The case was so well known it made its way into the pop culture zeitgeist, parodied on shows like Seinfeld and used as fodder for late-night monologues.

I love a good lawyer joke as much as the next guy. The problem with the jokes about this case is that almost everything most people “know” about it is wrong, or at least based on an incomplete set of facts.

Full disclosure: I’m a plaintiff’s injury lawyer, and I see this case through the eyes of the lawyers who represented Ms. Liebeck. Honestly, I probably would have taken her case if she’d called me. But don’t trust me. Look at the facts, because I think they make my argument for me.

What actually happened

In February 1992, Stella Liebeck was 79 years old. She was a passenger in her grandson’s car, parked in a McDonald’s lot in Albuquerque, New Mexico. She wasn’t driving, and the car wasn’t moving. She put the coffee cup between her knees to take off the lid and add cream and sugar, and the coffee spilled all over her inner thighs and groin. The injury was almost immediate.

At the time, McDonald’s served its coffee at roughly 180 to 190 degrees, an extreme temperature. By comparison, coffee you make at home is probably somewhere between 135 and 140 degrees. Liquid that hot can cause third-degree burns in a matter of seconds.

And that’s exactly what happened. Within seconds of the spill, Ms. Liebeck suffered third-degree burns over about 6% of her body, including extremely sensitive areas like her thighs, groin, and buttocks. Lesser burns covered another 16%. Remember, she was 79. She spent eight days in the hospital, needed skin grafts, and went through roughly two years of treatment.

These weren’t “ouch, that’s hot” burns. They were the kind where surgeons take skin from other parts of your body, and the medical bills run into the thousands. (For more on how the law values that kind of harm, see my page on pain and suffering damages.)

She didn’t want millions. She wanted her bills paid.

Here’s the part that never makes the late-night monologue: Ms. Liebeck didn’t start by asking for millions of dollars. She asked McDonald’s to cover her medical expenses, which, in my view, is an extremely reasonable request.

McDonald’s response? They offered her $800.

EIGHT. HUNDRED. DOLLARS. That’s it. $800 for skin grafts. $800 for eight days in the hospital. $800 for two years of treatment.

Only after that offer did Ms. Liebeck hire a lawyer. Her lawyers filed suit, and McDonald’s had several opportunities to resolve the case well before trial. It turned down every one of them.

What the jury heard

When a defendant settles before trial, it can often keep damaging information out of the public record, negotiate confidentiality, and deny any wrongdoing. Not so in a courtroom. At trial, the jury heard evidence that was particularly damning for McDonald’s, both about how it treated Ms. Liebeck and about its business practices:

• McDonald’s had received more than 700 reports of people burned by its coffee over the previous decade, including some burns as severe as Ms. Liebeck’s. The company did little to address them.

• It knew the temperature was dangerous. A McDonald’s quality assurance manager testified that the company knew its coffee could cause serious burns at that temperature, and it had no plans to change it.

• It made that choice on purpose. McDonald’s kept its coffee that hot to maintain flavor, and because customers often drank it later, on the road or at work.

In other words, the evidence showed this wasn’t a freak accident. It was a deliberate decision. The temperature of the coffee was a known risk that had already caused real harm to hundreds of people, and the company did little, if anything, to make its product safer because doing so would have hurt the bottom line. This is a classic “profits over people” case. (If that sounds familiar, I’ve written about how insurance companies use similar math.)

The verdict, and what happened to it

At the close of trial, the jury awarded Ms. Liebeck $200,000 in compensatory damages, then reduced it to $160,000 because it found her 20% at fault for spilling the coffee. That’s comparative fault working exactly the way it’s supposed to. (More on how comparative fault works, if you’re curious.)

The real headliner was the punitive damages award: $2.7 million. That number wasn’t pulled from thin air. It represented roughly two days of McDonald’s coffee sales. In other words, it was a verdict based on the evidence and specifically designed to address the harm. The point wasn’t to make Ms. Liebeck a millionaire. It was to get the attention of a company that had repeatedly put its customers’ safety at risk.

What’s more, Ms. Liebeck never saw anything close to the $2.86 million verdict. The judge cut the punitive award to $480,000, three times the compensatory damages, bringing the total to about $640,000. Then, as often happens, the parties reached a confidential settlement to avoid a lengthy appeal. The final number has never been made public, but it has consistently been reported as less than the $640,000 she was rightfully owed.

So despite what late-night hosts and tort reform advocates want you to believe, the “lady who got millions for spilling coffee” was actually a 79-year-old grandmother with skin grafts. She asked for her medical bills to be paid, got offered $800, and ended up with a reduced, confidential settlement after a judge trimmed the verdict.

The system worked. The jury heard the evidence, found her partly at fault, and punished a company for ignoring a known danger. Then the judge, the built-in check on excessive verdicts, stepped in and reduced the award.

So why does everyone think it was frivolous?

Because the story was useful. Trim this case down to its simplest form, “woman spills coffee on herself and gets millions,” and you can make people angry.

After the verdict, businesses and insurance companies that had long wanted to stack the deck against injured people used the story to fuel their push for so-called “tort reform”: laws that cap damages, limit punitive awards, and make it harder for injured people to get their day in court.

You can’t sell tort reform to the public without a villain, and they found one in Stella Liebeck. A greedy woman getting millions for spilling coffee was almost too perfect.

In many ways, it worked. More than thirty years later, this case is still cultural shorthand for “frivolous lawsuits.” Every year in Missouri, bills are introduced that would harm my clients and their ability to seek justice for their injuries, and Stella Liebeck is often part of the justification.

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Why tort reform is silly

Here’s my problem with tort reform: it claims to solve a problem the system has already solved, and it creates new problems along the way, without any solutions for them.

Lawyers are the first barrier against frivolous cases. At my firm, and at most plaintiff’s firms I know, the firm funds the claim. We advance the costs of investigating and prosecuting the case, and we don’t make a penny until it’s resolved, whether by settlement or verdict. (Here’s how contingency fees work.)

I’m not going to waste my time, my money, or my client’s time on a case with no merit. There’s no incentive for me, my business, or my client to spend months or even years chasing compensation that isn’t there.

Juries already police bad cases. Juries are made up of people from the community. Individually, they vary in experience and intelligence, but collectively, they’re pretty damn smart. Juries may be the world’s greatest bullshit detectors. In Ms. Liebeck’s case, the jury believed she was partly to blame for her injuries, so it assigned her 20% of the fault. That wasn’t the exception. That’s the rule.

Every day, juries assess and apportion fault in injury cases. They aren’t the pushovers tort reformers make them out to be. They’re citizens who, more often than not, take their responsibility seriously and deliver verdicts based on the facts in front of them.

Judges already police big verdicts. Judges have legal tools to cut excessive awards and, in many courts, to increase inadequate ones. They’re called remittitur and additur, and they usually come up in post-trial motions, where either side can ask the court to adjust the verdict based on the evidence.

That’s exactly what happened in Ms. Liebeck’s case. The judge reduced the punitive award in line with the relevant case law. Blanket damage caps don’t add a safeguard. They replace the judgment of an experienced judge, looking at one specific case, with the legislature’s collective guess about the value of every case.

Caps hit the most seriously hurt people hardest. Damage caps don’t affect most cases. Many injury claims are routine car crashes and slip-and-falls that resolve for hundreds of thousands of dollars or less. The overwhelming majority of cases my office handles, and that most injury lawyers handle, resolve for well under a million dollars.

So damage caps really only affect the most catastrophically injured people: someone who’s paralyzed, someone maimed by a negligent surgery, or a grandparent whose burns require skin grafts. The only people caps reach are the ones who need their day in court the most.

Tort reform shifts the cost to taxpayers. When a cap lets the at-fault party off the hook, injured people are often left with nowhere to turn but government assistance.

Here’s how it’s supposed to work. A plaintiff presents the cost of a lifetime of care to a jury, and the jury can award damages that account for all of it. The plaintiff can then plan around the care they’ll reasonably need for the rest of their life. (There are plenty of options for how to do that, which I’ll cover in a later post.)

But when the at-fault party only has to pay up to a cap, the injured person has to make up the difference somewhere, and that somewhere is usually the government.

Let’s use an example. Say the plaintiff in our story is a 25-year-old man left quadriplegic by a negligent truck driver. The cost of his care over the rest of his life could easily run into the tens of millions of dollars: physical therapy, surgeries, home health care, accessible housing, and mobility equipment. That’s before you even get to the income he’ll likely never be able to earn.

An experienced lawyer can present evidence of those costs to a jury, and the jury can award them. The lawyer and client can then structure the recovery so his future care is essentially “prepaid.”

Now say the law caps total damages (what the trucking company can owe him) at $500,000.00. (I’m making up this cap for the sake of the hypothetical.) He’ll almost certainly have to turn to Social Security, Medicaid, or Medicare to cover the rest. Which means you, the reader, end up footing the bill for the trucking company’s negligence.

Tort reform advocates rarely mention this inescapable truth about their policies. They talk about saving businesses and consumers money, and they blame plaintiff’s lawyers like me. But they never tell the public about the knock-on effects of their proposals. And shifting the burden from the negligent party to taxpayers sounds a whole heck of a lot like corporate welfare disguised as “pro-business” policy.

Punitive damages are the point. Punitive damages are a special category. They aren’t meant to compensate the injured person. As the name suggests, they’re meant to punish conduct that goes well beyond ordinary carelessness. Every jurisdiction handles them differently. In Missouri, for example, you have to prove by clear and convincing evidence that the defendant’s conduct was bad enough to deserve punishment, like driving drunk.

The evidence in Ms. Liebeck’s case showed that McDonald’s made a business decision to serve its coffee at extreme temperatures with full knowledge of the risks. Basically, McDonald’s decided paying for the burns was cheaper than fixing the problem, and it refused to change. In the civil justice system, punitive damages are the only tool a jury has to demand change. By capping them, legislatures are blessing that kind of conduct in advance and giving companies an out when they cause severe harm to innocent people.

“Frivolous lawsuits” already have a remedy. Assuming arguendo that a lawyer does take on a frivolous case, that doesn’t mean the plaintiff gets a jury. The rules of civil procedure and the rules of professional conduct empower judges to deal with these claims case by case. A judge can dismiss a claim that doesn’t pass legal muster, sanction the lawyers who brought it, and impose monetary penalties on the plaintiff, the lawyer, or the firm.

And because the overwhelming majority of plaintiff’s lawyers, me included, work on contingency, there’s a built-in incentive not to take baseless cases: if we don’t win, we don’t get paid. I have plenty of work to do. I don’t need to fill my schedule trying to make a case out of a claim where none exists.

The other side of it

To be fair, I want to give tort reform advocates their flowers. They argue that large verdicts drive up insurance premiums and the cost of doing business. Prices for goods and services go up, and those costs get passed on to the public.

The argument is especially compelling in medical malpractice. Supporters argue that big verdicts push doctors toward defensive medicine, or out of high-risk specialties and states altogether, which ultimately hurts the health care system.

I believe those concerns are real and often come from a good place. But I don’t see much evidence that limiting verdicts meaningfully lowers premiums or the cost of doing business. Think about it: when was the last time your insurance company lowered your premium because your state passed tort reform? When was the last time your doctor cut your bill because their malpractice premiums went down? It probably hasn’t happened.

Ultimately, a careful look at the Liebeck case shows that the existing checks, juries and judges, worked exactly the way they should. Arbitrarily capping damages or limiting access to the courts only hurts the people who need the system most.

Final thoughts

The next time someone brings up “that lady who sued McDonald’s over hot coffee,” ask them if they knew about the skin grafts. Or the $800 offer. Or the 700 prior burn reports. Or that the judge cut the verdict.

The McDonald’s coffee case isn’t proof the system is broken. It’s proof the system works, and it’s the most successful PR campaign in legal history at convincing people otherwise.

If you or someone you know has been hurt and you want to talk it through, get in touch with me here.

This post is general commentary based on my own experience and isn’t legal advice. Every case is different, and how yours plays out will depend on its own facts. For actual injury questions: hurtinstl.com. New here? Learn more about me.

Cheers,

September 30 marked my 10th year as a practicing attorney, and after a decade of practice, you start to pick up the insurance company’s playbook. To be clear, I have never worked for an insurance company as an attorney. I spent my law school summers clerking at a firm that had insurance company clients, but my employment was very limited.

Since being sworn in to the Missouri Bar in 2016, I have exclusively represented injured people, including many hurt in St. Louis car accidents. Here are the tactics I see most often. I’ve covered some of this on my firm’s page about dealing with insurance companies after an accident, but it bears repeating.

1. The Quick Settlement Offer

When there really isn’t a good defense on fault, the insurance company (usually the other driver’s) will make a seemingly “generous” settlement offer, sometimes on the same day as the crash.

The offer will look something like this: “We’ll give you $1,000 now and pay up to $10,000 in medical expenses over the next six months. All you need to do is sign a release, and we’ll send you the money.”

This is a problem for two reasons. First, there is no way you can fully understand the extent of your injuries in the hours and days after a crash. Second, once you sign that release, the case is over. There’s no coming back later when the money runs out.

This tactic exists because, somewhere in the C-suite, the accounting and actuarial executives figured out that quick settlements cut claim payouts by a meaningful percentage every year. That means more money for shareholders.

Simply put, if the insurance company is offering you money now, that offer isn’t going anywhere, no matter how urgent the adjuster makes it sound.

2. The Recorded Statement Request

Insurance adjusters (the people who handle and review the claim) love to frame a recorded statement as “part of the process” or “routine.” It’s a thinly veiled attempt to find something that can hurt you.

Adjusters are trained to ask questions like “Are you feeling okay?” or “You’re not hurt too bad, are you?” Your answers can, and often do, come back to bite you. If you later report more serious injuries, they’ll point to the statement you gave hours after the collision as proof you weren’t hurt.

I recently heard recorded statements called “depositions with a smile,” and I like that. The adjuster knows the claim is adversarial. They’ll just never tell you that.

That’s why it’s important to get an experienced lawyer involved before you give a statement. A lawyer will tell you whether you even need to give one, prepare you if you do, limit the topics, and be with you on the call. For more on the first few days after a crash, see what to do immediately after a car accident in Missouri.

3. The Delay Game

If the insurance company has something that could reasonably explain a delay, like a potential coverage dispute, questions about liability, or “needing to speak with their insured,” it may slow-walk the claim.

Most injured people are stressed. They’re in pain, their car is busted, and they may not be able to work. The insurance company knows that, and it will lowball offers or drag out the claim to use that stress, or even desperation, against them. Stressed and desperate people rarely make their best decisions, and they may settle for less than the case is worth.

My last post covered the injury claim process generally, and I’ve also written about how long a personal injury case takes in Missouri.

4. Disputing Medical Necessity

Another fun game insurers love to play is disputing whether your medical treatment was necessary. They question the imaging, the consults, and the bills. You may owe your doctor $2,500 for the care you received, but the insurance company will argue that treatment “should have” cost $1,500.

To fight back, you need complete, consistent medical treatment. Comprehensive care brings multiple providers onto your “team.” It’s not impossible, but it becomes much harder for the insurance company (read: their lawyers) to argue that treatment was unrelated or unnecessary when several different medical professionals were involved.

Here’s more reading on what evidence you need for a personal injury claim.

5. Shifting Blame (Comparative Fault Games)

Most states, including Missouri and Illinois (where I practice), use “comparative fault.” Comparative fault lets a defendant put the injured person’s own conduct at issue to reduce what they owe.

For example, if a jury finds the plaintiff was 20% at fault for a crash, the defendant only has to pay 80% of the total damages. Missouri is a pure comparative fault state, so you can recover even if you’re mostly at fault. In Illinois, you’re barred from recovering if you’re found more than 50% at fault. We can discuss state-to-state differences in a future post.

When adjusters take recorded statements, they’re often fishing for an “admission” that justifies a comparative fault argument. For example, if you say something like “I am not sure where I was looking” or “I might have been speeding,” the adjuster will absolutely use that to apply comparative fault, which in turn saves the insurance company money.

Here’s a longer write-up on how comparative fault works in Missouri.

6. Social Media Surveillance

Social media has changed the game. Nearly every American has some combination of social media accounts, and insurance companies check your public posts for anything that undercuts your injury claim. And I want to stress anything.

After an injury, the smart move is to lock down your privacy settings and stop posting updates about yourself, period. Don’t delete old posts, either, because that can create a whole new problem. If you post it, I promise the insurance company will find it. Better to just leave it out.

7. The Medical Authorization Trap

Sometimes adjusters will ask you to sign broad medical authorization forms that give the insurer access to your entire medical history, not just accident-related records. The problem is that they’ll use completely unrelated medical conditions against you.

At my firm, clients don’t sign authorizations for the insurance company unless a court requires it. Having an attorney lets you control the flow of information to the adjuster and keeps the insurance company from getting records it shouldn’t have.

The Bottom Line

Most of these tactics are perfectly legal. But they were developed by organizations with tremendous resources, designed to use an inherent power imbalance to their advantage. Having an experienced legal team on your side levels the playing field.

If you want to talk through an issue you’re having with an insurance company, get in touch here.

New here and want to know more about me? Here’s my bio.

This post is general commentary based on my own experience and isn’t legal advice. Every case is different, and how yours plays out will depend on its own facts. For actual injury questions: hurtinstl.com.

Cheers,

I’ve already written about why that TV trope almost never happens in real life. But it’s also worth knowing that even good lawyers can botch a cross. And between broadcast television, streaming, and social media clips, it’s easier than ever to watch one go bad in real time. This week, it happened on C-SPAN.

A quick programming note: Senate hearings are not trials. There’s no counsel there to “protect” the witness, the rules of evidence don’t apply, there’s no judge ruling on what testimony comes in, and most of these senators are just trying to generate content for their socials.

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The setup

Let’s get into it. On Tuesday, Eric Schmitt, the junior senator from Missouri and a De Smet alum (BOOO De Smet, up the Red Devils always and forever), tried his best to generate some sick content. Instead, he ended up with several eggs on his face.

Anyone paying a modicum of attention knows the GOP has spent a lot of energy trying to vilify former special counsel Jack Smith and his investigations into President Trump. As part of that effort, Smith was called to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

When Schmitt’s turn came, it was clear he thought he had some dirt on the former special counsel. He started a line of questioning about Smith’s whereabouts on February 3, 2024, the day after Fani Willis’s relationship with a prosecutor on her Georgia case against Trump became public.

Schmitt asked Smith point-blank whether he’d attended an NBA game between the Atlanta (formerly St. Louis) Hawks and the Golden State Warriors that night. Smith unequivocally denied it. Schmitt then briefly flashed a poster board of text messages, confident he’d sprung his trap and caught Smith in a lie that would amount to perjury.

But once Smith actually got a look at the texts, he connected the dots. That night, he’d been at a women’s college game between the Iowa Hawkeyes and the Maryland Terrapins in College Park, Maryland, just outside Washington, D.C.

I’m no fan of Senator Schmitt, and I didn’t vote for him. But politics aside, I try cases for a living, and this was a textbook example of what new lawyers shouldn’t do on cross. And Senator Schmitt is not a new lawyer. He’s held a Missouri law license since 2000, and he’s a former Missouri Attorney General.

Here’s the breakdown, lesson by lesson.

Lesson 1: Don’t ask a question you don’t know the answer to

Irving Younger was a legendary trial lawyer and law professor, and the mind behind the blueprint for effective cross-examination: the Ten Commandments of Cross-Examination. Younger gave the talk in 1975, which means his blueprint is older than most of the people reading this post. His fourth commandment, probably the best known of the ten, is don’t ask a question you don’t already know the answer to.

Watching Schmitt’s questioning, it’s clear he thought he knew the answer. His evidence was a text about reserving a seat. But a text about reserving a seat doesn’t prove much. At most, it shows someone reserved Smith a seat somewhere.

Any sports fan knows February is the middle of basketball season, with dozens of NBA and college games happening around the country on any given night. And plenty of teams, pro and amateur, go by some version of “Hawks.” Heck, my alma mater, Quincy University, is the Hawks.

Schmitt didn’t have the name of the arena, but he did have the section and row number from the text. Anyone could have checked whether that seat even existed at State Farm Arena, home of the Atlanta Hawks.

Instead of doing that basic prep, he put a yes-or-no question to a hostile witness based on limited information. He got a truthful answer, “no,” and it blew up his theory in real time.

How to do it right: If your information is limited or you can’t prove the answer independently, don’t ask the question. Either lock the witness into details you can contradict later, or leave it alone.

Lesson 2: Verify your exhibit before anyone else sees it

“Hawks” in a text message could mean Atlanta. But as I mentioned, a lot of teams go by “Hawks.” Figuring out which one takes a quick search: what basketball games were played on February 3, 2024, and which involved a team with some version of “Hawks” in its name? Schmitt or anyone on his staff could have found the answer in minutes.

It gets worse. As Talking Points Memo reported, the text asked whether “109 Row 1” was reserved for Smith. Arena seating maps are easy to find online, and one more search would have shown that State Farm Arena uses lettered rows in section 109, not numbered ones. The Maryland arena where Iowa played that night does have numbered rows in that section. In other words, Schmitt’s own exhibit disproved his theory.

After the hearing, Schmitt said Atlanta was the only NBA or men’s college game going on in Atlanta at that time. Read that again. A senator who has made protecting women’s sports a signature issue forgot to consider women’s basketball.

How to do it right: In my practice, an exhibit doesn’t go in front of a witness until someone has tried to break it. Ask what else it could mean. Look for the innocent explanation before opposing counsel hands it to the jury. That step got skipped, and the innocent explanation arrived live, on camera.

Lesson 3: Show the witness the document

When a witness says “I don’t recall,” a lawyer can “refresh their recollection” with a document, and doing that means actually showing it to the witness (see generally Federal Rule of Evidence 612, and every state version of it). Either the document jogs their memory and the lawyer gets an answer, or it doesn’t, and the witness is locked into a denial that might be grounds for impeachment later.

Schmitt did the opposite. He showed Smith the texts only briefly, characterized them himself, and jumped straight to a perjury accusation. When her turn came, Sen. Amy Klobuchar, a former prosecutor herself, insisted that Smith be allowed to actually see the exhibit. Once he did, Smith gave an innocent, concise explanation: he’d been at a women’s college game between the Hawkeyes and the Terrapins. Klobuchar’s summary was about as clean a closing as you’ll hear: “You had the teams wrong, sir.”

How to do it right: If an exhibit helps you, you shouldn’t fear showing it to the witness. If you’re afraid to let the witness see it, leave that exhibit alone. Refusing to show a witness your exhibit raises more questions than it answers.

Lesson 4: Don’t argue with the witness

Two more of Younger’s commandments matter here: don’t quarrel with the witness, and save your conclusions for closing. At trial, there’s a specific time for argument. It’s called closing, and it doesn’t happen between a lawyer and a witness on the stand.

Schmitt declared victory before he’d won anything. “I think you’ve already perjured yourself.” Later, “a total dirtbag.” When the exchange collapsed, all of that stayed on the record, attached to a factual claim that had just evaporated.

Here, the jury is the public, and juries punish overreach. Once a lawyer is caught confidently wrong, jurors start discounting everything else he says. By the end of the day, Schmitt was saying on a radio show that his job was just to ask the questions, and if that was Smith’s answer, then that was his answer. There’s no worse position than walking back your big moment the same afternoon.

How to do it right: Get the facts out on cross, and save the argument for the jury, where the witness can’t embarrass you in front of them. If you’ve questioned the witness effectively, the jury will reach the conclusion on their own, and they’ll believe it more.

Lesson 5: Make sure the point matters even if you win

Suppose Smith had been at the Atlanta Hawks game. Then what? It would take a lot more evidence to connect the dots the way Schmitt wanted to.

The theory needs every link in this chain to hold: Smith was in Atlanta, so he was near Willis. While in Atlanta, he met with Willis. In that meeting, they coordinated somehow. And that coordination is evidence of whatever nefarious dealings the GOP is currently suggesting.

But being at a basketball game proves that Smith was at a basketball game. More than 6 million people live in metro Atlanta. There has to be something more than “he was in Atlanta on that date” to suggest anything else. Schmitt’s point was speculation stacked on speculation.

How to do it right: A good cross builds toward a point that matters. Seasoned attorneys get the witness to agree with points that can’t be refuted: it’s important to drive safely, and when you’re driving, you should pay attention to the road. Schmitt was counting on Smith to hand him everything and simply agree with his conclusion. He never laid the foundation, and he tried to argue a point nobody has evidence for.

The other side of it

I’m not going to “defend” Schmitt, but as I said at the outset, a congressional hearing isn’t a trial. There are no rules of evidence and no judge. Sometimes a senator on an oversight committee will ask pointed questions with incomplete information. And Smith was at a basketball game on the date in question. It just happened to be in a different state, in a different league, with different teams, and with female players.

Schmitt’s position is that this is what hearings are for: you ask questions, and you get answers. He maintained that the texts could have related to the Fulton County prosecution. But once Smith explained where he was, that line of questioning should have been abandoned.

My view is that if the goal really was to gather information, Schmitt used the wrong method. Opening with a perjury accusation based on nothing but speculation isn’t going to get cooperation from a witness. It does the opposite. Schmitt should have shown Smith the texts and asked open questions, like “What’s this seat reservation about?” Asking questions is fine. Announcing the verdict before hearing the answer is the problem.

Why this matters for your case

Most people will never cross-examine anyone. But if you’re ever in a lawsuit, you’ll be on one side of it: sitting for a deposition, testifying at trial, or watching your lawyer question the other side’s witnesses.

The same rules apply. Good lawyers win on cross because of the preparation you never see: understanding every piece of evidence, anticipating every explanation, and knowing the answer before asking the question. When you’re hiring a lawyer, that’s what you’re really paying for.

The takeaway: the gotcha is earned in prep

The dramatic cross-examination moment you see on TV is the last 30 seconds of 30 hours of boring work. Verify the exhibit. Hunt for the innocent explanation. Know the answer before you ask. Show the witness the document. Save your conclusions for the jury.

Skip that work, and you don’t get a Perry Mason moment. You get a clip that trial advocacy instructors will be showing for years as the example of what not to do.

And whatever else you do: check the mascot.

This post is general commentary based on my own experience and isn’t legal advice. Every case is different, and how yours plays out will depend on its own facts. For actual injury questions: hurtinstl.com. New here? Learn more about me.

Cheers,

I’ve tried to break the process down into broad phases, but I should note upfront: each phase could easily be its own 10,000-word post. At some point, I probably will write those. For a general overview of how these phases typically unfold, you can also check out our case timeline — but for now, here’s the plain-English primer.

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The Investigation Phase

To put it bluntly, just because you’ve hired our office doesn’t mean you already have a case. From the start, I’m taking you at your word, and the purpose of a consult is to answer one simple question: is there a case here?

The first thing my office does after we open a new case (after putting it into our system) is send notice to all potentially liable parties and request the relevant reports. Often, our clients don’t have this information themselves, so it falls on our firm to obtain it.

That means requesting reports from organizations like the police department, animal control, or an ambulance service. We also try to track down any available video, which can include footage from local businesses, traffic cameras, or — now, in 2026 — Ring cameras.

This can also include sending out “spoliation letters,” which are legal notices requiring an organization to preserve evidence, even if they aren’t otherwise inclined to share it voluntarily. To put it succinctly: if a person or organization destroys evidence after receiving a spoliation letter, there are potential consequences that can be used against them at trial.

We’ll also alert the relevant insurance company (or companies) of our involvement in the case. This often involves waiting on hold to get basic claim information — claim number, point of contact, and their initial position on liability (fault).

We also try to determine how much insurance coverage is available. Insurance policies are never unlimited — there’s always a “limit,” meaning the maximum amount a policy will pay. Sometimes multiple policies apply to a single case, which means the potential for a better recovery.

There are often witnesses who, if not contacted quickly, may “disappear” — and I don’t mean they die, I just mean they move, change their number, or forget what they saw. So when it’s relevant, many law firms, ours included, will hire an investigator to get a recorded statement from those witnesses before that happens.

Here’s some general information if you’d like to read more about evidence, especially evidence you, as a potential plaintiff, can help obtain or preserve: hurtinstl.com/personal-injury-resources/evidence

Medical Treatment

While my office is investigating a claim, our client should be getting treatment for their injuries. I’ve told clients, rather bluntly, “I can’t want this case more than you want this case.” The single best way a client can do their part is to get comprehensive, consistent medical treatment.

The best thing a client can do is get to treatment quickly and report every injury that may be related to the crash. This creates an “objective” chronology of injuries and gives medical providers the chance to diagnose and treat them in accordance with the relevant medical guidelines.

Some clients don’t have health insurance, and there are options for them. Colloquially, we call these “lien providers” — meaning the doctor or doctor’s office asserts a legal right to be paid out of the proceeds of any recovery, while holding off on payment until the case resolves. Our office can almost always connect you with an excellent provider in your area.

Another wrinkle in the medical treatment phase is handling liens and outstanding bills. Often, my clients have already been to a doctor (or several) before hiring me. Depending on your jurisdiction and the type of health insurance you have, your health insurer may or may not have a right to some of the recovery — but it’s better to be safe than sorry, so we always ask for a copy of your health insurance card to investigate.

While pain and suffering is a much more fluid concept than medical treatment, it’s helpful to understand how it can and will impact your case. Here’s some more reading on that topic: hurtinstl.com/personal-injury-resources/pain-and-suffering

The Demand Letter

The overwhelming majority of cases resolve without litigation, but insurance companies rarely offer money without receiving a comprehensive “demand” letter from the attorney. There are different types of demands for different types of cases, but in general, a demand summarizes the case and includes medical records, bills, lost wage information, and a description of the pain and suffering the client experienced.

At my office, we send a demand via certified mail — so we can prove the insurance company received it — and often via fax or email, if that’s an option. Once received, the insurance company typically sends an “acknowledgment” along with an estimated turnaround time.

Typically, an insurance company takes somewhere between six and ten weeks to respond, depending on the amount of money demanded, the statutory requirements of the state, and the type of demand sent.

At its core, a demand is an offer to settle the case in exchange for a specific dollar amount. My demands typically include language like: “In exchange for $XXXXX, my client will unconditionally release [Negligent Party] from any and all liability relating to this incident.”

Here’s a little more reading on this process: hurtinstl.com/personal-injury-resources/case-timeline

Negotiation

Just because there’s a big policy, or we demanded a big number, doesn’t mean the insurance company will simply agree and send a check. That’s an option — but it’s not their only one.

I tell my clients the insurance company generally has three options after receiving a demand:

Accept the demand. If the insurance company wants to accept, there’s still some additional paperwork to work through before a check is sent.

Reject the demand. This doesn’t happen often, but the insurance company can reject the demand outright, usually providing some rationale for the rejection.

Negotiate. Often, an insurance company will look to negotiate. I demand X, they offer Y, and if they want to negotiate, there’s often real value in doing so — assuming the client is on board with that plan.

Negotiation often proves fruitful, and the matter resolves (more on that below). I don’t want to give away all my secrets, but rest assured — if my office is representing you, we’ll discuss negotiation strategy in depth at this phase of the case.

Here’s some more information on insurance companies, if you want to read about their games: hurtinstl.com/personal-injury-resources/insurance-companies

“Going to Court”

Filing a lawsuit isn’t as simple as walking down to the courthouse and putting on your evidence. Civil litigation often takes months or even years, depending on a multitude of factors: the court’s schedule, the number of parties involved, opposing counsel’s schedules, and more.

When a case “goes to litigation,” it means a formal lawsuit has been filed with the appropriate court, and the court issues a summons that must be served on the defendant(s). A sheriff or private process server delivers actual notice of the lawsuit to the defendant(s), who then have 30 days to respond.

From there, the parties conduct discovery — both written discovery and depositions (sworn questioning in front of a court reporter) — and designate expert witnesses, who are also deposed.

Once these tasks are complete, the case is “ready” for trial, which the court will schedule. Trial itself can take hours, days, or weeks, depending on the amount of evidence involved and the complexity of the issues in the case.

At any point during litigation, the parties can engage in settlement negotiations, and many courts now require parties to mediate as part of the scheduling order. My educated guess is that more than 97% of all cases resolve without ever actually going to trial.

Trial

If your case is one of that small percentage that makes it all the way to trial, those days look a lot different than what you see on TV or in the movies.

Voir Dire. This is often called “jury selection” (more accurately, “jury de-selection”), where the attorneys question a pool of potential jurors to see which ones are fair and unbiased, and which ones may have already made up their minds about the case.

Each side gets strikes — “for cause” strikes (where a juror has admitted a bias they can’t set aside) and peremptory strikes (where a lawyer can excuse a juror for almost any reason, except race or gender). This process varies by jurisdiction, and sometimes even by the assigned judge, and can take anywhere from a couple of hours to several days depending on the case. In my view, this is the most important part of the trial — a bad jury can torpedo your case, and a good jury can make your career (see generally: Johnny Cochran).

Opening Statements. Before any evidence is presented, each attorney gives an opening statement laying out their roadmap of the case: what happened, what the evidence will show, and what they’re asking the jury to do. This isn’t argument yet — it’s a preview. The plaintiff goes first, since they carry the burden of proof.

Evidence. After opening statements, the bulk of the trial is spent presenting evidence. Each side gets a chance to present its “case in chief.” The plaintiff goes first and can call witnesses in whatever order they choose. Witnesses can include the plaintiff, the plaintiff’s family and friends, treating doctors, and sometimes expert witnesses like accident reconstructionists or economists.

Each witness’s examination is divided into two parts: direct and cross-examination. The direct examination is conducted by the lawyer who called the witness, and the cross-examination is conducted by the opposing attorney. Regardless of who’s asking the questions, it’s during examination that physical evidence gets introduced — photos, medical records, police reports, and so on. After the plaintiff calls their witness(es), the defense gets to do the same.

The presentation of evidence can take anywhere from a day or two to several weeks, depending on how complex the case is and how many witnesses are involved.

Jury Instructions. Juries are made up of everyday people from the community — rarely lawyers or judges — so the presiding judge provides them “instructions” before they deliberate. But the instructions are proposed by each side and ruled on before closing arguments, at an instruction conference that typically takes place after the evidence is presented (usually during lunch or after the jury’s been sent home for the day).

Once the judge — and usually the parties — agree on the instructions, the judge instructs the jury on the specific legal rules they have to apply during deliberations. In my cases, this often includes things like what negligence means, how to calculate damages, or how comparative fault works. It’s boring, but it’s very important — a lot of appeals are based on incorrect jury instructions. (We can talk about appeals practice sometime in the future — I’m no expert, but I’m 1-0 in front of the court of appeals.)

Closing Argument. It’s exactly what it sounds like: the final word. Each side argues why their client should win. Every lawyer has their own style and strategy, but generally, jurors will see the evidence tied together, the strengths and weaknesses of the case addressed, and an explanation of why it all supports the desired verdict. I bring a large copy of the verdict form and actually show the jury how to fill it out in my client’s favor.

In Missouri, the plaintiff’s attorney goes first and can reserve time for rebuttal. The defense attorney goes second, and the plaintiff’s attorney gets the last word before the jury retires to deliberate.

Jury Deliberation. This happens outside the view of the court — judge, bailiff, lawyers, and gallery included. Deliberation can take minutes or it can take days. My last jury was out about 45 minutes before reaching a verdict.

While deliberating, juries can ask questions, ask to review evidence again, or get stuck and have to work through disagreement. There’s no way to predict it, and that unpredictability is exactly why so many cases settle before ever reaching this point.

Once a verdict is reached, it’s read by the court, and that’s the ballgame — at least for that stage (more on appeals another time). Trial is intense, unpredictable, and stressful for everyone involved, especially the client. That stress is exactly why it’s a lawyer’s job — my responsibility — to be prepared for every stage of trial, not just showing up and hoping for the best.

Settlement

Once a settlement (or verdict) is reached, there are still steps to take. First, getting the money: insurance companies draft a physical paper check and send it to the attorney’s office. The attorney then deposits the money into a trust account — a special account for protecting clients’ money.

The attorney (at least at my office) will confirm outstanding balances, negotiate them down where possible, and resolve any liens before distributing funds. Once there’s a final breakdown of the recovery, a distribution statement is prepared and provided to the client for review and signature.

Then the client can come pick up their check and use it however they choose. I’m not a financial planner, so I don’t offer advice on how to save the money — but I can absolutely give you some ideas on how to spend it.

Here are some of our recent case results: hurtinstl.com/case-results
And here’s what folks are saying about the firm: hurtinstl.com/testimonials

Closing Thoughts

Buckle up — quality work takes time, a focused goal, and teamwork. At my firm, I want to work as efficiently as possible while also doing everything I can to maximize your outcome.

Timelines vary from case to case, and “no news” usually just means the process is moving along normally — not that something’s wrong.

If you’re new here and want to know more about me: hurtinstl.com/attorney/rob-schmittgens

If you want to get in touch and talk through what happened to you: hurtinstl.com/contact

(Standard disclaimer: this post is general commentary based on my own experience and isn’t legal advice. Every case is different, and how yours plays out will depend on its own facts. For actual injury questions: hurtinstl.com.)

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Cheers,

1. The Witness Stand Meltdown — A Few Good Men

I’m a huge Aaron Sorkin fan. Few writers in Hollywood do it like he does, and his films often center on the courtroom or, at the very least, legal procedure. His best-known legal drama, without question, is A Few Good Men.

If you haven’t seen the film — it came out in 1992, spoilers ahead — it centers on an inexperienced Navy JAG lawyer, played by Tom Cruise, tasked with defending two Marines accused of killing a third in a punishment known as a “code red.”

The climax is the trial. Cruise’s character mounts a defense against Kevin Bacon’s prosecution. The critical moment comes when Jack Nicholson’s character takes the stand, and we already know his testimony will make or break the case for Cruise’s clients. It’s at the end of that cross-examination where we get to the trope at issue.

The trope: After some serious badgering, Cruise finally shouts, “I want the truth!” Nicholson launches into a lengthy soliloquy, admitting he ordered the code red — and, in doing so, clears Cruise’s clients of criminal culpability for murder.

The reality: This never happens. For starters, before Nicholson’s soliloquy, Cruise’s character is warned by the judge and ultimately held in contempt. In a real trial, if a judge holds an attorney in contempt (disobeying a judge’s order or showing disrespect in court), the examination pauses — at the very least — to deal with the contempt issue. That’s a whole post in itself.

Beyond that, Cruise asks, “Colonel Jessup, did you order the code red?” The judge interjects: “You don’t have to answer that.” Nicholson’s Jessup responds anyway: “I’ll answer the question.” In the simplest terms, if a judge instructs a witness not to answer, the question doesn’t get answered. Period.

More broadly, real cross-examinations are slower and far more focused on locking a witness into small, specific facts. Rarely, if ever, can you badger a witness into agreeing with your entire case.

Witnesses are entitled to their own lawyers, who protect their legal rights. If a witness is unrepresented, the judge and opposing counsel are also there to protect the witness’s rights and privileges. In practice, that makes it extremely unlikely a witness unravels on the stand in front of a jury. Someone objects, requests a recess, or moves to sidebar long before you get a cinematic moment like the one in A Few Good Men.

Unrealistic or not, it’s still a great scene in a great film. Haven’t seen it, or haven’t seen it in a while? Watch it here:

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One more thing that doesn’t get mentioned enough: even if someone did confess like that on the stand, it doesn’t just end the trial. A confession, like any other testimony, is just another piece of evidence for the jury to weigh. Real trials don’t have a “mic drop” moment the way the movies want you to believe.

2. Cops Hate This One Trick: No Miranda Rights, No Case.

I’m a sucker for a good police procedural. Network TV has been saturated with the next big cop show for decades — from Law & Order to Criminal Minds — and they always do numbers in the ratings. Watch enough of them and you’ll notice there’s a clear formula.

If you’ve seen one of these shows, you know the scene where the cop reads a suspect their “Miranda rights.” Miranda rights are real, and they come from the landmark Supreme Court case Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436 (1966).

I won’t bore you with a law-school-style case summary, but this is the case where the Supreme Court told every law enforcement officer in the country that before questioning a criminal defendant, they must advise that person of their Fifth and Sixth Amendment rights.

Because of the inherently coercive nature of police interrogations, the Court held that a suspect must be told, clearly and before questioning begins: “You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed for you. Do you understand these rights as I’ve explained them to you?” From there, the suspect can waive or invoke those rights. (Not legal advice, but generally: don’t talk to the cops before they’ve read you your rights — or after, really.)

The trope: Every cop show ever. The hero cop chases the suspect into an alley, tackles him, and while slapping on the cuffs, angrily starts reciting, “You have the right to remain silent...”

The reality: Here’s what makes this trope so silly — Miranda warnings only have to be given before a custodial interrogation. That means the person is in custody (not free to leave) and being questioned. A cop can arrest you, cuff you, and put you in the back of the car — so long as there’s a warrant or probable cause — without ever mentioning your rights, as long as they’re not planning to ask you questions. Miranda isn’t a magic spell that has to be cast the moment cuffs go on. It’s a prerequisite for using anything you say afterward against you.

Here’s the more important point: if the officer never Mirandizes you, that doesn’t mean the case gets thrown out. It means your lawyer can file a motion to suppress any statement that was unlawfully obtained, and the court rules on that motion. Win it, and all that means is the prosecutor can’t use your statement in court — not that the case gets dismissed. TV and movies have convinced a huge swath of the population that “they didn’t read me my rights” is a get-out-of-jail-free card. It is not.

3. From Strangers to Billion-Dollar Client in Minutes.

I’ve never worked at a “big” firm as a lawyer, but I did during law school. By big firm, I mean one that spans multiple floors of a high-rise building, with 50+ lawyers and potentially 200+ staff. These firms are obviously good at what they do, but it’s hard to make the day-to-day interesting on screen. My dad did this type of work for nearly 40 years, so I’m by no means being critical — transactional law practice just doesn’t translate well to the screen.

My theory: a lot of that work is business-services related — corporate compliance, risk management, mergers and acquisitions. Important work, but it’s collaborative — advising clients on best practices in risk management, contract negotiation and review, proactively addressing legal issues, and trading marked-up drafts with a lawyer at some other big firm who’s trying to get the same deal done.

There’s only been one show, in my opinion, that’s made “big law life” interesting: USA’s Suits.

You know the show — hotshot New York lawyer Harvey Specter (played by Gabriel Macht) is the best closer in the city. Clients want him, colleagues envy him, opponents fear him. When you’re rich and need to win your case by any means necessary, Harvey is your man.

The trope: Several storylines involve Harvey signing a massively profitable new client after a five-minute meeting. Some rich guy struts into Pearson Hardman (or whatever the firm’s called that season), demands a meeting with Harvey, and hands him a six-figure check for a retainer. Stranger to client in a matter of minutes — full representation, effective immediately.

The reality: In the real world, the attorney-client relationship is a lot more complicated, and depending on the attorney’s area of practice, it takes more than a hefty bank account.

To start, unlike the show makes it seem, most attorneys have a focused area of practice. While a lawyer can technically give a client advice about any issue, most lawyers — me included — are careful about the types of cases they handle. Criminal defense lawyers rarely handle intellectual property cases; the personal injury lawyers I know aren’t handling divorces in their free time.

This is protection for both the lawyer and the client. Any experienced lawyer knows what he or she doesn’t know. It would be a violation of an attorney’s ethical obligations to a client to get involved in a legal matter the attorney doesn’t fully understand. Similarly, a client doesn’t want an attorney who doesn’t know what they’re doing. It would almost certainly cost more for an attorney to learn as they go than to hire one who’s well versed in the practice area.

Moreover, attorneys have ethical obligations to clear before taking on a client — the first being a conflict check, to make sure the attorney doesn’t have an impermissible conflict of interest in representing that person. (Conflicts of interest deserve their own post — stay tuned.) Simply put, a lawyer can’t represent two individuals or entities who have competing interests. Rob Schmittgens, a personal injury lawyer, can’t represent the individual suing for damages while also defending the person being sued. There’s a very real question of whose side you’re actually on.

After clearing a conflict check, a written engagement agreement is essential. Whether it’s an uncontested divorce or a multi-billion-dollar corporate merger, having a clear scope of representation is imperative. An engagement agreement spells out the fee structure, what the lawyer is promising to do (and sometimes what they’re not going to do), and memorializes what a client can expect from the representation.

After the engagement agreement is finalized, payment of legal fees is its own ethical step. I work on contingency, meaning I don’t get paid until the case is resolved. But lawyers who bill by the hour or work on a flat fee still have to earn those fees before paying themselves.

In most instances, lawyers will receive a “retainer” from the client, which gets deposited in the firm’s trust account (a special bank account for client money), and the money must remain there until the fees are earned. Lawyers will then forward billing statements to a client at certain intervals. Handling client money within the ethical rules is essential, because mishandling client funds is the number one disciplinary issue attorneys face.

By design, hiring an attorney should be a careful collaboration between attorney and client. None of that happens over one meaningful stare-down across a sleek desk with a picturesque view. It’s paperwork. It’s research. It’s precise contracting. Necessary, unglamorous, un-cinematic paperwork.

None of this is legal advice — just me pulling back the curtain on what TV gets wrong. Got a real legal situation (not a courtroom drama)? Head to hurtinstl.com and let’s talk about it for real.

Cheers,

I’m a fan of any establishment that has a TouchTunes jukebox, and this restaurant did. After getting situated, as is my TouchTunes custom, I stuffed the machine with several of the longest Dave Matthews Band tracks I could find, all queued up on “play next.”

If you don’t know me at all, it’s important to understand that I’ve been going to DMB shows for 16 years. I’ve seen the band perform in three different countries and close to a dozen different states. I proposed to my now-wife at a DMB concert, and our first dance at our wedding was to a DMB song. I’m a bit of a fan.

So I’d put probably $20-30 into the machine and was well into my highly curated set when, midway through our meal, I got up to use the restroom. On my way back, a normal-looking guy stopped me and asked if I was the one playing the Dave Matthews songs. I gleefully responded, “Absolutely.” We exchanged some pleasantries, and I quickly discovered this gentleman was also a fan, going so far as to show me his Dave Matthews-themed tattoo (I didn’t get my own DMB-inspired ink until 2025).

We’ll call this fellow Kevin. As I normally do when I meet someone new, I handed him my card and invited him to call if he ever needed help with an injury. Sometimes that results in a new case; other times I get asked about an area of law I know less than nothing about. Kevin made a remark about how he could have used my card because he had just been in a wreck, but that he had already found a lawyer to help him. I told him something to the effect of “not a problem, good luck, I hope they treat you well.”

A week or so later, Kevin called to tell me he’d fired the lawyer representing him on a personal injury case and he wanted me to help him out. I told him I’d be happy to look at his file. He hired me the next day.

I quickly found out Kevin had a massive case. He’d been a passenger in a vehicle struck by a partner at a large St. Louis law firm. Admittedly, I saw dollar signs, and I communicated that potential to Kevin.

For the first nine-ish months, Kevin was affable, if a tad needy. Despite my assurances that everything was under control, he and I talked at least a couple of times a week.

Once he was “released” from treatment, I sent a policy-limits demand to the insurance company for the at-fault driver, and told Kevin that by law, the insurer had 90 days to respond after confirming receipt. Even though I expected them to take every day the statute allowed, Kevin and I kept chatting regularly, and he knew the due date. As we approached it, that’s when Kevin’s demeanor started to change. He grew impatient and frustrated, some of it understandable, some not.

Despite my consistent reassurances, it seemed to me there was always some part of him that suspected I wasn’t really on his side. The due date came and passed. Kevin was livid, that part, I understood.

I told him I’d call the insurance company’s lawyer to see what was going on. Opposing counsel told me the deadline simply hadn’t been calendared correctly — nothing could be more innocent — and asked for ten extra days to evaluate my demand. Kevin begrudgingly agreed.

Five days later, opposing counsel purported to tender limits (this was a combined single-limit policy with two other claimants against it, a story for another post). A week after that, opposing counsel called to tell me there was an umbrella policy providing an additional $3,000,000 in coverage, once triggered.

Obviously, I wanted to get into that policy too, because I thought Kevin’s case supported it. But getting there was going to take even more lawyering, and I wasn’t sure how much leash I’d be given.

It was around this time that Kevin became impossible to deal with. There’s no way around it, he was abusive toward me and my staff, but mostly me. I was getting daily tirades full of insults and put-downs. Most of them were, admittedly, painful to hear. One of them was objectively hilarious: “Did you take your LSAT in fucking crayon?” (I did not. They wouldn’t have let me.)

Ultimately, I transferred Kevin’s case to another attorney at my prior firm, and he became someone else’s problem. By August 1, 2024, I’d left that firm to start my own, and I hadn’t heard from Kevin in some time. I later learned his case resolved for a substantial amount of money.

About six months later, I ran into Kevin at the Target by my house. I wasn’t exactly thrilled to see him, given how he’d treated me. But being the stand-up guy he actually is, he approached me and immediately apologized for his behavior and what he’d said. I forgave him, unequivocally.

About six months after that, after exchanging some messages on social media, he was in another collision, albeit much less severe this time, and hired me again. A couple of months into the case, he called to let me know he was heading to inpatient rehab for addiction treatment. Suddenly, everything made sense.

Kevin, unbeknownst to me, had been deep in the throes of addiction. Early on, he’d told me he was a Marine Corps veteran, and that the Marine Corps was really the only place he’d ever felt a sense of belonging. His parents were rarely in the picture, and when they were, it was the farthest thing from a loving home. Couple those experiences with a traumatic brain injury, and it’s no wonder Kevin was, and I think he’d agree, an asshole.

But in January 2026, Kevin made the hard, brave decision to get help. Help no personal injury lawyer could possibly provide: help getting sober. He completed inpatient rehab and has continued his sobriety journey ever since. In fact, as I write this, Kevin has been clean and sober for seven months, and I am so incredibly proud of him.

Addiction is real. It’s a worthy opponent — a disease that requires daily battles to overcome. Kevin fights those battles every single day, and he’s been stacking wins. Representing Kevin, now twice, has reminded me of two important things I think every lawyer is wise to remember: (1) you truly never know what battles people are fighting, and (2) sometimes people are assholes because of what’s happened to them, not because that’s who they are.

I resolved Kevin’s second case and even drove an hour each way to see him at his new home. He’s started a new job and, at least as he reports it, is doing much better. He spends his time switching between Dave Matthews Band and Slipknot, two musical groups that could not be more different if they tried. He’s dating again, and he recently found out his student loans have been forgiven in their entirety.

Kevin deserves all the credit for overcoming the hand he was dealt, but I like to think that somehow, some way, I helped him find the courage to take on addiction and come out better and brighter on the other side.

That’s all for today. If you’re having a cold one tonight, raise a glass for Kevin, because he better not be toasting anything with booze in it.

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(Standard disclaimer: this post reflects my own experience representing a real client and is shared with his knowledge, not as legal advice. Some details may be adjusted to protect privacy. If you’re dealing with a personal injury claim of your own: hurtinstl.com.)

Cheers,

To state the obvious, my own politics affect my view of these cases. I’m a bleeding-heart liberal. In second grade, I was the only kid in my class supporting Bill Bradley for the Democratic nomination for President. I wrote a position paper in 2008 at my Catholic prep high school in favor of gay marriage. As a voter, I don’t think I’ve ever voted for a Republican, and I live in Missouri’s 1st Congressional District, one of the bluest districts in the country. But back to the good stuff.

Case One: The Congressional Map Referendum

If you haven’t been paying attention: the current President, in an effort to hold the House of Representatives, encouraged “red” states to gerrymander in ways that would either strengthen conservative swing districts or carve up liberal ones. Missouri’s Republican-controlled legislature redrew the state’s congressional districts in 2025, with the express intent of carving up the district represented by Democrat Emanuel Cleaver II (not relevant at all, but Cleaver also gave the commencement address at my law school graduation in 2016) since 2004.

In response to the partisan gerrymandering, a group called People Not Politicians organized a petition drive to force a referendum on the new map, ultimately gathering more than 300,000 signatures, a number well above what’s required. Secretary of State Denny Hoskins refused to certify the referendum for the ballot, arguing a congressional map isn’t the kind of thing voters get to referendum in the first place. Initially, a Cole County circuit judge agreed, ruling that Missourians don’t have the constitutional authority to veto a congressional map this way.

The Missouri Supreme Court disagreed, holding that Article III, Section 49 of the Missouri Constitution, which lets voters approve or reject “any act of the general assembly” by referendum, is broad enough to cover congressional redistricting. The Court noted the constitution specifically exempts maps drawn by independent bipartisan commissions from referendum, which only makes sense if legislature-drawn maps were covered by the referendum power to begin with. Because the referendum has enough signatures, the Court held the 2025 map was suspended as of December 2025, meaning Missouri will vote this November using the old, pre-2025 district lines, while the new map’s fate gets decided by voters at the same election.

This is great news for Democrats and bad news for Republicans. While polls indicate that Democrats are favored to win back the House of Representatives, the President and his allies have been trying increased their chances of holding the House through out-of-cycle, partisan gerrymandering.

Hoskins, in his infinite wisdom, did not take the loss quietly. In a statement afterward, he called the ruling nothing short of a “Constitutional crisis,” insisted no court has ever rejected a congressional map already used in an election, and vowed to keep fighting to “preserve our constitutional republic.” Hoskins went so far as to say he is prepared to “fall on my sword” to stop the state from turning into, in his words, another big coastal city. Subtle, it was not.

Case Two: The “Respect Missouri Voters” Initiative

The same day, the Court also ruled against Hoskins in an unrelated case, Harris v. Hoskins, involving a proposed constitutional amendment informally known as “Respect Missouri Voters.” If enacted, it would expand and protect Missourians’ initiative and referendum rights more broadly: making that process a “fundamental right,” letting courts revise misleading ballot summaries, and requiring a supermajority vote before the legislature could weaken or undo laws voters pass directly. Organizers gathered more than 300,000 signatures for this one too. Hoskins’s own office had approved the petition’s form back in 2025 and certified its official ballot title.

On August 4, 2026, about an hour before the statutory 5:00 p.m. deadline, Hoskins issued a “Certificate of Insufficiency,” declaring the petition “insufficient under the Missouri Constitution.” The certificate didn’t elaborate. He also tried to change the ballot title his own office had certified a year earlier, swapping in new language.

That created a problem, because Missouri law doesn’t allow the Secretary of State to declare a petition “insufficient” and walk away. By law, the certificate itself has to state the actual reasoning. Instead, Hoskins attached a six-page opinion from the Attorney General’s office and tried to incorporate it by reference, a technique trial attorneys (me included) often use to pull in previously filed documents. That works fine in motion practice before a circuit court judge; the Supreme Court was clear, it doesn’t work here. The Court held the statute doesn’t let the Secretary outsource that explanation to someone else’s memo, and because the certificate itself gave no reasoning, there was nothing left to review on appeal. Game over.

The Court didn’t stop there. Hoskins’s briefing raised concerns about what could happen if the amendment were approved, but the Court wasn’t moved, those concerns weren’t “ripe,” since courts don’t pre-judge what a law might do before it’s even been voted on. The Court also rejected his argument that the petition improperly touched more than one article of the constitution or covered more than one subject, finding it affects only Article III and relates entirely to one theme: protecting the initiative and referendum process itself.

Then there’s the ballot title switch, maybe the cleanest part of the opinion. Hoskins tried to vacate the title his office certified in September 2025 and swap in language that almost certainly would’ve sounded more alarming to voters. The Court held he simply didn’t have the authority. Missouri law gives the Secretary one shot to certify a ballot title, subject to a 10-day citizen challenge window. Nobody challenged it. Once that window closes, it’s final, even for a new Secretary who wasn’t in office when the title was first certified.

The Court ordered Hoskins to certify the petition as sufficient, restore the original ballot title, and get it on the ballot by September 8. It’ll appear as Amendment 6.

Why I find both of these satisfying

Procedural rules like “you have to actually state your reasons” can feel like technicalities, but they exist for a real purpose, so people know what they’re appealing and why, on a clock that doesn’t leave room for guessing games. Both opinions are clean illustrations of what happens when an agency tries to skip that step and hope the outcome speaks for itself. That it happened twice, to the same official, on the same day, is just a bonus.

Either way, in my view, today Missouri citizens won and Hoskins lost. Twice.

I like to law-nerd out over Supreme Court decisions, especially the ones I happen to agree with, but I promise not to spam your inbox with liberal propaganda or delve into politics too often, unless you ask nicely. That’s all for today, and probably this week. Smoke ‘em if you got ‘em.

A special thanks to St. Louis Public Radio’s Jason Rosenbaum, who has been reporting on this legal battle for some time. His story on the congressional map ruling is here: https://www.stlpr.org/government-politics-issues/2026-09-03/missouri-supreme-court-referendum-congressional-map, and his story on the “Respect Missouri Voters” ruling is here: https://www.stlpr.org/government-politics-issues/2026-09-03/respect-missouri-voters-initiative-petitions. He’s also a great follow if you have any interest in Missouri politics.

(Standard disclaimer: general-interest summary of public court opinions, not legal advice, and not my usual personal injury lane. For actual injury questions: hurtinstl.com.)

Cheers,

But I want to be the exception. I hope to show, through this newsletter, that there are a lot of quality attorneys who “chase ambulances” for a living — some of the brightest legal minds and kindest people you’ll meet, myself included.

In August of 2024, exactly one week before my son was born, I founded Schmittgens Injury Law Firm. If you’re thinking about starting a business of any kind, I’d advise against doing it a week before you and your spouse welcome a new child into the world.

I’m a born-and-raised St. Louisan, and naturally, my office is downtown on Washington Avenue. I started this Substack (today) because I think I can bring a lot of quality information to an otherwise confusing industry.

Candidly, I think most personal injury commercials are terrible. Some are corny by design, others bury you in unnecessary and terrifying legal jargon you probably don’t understand, and some have a guy with gray hair telling you about “MAXIMUM COMPENSATION” over stock footage of a car crash.

As a father, I have my fair share of awful jokes. As a lawyer, I find myself using cumbersome language. As a business owner (who only gets paid when you do), I also want to get my clients the most money I can. But attorney marketing leaves a lot to be desired.

There’s a real gap between “I got hurt and I have questions” and “I understand what’s actually going to happen to me legally,” and I’d like to live in that gap for a while, if you’ll indulge me.

So here’s what you can expect from my Substack:

• Plain-English breakdowns of what actually happens after a car accident, a slip and fall, or any of the other ways life likes to humble us — no Latin phrases unless I’m making fun of them.

• Real talk about insurance companies and the surprisingly creative ways they try to pay you less than you deserve.

• Myths, debunked — no, you don’t automatically get a million dollars for spilling hot coffee, and yes, that case was actually more reasonable than the jokes suggest.

• The law, explained in words you actually understand. The law is, almost by design, intimidating. I hope to break it down in general terms you can follow — and I might even give my two cents (three, if you’re lucky) on high-profile cases.

• The occasional war story from the trenches of St. Louis-area courtrooms, names changed to protect the aggrieved.

• Zero pressure, zero sales pitches — I promise not to turn every post into a thinly veiled ad for my firm (this one doesn’t count, I’m allowed one).

I’ve spent my career explaining complicated, stressful legal situations to people on what is often one of the worst weeks of their lives. Turns out I have a lot of opinions about how that should be done — and apparently now I have a newsletter to put them in.

If you’ve ever been hurt, known someone who’s been hurt, or just enjoy watching a lawyer try to be funny on the internet, you’re in the right place. Subscribe, and I’ll see you in your inbox.

(And if you’re dealing with an actual injury right now and need actual help, not just my musings: hurtinstl.com.)

Cheers,