Jason Green

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Jason Green: And I just didn’t feel like I was using my powers and my training for good…. Gain a certain amount of fearlessness and thinking on your feet, ingenuity And I think those skill sets have served me well as I moved into the civil world… When she’s having one of the injections, she flatlines. They’re on the table…..

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.

Chad Sands: Think back and tell me, why did you want to become a trial lawyer?

Jason Green: Interestingly enough, I really didn’t want to be a trial lawyer initially. My dad was an attorney. He had stopped practicing by the time I was born. But everybody in the church respected them, used to come to him with questions because they knew he was a lawyer. And so that’s how I just wanted to go to law school and become a lawyer. And then growing up in the eighties, you know, there were some TV shows that were very popular, “Perry Mason.” I used to watch that with my dad, and so I thought that was so interesting in “L.A. Law.” So that’s where the interest com coming to going to law school came from. But I didn’t see myself as a trial attorney. And then once I got to law school, the first year in law school, there was a mandatory competition for Moot Court, and everybody had to participate. And I did it just because it was required, hadn’t really no interest in it, just wanted to check the box. And I kept advancing in the rounds and I’m thinking, I’m not even putting forth effort. Like, where’s where’s this coming from? And the next thing I know, out of the whole lawsuit class, I made it to the round of, you know, eight and and I’m I’m really not even trying. And people are telling me like, wow, you’re really good and and everything. And so that’s where the first inkling that maybe ought to look at trial law came from. And so after law school decided to do some legal work in Athens, Georgia, which is, you know, a college town, and got a lot of little, you know, criminal experience and everything and realized, no, I do like this. And so the the the path and the the the course was chartered.

Chad Sands: What kind of lawyer was your dad then?

Jason Green: So he was working for the government. He was a civil rights lawyer. So he was working for — I, you will put me on the spot, I can’t remember which department it was, but he was working for the federal government when he was practicing law and then he stepped back from law and went into another field, but he did that as he’s told me for about seven to ten years.

Chad Sands: So you kind of grew up with a dad as a lawyer, kind of interested in the in the world, but kind of fell in love and found your calling and first year of law school as, you know, maybe I could make a living and be good in a courtroom. And so you also started out though on as a prosecutor. Can you tell me a little bit about those years and, you know, kind of as a young lawyer?

Jason Green: Yeah, so in short, I loved it. And I really look back on that time fondly because while you’re talking about horrendous cases and catching people truly at their lowest moment, I like the high stakes of it. I like strategizing in this kind of dovetails into what I do now, but I knew that I was gonna be going to trial. I mean, it was gonna be rare that somebody was gonna plead to life in prison or the death penalty or 30 years. And so kind of knew from the outset, like this is where we’re heading. And so I really would start building the case and start thinking about it from the minute I got the file, got to work with all kind of interesting experts, law enforcement. We had our whole inf set of investigators. And so by the culmination of the case, when we got to trial and and going through it, and especially at that verdict, there was so much gratitude from the family. They were just, I I really can’t even explain it to you, tears of joy. It stopped now because we’re talking about decades. But I used to get, you know, the the Christmas ham or whatever. Like people would just felt really good to, as I used to say, put on the white hat and and and be the good guy and and come in there. And like I said, you’re catching people at their lowest moment, but to help them begin to put those pieces back together and feel like they had gotten the closest thing to justice that they could get was incredibly rewarding.

Chad Sands: Yes, it does dovetail a little bit into personal injury. And so when did you kind of make the jump over into PI?

Jason Green: Yeah. So PI kind of found me. I was enjoying and had kind of risen through the ranks of prosecution so much that I decided to make an ill-fated run for elected district attorney, which is what the prosecutor function is called here in Georgia. And it didn’t work out. I didn’t get the election, didn’t win it. And so now I’m kind of like, Well, what do I do? Do I just go back into the ranks and file or do I find something else? And a buddy of mine who had been a prosecutor with me said, Well, look at civil law. And I’m thinking, that’s boring, you know, don’t really d wanna do it. But candidly, we were kind of in dire financial straits. We put a lot of personal money into it. And he was telling me, you know, it it pays so much better than being a government, you know, grunt worker. And so I said, Well, I’ll try it. And so he recommended that I start on the dark side of things, insurance, defense. And kind of learn the the civil law on their dime. And in the retrospect, I’m so glad I did that because I kind of got, as I’m sure many of your guests have talked about that inside peek into how they evaluate cases and their thought process, the levers that move things. And so I did that for about five years. And pretty quickly, probably in the first year, I realized I don’t want to be on this side of things. There were so many files and situations that crossed my desk where I was like, We could do better by these people or flat out we’re doing them wrong. And and I just didn’t feel like I was using my powers and my training for good. And that gratitude that I spoke about being a prosecutor. Yeah. I— if you’re working for a billion dollar insurance company, you you go in there and get a great result defense verdict or a defense friendly verdict and you get, you know, Okay, great, where’s my thirty day report? Like get get back to work, you know.

Chad Sands: You were no— you were no longer wearing the white hat.

Jason Green: You are no longer wearing the white hat. You’re coming out the courtroom, people are crying because of course you’ve, you know, thwarted, you know, their effort for justice and everything. And and I just wasn’t really feeling good about what I was doing. I I felt good about the skills I was getting and the knowledge and everything, but wasn’t feeling good about the outcomes. And so, like I said, probably after that first year, maybe two at the most, I started thinking I’m gonna build this skill set. I I would just say it candidly, my motions and you know, build up because remember I’m coming from the criminal world, so I’ll find out who the experts are in the fields and everything and and and build up my library. And I I made a hasty exit and and ever since then I’ve been on the side of truth and justice. There you go.

Chad Sands: So you’re a former prosecutor, former defense attorney, jumps into the world of PI and also entered an election that didn’t go your way. It’s a pretty pretty eclectic background. What makes you unique in the courtroom? What makes you unique as a trial lawyer?

Jason Green: I really believe, Chad, that it’s that prosecution bent. I think there are lots of talented attorneys. I think there are lots of good seminars and books out there that will teach you different things that can help you in the courtroom or in building a case for the courtroom. But the one thing that I think is I’ve learned how to become a trial lawyer again by assuming that the case is going to go to trial and starting to put those things together from literally from the outset of the case. And then also, you know, going back to those homicide and death penalty days, many times you’re talking about unsavory characters, so they will lie. Yeah. Does that sound familiar? You know, they would destroy evidence, throw away guns, or, you know, intimidate witnesses. And I’ve learned to let the truth of the matter be my North Star. And I say that because if I always focus on that and I believe that, you know, my client’s version of things or or what the medical records of the doctors are saying is the truth, we’ll be able to get there eventually. I might have to sift through some subterfuge and all of spin and all of that, but we’ll eventually get to the desired outcome. And the last thing I’ll say about the prosecution world and how it’s kind of helped me is I’ve kind of just learned to be a gunslinger. And what I mean by that is, and it was actually a judge who had formerly been a civil attorney, and she told me when you look at civil lawyers, they have depositions, they have written discovery. I mean, they know everything. You you have consolidated pretrial orders where you have to list out every like you know everything’s that’s gonna come into the courtroom, and so you can adequately plan to counteract that. But in the criminal world, at least here in Georgia, it’s trial by ambush. And so you had to deal with, I remember one trial where they bring in an alibi witness and that I never heard of, never heard the name. And you know, you have to try and diffuse them there with the jury watching. And so you gain a certain amount of fearlessness and thinking on your feet, ingenuity. And I think those skill sets have served me well as I moved into the civil world because I employ them to my clients’ benefit.

Chad Sands: Let’s talk about a few cases that have stuck with you over the years. Can you share a story about one of those cases back when you were a prosecutor that you still remember and that made an impact?

Jason Green: Probably the one that was one of the most intensive was it was a death penalty case and it was a female, which is kind of in itself an anomaly. People aren’t used to having at least at that level of criminality, a female defendant. And she had set a hotel on fire. And unfortunately five people die in the in the blaze. She had set some mattresses on fire. And these folks unfortunately were not able to get out and and perished. And so it was the burden of trying to figure out where she was, who she was, you know, because initially they just had a little surveillance footage of of figure kind of walking around and doing so we literally had to go backwards and try and piece together well where did she come from, look at surveillance camera footage from all over, then figure out we I actually worked closely with the ATF to try and piece together what was the accelerant in the case and all kind of experts there. And then of course the awful burden of presenting how these people perished and and and and what was I mean obviously death was the aftermath, but what was the actual agony, because at least in Georgia one of the prongs was that the person suffered unnecessarily and it was akin to torture. And so going through those details for five individuals as opposed to usually a death penalty case is one, maybe two, but go through it for five individuals, it was a massive undertaking, but we got the result, and I feel like justice was served. And certainly there was very capable trial counsel on the other side. They brought in a renowned defense attorney. But they also brought in the state’s Capital Defender office. And so I’m just kind of fighting a two-headed monster with that. And so from the investigation standpoint, all up to, yeah, as you can imagine it being the death penalty case, it was emotions intense. And then ultimately the presentation in the courtroom, it was — yeah. High stakes. High stakes and and and and a learning experience. I I grew leaps and bounds by…

Chad Sands: What was kind of the defense’s strategy? T— was, was, were they saying that it wasn’t her, or what were they presenting on their side?

Jason Green: Yeah, so was a — and I find coincidentally that the defense industry kind of resorts to these tactics, but it was a a multiple defense. So it was first that it wasn’t her, which is kind of why we had to backtrack and talk to people she’d been with and what was going on leading up to that. But it was also, well, if you believe it was her, you know, she couldn’t have done this, you know, there was no way she didn’t have any of the things to set it, and I don’t remember the details enough about who they were trying to blame for, but they tried to put it on somebody else. And I was able to show not only from going back to the people that she talked about, that she had been arguing, there was a drug dealer, if memory serves, that was in that hotel that she was mad at, and she had made some threats against him. And so she got a lighter from one person. Long story short, we were able to go back and put together the chain of events and conversations that show that she was the likely culprit.

Chad Sands: Yeah, build the timeline. So you, you know, you just shared that story about a case where, you know, five people died tragically in a fire in a hotel, trapped more or less, and, you know, bringing justice for those families, at least a little bit in terms of holding that person accountable, that does feed into the world of PI where you’re representing these people who have been wronged. Yeah. What— what case comes to mind in terms of your years representing plaintiff plaintiffs that really has made an impact on you?

Jason Green: I’ve had a few f— that stand out for different reasons, but one of the ones that maybe stands out the most is I, I’ll just use her last name, at the Espinoza case. And in that one we had a perfect plaintiff. She was a mother of three. She was a wife of a husband who’d had a stroke and was bedridden. She was a loan officer, just salt of the earth, hardworking woman trying to take care of her family with, like I said, the young kids and also having to take care of her husband. And she was T-boned, it was a serious collision, but she was able to walk away from it. She had three disc herniations, cervical herniations, and she was going through injections, RFAs, typical treatment, but about a year into the treatment, when she’s having one of the injections, she flatlines. They’re on the table. It was just kind of a freak thing. And ultimately they were able to rush her to the hospital and revive her, but she had even more severe deficits after that. And of course the defense tried to frame it as this is just a car wreck, you know, pre-existent injuries. We’re talking about at most one disc injury. We didn’t buy the rest of this. And it’s really the doctor’s fault. And they threw a whole bunch of different things at it. And because the stakes were so high, even we elicited testimony from her oldest son, who — his age, that age escapes me, but he was still school age — was having to help his mother with her personal grooming, help her in and out of the shower, help her with the bathroom, help her get her clothes on. And just really get into the human nature, the human toll of it, not just for her but her family, obviously her husband, who as I mentioned, was bedridden. And really paint this picture that you’re looking at the medical bills and not even properly, but you’re trying to limit it to that. But there’s this whole range of consequences that have impacted her and her family. And they absolutely deserve to be compensated for what y’all have taken from her and them on a larger scale. Unfortunately the jury saw it our way, but I focus on that one because the stakes were so high for that family. He was bedridden, the children were dependent, were young, and she was out of work and they really needed that good outcome to stay in the lifestyle that they’ve been a cut, and it wasn’t a lavish lifestyle. I mean we’re talking about just solid middle class people, but they’re trying to maintain, you know, what they have and so it was kind of akin to my old criminal days ’cause I felt like I cannot go in here and lose this case or get a suboptimal result because they are literally dependent on it.

Chad Sands: She literally died. Did— did she talk to you? Did she see the other side or anything like that?

Jason Green: I did ask her, but no, she didn’t— she didn’t have one of those experiences. But Chad, you know, I asked up.

Chad Sands: Yes, always curious what’s on the other side, but then she came back but forever changed. Did you have to call in the doctor or was she at just some clinic getting these shots and then all of a sudden she died on the table? You know, wasn’t in a hospital obviously.

Jason Green: Right. So that was part of their defense was that this was the doctor’s fault. And so we wound up calling him, as you can imagine, in two capacities. One to talk about her injuries in the treatment because he’d been the one treating her for the year leading up to this tragic turn, but also to defend himself from the allegations that he had done something or not done something that caused this. So it was really almost two examinations in one.

Chad Sands: Did you have like an ongoing litigation and you were kind of building up because of, you know, s— because of the accident?

Jason Green: Yeah, we were already in the process. She was treating and it was being approached as a herniation case. And all of the things, you know, the dynamics that you would expect in a case like that where somebody has a diminished capacity, we were moving forward with. But obviously this just upped the ante because then her level of decline increased dramatically and the stakes were so much more. She was able to go to work before, but with pain. And she was not a whiner. She didn’t have the luxury of being a whiner with, you know, three minors and a husband counting on her. So she was playing through the pain and that was the direction in which we were taking this. But then after that, I mean, it became a full on blown emergency. Bad for her, but good for the case, right? Yeah. As is so many so so many times the situation where I always feel weird and I imagine many plaintiff lawyers do, because you know, often th— times the things that disadvantage your client the most and create havoc in their life is the things that as a trial attorney you kind of salivate over, you’re like, wow, I can really play that up for the jury and highlight it and this gives me my theme or theory of the case. So it’s always that push pull where you’re hap— you’re happy as a trial attorney, but you’re distraught for them as a human.

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Jason Green: What comes to mind is the case of a young man, last name was Hope, and he was a professional fighter, mainly a boxer, had done some Olympic trials and had done some light MMA work. He was 10 and 2, had a pretty good record. He lived a very ordinary lifestyle and was trying to make a go of it. He was making money on the fights, and one day he’s running to the store for his mother. And as he’s coming back to the apartments, which, you know, actually he shared with his mother. So again, living a very humble lifestyle. As he’s going down one of the streets here in Atlanta, a detective for the city of Atlanta made a U-turn to respond to a call and didn’t see him, knocked him, clipped him. He was on a dirt bike, which ultimately became a very significant factor in the case. Launched him off the dirt bike and he had road rash, a groin injury, significant permanent leg scarring. And ultimately it sidelined him from being able to fight for two and a half years. He feared his career was over and understandably he had not been able to get back in the ring. And he was depressed. He had been suicidal at one point. I mean, it was mainly over this fear that his career was over and he didn’t know what he was gonna do with the rest of his life. He wasn’t an astute student, didn’t have, you know, a career per se. He worked at a loading dock. And so he was just really down, and his case had been poorly worked up by a previous attorney. They were just treating it as a leg injury and hadn’t really going into his life and how it had impacted him. And so we really did a trial-by-human approach and sat with him for a long time, talked to his friends, talked to the people that he sparred with, his coach, his family, his mother, and really tried to get an understanding of his life and how it had impacted him on a physical level, yes, but even on a mental and emotional one. Pictures from his Olympic trials, his different fights. We were able to find clips from those fights and his medals that he had won. And we presented this to the city of Atlanta, thinking that this would move the needle and get them to a fair resolution. But they gave us basically a nuisance offer. And they stuck on that position. Not only did they cloak themselves in that we’re the government, this was the police, but really tried to do some victim blaming. As I alluded to earlier, he was on a dirt bike, and so they got into whether it was street legal and questioning the tires that he had on there. They said that he didn’t have his headlights on. And there was a definite undertone of, as you might imagine, being a fighter. He did not have a corporate or mainstream look. He had dreads, he was a young black male, and really playing on the stereotypes that a lot of people would have because of who he was. Really tried to, like I said, not only say that we’re the good guys, we’re the police, we were responding to a call, but also that he was in the wrong and there was some marijuana that was on his person and tried to really get into victim blaming and shifting it to him. And piece by piece we were able to debunk that. We even found the officer who responded to the scene, as you can imagine and have probably heard there’s the oftentimes this blue wall of silence. He ultimately broke it, said no, I think that the detective was the one in fault. And so often they want to hang on what are the medical bills. His medical bills were actually fairly low. And this was really a case where we told the human story. So we tried the case and it was incredibly rewarding because he was so low. Because his way out, his ticket, the way that he could provide for his family was through this fighting. And so we were able to get him a seven-figure award that was life-changing for him. And we did it, in my view, through some pretty significant obstacles and odds. And the jury completely saw through the defenses that were thrown at us. When I last checked in with Hope, he was able to get a house and support his family and had actually started a nonprofit. That good in the courtroom has turned into a force multiplier and allowed him to do so much good for himself, his family, and the community through this nonprofit where he’s helping other troubled young men is something that I find incredibly rewarding, even to this day. This is about a human, a human toll, and it’s probably, when I hang up my spurs, one of the things that will linger in my memory the most and make me feel like I did a little bit of good in the…

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