Mike "Pap" Papantonio

[Theme Music Plays]

Mike “Pap” Papantonio: The thing we used to talk about is “What holds lawyers back?” Why do I do that? Because it’s a reflection of what the PBM industry is. They take kickbacks…. Kind of our marching orders is to do well by doing good. And I think that sounds, you know, that sounds a little hashy, but it’s not.

Narrator: Welcome to Celebrating Justice, presented by the Trial Lawyers Journal and CloudLex, the next-gen Legal Cloud© platform built exclusively for personal injury law. Get inspired by the nation’s top trial lawyers and share in the stories that shape our pursuit of justice. Follow the podcast and join our community at www.triallawyersjournal.com now here’s your host, editor of TLJ and VP of Marketing at CloudLex, Chad Sands.

Pap: Yeah, see if it, see if it takes. I’ve done these things where I’ve gone like 30 minutes and they say, “Oh, well, we had problems on. Hey, matter of fact, guys, why don’t you capture. Okay, we’re working on our side.”

Chad Sands: Okay, good. We got a backup of the backup then.

Pap: I always do that, that.

Chad Sands: Take me back and tell me the story about why you wanted to become a trial lawyer?

These weren’t wealthy families. These were people that were living paycheck to paycheck, sometimes were kind enough to take me into their family. And so I’ve always had that notion that, I always wanted to help the underdog. These people.

From a scale of cultural evaluation, they would be considered definitely the underdog. That was one factor. The other factor that kind of led me here is I was a journalism major at University of Florida. I was going to be a foreign correspondent, was my goal.” Ultimately, in about the last year of my school, somebody said to me, you know, I think you ought to think about being an attorney.

So I was kind of nonplus about it, Chad, you know, take it or leave it. I knew what I wanted to do. All my friends at that point were going and they were covering the Nicaragua Sandinista story and it was revolution Taking place down there was heated revolution. And that’s where everybody wanted to go.

If you had a journalism degree, University of Florida had a spectacular news editing kind of all-round writing school. I mean it was. Columbia and University of Florida were regarded as the premier journalism schools in the country. So, I was really mentally prepared to do that.

And then somebody said to me, I want you to meet Perry Nichols, who you’ve probably heard of Perry Nichols, was regarded as the very best, very best trial lawyer of his time. There were about three of them that names were kicking around during his time. But he was a spectacular trial lawyer who had really mastered the art of cross examination, I would say would be his strength. And so I said, “Well, okay, yeah, I’ll meet him and I’d love to see what he has to say.” And so I went to his house in Arcadia, Florida, and it was, a cinder block house.

He was into that kind of Angus cattle business. And he had this place out in the middle of, nowhere. And so I go into his house and I start, you know, kind of unartfully. I don’t really even know what to say, this man.

I mean, I’ve got this Goliath of a lawyer sitting in front of me and I’m halfway thinking about wanting to be a lawyer. And so I said, “What is it that sets you apart from m other lawyers? And in back of him he had books, and they were Steinbeck and Conrad and Kafka, some of the greatest writers of the time.” He said, “Son, those are books I’ve read a couple times. And what he was saying to me is there’s nothing magical about what we think of when we think of, an idea that all these ideas typically have been out there.

And it’s our job to understand those ideas and bring, bring more space and more impact to those ideas and then deliver them as a trial lawyer. So I walked away from there thinking, wow, you know, I had to really think about it. I thought. So I concluded, well, I can always be a journalist.

You know, I can write, but let me get my law degree. And that’s what he had talked to me about. And ultimately, the real irony, Chad, is that let’s see, about 35 years, no, good God, 45 years later, I, got the Perry Nichols Award in Florida, which is the highest award you can get as a trial lawyer in the state of Florida. So it’s kind of funny how things went full circle.

So there’s a lot of things that have impact on you. But if I’m to Distill. What it is is that you, You’re. You’re product of how you’re raised.” And when you’re raised around people as decent as the people that I was raised around, you say, well, that’s, that’s the. That’s the side of the V that I want to be on. And I had no interest at all of doing anything but that.

Chad Sands: interesting that you asked Perry Nichols in that meeting, what makes you unique? That’s actually the second question I ask on this podcast. And I speak to trial lawyers who have just done one side, you know, second chair on one motor vehicle accident to guys like you who are leading, you know, change in society. So after all these years, what makes you unique compared to everybody else?

Chad Sands: Yes.

Pap: Is I tell every. Every lawyer that wants, to know kind of, what have you done in your career? I said, “You know, in your wallet or in your office somewhere, you have that thing that’s called a license. It’s a license to practice law.

And I have the same license that you have, but. And I could choose to do 1-800-car- crash, 1,800-comp.” I could churn cases for my entire career, or I can use that license to say there’s something really significant I can do, and I can clean up an ecosystem. I can get bad drugs off the market. I can get mom and pop’s money back when Wall Street steals it from them.

And so I’ve always thought about why it’s kind of like the person who chooses to sell used, cars versus jets. Right?

Chad Sands: Right.

Pap: Yes. The guys selling the jets got a tougher road because there aren’t that many people buy jets.

Chad Sands: Yes.

Pap: The guy selling used cars can sell more cars, but the volume and the impact is dramatically different.

Chad Sands: Yes.

Pap: So I think I kind of look at that same scale of economics where it comes to practice and law not just from the economic standpoint, but from the impact that you have on so many people’s lives. And you either believe that or you don’t. It either matters to you or you don’t. It matters to me to the point, do I write books about it after I’ve handled the case and I try to go back in and explore what happened?

You know, did it change anything? Yeah, I guess that’s one difference. I guess that’s that that is somewhat unique because there’s only about 20 law firms in the entire nation that, that seem to be thinking like that. If you really drill down, there’s only about 20, 20 firms you can come up and say, yeah, these are the people at the front of the fight trying to make, trying to impact culture.

And there’s a selfish side to it. I mean, obviously, I’m. I don’t want, you know, I’m not trying to. A little orphan or Pollyanna about it.

You know, the scale of what you accomplish has a direct impact on the scale of what you benefit from financially.

Chad Sands: Yeah.

Pap: And around here, one of our, you know, kind of our marching orders is to do well by doing good. And I think that sounds, you know, that sounds a little hashy. A little. But it’s not.

It’s. It’s kind of. You have to really have that belief and you have to know that you’re probably going to do pretty well if you choose the right fights, you know, and they’re big fights all the time.

Chad Sands: Big fights. And it’s not just kind of, I think with you and firms like yours who are helping or impact acting just your clients, you’re actually impacting a lot of other lawyers and all of those clients and all of their clients with kind of some of the work you’re doing. And going back to some of your early mentors, you mentioned Perry Nichols, also Fred Levin. When you think back to, you know, the lessons they passed on to you and taught you, what are some of those real important gems that you think the younger lawyers nowadays are not getting taught or not getting shown?

Pap: It surfaced with Fred. I used to talk to Fred all the time about the direction of the law firm. You know, he. This law firm is 71 years old.

And Fred very early on brought me on as a name partner, Levin, Papantonio, because I was just getting good results. And I think the thing we used to talk about it is what holds lawyers back? What is it that lawyers can’t overcome? And if I, drill down on it, it’s a simple word.

It’s called rejection. They’re fearful of rejection. They’re fearful of moving outside of their safe space. Most of them grew up as president of their class and, you know, homecoming queen and president of the fraternity, whatever.

They were always in that position where they were had this sense of self-importance, right? Yes., and all of a sudden you ask them, well, you know what, Mary? You know what, Joe? I’m going to ask you to do something that’s risky.

Okay? First of all, it’s risky. Second of all, you might fail. And thirdly, your fail may make you really unhappy for a long time, and people are going to notice you fail.

It’s that fear of reject that keeps lawyers from doing what they need to do to grow. They buy into everything that’s been handed down to them. Um, generation after generation, you know, they come, they go to a law firm, and the law firm does, hey, we do 1-800-car- crash, Bobby. You’ve got to do 100 of them a year.

And, you know. Yeah. And what kind of life is that? It’s not much different to me to say to those awful people on the other side of the V that come out of law school and say, I’m going to work.

I’m going to go to work for a defense firm. And, you know, my big day is going to be when I have prevented a thousand people from recovering after the defendant company that I represent has caused them, has killed them and maimed them. That’s a big day for me.

Chad Sands: Yeah.

Pap: And those are people that are terrified of rejection, Chad. Those are people that might have graduated in the first top, of the class. They may be editors of the law review.

Chad Sands: Yes.

Pap: Yeah. But they come out like veal. I call them veal because they graduate from law school, they’re put into this isolated, tiny office, and all day they sit doing memos and briefs because they’re smart. I mean, they’re really smart people, but they simply have no imagination.

They have no creativity. They have no sense of a bigger world out there. So they’re relegated to make the little bit. I mean, relative what we do.

What they make is pennies on a dollar.

Chad Sands: Yeah.

Pap: And so they’re relegated to that for their entire life. They never really accomplish anything, but they, they are terrified of rejection.

Chad Sands: Well, it.

Pap: And it’s a, it’s a safe.

Chad Sands: Space to get, you know, 300, 600 grand a year as an associate.

Pap: Exactly, exactly. And you’re a member of the country club. And, you know, you’re, you’re, you’re affiliated with the, you know, the elite part of that culture where you go to work and they’re happy that that’s what they’ve grown up with. You see, that’s who they are.

And they can’t reach outside of that. And it’s sad, man. I see the same thing with people who just choose to, you know, drink out of the same damn coffee cup every day. You let me go to the office and do the same thing.

1-800-car-crash. Come on in. Sign them up. You know, you know, it’s, it’s.

Is that, is that practicing law? I mean, really. Okay, so, so it’s a different. They have the same license that our lawyers have.

Chad Sands: That’s right.

Pap: Or that. Or that the lawyers in 20 other firms in this country have that say, hell no, I want to do something different.

Chad Sands: What about Perry Nichols?

Pap: Perry was a lion of man. I mean he was developing how to try a case during a time where plaintiff’s lawyers were despised. Man, I mean, you know, everybody coming out of law school wanted to go to a silk stocking firm.

Yeah. And Perry Nichols was the guy that was on the other side of the table every time they show up in court. So he, he, it took him years to where people understood this person is extraordinary to the point to, where he needs to be remembered for it is a. He’s a Clarence Darrow quality lawyer. You understand what I’m saying? I mean, how many Clarence Darrows have we had? But, he’s a Clarence Darrow lawyer. And the impact that he had on young lawyers, if they were paying attention, then they paid attention to a guy like Perry Nichols.

Chad Sands: So you had some early mentors. And I touched on it a little bit about, you know, I think what you’re doing, educating other lawyers to help their communities, to help their clients through mass towards made perfect, which I’d like to chat a little bit about, the 25th anniversary this year.

Pap: Mhm.

Chad Sands: When you know, I don’t know if it was five, five of you in a dark room, you know, 25 years ago saying let’s get this thing together in Vegas and do it twice a. But did you ever imagine that 25 years later it would be where it’s at and in terms of the influence and education that you’ve given so many.

Pap: People, Chad, I don’t think anybody believes that MTMP was even a good idea. I remember bringing it to my partners and said, they said, “Let me get this right. You want to go to Vegas and you want to put all of your competitors, the people who want your business on a stage talking about how great they are and their great ideas and how they’re going to change. Those are your competitors, Pat, remember?”

“And you want to put them on stage.” I said, “Yeah, right.”

“And you want to spend a million dollars a year. By the time it’s over doing that, the ah, firm has to pay. That’s after all the costs are paid.”

“Yeah, that’s what I want to do.”

And the only person that really kind of understood it was Fred Levin. Fred Was, you know, Fred was a single event lawyer. He never did any mass torts. People don’t know that, but he was a, he was a single event lawyer. Had the biggest verdicts in America. I mean, they were huge verdicts. I think for four years, he had two of the largest verdicts in the country.

So. But he understood that in order to sustain growth in our firm, growth in the practice, we had to do something unusual. And that was the unusual thing. So, yeah, it was.

And oddly enough, you know, the first time we showed up in Vegas, the place was packed because the idea was to get people thinking about something different than they go to their office and thinking about every day. You know, every day, it’s the same routine, but for four or five days they go to Vegas and they think about possibilities that they’ve never even considered, possibilities that can make them mammoth in the practice of law.” If they’ll simply overcome that fear of rejection and if they’ll be teachable and if they’ll be willing to say to some of the guys that have been doing this for 20 years, you know, I don’t know how to do it. I want your help. You know, I’m glad to pay you, some percentage of a case until I can learn how to do it, and then they’re on their own. So, I mean, it was a clearinghouse. The other part of it was when we first started doing mass torts, there was only. I mean, it may have been 10 people at that point in the country, 15 at the most, that would do all these big projects. Here was the problem, Chad. If I were handling a project and I had a thousand cases, right? Then, they would just. I would go away. They’d settle my cases, and then they’d settle the cases of something, you know, the other factors for them, the other people who are a threat. But then the project never. There was never closure to the problem, right?

Chad Sands: Yes.

Pap: Because we didn’t have enough lawyers involved. Now when I say, “Okay, we want closure to the problem,” it is. They’re considering the fact that 50 lawyers, 60 lawyers throughout the country can continue coming at them after they settle with me.”

Chad Sands: Right?

Pap: So the closure has to be for everybody. The bigger vision has to be, when this case is over, these people who have been harmed have been made whole as we can. Product is off the market. Warning is on the product. Mom and Pop get their money back, whatever it is. Ecosystem is cleaned up from toxins, that some damn corporation has put toxins all over lakes and ecosystems. So it Takes those kinds of numbers to bring what I call a global closure. And so it’s gone from us just handling our cases like maybe asbestos, whatever it may be. Well, when asbestos started, I mean, there weren’t that many of us doing it.

Chad Sands: Yeah.

Pap: So they’d settle my cases and then they’d settle the cases of maybe 10 other lawyers and they were, they were done for the day.

Chad Sands: I was there in April this year and you talked a lot about ultra processed foods and this new type 2 diabetes that didn’t exist when I was born in 1980. You know, kids growing up, up in the 80s didn’t have it. And I found it so interesting that you trace it back to big tobacco companies who ultimately got their wrist slapped and then pivoted into the food corporations.

Pap: Yeah, it’s the same people, Chad. The same people who killed hundreds of thousands of people with tobacco now are killing thousands and thousands of kids through their food. It’s the same people. Yeah, they’ve just moved over to the, to the, they’ve moved over to the food industry because it’s more profitable.

Chad Sands: And they, and they took their dyes and flesh flavors and all of that that they weren’t allowed to put into nicotine and started putting it into food.

Pap: That’s correct. It’s an addictive. Not only the flavors, they put the addictive chemicals in the food to where it’s an addiction problem. If you tell a, if you tell a little 8-year-old that he can’t have his Captain Crunch anymore for the rest of his life, he’s going to hysteria because he’s addicted to damn Captain Crunch.

So it’s really. And you know, the other reason they were able to make that pivot, Chad, is nobody in the tobacco years was thrown in prison.

Chad Sands: Right.

Pap: You know, you had the 12 dwarfs standing up in front of Congress. And now, sir, is there any connection between the product that you make in cancer? Oh, absolutely not. I’ve studied it, I signed.

There’s no connection at all. Those guys knew exactly what they were doing. They were perjuring themselves in front of Congress. And the Department of Justice is so dysfunctional.

They’re so useless. Used to be. Now I don’t know what we’re going to get now. But they used to be just for generation after generation they’ve been so useless they wouldn’t prosecute these people.

And you don’t change that conduct until you put people like that in prison. Until MBA schools are talking, they say, “You know, let me tell you the story of Uncle Joe. Uncle Joe did this and he got thrown in prison now in MBA school, Uncle Joe did this and he made a big profit and he got slapped on the hand and then he moved to the next ugly project and did it again. Yeah, because we have a, we have a toothless Department of Justice, I mean absolute toothless.

Most of them are career prosecutors. They’re not even trial lawyers. They’ve come most of the time through, you know, some, some bizarre background and they’re, they’re put in these positions of being prosecutors. Hell, they’ve never been to trial.

Most of them. They don’t have to go to trial. Right. So until you prosecute these people, you don’t change that conduct that you described.

Day one, they’re selling tobacco that kills people. Day two, they’re selling food that kills people.”

Chad Sands: Yeah.

Pap: Can we let them go again?

Chad Sands: Is it too late? Obviously, you want to lead the litigation, but as he said, “Justice Department isn’t going to hold them accountable.”

Pap: The Justice Department, Chad, won’t do anything. As a matter of fact, I don’t know if you were in Vegas when I launched the opioid case, okay. I only knew the edges of the opioid case, but I knew they’re going to be great documents. And so the Department of Justice, for this single time that I can identify, they had a real prosecutor in Colorado, okay.

He was uncovering this incredible story about the criminality of the opioid industry, how they were nothing short of just pure drug pushers. And so he wanted to prosecute. In Department of Justice, Eric Holder, who, oh, by the way, was Obama’s Attorney general, said, no, we’re not going to do that. Well, you know why he said, “That’s right?”

Because he, he, he’s come up his entire career defending these white collar thugs, right?

Chad Sands: Yeah.

Pap: And so he says, “No, we’re not going to prosecute.” So, but this one, this one lawyer out in Colorado said, “Really, I’ve got all this stuff.” So we take all that stuff and we build the case that he was trying to build. And we settled with the opioid industry for $75 billion. And we’re still at it, by the way, it’s still continuing.

Chad Sands: You talk a lot about how fact is always stranger than fantasy in the practice of law and that a lot of your writing and fiction work you do because, you know, corporate America and the other people aren’t really talking about it.

Pap: Right.

Chad Sands: And that you weave that into your story to not only entertain but educate people. Your novel, ““The Middleman”” touches on these PBMs right.

Pap: Well, you know, let me give you an equation. This trial lawyers journal that you do, right?

Chad Sands: Yes.

Pap: Now, these are the kind of stories corporate media will never talk about. The things you talk about.

Chad Sands: Right?

Narrator: Right.

Pap: They won’t hear these lawyers’ stories. They don’t give a damn that, you know, lawyers are, you know, they’re keeping America safe in so many ways. But here, you tell the stories now. So here’s my analogy.

These books step into that same role because corporate media is dead. Okay, Chad, There is no such thing as investigative journalism in corporate media. It is a useless, toothless thing. And so if I were to try to.

The story of PBMS on this in Middleman is a story where it tells how right now, until. Oh, by the way, till Bobby Kennedy just made some changes and got Trump to sign on to something where he’s forcing these people to reduce cost of pharmaceuticals.

Chad Sands: Okay, I actually wanted to ask you.

Pap: I’ll go there. I’ll go there. But hang on just a second. This book tells that story for the first time.

The New York Times actually came out, I think, almost contemporaneous with this book. I came up with the name Middleman. New York Times. Their story was called “The Middleman”, and it was the first time the story was told about the PBMs and how they’re raping the American public, how it’s a wholly corrupt gangster organization.

It’s purely gangster organization as you kind.

Chad Sands: Of set up with your characters and storylines.

Pap: Yeah, my character’s a real gangster in here.

Chad Sands: He’s like the Irish gangster.

Pap: Irish gangster. Okay, why do I do that? Because it’s a reflection of what the PBM industry is. They take kickbacks.

The kickback is based on whether or not the drug that’s being pushed by Pfizer or Merck or Bayer, whoever, is actually even going to be sold in a drug store. The kickback is. We’ve put this thing together. Nobody even knows what the hell it is.

They don’t serve any purpose. And they actually extort the manufacturers of these drugs. And so this has gone on for decades in the US and you’ve had four presidents besides this, President Trump who’ve looked at it. They know that that’s the reason drug prices are so high, have done nothing.

And then Bobby Kennedy, who, by the way, I practice law, he comes out, says, hell, no, we got to stop this, and convinces Trump that’s what needs to be done. And people have to make a decision whether they can eat that night or whether they have to cut their pill in Half or are they going to be able to take their pill? They can’t afford both. They can’t afford rent.

And the pills that they have to take to stay alive. Now, can you imagine? That’s our culture. And so that’s what this book.

This book, if you don’t have total rage,, when you read “The Middleman”, it’s all true, Every bit of. Well, I mean, it’s a fiction story. The murders aren’t true, and the Irish mobster isn’t true. The mobsters over here, they’re not Irish.

They dress up in Armani suits. They have Rolex watches, they drive Bentleys. They’re a different kind of mobster. They don’t look like a typical Italian mobster out of New York because they have MBAs.

They’re educated at Harvard and Yale, and they’re killing us. And this book talks about that.

Chad Sands: So “The Middleman” is just the latest novel of many, many novels you’ve written over the years, both nonfiction and fiction. Your first fiction book with Deke was called Law and Disorder. Has your writing process changed or how.

Pap: Do you approach that? Yeah, my writing’s got. Well, here, let me just put it this way. I was trained to be a writer. I mean, I went through University of Florida journalism school, and there was no tougher in the country.

Chad Sands: You were just smart enough to realize that, hey, I should have a backup career as a lawyer because lawyers need to write anyways, and I can’t.

Pap: That’s right. Lawyers should have responsibility to write. They should have responsibility to tell their story. Law and Disorder was a good book.

I don’t think it was my best. It was like an introduction book. I had to invent Deke, and I had to invent the characters. Gina Romano and Carol and all the characters that resurface.

But you have to stay at it. And I think these books, the reason I think they do so well is they’re true stories that people can read and they can. It’s a good thriller. There’s a page.

I don’t think I’ve written the one that’s not a page turner. I mean, you want to see what’s happening. What’s going to happen to Deke, what’s going to happen to Michael, what’s going to happen to Gina Romano. You know, you always want to know what’s going to happen, and so they keep you turning the page, but at the same time as you’re turning the page, you don’t even realize it, but you’re learning the true story of PBMs.

You’re learning. True story of the terrorism case where banks were washing money for terrorists and getting away with it. And again, the doj, let him go. You don’t know that story.

And you read, and you’re gonna say, “My God, I wonder if this is true?”

Chad Sands: Yeah.

Pap: And then you do a Google and you find out, yep, it’s true. The next book that comes out, Chad, I think you’ll really love it. Matter of fact, Paris Hilton, who was —

Chad Sands: At MTMP a couple years ago.

Pap: Yeah, yeah, Paris Hilton. Matter of fact, she sent me this today. She says, “Mike, can I put this in your book?,” because she loved the book, and it’s a hell of an endorsement about a death in Arcadia. And so this is the story.

You know why I wrote that book? Because of her talk. It was the talk on institutions that abuse kids. Now, understand, I’ve had out there Al Pacino, McConaughey, Sting Fogarty, Keith Urban, Miranda Lambert.

I could go on forever with the people I’ve interviewed. She’s the only person in that whole group that’s got two standing ovations. She was so powerful in her story. So I walked away from there, and I said, “Damn, I need to write a book about this.” And so I did. And it’s called “A Death in Arcadia,” and it comes out the first of the year. She is just. You saw. If you were there —

Chad Sands: I was there —

Pap: You saw dimensions that you never would have dreamed, I bet.

Chad Sands: Well, because on the outside, you see it as, oh, Paris Hilton is at this Vegas conference with a bunch of lawyers. What’s she doing there? But then, actually, if you sat and listened to her story.

Pap: Oh, my God, it was incredible.

Chad Sands: Speaking of stories, I know it’s hard for a guy like you who have been doing this for so long and so at so many different levels. Right. In terms of. When you talk about a case. But I would like if you could share maybe 1 or 2 of those cases that really have stuck with you that you just have never forgotten.

He had. He had talked to, I think, 10 different firms, but they weren’t specialty firms. They didn’t do what I do. And all of a sudden, I found out that he had been watching a case I was trying in Spelter, West Virginia, maybe two years before, three years before, something like that.

And I noticed he was out in the audience and he taking notes and watching me try this case that was against DuPont. And so he comes to me and he says, “Pap,” — this guy is. You talk about a brilliant character. Absolutely brilliant.

And he comes to me, and he’s working for a defense firm, right? So they were telling him what he could and couldn’t do. They’re kind of limiting his ability to jump into the case. He said, “Would you try these cases for me?” And I looked at him, I said, “Well, okay,” But you know, the case the documents were developing. And we jumped in and developed the case even more with what his wealth of knowledge was. The guy. I can’t emphasize how smart this guy was. So he found all of the… you know, he would. He would intuitively figure out where everything was, and we’d go find it and take the depositions. I mean, the depositions were bloodbaths, Chad. They were just.

You know, it’s almost like the defense lawyer had to stand up and call them off. They were that bad. So I remember trying those first three cases. I remember friends of mine, they said, “Pap..

Are you nuts? I mean, really, It’s a PFAS case. Nobody knows what PFAS is. And you’re saying that this stuff in the water caused your clients kidney cancer or testicular cancer.”

There’s no science to support it. There was one committee of scientists that came up and did give you a relationship on it. But. But at any rate, And I remember trying that first case, and I remember this.

These absolute buffoons that after I got. I think it was a $2 million verdict at first. And they weren’t used to me getting those kinds of. You know, they were used to me seeing bigger verdicts in that last one before that was a $395 million verdict.

And so they’re. They. I was getting like, “Oh, Pap. I’m so sorry.”

You know, just kind of gig me about. “You tried that case, you idiot. You only got a $2 million verdict.” But I knew how important these cases were, right?

I knew that I had to stay at it. And my firm tried five of them all together, and it changed the whole complexion of pfas. Congress started looking at it, saying, this damn stuff can kill people. And they started paying attention to it, and the media paid attention to it, and they made movies about it, and they wrote books about it.” But what if I had said no? It’s just a long shot.

You know, my friends… They think I’m crazy. And now I’m not going to try a second one because they only got this small verdict on the first one. But we tried five, and every verdict was boom. It just almost geometrically increasing every. Every trial we went. And now it’s the biggest litigation in America. So that’s kind of. That’s kind of what I’m talking about when I say, “Sometimes you just have to step out. You can’t worry about what people think. Lawyers have a, you know, there’s some pretty petty people out there that are.

They, you know, they’re average, and they want everybody else to be average. You can’t be influenced by that. If you’re working in a community and all everybody does is just the same thing, they don’t want you to do well, they’re your competition. So step out, do something extraordinary, you know, move ahead of those folks and do some real good in doing that, is what I’m trying to say.

Chad Sands: Yes, you can do it. You can do some real good if you. If you do it right. What about a story that may be, um, maybe from your earlier years, maybe not. Maybe more recently, but maybe something that isn’t in the headlines?

Pap: Yeah. Well, okay, so there are always cases that, you know, they’re, you know, you’ve got to. You’ve got to go forward with them. And so. But, but, you know, the chances of results may be dismal.

Chad Sands: Right.

Pap: For example, I didn’t lead the Zantac case down in South Florida. That was just completely, utterly, wrongfully dismissed by that federal judge down there. But the lawyers that did it, you know, again, they were in the position of stepping out. But what they did is they forgot that we are. We’re business. But at the same time, we’re still lawyers. We have to have. We have to represent clients. You can’t have 20,000 clients. Right, yeah., and expect to represent 20,000 people. In the last 10 years, you’ve had this influx of money that’s come from Wall Street. Right.

They see us getting verdicts, and they see us these massive settlements, and they said, “Hey, we want in on that.” Because they’re a bunch of predators. I mean, Wall Street, by their nature, are predators., every day, wake up. Money 100 app. These kids work, work 80 to 100 hours a week. Can you imagine?”

Chad Sands: You know, their only focus is on money, money, money.

Pap: Yeah. And so they move into the legal business for a while. I think this, I think those days may be over now because they’ve lost so much money. But when that was going on, you had all these lawyers coming in on Zantac and saying, hey, we got 10,000 cases, we got 20,000. And you’re going, really, really, can you even talk to 20,000 people? Yeah. How many times have you talked to them? Have you been to their house? Have you talked to their people? That their lives have been affected by the illness that that person had? There’s no connection at all.

And so that’s, that’s one of the failures that exist, that has existed. I think it’s turning around after, after Johnson and Johnson, you know, you had a lot of people. I, I don’t, I guess they can pull out of it. I don’t know how.

I mean, if you’re holding on to 30,000 cases and Johnson, Johnson says, “We’re going to try one at a time.” You’re toast. Right. Wall street can help your firm.

Banks, for example, are incapable. A typical bank like say Wells Fargo, totally incapable of understanding what you do or being willing to take a risk on what you do. So you have some real legitimate organizations like Fortress up in New York. They come in and they finance a firm. Just the operational costs.

Right. It’s not, hey, “I’m giving you $50 million to go out and get a bunch of cases that you don’t, you can’t handle.” Yes. Because A) you’re not a trial lawyer, B) you have no staff, C) you’ve never been to trial in your life, D) you don’t, probably don’t even know where the courthouse is.

So there’s a difference there, you know, and pumping up $50 million for that versus just saying to a firm, look, we want to help you run your operation, you need to hand hire a new paralegal. Great, we’ll help you with that. Just typical financing.

Chad Sands: Where do you fall in the non-lawyer conversation? Obviously, there’s been a lot of talk about Arizona and non-lawyers to come in or KPMG, the big accounting firm, to set up shop as a law firm.

Pap: Well, okay, yeah, I’ve got a quick answer on that. First of all, that decision in Arizona was no gift from the Supreme Court. That’s one of the most awful Supreme Courts in the country. They were doing that to spite the trial lawyers in Arizona who had given big money to the Democrats. And so these Republican types come in and say, oh, well, we’re just, we’re going to take your business away. We’re going to let everybody do it.

Chad Sands: Okay. Yeah.

Pap: So that’s really, that’s the origination of that. Everybody thought, oh man, these guys are so progressive, right? They’re not progressive, they’re regressive. They, they didn’t mean to help these lawyers, they meant to cause them harm.

And I think it has the capacity to do that in the long run. But I don’t think, you know, people act like, oh, this is maybe the end of the earth. It’s not at all. It’s just, it’ll evolve.

People will figure out how to, you, know how to move into that space. And the people who think they’re coming in big time if they don’t know what they’re doing, they’re going to get, they’re going to get killed. They’re going to get killed. And until they get killed that first time and try to resurrect themselves, they’re not going to, you know, they’re not going to understand.

This is not something just anybody can do. I mean, I think there’s been 10, 10 major bankruptcies since Wall Street got involved and said, hey, we’re here to help you. Here’s our money. And I love to see these Wall Street types lose their money.

I mean, it’s just, how clear can the message be when you have to go back to shareholders and say, “Wait, let me get this right. You gave $150 million to a three-person firm with, that has three paralegals, that has 10 people on staff that has never been to trial then, and they got 20,000 cases and you’ve given them $150 million?” Like they’re gonna somehow pull out of that. They’re in a, they’re in a tailspin. These are people who call me all the time, “Hey, I’ve got all these cases” and I say, “Sorry, bud, I can’t take those cases. I don’t know how much water’s under the bridge. I don’t know what you’ve done to commit malpractice already. Yes, can’t take those cases.”

Chad Sands: For me, it goes back to this kind of commercial of everything, including law. And even for example, after I got back from MTMP, I kind of was reading around and discovered that Mars Inc. The food Corporation owns about 15% of the vet clinics in the United States.

Pap: Oh, good point, Chad. Yeah, it’s a, it’s a, it’s a. Again, let me go back to Princeton MBA school or Harvard MBA school. Here’s what happened? Let me, let me tell you where this started. Yes, it started when we used to have doctor run hospitals. Right. Way before your time.

But there was a time, it’s ancient history, but doctors used to own their own hospitals. You’d have 10 or 15 doctors that owned the local hospital in the small town. Right? Yeah., and they made decisions about how care was put out there and what care should be.

And they made all the decisions about health care. Then you had Wall Street say, “My gosh, we can move in here and make a killing. Yeah. Because nobody’s going to regulate us.

Nobody’s going to stop us from charging a, four thousand dollar increase for a routine that’s done at a hospital. Yeah. Ah, nobody’s going to stop us. So we can get all this money from the insurance companies.”

And so all the doctor hospitals were bought up. Right. And they were put into these major hospital corporations. Right. Okay. Wall Street said, well, we’re not done. Let’s move into dentistry. Let’s move into the veterinary business. Let’s move into the, optometrist business. Let’s move into all these different things. And so we’re a kid coming out of school if for optometry they used to hang their shingle, Right. They’d hang up a, hang up a license and say, “I’m your local optometrist.” Well, not anymore. Now they don’t even hang anything up. They just go to work for the corporation. Because the corporation says, we’re going to pay you some amount of money that you can pay your student loans back. And they’re trapped for the rest of their career. They’re slaves. They are veal, as I like to call defense lawyers. They’re, you know, they’re never going to, they’re never going to bust through that glass ceiling that the corporation has set for them.

Chad Sands: Yeah.

Pap: And that’s the same way with lawyering. These people buying into. You realize you got corporations buying up major law firms.

Chad Sands: Yes.

Pap: You know, they’re spending $110 million a year advertising some brand, you know, whatever the brand is. Well, the damn corporation owns the law firm.. They have to perform under the law firm’s requirements. That’s not practicing law. And who the hell says, yeah, I want to do that? And then they say, “To young lawyers coming out of school, hey, come with our brand. Come with our mega firm and we’ll pay you $200,000 a year for two years.” And then you eat what you kill. Or, whatever it may be. The problem with that is that lawyer never builds out his own career. He’s at the behest of that corporation. And when they’re tired of him, see you, Joe. Where does Joe go then? What does Joe do then?

Is he going to hang up a shingle? Ten years into his practice, he’s toast. He’s brown bread, man.

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And now here’s this episode’s “Closing Argument.”

It’s called “The Five C’s.” To be able to project with other things besides words. One picture, for example, or one video may be worth 10 minutes that you’d have to spend in an argument trying to make it happen. How do you sell character?

How do you sell conflict? How do you sell. Sell different elements of your case or different elements of what you’re trying to sell to the American public? And they found that the simplicity is what matters, the simpler the better.

And I remember Coca-Cola had an ad, it was Hands Across America, where they’re all singing about, I’d like to buy the world a Coke. It’s almost this picture of unity. And we’re all in it together and we all believe this. And if you don’t believe it, you’re an oddball kind of message to it.

The reason they were doing it is because Pepsi Cola was trying to move into the market. And Coca-Cola was just saying, you know what, we’ve been around a long time. All these people are with us. You should be with us, too.

Simple message. And you were watching this ad and they’re all singing this song, holding hands. You’re going, what the hell? What is this about?

Well, it was a visual that accomplished that. The other one I think about was a Nike commercial where you had a runner who’s an old guy, he’s running across the bridge early in the morning. And Nike was trying to sell the idea that they connect with that effort. This guy is aging and the only way that he can fight his aging is to exercise.

And we give you the best products to exercise with. You want to be that person, and you can be that person by buying our Nike shoes or buying our Nike shirt. And what, what they were doing was distilling the message with a 30 second commercial. Same way with Apple Computer, where you had this huge screen.

And on the screen is, it almost looks like Orwellian kind of scene. You have this old guy talking. He sounds like an authoritarian nutcase to some degree. He’s talking about power and the importance of power.

And a woman comes running down the aisle and has this hammer and throws it at the screen and shatters it. So what was Apple trying to do there? Apple was trying to say, we can empower you if you have our computer. You can protect yourself against that guy on the screen if you have our computer.

But if you don’t have information and you don’t have knowledge, then you are so far behind and you’re actually a potential victim. You have to understand that concept. Simplicity matters. You can do it with pictures, you can do it with shortcuts, you can do it with depo cuts.

There’s all kinds of ways to simplify something that might take you 10 minutes to talk about and you can do it in two minutes. And you can move around and have that visual clearly implanted in the, in the juror’s mind.

Chad Sands: That was trial lawyer Mike “Pap” Papantonio. Thanks, for sharing your stories. To learn more about Pap and his firm, visit levinlaw.com all right, I’m Chad Sands. Thanks for listening.

Chad Sands: See you next time.

Narrator: You’ve been listening to “Celebrating Justice” presented by CloudLex and the Trial Lawyers Journal. Remember, the stories don’t end here. Visit www.triallawyersjournal.com to become part of our community and keep the conversation going. And for a deeper dive into the tools that empower personal injury law firms, visit www.cloudlex.com/tlj to learn more.