Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Friend and morning show partner Mike Burg founding shareholder, which
you might sometimes call partner, but in their structure to
call a shareholder in the law firm of Berg Simpson,
there's a lot of other names there, but I just
call him Berg Simpson for short. And it came up
on the show just in passing on Friday that Mike
had just won a very big lawsuit, and then as
(00:22):
Mike told any more details about it, I thought it
was interesting enough to have him on the show to
talk about it. So, Mike Burg, good to see in person.
Thanks for being here.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
Yeah, I appreciate being here.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
Okay, So just give us, first of all, kind of
the the overview of what the case was.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Okay. Yeah, we representing a young woman who bought.
Speaker 3 (00:37):
A multi cooker It's called the Crockpot multic cooker by Sunbean,
which is owned by Newell within the time she bought it.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Within the owner's.
Speaker 3 (00:48):
Manual said for safety purposes, the pressurized pressure cooker, which
was one of the multi cookers, would not pressurize unless
the lid is locked. Well, as it turns out that
lid can be put in three or four different positions
and it'll click like it's locked, and then it'll pressurize
even though it's not locked. And then ultimately after it pressurizes,
(01:12):
if you go to deep pressurize it or touch it
at all, it explodes thirty five feet in the air
two hundred and fifty two degrees. And in this unfortunately,
it came down and badly burned my client.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
When you say badly burned, can you just describe her
injuries in a little bit, in the medical treatment she's
had to go through.
Speaker 3 (01:30):
Yeah, they she had her second degree burns on her face,
second and third degree on her neck, third degree on
her chest and breast, second and third degree on her arms,
on her hands, and her waist. She had to go
through and get allographs from a cadaver's skin all over
her body. She had a great burn doctor who did
(01:51):
a great job with her, but obviously some serious scarring
and obviously some very very bad burns.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
It seems to me that part of what you would
need to prove in order to win a case like this,
especially in fact, tell us what you want and then
I'll finish myself.
Speaker 3 (02:09):
Well, we seen done three different claims. One it was
a design defect because the lid could go on multiple
ways to no failure to warn about what would happen
if it did go in and three negligents, and we
won on all three claims.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
Jury awarded a total.
Speaker 3 (02:25):
Of fifty five zero point five million dollars broken down
in three and a half million for pain and suffering,
two million for disfigurement, and then and then fifty million
impunitive damages to punish these guys for what they did.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
So it seems to me in order to win, and
especially in order to win that much, you would need
to convince a jury that not only did the company
cause this thing to happen, but that they knew it
could happen and didn't do anything about it.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
Is that right?
Speaker 3 (03:00):
You have to prove wilful and wanting that what they
were doing is they knew as early as in February
of eighteen that people were getting badly burned. People were
sending in pictures of not only them, but babies, dogs
being burned exactly the same way she got burned. Instead
of withdrawing it and recalling it, they actually made and
(03:23):
miss representations to the Consumer Protection Safety Commission, blamed the consumers,
didn't take it off the market sold a million of
them at one hundred dollars a shot. Waited two and
a half years, and then finally they recalled it and
in the recall notice they said, oh, guess what, it
will pressurize.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
Even when it's not locked. Did you were you able
to show during discovery?
Speaker 1 (03:51):
Were you able to get your hands on internal communications
that showed that the people in the company knew this?
Speaker 2 (03:58):
You know what? They played a game.
Speaker 3 (04:00):
They originally they had twelve witnesses. They were hiding witnesses
from us. They completely attempted to keep us from getting
that information.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
However, we did get it. We took a deposition.
Speaker 3 (04:12):
One of my partners took a great deposition of the
guy who reported to the Consumer Product Safety Commission, and
what we found out is that the lawyer or the
general counsel was telling them it was the consumer's fault,
not the engineers.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
And so yes, we had that kind of evidence. One
of the things that.
Speaker 1 (04:30):
You told me by text when I was asking you
about this on Friday is that, of course, since they
sold a million of these and it's a defect in construction,
it's not surprising that this happened to other people, and
other people went to other lawyers and you told me
other lawyers were typically settling these cases for one hundred
thousand dollars and you just won fifty million, and a
(04:52):
judge may will end up reducing the fifty million, but
it's still going to probably be at least a high
seven figure but probably an figure number.
Speaker 3 (05:01):
Depending what the judge does, because we have caps, which
you and I talked about.
Speaker 2 (05:04):
I don't like caps.
Speaker 3 (05:05):
I think you do what the jury says, but it
could be anywhere from eight million to like thirty three million,
depending on what the judge does. But let me talk
about the fact that other lawyers we looked for other
cases that went to trial, there were none.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
Our Brethren, a.
Speaker 3 (05:20):
Firm in Florida for Minneapolis, they had a lot of
these cases, and I actually went and talked to some
of them, saying, well, what are you doing, and they said, oh, man,
we settled ten or fifteen of them for one hundred
grand or two hundred grand. And unfortunately, there are lawyers
out there who don't want to go to trial. They
don't want to, you know, what they have to put
(05:41):
in the time, the effort, and also the money. You know,
we had a great expert on the liability of it.
In terms of the defect out of California, worked in
the aerospace industry.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
We had a great doctor.
Speaker 3 (05:54):
You know those people you have to go hire the
best if you can. Instead of doing that, what they
do is they turn around and say, you know, like
some of the lawyers, say, we'll get you as much
as we can, as fast as we can, and they
convince these people who've been badly burned that they should
settle their case, and many times that people need the money.
In our particular instance, they offered us over seven figures
(06:16):
to settle the case, the largest settlement offer they ever made.
And we told our client who needed the money. I mean,
this is a woman who works minimum wage jobs, worked
at ARC. You know, her life was tough enough, and
thank goodness, she had confidence in us that we would
go to trial and we'd be successful.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
Since I'm not a good lawyer, I'm going to ask
you a question that I don't already know the answer to,
because I should only ask questions I know the answer to.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
But you know, one of the things.
Speaker 1 (06:45):
That I talk about when I talk about Berg Simpson,
when I'm talking about you on my show, is that
you guys take good care of your clients in ways
that go beyond just doing everything you can to win
in court. So I'm curious, and again I'm not even
sure if I should ask you this in public, but
I'm going to. So you said that your client needs
(07:05):
the money low wage worker, and you convinced your client that, hey,
I think we can win this case, and I think
we can win a lot of money, but it's going
to take some time.
Speaker 3 (07:16):
Right.
Speaker 1 (07:17):
What did that mean for you and your firm as
far as what you had to do separate from arguing
in front of a judge or jury to take care of.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
That client during that time when you told her she
needs to be patient.
Speaker 3 (07:31):
Well, you know, first of all, it was a very
tough decision because that money that she would have gotten
would have made a big difference in her life, but
it wouldn't have made the difference in two ways.
Speaker 2 (07:41):
One, she wanted.
Speaker 3 (07:43):
To go to court because she thought what they did
was wrong, and she didn't want anybody else to get
burned like she did, which was very admirable.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
I really appreciated that.
Speaker 3 (07:52):
Second of all, when we go to trial, we go
to trial with more than one shareholder.
Speaker 2 (07:56):
We had three shareholders it.
Speaker 1 (07:58):
And those are just So folks understand, I had like
a partner in the typical law firm, the senior people
at the farm exactly, you have.
Speaker 2 (08:06):
The a team.
Speaker 3 (08:07):
And second of all, we're still talking to her about
how we can help make sure that her money is safe,
you know when and if the final judgment, because they
could appeal it. They put on no defense, which was
amazing to me. Like I said, they were hiding witnesses.
We started with twelve and then by the time we
were ready to finish our case, they had two and
(08:30):
they never called either one of them, which was I'd
never seen that in my thirty forty.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
Five years of forty nine years of practicing. But they
knew that we were ready.
Speaker 3 (08:41):
We were ready for every witness they had on their list.
We had gone and done a deep dive on every
one of them, and we knew that we could cross
examine them and make them look foolish or make them.
Speaker 2 (08:51):
Look like liars. Yeah, that's the hard work that has
to get done.
Speaker 3 (08:56):
But in terms of the client, we're always looking out
for the best interests in the And if my client
would have said, hey, you know what, I think I
really need to do this now, we would have said
you know what, that's your decision. But our advice is
that we feel we have a strong case and we're
going to do better. This could temporarily help you with
(09:16):
the money they offered, but it would not take care
of holding them accountable, which is really the important thing
is you know, let me just say one thing in
my closing argument. Right now, we have a lot of
anti corporation reading corporations.
Speaker 2 (09:33):
We saw what happened in New York. That is not
the way to take care of those problems.
Speaker 3 (09:38):
The way to take problems, to take care of them
if you have an insurance company that denies you and
denies and denies, is to get a lawyer and go
in court, not to go kill somebody in Manhattan. That's
the way you deal with it, and that's how we
dealt with it here a greedy corporation.
Speaker 1 (09:55):
Mike Burg is founding shareholder of Berg Simpson along with
his partner for former Wyoming Senator Alan Simpson, and these
kinds of stories are why I'm proud to have Burg
Simpson as a morning show partner.
Friend and morning show partner Mike Burg founding shareholder, which
you might sometimes call partner, but in their structure to
call a shareholder in the law firm of Berg Simpson,
there's a lot of other names there, but I just
call him Berg Simpson for short. And it came up
on the show just in passing on Friday that Mike
had just won a very big lawsuit, and then as
(00:22):
Mike told any more details about it, I thought it
was interesting enough to have him on the show to
talk about it. So, Mike Burg, good to see in person.
Thanks for being here.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
Yeah, I appreciate being here.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
Okay, So just give us, first of all, kind of
the the overview of what the case was.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Okay. Yeah, we representing a young woman who bought.
Speaker 3 (00:37):
A multi cooker It's called the Crockpot multic cooker by Sunbean,
which is owned by Newell within the time she bought it.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Within the owner's.
Speaker 3 (00:48):
Manual said for safety purposes, the pressurized pressure cooker, which
was one of the multi cookers, would not pressurize unless
the lid is locked. Well, as it turns out that
lid can be put in three or four different positions
and it'll click like it's locked, and then it'll pressurize
even though it's not locked. And then ultimately after it pressurizes,
(01:12):
if you go to deep pressurize it or touch it
at all, it explodes thirty five feet in the air
two hundred and fifty two degrees. And in this unfortunately,
it came down and badly burned my client.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
When you say badly burned, can you just describe her
injuries in a little bit, in the medical treatment she's
had to go through.
Speaker 3 (01:30):
Yeah, they she had her second degree burns on her face,
second and third degree on her neck, third degree on
her chest and breast, second and third degree on her arms,
on her hands, and her waist. She had to go
through and get allographs from a cadaver's skin all over
her body. She had a great burn doctor who did
(01:51):
a great job with her, but obviously some serious scarring
and obviously some very very bad burns.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
It seems to me that part of what you would
need to prove in order to win a case like this,
especially in fact, tell us what you want and then
I'll finish myself.
Speaker 3 (02:09):
Well, we seen done three different claims. One it was
a design defect because the lid could go on multiple
ways to no failure to warn about what would happen
if it did go in and three negligents, and we
won on all three claims.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
Jury awarded a total.
Speaker 3 (02:25):
Of fifty five zero point five million dollars broken down
in three and a half million for pain and suffering,
two million for disfigurement, and then and then fifty million
impunitive damages to punish these guys for what they did.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
So it seems to me in order to win, and
especially in order to win that much, you would need
to convince a jury that not only did the company
cause this thing to happen, but that they knew it
could happen and didn't do anything about it.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
Is that right?
Speaker 3 (03:00):
You have to prove wilful and wanting that what they
were doing is they knew as early as in February
of eighteen that people were getting badly burned. People were
sending in pictures of not only them, but babies, dogs
being burned exactly the same way she got burned. Instead
of withdrawing it and recalling it, they actually made and
(03:23):
miss representations to the Consumer Protection Safety Commission, blamed the consumers,
didn't take it off the market sold a million of
them at one hundred dollars a shot. Waited two and
a half years, and then finally they recalled it and
in the recall notice they said, oh, guess what, it
will pressurize.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
Even when it's not locked. Did you were you able
to show during discovery?
Speaker 1 (03:51):
Were you able to get your hands on internal communications
that showed that the people in the company knew this?
Speaker 2 (03:58):
You know what? They played a game.
Speaker 3 (04:00):
They originally they had twelve witnesses. They were hiding witnesses
from us. They completely attempted to keep us from getting
that information.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
However, we did get it. We took a deposition.
Speaker 3 (04:12):
One of my partners took a great deposition of the
guy who reported to the Consumer Product Safety Commission, and
what we found out is that the lawyer or the
general counsel was telling them it was the consumer's fault,
not the engineers.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
And so yes, we had that kind of evidence. One
of the things that.
Speaker 1 (04:30):
You told me by text when I was asking you
about this on Friday is that, of course, since they
sold a million of these and it's a defect in construction,
it's not surprising that this happened to other people, and
other people went to other lawyers and you told me
other lawyers were typically settling these cases for one hundred
thousand dollars and you just won fifty million, and a
(04:52):
judge may will end up reducing the fifty million, but
it's still going to probably be at least a high
seven figure but probably an figure number.
Speaker 3 (05:01):
Depending what the judge does, because we have caps, which
you and I talked about.
Speaker 2 (05:04):
I don't like caps.
Speaker 3 (05:05):
I think you do what the jury says, but it
could be anywhere from eight million to like thirty three million,
depending on what the judge does. But let me talk
about the fact that other lawyers we looked for other
cases that went to trial, there were none.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
Our Brethren, a.
Speaker 3 (05:20):
Firm in Florida for Minneapolis, they had a lot of
these cases, and I actually went and talked to some
of them, saying, well, what are you doing, and they said, oh, man,
we settled ten or fifteen of them for one hundred
grand or two hundred grand. And unfortunately, there are lawyers
out there who don't want to go to trial. They
don't want to, you know, what they have to put
(05:41):
in the time, the effort, and also the money. You know,
we had a great expert on the liability of it.
In terms of the defect out of California, worked in
the aerospace industry.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
We had a great doctor.
Speaker 3 (05:54):
You know those people you have to go hire the
best if you can. Instead of doing that, what they
do is they turn around and say, you know, like
some of the lawyers, say, we'll get you as much
as we can, as fast as we can, and they
convince these people who've been badly burned that they should
settle their case, and many times that people need the money.
In our particular instance, they offered us over seven figures
(06:16):
to settle the case, the largest settlement offer they ever made.
And we told our client who needed the money. I mean,
this is a woman who works minimum wage jobs, worked
at ARC. You know, her life was tough enough, and
thank goodness, she had confidence in us that we would
go to trial and we'd be successful.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
Since I'm not a good lawyer, I'm going to ask
you a question that I don't already know the answer to,
because I should only ask questions I know the answer to.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
But you know, one of the things.
Speaker 1 (06:45):
That I talk about when I talk about Berg Simpson,
when I'm talking about you on my show, is that
you guys take good care of your clients in ways
that go beyond just doing everything you can to win
in court. So I'm curious, and again I'm not even
sure if I should ask you this in public, but
I'm going to. So you said that your client needs
(07:05):
the money low wage worker, and you convinced your client that, hey,
I think we can win this case, and I think
we can win a lot of money, but it's going
to take some time.
Speaker 3 (07:16):
Right.
Speaker 1 (07:17):
What did that mean for you and your firm as
far as what you had to do separate from arguing
in front of a judge or jury to take care of.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
That client during that time when you told her she
needs to be patient.
Speaker 3 (07:31):
Well, you know, first of all, it was a very
tough decision because that money that she would have gotten
would have made a big difference in her life, but
it wouldn't have made the difference in two ways.
Speaker 2 (07:41):
One, she wanted.
Speaker 3 (07:43):
To go to court because she thought what they did
was wrong, and she didn't want anybody else to get
burned like she did, which was very admirable.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
I really appreciated that.
Speaker 3 (07:52):
Second of all, when we go to trial, we go
to trial with more than one shareholder.
Speaker 2 (07:56):
We had three shareholders it.
Speaker 1 (07:58):
And those are just So folks understand, I had like
a partner in the typical law firm, the senior people
at the farm exactly, you have.
Speaker 2 (08:06):
The a team.
Speaker 3 (08:07):
And second of all, we're still talking to her about
how we can help make sure that her money is safe,
you know when and if the final judgment, because they
could appeal it. They put on no defense, which was
amazing to me. Like I said, they were hiding witnesses.
We started with twelve and then by the time we
were ready to finish our case, they had two and
(08:30):
they never called either one of them, which was I'd
never seen that in my thirty forty.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
Five years of forty nine years of practicing. But they
knew that we were ready.
Speaker 3 (08:41):
We were ready for every witness they had on their list.
We had gone and done a deep dive on every
one of them, and we knew that we could cross
examine them and make them look foolish or make them.
Speaker 2 (08:51):
Look like liars. Yeah, that's the hard work that has
to get done.
Speaker 3 (08:56):
But in terms of the client, we're always looking out
for the best interests in the And if my client
would have said, hey, you know what, I think I
really need to do this now, we would have said
you know what, that's your decision. But our advice is
that we feel we have a strong case and we're
going to do better. This could temporarily help you with
(09:16):
the money they offered, but it would not take care
of holding them accountable, which is really the important thing
is you know, let me just say one thing in
my closing argument. Right now, we have a lot of
anti corporation reading corporations.
Speaker 2 (09:33):
We saw what happened in New York. That is not
the way to take care of those problems.
Speaker 3 (09:38):
The way to take problems, to take care of them
if you have an insurance company that denies you and
denies and denies, is to get a lawyer and go
in court, not to go kill somebody in Manhattan. That's
the way you deal with it, and that's how we
dealt with it here a greedy corporation.
Speaker 1 (09:55):
Mike Burg is founding shareholder of Berg Simpson along with
his partner for former Wyoming Senator Alan Simpson, and these
kinds of stories are why I'm proud to have Burg
Simpson as a morning show partner.
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