Kate Feroleto

[Theme Music Plays]

Kate Ferotelo: You can be human with your client and relentless with your opponent … I did see something in my dad about how much it meant to him, and and I think a lot of it was the way he grew up … “The Sisterhood of the Eight” is unofficially known as the “Mother Truckers” and it was formed by three amazing women …

Narrator: Welcome to “Celebrating Justice,” presented by the Trial Lawyer’s 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: Tell me the story about why you wanted to become a trial lawyer.

Kate Ferotelo: I don’t have one moment like maybe a lot of people have. I I grew up around it. Okay. But my father was a trial lawyer my whole life. He grew up on Buffalo’s west side, which doesn’t mean anything to you, but it was the immigrant neighborhood. And he met my mom in law school and my mom did defense work and my dad does plaintiff’s work. So it was a interesting mix I would hear both sides of of the coin growing up. When I always wanted to be a plaintiff’s lawyer, but being the stubborn Italian woman that I am, I didn’t want to go out of law school and start with my dad right away. I wanted to kind of do my own thing. So I went and did defense work.

Chad Sands: Okay, like your mom?

Kate Ferotelo: Yes, although she she was a judge at that point. So she had she would handle the firm’s plaintiff cases when they decided to keep one at the at the defense firm. But and life kind of got in the way for for a few years. And then I finally was able to join the right side of things and get onto the plaintiff side.

Chad Sands: So it’s kind of in your blood then growing up. So at the dinner table were conversations between your mom and dad kind of like the plaintiff versus defense and over tacos or what have you?

Kate Ferotelo: They were really good about not talking about it much at home and not letting work take over our family nightly dinners. I did see something in my dad about how much it meant to him and and I think a lot of it was the way he grew up. He grew up in this tight-knit community where people looked out for each other. It wasn’t, you know, one man for themselves like it seems to be today. And watching how much he cared about all of his cases, watching him gre have friendships with his clients years after the case is settled. I think that’s what really stuck with me.

Chad Sands: That’s a little bit of a difference that you saw, but not necessarily animosity on this side, the two different sides of the aisle and defense versus plaintiff.

Kate Ferotelo: No, there was definitely no animosity.

Chad Sands: And as you grew up and then you became a lawyer and you started on the defense side, I did you kind of take that approach as you mentioned, not to as a stubborn Italian woman, but also maybe to pay your school loans and kind of all in addition to making your own path?

Kate Ferotelo: Yeah, I wanted to make my own path. So that’s exactly why I did it. I figured I can learn on the defense side and take what I learned and use it on the plaintiff side, which is exactly what I what I do.

Chad Sands: And so what makes you unique as a trial lawyer in Buffalo? Are there a lot of trial lawyers in —

Kate Ferotelo: Buffalo. There’s a lot of trial lawyers everywhere.

Chad Sands: Right.

Kate Ferotelo: You know, we have the billboards, we have all of that. My face is not on any billboards, and I like it that way. I’m I I like to say I’m an extroverted introvert. So I don’t know. I think for a while it was it was finding being able to embrace who I am because I wasn’t sure if you could be kind and also be a trial lawyer, right? But there’s a difference between being kind and warm and welcoming to your clients and being an advocate. And I think that kindness with my clients has helped me in my cases because it helps to build trust. It helps all of those things. So that was always of an interesting thing that I had to work out through my years of practice because I thought about what I expected a trial lawyer should be and who I was. So…

Chad Sands: And do you think was were those expectations shaped more maybe of watching your mom and dad? Or were they shaped when your early years as working on the defense side? Or how did they kind of how do you think they were shaped?

Kate Ferotelo: I don’t know, maybe even for movies, you know, I never really liked rules or being told what to do even as a kid. You know, it was like you gave me a rule and I wanted to do the exact opposite thing right away. And you know, I when I was in law school I had someone tell me, you know, “I don’t know if being a trial lawyer is right for you.” And that amazed —

Chad Sands: That immediately made me wanted to be a trial lawyer.

Kate Ferotelo: Yes.

Chad Sands: So Buffalo. I’ve never been to Buffalo. I know it’s cold. We we chatted about the Bills Mafia before, and you mentioned that there are the billboard attorneys around Buffalo, and there are a lot of advertising attorneys. Where do you but you said you you know your face isn’t on any billboards? Where do you fall in that non-lawyer conversation, especially what’s coming out of Arizona and the advertising firms. What’s your kind of perspective on all of that and how it’s shaping the industry?

Kate Ferotelo: It’s tough. It gives the the industry a different reputation than I think it should have. We’re facing a lot of tort reform here in New York State. I’m the president of the local chapter, Western Region affiliate of NYSTLA, the New York State Trial Lawyer Association. And we’re certainly not flying under the radar when we’re on every billboard along every highway, right? It definitely makes it harder to fight tort reform and things that are truly impacting our clients because of private equity, because of the billboards because of the all the advertisements. So I I’m a little bit more old school. I don’t I don’t love it, but I also understand and, you know, have respect for those lawyers that decide that that’s what they want to do.

Chad Sands: Yeah, it’s a it’s a double-edged sword. It’s tough to navigate and ’cause every law firm, every plaintiff lawyer is a little bit different in terms of their business model and how they operate and how they advertise, especially.

Kate Ferotelo: Y it’s a completely different business model.

Chad Sands: Yes. And you are also pretty active, I see, with trucking litigation, I interviewed Joe Freed. I don’t know if you know Joe Freed down in Georgia.

Kate Ferotelo: Everyone knows Joe.

Chad Sands: Yes, everyone knows Joe Freed when you talk about Amazon and trucking. Is there something specific about trucking litigation that in that you’re kind of inspired by? Or is it just ’cause of the region and your guys’ caseload?

Kate Ferotelo: You know, I think that going back, yeah, when I was a little kid, my dad, despite being a great trial lawyer, was also really good at fixing things, doing things around the house, projects. And despite having two big brothers, I was always the one that wanted to help him. You know, when the sink was leaking, I wanted to figure out why and how to fix it. So I have this very analytical brain, which I think started as a kid. And so I look at things analytically in the system and how and how things break down and where things break down. And I think in the trucking cases, because there’s there’s so much, you really have to dig so so deeply in those cases. And you really need to take a big step back to figure out it wasn’t just the crash. It could have been months before the crash. It could have been years before the crash. What what went wrong to make that happen? And I so I think that’s what I really love about digging into those cases, because it it’s a challenge and it provides a challenge for me and it it’s how how my brain operates.

Chad Sands: Going back to your childhood again, I see a theme here. And tell me a little bit about the Sisterhood of the Eight. What is that exactly? As we’re connected on LinkedIn and I’ve seen a couple posts.

Kate Ferotelo: The Sisterhood of the Eight is unofficially known as the Mother Truckers and it was formed by three amazing women who do a lot of truck accident litigation. And they wanted to help other women in the field of truck accident litigation in terms of fine-tuning our skills, working with each other and supporting each other in whatever ways we can. So it is now not just a trucking plaintiff’s lawyer group. It’s now open to all women, plaintiff’s attorneys. And that’s called the Sisterhood of the Eight. So yeah, it’s an awesome organization.

Chad Sands: And now is there more than eight people?

Kate Ferotelo: Yeah. The Eight stands for figures in a verdict.

Chad Sands: Okay, got it. Did not connect with that, but now that makes sense. Very nice wordplay there. I’ve seen some of your posts on LinkedIn, you know, talking about Uber and what’s going on with with them. I guess give me your two cents on the state of the union when it comes to tort reform in New York and what you’re looking at and watching.

Kate Ferotelo: Yeah. So in New York it’s the tip of the iceberg, I think, this year. So there was an influx of money from special interests into New York to try to limit auto claims. And the influx of money wasn’t just to politicians, it was also on a c campaign, TV campaign commercial talking about how high car insurance is. So they’re essentially weaponizing the affordability crisis that we have in our country to try to essentially protect the insurance companies and protect Uber. What happened and what’s happening in New York is they’re making it we have a serious injury threshold in New York to have a lawsuit. So they’ve eliminated one of the categories of serious injury. We were a pure comparative state. So Chad, if you and I were in a crash, opposite cars and you were eighty percent at fault and I was twenty percent at fault, you’d be able to technically recover 20% of your injuries against my insurance company because I was twenty percent at fault. They have a now eliminated that or will be eliminating that so that if any one person is fifty-one percent or more at fault, they will not be able to recover anything and crash. So if you think about, you know, a kid that chases a ball into a street and the jury finds the kid or the kid and the parents fifty-one percent at fault, that kid who has life-changing injuries get zero. You think about maybe two people driving, we both cross the yellow line, a jury finds me fifty one percent at fault and you forty nine percent at fault, you recover, I don’t. So that’s a huge change in tort reform, to be honest with you, I don’t think that I think this is just the start.

Chad Sands: And was this and what serious injury did they remove? Just kinda curious.

Kate Ferotelo: Sure. So to the to qualify for one of the categories to qualify for a serious injury for a lawsuit in New York State is the inability to do most of your daily activities for ninety out of the first one hundred and eighty days after an accident. So, you know, let’s say you get into a crash, you don’t have a broken bone, but you have a brain injury, you’re confused, you can’t concentrate, you can’t go to work for four months. That would be the category you would most easily qualify under. And they’re saying, “Well, too bad, so sad you can’t recover.”

Chad Sands: And all of this kind of came w with some, I’m assuming, was it lobbyists and kind of like nonprofit groups that came in and ran these campaigns and twisted the narrative?

Kate Ferotelo: Yes, it was mainly Uber to the benefit of the insurance companies now, but we think Uber will be pushing for more that will benefit them in the next round. But what was so frustrating about the entire thing is it these were not even bills that were proposed in the legislature and passed through and debated. They were able to get the governor to insert this language into her budget where things can’t be redlined. So it was a very under underhanded way of doing things and that even the lawmakers didn’t have a say in it. She just took the ability of the lawmakers to actually do their job right away from them. And Uber also has, you know, the ability on their apps every time somebody would do a ride, they would say, “Hey, do you want lower fares? Press this button to email your legislature legislator.” So they were getting inundated with these emails where people have no idea what they’re even emailing about, just saying, “Hey, we want lower car insurance in New York. We want lower Uber fares.”

Chad Sands: And it was the it was the big bad plaintiff lawyers that were causing all of these insurance rates to skyrocket, even though my guess is insurance rates or insurance profits were a little bit higher.

Kate Ferotelo: They have record profits, billions of dollars, and I hate to say it, but they’re blaming all the billboard lawyers.

Chad Sands: They are. They are blaming them. I actually did an interview with an attorney from New Jersey. He had a big Uber case with a former NHL player whose career got cut short due to the Uber crash. And they actually were one of the first people to actually get a jury verdict against Uber and hold and held held them liable for this NHL player’s career who got cut short.

Kate Ferotelo: I think the rideshare companies are starting to see that they’re getting some decisions they don’t like in the courts across the country. So they’re trying to backdoor it by going through the lawmakers to to limit their liability, say yes, they’re statutorily not their employers, different things like that, because that’s all they can do since they were losing some court cases that were saying otherwise.

Chad Sands: Yeah, so they made a kind of a backdoor deal with that governor who kind of bypassed the whole legislative system for for to keep a long story short. Interesting. Interesting developments. Uber’s doing a lot of stuff out here in California as well.

Kate Ferotelo: Yeah, I’m f I’m s familiar with what’s going on in California and aware of it because we’re expecting that down the road here.

Chad Sands: Speaking of the verdicts, I know you’ve had probably a few cases over the years that have stuck with you, but could you share a story about one that had a significant impact?

Kate Ferotelo: Yeah, well, actually, I just resolved a case last week that’s I know it’s one of those cases that’s gonna stick with me for the rest of my life. It’s not a case type that I’ve handled before only because the facts were so unique. My client was seventy-seven at the time she was harmed and she lived in an apartment with and the lock on her window, kitchen window was broken. She had asked her landlord a few times to fix it, and he never did. And needless to say, the an intruder came in the window and brutally raped her for two hours, held her hostage, threatened her with death. So she’s 82 years old now. She’s the strongest woman I’ve ever met. She comes from the generation where when things go wrong, you don’t talk about it, right? So it certainly was hard for her. She never wanted to relive it. She never wanted to go into the courtroom again and I don’t know if the defense knew that, but I’m guessing they suspected because she never got therapy. But you could tell the second you would start talking to her about what happened to her, she would start crying. And forever for f it took us four years to resolve the case. There was a $10,000 offer on the case. But we were able to resolve it last week for the full policy, which won’t be the biggest case I’ve had in my life. But clearly when I speaking to my client, knowing that she’s going to have a safe place to live for the rest of her life was so satisfying. And, you know, there was a moment after getting to know her, I met with her many times. I sat in her living room when she kind of came around and said, you know, “I trust you. I’ll I’ll testify. I’ll I’ll go into court.” And I knew that once that she committed to to understanding and saying that she would come into court and talk about what happened to her, I knew it was a turning point in the case because I knew that she I I knew that we would win.

Chad Sands: What do you think it took to get her to that place where she was willing to say yes?

Kate Ferotelo: Think it was the personal relationship that she and I had formed.

Chad Sands: And do you think that the offer for ten thousand dollars was because they were saying she’s seventy-seven and what’s the big deal or in like where did the ten thousand dollars come from?

Kate Ferotelo: Well, I definitely think one of the strategies was to delay and in the hopes that she would pass away given her age, which just made me more mad. They did I say give me a test offer about a month before trial of a hundred thousand dollars, which I just didn’t even blink at. I said, “Well, I’m not considering it. Don’t call me unless you got the policy.” So I think they were trying to test the waters to see if, you know, she would cave if if we were playing chicken with her coming in to testify. But th the whole theory of the case was if this guy didn’t climb through the window there was no claim because it was a negligent maintenance, negligent security type case. So their theory the whole time was that because she is such a nice old lady who would give out candy to children in this not great neighborhood, that she let this man in her side door forty years younger than her at nine thirty at night. So that was their strategy this whole time, as if she had somehow invited this on herself by being so kind and so nice. But I think that once they had to really face the proof and realize what was coming in, the nine one one call where she’s saying, “Help, he climbed in my window, he climbed in my window,” it just wasn’t gonna fly.

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Kate Ferotelo: So for years this case, according to the defense, was worth ten thousand dollars. That was the number that they put on it. My client was brutally raped in her own home and held hostage for two hours. And all because her landlord failed to fix a broken lock on her window. Going into the depositions, we weren’t sure what the defense was going to be. We thought it might be, hey, she just never gave him notice. But it was so much worse than that. They basically blamed my client for being nice. She was the pillar in the community that would give candy to kids and give ice cream to kids in the summertime. She would sit outside and sit in the sun with her cordless phone and her vinyl chair and say hello to everybody that walked by. So we get to the depositions, and what did the defense do? They tried to rewrite this narrative, suggesting that my client let this man into her house through her side door. Who was 40 years younger than her? And because she let him in, the landlord would not have been at fault at all. So they blamed her. In fact, the defendant, the the landlord in his deposition said he thought this happened to her because she was so nice. You could see it all through the depositions. They were talking not about anything that the defendant did. Why was she so kind to people? Why did she say hello to people on the street, why did she help people in the neighborhood? And it was terrible and you could see in her demeanor how it impacted her. Even the police officer who investigated the case said something to her about her answering machine jingle being too friendly. And she felt so much guilt, she was ashamed of about what happened to her. So they b blamed her, they minimized what happened to her. It’s disgusting to even say that. And I think a tiny part of them was trying to delay, delay, delay in the hopes that she would pass away. But we were able to hold our feet to the fire. We really pushed it along. And my client, who now is 82 years old, comes from the generation that does not talk about trauma. You don’t say out loud what happened to you. You don’t relive it. You you carry it quietly inside of you. And I think the defendants, maybe a little bit, were betting on that. They were betting she wouldn’t take the stand, she wouldn’t come in. Maybe that she would take a lowball offer just to get rid of this case and what happened to her and put it behind her. So the case became a lot more about trust and my relationship with the client. So we built that slowly conversation by conversation, and I kept saying, “Don’t worry, we’re gonna push it along, but you won’t have to testify.” And then one day when I was sitting in her living room, she looked at me and she said, “Kate, I trust you. I’ll testify. If we have to go to trial, I’ll go.” And although I had push been pushing forward all along as if we would have to go to trial, that was a turning point because I knew what that cost her. And it was so courageous of her to be to do that. So we prepared, we got ready for jury selection, we prepared our pre-trial motions, and we were ready to stand up and get the verdict. One week before trial was supposed to start, the day we were supposed to argue our motions in limine, I actually had met with a one of our witnesses who was a housing inspector. And I was on my way to court when I got the phone call and they called with the full policy. The facts hadn’t changed, the law didn’t change, but I think they finally believed us and knew that we were gonna try this case. And what stayed with me wasn’t just the result, although my client was completely speechless. I turned around my car and I drove to her house to tell her in person. But it was her willingness to trust me, to be from that generation that doesn’t talk about what’s happened to you and her willingness to walk into that courtroom and to speak. There was a time in my career that I worried that kindness or the way that I connect with clients, the way that I listen, or learn to love my clients, might be seen as a weakness. But this case made it clear as it has over and over again that that instinct was wrong as when I was younger. It’s that exact quality, just treating her with a little bit of dignity and treating her with respect that made this case what it was. It’s what built the trust between us and allowed me to hold the line when it would have been easier to accept less. So it wasn’t kindness that weakened the case, it strengthened the case. And when you pair that kindness with preparation and tenacity, it becomes so powerful because you can be human with your client and relentless with your opponent. And I’ve recognized that time and again in this case was a perfect example of that. Us as lawyers, we can’t forget about why we do the work that we do. We need to keep showing up for our c clients. We need to keep giving it all and expect nothing in return. So that’s my advice to any young lawyers out there and to any people out there looking for attorneys. Find somebody that you can trust, that you can relate with and that truly cares about you and who you are as a person.

Narrator: You’ve been listening to Celebrating Justice presented by CloudLex and the Trial Lawyer’s 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.