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The Wick case

Wick was our first mold case. The story about how I got involved in mold litigation is actually pretty interesting and a bit funny, and I'd like to share it with you. My practice had hit a bit of a stumble, and our bank was getting a little bit nervous. We received a notice from my bank that they were going to come by and review our caseload and review my assets. When the gentleman came to my office, we spent a good bit of the day together and at the end of it he said, "You know, I've never met anybody that I have so much confidence in. From now on, I'm going to be your personal banker." And then, on his way out, after having a wonderful day, he said to me, "You have to do one favor for me. That favor is: you've got to take my friend's case." And he told me that this mold case involved a family he was close to, a former banker, and that that banker and his family were experiencing very unusual physical symptoms.

"Stuff is growing on us, we're sneezing, we are wheezing, we're dizzy, we don’t remember things, we're coughing."

They were bleeding out of their noses and ears. They had a loss of consciousness and confusion. They were previously high performing people, but had got to a point where they couldn't organize their daily routines.

"We're like, what? What is this?"

I didn't know anything about mold and, of course, the injuries sounded quite funky to me, but I did meet the family.

Then, and this is a good thing about this firm, we started doing research.

I learned about Stachybotrys, aspergillus, and penicillium. I learned that there wasn't anything magical about what was happening to this family, but instead mold litigation could be a very fascinating field.

In researching the law, we figured out that the Kelly-Frye rule, a rule that keeps out junk science, is really about devices. It didn't apply to medical causation testimony in the State of California. That set the precedent in the legal community for the defendants to be on notice. Our firm was going to get its medical causation testimony to the jury.
I did get 6-1/2 million dollars in that case, and also set a record.

And, based on that, we've had a series of settlements before we go to verdict on many mold cases.

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