Transcript of Episode 31, with Corinne Mullen

Scott Glovsky:

Welcome to Trial Lawyer Talk. I’m Scott Glovsky and I’m your host for this podcast, where we speak with some of the best trial lawyers in the United States. This is a storytelling podcast, so we have great lawyers tell great stories from cases that had a profound impact on them. So, let’s get started.

I’m very happy to be sitting across the table from an amazing lawyer, an amazing human being, an amazing person, an amazing teacher, Corrine Mullen, who practices in New York and New Jersey, and is a phenomenal, phenomenal lawyer. Corrine, thanks so much for being here.

Corinne Mullen:

Oh, thank you, Scott. It’s great to be here.

Scott Glovsky: 

Corrine, can you share with us the story of a case that had a profound impact on you?

Corinne Mullen:

Yes, it was … The story of the case is that our client, John Robinson, was in his pickup truck in Jersey City, New Jersey. He had already been disabled, and he was out doing something called junking, which is looking for scrap metal. He was rear-ended by a small car, a Toyota, and we brought the case for him. There were no damages to his truck, but he had been injured. So, in the face of no damages and a prior accident that he had had, we continued to believe in him, and we brought that case to trial just a couple of weeks ago.

Scott Glovsky:

Tell us about him, and tell us about the case.

Corinne Mullen:

He was an African-American man in his late fifties, and he was in a lot of pain from this accident. He hadn’t been working. He was already disabled due to his hip having been replaced from this prior accident. He was a very lovable man, who refused to take any pain medicine because he was caring for a mom with Alzheimer’s disease. And so, he lived every day with the pain of this accident. We had a very hard time getting the insurance company to understand that there were any injuries at all, and up until the day of trial, they had offered us only $1,500 to settle the case, but we were very fortunate, in that our verdict was $1.5 million.

Scott Glovsky:

How did you go about learning the story of the case?

Corinne Mullen:

I had met with John a number of times, and the biggest lesson that I learned from him was what I got to see every day, and that was his obvious pain, his inability to move around. You could see how much discomfort he was in. He couldn’t get up and down from the chairs in my office without difficulty. When I would ask him, “Are you in pain?” He would say, “I’m in a terrible amount of pain, a 10 out of 10.” I couldn’t believe what he was suffering with, and he couldn’t have surgery because he was a high risk. He’d already had a hip replacement, and he was significantly overweight and had some other health issues. So, he had to live with this condition without it being repairable through any kind of surgery.

So really, the focus of the case was on his ongoing pain. We argued to the jury that although you couldn’t see the inner workings of his body, that all of his systems had been affected. We were very fortunate that the jury was able to see this for themselves. One of the things that we did, that I thought was very successful in helping us with the verdict, was … I had asked the judge to excuse him from the courtroom during the opening of the case, because I thought that it would be a good idea for … You know, it would free me up to speak about his limitations and his pain, in his absence. I challenged the jury to look for themselves, and to see what obvious pain he was in just while he was in the courtroom, getting up and down from the chair, and going to the witness stand to testify.

Scott Glovsky: 

What was your connection to the case?

Corinne Mullen:

My connection to the case was that I was really the only person who really believed John. A lot of the other doctors who looked at him had said that his problems were caused by these prior injuries. I never stopped believing in him, and believing in the truth of what he was saying about the pain that he was suffering. So, I really empathized with what he was going through, and I came to realize that because some of the activities in his life had been taken away from him … That he was no longer working, that he had very limited mobility … I realized that those very small, daily activities that he enjoyed that had been taken away from him in this accident, made the injuries that more pronounced. All he was able to do on a daily basis prior to the accident was go to Planet Fitness with his family, go for a walk, help his wife a little bit around the house. And after the accident, he wasn’t able to do any of that.

Scott Glovsky: 

How did you bring that out?

Corinne Mullen:

Well, in opening I talked very freely, without him being in the courtroom, about what he was not able to do. That he wasn’t able to move around. He wasn’t able to walk without pain. That he wasn’t able to do even the junkyarding things that he had done in Jersey City, or to work out with his daughter or his son, and that the deprivation of those little things were really very profound in his case. His intimate life had been affected, too. He really wasn’t able to have intimate relations at all with his wife. I focused on those things, and that’s where I was really connected. Because I clearly saw, through everything, how much pain he was in, and how bad this was for him.

Scott Glovsky: 

How did you bring that home with the jury? In other words, did you tell some stories, or …

Corinne Mullen:

What I did was in the opening, I said, “I want you to see for yourself what’s going on with him. You’re going to see, members of the jury, just what kind of pain he’s in, and you’re gonna have a chance to look.” We also really focused on it in closing. One of the things that I did in closing was to talk about his body and his spine as a leaning tower of Pisa, like the Leaning Tower of Pisa in Italy. And I said, “Imagine that structure. It’s already damaged. It’s already leaning to one side, so a small tap to that structure would cause the entire structure to fall down, and to be in rubble. And that’s what’s happened here.”

Scott Glovsky: 

How did you deal with the issue of having a car with seemingly no damage? Which, many lawyers out there, of course, look at potential cases like this and have to try to figure out how to deal with that.

Corinne Mullen:

Well, in our case we were fortunate that we didn’t really have to deal with that. They had stipulated to liability, but they still argued the absence of any noticeable damage to the truck as being a factor to look at. We, surprisingly, never had to really address that. We conceded that there were no damages to the outside of the vehicle, but said the damages were to the occupants inside. And we spoke about how, although there were no visible damages to the structure of the truck itself, that the impact had moved the car a foot or so forward. And through John’s testimony, John said it was just a huge impact, and it felt like an earthquake. It felt that he expected the ground to open up. That’s how significant it was. And there were some damages to the car that hit him.

Scott Glovsky: 

How did you approach voir dire? That’s jury selection.

Corinne Mullen:

All right. Well, in New Jersey we have very limited voir dire. We’re not allowed to ask any questions at all. The judge asks the questions of the jury. So, I really had to just rely on my instincts. I had three challenges, because we were on an expedited trial track, so I took a look at the pool in the room, and I saw that they were a very favorable pool. I dismissed three jurors, really just based on my perception that they weren’t going to be favorable to this kind of an injury. I dismissed one middle-aged woman, and then two others. So, our jury selection only took an hour in the case.

Scott Glovsky: 

Gotcha. Where in this trial was Corrine Mullen?

Corinne Mullen:

I think in this particular trial, I was incredibly present. I focused on connecting with the members of the jury, and I didn’t worry about being perfect at all. I was very much in tune with them talking to them, and even when our own client really testified very poorly, in terms of being a historian as to when certain things happened, I stood up to them and I said, “You know, he was really a very poor witness, and sometimes that happens. You’re not a good historian of what happens. So I need you to look beyond that to the medical proofs here, which are undeniable, as to how he was injured.”

So, I think one of the things that I did well in the trial was to state completely honestly what was going on in the courtroom. I didn’t run from the things that weren’t going my way. So when my client’s testimony was really quite poor, I admitted that to the jury, and I think they appreciated that candor.

Scott Glovsky: 

You talk about connection the jury, and focusing on that connection. How did you do that?

Corinne Mullen:

I would talk to each of the six jurors individually, really leaving no one out, and I spoke to them in a very conversational way. I would even hold up the records that I wanted them to focus on in the jury room, and I would say, “Here it is. I’m gonna need you to go to page eight and to look at this paragraph of the report, which I really think is important.” And I would pick that up and show that to them. I would just be in front of the box, just talking to them, without any notes, and making a connection with each individual juror before I moved on to speak to the next one. I didn’t leave anyone out.

I did this in both the opening and the closing. Especially in closing, you know, I was very frank with them about what the difficulties were in our case, but I also said, “This is a case where you can feel confident, based on the medicine and the reports that you’ve seen, that this is someone who’s really injured. You had the chance to see Mr. Robinson for yourself, and to make your own assessment as to whether or not he was injured, and he is. There’s no denying that.” And I was very matter of fact and frank with them in a way that I don’t think I’ve ever been in a case before. And the reason for that is, we had so little time to get this case ready. I took it over from another lawyer. It was on an expedited track, and we elected to use an expedited trial procedure. So the whole case, start to finish, was in an afternoon.

Scott Glovsky: 

Wow.

Corinne Mullen:

Yeah, we picked the jury at … Oh, about 11:30 in the morning. We had the jury by 12:45. I opened at 1:45, and we had a verdict at about 4:50. Three hours later. So, it was an incredible experience, and a laboratory for direct communication and connection with the jury, because that had to be what won the case. It was such a brief period. We were committed only 15 minutes to open, and half an hour to close.

Scott Glovsky: 

What do you attribute the very large damages award to? Or how did you get that, is my question?

Corinne Mullen:

Well, I did argue that the damages would be with him for the rest of his life. That he couldn’t have the surgery because of the high risk. I asked them to make an award that would compensate him for each day of his life going forward. In New Jersey, we’re permitted to use a time unit rule, to ask the jury to evaluate what a day of this kind of injury would be worth. I said, “He’ll probably live another 20 years with this kind of pain, day in, day out, so I’m gonna ask that your verdict compensate for each day of that, through the natural expectancy of his life.” And that had to be it.

We did get a question during deliberations. The jury asked, “What guide should we use … ” or “percentage” in their own words, ” … to award the damages?” And the judge brought them into the courtroom and said, “There is no guide. You must use your own common sense and experience as a person to award the damages.” And they came back 10 minutes later with a verdict that was divided $1.125 to Mr. Robinson, and $375,000 to his wife Karen, for loss of services.

Scott Glovsky: 

What did you learn from this case?

Corinne Mullen:

I learned a huge lesson in this case. Two huge lessons. The first one I learned was to follow my instincts. My instincts told me to have him not be in the courtroom during the opening. My instincts told me to be honest when he had flubbed on the stand. And my instincts also helped me dismiss two of the jurors that I thought were not gonna be helpful to understanding this kind of injury, in someone already disabled, with a prior accident. So, that was the first lesson.

The second lesson was, more than anything else, stay connected as a human being to the jury. Really talk to them as people, and don’t focus on being overly lawyer-like. But if you can speak to them as a real, living, breathing person, and really try to make that connection, I think that they rally for you.

Scott Glovsky: 

Corrine, what advice do you have for young lawyers out there who are just starting practicing, and looking for guidance?

Corinne Mullen:

What I would say for young lawyers is to try to get experiences where you can go to court as much as possible, and to really focus on your communication skills in the courtroom. And to spend a lot of time with your client, trying to understand what’s really going on with them. Because if you can establish that human connection, and really feel what’s happening with them, and understand their pain, I think then you’re in a much better position to relate it to your juries.

Scott Glovsky: 

What advice do you have for all of the lawyers out there that look at a car accident case with no visible damage, and immediately reject the case?

Corinne Mullen:

You really need to shift that focus from the outside of the car. I mean, the car is not the client. The client’s on the inside of the car. The client can be hurt. These cars are designed to withstand these kinds of impacts. You really can’t focus on the car. I’d almost concede the absence of damages to the car. It’s not indicative of the damages to the occupants. It’s a much different structure, a human body, than a bumper. And so, I wouldn’t be afraid of those cases at all, and I would advise them very strongly to concede the absence of damages, and say that it’s not relevant at all to what’s happening to the soft, human bodies of the occupants of the car.

Scott Glovsky: 

Did you present any medical testimony?

Corinne Mullen:

No. We just presented the … We had an expert narrative report that the jury was allowed to take. Oh, I forgot one thing … That they were allowed to take into the jury room. Our expert had divided the injuries. 30% attributable to the first accident, and 70% to the second. And when I stood up in opening to the jury, I said, “Today is the day for me to tell you about my case. It’s the day for me to let you know what it is, and also what it is not. We are not here saying that every injury was the result of this accident. We are saying that our doctors have told us it’s 30% to the prior accident, and 70% to this, and I don’t want you to award any damages for that prior injury. That was already there.” So, we were very candid about that.

Scott Glovsky: 

What else should we know about Corrine Mullen?

Corinne Mullen:

Well, I think that most of my life is driven by really loving communicating with people, and being with people. I really love being in the courtroom. I have other interests and hobbies as well. This is my second career. I started at NBC Network News as a writer. I’m very driven by my family, and by the responsibilities of our family and our children. We really focus on our family, and on doing things in the family. I found that having children made me much more a rational lawyer. You know, particularly for this trial, a lot of my preparation time was compromised by taking care of one of our children who is about to start college next year. So, I found that I had to focus my attention in only a couple days in getting ready for the trial. I had to study it on the case. But I didn’t have countless weeks and months to prepare, and it had an unexpected benefit. When I stood up, I had a very good idea of what was in my notes, but I didn’t remember it word for word. And I discarded my notes, and it gave me a chance to really connect with the jury in a way that I didn’t anticipate. That really helped my case here.

Scott Glovsky: 

Wow. Well, Corrine, congratulations on a phenomenal result.

Corinne Mullen:

Thank you.

Scott Glovsky: 

Congratulations on being a phenomenal lawyer and a phenomenal person. I want to thank you for taking the time to chat with us today.

Corinne Mullen:

Oh, you’re so welcome. Thank you very much, Scott.

Scott Glovsky: 

Thanks.

Thank you for joining us today for Trial Lawyer Talk. If you liked the show, I’d really appreciate if you could give us a good review on iTunes, and I’d love to get your feedback. You could reach me at www.scottglovsky.com. That’s S-C-O-T-T-G-L-O-V-S-K-Y.com, and I’d love to hear your feedback. You could also check out the book that I published, called Fighting Health Insurance Denials, A Primer for Lawyers. That’s on Amazon. I put the book together based on 20 years of suing health insurance companies for denying Medicare to people, and it provides a general outline of how to fight health insurance denials.

Have a great week, and we’ll talk to you in the next episode.