Tim Felice

Tim Felice: Gerry Spence is the reason, is the biggest reason why I went to law school … And I told you what the demand was yesterday, $35 million. And he laughed. I’m like, “No, dude, you don’t understand, I’m not kidding.” … An international warrant being issued for this guy’s arrest. And this has been one of the most satisfying things I’ve ever gotten to do as a lawyer.

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: But kind of go back to the beginning and tell me why you wanted to become a trial lawyer.

Tim Felice: You know, growing up, right? Every kid wants to be, “I want to be a do — a doctor, I wanna be a lawyer, I wanna be this, I wanna be that.” I was like, you know, just like every other kid. But grew up in a family, my dad was a sheet rocker, mom worked for Hallmark Cards, middle class, lower middle class, whatever. Always thought I wanna do it. Get out of high school, start school, and I’m a complete and total screw up. Yeah, man.

Chad Sands: Okay. In high school or did it ha — it start after high school?

Tim Felice: It started in, you know, grades in high school were okay. Grades my first three semesters of community college were terrible.

Chad Sands: Okay.

Tim Felice: Absolutely terrible. Didn’t party, didn’t do drugs, didn’t drink, but worked a lot and didn’t go to class a lot. So I, I took time off and I’m bartending at a dance club in East Fishkill, New York. I’m from Hopewell Junction, New York. I close the bar early one night, there’s like no one at the Holiday Inn. So I leave and I find myself walking through Barnes and Noble. And I’m, I’m walking through the stacks and I get to the part where I think it’s law and politics. So I’m just looking at the books. I find a book that I like. I look at it, I open it up. It’s Gerry Spence’s book, “How to Argue and Win.” I end up buying it for really no reason other than it’s interesting, what have you. I mean, didn’t know what I was gonna do in life.

Chad Sands: Yeah.

Tim Felice: I get back home that night, 10 o’clock at night, whatever, and I start reading it. And I don’t stop until like three or four in the morning when I’m like, “My gosh, I gotta go to sleep. I gotta wake up and do a double. I gotta go to the restaurant and then I gotta go to the bar.” Do that. I get home. And instead of going to sleep, I start reading the book and I finish it overnight. And at that point, there was a lot of stuff Gerry gave to us in that book. And, and I’ve since gotten to, before he passed last year, I’ve gotten to meet him a couple of times and we actually worked on some things by Zoom. There are a lot of things in that book that resonated with me and I appreciated it. I ended up going back to school. I did one more semester in New York. Then I moved down to Florida. I got a degree in, from the community college. And then I went right to FAU and I did 60 credits or fifty-eight or fifty-nine credits in one year. Finished the whole bachelor’s degree in a year and went right to law school.

Chad Sands: Okay.

Tim Felice: So I went to Nova. So that was the beginnings of why I wanted to be a lawyer. In addition, my best friend and her husband had moved down to the same part of Florida about two weeks before me when I’m going to community college. He’s actually starting school at Nova. And he’s a brilliant guy and we’ve known each other forever. I’m like, “Hey, you know what? If Rob can do it, you know, I probably can do this. So let me think about it.”

Chad Sands: And he was from the New York area as well and he went south.

Tim Felice: Yeah, his, his wife Tracy was — I was Felice, she was Frouded. We were sat next to each other in home room in ninth grade and she became my closest friend throughout high school. Still to this day. I mean, we still talk. They, they live in Melbourne Beach now. But yeah, so when she met Rob and got married, they moved down here. We’ve been really, really close. They lived with me for a time. So that was one of the moments, and then getting into school and then trucking away. But Gerry Spence is the reason, is the biggest reason why I went to law school.

Chad Sands: Did you make it to Thunderhead Ranch ever or did you just kinda talk to Gerry and meet Gerry elsewhere?

Tim Felice: There’s an interesting story to that. It actually, I think, goes into one of your sections. So I had no idea what Trial Lawyers College was. So I think I read this book in, in nine — I want to say it was like nineteen ninety-six or nineteen ninety-seven. He had started originally Trial Lawyers College, I believe it was nineteen ninety-four. So I didn’t know anything about it. And I didn’t hear about it in law school. I knew nothing about it at all. And I’m years into practice and I always wanted to try cases and I kept settling cases because they, the carriers kept paying me a lot of money on cases, more so than you’d expect.

Chad Sands: Yeah.

Tim Felice: And they avoided me getting a trial. I started researching some things. I had done like the NITA program, like a seven-day or a nine-day program where you do trial work, and I was looking into those things, and then I found out about Trial Lawyers College.

Chad Sands: Huh.

Tim Felice: So I was like, “Wow.” I was a solo practitioner. I couldn’t go out for three weeks.

Chad Sands: Right.

Tim Felice: It would be impossible. But what I ended up doing was in January of 2017, I went out to California and I did a four-day program. I did their opening statement program. I think it was three or four days. And that was a defining point in my life, both professionally and personally.

Chad Sands: Yeah.

Tim Felice: I met a bunch of people, became friends with Joey Low, a number of other guys and girls from Trial Lawyers College at the time. I mean, I remember leaving that and I called my wife. I told her, I had been talking to her, told her everything was great. But I remember I called my — at that point in time, I had one partner. I called him and I was like, “Dude, we’re a-changin’ how we do everything in this office.”

Chad Sands: Wow.

Tim Felice: “You won’t believe like what I just learned, what I experienced.” It was, it was moving.

Chad Sands: Yeah.

Tim Felice: And changing. It was fantastic. So then I started looking for more programs to do. And I did a couple of more of the Trial Lawyers, Trial Lawyers College programs, but before I did that was I found Trojan Horse Method.

Chad Sands: Okay, tell me, I don’t know about the Trojan Horse Method.

Tim Felice: So Trojan Horse Method is Dan Ambrose’s first trial presentation or trial advocacy training group. So it started with Trojan Horse and it started, I believe, in Orlando. But how — so I found out about it and I had actually done my first trial a couple of weeks, well, maybe about a month or so before I ended up doing the first thing with Dan. And I had found some videos and I used some of the Trojan Horse stuff in my opening along with what I learned from Trial Lawyers College. And I remember we were supposed to do it here in Palm Beach and we had hurricanes. So Dan’s calling me and I have — it’s me and now I have like five other lawyers coming with me because we had, we had added some. And he’s like, “Hey, I don’t think we can come down.” I’m like, “Well, dude, I can’t come to Tampa.” I’m like, “I — if you can’t do it now, it’s okay, but I, you know, we’ll have to do it another time.” So he ends up renting an Airbnb because no hotels were available. He comes down and we go to this Airbnb in Boynton Beach or Delray, and we work for a few days on that. And since then I’ve, I’ve become really close friends with Dan. So I’ve, I’ve done some teaching with him at Trojan Horse. I presented a handful of times. And then when COVID started, right before COVID, he had started Case Analysis. And I had gone and done one of those. And then when COVID started, it was, everything was webinar-based.

Chad Sands: Right.

Tim Felice: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So that’s how I, I kind of merged into it all. And then I was fortunate enough. I’m the only person in the country, as far as I know, that was invited to instructor training for Gerry Spence Method when I’m not a graduate of the program, not a graduate of the full three-week program.

Chad Sands: Yeah.

Tim Felice: So I was — did instructor training. I was scheduled to go out and then my wife and daughter got COVID and I couldn’t go out to do it that one time. So I regret that. I’m hoping that I have that opportunity again in the future.

Chad Sands: So you never made it to Thunderhead Ranch, but needless to say, Gerry Spence maybe tipped the scales a little bit with his book, put you down the path of becoming a trial lawyer.

Tim Felice: There’s no doubt. So the cool thing about it, so the first time I get to go out there, I can’t remember where it was in California. I know that I flew into Los Angeles and I drove south. What ended up being their biggest event that they had ever had. I mean, there were a couple of hundred lawyers there. It was massive.

Chad Sands: Okay.

Tim Felice: And Gerry was actually at this one. So I got to sit down, I got to talk to him, take a couple of photographs. So that was really special to me. And then since then I’ve always helped with anything from Gerry Spence Method if they’ve asked. We, before Gerry passed, we put on a, a big webinar where we had him, Joey, and a bunch of other GSM trainers and we got other lawyers, you know, to come participate so they can learn about GSM. And I got, I actually, I got to work in the group with Gerry and Joey. So that was really cool.

Chad Sands: Yeah. I remember I heard Joey Low speak at TBI conference a couple of years ago in San Diego and it was like nine AM and I was just kind of like crashing the sessions, you know, as a marketer, but wanting to learn about trial law and I was like crying at nine AM in the middle of this session that Joey Low’s talking about. It just kinda took me, took me by surprise and very inspiring guy. Are you still settling or are you kind of the guy that is like, “No, I always want to court, go to court now”?

Tim Felice: Tried seven cases last year, seven cases the year before, constantly on dockets. I’m constantly getting ready. I, I don’t, I handle day-to-day cases very rarely unless they’re catastrophic. And I’m, I’m typically managing our litigation and handling all the trials with the other lawyers that work with me.

Chad Sands: Well, so you’re down in Florida, Florida or California, New York, you know, no matter where you are, personal injury is a very competitive field, right?

Tim Felice: Yes, it is.

Chad Sands: There’s various levels of trial lawyers, obviously too, but how do you kind of separate yourself from the competition? You know, what makes you unique as a trial lawyer?

Tim Felice: I’ve been pretty good at turning lemons to lemonade.

Chad Sands: Uh-huh.

Tim Felice: All the major law firms over the past fifteen years have been sending me a lot of their work. All the major advertisers, the big ones in Palm Beach County and nationally. And I, I kind of made a reputation in the community for someone that I find the path through the forest, so to speak, to get to the right ending. I’ve been able to do that. I’ve been really fortunate and very lucky. The other thing we — I do a lot of teaching and a lot of training. We’re actually, we’re finishing up building a courtroom now in my building.

Chad Sands: Right. Nice.

Tim Felice: We’re almost done. We got everything up except for the, the bench and the walls.

Chad Sands: Right.

Tim Felice: I like the decorative walls. So that’ll hopefully be done within the next month and we’re gonna be doing a lot of training.

Chad Sands: Building out your own courtroom for like teaching and education and kinda pay it forward to other trial lawyers around in Florida and elsewhere.

Tim Felice: Yeah. Yep. We’re gonna do free teachings and then I’m also gonna let people, if they want to, rent it out. A, a companies have approached me, they want to come in and use it for mock trials.

Chad Sands: Yes.

Tim Felice: Yeah. We’re developing a program to help them out there. But yeah, the, the main focus was so that we can practice in my office, all the lawyers, and we can bring in friends and they can learn. But then I also want to help, you know, other people from really anywhere.

Chad Sands: Let’s get back to the stories. I mean, going to trial multiple times a year, you’ve been doing this for a while, and you have some impressive results on your website, a couple massive verdicts. Can you share a story or two about a case that really had an impact on you? Maybe it was one of the big verdicts, but maybe it was something else that happened earlier in your, your career or just one of those cases and clients that you didn’t see walking in the door that kind of really changed your life.

Tim Felice: Yeah, I’ve had a couple. There’s one in particular though. This guy, man, he’s such a — he’s unbelievable. I get a phone call from another, another lawyer who refers me cases and she tells me, “Hey, would you mind taking over this case? This other lawyer I sent it to, he, he’s telling the client to take two hundred and fifty thousand dollars and we, we don’t really think it — we think it’s worth a lot more.” It was a shooting case.

Chad Sands: Wow.

Tim Felice: The client was shot outside of a house he was renting and the bullet went through his spine at around the middle of his chest. He was completely paralyzed from the half waist down, and the bullet got lodged in his shoulder, causing a brachial plexus injury. So he had v — very limited use of one arm. It’s what we call an incomplete quadriplegia.

Chad Sands: Did the bullet exit or did it stay?

Tim Felice: It’s still in there. Yeah. They, they, they were afraid that they’d do more damage to take it out.

Chad Sands: Wow.

Tim Felice: So I get on the case. I, I haven’t met him yet, but I’m reading everything and I’m preparing myself to go see him at his house. Mind you, he’s a younger guy. He’s in his early thirties. I’m expecting doom and gloom.

Chad Sands: Yeah.

Tim Felice: And what I met was one of the brightest stars I’ve ever seen. Words — it, it’s rare that I, I have a hard time finding words. And I’ve always had a very difficult time finding the right word how to explain just who this person is. My conversation with him about everything, he was one of the most positive human beings I’ve ever met. Despite, you know, I mean, he’s talking to me in a wheelchair with use of one arm. He’s got no help at all in his house. He’s got kids that had to move in with their mother, they were divorced, back to New York, and he still was just an amazing human being. And it made me want to fight even more. We ended up being the sixth or seventh law firm on the case.

Chad Sands: Wow.

Tim Felice: Yeah. There was a decent amount of coverage, but nowhere near enough to compensate him for that. So we get involved and we start doing things a little differently. We start looking at the criminal file, no one looked at. Because there was a 13-year-old kid that was arrested and tried for the shooting. We found evidence, nobody found. We presented it to the defense, and their response was, “Hey, we’ll offer you X.” It was more than the 250 grand, but less than their policy. I literally started laughing. Like, “There’s no way that’s ever gonna happen.” I was like, “We’ll take, you know, multiple eight figures.” He calls me the following day and they tell me, “Hey, good news. I got the policy limits for ya.”

Chad Sands: Mm-hmm.

Tim Felice: And I said, “Okay, great. I appreciate the call, but ain’t enough.”

Chad Sands: Yeah.

Tim Felice: “I told you what the demand was yesterday. It’s thirty-five million dollars.” And he laughed. I’m like, “No, dude, you don’t understand. I’m not kidding.” He’s like, “You’re serious?” I’m like, “Yeah, I’m serious. I will go to trial any day of the week for this man.” So about a month later or so, they agree. They want to schedule mediation. We go to mediation. We don’t resolve at mediation, but we end up resolving shortly thereafter. It’s a confidential number, but I can tell you that I sleep well at night knowing that, that he and his children will not have to worry about life, about the, you know, the, the stuff that, that would normally or could come up had we not been able to do it. I regret not trying the case. I still wish we would have tried the case because I actually think we could have gotten a hundred and fifty million dollars from a jury. I really do. But it was worthwhile for him, for the protection and everything to be taken care of. So that is one man that he is an incredible human being. And I — he should be on stages talking to people every day. He should be life coach. He’s that amazing. What killed me, in fact, one thing was amazing. We have a hearing on their motion for summary judgment. So I have him come to the courthouse. I’m in the courtroom and it’s, it’s a — it’s in Palm Beach County. Some of them are fairly large. Some of them are smaller. This one’s a little bit larger. I’m sitting at counsel desk and I hear the door open. The hearing hasn’t started yet. So I turn around and I see him. He’s coming in. So I go over to him. I’m like, “Hey man, what’s going on?” I’m like, “What are you wearing?” He’s like, “My uniform.” I’m like, “You got a job?” “Yeah.” I’m like, “Wait a minute, where’s, where’s your fiancée?” “She’s not here.” I’m like, “How’d you get here?” He goes, “I drove.”

Chad Sands: Wow.

Tim Felice: I’m like, “You drove here?” So yeah. Someone who also was an incomplete quadriplegic in like Carolina had gotten a new van.

Chad Sands: Huh.

Tim Felice: So he was — he gave this guy his van that was still in great shape.

Chad Sands: Huh.

Tim Felice: So he literally drove himself to the hearing before work. It, th — this man who’s got one arm that’s fully functional, and thank God his brain was still good. This man’s working and driving himself. It just, y — i — it’s rare to find a human being that’s like that.

Chad Sands: Yeah, who can overcome something as tragic as what happened to him?

Tim Felice: Yeah. Yeah. It was, it was incredible. Really.

Chad Sands: Can you talk about one of these, one of your big, big verdicts that you got? There’s the trucking accident one and the sexual abuse.

Tim Felice: It’s case up in Suwannee County, Florida. The client was a musician, plays, played almost every instrument and sang. It’s what her life was. Her and her best friend were coming back from — they had gone to Louisiana to see Stevie Wonder. He was playing at a festival. Unfortunately, he ended up getting rained out. He couldn’t do it, but they were on their way back. And it’s late at night, traveling down the highway. Now, what they didn’t know was that a few hours before, Kelvin Kennard Slayton, working for Ed Smith Construction Company, he decides to start drinking early in the morning. He’s drinking a lot of alcohol. And then he goes to sleep at his mom’s house. Wakes up about two hours later, hops in his truck. Fast forward a few hours. I think was about three hours or so, four hours, give or take. He’s on the highway. He pulls over for some reason. Supposedly gets out of his truck because there’s a problem with the tire. He walks around and he literally kicks a tire. Like what you’d see in the old like 1940s movies, like literally kicking a tire. Like, “It’s okay.”

Chad Sands: Right.

Tim Felice: He gets back in the truck, looks in the side, sees lights coming down the highway. And he pulls right on out. Right out in front of a blue minivan driven by my client. She swerves, hits the brakes, tries to get out of the way, and ends up clipping the rear driver’s side of his truck. The van spins and it flips. And her passenger’s killed.

Chad Sands: My God.

Tim Felice: Yeah, it’s terrible. What we find out was that he was wasted. I don’t remember the exact numbers, but I think it was like point one nine, it was really high.

Chad Sands: Yeah.

Tim Felice: Right? He is currently sitting in prison for vehicular homicide. So the client ends up with a multitude of surgeries. I think it was sixteen orthopedic surgeries. She’s got a mild traumatic brain injury, and one of the worst things that ever could possibly happen happens to her where there’s a news report about the crash. And it just makes a comment that someone was arrested for DUI. It didn’t say who. Never made any attempt to correct anything in the news. Never told anyone, “Wait a minute, I was the drunk driver.” In fact, he denied being the drunk driver, despite all the testing showing that he was completely drunk. And he claims that he hadn’t had anything to drink in hours before. So think about that. If he hadn’t drank for, say, six hours before, but he still so high, how much booze is he drinking?

Chad Sands: Yeah.

Tim Felice: No, he was actively drinking in the cab. That’s what we believe because there were beer bottles found right outside the cab. We couldn’t get them in. We couldn’t talk about that because he didn’t admit it and we couldn’t prove that that’s what he was drinking. But it was just, it’s way too coincidental.

Chad Sands: Right.

Tim Felice: So in discovery, what we find out is that this guy never should have been driving.

Chad Sands: Did he not have like a license of —

Tim Felice: Well, he didn’t need to have a CDL. He didn’t have to, but he had to abide by interstate commerce rules because it was a truck that’s considered a commercial motor vehicle. It’s just not one that required a commercial driver’s license to operate.

Chad Sands: Yeah.

Tim Felice: But that’s not what the issue was. So we get the records, we get his driving history and everything else. And I take the deposition of the corporate representative, and this all came out in trial. I was like, “You hired this like fifty-something-year-old man to be a laborer. Did you think it was funny that he got his driver’s license about two months before he started working for you?” And they’re like, “No.” Like, “No? Okay. Well, let me ask you this. If you knew that he didn’t have a driver’s license for almost fifteen years because of a prior DUI, would that have made a difference?” “Yeah.” “If you knew that he had a multitude of traffic infractions, fleeing the police, fleeing and eluding, a car crash he left the scene for —” He had a terrible, terrible history. Say, “If you knew all this, would you have let him drive?” “No.” “Okay, well, did you do any research?” “No, we just pulled the driving history report for the past year. We saw he got his license and that was it.” Okay. So fast forward to about six months or eight months into employment, January rolls around the following year, and they decide to make him a driver. They did no background investigation on this man, even though he previously worked for the owner’s other company.

Chad Sands: Wow. Another company.

Tim Felice: Yes. Ed — he worked for Ed Smith in another company. They never asked him anything about his history. Claimed they didn’t know that he was incarcerated for many, many, many, many years because of the DUI and then violating probation and then committing more crimes. And the majority of which had something to do with operating a motor vehicle. So they put him on the road in January. He gets a speeding ticket in February. He gets another one the following year. So I say to them, “Wait a minute, you do the yearly driving history checks, right?” Like, “Yeah.” “Well, where are they?” “We don’t have them. We lost them. They were in the warehouse. I don’t know. We can’t find —” Like, “Okay. You agree if you did it, you would have known about the speed —” “Yes.” “If you knew about the speeding, would you have let him drive?” “No.” “Okay. Let’s look at this. He got two more tickets the following year and his ability to get a CDL was revoked. Did you know about that?” They’re like, “No.” Well, the following year is the year of the crash. “In that January, did you pull another report?” “Yeah, we always do every year.” “Did you look at the report?” “I don’t know.” “Where’s the report?” “We don’t have it. We lost it.” Like, “Okay, let me ask you this.” I was like, “If you’re telling me you definitely pulled the report and if you saw what’s on the report, you never would have let him operate the vehicle. Do you really think you looked — you got the reports?” They’re like, “Yeah, we did.” I was like, “Well, if that’s the case, do you think maybe you never bother to look at them?” Like, “Yeah, maybe.” I was like, “Should this guy have been driving your truck?” They’re like, “Absolutely not.” All of this came out. It was, it was really bad. Yeah, it was really bad evidence. There was an issue with our client though. She was speeding. She was doing like seventy-eight, I think, in cruise control. There’s some comparative negligence, and we told the jury that. We told them she contributed it, she was going fast. We don’t — we wouldn’t be here but for this guy drinking and driving and pulling out in front of her.

Chad Sands: Right.

Tim Felice: But we, we asked them to apportion damages between everybody. They gave her ten percent, they gave fifty per — fifty percent to the employer, forty percent to the drunk driver. They thought the employer was more at fault for putting him on the road than the driver for actually being drunk. I would agree for a human being.

Chad Sands: I would agree.

Tim Felice: Yeah. Yeah, that, that one, that one’s crazy. So we had served them with an offer of judgment. I think it was for like fifteen million dollars, and they told us no. “There’s no way you’ll ever get a good verdict in Suwannee County, Florida.” The — it’s a ultra conservative venue, the highest verdict in that county in the entire, since its inception, with like seven million dollars on a death case.

Chad Sands: Mm-hmm.

Tim Felice: And I said, “Okay, we’ll see what happens.” And the jury gave us seventy-seven million three hundred thousand dollars in compensatory damages. Of that, thirty-seven and a half million in human losses in the past, thirty-seven and a half million human losses in the future, and fifteen million in punitive damages. I had asked for 125 to 175 million dollars for the compensatory phase. So I was happy that where they came in, I still believe, I truly believe that it was, it was worth more because going back to the story about the defendant not owning it and not telling anyone he was the drunk driver, because the story came out, people assumed that my client was the drunk driver. And for years, re — even up until months before trial, people have accused her, screamed at her, painted her house and said, “You’re a murderer.”

Chad Sands: Yeah, for killing her friend supposedly.

Tim Felice: Exactly. Even so, like just about a year before the, before the trial, so this would have been 2024, someone she hadn’t seen in a long time, she saw like walking in the streets of Savannah, and she’s like, “Hey, how are you?” Wanted to talk. She goes, “I don’t want to talk to you. You’re a murderer.” So many years later, a criminal trial where the man is convicted of killing her friend because he’s drunk. And she’s still facing those things and it, it, it took a major, major, major toll on her mental health.

Chad Sands: Dealing with their own demons, but then having to be accused of that.

Tim Felice: Yeah, it was terrible. She’s in and out of the operating room. She’s having major problems. She can’t play any instruments anymore. She lost, I think it was two octaves in her vocal range. And this is a lady that has had residencies at the House of Blues. This isn’t just somebody playing, you know, in, you know, sitting in the back of a bar somewhere. Like she got to play a, like a handful of the biggest stages in Savannah where major artists that she looked up to, you know, as a little kid had played. I mean big time musicians. And she got to that stage and she got knocked down. But she’s a fighter. She still tries every day. She’s still working. She’s a good egg. She’s a great person.

Chad Sands: And then the company — it appealed it? Appealed the decision.

Tim Felice: Yeah, yeah. So th — there, there’s always appeals following trial. So yeah, th — they filed for an appeal. It’s before the First District Court of Appeals. And we haven’t had oral argument or anything yet. I believe the briefings might be done or, or are finishing soon, I think. I don’t handle appeals. I have the very best appellate lawyer I could find. His name’s Andrew Harris. He handles all of my law firm’s appeals. In fact, he was with us as trial counsel. It was Andrew and my associate Paul Dozois and myself. We tried the case together.

Chad Sands: Yeah.

Tim Felice: Like I said, up in a little, a beautiful hundred-plus-year-old courthouse in Suwannee County. It was remarkable to see what, what those citizens in that county did. ’Cause it, it shocked everybody. And I think it just goes to show how much damage there was. You know, it, it’s not like this was a tried in Los Angeles or downtown Miami or some of, you know, the, you know, the areas around the country that are known to be liberal. This is the complete opposite. Because I think that it’s worth it. What she’s been through, what she’ll go through for the rest of her life … it’s horrible. No human being should experience that.

Chad Sands: All because a guy had to drink too much and then get in a truck.

Tim Felice: Yep. Yep. Or an employer, all they had to do was literally look at the form they, they claim they bought that, you know, it’s online. All they gotta say is, “Wait a minute, dude, even if it’s not the first year or the second year, on the third year,” it’s like, “Wait a minute, last year you can’t even have a CDL? Yeah, you can’t drive for us.” That’s all they had to do, and this never happens. A life is still being lived and another one has not been destroyed. Yeah, it’s terrible.

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Explore what’s possible at www.cloudlex.com. Now here is this episode’s “Closing Argument.”

Chad Sands: Can we chat about the hundred million dollar —

Tim Felice: Verdict. So that was an arbitration award. This was a case that got, it got a lot of attention when we took it on. Our client, she was a US figure skating hopeful.

Chad Sands: Wow.

Tim Felice: She was, I believe, 13 years old. And she goes — as in, in ice hockey, in figure skating, oftentimes if you’ve got someone with great talent, they’ll end up going and living with a coach. So —

Chad Sands: Sure.

Tim Felice: — they can practice all the time. So that’s what she did. She was living with this coach, Andrei Berekhovski. He and his wife, actually. So while she’s there, he abused her. Yeah, he sexually abused her. It’s in the court file, so I can talk about it. It was bad. She didn’t tell anybody for a very long time. Very long time. She happened to be friends with someone who worked for the office. They were really close. And she finally talked to him and he said, “Listen, come talk to Tim.” So she actually flew down. They lived in District Columbia, she flew down and we talked about it all. And you know, those are the types of cases where you have to be a little skeptical, right? Because you don’t, you don’t know what happened. Like why — I understand why you wouldn’t talk, but we have, we have to go do our research, right? We have to investigate ourselves too. Well, in this case, I didn’t really have to do much because it — one of the, one of the times he abused her was actually witnessed. The guy’s father had been visiting from Poland, I believe, or Russia. And he saw it. When she finally told her mom, her mom did like a Zoom call with the man, it was recorded, where he admitted walking in and seeing his son do this.

Chad Sands: The coach’s dad.

Tim Felice: Yep. So that’s enough. When, when you’ve got a father of a freaking rapist saying, “Yeah, I saw it, he’s a terrible person.” That’s all I need to go. So that’s when we first, we had her go up to Orange County to file the police report. And what happened was they were gonna do a controlled call with him. That’s where they’ll take the victim and they’ll, they’ll be with the investigators and she’ll call the person and talk to him in the hopes of him admitting everything that happened. Well, he got spooked. He realized something wasn’t right within two hours, because unfortunately the sheriff’s office didn’t have anyone stationed outside of his house when they did the controlled call. Within two hours, he was on a flight to Iceland.

Chad Sands: Mm-hmm.

Tim Felice: And he made it all the way to Russia. Yep. Made it to Russia. So we’re like, “Wow, that really sucks.” But my client’s husband works in Capitol Hill, happened to work for one of our senators from Florida. And we were able to get, I should say we, he was able to facilitate an international warrant being issued for this guy’s arrest. And this has been one of the most satisfying things I’ve ever gotten to do as a lawyer. So what ha — what happened was he’s in Russia. He has no idea what’s going on. No idea.

Chad Sands: Thinks he’s made a c — clean break, right?

Tim Felice: Yep, he knew something was a problem and he went out. We, no one, we said no letters. Then we find out the, in that the detective goes and talks to the wife and tells the wife everything. And says, “When’s he coming back?” “Well, he moved back. He’s never coming back,” you know. Obviously, she would talk to him. Made no mention about an international warrant. What we found out was that a few months later, he actually went from Russia and he met his wife and his young child, he had a young kid, I, I don’t remember how old, maybe five or six. Met them in London. Nothing happened. He saw them, whatever, he went back to Russia.

Chad Sands: Mm-hmm. And the day they go back to the States?

Tim Felice: They went back to the States, he went back to Russia. We missed out. Well, fast forward another six months, eight months, and his mother passed away in Poland. He thinks he’s free and clear. “I’m good to go.”

Chad Sands: Right. “I made it to London, I can go to Poland now.”

Tim Felice: No, yeah. He thinks he can go anywhere except for the United States of America.

Chad Sands: Yeah.

Tim Felice: He gets to Poland and they nab him. They pick him up. He gets nowhere. They toss him in a Polish prison. And this was during COVID. He sat there for, I, I, I think it was close to a year plus, where he was formally extradited to Orange County to stand trial. And before trial, he pled guilty to, I can’t remember the exact count he pled guilty to, but it was basically sexual abuse of a, sexual battery on a minor child. It was awesome. So during this time, we had filed the lawsuit. He had fled. He had a lawyer defending him in the beginning. And then the, the lawyer for some reason withdrew, even though he continued with the criminal stuff. I don’t know if they forgot about it, but the judge ordered us to arbitration. So we went to arbitration, did a full presentation, showed him everything, had the client testify. And a rather conservative mediator or arbitrator gave us an award of a hundred million dollars. And he didn’t reject the award. It was just entered as a judgment. So now I am gonna chase this man anywhere he goes. He can’t leave the US for a long time. We are going to perfect that judgment and execute against him, hopefully till he dies. And then whatever he’s got in his estate, we’re taking it for my client.

Chad Sands: Was he part of like a, like an organization or was he just kind of like this l — lone shark ice, ice figures coach?

Tim Felice: He was a US figure skating coach.

Chad Sands: Uh-huh.

Tim Felice: He was internationally known.

Chad Sands: Yeah.

Tim Felice: And this is not the only girl he abused. We, we know of for sure, absolutely one other girl, and we discussed it. Unfortunately for her, she didn’t do as well as my client did. Her and my client talked, and, and my client has done very well for anything that’s happened to her in life. She’s back skating again. She’s teaching kids. So she’s been — the other girl, unfortunately, the demons took over and she’s had a, a bit of a, a rough life. But we know, you know, when there’s one, there’s two. When there’s two, there’s a hell of a lot more. So we, we have no doubt that it occurred, but we know of specifically at least one other person that was afraid to come out and talk publicly. But he absolutely did it to her.

Chad Sands: Yeah.

Tim Felice: So it, being a part of, you know, being, I guess, the catalyst or, or starting that process to bring this piece of garbage rapist and to justice at both the civil court but the criminal court, having him extradited was one of the coolest things I’ve ever been involved in.

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