the story. So tell us a little bit about how you got in our sphere—in my sphere.

Natalie Woordward:
So other trial lawyers, I'm sure, are the same way. This case had been going on. When we tried it, it was five years almost to the date of Nick's death. And I had taken the case very early on, within a few months of him dying. So I had put everything I have into this case for a long time, had talked to all my friends about it, and I was at an event talking to a friend about the case that was coming up. This was in March, when the case was supposed to go to trial in May—didn't end up going to trial until August. And we were talking, and he said, "Hey, there's this book you've got to read." And he's very much—we both love the psychiatric aspect of the law, I think, or the psychology of the law. And we both have always bonded in looking outside the box for new ways to get better and to learn.

And he said, "There's this lady, and she's awesome, and you would love her, and she's funny." And I was like, "Why is this any different?" And he's like, "Well, it's so focused, and it's really specifically about voir dire and opening, and you've just got to read it. Oh, and there's a podcast." And so in the car, in the parking lot—I have to say his name, Curtis Dickinson; I have so much to thank him for, but he's been a mentor of mine, a friend of mine for a long time. He's a fabulous lawyer. So I bought the book in the parking lot and then started listening to the podcast, and it was what I did every time I was driving. When I was driving my son to school, anytime I was in the car, I just was a sponge. And I think it just found me at the right time, and it totally felt like a path and answered so many of the questions I had about "How am I going to do this?" This has got challenging issues, obviously. So yeah, that's the story.

Sari de la Motte:
I'm so glad for that. And I just was talking with the attorneys that were here this last weekend, and they were saying, "How did you get started, and where did this whole 'From Hostage to Hero' thing come from?" And I said, "Well, I started in criminal law, and I was there watching this and noticing that the big problem was that jurors didn't want to be there." And so I went and started looking at everything I could get my hands on in terms of voir dire and jury selection, and there wasn't anything out there. It was like this afterthought—nobody was thinking about how do we get jurors to actually want to be there. And so I'm so incredibly honored that that made such a big impact on you. How did you end up using H2H in the case? And actually, I should step back for a minute—let's talk about what you identified as the issues in your case first and then if those melded together. Go ahead and let us know how you ended up using H2H.

Natalie Woordward:
I think the issues were a lot of that fear. This was my first trial since COVID. I knew we were going to be dealing with some issues on top of the fact that jurors don't want to be there. This is a very liberal—I shouldn't say liberal, it's the wrong word—a very diverse area of Atlanta. The CDC is in DeKalb County; Emory University is in DeKalb County. And it also has a lot of poverty. So it's incredibly—you've got really high intellectual aspects of it, folks who are very conscientious about COVID, and you've got an area of the population that's been really hit incredibly hard by COVID.

So that was something we were worried about—the fact that a lot of times people don't want to be there anyway; they definitely don't want to be there now. They're going to be scared. It's going to be their first time coming to jury selection after COVID. And oh, by the way, telling them it's a three-week trial, they're going to hate me so much. And so I think that was really what jumped out about the book to me—it was a path towards addressing all of those fears on a grand scale. Secondarily, the aspect of "What are your fears? What kind of juror do we need for this case?"

And you say it repeatedly in your podcast for a reason, and I'm glad you keep saying it, and you should keep saying it—because making trial lawyers sit down and actually write something on paper instead of just thinking about it is hard for us, for a lot of us. It's hard for me. So that, to me, was incredibly impactful. What would I need a jury to believe in order to win? I need them to believe that mentally ill drug addicts still deserve proper care. I need them to believe that people can get better, that recovery is possible, that substance abuse issues and bipolar are a treatable disease. I need them to not be…

Sari de la Motte:
—Especially someone like Nick who was trying to get better. He checked himself in, yes? He went to the 13 different places. So you've got such a great story there in terms of a plaintiff who is an addict who wants to get better. And I'm just going to stop you there for people who are wondering what the heck Natalie’s talking about. She's talking about our ideal juror profile. So, the way that we start in all of our cases in terms of how to approach voir dire is we start with "What are you scared of?"—which you guys are really great at coming up with. That's the easiest part of our voir dire method: what are you scared of? How's the defense going to defend this? List it all out, right? And right now I'm going to take the opportunity to say, if you go to sariswears.com, we've got the H2H Fun-damentals class that tells you exactly how to do this.

But step one is fears. And so then Natalie here is talking about step two, which is developing that ideal juror profile. Go in and look at each separate fear and ask yourself, "What would my ideal juror, if I could build it brick by brick, what would this juror have to believe about this fear on my list so that it's no longer a fear?" It sounds like you were armed with going in and looking for your jury. Let me ask you this, Natalie: before H2H, what kind of voir dire did you do? What was your standard voir dire? I know it had been a while since you'd tried a case, but—

Natalie Woordward:
Yeah, it’d been a while since I tried a case, but I guess the last sort of deep dive I had done on anything was Reptile, and Don Keenan's a mentor of mine and someone I looked up to and have met with and talked to before. And so, y'all's approaches are very complementary in a lot of ways to me, in terms of trying to find what jurors are going to care about—something that matters in their own life. Ultimately, that idea of Reptile—you've got to make it something that they have some connection to. And I think I married some of that with "What does my ideal juror need to be for the principles of my case?" But also, I need to find people who care about mental illness and who care about substance abuse treatment in this country, and the implications of what happens to all of us and our vulnerabilities if mental illness is not properly treated and substance abuse is not properly treated.

Sari de la Motte:
But I think it helps going in knowing exactly what it is that you're looking for. I think so often—and that's why H2H is so different—is we go in going, "Okay, who here's bad for me?" Right? "I'm going to go in and I'm going to kill off the rats." And then you're just kind of left with, well, whatever's left.

Natalie Woordward:
That was my complete change in mentality. I mean, your book changed my mentality about that, because it was so freeing to go, "Oh, now I know what I want, and I've committed to who do I really want on this jury." And you've said it before: of course, the bad ones—we had six strikes on the plaintiff's side; defense side had six strikes. We truly only needed three strikes, because what was bad for us in terms of—and we did some things that, I think, in terms of opening that up—we had a jury questionnaire, and it's something that I—

Sari de la Motte:
Those are always helpful.

Natalie Woordward:
—love and had never had before, was afraid of, but now am a huge fan of, if done well. But they were so—

Sari de la Motte:
Now you know you don't need to be scared of the jury.

Natalie Woordward:
Yeah. Yes-or-no, seven questions. But yeah, that just changed my mentality, because I knew I was looking for a group, and I wanted that group dynamic. That was important to me, for all the reasons that you talk about in the book. And so yeah, it felt like jury selection was more fun than it had ever been. It was three days of jury selection. We went through almost eighty-something jurors to try to get to our fourteen. They actually struck twenty—the defense struck twenty for cause. I struck one for cause.

Sari de la Motte:
Okay, okay. I just love this, because Natalie, you and I don't know each other.

Natalie Woordward:
No.

Sari de la Motte:
This is the first time we have seen each other, and you are saying the exact same thing—I mean, down to actual words—that people who've come through the H2H method are saying: that you weren't so worried about strikes, you hardly used any, and that it was fun. So talk to me more about the fun part, because I think this is what people don't get. My job isn't necessarily to help you guys win—I mean, that is awesome when we win; we love winning—but it's to make this process more fun and enjoyable so you can actually enjoy your life. And when we get the win, yes! And when we don't, it's okay. So talk to me about that whole idea of it being more fun.

Natalie Woordward:
I think—and a lot of this stuff sounds corny, I'm sure it does—but I had just accepted in my mind that if I can—the defense had never offered us anywhere close to their policy limits, say it that way. And the family knew that they were doing this for a bigger reason than just the money. That—

Sari de la Motte:
Always.

Natalie Woordward:
—some aspect of that, for sure. That it was not like—and I've done plenty of my fair share of fender benders, God knows—but it wasn't just, "Hey, somebody needs $5,000, $10,000 worth of medical bills." They had a passion for the accountability of bringing this issue to trial. So that gave me a freedom to be able to talk to these jurors with a passion and an openness that I think resonated, because I knew that we were doing the right thing in going to trial no matter whether I won or lost. I knew that this was a case where the issues were important enough that it needed an opportunity for a trial. And I realized and believed that it would change—I believe still—that it'll change the mental healthcare industry and the drug abuse treatment industry forever.

Sari de la Motte:
Y'all are on the side of the right. I say that all the time in the podcast. Y'all stand on the side of the right. And what I hear consistently from my clients that have been able to achieve the white whale, the eight-figure verdict, is that they all say the same story: it wasn't until I let go and just focused on what I was there to do—my love for my client, my love for the case, and my love for the jury—that it came. When we focus so tightly on that verdict, then we lose sight of what we're actually there to do. So we just need to let go.

Natalie Woordward:
I didn't have a number. I mean, to me, a win was going to be a win in this case, honestly, because it was such—no one—my friends who loved me still were like, "Oh Nat, golly." They can list all the reasons that are obvious as to why it was going to be a struggle, and even if you win, the number's going to be low. And I'm like, "I don't care. I don't care. I'm just tired of not leaving it all on the field. So I'm going to go do this." I don't care how many continuances there are. They're going to have to outlive me to avoid trying this case, and I'm younger than they are, so—

Sari de la Motte:
So let's go. I love this; I love this. Okay, so talk to me about voir dire. How was it? What did you do? What did you use from the book or the podcast that was helpful?

Natalie Woordward:
So with the questionnaires, everyone who said yes to any of the questions on the questionnaires, we specifically did individual voir dire with them because the issues we were asking about on the questionnaire—like, "Have you lost a loved one to mental illness or substance abuse?"—were so private and emotional that we wanted to respect that as much as we could. The unexpected beauty of that, that I loved, was that it gave me a chance to—because the plaintiffs talked first—so when they would bring them in individually, we had actually asked very little, no general questions yet. So I got to have a one-on-one conversation first with 70 percent of the jury, and—

Sari de la Motte:
Love that. Lovely.

Natalie Woordward:
That—there’s just no comparison for that. And so I would ask the questions and I would say it as “we.” “We, all of us lawyers, we're sorry to have to ask you this. We understand this is incredibly private. You checked yes to losing a family member from suicide. Do you mind talking to me about that just for a few minutes?” And then it was—I had to be very delicate with how I pulled it out and what I asked, and I was gracious. That was genuine, because I know that there were a lot of tears—from almost everybody that came in, there were tears at some point. But that gave an opportunity that, by the end of that process, everybody knew what the case was about. They had pieced it together even though they had heard nothing yet. And so the twenty-some-odd strikes for cause, the majority of which were because they were saying we cannot be fair to the defense just based on what we know so far—which was nothing. They didn't even know what the case was about. But they had such negative experiences with mental health issues and substance abuse issues. And we were not anticipating that. That was not something that we could have predicted.

Sari de la Motte:
But it's such a great point—it's such a great point—because so many people, when they learn the H2H method, go, "Okay, I get this. I'm going in there, I'm looking for my ideal juror, I'm getting them to talk about it. But as soon as they do that, the other side is going to kick them off." And I always say, "Listen, y'all stand on the side of the right." So once you get your principles out there—what is a principle? 99 percent of people believe it, it's a fundamental truth—it's going to be hard to kick off the entire eighty-eight jurors. The majority of them are going to rally for you. Was that a fear of yours though? Like, "Oh my God, they're kicking off all these people that are for us"?

Natalie Woordward:
No, because I think once the principles were out there and they were talking about the importance of mental health treatment and that it should be held to the same standard, if not a higher standard, than medical cases—because one of the things that came up in the trial is, if someone misdiagnoses a broken bone—and I'm using an example that came up in trial—that affects that one person. And that can be a case, and we can litigate that. But if someone mishandles a mental illness in a person, it doesn't stay contained. It's the same thing we're hearing about on the news. It's the reason why Nick being in that road in the middle of a psychotic event, in the middle of the night, is a danger to all of us. And so these people truly believed that mental health was something that had not received the value in our society, from a treatment perspective, that it needed to.

Sari de la Motte:
Yeah, love that.

Natalie Woordward:
And also, we correlated substance abuse and mental health issues. And that to me—I was worried about that—but that ended up being something I didn't need to worry about also. I mean, people live in the world just like we do. They know that the great majority of the time where there's one, there's the other, with substance abuse issues and mental health issues. And you really can't treat one without treating both. Lots of times I did the visual of an iceberg, where the substance abuse is the part that you're seeing tipping out of the top of the water. What's larger underneath—which will really cause real damage—are those long, deep mental health issues. So that was something that the great majority of them completely knew, which was a huge fear of mine.

Sari de la Motte:
Come to find out jurors are people! And I mean this is why I keep reminding y'all that you don't need to be persuasive. Do I need to persuade you the sky is blue, right? I mean, you stand on the side of the right. So the more you try to persuade the jurors that your side is right when it is right—because you stand on the side of the right—the more confused they’re getting, a little suspicious: "Why are you trying so hard to convince me?" But when you allow the jury—you give the jury the control—and you say, "What do you think about these principles?" And in fact, in my method, they give you the principles. They own it, and they're enrolled. I mean that's what's so hard about being a plaintiff attorney, is that y'all have to get people to do something, and the easiest thing is to not do anything at all and just leave things as they are. And so to get them to actually take action, they've got to be enrolled, which means talking about the actual things in the case—which means not talking about hobbies and bumper stickers and what news they watch, which just becomes pointless when you can actually have—

Natalie Woordward:
What's funny is that after all of that individual talk about real issues, we couldn't go back then during the general—then we started the general once we had that all done—I had already made a connection with these folks. I would've lost so much credibility if I'd have gone back and started asking them about what TV shows they watched.

Sari de la Motte:
"What are your hobbies?"

Natalie Woordward:
So I said that when I got up. I said, "I'm not going to do this. I know that we've been here for three days and some of y'all have been through jury selection. I'm not going to do this. I'm not going to do what's normally done. But I am going to talk about the stuff that y'all are going to hear about, and I want to know who knows about this issue and who knows about this issue on a general level." And I skipped all of the fluff questions that I had been using and leaning on for twenty years.

Sari de la Motte:
Most people have. That's how y'all were trained: "Let me go in there and try to create rapport." But really, you're thinking, "Well, who are the bad ones? Look, if I create this rapport then they'll show themselves and I can kill them off." So it sounds like you had a real mindset shift, and I love that. So did you feel like you were able to create a group in voir dire?

Natalie Woordward:
Yes. And I think that was, to the extent that we were using our strikes, it was more about using our strikes to make that the strongest possible group—not so much people that we thought were horrible for us. There were one or two, but once we got past the two or three that we thought, "Oh, they're not good for us under any scenario," then it was, "Okay, who do we think's going to be this best cohesive group?" And we used our strikes to make people—to who do we think are going to like each other and are going to work well together? And that—

Sari de la Motte:
That's what they do. That's their whole job, is to work together. And it's so much easier to get a verdict from a group than twelve individuals—especially when you need a unanimous verdict, which is not always the case, but it obviously is the case in your jurisdiction, at least for a case like this. So you got your jury the way you wanted it and then you started with opening. How did opening go?

Natalie Woordward:
It was great, and I think I kept a lot of the same principles. It was: "I want to be very conscientious of your time. The case is about two things. It's about they should not have discharged him when they did, and they should not have taken him off his meds, period. The defense is going to get up here and tell you about his fifteen years and every drug he's ever done and every time he's gone through rehab and it didn't work. And you'll hear that for two weeks, and it has zero to do with the case. The case is only about these three weeks and how they treated him in this facility, and that's what the case is about." And then the defense proceeded to do exactly what I told the jury they were going to do.

Sari de la Motte:
Which made you look super smart.

Natalie Woordward:
Well, it made me look honest. And so they sort of fell right into that, which shocked me. I thought, "Well, maybe they'll go off script and not do that because I've said that they're going to do it." Nope, they stuck right to their script.

Sari de la Motte:
So I always talk about how there are two things that you must do to win a plaintiff case, right? Two questions you must answer for jurors. And it sounded like you did rockstar on the first question. The first question is, "How could this have been avoided?" So I love how—because if jurors can't know how it could have been avoided, then that goes under the "shit happens, mistakes happen" umbrella. But if you can clearly communicate, "This is how it could have been avoided: keep him on his meds, don't discharge him," right? Then the jury's like, "Okay, this could have been avoided." Sounds like you did a great job of doing that and really simplifying it down to that. That's the other place where we would go wrong in opening statements, is we just throw everything possible in there that we think will help us, and that actually hurts us. But the second question and the one that I'm—yeah, go ahead. Go ahead.

Natalie Woordward:
No, that—we had taken thirty depositions. I mean, the discovery of this had been voluminous. We had them changing records after they found out that Nick had died. We had so much stuff that if I would've tried to put it all in the opening, which you'd want to—and every lawyer wants to say, "Let me tell you all my good stuff," then you just are overwhelming. So we chose not to do that in openings, even though that was hard.

Sari de la Motte:
It's so hard. But as Rick Friedman says, "What are the tools of the defense? Confusion, complexity, and ambiguity." So the more simple and clear you can be, the more we win cases. So that second question that I said—even if you can show that it could have been avoided—you've got to prove how money's going to make a difference or how money can help. So that's always tough in a wrongful death case. And people come and they go, "I get what you're saying, Sari, but if I've got a death case, how do I do that?" So I'm going to ask you: How did you talk about money in a wrongful death case with the jurors to get this incredible—I mean, did I hear you right, $55 million just for the meaning of his life? That's incredible. Talk to me about that.

Natalie Woordward:
So the value—in Georgia, it's the value of the decedent's—the value of their life to themselves, not the value of their life to other people. It's how much did they value their life. And I took the position that someone who was willingly going to thirteen different facilities—that there's no example of anybody who thinks that they have more value, because he believed he had value to get better and could get better. Because he was a very smart guy. He'd been the starting kicker all four years on his high school football team. He was a beautiful guy and loved and good with the ladies. And he had a five-year-old little boy at the time. So he was there because I believed he believed he could beat this thing. And so we took the position of "That's the most value."

Sari de la Motte:
Yeah, I love that. So how did you talk about that? And did you start that conversation in your opening or did you save that for closing?

Natalie Woordward:
I started talking about money in voir dire. I put a number out there. That was one of the last questions I asked in voir dire. And I didn't know what number to use, so I used $10 million. I said, "If the facts are such, is there anybody here that's just philosophically opposed, under any scenario, to giving more than a certain amount of money, even if it was $10 million or whatever the number is?" And so I did it not so much because I cared about the answers—I didn't really actually care about the answers—I just wanted them to hear a big number early on, so that it wouldn't be shocking to them when they heard it at closing.

Sari de la Motte:
And what did you ask for in closing?

Natalie Woordward:
So in closing I asked for $10 million in pain and suffering, and $40 million for the value of his life.

Sari de la Motte:
So they went over what you asked?

Natalie Woordward:
They did. They gave $15 million more than what I asked for.

Sari de la Motte:
Were you able to talk to them afterwards?

Natalie Woordward:
I was. I was.

Sari de la Motte:
And what did they say?

Natalie Woordward:
So we talked a lot about—in Georgia, and I'm sure this is true in lots of states, we can't say "send a message." There's all these rules, things that you can't say.

Sari de la Motte:
Yep, most places you can't.

Natalie Woordward:
But we can say—and what I did say to the jury is—that ultimately our ability to make change in the world comes in ways that we don't expect. And it doesn't come around often. And sometimes it looks like a jury summons. And so you get to decide today how you feel about mental health treatment, and you get to decide how you feel about substance abuse treatment. And this is your opportunity to let your voice be heard. Because so often we see these tragedies, we experience the tragedies, and we feel so powerless. And this is an opportunity where you're not powerless. And it doesn't come around often. I know a lot of folks are happy they don't have to deal with jury selection very often, but this is your opportunity—so you get to say how you feel about it. And so that way, when I was asking for a big number, it wasn't offensive because I think they knew I believed it.

Sari de la Motte:
That's what we talk about in H2H: you've got to own your number. This is exactly how we teach our clients how to deal with the money issue in wrongful death cases, is to talk about what it means. What does that verdict mean? So here it meant—and you clearly communicated—that your verdict means the statement you want to make about mental health and addiction issues. And I love how you did that. Beautifully, beautifully done.

Sari de la Motte:
Which made you look super smart.

Sari de la Motte:
Yeah, I love that. So how did you talk about that? And did you start that conversation in your opening or did you save that for closing?

Sari de la Motte:
And what did you ask for in closing?

Natalie Woordward:
So in closing I asked for $10 million in pain and suffering, and $40 million for the value of his life.

Sari de la Motte:
So they went over what you asked?

Natalie Woordward:
They did. They gave $15 million more than what I asked for.

Sari de la Motte:
Were you able to talk to them afterwards?

Natalie Woordward:
I was. I was.

Sari de la Motte:
And what did they say?

Natalie Woordward:
So we talked a lot about—in Georgia, and I'm sure this is true in lots of states, we can't say "send a message." There's all these rules, things that you can't say.

Sari de la Motte:
Yep, most places you can't.

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Sari de la Motte:
Hello. Hello. Welcome to those of you who are coming into the room. We are here with Natalie, and we are going to be doing a trial debrief today on the highest-ever medmal verdict in Georgia history. And so I am so excited that you are here. And if you are here and you have questions as we are going through the trial debrief today, please load them up in the Q&A, and we will take them as we can get to them. But welcome, Natalie, and thank you so much for being here and congratulations on your win.

Natalie Woordward:
Thank you. Thank you. It has been a surreal experience, I think in the past month for sure. And this is the first deep dive conversation I'm having about the trial, so this is new for me too.

Sari de la Motte:
I'm so glad that we got you first. And so before we get started, why don't you tell everybody what the actual verdict was? What was the number that you won in this case?

Natalie Woordward:
Well, the total of everything after was 77 million and 700,000 and some odd dollars. I should know it down to the penny and I don't. It was $10,009,500 in pain and suffering, 55 million in the value of Nick's life. It was an additional million dollars in punitives and an additional 11 million in attorney's fees that we did in a sort of a mini trial later the day after we got the verdict. So we got the verdict at 10:00 AM and the judge said, "Okay, y'all come back at three o'clock." Because the jury had selected yes on the question of attorney's fees and punitive. So we had to have that follow up sort of mini trial that same day afterwards.

Sari de la Motte:
And as we were talking before we got started, your biggest verdict before this one was how much?

Natalie Woordward:
It was a million dollars in 2010. I was 33. I had just started my plaintiff's firm after doing civil defense since law school, and had just gone out on my own with my law partner at the time, Corey Stern. And it was our first trial. It was a false arrest trial in federal court. Friend of a friend. Then had...

Sari de la Motte:
This was your first trial?

Natalie Woordward:
It was my first plaintiff's trial. It was.

Sari de la Motte:
Nice to get a verdict on your first plaintiff's trial. Not everybody does that. I was just talking with another female trial attorney that was here this weekend working with me and I said, "When most women trial lawyers quit, it's after their first loss." It's like they already believe that I don't belong here. And then that first loss just tells them they're right and they leave the profession, which is too bad. And I'm so glad that we're having at least a small part in turning that around and, so.

Natalie Woordward:
It was weird for me because then I went through this 11 year, 12 year drought where I didn't have anything of that level of success. So you start feeling like that must have just been luck or...

Sari de la Motte:
An anomaly. Right.

Natalie Woordward:
Anomaly. And then you kind of get to the point where it feels a little strange to still be talking about your... You feel like that guy who's still talking about a touchdown he threw in high school at some point.

Sari de la Motte:
Right. Remember that verdict way back when? Well, everybody here, male or female, is always chasing the eight-figure verdict. And here you've gotten it. So we want the details, my lady. So let's start with giving us, before we go into the actual details of the case, was this in person? Was it over Zoom? Set stage for us and then we'll actually talk about the details of the case.

Natalie Woordward:
So it was all in person. We were not sure it was going to all be in person. We had gotten permission from the judge to have whatever kind of witnesses appear via Zoom that we needed to, but it all ended up being in person. The masks were optional for the jury and the majority of them wore masks during the entire trial. At least half of them wore masks during the entire trial. There's mask in the courthouse, but as soon as you came into the courtroom, the lawyers could take off the mask and we were all vaccinated. But within a few days someone ended up COVID positive. And so we had a little scare with that.

So it was definitely on the back of our minds. We'd gotten two alternates to try to save it because we were anticipating with a three-week long trial that we would run into issues. In hindsight, I think we should have gotten more alternates. We lost one immediately for another reason. And then we held our breath, but thankfully they all stayed the full three weeks and we dodged a bullet. But looking back, I think that was a mistake. I think I should have gotten more alternates just to give me less stress.

Sari de la Motte:
And how many... Since we're talking nationally here and every jurisdiction is different, how many jurors did you have in the box or to try to...

Natalie Woordward:
You need 12.

Sari de la Motte:
12, okay.

Natalie Woordward:
And so we started with 14, lost one immediately. And in Georgia, the alternate doesn't know they're the alternate. I don't know if that's the way it is everywhere. So no one...

Sari de la Motte:
Yeah, many jurisdictions, not all, but many. Yes.

Natalie Woordward:
And I think that's the way it should be.

Sari de la Motte:
Sure.

Natalie Woordward:
So we held our breath, but if we would've lost two, we'd have lost both alternates and then lost the third, then the defense would've asked for a mistrial and would've gotten a mistrial.

Sari de la Motte:
And how many did you need to win?

Natalie Woordward:
Unanimous.

Sari de la Motte:
Unanimous. Yeah. With 12. Yep. That's tough. All right, so let's talk about what this case was about. Thanks for setting the scene for us there. So what were you up against? What made you bring this to trial?

Natalie Woordward:
Well, so this case involved a 29-year-old man who had a long history of mental illness and drug treatment and drug abuse issues. He had gotten diagnosed when he was 19 with substance abuse disorder as well as bipolar disorder. And when he was great, when he was doing well, when he was clean and sober and taking his meds, he was great. And then he would start feeling good, go off his meds, start using, come to his parents, say, "I need help, I'm off, I'm not doing okay." And then they would send him back. He had been to 13 different rehab facilities in his life. Always willingly. He did not have any... He had some college and had done well. His mental health issues presented like they commonly do in young men—late teens, early twenties—but for him, he was much more comfortable with being called an addict than he was accepting his mental illness diagnosis.

So it had taken him many, many years to get to the point where he was really willing to accept that he had both and struggled with both. And so when he came to this particular facility, he had just started Lithium and Seroquel and his particular bipolar disorder would present itself with psychosis. So he would have hallucinations, see things that weren't there. The instinct when he would get to the hospital is, "Oh, he must be on drugs." They'd do a drug screen and he'd have a clean drug screen. And that's how they figured out that he was bipolar—because whenever he had anything in his system, legal or illegal, it would stave off the psychosis. It was only when he was completely clean and without any kind of mental health meds that his psychosis would present itself.

Sari de la Motte:
Makes sense.

Natalie Woordward:
So yes, and no real work history, had very loving, wonderful parents, but had been somebody who had struggled for a long time.

Sari de la Motte:
So already the plaintiff attorneys in here are like, "Okay, here's all the problems." We don't even know what happened yet, but we've got basically a mentally ill drug addict who is the center of this case. So tell us what happened.

Natalie Woordward:
So he had come to a facility from North Carolina. He was from North Carolina originally; heard about a facility here in Atlanta called Ridgeview—very well thought of, it's a psychiatric hospital. It also has substance abuse treatment abilities. He came there, he had just been placed on Lithium, which was a new medication that he had never tried before. During the time he was there, he was clean and they had to keep upping the Lithium to get him to a stable level. They finally did get him to a stable level after about three weeks. And at that point, because he was mentally stable, he was ready to go to a residential drug treatment facility, but he needed a dual diagnosis facility that could handle the meds part as well. So he checked himself into a facility here in Atlanta that represented that they were dual diagnosis and could handle both.

And the day that he checked in, they immediately cut his Seroquel down that first day. Within a week, they took him off his Lithium cold turkey, and within two weeks, they kicked him out for what they claimed was being caught with a cell phone. And within two days of being kicked out—or two and a half days—he was naked in the fetal position on Interstate 85 at four in the morning and was hit by multiple cars and killed. He had a clean screen, his autopsy, the lab results—he had no drugs in his system, no illegal drugs in his system. And so it was very much, in a lot of ways, like a traditional malpractice case. We took the position that the psychiatrist had violated the standard of care by stopping his medication, and that the facility had violated the standard of care in discharging him just to basically a halfway house, a sober living house without any care, without any medical care. And so that was the case.

Sari de la Motte:
And what I think is so incredible about this, besides the problems that you have to overcome with him being mentally ill and being an addict, is that wrongful death cases are some of the hardest cases—as you know—to try to verdict. Because jurors are thinking, "Well, what the hell does money do? This person is gone." And so I know that our people watching today and those listening later are going to want to know how you were able to talk about the money issue here in this case. But let's pause here for a moment and talk about how you got to H2H before trying this case. You were just telling me the story when we got started and I stopped you, and I wanted you to tell the story. So tell us a little bit about how you got in our sphere and my sphere.

Natalie Woordward:
So, other trial lawyers, I'm sure, are the same way. This case had been going on. When we tried it, it was almost five years to the date of Nick's death. And I had taken the case very early on—within a few months of him dying. So I had put everything I have into this case for a long time, had talked to all my friends about it, and I was at an event talking to a friend about the case that was coming up. This was in March when the case was supposed to go to trial in May—it didn't end up going to trial until August. And we were talking, and he said, "Hey, there's this book you got to read." And he's very much—we both love this, the psychiatric aspect of the law, or the psychologies of the law. And we both have always bonded in looking outside the box for new ways to get better and to learn.

And he said, "There's this lady and she's awesome and you would love her and she's funny." And I was like, "Why is this any different?" And he's like, "Well, it's so focused and it's really specifically about voir dire and opening and you just got to read it. Oh, and there's a podcast." And so in the car, in the parking lot—I have to mention his name: Curtis Dickinson, and I have so much to thank him for; he's been a mentor of mine, a friend of mine for a long time, he's a fabulous lawyer. And so I bought the book in the parking lot and then started listening to the podcast, and it was what I did every time I was driving. When I was driving my son to school, anytime I was in the car, I just was a sponge. And I think it just found me at the right time and it totally felt like a path and answered so many of the questions I had about, "How am I going to do this?" This has got challenging issues, obviously. So, yeah, that's the story.

Sari de la Motte:
I'm so glad for that. And I was talking with the attorneys that were here this last weekend, and they were saying, "How did you get started, and where did this whole 'From Hostage to Hero' thing come from?" And I said, "Well, I started in criminal law and I was there watching this and noticing that the big problem was that jurors didn't want to be there." And so I went and started looking at everything I could get my hands on in terms of voir dire and jury selection, and there wasn't anything out there. It was like this afterthought—nobody was thinking about how do we get jurors to actually want to be there. And so I'm so incredibly honored that that made such a big impact on you. How did you end up using H2H in the case? And actually, I should step back for a minute. Let's talk about what you identified as the issues in your case first, and then if those melded together, go ahead, let us know how you ended up using H2H.

Natalie Woordward:
I think the issues were a lot of that fear. This was my first trial since COVID. I knew we were going to be dealing with some issues on top of the fact that jurors don't want to be there. This is a very diverse area of Atlanta. The CDC is in DeKalb County, Emory University is in DeKalb County, and there is a lot of poverty. So it's incredibly diverse—you've got really high intellectual aspects of it, folks who are very conscientious about COVID, and you've got segments of the population that have been really hit hard by COVID.

So that was something we were worried about—the fact that a lot of times people don't want to be there anyway, they definitely don't want to be there now. They're going to be scared. It's going to be their first time coming to jury selection after COVID. And, oh, by the way, telling them it's a three-week trial, they're going to hate me so much. And so I think that was really what jumped out about the book to me—it was a path toward addressing all of those fears on a grand scale. Secondarily, the aspect of "What are your fears? What kind of juror do we need for this case?"

And you say it repeatedly in your podcast for a reason, and I'm glad you keep saying it and you should keep saying it, because making trial lawyers sit down and actually write something on paper instead of just thinking about it is hard for many of us—it's hard for me. So that, to me, was incredibly impactful. What would I need a jury to believe in order to win? I need them to believe that mentally ill drug addicts still deserve proper care. I need them to believe that people can get better, that recovery is possible, that substance abuse issues and bipolar are treatable diseases. I need them to not be—

Sari de la Motte:
—Especially someone like Nick who was trying to get better. He checked himself in, yes? He went to the 13 different places. So you've got such a great story there in terms of a plaintiff who is an addict who wants to get better. And I'm just going to stop you there for people who are wondering what the heck Natalie’s talking about. She's talking about our ideal juror profile. So the way that we start in all of our cases in terms of how to approach voir dire is we start with, "What are you scared of?"—which you guys are really great at coming up with. That's the easiest part of our voir dire method: what are you scared of? How's the defense going to defend this? List it all out, right? And right now I'm going to take the opportunity to say, if you go to sariswears.com, we've got the H2H Fun-damentals class that tells you exactly how to do this.

But step one is fears. And so then Natalie here is talking about step two, which is developing that ideal juror profile. Go in and look at each separate fear and ask yourself, "What would my ideal juror, if I could build it brick by brick, have to believe about this fear on my list so that it's no longer a fear?" It sounds like you were armed with going in and looking for your jury. Let me ask you this, Natalie: before H2H, what kind of voir dire did you do? What was your standard voir dire? I know it had been a while since you'd tried a case, but...

Natalie Woordward:
Yeah, it’d been a while since I tried a case, but I guess the last sort of deep dive I had done on anything was Reptile and Don Keenan's—a mentor of mine and someone I looked up to and have met with and talked to before. And so, y'all’s approaches are very complementary in a lot of ways to me in terms of trying to find what jurors are going to care about—something that matters in their own life. Ultimately, that idea of Reptile—you've got to make it something that they have some connection to. And I think I married some of that with, "What does my ideal juror need to be for the principles of my case?" But also, I need to find people who care about mental illness and who care about substance abuse treatment in this country, and the implications of what happens to all of us and our vulnerabilities if mental illness is not properly treated and substance abuse is not properly treated.

Sari de la Motte:
But I think it helps going in knowing exactly what it is that you're looking for. I think so often—and that's why H2H is so different—is we go in saying, "Okay, who’s bad for me?" Right? I'm going to go in and I'm going to kill off the rats. And then you're just kind of left with, well, whatever's left.

Natalie Woordward:
That was my complete change in mentality. I mean, your book changed my mentality about that because it was so freeing to say, "Oh, now I know what I want, and I've committed to who I really want on this jury." And you've said it before—of course, the bad ones. We had six strikes on the plaintiff's side; defense side had six strikes. We truly only needed three strikes because what was bad for us in terms of... And we did some things, I think in terms of opening that up—we had a jury questionnaire, and it's something that I...

Sari de la Motte:
Those are always helpful.

Natalie Woordward:
...love and had never had before, was afraid of. But now, I'm a huge fan of it when done well, but they were so—

Sari de la Motte:
Now you know you don't need to be scared of the jury.

Natalie Woordward:
Yeah. Yes or no—seven questions. But that just changed my mentality because I knew I was looking for a group, and I wanted that group dynamic that was important to me for all the reasons that you talk about in the book. And so, yeah, it felt like jury selection was more fun than it had ever been. It was three days of jury selection. We went through almost 80-something jurors to try to get to our 14. They actually struck 20, defense struck 20 for cause, I struck one for cause.

Sari de la Motte:
Okay, okay. I just love this because Natalie, you and I don't know each other.

Natalie Woordward:
No.

Sari de la Motte:
This is the first time we have seen each other, and you are saying the exact same thing—down to the actual words—that people who've come through the H2H method are saying that you weren't so worried about strikes, you hardly used any, and that it was fun. So, talk to me more about the fun part, because I think this is what people don't get. My job isn't necessarily to help you guys win—although that is awesome when we win; we love winning—but it's to make this process more fun and enjoyable so you can actually enjoy your life. And when we get the win, yes. And when we don't, it's okay. So, talk to me about that whole idea of it being more fun.

Natalie Woordward:
I think—and a lot of this stuff sounds corny, I'm sure it does—but I had just accepted in my mind that if I could… the defense had never offered us anywhere close to their policy limits, say it that way, and the family knew that they were doing this for a bigger reason than just the money. And, you know, there was some aspect of that for sure, that it was not like… And I've done plenty of my fair share of fender benders, God knows, but it wasn't just, "Hey, somebody needs $5,000, $10,000 worth of medical bills." They had a passion for the accountability of bringing this issue to trial. So that gave me a freedom to be able to talk to these jurors with a passion and an openness that I think resonated because I knew that we were doing the right thing and going to trial, no matter whether I won or lost. I knew that this was a case that the issues were important enough that it needed an opportunity for a trial. And I realized and believed that it would change—I believe still—that it'll change the mental healthcare industry and the drug abuse treatment industry forever.

Sari de la Motte:
Y'all are on the side of the right. I say that all the time in the podcast. Y'all stand on the side of the right. And what I hear consistently from my clients that have been able to achieve the white whale—the eight-figure verdict—is that they all say the same story: it wasn't until I let go and just focused on what I was there to do, and my love for my client, my love for the case, and my love for the jury, that it came. When we focus so tightly on that verdict, then we lose sight of what we're actually there to do. So we just need to let go.

Natalie Woordward:
I didn't have a number. I mean, to me, a win was going to be a win in this case honestly because it was such... No one... My friends who loved me still were like, "Oh Nat, golly." They can list all the reasons that are obvious as to why it was going to be a struggle, and even if you win, the number's going to be low. And I'm like, "I don't care. I don't care. I'm just tired of not leaving it all on the field. So I'm going to go do this." I don't care how many continuances there are; they're going to have to outlive me to avoid trying this case, and I'm younger than they are, so...

Sari de la Motte:
So let's go. I love this, I love this. Okay, so talk to me about voir dire. How was it? What did you do? What did you use from the book or the podcast that was helpful?

Natalie Woordward:
So, with the questionnaires, everyone who said yes to any of the questions on the questionnaires, we specifically did individual voir dire with them because the issues we were asking about on the questionnaire—"Have you lost a loved one to mental illness or substance abuse?"—were so private and emotional that we wanted to respect that as much as possible. The unexpected beauty of that, which I loved, was that it gave me a chance to—because the plaintiffs talked first—when they would bring them in individually, we had actually asked very little, no general questions yet. So I got to have a one-on-one conversation first with 70 percent of the jury, and...

Sari de la Motte:
Love that. Lovely.

Natalie Woordward:
That—there's just no comparison for that. And so I would ask the questions and I would say it as "we." "We, all of us lawyers, are sorry to have to ask you this. We understand this is incredibly private. You checked yes to losing a family member from suicide. Do you mind talking to me about that just for a few minutes?" And then I had to be very delicate with how I pulled it out and what I asked, and I was gracious—that was genuine—because I know that there were a lot of tears from almost everybody that came in; there were tears at some point. But that gave an opportunity that, by the end of that process, everybody knew what the case was about. They had pieced it together even though they had heard nothing yet. And so the twenty-some odd strikes were for cause, the majority of which were because they were saying we cannot be fair to the defense just based on what we know so far—which is nothing. They didn't even know what the case was about. But they had such negative experiences with mental health issues and substance abuse issues, and we were not anticipating that. That was not something that we could have predicted.

Sari de la Motte:
But it's such a great point. It's such a great point because so many people, when they learn the H2H method, go, "Okay, I get this, I'm going in there, I'm looking for my ideal juror, I'm getting them to talk about it. But as soon as they do that, the other side is going to kick them off." And I always say, "Listen, y'all, stand on the side of the right. So once you get your principles out there, what is a principle? 99 percent of people believe it, it's a fundamental truth." It's going to be hard to kick off the entire 88 jurors. The majority of them are going to rally for you. Was that a fear of yours though? Like, "Oh my God, they're kicking off all these people that are for us"?

Natalie Woordward:
No, because I think once the principles were out there and they were talking about the importance of mental health treatment and that it should be held to the same standard, if not a higher standard than medical cases—because one of the things that came up in the trial is if someone misdiagnoses a broken bone—and I'm using an example that came up in trial—that affects that one person and can be litigated. But if someone mishandles a mental illness in a person, it doesn't stay contained. It's the same thing we're hearing about on the news. It's the reason why Nick being in that road, in the middle of a psychotic event in the middle of the night, is a danger to all of us. And so these people truly believed that mental health was something that had not received the value in our society, from a treatment perspective, that it needed to.

Sari de la Motte:
Yeah, love that.

Natalie Woordward:
And also, we correlate substance abuse and mental health issues. And that, to me, I was worried about—but that ended up being something I didn't need to worry about also. I mean, people live in the world just like we do. They know that the great majority of the time there's one; there's the other—with substance abuse issues and mental health issues. And you really can't treat one without treating both. Lots of times I did the visual of an iceberg, where the substance abuse is the part you're seeing tipping out of the top of the water, and what's larger underneath, which will really cause real damage, are those long, deep mental health issues. So that was something that the great majority of them completely knew, which was a huge fear of mine.

Sari de la Motte:
Come to find out, jurors are people. And I mean, this is why I keep reminding y'all that you don't need to be persuasive. Do I need to persuade you the sky is blue, right? I mean, you stand on the side of the right. So the more you try to persuade the jurors that your side is right when it is right—because you stand on the side of the right—the more confused they're getting, a little suspicious, "Why are you trying so hard to convince me?" But when you allow the jury, you give the jury control and you say, "What do you think about these principles?" And in fact, in my method, they give you the principles, they own it, and they're enrolled.

I mean, that's what's so hard about being a plaintiff attorney is that y'all have to get people to do something, and the easiest thing is to not do anything at all and just leave things as they are. And so to get them to actually take action, they've got to be enrolled—which means talking about the actual things in the case, which means not talking about hobbies and bumper stickers and what news they watch, which just becomes pointless when you can actually have—

Natalie Woordward:
What's funny is that after all of that individual talk about real issues, we couldn't go back then during the general. Then we started the general—once we had that all done—I had already made a connection with these folks. I would've lost so much credibility if I'd gone back and started asking them about what TV shows they watched.

Sari de la Motte:
What are your hobbies?

Natalie Woordward:
So I said that when I got up, I said, "I'm not going to do this. I know that we've been here for three days and some of y'all have been through jury selection. I'm not going to do what's normally done. But I am going to talk about the stuff that y'all are going to hear about, and I want to know who knows about this issue and who knows about this issue on a general level." And I skipped all of the fluff questions that I had been using and leaning on for 20 years.

Sari de la Motte:
Most people have. That's how y'all were trained—"Let me go in there and try to create rapport." But really, I'm thinking, "Well, who are the bad ones? Look, if I create this rapport then they'll show themselves and I can kill them off." So it sounds like you had a real mindset shift, and I love that. So did you feel like you were able to create a group in voir dire?

Natalie Woordward:
Yes. And I think that was to the extent that we were using our strikes—it was more about using our strikes to make the strongest possible group, not so much to eliminate people we thought were horrible for us—there were one or two—but once we got past the two or three that we thought, "Oh, they're not good for us under any scenario," then it was, "Okay, who do we think's going to be this best cohesive group?" And we used our strikes to make people—who do we think are going to like each other and are going to work well together? And that...

Sari de la Motte:
That's what they do. That's their whole job—to work together. And it's so much easier to get a verdict from a group than from 12 individuals, especially when you need a unanimous verdict, which is not always the case, but it obviously is the case in your jurisdiction, at least for a case like this. So you got your jury the way you wanted it, and then you started with opening. How did opening go?

Natalie Woordward:
It was great, and I think I kept a lot of the same principles. It was: "I want to be very conscientious of your time. The case is about two things. It's about they should not have discharged him when they did and they should not have taken him off his meds, period. The defense is going to get up here and tell you about his 15 years and every drug he's ever done and every time he's gone through rehab and it didn't work. And you'll hear that for 2 weeks, and it has zero to do with the case. The case is only about these 3 weeks and how they treated him in this facility, and that's what the case is about." And then the defense proceeded to do exactly what I told the jury they were going to do.

Sari de la Motte:
Which made you look super smart.

Sari de la Motte:
So I always talk about how there are two things that you must do to win a plaintiff case—two questions you must answer for jurors. And it sounded like you did rockstar on the first question. The first question is, "How could this have been avoided?" So I love how, because if jurors can't know how it could have been avoided, then that goes under the "shit happens, mistakes happen" umbrella. But if you can clearly communicate, "This is how it could have been avoided—keep him on his meds, don't discharge him," then the jury's like, "Okay, this could have been avoided." Sounds like you did a great job of doing that and really simplifying it down to that. That's the other place where we would go wrong in opening statements if we just throw everything possible in there that we think will help us, and that actually hurts us. But the second question—and the one that I'm... Yeah, go ahead. Go ahead.

Natalie Woordward:
No, that—we had taken 30 depositions. I mean, the discovery of this had been luminous. We had them changing records after they found out that Nick had died. We had so much stuff that if I would've tried to put it all in the opening—which you'd want to, and every lawyer wants to say, "Let me tell you all my good stuff"—then you just become overwhelming. So we chose not to do that in opening statements, even though that was hard.

Sari de la Motte:
It's so hard. But as Rick Freeman says, "What are the tools of the defense? Confusion, complexity, and ambiguity." So the simpler and clearer you can be, the more we win cases. So that second question—that even if you can show that it could have been avoided—you've got to prove how money's going to make a difference or how money can help. So that's always tough in a wrongful death case. And people come and they go, "I get what you're saying, Sari, but if I've got a death case, how do I do that?" So I'm going to ask you: how did you talk about money in a wrongful death case with the jurors to get this incredible—I mean, did I hear you right? $55 million just for the meaning of his life. That's incredible. Talk to me about that.

Natalie Woordward:
So, the value in Georgia—it's the value of the decedent's life to themselves, not the value of their life to other people. It's how much did they value their life. And I took the position that someone who was willing to go into 13 different facilities—there's no example of anybody who thinks that they have more value because he believed he had value to get better and could get better—because he was a very smart guy. He'd been the starting kicker all four years on his high school football team. He was a beautiful guy, loved, and good with the ladies, and he had a five-year-old little boy at the time. So he was there because I believed he believed he could beat this thing. And so we took the position of "that's the most value."

Sari de la Motte:
Yeah, I love that. So how did you talk about that? And did you start that conversation in your opening, or did you save that for closing?

Natalie Woordward:
I started talking about money in voir dire. I put a number out there—that was one of the last questions I asked—and I didn't know what number to use, so I used $10 million. I said, "If the facts are such, is there anybody here that's just philosophically opposed under any scenario to giving more than a certain amount of money, even if it was $10 million or whatever the number is?" And so I did it not so much because I cared about the answers—I didn't really actually care about the answers—I just wanted them to hear a big number early on so that it wouldn't be shocking to them when they heard it at closing.

Sari de la Motte:
And what did you ask for in closing?

Natalie Woordward:
So, in closing I asked for $10 million in pain and suffering and $40 million for the value of his life.

Sari de la Motte:
So they went over what you asked?

Natalie Woordward:
They did. They gave $15 million more than what I asked for.

Sari de la Motte:
Were you able to talk to them afterwards?

Natalie Woordward:
I was. I was.

Sari de la Motte:
And what did they say?

Natalie Woordward:
So, we talked a lot about—in Georgia, and I'm sure this is true in lots of states—we can't say, "send a message," because there's all these rules, things that you can't say.

Sari de la Motte:
Yep, most places you can't.

Natalie Woordward:
But we can say that, and what I did say to the jury is that ultimately our ability to make change in the world comes in ways that we don't expect. And it doesn't come around often. And sometimes it looks like a jury summons. And so you get to decide today how you feel about mental health treatment and you get to decide how you feel about substance abuse treatment. And this is your opportunity to let your voice be heard. Because so often we see these tragedies, we experience the tragedies, we feel so powerless. And this is an opportunity where you're not powerless, and it doesn't come around often. I know a lot of folks are happy they don't have to deal with jury selection very often, but this is your opportunity, so you get to say how you feel about it. And so, that way, when I was asking for a big number, it wasn't offensive because I think they knew I believed it.

Sari de la Motte:
That which we talk about in H2H—you've got to own your number. This is exactly how we teach our clients how to deal with the money issue in wrongful death cases: to talk about what it means. What does that verdict mean? So here it meant—and you clearly communicated—that your verdict means the statement you want to make about mental health and addiction issues. And I love how you did that. Beautifully, beautifully done. So what were your biggest learnings from this trial?

Natalie Woordward:
I think a lot of this is probably specific to our ideas about how women try cases versus how men try cases. I had a fabulous co-counsel—one of my oldest friends in the world; his name is Dax Lopez—and he had just gotten off the bench. We graduated high school together, actually, and he had just gotten off the bench from being a state court judge, and this was his first trial off the bench. So he was my co-counsel. But I did 70% of the work with the witnesses, and the jury was half women, and then the defense were guys. For the most part, they had some women as co-counsel, but they didn't do very much. I think that in 2022, a diverse trial table is more important than we realize. I think when I did the direct of Nick's mom, it was the mom talking to a mom. And then when Dax, my co-counsel, questioned the dad, it was a dad talking to a dad. And so there was a humanity there that I embraced. I cried for the first time in trial. You're told not to let that wall down. And when something was really sad, I let a tear go. And when it was funny, I laughed, and when there was a joke to be made, I made it. And I was going to win or lose, but it was not going to be because there was any lack of authenticity, and we made it a point to be very, very professional—always—but genuine.

Sari de la Motte:
I love it. I love it. I'm sorry, I skipped over the question I said that asked you if you had talked to the jury. What did they say to you?

Natalie Woordward:
They repeated my opening to me. They were like, "They did exactly what you told us they would do." And all they wanted to talk about was the things he had done wrong in his life. They didn't want to talk about the medical aspects of, "Do you or do you not remove someone cold turkey from their Lithium?" From a pharmacological standpoint, we brought in a pharmacologist who explained to them, "We hear this on commercials all the time: don't stop taking your meds, but why does it matter? What are the implications of that?" And the defense didn't want to talk and get into those kinds of substantive issues because that's really what the case was about—the scientific aspect of that was bad for them. But the jury was really... so then we are the educators. The whole time, we're the ones educating them. And then that just made us look that much more believable because we're telling them information. And I mean, we gave the jury a lot of really fairly complicated pharmacology issues about how the mood stabilizers versus antipsychotics and different medications work and why they take a little while to work. But that just, I think, legitimized us more than anything. So yeah, I think that was something that really resonated with the jury—that we presented to them exactly what we told them we would—and that just built trust.

Sari de la Motte:
Absolutely. Absolutely. What would you say... And we're going to go to questions here in just a minute, so if you have questions, please load them up in the Q&A box. I won't be able to see them very clearly in the chat feature, so Q&A box. And also, if you haven't already gotten H2H Fun-damentals, Kristi's going to drop a link in for that where you can learn how to do all the things that Natalie's been telling us about today. Natalie, what do you think the biggest impact of reading the H2H book, listening to the podcast, and coming into the method had on this case and on you personally?

Natalie Woordward:
I really think that... I go back to this a lot about the negative. You have a chapter in the book about the empowering beliefs—and I don't know, I can't remember exactly the way you phrase it.

Sari de la Motte:
Limiting beliefs.

Natalie Woordward:
Yes.

Sari de la Motte:
Limiting beliefs, yeah.

Natalie Woordward:
And just that aspect of it. I mean, truly owning all these fears, really digging deep into what I'm afraid of. I'm afraid they're going to think, "So what, he's dead because he was a drug addict?" I'm afraid they're going to think his family's better off. I went deep on my fears in order to find that it's his fault that he's a drug addict and that drugs maybe caused his mental illness. And, is the world a better place? I went really deep into all of the things. I was truly afraid of a jury feeling—so as to find who I believed my ideal jury would be. They would have to believe in mental health treatment; they'd have to believe that substance abuse is a treatable illness; they have to believe that substance abuse is an illness. There are lots of people that don't believe that. Right? So that, to me, I think was just the most impactful because it gave me permission to ask those hard questions of myself first and find out my answers to them—because I had to come clean about what my principles were.

Sari de la Motte:
Love it. And then you could go in knowing exactly who you were looking for.

Natalie Woordward:
Yes.

Sari de la Motte:
No guesswork. No guesswork. I love that. Well, Natalie, if you stay on with us, we've got some questions from people who are here wondering about some things.

Natalie Woordward:
Sure.

Sari de la Motte:
Matthew, one of our crewbies in H2H, says, "What questions were on your questionnaire?" Would you mind sharing that with us, Natalie?

Natalie Woordward:
Yeah, I'll do it from memory as best I can. There were seven. It was yes or no. "Have you or a loved one ever been on Lithium or Seroquel?"—the drugs that were at issue. "Have you or a close family member ever been hospitalized for mental health issues or substance abuse issues?" "Have you lost a close family member to suicide or mental illness or drug abuse, drug or alcohol abuse?" It was very much a yes-or-no standard because we were trying to identify folks who had personal experiences with these issues. So they were not... The defense had taken the position that this was a suicide. We took the position—this was never our position—that it was a suicide. It had not been ruled a suicide; it had been ruled an accidental death, even though there was no question that Nick placed himself in the road. But there was testimony from a 911 operator of a call that had come in beforehand, of someone hearing someone near the road yelling, seeming disoriented.

And then we had to figure out folks who had really close personal issues with a lot of those subjects so that we could... It was just a lot of potentially triggering information in the trial, and people who had lost children—Mike and Tina, mom and dad—were going to be sitting there for three weeks. And we had to get into those kinds of questions, so that was basically the gist of this questionnaire.

Sari de la Motte:
Love it. Thank you. Rhonda's asking, "How did you introduce Nick to the jury?"

Natalie Woordward:
So, as a person.

Sari de la Motte:
Look at that smile. I love that smile. It says right there how much you care about this.

Natalie Woordward:
Yeah, we really took the position of, "Here's this beautiful guy who was all these things," and he also had 12 years of substance abuse over time. He would have periods of sobriety and not sobriety, and he was mentally ill. And you can be both. You can be a funny, handsome, intellectual life of the party, deeply spiritual person, and also have a mental illness and drug issues. So I introduced him the way I think he would've introduced himself.

Sari de la Motte:
Oh, love that. Beautiful. How did you showcase the defendant's culpability and wrongfulness without coming off as the only one attacking them?

Natalie Woordward:
So, the case was interesting because 95 percent of the facts were not in dispute. There was no dispute that they had taken him off his meds. There was no dispute that they had discharged him. We had done so much during discovery that we had really fleshed everything out. And I told the jury that this is not a case where we're asking you to decide facts. We're asking you to decide if this was okay or not. And we took the position that it was—look, there's no intentional wrongdoing here. We're not taking the position that they were trying to hurt him, or that they obviously didn't know what was going to happen. But it was such egregious conduct that they had gotten so lax for so long. And basically, their defense was, "Well, yeah, but he's a drug addict and a mental health patient, but—"

Sari de la Motte:
—and he wanted to die anyway. But that's so egregious.

Natalie Woordward:
...the facility treats—your facility says they're treatable. And you're inviting these folks, but then turning around and trying to diminish their life's value based on the exact thing that you say you can heal. It was very much like what I think a nursing home case would do, where they'd say, "Yeah, but it's an old person." But that's your business. Your business is older folks.

Sari de la Motte:
That's exactly right. And was the jury angry? Could you tell if they were angry at this behavior?

Natalie Woordward:
They were angry, yes.

Sari de la Motte:
Well, see, and that's the point there. What I want to speak to in that question is how did you do it without picking on them? Well, sometimes you need to pick on them. I mean, we have literally had mock juries here—I’ve done thousands of mock juries with my clients before they're going to trial—and we have literally had jurors, our mock jurors, say, "Why aren't you more mad about this?" They're confused as to why the attorney is having no emotional reaction at all. Listen, we're not supposed to advocate, but you can certainly cue in with the jury. We never want to go above the jury in their emotional response, but at least meet them there because they look at you as their leader. And if you're just like, "Yeah, this happened and it's no big deal," in your mannerisms and your non-verbals as we teach around here, that confuses the jury. It causes them dissonance.

Natalie Woordward:
I use my vocal range in the—...

Sari de la Motte:
That's right.

Natalie Woordward:
...sarcastic tone. I would be a little sarcastic and, okay, say this. But then when they would say something that was crazy town, my next question, my octave would go up. I would be like, "For real?" I wasn't being a crazy person. I wasn't yelling at them, but I could let my thoughts about the answers be very obvious.

Sari de la Motte:
That's exactly what I'm talking about. Exactly. Ed is asking... Hi Ed, you were on our webinar last week. "I'm not giving up talking to jurors after. I do think they try to do the right thing and make what they think is the right decision. But what I'm getting afterwards is post-talk rationalization of the decision." Ed, I am literally doing a podcast after this webinar. I'm recording a podcast on why you should talk to the jury, and I talk about that exact thing. So stay tuned. It's coming out next week. That is, they made a decision and they came up with an explanation rather than an actual explanation of their thought process. I think I must know what to ask them. What questions should I ask jurors afterward that will actually get true insights on what can help me in the future? Not sure, Natalie, if you want to take that or...

Natalie Woordward:
I'll take one question because I agree with him in large part and have felt that same way a lot of times.

Sari de la Motte:
Not that you shouldn't talk to them, but that they're going to give their observations.

Natalie Woordward:
I take the approach of, "Thank you, and is there anything that you want to ask me?" So, inevitably, when I give them permission to ask me questions, I get more information about their thought process from that than I do when I try to interrogate them. And sometimes I'll do it as well, "What did you think about this witness? What did you think about that?" I try not so much to put them on the spot as to ask, "Why did I win or why did I lose?" But more about, "Hey, what worked? What didn't work for you?"

Sari de la Motte:
I love it. I love it. I'm stealing that. I'm literally writing a note right now that I'm putting in the podcast for next week. Okay, we're getting to the end. A couple more questions. From Roger, "Did you keep the clients in the trial the whole time?"

Natalie Woordward:
Yes. I debated that and decided yes, to do that. I considered letting them out if we were going to ask them all of those sort of hot topic questions during the trial, but we ended up having the questionnaire do a lot of that work for us. But yes, I did have the mom and dad in there the whole time and coached them about what was going to be an appropriate reaction and what wasn't, and if they needed to take a break to walk out, that was going to be okay. But yeah, we did.

Sari de la Motte:
Great. Todd, "Did anyone in the veneer answer yes to any of the seven questions in your questionnaire?"

Natalie Woordward:
To answer all of them? Yeah, so there were a few that answered yes to all the questions—that had personally been in treatment, had lost family members, and had been on these meds. There was one guy who had been in AA for 30 years—the attendant at Grady Hospital here in Atlanta and the Grady ER psychiatrist was one in the group. It was a really diverse group of folks in terms of people who worked in the mental health field, whether it be therapists or social workers. I was afraid of those on my jury in some respects, I think, because I was afraid that they've heard every sad, horrible story and they're almost numb to those stories if they work in the industry. Not because I thought they wouldn't think the conduct was egregious—I just thought that they might be almost numb to sad stories and egregious conduct. So, yeah.

Sari de la Motte:
Okay. We've got Linda, who is asking—she's in Georgia—"Who was your judge and how did you get the judge to allow the questionnaire and how was it given?" Linda, we're going to connect you with Natalie so she can talk to you about that offline, just because that may not apply to all of the people listening today. And if Natalie is willing to chat with you, I'm sure she would be.

Natalie Woordward:
Yes, let her email me, I'll tell her.

Sari de la Motte:
Yeah, yeah. So go ahead and you could connect with Natalie. If you don't know how to do that, you can contact us at info@saridlm.com. At this point, I want to thank you, Natalie, and congratulate you again. And those of you who are like, "Okay, what are all these things that Natalie’s talking about and how do I learn more?" Right now, and it's only through next Wednesday, we have the H2H Fun-damentals. It's 40 video lessons on how to put your voir dire, opening, and closing together step by step with a workbook and all kinds of bonuses.

But if you're not sure, you go to the website and you're like, "I don't know if I can afford this," or "I don't know if this is for me," we've got a free webinar next Tuesday at October 4th at 10:00 AM Pacific, where I'm going to walk you through the whole thing and I'm going to show you three ways—three strategies—on how to read a juror's mind. So you definitely want to be there for that. Kristi's going to drop the link in the comments right now. Natalie, thank you so much for being here. Is there anything you want to leave our listeners with?

Natalie Woordward:
I told somebody the other day, when I was talking, "Being scared is normal, and I know that it's probably a permanent condition to some extent, but if you're not afraid, then you don't care." So, yeah.

Sari de la Motte:
That's exactly right.

Natalie Woordward:
Yeah.

Sari de la Motte:
Great.

Natalie Woordward:
Thanks, guys.

Sari de la Motte:
Congratulations. We hope to see more of you around here.

Natalie Woordward:
Thank you.

Sari de la Motte:
Alright.

Natalie Woordward:
Sure. Alright. Thanks.

Sari de la Motte:
Okay. Thank you. We'll talk to everybody next week. See you at the webinar. Bye-bye.

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