He is the CEO of Connecticut Trial Firm and attorney of the highest bodily injury verdict in the State of Connecticut!
With a dollar amount in mind, Ryan and his partner set out with a specific goal in mind about five years ago when it all began with his client, but this verdict certainly exceeded expectations.
Something that may surprise many is that Ryan had no doubt about his goal. He set out knowing that his goal was going to happen but also knew it was going to take a significant amount of work and skill.
One of the great things about Ryan is that he understands that clients are scared, hurt and confused, which is why he represents individuals every day against multi-billion dollar corporations that are focused on profits, not people.
Being the first person in his family to graduate from a four-year college, Ryan has dedicated his life to putting law into plain English.
2:35 we want a $10 million jury verdict
6:23 we were not established
11:03 we really wanted to understand what they went through
14:07 initial demand of $60 million
19:51 I was in court sobbing
Jim’s Hack: There’s no substitute for looking out into the future deciding where you want to be, writing it down, and then working backward to build the infrastructure to get where you want to be.
Ryan’s Tip: Even if something feels out of reach for you, believe in yourself. Surround yourself will better people, go for it and figure it out because you can do it. Everything is figuroutable!
Tyson’s Tip: For visuals and recreations, check out highimpact.com. For animations, check out https://www.totaltrialsolutions.com/animations/
🎥 Watch the full video on YouTube.
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Transcript: The $100 Million Verdict with Ryan McKeen
Speaker 1
Run your law firm the right way. This is the maximum lawyer podcast, podcast, your hosts, Jim hacking and Tyson metrics. Let’s partner up and maximize your firm. Welcome to the show.
Jim Hacking
Welcome back to the maximum lawyer Podcast. I’m Jim hacking.
Tyson Mutrux
And I’m tasting metrics. What’s up, Jimmy?
Jim Hacking
Oh, Tyson. This is like the old days when we used to record them one episode at a time lately, we’ve been doing batching them on a Thursday. But we had such a late breaking news and such an important bulletin that we had to bring to our maximum lawyer members that we decided to get our guests for today on the show as quickly as we could. His name is Ryan McKean. You all know him. Love him. And Ryan, thanks so much for joining us.
Ryan McKeen
Well, thank you, Jim, for that introduction. And thank you, Tyson for having me on.
Tyson Mutrux
Listen, I couldn’t be more excited to have you on this is amazing. I’m gonna let you tell people why we’re having you on because I don’t even want to be the one to say it. I want you to be able to say it. And then we’re going to ask you about it. So you tell us about and I guess, for people that don’t know, you maybe say who you are and what you do and all that. But then tell people why the specific reason why we’re having you on here. Okay.
Ryan McKeen
I’m Ryan McKean. I’m a CEO and attorney of Connecticut trial firm, a firm that I co founded here in Hartford, Connecticut. And the reason I’m on is we recently took $100 million dollar jury verdict on behalf of an incredibly worthy client on a case that we fought for five years.
Jim Hacking
Alright, Ryan. So as with so many things, you’ve documented your journey. And you were kind enough to share a goal that you and your partner Andrew had set a while back, do you want to talk a little bit go back go back in time a little bit to before we even signed up this client, and sort of what was the goal,
Ryan McKeen
we sat down at a local bar restaurant and we had our traction like vision, I think they call it the VT o organizer you can download from their site. And we’re like, Well, what is going to be our big, hairy, audacious goal. And we’re like, Well, we know we could be a lot of different things. But we set the goal that day, that March day as a $10 million jury verdict. And like we had no business setting that as a goal, like I may as well have been like, I want to play in the NBA for the Celtics or something. Because we didn’t have a case of that value. We had never returned a jury verdict of 100,000, let alone a million or 10 million. And we put that out into the universe as to our 10 year goal, we want a $10 million jury verdict. And we made it clear, we didn’t want a settlement, we wanted to take a verdict in excess of that amount. Because if we did it, we knew we would have to get so much right along the way that we will have built the business that we wanted to have built,
Tyson Mutrux
I want you to take us to the day after you set the goal, right? So you set the B hag. And I wonder did any any doubt creep in your mind? Like, hey, we’re not gonna be able to accomplish this, we set this way too high. Talking about the mindset part of it.
Ryan McKeen
See, I think I’m really like a simple Bob on this. And if the doubt was not there, like it was like this will happen. And I don’t think like there was there was always a belief that it would happen. And but there was an acknowledgment that we needed to do a lot of work for that to happen. Like we needed to raise our trial skills to the level that could achieve that. And so we invested significantly in going to plaintiffs workshops throughout the country for many years, and learning the best that we could to present the case. We also, you know, at the time, it was just Andrew and I and I had one part time employee with it was nine hours a week, we needed paralegals we needed structure, believe it or not, we had we weren’t even on with file vine. Like we needed to organize our operational systems and tech stack, all for this one goal. And so we started out doing those things like we were like, Okay, let’s hire somebody more part time. And we brought on like, somebody 20 hours a week, we signed up with file line, we started paring down our cases from general litigation, to only taking personal injury cases. And we’re like, This is who we are. We told the market like we want to try cases. And so all of those sorts of initial decisions stemmed from that bigger goal.
Jim Hacking
And, Ryan, I know that you and Andrew also sort of did some structural work inside the firm to separate out your pre litigation cases from your litigation cases. How did that decision, help set up your firm for success in this case?
Ryan McKeen
Yeah, we realize that bizarrely, like we were spending so much individual time on cases that were urgent in cases that were not necessarily the most important cases. So weirdly, we’d get a big case and it would kind of get back burnered Because hey, we’ve got a deposition in this motor vehicle case or we’ve got a pleading that Stewart what ever it is. And so what we decided to do was isolate really critical cases in our firm. And we isolated them with Andrew, as he’s the one who really wanted to litigate these and do these things. So I ended up getting like pre litigation, I got intake, I got firm operations, I got marketing, I had all of this stuff, because we knew that the most important thing we could do was move big files. And we tried to isolate that for as long as possible, and in fact, did for years. And that really led to different departments in our firm that led to a linear workflow. And we just wanted to protect that time. Because, look, Andrew had to take like 40 depositions in that case, you can’t do that. If you’re trying to handle intakes,
Tyson Mutrux
I find the logistical side of this just honestly, fascinating. It’s just as fascinating, if not more fascinating than the actual trial part of this, I kind of want to dig into that part of it. And the case comes in, right. I’m not sure how it comes in. But it comes into you all. And there could have been and I’m not sure if it is, but I know that some attorneys have say, well, we can’t manage this case, because we don’t have the funding to pursue a case like this. We’ve got to co counsel with someone else, we got to refer it out. Was there any point where you had to make that decision? And then also, because I my guess is probably not because of you will were more established, but talking about that part of it. And then also talking about the funding of the case, as well
Ryan McKeen
see that actually, we were not established. Like I think my firm, I think, probably combined Andrew and I even though we had separate books, were probably grossing like $250,000 Gross, like it just there was not a lot of money. But we believed that we could handle this case. And you know, when I talked to my client, Mikey Cruz when I met him at the hospital, and I said like, look, we are playing all in for you like and I meant it. And I and even at trial, I said, Look, I you know, I talked to him, and he’s like, You fulfilled your promise to me that day. And it was like, this is a thing, where I don’t care if I have to beg, borrow or steal, like we’re going to make this thing go because it’s that important. We realize the financial component early on. And that prompted us to sign up with advocate capital at the time. So we went out and we applied to them, we met them through John Fisher’s thing. And, you know, we got ourselves like an initial line for case expenses of like, I think it was like 60 or 70,000, like pretty small. But that is what enabled us to start engaging top level experts early on, because the way we used to do it, Tyson would be like, Oh, okay, we have this thing come in. Great. Now we have money for an expert to put on another case. And when you’re prosecuting something really big, that is not an ideal outcome for any of you. Because the sooner you get experts in, the sooner you get. And also, we made a commitment. We said we’re gonna get the best experts in the country on any specific thing that we’re going to use in this case. And we had the funding to write those checks. We ended up with like spending 300. I think the bills up to like $310,000 in expenses on this case, over five years, a lot of money.
Jim Hacking
Right. I think as we dive into the case itself, maybe it’d be helpful for our listeners, if you could give sort of a brief overview, a high level view of the facts of the case.
Ryan McKeen
So what happens is a pallet of lights from Philips signify the Philips Lighting Corporation, they get shipped out to a warehouse in Hartford, the warehouse is like an electrical distributor warehouse. And the safety rule here is that the lamps, the lights have to be affixed to the pallet in some way. They have to be banded or they have to be stretched wrapped to the pallet. Phillips does not stretch wrap these ramps does not stretch, wrap these lights to the pallet. And they actually they get these things from China and they have these in China, they don’t have pellets. And they have these like cheap slip sheets, okay, and the ice has a coefficient of friction of zero. These have a coefficient of friction of point one just slightly less than if it’s like this cheap plastic. And so the Phillips just takes us in a warehouse in mountaintop Pennsylvania and puts it on the chief pallet and they ship it out to rec sell warehouse in Hartford where our client works. And Rec sell puts it up on a rack about 20 feet high. And then in an adjacent aisle. What happens is a temporary worker from another company goes to lift a pallet up and it makes a little bit of contact with the pallet there and then it causes it to tip 30 The lamps of 1300 pounds of them fall on our client in the adjacent aisle paralyzing him and he’s paraplegic. So he has no sensation or use of body from the belly button down so can’t toilets can just no function below the belly button at all. And obviously that causes a whole host of harm Dan,
Tyson Mutrux
that’s terrible. I mean it’s it’s really sad and I’m glad you’re able to do a lot for the client. It’s just it’s just a terrible thing for him to go through. Talk about that part of it though maybe the emotions of not just of managing your clients emotions, because I mean they by the time he got to you all I mean he was in really bad shape. So talk about managing those emotions, but then also managing those motions inside the firm. Because sometimes you have to treat this clinically, you’re not sometimes usually you’ve got to treat this clinically, because you’ve got to take emotion out of it and approach these from a clinical standpoint, so you can best serve your clients. So talk about that part of it.
Ryan McKeen
Yeah. When we first met him, and this is something we learned is common with paralysis victims, he was in denial, he believed that he would walk again. And in fact, they sort of allow that hope to exist. And they didn’t tell him up till about a year later that he wouldn’t walk. And so when we met him in a hospital bed, he was like, I’m going to be back to work in two weeks. Okay. And you’re like, we knew that for what it was at the time. But you’re just like, you’re like, Hey, I’m with you. And, you know, if you’re gonna be back, you know, okay, like, you just you just let that be. Because again, life is weird. You don’t know. I actually think, you know, we worked on this day so hard, and we work so closely for them for five years. I mean, they call me mi familia, and they tell me, I have a Puerto Rican family. And so we really wanted to understand what they went through. And that meant time going to their house, that meant time, having dinner, or having lunch at their lunch table and sitting with them and talking sports with them. And, you know, playing Madden with, like, all all of these things sort of they happen. And because we wanted as advocates to really be able to convey credibly, what they had experienced, and to know the nuances of paralysis, which is I don’t think anything that any of us understood, private working on this case.
Speaker 2
Running your own practice can be scary. Whether you’re worried about where the next case will come from. Feeling like you’re losing control of your growing firm or frustrated from being out of touch with everyone working under your license, the stress can be overwhelming. We will show you how to turn that fear into the driving force of clarity, focus, stability, and confidence that eliminates the rollercoaster of guilt ridden second guessing, and mistake making to get you off that hamster wheel for good.
Tyson Mutrux
Maximum lawyer. And minimum time is a step by step playbook that shows you how to identify what your firm needs and how to proactively get it at every stage of the game. You’re prepped and excited for the inevitable growth that will follow name the lifestyle that you want. And we’ll show you how to become a maximum lawyer and minimum time. Find out more by going to maximum lawyer.com forward slash course.
Jim Hacking
You’re listening to the maximum lawyer podcast. Our guest today Ryan McKean. He and his partner, Andrew just got a big verdict on behalf of their client. And I’m wondering, I always just want to think about, like, as you approach trial, as you got closer, and the settlement demands going back and forth, was Was this a case that the other side could have settled for a whole lot cheaper than the verdict?
Ryan McKeen
Yes. Let me sort of backup because the last, I would say six months have been critical. When we sat down and we did our quarter, three rocks, we decided that the rock was going to be this case for the whole firm. And quarter two and quarter three, that was our rock was we’re going to get this case resolved. One way or another we had done about, I think it was I think we ended up doing about eight focus groups on this. We hired a retired judge to actually vet this case, and go through and we’d make legal arguments, factual arguments, and tell me this, tell me this, tell me how this plays out. Tell me what you think, tell me what you think, for valuation. And so we had a really good idea in our heads as to where this case should have been valued. And there’s no right number in a case like this, but the gross insurance between, there’s actually two different parties, or actually three different parties, but the gross insurance was $26 million. And Philip signifie had $20 million of it. And we drew a line in the sand and we said you are going to pay every penny of available insurance investment, or we are going to take a verdict, okay. And we had initially issued to an initial demand of $60 million, just to get things started. Because they said we want mediate this case until you until you have a demand. And so we said 60 million, that did prompt a mediation. We knew the mediation was kind of fail, we knew they weren’t taking this seriously. But we had to have the mediation for one reason and one reason only because we wanted to keep our trial date. And we knew if we went into court for the Trial Management Conference, the judge was going to say to us, you guys haven’t mediated this, get out of here and come back in six months. So we knew they weren’t going to ever take it seriously at mediation between all the parties. They offered us a grand total of $3 million. And we said we’re not even moving off our 60 until you can come up over 10 Because we have nothing to talk about here. And 10 is not going to get this done, and they wouldn’t move. So the two day mediation we have the mediator come in from Boston that blew up which was fine by us. And we then filed an offer a compromise for 26 million, but global amounts of the policies against the parties and for M Phillips in their response, they filed an offer a compromise for $1.5 million. That was the only offer that we ever had from them. So we ended up settling out with two other parties in this case right before opening statements for $8 million. So our guy had some guy had some money. And Phillips was the only remaining defendant.
Tyson Mutrux
So incredible. And I this is I just love hearing all this these stories, these war stories, these are really good. So you get past mediation, it doesn’t work out, you’re completely fine with it. You’re approaching the trial date. But walk us through the mindset, the preparations, both business side, but litigation side talk us about that the part of it,
Ryan McKeen
we knew this case was massive. And we knew that the amount of work was massive. And so we decided really prepping this case for trial in April, and or end of March. And we’d have weekly meetings and it was like this needs to be done. This needs to be done. Let’s get out ahead of things because we know we’re gonna get jammed up. We know defense lawyers are going to pull all sorts of things, there’s going to be new depots, it’s got to be taken, there’s going to be, you know, one of our experts died, we have to go get another economist like, like, we’re like, why isn’t our expert responding to emails, oh, he’s dead. So but these are the kinds of things that happen. And we decided to really, really, really start working on them, we sort of ditched and we knew that we were going to have to run hot to get where we needed. It was like, we’re gonna put the throttle on the gas on this. And we’re going to take some pressures off other places. We got our finances in order, we got some projections in order. We didn’t take drawers we we didn’t probably spent we sacrifice really, I mean, personally at the end of it, but but to push through and to get the result that we needed to do because it was so like, this was our moment. And we knew it and we took our shot. And I think I think it for us it was just having the confidence and drawing those lines and saying like we are going to be unyielding here. We believe in our case, we’ve done our work, and we’re going to kick your ass. And they just didn’t take us seriously.
Jim Hacking
Ron, I know you put a lot of thought and energy into firm culture. I’m just wondering, what was the experience like? And how has it affected your team to all work together on one goal? I would think it’d be galvanizing.
Ryan McKeen
It is definitely galvanizing. I mean, people are really proud of the firm and of the result. And people are like, Oh, my gosh, you work at this firm, because it’s like front page of the paper. And like it’s recognition and validation in ways that there’s a lot of pride. And our whole team knew these clients intimately and knew them personally. And so there’s there’s just, there’s relief, because I think the biggest burden, the biggest challenge was always like, I couldn’t live with a result that he wasn’t taking care of. Like that he was not taken care of. And to know that he set up like these people’s lives are changed and made infinitely better because of the work that went on in our firm. And it just means everything 14
Tyson Mutrux
I love the gym. I’m glad you asked about the culture question because I mean, Ryan, you are like the the culture warrior. It’s awesome. It’s really good. I don’t think we need to dig into the details of the actual trial, you’re gonna tell that story. I’m probably hundreds of times. But I want to talk about the moment you stand up that that, you know, the judge asked for everyone to rise, I’m assuming that’s how you do it in Connecticut, like they do pretty much everywhere else. Walk us through that moment, man, because it’s gotta be you’ve probably relive that a bunch now. So walk us through it. Either
Ryan McKeen
the verdict or the opening of the trial. The verdict,
Tyson Mutrux
I’m talking about the verdict part of it. Oh, man,
Ryan McKeen
you know, like, aside from like, you know, marriage birth of my kids like this is this is like one of the moments in life like this, this is one of the defining things like it, you know, you think like, if I could go back to any days in my life like this would make the cut in the top floor. And, you know, we went in and the jury comes in, and they’ve got their verdict. You know, we knew we I thought it was going to go well for us, because they had asked to see our life care plan, which meant on the jury interrogatory is that they got through the liability portion. And then they’re on to damages, which was a good thing. And I just had my remarkable out there and they start, you know, first of all the judge, the judge afterwards said, You have to love my poker face, because the judge gets the verdict first, and he’s just like, his face is not reacting at all. So he gets the verdict. And he starts writing and I was like, Oh, he’s writing a lot of what appeared to be zeros. Like, and I’m like, Oh, this is this is this is good. Right. And so then he gets the verdict. And he hands it off to the clerk. And the clerk then asked the foreperson, you know, is this your Is this your verdict? And the first line came up economics and it went 15 million. I was like, Yes. And then it was like non economics. And it was like, they’re like, going to come back $75 million. And I was like, like, I just at that point, I just started sobbing like I was just in court sobbing, and then then they’re like loss of control. are some damages $10 million? And I was like, like, I just, I’m just, it’s just such a powerful it was justice. And so they’re like up to 100 million. And then the question is like, how do they apportion amongst the other parties? Because the defendants that we settled, were still on the jury verdict form, that jury could assign responsibility. And then they’re like, We assigned 90% of field of signify, and I’m like, Oh, God, like $90 million. And it was just like, I just stopped. I just, I was just completely just sitting at counsel table, a complete mess of a human being. And, yeah,
Jim Hacking
I don’t know if we can even add anything to that. I mean, that’s pretty dramatic. Well, let’s, let’s try to wrap it up a little bit. Talk to us about the fallout, like after, so the emotional Fallout, and then maybe the publicity fallout.
Ryan McKeen
Yeah, I mean, the emotional Fallout is, is just tremendous. I mean, like, it’s probably like what I imagined, like, somebody winning the Super football player winning the Super Bowl, like, there’s an element to it of joy. And there’s an element to it of like relief. Like, we did it, we did the thing, like we hit the goal, our guys set, we did what we set out to do, and I don’t know that that has like, fully hit us in a lot in a lot of different ways. But there is there’s elation. There’s, there’s joy, there’s relief, in a big way. And then you know, the publicity thing. I mean, that we also I told anybody would listen to me that we’re going to hit 100 million. And so I’ve had Brittany our marketing person, for months working on getting a campaign ready, getting press ready, getting our publicist ready, getting this thing rolled out in a big way. So those ducks were in a row and again, that had big, and, you know, in that has been so touching on a personal level, like so many people have reached out and just been like, you know, in high school, like you did this nice thing for me, and I’m so happy for your success. And that on a very personal level has been so touching. And from colleagues and for a lot of different things. And yeah, there’s managing like, now it’s like, I gotta speak here, I gotta do this. These fall into the bucket of good problems. And I haven’t taken like people like, Hey, you retire, you take a vacation. I’m like, Nope, it’s been. It’s been grind, grind grind since this, because it’s, it is a continuation of the moment.
Tyson Mutrux
I love it. Well, I said this to you before on Twitter, but I’m gonna say to you just face to face. And I’ll say it to you again, whenever I see you actually in person, but thank you for everything you’ve done for us. But also, thank you for holding your ground, because the work that you will do on this case, it helps all of us, it helps every single one of us because it holds them accountable. And so thank you so much. I cannot thank you enough and cannot be prouder of you.
Ryan McKeen
And I have one thing for this audience. I think it’s just a lot of value no to short on time. But it’s that if you’re gonna do something like this, like you need a team, we had four lawyers on this team. And all of us brought very complementary skill sets to this trial. And you know, Andrew was, Oh, my God, the work he did in the detail work. And all of it we assembled was amazing. Alexa handled the loss of consortium claim as a woman. And that was amazing. I mean, just but but get people with disparate skill sets we brought in appellate counsel. So you know, we talked about team a lot with business. But also if you’re doing a litigation project, find those other players for you to complement your skill set. We could not have done this alone.
Tyson Mutrux
Love it. That’s That’s good advice. All right. We are going to wrap things up, though, Ryan. Before I do, I want to remind everyone to join us in the big Facebook Group. If you’ve not already. It’s a lot of great information being shared there. If you want more high level conversation with people like Ryan McKean, who’s in the guild, join us in the guild, go to max law guild.com. And while you’re listening to our hips, tips at our hips, our tips that are hacks of the week, actually give us a five star review, I totally lost my train of thought whatever I said hips. Please give us a five star review as you’re listening to the rest of this podcast. Jimmy, what’s your hack of the week,
Jim Hacking
I’m going to return back to the start of the show for my hack of the week. And that is the fact that Ryan and Andrew had written down their $10 million goal. There is something about planting your flag, declaring what you want and where you want to get to, you probably don’t have any idea how you’re going to get there. But there’s no substitute for looking off into the future or figuring out where you want to be writing it down. And then working backwards to build the infrastructure to get you to where you want to be. So I think that’s one of the great lessons. There are many great lessons in today’s episode, but I think that’s a great lesson for me and for all of us, which is you know, say what you want to happen say out loud the things that you want, write them down and then figure out how to get there because as Marie Forleo says, Everything is figured out double. It’s very
Tyson Mutrux
good. Love it, Jimmy. I Ryan, do you have a tip or hack for us?
Ryan McKeen
Yeah. There’s another Ryan McCain and maybe hopefully dozens of them out there in this audience who are starting out and life is tough. And you don’t know. And you don’t probably it feels improbable or out of reach for somebody, but believe in yourself, surround yourself with better people, and go for it and figure it out. Because you can do it. Like there’s no magic in what we did the quote Jim, everything is figure out double
Tyson Mutrux
love it good stuff. Ryan, I have in my brain a visualization of what happened in your case. And I think it might have been because you shared a recreation. Do I remember that correctly? Yes. Yep. Okay, so I thought so I’ve got a very clear, it’s very clear in my brain as to what happened, you didn’t have to tell me I remember seeing it. And that’s where my tip comes in. I don’t know who you used. But I recommend high impact kind of high impact.com. They can give you visuals, they can do recreations. And if you want to talk about who use that you can do that as well. But it is very, very impactful. Ryan, I think you showed me that months ago, if not a year ago, and I still in my brain I see it. So I recommend using a company if you’re trying cases even even if you’re not, I highly recommend using a company whether it’s high impact or something else. But do you want to talk about who you use?
Ryan McKeen
Yeah, and I’ll send the links if Becca wants to put them in there. Whatever. I’ll send the link to Dropbox about to these we use five animations absolutely critical. Our focus group said these helped us understand what had happened. We used Andrew Finkelstein’s outfit, total trial solutions, absolutely amazing to work with the defense products tooth and nail to get these animations in because they they knew they were powerful. They deposed our animator and really strict judge let them in and it made a huge difference. So I was on those do animations if you’re doing personal injury work. Absolutely.
Tyson Mutrux
Love it. Thanks so much, Ryan. Appreciate it. Ryan. Thanks for coming on. I know that you’re really busy these days. So thank you so much for coming on and sharing your story. Really appreciate it. Thank you.
Jim Hacking
Happy for you, buddy. See brother later.
Speaker 1
Thanks for listening to the maximum lawyer podcast. Stay in contact with your host and to access more content. Go to maximum lawyer.com. Have a great week and catch you next time.
