Tom Scolaro

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Tom Scolaro: Ask your lawyer, “What is your why? Why do you do this?” … I get a phone call from some friend. Let’s call him Mr. Smith. Mr. Smith’s ex-wife and two children were killed in a house fire… What would I have wanted when I was in that situation? What did I want? I wanted somebody to answer the questions for me. I wanted somebody I could talk to.

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: Welcome back, friends, to “Celebrating Justice.” In this episode, we hear from trial lawyer Tom Scolaro. His firm’s motto, “Hustle & Heart, Set Us Apart, reveals his fierce commitment to uncovering truth, protecting clients, changing lives, and sometimes changing laws. To get to the stories, I asked him, “Why did you want to become a trial lawyer?”

Tom Scolaro: My origins go back to my childhood. I grew up in a very, very blue-collar town in upstate New York. Couldn’t find it on a map or pronounce it if you tried. And I grew up around blue-collar people. My father was a truck driver, and he was a tough dad, but a good dad. And he always wanted his kids to do and be better off than he was. He was an immigrant to this country. He moved here with his parents when he was, I think, about nine or ten, over from Sicily. So he had a fondness for this country and for its ideals and always had a great respect for lawyers. Ever since a young age, he always said, “Tommy, you know, you gotta be a baseball player or a lawyer.” I wanted to be a baseball player, but I blame my parents for that. I capped out at five foot seven, so there was no chance of that happening. But I do remember him saying that, and for whatever reason, it stuck. Because if I look back on it, it’s — you do things because you want to please your parents, and you want to always be the apple of their eye. And I always wanted to do good in school. I always wanted to make my dad proud because I saw how hard he worked. It’s just that the grain of thought stood in my head, and I always had that in my mind. Despite that, I went to college, I think, for finance or something that I didn’t care about. But it was always law school for me, because I wanted to, in my mind, make my dad proud. Growing up when I did and where I did, I didn’t know what the hell a lawyer truly did. To me, a lawyer was what you saw on TV — it was Jack McCoy from Law and Order. That was everything to me. I didn’t know that there was civil law, property, or real estate, or trial law, or whatever. It didn’t exist. You only know what you know. And I only knew Jack McCoy — darn near my idol. So that’s what I wanted to do and be. And so, I took all the criminal classes in law school that you could take, and I had my heart set on going back to New York and being a prosecutor in the same office that Jack McCoy worked in on TV. But despite my dreams — or what you think is supposed to be your life course — fate intervenes. And, you know, it did for me. My story is a little bit unique.

Tom Scolaro: When I started law school — I should say, I’m the second of four kids. I have an older brother. Now, you know how college should be four years, right? My brother was on, like, the seven-year plan. So I’d lapped him. And so, when it came time for me to go to law school, I selected the University of Miami. And my brother — I don’t know where he was at that point — but he decided to transfer to the University of Miami so he could finish undergrad, and I was starting law school. I remember, he’s two years older than me. So that was the plan. And what we did is — no money, no nothing. So we were sharing a motorcycle. That was our mode of transportation. And every other weekend, we would take turns to go visit our grandmother on the other side of the state in Sarasota. And this weekend, it was his turn. He leaves on Friday — I forget what time. Next thing I know — Idon’t know, this was before cell phones — I don’t even know how they found me. I guess I got a phone call in the dorm. And it was some cop from somewhere who says, “Your brother’s just been involved in a terrible accident. You need to get here right away.” And I had to borrow somebody’s car, and three o’clock in the morning I’m driving across the state, and got there just in time to watch him being wheeled into surgery. And it ends up that he was rear-ended by a drunk driver on Alligator Alley and just slammed and thrown. It was really bad. And my brother ended up with a really bad brain injury. He lived, thankfully, but he’s just never been the same. And people ask me, “Well, what’s it like?” or “What was he like? What’s he like now?” It’s a different person. The brother that I had at that point in time is no longer—and he’s functional, he’s got a wife, and now he’s got two kids—but he’s not the same person. It’s just… just not. You can imagine—I’m a first-year law student, I’m in the hospital. Also, there’s cops, there’s my parents telephoning me from New York, “You gotta do something.” I’m like, what the hell am I going to do? I didn’t know anybody or anything. But I was smart enough to ask my law professors, “What do I need to do?” And they gave me the names of some lawyers, one of which I hired. And I saw what happened in that. I saw that — wow, okay —they won the case. They got my brother money. They set him up for life. And I said, “Okay, I’m not stupid.” I’m the type of guy that, no matter — even if it’s something bad in life—I try and look for the positives of it and try and understand what the lesson to learn is from it, and that things happen for a reason. So I said to myself, this happened for a reason. I was meant to go through this experience, live the horror of it alongside my brother. From that moment on, despite my urge to continue to be Jack McCoy, I knew it wasn’t starting to fit. And I knew that I had to embrace what it was that I was supposed to do. And so I said goodbye to Jack and my dreams of being him. And I decided to do this for a living. It’s been the greatest thing in my life next to my wife and kids—that I know when I get up in the morning that I was put on this earth to do this type of work. And there are people that I’m supposed to help, and I’m supposed to make a difference in their lives. I’m supposed to be different, because I’m not an ordinary guy. I know there are plenty of good lawyers out there, but I don’t think anybody’s going to put their heart into it and their muscle into it like I do and have been, because I know exactly what it’s been like. I know what it’s like to be in the emergency room at four o’clock or five o’clock in the morning. I know what it’s like to have a billion questions. I know what it’s like to have an uncertain future, to have a complete life disrupted. And unless you’ve been through it, you’ll just never know. And I try and carry that experience forward, try to never get too complacent, try never to be too big or too small, and always understand, why the hell am I here? You know, what am I supposed to do? And it’s not always easy. It’s not always fun. But it’s what I’m supposed to do — until I get another sign from the big man upstairs, right? And something else pops in my life in a different way. I think I’m reading the signs all right. So that’s my backstory. That’s where I find myself today.

Chad Sands: You really experienced it firsthand, as you probably still experience it with your own clients now, but it was with your family and you weren’t a trial lawyer yet. But you saw all the puzzle pieces, all the trauma and the questions that come up, and you brought it up. You bring us a special quality. Is that what makes you unique? How do you separate yourself then?

Tom Scolaro: I think so. And look, I’ve got a lot of friends that do this type of work, but I don’t believe anybody comes at this the way I do — and with the heart and with the hustle that I do. I mean, so much so that I made it my tagline for my firm because I’m more of a street lawyer. I’m more of a boxer. I’m somebody that lived the fight. There’s nothing frou-frou about me. Didn’t go to Harvard. Wasn’t Law Review. Although I’m telling you right now, I’ll beat any of them because I’m personally invested in each outcome, each case, each client. Because this is not a profession that I do. This is not a business I’m involved in just for the money. I don’t care. I really don’t. If you do everything well and right, personal success will follow. But you have to have the right reasons for doing it. And whenever it’s a beauty contest between me and some other firms or me and some other lawyers — and I encourage people to talk to whoever they want to. Five lawyers, I don’t care, ten lawyers, doesn’t matter. And I always tell them, “Listen, ask your lawyer, what is your why? Why do you do this?” And if they give you some sort of canned answer like that — which 90% of them do — you might want to think twice. But if you see that there’s heart, if you see that there is real passion for doing this, I don’t care, this person’s better than me, go with them. Their story’s better than mine, go with them. But you know, you have to… You have to be doing this and wanting to do it for the right reasons, because it’s a slog, it’s hard. You know what we’re up against on a daily basis. So it’s the truth. It’s not that it’s my truth — it’s the truth. And I feel very comfortable being an open book about these things.

Chad Sands: You think that maybe comes back a little bit from your dad’s Italian journey and hardworking attitude?

Tom Scolaro: One hundred percent, because we were — again, I grew up around people like my clients. There was no living it up with upper class. It just didn’t happen. It wasn’t my world. I was around truck drivers, school teachers, nurses, construction workers, people that worked in the drywall factory, gardeners. Those are my people. And I feel very good about it. And I feel that, okay, I’ve got just enough in me and just enough brains and ambition to be able to be their voice when they need to. And I’m happy to do it.

Chad Sands: You’ve been doing it for a while now — over 25 years — a lot of cases, a lot of clients, hard to choose one. Could you share a story about one case that really had a significant impact on you? I mean, obviously your brother’s, which you referred out — that was, in theory, your first referral, right? Yeah. What about sharing one of your cases that had an impact?

Tom Scolaro: Thank you for the question because there is one that comes to mind that I gave more of myself than I thought I could. I like to really be there for my clients. I like to give. Everybody gets my cell phone number. Everybody calls me whenever they need to. They text message me. But I don’t mind, because again — what would I have wanted when I was in that situation? What did I want? I wanted somebody to answer the questions for me. I wanted somebody that I could talk to. I wanted somebody to tell me it was going to be all right so I could get through it. I think the most impactful case in my career was — I don’t know — maybe six, seven years ago. It starts out as a house fire in Cudjoe Key, Florida. So, if you don’t know the Florida Keys, Cudjoe Key is one of these little islands on the way to Key West. It’s got a whole bunch of houses. I do a lot of work throughout Florida, but especially the Florida Keys. I get a phone call from some friend — let’s call him Mr. Smith. Mr. Smith’s ex-wife and two children were killed in a house fire. And the children, if memory serves me, were like nine and five or something like that. Very young. And they’re like, “Can you help them?” Okay, but house fire — how did the house fire start? Kid playing with matches? Was there a… let’s see this… I have no idea. So I go down there. I haven’t retained anybody yet, no experts or anybody. I go down there and I just see the fire marshal over there, and he says, “Yeah, you know, looks like the fire started on the outdoor balcony. Looks like this was a marijuana fire.” I’m thinking to myself, what’s a marijuana fire? “Yeah, yeah, no, the older kid, the one kid survived, the 18-year-old. He must have been outdoors smoking marijuana and somehow he didn’t put it out, and it was able to ignite the cushions, and somehow he left it in the cushions.” I’m like, okay, that’s what you’re going with. Okay. So I talked to the 18-year-old kid, and he says, “No, no, I was sleeping. Okay, I’d earlier in the day gone back there and smoked weed on the balcony, as an 18-year-old does — and I’m certainly not judging that, I could care less — but no, I smoked my little joint, there was nothing left. I put my little stash underneath the outdoor sofa, went to bed. Two hours later, there’s a bang at my door from my mom to get up and get out of the house.” So, mom wakes up at like, I don’t know, two in the morning, slams on his door, “Jacob, get out of the house, get out of the house!” Jacob gets up, out of the house. She goes back for her two other kids who were sleeping in her bedroom and was never able to get past that doorway. So they all burned to death. It was horrific. And the father — the ex-husband and father of the two children — he was living maybe a mile away, heard word that the house was burning down, and he tried to get back into the house, busting through police lines, ready to run in there. I mean, the place is engulfed. He didn’t care. He had to be restrained and, you know, kneeled down by five people. His babies were dying inside.

Chad Sands: The older brother — was he outside too?

Tom Scolaro: Yeah, he was able to get outside. He had a lot of bad burns on his back, but he survived. And so, the fire marshal, right — this is the start of the case — says, “It’s this kid’s fault. By the way, you killed your family while you were sleeping.” And I didn’t buy it for a second. So I hired a couple of experts — a fire guy and an electrical engineer — before the scene was destroyed. And we went there and we ran it with a fine-tooth comb. And we had the area of origin only about two to three feet away from where they had it, but on the inside of the house, not on the outside — on the inside of the house, right near an electrical outlet. And we couldn’t figure out what the hell was the cause or why or anything like that. But that’s where we had the area of origin. Fire marshal said, “You’re out of your mind. It’s outside, not inside, the way the fire dynamics…” I don’t want to bore you with a lot of the details, but it was an epic battle. Lo and behold, I pulled every electrical outlet out of that house. Like I said — electrical engineers, metallurgists — and it was my theory, and I believe I was right. We were able to prove, at least to the point that the case ultimately settled for a substantial eight-figure amount, that the electrical outlet had arced, and it arced, causing a spark that ignited the blackout curtains, ignited the sofa, which resulted in all this massive black toxic smoke and fire filling the house, going back into the different compartments. And then once that happened, flash fires set in and they were barely able to get out of the house. So, I mean, I had to prove up that this outlet was defective. And again, this was one of the largest electrical manufacturer outlet companies in the world. This is a worldwide company. I had to essentially establish that their outlet was the defect. Okay. I had to prove a product liability defect in this thing — not just that the fire started there. I needed a cause. What was it about the outlet’s composition — how it was designed — such that it could cause, could develop what’s called resistance and heat to develop into an arc. And by God, I did it. And the satisfying part about this case was finally getting to depose — well, two things, three things really. One: showing the company that they had a defective outlet when absolutely, gospel, they did not — they said, did not, did not, did not. Two: deposing the fire marshal and walking him through his analysis and how it could not pass — it could not stand up to the scientific method. There was nothing to support his hypothesis. And then I’m walking him through my recreation and walking him through the scientific method of it, and then getting him to see, at the end of the day, “Oh, okay. I can see that.” That’s the most of an admission we were going to get from the guy. “Okay, yeah, I can see that.” He did say it. He did say it. Yeah. And then to me, the most satisfying part was the human side of it — that number one I got to clear a young man’s name who, you know, all these officials were trying to pin this on. They were trying to say that this kid was a reckless drug user and he accidentally lit his family on fire. Can you imagine the burden that that is? My God, he’s an 18-year-old, he’s a good kid. And it certainly was not him. So I got to clear the weight, and you could see the weight that he was carrying from this — the accusations, the way people looked at him. And it was horrific. And he was such a good kid and he didn’t do anything wrong other than have a lazy fire marshal try and point the finger at him. And the second thing, the second most important part of that case for me and why I remember it every day, is the father. There were moments — I’m going to say moments, plural — where he was going to end it. And he was going to join his kids. I can’t imagine the pain that he, even to this day, lives with, obviously, because it’s his children. I mean, I’ve got two young kids, and I don’t think I would have been as strong as this guy was to not want to do that. But I mean, I had hours and hours and hours of conversation with this man. He’s a beautiful man. Beautiful man. Loved his kids. I just… just could not let him do that to himself. I wanted him to live in their honor, and I wanted him to feel life again, and to feel love again, and to feel it all again. So yeah, that case — irrespective of the monetary amount that it resolved for — the fringe benefits of getting to heal people and to show people that they were wrong and that your gut and your intuition were right — It’s everything that I could ever ask for. When you go back to sort of life choices, there’s just no — and again, it will sound conceited — no one could have taken on the responsibility that this case required, both on a human level, on a legal level, and put in what needed to be done in order to get to the outcome it needed to be. You’ve got to give part of your life away. You have to. There’s no way to do it in a sterile, cold, “I’m just a great trial lawyer” thing. You’ll get a money result, but will you get the human result that ultimately you should be after as well?

Chad Sands: You did get a little bit of Jack McCoy in there then, I feel like, with that fire marshal.

Tom Scolaro: I’m not going to lie — it kind of felt good.

Chad Sands: What a case. Also, on your bio — I was checking it out — you’ve also done a lot of stuff around mandating carbon monoxide around the Keys again. Was that stemming from one case that you had that you grew into something that you led the charge on?

Tom Scolaro: Yeah, again, it all goes back to cases. So I had this case a long time ago — let’s say early 2000s — where a young guest and his father were in a hotel room in Key West and the young man died, father lived. And there were a series of — I think it was like 24 or something like that — other individuals who reported and had been having sickness as a result of staying in this one room. And so it was just a big case. Ultimately, this case was next door — I guess it shared a common wall with a boiler room. And there was a little hole in the drywall. And if memory serves me right, the carbon monoxide from the boiler would blow up through a stack and be vented out the ceiling. But the vent at the ceiling — it’s supposed to be a straight hose that goes up with no bend towards any of the winds. But I don’t know — something happened with a pipe, and a maintenance man said, “You know, I could fix this,” as opposed to sending it out to a professional. And of course, he put some sort of vent on it that essentially bent right into the eastern winds coming off the ocean. So instead of the carbon monoxide being forced out to dissipate into the atmosphere, the winds would blow it back down into the boiler room, which would then overcome the room and seep into that hole. And lo and behold, yeah — a whole bunch of guests were poisoned, one died. And so, you know, we were able to spearhead a change in the law that new hotel accommodations — new construction for hotels — now had to have carbon monoxide detectors as part of their building requirements. And it’s interesting because, I think maybe a year and a half or two years ago, I was involved in another case similar to this, but it occurred in the Caribbean. Okay. And there was no building code requirement — there was no law that this thing be… that they have carbon monoxide alarms. And it was a carbon monoxide leak again in the boiler and common wall, and it just dissipated into the room. Husband died, wife lived. Very horrific, tragic case, lots of choice of law issues in the Caribbean, as you could probably imagine — and releases and liability waivers and all of that nonsense. But I was able to get through that and get a very significant result for that family, and just wonderful people. I’m a sucker for a good client with a terrible story. I’ll move heaven and earth for them because… that’s what you’re supposed to do — it’s what the job is. And as challenging as some of these choice of law and foreign jurisdiction issues are, and releasing liability waivers and all of that — to be able to put it all together feels good at the end of the day when you can get them that measure of justice, because that’s what they want. They want accountability, and you have to be their voice for that.

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Now here is this episode’s “Closing argument.”

Tom Scolaro: I think we all want to feel like the work that we do has meaning and has importance and has value.

We all want to feel like we’re chasing something good, something great. And I’m certainly in that category.

I got involved in this line of work not by design. It was strictly by accident — happenstance, serendipity, call it whatever you want. But this was not what I had set out for myself in life. I wanted to be, as I said earlier, a prosecutor. I wanted to spend my life putting bad guys in jail.

I thought that was what a lawyer was supposed to do. But it wasn’t until I had a very sad and unfortunate situation happen in my own family where I realized that there was something greater that I was supposed to be doing. I needed to do this type of work. I needed to be able to be a champion for people.

I needed to be able to help heal people. I needed to be able to stand up for individuals who went through life-altering, life-changing, devastating ordeals — and be there and care and work and push and get accountability and get justice and, you know, help them recover. I’m not just talking about financially — I’m talking about recover personally. Put the pieces back together. Move forward with life. Because life is hard.

Life is brutal at times. It’s unfair. It’s going to make you question your religion, question God, question everything about yourself. But at the end of the day, if you can find somebody that is going to help you through it, who’s going to hold your hand and make sure that you get to the other side of this — healed, full, recovered — that’s why I do this. I feel that in doing this type of work, I’ve been put on this earth to make a difference. To be that voice. To be that individual. To be that last bastion of, “Well, you know what? I’ve got Tom.”

“I’ve got Tom in my corner and he’s the one fighting for me.” I hope that those that may listen to this and who will find themselves staring into the abyss — questioning everything, fearful, not knowing what’s going to happen — I want them to know that there are people out there like me,

who don’t do this for the money, who don’t do it for the accolades, who don’t do it for anything else other than it’s the right damn thing to do for people. So I would encourage everybody who finds themselves in a situation where they need to look for a lawyer to help them, who’s been through something — don’t just settle on a billboard or don’t settle on a jingle in a commercial. Talk to people.

Talk to different lawyers. Find out what that lawyer’s why is. Why is it that they do this? That is the most important question you can ask. And I encourage everybody out there to find an attorney who can be their partner, who can be their champion — to get you back on, in a forward and progressive manner, in a good manner with the rest of your life.

Chad Sands: That was trial lawyer Tom Scolaro. Thanks for sharing your stories. To learn more about Tom and his firm, visit usinjury.law. All right, 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.