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in the description. (soft bar piano playing) - You know what this means. They're gonna keep coming after her, personally, legally, in
whatever way they can. - Take it to the judge! There will be sanctions! (light, jaunty music) Hey, Legal Eagles, it's
time to think like a lawyer. Today, we are covering
an oldie but a goodie, Damages episode one, starring
Glenn Close and Rose Byrne. I've never seen an episode of Damages, but I've heard a lot about it. So I'm really looking forward to this. As always, be sure to comment
in the form of an objection, which I will either sustain or overrule, and let me know what movie
or TV show I should do next. And, of course, stick around until the end of the video where I give this episode of Damages a grade for legal realism. So, without further ado, let's
dig into Damages episode one. (jackhammer pounding in distance) (car horns honking) (taxi honks)
(tires screech) (dramatic music) Eh, you should really shower up after you murdered someone. The blood is a dead giveaway. - Ellen, I think you'll find
our offer more than fair for someone just out of law school. We'd like to bring you in
as the junior associate. Five years guaranteed, - Okay.
- with a start salary of... - Holy (bleep). (laughs) - So it is very common
to get job offers right out of law school. That is one of the primary
functions of law school is to connect aspiring lawyers with big firms who will
make offers like these. A couple things to note here. Number one, nobody gets
a five-year guarantee out of law school. There's just no way to know who's going to be a good lawyer and who's not, so there's really never such a thing as a guaranteed employment
contract with a big law firm. But that kind of reaction
to the salary offer is somewhat realistic because
New York really sets the bar when it comes to associate salary. Right now, in New York at a big firm, you can make anywhere
between 160 and $190,000 per year straight out of law school (cash register chimes)
if you go to one of the biggest firms. I don't know if this is
one of those big firms. It looks very ornate. But there are some monster salaries that are being offered to
students right out of law school. - Ms. Hughes, the verdict's coming in. - It's your last chance
to get off cheap, 150. - 50, Patty, tops. - Reggie Dwayne Thomas. - Who the hell's that? - A second grader and a Mets fan. You know him as patient 61. As his immune system is being decimated, Reggie asked me for two things. - 75, Patty. - That his team make the playoffs and that someone punish the
company that made him sick. - All right, (bleep) 150. That's it, we're done. - Ah, the good old
courthouse steps negotiation. While this is clearly a dramatization, there are some kernels of truth here because, contrary to popular belief, very few cases actually go to trial. And those that do go to trial, very few of them actually
end up going to verdict because parties are risk averse. And while tens of millions of dollars might seem like a huge
amount, and it is, obviously, to a large corporation, the
downside could be even worse. For example, a good friend
of mine just litigated a case against Monsanto and won $300 million. So if you're up against a 300 million or a billion-dollar verdict
that could bankrupt the company, it's better to just take your lumps, get the certainty of not
having hundreds of millions of dollars against you by
the jury, and just move on, which I think is what's happening here. - I am here because of Arthur Frobisher. 5,000 of his employees
lost their life savings as a result of his actions. - Alleged actions. He was found not guilty
at a criminal trial. - As is often the case,
there are different burdens of proof depending on
what court you're in. If you have a criminal prosecution, then you have the highest
burden in all of law, which is you must prove your case as the state beyond a reasonable doubt. The members of the jury cannot have a single reasonable
doubt in order to convict. However, what often happens is that, even if you are acquitted
in a criminal court, you can be brought to
trial in a civil court where the burden of proof is much lower. You can get damages. - Oh boy, I usually only get this excited when they say the title
of a movie in the movie. - Even if a defendant is
acquitted in criminal court, then you can still sue that person for civil damages, IE money
damages, in civil court where the burden of proof
is much, much lower. You just have to show a
preponderance of the evidence. In other words, if you
had both sides on a scale, which side is just slightly
more persuasive than the other? So I think what's going to happen here is that there will be a civil
lawsuit against Mr. Frobisher for civil damages, money damages, where he might have to discourage some of the profits that he
made or pay civil damages to his employees if he
did something wrong. So I guess we'll see. - I need you to understand this. We are engaging in a battle with a man who will stop at nothing
to preserve his fortune. High stakes litigation is
a long and painful process. - That is true.
- Frobisher will destroy us in the press, he will
attack us personally, he will try to turn our lives upside down so that we'll want to settle. Meanwhile, his attorneys will spin him as the good guy, the
aggrieved innocent victim. So we have to be patient,
and we have to stay strong. But most of all, we have
to all stick together. If we do that, we'll win. - There is some truth to that. Litigation can take literally years. I've been on cases that took
five years to get to trial and took another few years
to deal with the appeals. Litigation takes a long
time, it takes a huge amount of resources, and it's one of the reasons that people settle all the time, is because it's so resource intensive that it can take years
before you get compensation when you're clearly an aggrieved party. It's a real problem. - Ellen, Uncle Pete. Uncle Pete's been with
Patty longer than any of us. He's really the one who
runs everything around here. - [Pete] Good to meet you. - Nice to meet you. It's, uh, it's dry cleaning. We've been working on
the Frobisher case 24/7. Some of our associates haven't
been able to go home yet. - That's true. Big firms actually do
offer dry cleaning services to keep their associates
in the office longer. (door creaks open)
(dance music in background) (door creaks shut) - Well, if it isn't the maid of honor. - What? (laughs) This is totally insane to suggest that a partner in a major firm is going to come down to someone's wedding to interview them because
they rejected them for a job interview. They're gonna get hundreds
of rejections a year. That's just the way
that these things work. There's no such thing as this firm that everybody has to work
for right out of law school or while you're in law school. This is this trope that exists in TV that just doesn't exist in reality. There are hundreds of
great firms out there. There are even lots of
firms that parallel a sort of Gloria Allred thing
that's going on over here. There's no reason why
any one in particular would need to work for
one particular attorney. It doesn't work that way. (Blondie's "Heart of Glass" playing) - Ms. Hewes. Is there any way I could still interview? - I think it would be
a waste of time, Ellen. You're hired. (scoffs) - From 1:00 PM to three,
he lunches with a few of his Fortune 500 pals,
lobster bisque, Kobe beef. - But his broker is nowhere to be found. From 3:00 PM to 6:00 PM, Frobisher's at the spa getting a full body treatment. - For three hours? What was he getting waxed? (zipper unzips) - 6:00 PM, Frobisher flies home in his private jet, arrives at
Teterboro Airport at 9:00 PM. He's home safe and sound by 10. - So somehow Frobisher and
his broker communicated down in Florida, but no
one saw them together. - So this seems like the kind of issue that would be determined in discovery. You would get access to all of his emails, his phone records. So if there is any communication going on, they would probably have that information. They wouldn't need to do any kind of private investigation
work to track it down, which is dramatic for TV
but is not the kind of thing that actually happens very
much in actual litigation. I guess we'll see. - Good news, I was able
to push this through. (pleasant piano playing) - (gasps) My liquor license! Ah, excellent, thank you. - Oh God, don't even get me started about liquor licenses
in New York, it's crazy. - But Larry, Patty Hewes. She's not the answer. I mean, she's an egomaniac
and she's gonna lose. You know why? - No, sir. - Because I didn't do it. I'm-I'm a very rich man. I make no apologies for that. But I'm also an innocent
man, and I want to come to some reasonable solution to this. - If Mr. Frobisher was an attorney here, this whole meeting would be
completely inappropriate. If you know that someone
is represented by counsel, as another attorney you cannot reach out to the party directly, you
have to go through counsel. But there is no rule that
prohibits two clients themselves from talking things out, even when there's litigation pending. That being said, it's a
really, really bad idea because the lawyers are there
to act as intermediaries, and they are there to hash
things out dispassionately, whereas when you get the clients
together talking things out it never goes right. And I'm guessing that things
are not gonna go right in this episode either. - I think that you and I
together could end this. And we'll, and we'll be discreet,
and we'll take care of you when this is all settled, but-- (groans)
all I'm asking for - Not good. - is a number that you think is fair. - Yeah, that's one of the reasons you don't have clients meet
individually amongst each other, especially here where this guy seems to be representing a class
or a whole group of people who have been wronged by this company. You can't conspire with a defendant and then screw over all the other members of the class for your own personal gain. This is exactly why you
want lawyers in the room, to prevent any kind of shenanigans, because lawyers know
they can get disbarred for this kind of nonsense. - Frobisher's net worth is upwards of two and a half billion dollars. (crowd groans) Now 100 million sounds like
a lot of money, and it is. But it's less than 5% of
what this man is worth. (chuckles softly) I think we have a strong case. - It doesn't matter how
much the defendant is worth. It matters how much you're going to get as a result of the litigation. I don't know the specifics of this case, but Glenn Close here may
be doing a big disservice to all of those class members
because when you're thinking about a potential recovery,
there are a couple of things you need to take into account, not just the top line number. Number one, no recovery is certain. Let's say that there is a 10% chance that you're going to win
everything that you think you do. Well, if you think you're entitled to a billion dollars,
then a 10% chance means that's worth about $100 million. On top of that, there's
the time value of money. Say you get a full recovery,
but it takes you five to 10 years to get that. Well, a lot of people would rather have a smaller amount right now. That's the net present
value of the recovery. And then on top of that, there
are all the attorney's fees and court costs that it's going to take to litigate this thing to the end. So those are some of the reasons why you might take a
smaller amount up front with the certainty of getting it than to have to deal
with years of litigation and potentially never
being able to recover if the defendant is judgment
proof and goes bankrupt. So you gotta take those
things into consideration. - I'd like to take it to a jury and let them decide what Mr.
Arthur Frobisher owes you. - Yeah, I'll bet you would, but that might not be in their interest. (crowd laughs) - Look at her. Normally she turns this shit down. She hates awards. - Then why is she here? - For the PR. - [Patty] The legal system
has just become another tool-- - Both cases, you get
your clients 100 million, you're a hero. But if Frobisher gets off that easy, the whole legal world
will know she tanked it. - That is not true at all. - Tom here is a vegan. - Only for health reasons. - Health reasons,
(laughs) right. (chuckles) - That's weird. - I read an interview once
with a Nobel Prize winner, a physicist genius, married six times. He said, "Don't have kids. "Ruins your ambition, keeps you from "what you want in life." He said to have wives instead. You can leave wives. You can't leave your own kids. - What is she signing? (laughs) Why does she need to sign 100
different pieces of paper? (laughs) - You know what I like about you? - No. - There's always something going on. - What's redeemable about her character? How would you know that? She's done nothing! - And you don't fall for (bleep). - Okay, I guess. (slow, dramatic music) She seems like a blank slate
that everyone just projects what they want onto her. - Patty Hewes has a new associate. - So what? I thought they voted to
accept the settlement. - Eh, I haven't gotten the call yet. And I'm worried. - The new associate's been
talking to Katie Connor. - [Frobisher] Who? - Our chef. - Ray, whatever it takes, fix this. (slow, dramatic music) - Uh oh, witness tampering. Don't witness tamper! - Saffron?
(eerie music) - David, if I don't
tell Patty about Katie, the clients lose the case. - I'm not sure that you
could be totally objective about this, Ellen. - What is that supposed to mean? - That you'll score points with Patty. - I would never do anything to hurt Katie. (head thuds against floor)
(intensifying dramatic music) - Then just keep her out of this! (laughs)
(Katie groans in pain) - (chuckles) What? Yep, sorry Saffron. But how would that even get
her to testify or not testify? What are they trying to accomplish here? (Katie screams) (laughs) Quiet, oh my God. All right, so if you were a lawyer and you paid someone to kill
a potential witness's dog, that is certainly a disbarrable offense. I really don't even think that that would help keep that witness quiet. She doesn't know anything here. What are these people doing? - You know what this means. They're gonna keep coming after her, personally, legally, in
whatever way they can. - Take it to the judge! There will be sanctions! - Ellen,
(soft bar piano playing) I don't take this for granted. I know how hard it is for you. - Well, if Katie can help the case, then we're doing the right thing. - Are you? - I'll do everything in
my power to protect her. - [Ellen] Good. - (laughs softly) Lawyers don't
really have that much power to protect people. They're not the police or the FBI. That's kind of a hollow promise. If this had happened in one of my cases, I immediately would have
taken this information to the judge. I would've asked for the police or the FBI to start investigating it. This is a serious crime when
you have witness tampered and you've killed someone's dog. Never mess with someone's dog. This is a serious problem
that should result in sanctions against the defendant, if not more criminal charges
against the defendant or his attorneys. This is not a small thing. This is clearly something that deserves its own investigation, and you shouldn't just
sweep it under the rug and just continue the litigation
as if nothing has happened. (dramatic music) - Maybe one of these days
I'll stop being impressed. Ellen figures out why you hired her, and you still get her
to deliver the witness. - (scoffs) You don't need
to deliver a witness. - Are you interviewing
for a new associate? - No, I like Ellen. I think she's gonna
have a brilliant future. - Oh, come on. Okay, so they killed the dog to force Ellen's friend to testify. But if they knew anything
about litigation, all they would have to
do is to issue a subpoena against the friend and
then depose the friend, regardless of whether
she wanted to or not. It's so stupid to try
and reverse blackmail or reverse witness tamper... (sighs) It doesn't even sound like she was really on the fence in the first place. There are mechanisms to
do this in litigation. You deal with witnesses who don't want to testify all the time. Ugh! (laughs) These people are terrible
lawyers, terrible lawyers. (dramatic music) (dog tags jingle) Yeah, souvenir for the dog
you murdered for no reason. (light, jaunty music) Okay, so now it's time
to give the first episode of Damages a grade for legal realism. (gavel bangs three times) Oh boy, it started out strong, but it really took a
nosedive there at the end. It started out with some
really good negotiations, some interesting interplay
between defendants and a class of representatives, realistic negotiations and back and forth. But then it took a nosedive
and turned into a soap opera with witness tampering for no reason, ignoring the rules of civil procedure. They could've gotten everything
that they wanted just through normal channels in litigation, but they don't really
seem to be great lawyers. So, all in all, I'm
giving the first episode of Damages a C plus. Patty Hewes and Ellen Parsons
failed at being good lawyers. Learning to think like a lawyer really means learning
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