Michael Hill

With hundreds of millions of dollars recently recovered for clients, Michael Hill has changed the game elder abuse cases against nursing homes and assisted living facilities. Over years, Michael has refined strategies to turn what was long thought to be negatives in elder abuse cases (the old, sick, and dying trope), into attributes that address the punitive aspect of compensatory non-economic damages.

Focus

Identifying the winning theme and story in the case. Where there is a catastrophic injury in a nursing home case, there is a systemic failure to be diagnosed and exposed. Finding former employees and proving the behind-the-scenes systems case that can’t be found in traditional discovery. Differentiating “good” from “bad” evidence and standard of care concepts using focus groups. Simplifying the case to its core issues allowing you to try a complex elder abuse in days in days by limiting the number of witnesses, ordering those witnesses and evidence, and maximizing damages for consistent 7 and 8 figure verdicts.

Goals

To turn your traditional nursing home and assisted living neglect and abuse cases into record setting verdicts.

Student Prerequisites

Students should be prepared to bring a nursing home or assisted living facility case and poised to address all aspects of the case, including case framing and presentation of lay and expert witnesses, with a learning mindset eager to see the case from a new perspective.

What Strategies Will You Learn?

Finding the Winning Story

Every compelling story has 4 things:

Hero: Someone the jury can champion

Villain: Someone the jury can look to as the antagonistic force, the figure against whom to root.

Theme: The central idea or underlying message that demonstrates that the bad acts are bigger than all of us and our client’s injuries are an example of the bad conduct, not the root of the bad conduct.

Conflict: The struggle between opposing forces (care vs cash) that drives the stories theme

Without these components, any story is inert and fails to motivate the jury to act.

Case Simplifying and Structuring

Nursing home cases often have thousands of pages of records, dozens or hundreds of instances of poor care and challenging patient interactions (for example, patient refusals of behavioral problems like spitting, punching, or biting). These records and facts can quickly get out of control, resulting in a chaotic web of distractions leading to juror confusion and even distrust. The essential task is to synthesize this chaos into one or two simple issues, allowing the defense to get marred in the case they are used to using to their advantage.

Finding the Systemic Case

Bad care is upsetting. Corporate greed at the expense of human life is infuriating. Every elder abuse case has two subcases: The what and the why. The what is the bad care that happened. The answer to why the bad care happened is the systemic failures, done intentionally or in total regard for human life, that motivates the jury to punish.

Jury Selection

There are universals that apply to all jury selection: connecting with the jury, gaining the trust of the jury, getting people to feel comfortable discussing sensitive topics, letting jurors open up and do most of the talking, and helping unfavorable juror know this is not the right case for them. But, who the specific jurors who are favorable to this case requires a unique skillset and insights for elder abuse cases.

Opening Statements

Although the facts change from case to case, the purpose of opening statement remains the same in elder abuse case:

What: Tell the winning story of what happened?

Why: Show the story of why it happened?

Anger: Establish the rules / violations of basic human principles

Activate: Set the stage for why the jury needs to do something

Undermine: Eliminate the real or perceived defenses

Master persuading the jury to champion your case from the beginning of trial.

Presentation Evidence

While the story is necessary to win the case, the evidence must drive the story. Not all witnesses are created equal. In a typical elder abuse case, there may be over 100 potential witnesses when you consider the multitude of facility caregivers, treating providers, former employees, corporate representatives, and friends and family. Editing who to call, when to call them, and what evidence to elicit is the difference between a defense verdict or a record judgment.

Maximizing Damages

The purpose of damages in elder abuse cases is different than in many other personal injury cases. Moreso than most other cases, the damages are inherently punitive. Your clients likely have no lost earnings, no future medical bills, had few years to live, and a future life that many of us would not choose. So, what drives large verdicts is one that needs to express the intrinsic value of human life, of righting wrongs, and penalizing the violations of basic human values. Damages are less about your client and more about changing a patter of misconduct that will inevitably continue if the jury does not act now.