I'm going to move right along to the next talk. If you are served, here's the next list of do's and don'ts. So if you are served with that piece of paper, first thing you do is notify your insurance carrier within, that says 30 years. That was supposed to have been changed to 30 days. Sorry. I don't know how that got in there. I will change it with an addendum that says on the morning of. So refresh your memory. Start looking at the case. Don't change anything. Meet with your attorney. Be candid. Everything's non-discoverable between you and your attorney. Do not talk about the case with anybody else other than your attorney or your insurance carrier. If you talk about it with your partners, your colleagues in the surgical changing room or in the lounge or on the tennis court and the golf course, that's all discoverable. You've breached your rule of confidentiality, the doctor-patient relationship is something you've heard about where there's the attorney-client relationship that is non-discoverable when things are just between the attorney and the physician in a lawsuit. That is not able to be subpoenaed. There's not evidence that can be brought to court and held against you. You can tell your attorney anything and it can never be held against you in court. So if you're deposed, and depositions are part and parcel of the discovery process, so the plaintiff's attorney will send you a notice of deposition where you have to turn up with all your records and you need to tell the truth, obviously, all the time. Take control of the deposition in terms of if they say you need to be at my office at such and such a time and such a date, you say no. This is when it is and when it will be held. You don't have to go to their office. You can say the deposition will be in my office at this time on this date. My attorney will be there and you are going to have it at that time. So take control of things at that point. When you're asked questions, remember that, first of all, you're the doctor. They're the lawyer. They know a lot of medicine. But you're the doctor. You know more medicine than they do. They'll try to trick you and get you to say things. And you might want to say something really fast, thinking it's in your defense. Pause. Take a breather. Think about the question before you answer it. Because a lot of these questions are trick questions. Some of them are hypotheticals. You'll see in one of the bullet points I listed. They'll try to start talking about facts of your case. And then they'll throw in, doctor, what if this, that, or that, and you'll say, are you asking me a hypothetical that has nothing to do with this case? And they have to say yes. And then you'll say, okay, hypothetically and nothing to do with this case, I might have done X, Y, or Z. And then end the sentence with, and it has nothing to do with this case. So don't get tripped up. Because they'll come back and quote, but doctor, you said you would have done it differently in my questioning of you earlier. And they'll say, court reporter, read it back. So if you have it in the record, recognize what they're doing. So play the game and play it better than the plaintiff attorney. Listen, listen, listen before you talk. Recognize that they're trying to get you. And you have the ability to understand the situation better than they ever will. And so if you have a defensible position, make sure that everything you say and everything you do and all the records that you quote are on that straight and narrow path of defending your case. Because if they see that you're an unflappable defendant and that you've got a solid argument and a solid case and they can't get you, don't get into a jousting match. Just stay on the high moral ground. Know that this is the beginning of the case. That if they feel like they don't have a case or if they feel like you're going to be unbelievable in front of the jury because you're solid, you have a lot of personal appeal, you don't lose your cool, you did something that might not have had a great result but it really wasn't negligent and they know it. And they're just kind of testing the waters. You might win your case right then and there in your office in that first deposition so keep that in mind. Get coached. If you do have something like this that comes up, you don't have to be out there on your own just remembering this lecture that you heard in Chicago. You can get coached in advance by either your insurance company or your defense attorney. They've been through this a million times and they can help you be a really good witness for yourself to help your case. So I already kind of mentioned some of the don'ts. Here's one of the things that I didn't mention. Don't appear arrogant. Nobody likes arrogance right from the beginning to potentially in court. Jury hates arrogant doctors and a plaintiff's attorney who sees an arrogant doctor has an easy way of getting under his skin. So don't be arrogant. Be very humble. Be very honest. Be very open. Be very friendly. Don't get into a jousting match. I think I covered all those points. Actually there's one point more that I should talk about. We talked about earlier several times if it's not in the record, it didn't happen. That's something that the other side will say, the plaintiff's side will say that and the bullet point do not allow an attorney to insist that if something is not in the patient's record it did not happen. This is not the case when you're defending the lack of something in the record. Because you can quote use usual business practices defense in this situation. You can say, well, you know, it's something that I say or I do on every single case. I'm not going to write it down every single time because it's just part of doing business as usual. And that's a very good defense. They can't come after you by saying, well, you didn't write that in the record. All you have to do is say, well, I've done like, you know, several hundred of these types of cases. It's just routine business. We don't write it down. It's just routine. And so that's a good defense. And then they can't come at you by saying that, well, you didn't write it down so it didn't happen. So for out-of-court settlements, if you don't have a solid case and you're thinking, I don't want to go to court, looking bad, try to settle the case. So your insurance company, again, and your defense attorney know how to do that. You can say, look, I don't think we can defend this or I don't want to defend it. Some people say, I just can't take X number of weeks out of my practice. And that's a reasonable, it's an economic opportunity cost analysis you have to do. If you're thinking that this trial could last three weeks and that's X number of dollars of revenue and unbelievable anguish, grief, public exposure, family exposure, and you don't want that for whatever reason, whether it's economic or emotional or just stress or you basically don't have a good case and you don't want to wing it and roll the dice to see if you might be in that 95% of cases that go on the defense verdict but you think you could be one of those 5%ers that are going to lose, try to settle the case. And most cases are settled when both parties want to settle because it saves money on the insurance side and the attorney side of things. Like the plaintiff's attorney is putting his or her firm's money on the line throughout the course of the whole process. So they look at what a case might be worth when they take the case. And as they go through, they're thinking, oh, this case is looking pretty good. We have probably a million dollar judgment if we go to court and the jury awards our plaintiff a judgment, a court judgment, and it's at least a 50% chance of that, let's say. They might take a settlement offer of $500,000 on the defense offering side, but both sides have to know what the case might be worth, what the percentage chances are. When they both weigh what are the odds of having to pay out more versus a set amount. And so that's where the negotiation comes in. You can see both sides are thinking, okay, I'm going to probably get out lighter with a settlement than if I go to court where the chance of a big runaway jury judgment is high. Or on the plaintiff's side, it's a good case, but 50% chance it's going to come in at a lower dollar value, so I'm going to accept $100,000. So you have to play that game. And the bottom line is that that will get you out of the case for a set dollar value, which your insurance company pays. But the National Practitioner Data Bank is going to have your name forevermore because anything that's paid out, any judgment, any settlement that's paid out, even a pittance, goes into the National Practitioner Data Bank, which can be used at any time for the rest of your career when you're applying for state licensure, looking for a credentialing package at a hospital with a new job, and you have to go through the due process of disclosure of everything. They just go on and look at the National Practitioner Data Bank and say, oh, you had this big settlement. That could be a ding against you. It stops some people, and it drives some people to want to go to court, get their day in court, because they think if it is defensible and I get out, then at least I don't have the National Practitioner Data Bank filing against me for the rest of my career as a bit of a black mark. So if you do go to trial, what do you do and what do you don't do? You're there. You're there on the hot seat. But the jury and you can click, and you can get them engaged. Direct your answers to the jury. Look each juror in the eye. Again, like I said earlier, we're in a human being communication business. If you relate really well to the jury and they like you, and you're not arrogant, and you're educating them and talking to them, you're not talking down to them, don't use a lot of medical gobbledygook. Put it out there. Don't belittle their level of knowledge. They generally know what's going on. Explain things. Teach. Explain the crux of the case. What really matters here? And do it from your heart. Do it from your substantial treasure trove of knowledge. But do it with good eye contact as an educator to the jury. That can help you win the case. Because if they like you, and let's say you got a nasty plaintiff's attorney and nasty plaintiff who they don't like, and they like you, and they say, hey, you know, this is a good doctor who, you know, this is a bad outcome, but he or she's a good guy. Look at how he communicates and how he tried to teach us, and, you know, he knows his stuff. He or she knows his stuff. You know, they'll get you out of the case. So keep that in mind. You haven't lost just because you're in court. You have a way of communicating to the jury. And use that, again, you know, from the heart, from your brain. Communicate. And as I quickly said, don't use a lot of medical gobbledygook. That turns people off. You don't want to come across as a pedantic sort of person. On that note, I think I'm done, and I'll turn it over to Mike. Okay.

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