Justin Blitz

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Justin Blitz: And I showed up and I said, “Knock, knock. Remember me?” … Definitely my law school years, definitely my college years for the most likely my high school years, saying “I will never, ever do what my father does.” … By the time I was 40 years old, I lost 10 friends to horrible tragedies….

Narrator: Welcome to “Celebrating Justice.” Presented by the Trial Lawyers Journal and Cloud. The next-gen Legal Cloud platform built exclusively. 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: Welcome back friends to “Celebrating Justice.” In this episode, we welcome Manhattan Base trial lawyer Justin Blitz. A native New Yorker. Justin has seen his share of pain and loss, both personally and through the eyes of his clients. Despite thinking he would never follow in the footsteps of his father 22 years and over a hundred verdicts later, he now does exactly that, delivers justice for the injured.

Justin Blitz: When I was in law school, I was in the music business and I was working for a record label, and I was a thousand percent sure that I was going to pursue a career in law based in the music industry, and I was working for. Chris Blackwell who started Island Records, Bob Marley in U2, and he had started a new record label.

It sort of dawned on me, the music industry as an attorney really is boring, and you’ve got these big names on these contracts, but at the end of the day, they are just contracts. My mother always told me that. My best talent resided in talking using my powers of persuasion. So my father and my uncle, they were sort of the pioneers in the state of New York.

Doing medical malpractice cases. They were literally like the first guys to start bringing these cases. And I took the bar exam and I said to my father, I said, why don’t you gimme a shot over at your law firm? And he was like, well, I thought you were in the music business, all that about. I’m like, I know, but gimme a shot.

And besides my uncle, he had four other partners, and the other partners were like, that is a horrible idea. I don’t want him here. Basically, my father was like, too bad. We’re gonna give him a shot. They gave me, it was pretty much a closet next to this air conditioning, constantly. It was just brutal. The managing attorney, and he says, you’re trying this case in three weeks. Nobody wants to try it. Good luck with like this nasty smirk on his face. And I was like, wow, okay. I don’t even know the first thing about trying a case, it was a negligent security case and we brought a lawsuit against the owner of the building and I tried the case. Still. Remember the judge who’s now an appellate division judge, and I remember her.

During the trial, pulling me into her chambers and saying, you don’t know what the heck you are doing here. And I said, you are right Judge. This is my first trial. Don’t tell anyone. And the jury on that trial gave me a $3.95 million verdict. That was when I was like, I got the bugs, so to speak. I was like, wow, I’m pretty good at this.

I think I’m going to stick around here. Mind you, I had spent definitely my law school years, definitely my college years for the most likely my high school years, saying I will never, ever do what my father does, and here I am. Talking to you 22 years later with over a hundred verdicts under my belt.

That’s the story of me becoming a trial attorney.

Chad Sands: Did you love music? Like were you a mu musician in high school? Like what

Justin Blitz: Music? I still love music. I was throwing these parties. In Manhattan, at Joe’s Pub down on Lafayette Street where I was booking bands. I was, I guess like a little club promoter in high school, and this was sort of the continuation of that.

It was amazing. I booked great bands. Bands like The Strokes and All American Rejects and New York City grimy type bands that were trying to get big, and I was booking them and. Then I was going to law school and then I was working for, in the legal division of, it’s called Palm Pictures, Chris Blackwell’s record label. So it all sort of jived into where I thought I was gonna go. Now I just listen to music while I’m working on my trials

Chad Sands: And the realization that you didn’t want to be a contract attorney?

Justin Blitz: Yeah. I was like, dude, this sucks. Literally, I was like, okay. It’s cool that it says Bob Marley publishing on the front of the contract, but it’s just contracts. I mean, I wasn’t in A&R, I wasn’t booking the bands and then in the music business. Then eventually just became. Dealing with copyright —

Chad Sands: Napster.

Justin Blitz: Napster. Exactly. It was right around the time of Napster. They were trying the, they being the, the record labels were trying to figure out how they were going to stay profitable in a world of Napster,

Chad Sands: I heard someone bought Napster recently.

Justin Blitz: I mean, I remember Napster so well. I, I was, I was like, this is incredible.

Chad Sands: I mean, that was kind of at the birth of social media, but more MySpace, you know what I mean? Instagram TikTok wasn’t there. Oh, none. Streaming, streaming music wasn’t there. The labels were desperately trying to hold onto their CD sales, and now it’s, it’s completely turned

Justin Blitz: around. And the elevation from Napster to like Spotify is just mind boggling to me.

Chad Sands: It’s almost like if you stayed a contract attorney compared to being a trial lawyer.

Justin Blitz: Totally. And who knows where my world would’ve ended up. I most likely would not have had my own law firm as. Do now. And that’s also a pretty cool story as to what caused me to leave my father’s office.

Chad Sands: So you did leave your father’s firm. Was it the partners that, that you got sick of or did you have to just go out on your own to prove yourself?

Justin Blitz: What happened was after a couple years, I saw that one of the younger partners was taking money and I knew it. And the older partners didn’t believe me. He had been there a long time and I was like this new guy and, and, and I knew it and I couldn’t stay there and watch it. So I convinced my dad who started getting in sort of bad health to come with me and I was gonna start my own law firm. They were. Two guys, one who used to work for my dad, who approached me and said, listen, we’re starting a law firm.

Why don’t you be the third here? We met for seven months at a little bar in Tribeca, planning our new law firm and planning our escape route, and I took a loan and had no cases and had my father tag along. And, but with this guy who was taking this money, my father’s mental health started really deteriorating rapidly.

I sued the dude. And I went through an entire arbitration against him. I was the attorney. I represented my father on it. I covered the cost of it, which was back then was like a huge amount of money for me. Went on for about a year and a half, and I won after 34 years. Nine months after I left the firm, my father’s firm dissolved. This guy who. Took the money. I got a judgment against him. He, he was taking from my father and he pled poverty, but he had one case, he had one case that my father had started in the eighties. It was the oldest case in Bronx County of New York. It had gone through three different mayors and it was a landfill case against the city of New York.

Where we represented, it was about 35 kids who lived within the landfill area, and they had gotten leukemia from the landfill, permeating into the water in the area. And this guy who took the money, he took that case and I had this judgment against him from my father’s money that he was owed. And I just sat and waited and. Little did I know I was going to wait 14 years, so. My father passes away. I start this new firm. I then end up going out on my own without these other two guys. Um, fast forward 14 years and my wife calls me on my way to work and she’s like, Hey, I just heard on New York one that the City of New York settles.

A landfill case for $32 million. I’m like, honey, let me call you back. I had been sitting there waiting with this judgment to get against this guy, and after 14 years we eventually got paid and I showed up and I said, knock, knock. Remember me. Remember this judgment. By then, my father had passed away. My uncle had passed away, so I took that money that we got and I basically, I divvied it up to all my dad’s kids, the grandkids, my uncle’s kids, and eventually. Justice was done, delayed, but done. That was the real closure, so to speak, on passing of my dad and ability to like sort of put that chapter of my life behind me and move on. And it was the same guy who first Christmas party when I was at my father’s firm back in oh 3, 0 4, whatever it was, he punched me in the face. At the Christmas party in front of like all the judges in New York, you drank too much and you didn’t want me to be around. And that’s really what got me to start my own law firm.

Chad Sands: Well, it sounds like you didn’t have your typical journey to hang in your own shingle or starting your own law firm, that’s for sure.

Justin Blitz: It was typical in the sense of starting my own law firm and putting out my own shingle. In that we didn’t have any money, we didn’t have any cases, and we really just grinded for years to get to the point where I’m at now. I had of course, some things that happened to you that help you along the way. The first five years after I started my practice, there was a lawyer in Queens and he had hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of cases. They weren’t the best cases, but he asked me to try ’em. And this was back when there were one particular judge in Queens County. He was. Sort of a madman, and he’d have you try cases one after another after another. I mean, there would be times where I was picking a jury on the second floor, I was giving a closing argument on another case in the third floor, and I was then cross-examining someone on a third trial in the afternoon, all three separate trials happening at the same time.

And then I’d finish and he’d send me out again, and he sent me out again, and I took a ton of verdicts. I look back at that time and I’m so grateful for it. Of course, you have some lucky things happen. I remember maybe six, seven months into my new practice, I’m in debt and we don’t have any cases, nothing upcoming and

Chad Sands: Stressing probably like crazy.

Justin Blitz: And I’m like, how am I gonna pay my rent and like to get married and all this stuff, you know? And I get this call right from one of the big firms in the city and they’re like, Hey, you sent us, uh, Bausch and. Case and I was like, oh, I really, I didn’t even have any records of it. I’m like, oh, okay, great. I’m like, what’s going on? He’s on the other line. He’s like, well, we settled the case. We have a referral check for you. And he goes, $208,000. And I like fell off my chair. He’s like, so we’re gonna mail it to you. And I’m like, where’s your office?

Chad Sands: I’ll come pick it up.

Justin Blitz: Yeah. And I remember it was like raining and I’m like sitting on like staring at the check and like I never had that much money in my life. And so you have things like that that will help you get going. But I’m a big believer of if you really learn your trade and you treat people. Well, and you are honest and you work hard, things are gonna come to you. Well, there’s no doubt about that.

Chad Sands: And you don’t punch people in the face at Christmas parties.

Justin Blitz: You don’t punch people in the face at Christmas parties. You don’t steal from old lawyers who are starting to lose their marbles and. I’ve trained from some of the best guys in the country. I saw it just now on your trial lawyers journal. And the last page is the advertisement for the Gerry Spence College. Been there trained there.

Chad Sands: You went to Thunderhead Ranch?

Justin Blitz: I did. I went to Thunderhead Ranch. I was recently thinking I’m probably due for a renewal visit. It’s probably been about 10 years, but I loved it and I incorporate still to this day the things that I learned there. That’s a lot about trying cases by human and identifying people’s stories and brutal honesty with things and the psycho analytical principles that you learn. There, which you incorporate into your work as a trial attorney are still things that I do to this day, and then I take of course from the other greats, the balls and the Keenans and studied under them and Rick Friedmans, and you name it. If there’s a guy who knows. What they’re talking about in this world. I tell my kids all the time, I’m still learning. There’s no doubt about it. And second, you think you know, it all is second that you’re done. There’s always an opportunity to learn more and more.

Justin Blitz: That’s always a good question, especially when you’re in a market like New York City. I’m born and bred Manhattan. I’ve lived here my whole life. I also, when I was younger, at the time, I was 40 years old. I lost 10 friends. Wow. To horrible tragedies. Some that I was involved in, but all of them were very close. I’m talking my best friends in the world dealing with those things, and it was at one point when I was in high school, it was like, it was almost every year. One I lost and I lost two the following year. Then one the next year after that, then one the next year after that, next year after that, suffering through something like that alters one’s course. Of life and there’s a lot of bad that comes with it, and I miss my friends every day. But there’s also some good that you can take from horrible experiences like that. So I have a keen understanding of A, what’s important? B, how to deal with grief, how to channel those emotions into. A positive way. IE fighting ferociously for people who have suffered.

Loss and tragedy, and then you add that in with my real good sense street sense, just growing up in this city and to this day, I can say this where I had friends that were some of the poorest and some of the richest and everything in between. And then there’s the ability, which is also a skill that needs to be learned.

Which is the ability to be vulnerable, the ability to be embarrassed, the ability to be brutally honest, which goes hand in hand with being vulnerable and being embarrassed. And that’s where I stand out. ’cause I just don’t think that the average, very talented, very smart, very experienced attorney doing what I do. Had those life experiences that will. Take you to the level that I believe, and I know that I’m at,

Chad Sands: It’s almost as if the struggles of the city in Manhattan and all these characteristics of you, kind of like it’s a melting pot. It’s almost a reflection of the city itself.

Justin Blitz: Very much so. I’m like the epitome of a New Yorker, and I don’t take something like that for granted. This is the only place I’ve ever lived. I have a keen sense. Of the city. The city is in my blood. I think back to like before my time, but Studio 54. Right? Even in the early nineties, like the nightclubs, what made the city so great, which it’s not like this anymore. Now you got these private clubs and you need to be a member and go back to 54 where you can have Andy Warhol getting into a club. And then the next guy who’s getting in is just some like street dude who’s got some good vibes on and some cool clothes. And he’s getting in and he’s sitting there right next to Warhol. To me, that’s the city. It’s not private clubs just for the rich. That’s what made the city so great. And so to this day, when I hire interns or I hire young attorneys, I want kids who went to Brooklyn Law School.

I want kids who went to Cardoza Law School. It’s the type of business where you gotta grind. And I guess at the end of the day, I love what I do. I really enjoy it. And that’s half the battle.

Justin Blitz: I’ve had so many cases that have had such a significant impact on me. Talk about a case that I’ve never. Have answered the question that way. This about this case, and it involved a young lady. She was a really nice young girl. She was so quiet and she was in a psychiatric ward and she was in a psychiatric ward. She had been very abused as a young girl, and I guess it, your mind can only take so much and she ended up in this psychiatric ward. And she came to me through her father, who was a new stand guy. He had a little kiosk. He told me that his daughter had been raped in the psychiatric home. He had told me that there were four or five lawyers who didn’t believe her and wouldn’t take the case.

And the value is not a lot, begging me to take the case. And I remember when I got the case, I was very skeptical, wasn’t sure I wanted it. I met her in the ward, couldn’t get anything out of her. And I went back and I went back and we had a breakthrough moment and she told me in detail what happened. I took the case, I successfully litigated the case. We won the case. She then took that money. She left Queens where she was. She got proper care. She got on medication. She checked in with me about a year ago. She called me out of the blue and she was telling me how her mental illness is under control. And she got married and she became a mother and she lives down south.

And she said to me, she’s like, you know what happened with us? Was the precipice for her to change her life. And she said to me, if you didn’t take my case, I know for sure I would not be alive right now, or I would still be sitting in that psychiatric ward. In Queens, you do a lot of cases through the years like I do, and it wasn’t millions and millions of dollars.

I actually didn’t even think much about it until she called me and gave me this update on her life. I’ve thought a lot about her recently, actually. It was more meaningful to me than I guess I ever thought. It reinforces the notion in my mind that doing what I do has a true, significant. Real effect on people’s lives.

Chad Sands: A little parallels with, I guess, how long you had to wait for that result or the verdict to come in about that partner who was stealing from your dad and how that took over a decade and maybe this case. It took a a decade or many years to kind of come full circle.

Justin Blitz: There’s no doubt about it. Our system, in many respects is partially broken in that it just takes years and years and years for us to litigate these cases. As I tell my clients all the time, why is it taking so long? And I’m at the mercy of the courts and there’s just so many, so many judges, and there’s thousands and thousands of cases. Eventually they all come to a head. And eventually. Most of the time, almost all the time, I’m successful achieving justice for these people who have been waiting for so long, and I can relate to that. You asked me earlier what makes me stand out, and I gave you all these answers of my environment and the tragedies I suffered. I also was in some serious accidents when I was younger, where I really injured myself, and one might make the argument that I shouldn’t even be here today. In 1999, I was in a horrible motorcycle accident and I broke over 30 bones in my body, and things like that happening to me also adds to the gratification that I have for my clients when I get good results.

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Justin Blitz: I was asked by a colleague to take a case for trial. It was a. Products liability case against, we’ve all heard of them. They’re the largest manufacturer of construction equipment in the world, and you see their cats all over the streets. And my colleague said to me, listen, it’s coming up for trial. I can’t find somebody to try the case. The man was using the construction equipment. It was a big monster machine. Gets off the machine, turns it off, and the machine moved while it was turned off and it crushed. This man’s legs against the foundation of the home. Devastating life-changing injuries, seven, eight surgeries. Really bad stuff, but they couldn’t figure out.

Why this machine that was turned off moved. They had maybe 300,000 records that I’m not sure anybody had even looked at, which they had gotten in discovery from the construction company defendants, and he’s like, listen, it’s on for trial in about four or five weeks, would you get involved? He said to me, there’s an expert.

He’s in Illinois. He’s 80 years old. That’s all we got. And he doesn’t know why it moved. I got on an airplane and I flew to Illinois. He was an engineer, and I showed up at his house and I said, I’m not leaving here until we figure out why this machine moved. And I figured I might spend a day, maybe two days, I was on the third day and.

We still didn’t have a clue. Then it went to the fourth day, then it went to the fifth day when. We discovered, and this was after digging through thousands and thousands of pages of records, that there was a little piece of the parking brake system of this machine. It was called the solenoid valve and the solenoid valve on this particular model. In layman’s terms, it was shorting and it was causing the. Machine to move when it was not turned on. And then we figured out that the company knew about this valve not working and we started digging and digging and digging, and we found other instances where machine had moved and. No one could figure out why, and people were injured.

And then we found a memo that was internally written by the manufacturer where they basically said, yes, we know that this solenoid valve is broken. It’s defective. It was designed defectively. But it would take a recall of thousands and thousands of machines that are out there in the world. And in layman’s terms, it was decided by the company that they would rather just pay out on lawsuits. It would cost them too much money to recall this machine. So the trial starts. And it’s me on one side of the table, and there’s about 14 attorneys on the other side of the table, and there was no offer. And the trial begins and one week goes by and second week goes by, third week goes by, and on that third week, they flew down the chief engineer of the entire company.

He has about 350 engineers who work under him, and I had subpoenaed him and I put him on the stand and I kept him on the stand for two days. He was brilliant, there’s no doubt about it, but I was ready for him and I proved through his cross-examination. That this valve A was designed effectively, and B, they knew about it.

And then on the fourth day of his testimony, I walked into the courthouse and we resolved the case for about $10 million after about seven years without any dollar being offered monetarily. It was a great result. But it was such a microcosm of what makes being a trial attorney such a rewarding, wonderful career, and there’s so many. Core values that are in me that I take from that trial and that story of fighting the good fight and being the underdog, and staying persistent and figuring out what the heck is going on here. Who’s responsible and why, and just giving it every sense of my fibers and my bones and body to this case to get this man justice, a case, a gentleman, a story that I will never forget and has a lot of examples of how I strive to be not only as an attorney, but as a person.

Chad Sands: That was trial lawyer Justin Blitz. Thanks for sharing your stories. To learn more about Justin and his firm, visit their website, BlitzLawGroup.com. Alright, I’m Chad Sands. Thanks for listening. 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.