Just Verdicts

“Lawyers with nearly flawless technique can lose case after case while lawyers who appear clumsy and bumbling can win repeatedly," writes Rick Friedman in Becoming a Trial Lawyer — Brendan Lupetin's favorite book of all time. In this solo episode, Brendan digs into Friedman's chapter "Beyond Technique," exploring why mastering courtroom mechanics is only part of the equation. Drawing on his own experience trying cases — including a close federal trial where a juror later told him she could tell he truly cared — Brendan makes the case that personal investment and vulnerability in the courtroom can be the deciding factor in cases that hang in the balance.

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Host Brendan Lupetin wanted to focus this episode on building your own firm. He turned not to one inspiring lawyer. Not to two. But to three. No coincidence: They are sisters Lauren Kelly Gielarowski, Gianna Kelly, Erica Kelly Curren, who launched The Kelly Firm earlier this year. They also happen to be daughters of celebrated Western Pennsylvania personal injury attorney Larry Kelly. With just a bit of sisterly talking over each other, the three reflect on their past careers on the defense side, the challenge of keeping work coming through the door, and why being women-owned and female-led is central to their brand. And for anybody thinking of hanging a shingle, all three encourage you to go for it and not wait for the perfect time. It will never come.

☑️ Lauren Kelly Gielarowski | LinkedIn

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☑️ The Kelly Firm on LinkedIn | Facebook

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1. Lauren, Gianna, and Erica describe how their career paths were shaped growing up watching their father, Larry Kelly, a stalwart of Western Pennsylvania personal injury law.
2. Starting their own firm was a decision that took years of planning, saving, and working up the courage to leave the "golden handcuffs" of steady defense firm paychecks.
3. The sisters take advantage of virtual office assistants, Filevine case management, office sharing, and remote work to run a modern firm.
4. The sisters and Brendan weigh the real risks of AI over-reliance in legal practice, with Lauren sharing how she insists on reading every page of the medical record herself — even when using AI tools to prep for depositions.
5. Erica identifies keeping work coming in the door as the firm's biggest ongoing concern and explains why boutique firms like theirs can offer clients something the "big box" firms simply can't: direct access to the attorney actually working on their case.
6. Each sister offers advice for lawyers thinking about going out on their own — from Gianna's reminder that there's never a perfect time, to Erica's "you can do it,” to Lauren's call to lean on the Pittsburgh legal community.

Ready to refer or collaborate on med mal, medical negligence, and catastrophic injury cases? Visit our attorney referral page at PAMedMal.com/Refer. We handle cases in Pennsylvania and across the United States.

In this episode, host Brendan Lupetin explores what is often the most gut-wrenching part of a case: waiting for the verdict. To do so, he invites the trial team of Andy Delaney and Jack De La Piedra for a step-by-step breakdown of their recent wrongful death case against the operators of a Florida nursing home. They represented the family of a woman who died after a bedsore went untreated and wasn’t even revealed to the patient or her family. After trial – which included a six-minute closing and a three-minute cross-examination – they were at lunch when they got the call. The jury was returning. Tune in to hear what happened next.

☑️ Andy Delaney | LinkedIn

☑️ Martin Delaney & Ricci Law Group

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• Jack De La Piedra and Andy Delaney met at Trial Lawyers College in 2015 and have tried multiple cases together through their decade-long friendship.
• Jack and Andy represented the family of an 87-year-old woman who was in a Florida nursing home when she got a Stage 2 bedsore that neither she nor the family was told existed. Over 10 days at the nursing home, her health deteriorated; she died after finally being taken to the hospital.
• In voir dire, Jack asked the entire panel if they had heard the phrase, "If it wasn't documented, then it didn't happen." Every hand went up, establishing the theme that would carry through the entire trial.
• Jack's opening featured no PowerPoint, just a flip chart, two rules, and a physical reenactment on a rolling utility cart that showed jurors exactly how the patient was suffering in her bed..
• In Andy's three-minute cross-examination of the corporate representative, he asked one question: Did he believe the operators of the nursing home were negligent? The response was a flat "no.” With no further questions, Andy let the answer speak for itself.
• Jack's closing argument ran just six minutes, skipping the evidence recap and focusing on the heart of the case. The defense counsel's attempt to mock its brevity backfired and made their own position look weaker.

Ready to refer or collaborate on med mal, medical negligence, and catastrophic injury cases? Visit our attorney referral page at PAMedMal.com/Refer. We handle cases in Pennsylvania and across the United States.

Settlement discussions are where "so many different factors" collide — a client's relationship with money, their grief, their fear of trial, and their lawyer's duty to give candid advice. Host Brendan Lupetin sits down with his law partner Greg Unatin of Lupetin & Unatin, LLC to tackle the ethical tightrope every trial lawyer walks: How do you advise clients when you can't predict verdicts, when clients resist good offers, and when trial is looming? Brendan and Greg explore how data studies inform — but don't replace — candid client conversations, how settlement disagreements can have a psychological toll, and how lawyers can use a practical tool for documenting when a client overrules your advice.

☑️ Greg Unatin | LinkedIn

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☑️ Lupetin & Unatin, LLC

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1. Brendan and Greg introduce the episode's central challenge: Settlement discussions come up far more often than trials, yet they expose a "new side" of clients that lawyers may not have anticipated.
2. Brendan explains how large-sample jury data studies — from focus groups to verdict-prediction platforms — help him form concrete settlement recommendations.
3. Brendan tells clients plainly when he cannot confidently say a verdict will beat the offer on the table and that the final decision always belongs to the client.
4. Greg suggests one strategy: designating a separate settlement counsel — someone other than the trial lawyer — to handle negotiations.
5. Brendan describes a practical "informed consent" approach: having clients sign a letter acknowledging they've been advised that an offer is favorable and are choosing to reject it.
6. Greg offers a strategy for knowing when to stop advising and start preparing: If you find yourself repeating the same settlement advice, you've done your job.

Ready to refer or collaborate on med mal, medical negligence, and catastrophic injury cases? Visit our attorney referral page at PAMedMal.com/Refer. We handle cases in Pennsylvania and across the United States.

It was the first case tried to verdict under a Pennsylvania anti-hazing statute that allows civil remedies against Greek life organizations. The team that tried it – Helen Lawless and Mark Fuchs – visit host Brendan Lupetin to explain how they won $7.8 million. It wasn’t easy: They had to show how the college freshman ended at the bottom of a cliff with a BAC of over 0.2. And they had to deflect defense arguments that the student bore personal responsibility. For any plaintiff’s lawyer working on an anti-hazing case, this episode is a must-hear.

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1. In King vs. AST Sorority et. al, Helen Lawless and Mark Fuchs represented the family of Justin King, an 18-year-old freshman at Bloomsburg University who died just two weeks into his college career after attending an alcohol-fueled party co-hosted by a fraternity and a sorority.
2. This was the first case tried to verdict in Pennsylvania under the state's anti-hazing statute, a law born by the parents of a Penn State hazing victim that allows civil remedies against individuals, organizations, and educational institutions.
3. A key challenge was establishing causation without a witness to the fatal fall. The team used a digital forensics expert to track Justin's cell phone movements and a forensic pathologist to establish time of death, creating an unbroken chain of causation.
4. Helen and Mark argued that the sorority’s anti-hazing policies were "paper policies" that were never enforced: The only time national representatives visited the local sorority chapter was after Justin's death, and they arrived with a lawyer.
5. The defense's strategy of building up a high school friend as a star witness backfired when he testified he wasn't even in Bloomsburg the night Justin died.
6. The $7.8 million verdict was apportioned 35% to the sorority, 35% to the fraternity, and 24% to Justin, with the largest damages going to lost earnings and Carol King's companionship damages.
7. The defining moment at trial came when the sorority CEO sat in silence for nearly a minute after being asked whether handing policies to college students was enough to deter hazing—and answered "No."

Ready to refer or collaborate on med mal, medical negligence, and catastrophic injury cases? Visit our attorney referral page at PAMedMal.com/Refer. We handle cases in Pennsylvania and across the United States.

Jurors in traditionally conservative St. Charles County, Missouri, awarded $1.5 million in a complex case about medical negligence. Why? Host Brendan Lupetin invites the winning trial team – Chris Wright and Anthony Laramore – to reveal their strategies. Chris and Anthony recount how they built the case, starting with crafting simple rules that resonated with jurors. One of them? “Surgeons must confirm before they cut.” Tune in for the other.

☑️ Chris Wright

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1. The surgeon told the team’s client that she had cancer and the only option was a mastectomy. But the surgeon was either lying or too incompetent to realize that her diagnosis was inaccurate.
2. The defense attorney made a critical error in opening statement by framing the case as a one-issue trial: "If you believe our side, you have to find in our favor, but if you think we're lying and you believe them, you should find in their favor.”
3. One defense expert, a pathologist, had been sued by Vanderbilt University for stealing $250,000. In cross-examination, Anthony showed how she couldn’t be trusted to keep her word, a clean fit with the case theme.
4. The defense attorney inadvertently opened the door to discuss the defendant doctor's prior malpractice lawsuits by holding up four fingers and asking her to walk the jury through those four. Problem was – there were actually five prior cases.
5. During deliberations, when the jury asked if they were capped in what they could award, the defense attorney told the doctor she needed to give consent to settle. She refused and walked out of the courtroom.
6. The jury awarded $1.5 million ($500,000 for past non-economic damages and $1 million for future non-economic damages). It was $600,000 more than the attorneys requested.
7. A juror approached Chris after trial and told him she didn’t sign the verdict form – not because she didn’t vote for the plaintiff, but because they weren’t giving her enough money.

Ready to refer or collaborate on med mal, medical negligence, and catastrophic injury cases? Visit our attorney referral page at PAMedMal.com/Refer. We handle cases in Pennsylvania and across the United States.

For over 30 years, he’s helped select juries that have returned billions of dollars in verdicts. “He is the guy who gets called on for the highest-stakes cases going,” says host Brendan Lupetin. How does Robert Hirschhorn do it? In this conversation, Robert reflects on his past and describes the “game-changing” future: his AI-powered consulting platform called VerdictHub. Tune in as Robert reveals his powerful questions for identifying ideal jurors, innovative strategies for maximizing damages in states where lawyers cannot give jurors recommendations, and technique for anchoring jurors to substantial awards. Spoiler: Repeating the word “billion” helps.

☑️ Robert Hirschhorn | LinkedIn

☑️ CEB Jury and Trial Consultants

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☑️ Lupetin & Unatin, LLC

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1. Robert's career transformed in 1984 when he secured a seemingly impossible not-guilty verdict against a public safety officer charged with robbery – and caught at the scene with an Uzi, sawed-off shotgun, and silencer.
2. For that case, Robert was referred to jury consultant Cathy Bennett, who agreed to teach him her methods on one condition: He would spend an entire year attending all her meetings without speaking but instead observing and absorbing.
3. Robert and Cathy Bennett eventually married. Later, on her deathbed, she made Robert promise to find a way to give his jury selection gift to as many lawyers as he could, a promise he would fulfill with VerdictHub, his AI-powered trial consulting platform.
4. VerdictHub is now developing a “shadow jury" product. Once a lawyer has a seated jury, this product will replicate not one group of 12 using digital artificial intelligence jurors, but five groups of juries. Those five groups, demographically identical to the seated jury, will then be provided the transcript of that day’s court activity, and the lawyers will get their feedback each day.
5. Robert recommends asking potential jurors whether they see the world in black and white or shades of gray, explaining that cases centered on non-economic damages absolutely require "shades of gray" jurors who can think in nuanced terms.
6. Robert advises asking jurors if they prefer the big picture or details, noting that while detail-oriented people are important for certain cases, big picture thinkers are often better suited for cases requiring emotional connection and understanding of non-economic harm.
7. In states where lawyers cannot suggest damage amounts to juries, Robert's strategy involves villainizing the defendant or defense witnesses and finding creative ways to use large numbers throughout trial to anchor jurors' thinking.
8. If economic damages in a case are very low, Robert recommends waiving them entirely to avoid anchoring the jury to a small number when you cannot provide a recommended amount for non-economic damages.

Ready to refer or collaborate on med mal, medical negligence, and catastrophic injury cases? Visit our attorney referral page at PAMedMal.com/Refer. We handle cases in Pennsylvania and across the United States.

Fun fact: Rapper Harvey "Frzy" Daniels and famed horror makeup artist Tom Savini are both depicted on murals, created by the same artist. Their lives converged in another, more dramatic way when Frzy was injured in a hit-and-run. Brandon Keller represented the rapper against the makeup artist, who was tracked down, in part, by his “IZOMBIE” license plate. In this case breakdown with host Brendan Lupetin, Brandon reveals the challenges he faced – including an eyewitness who ghosted him for two years – and the strategies that ultimately led to a $225,000 verdict.

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☑️ Ainsman Levine on LinkedIn | Facebook

☑️ Brendan Lupetin | LinkedIn

☑️ Lupetin & Unatin, LLC

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1. Daniels v. Savini involved Harvey "Frzy" Daniels, a Pittsburgh rapper, and famed makeup artist Tom Savini, who has worked for horror legend George Romero.
2. Frzy was leaving a meeting with a music video director when his motorcycle was sideswiped by a black Dodge Charger.
3. The driver’s “IZOMBIE” license plate was initially transcribed incorrectly as "IVOMBIE,” creating early delays in the investigation.
4. The 911 call was compelling: You could hear Frzy on the ground as the eyewitness's cousin tells him, "We got the plate."
5. The defendant initially denied driving the vehicle, signing an affidavit with his insurance company stating he did not do it and would have remembered if he had.
6. The defense's last offer was $6,700, made right after the eyewitness deposition.
7. Brandon chose to seek only non-economic damages, not wanting to give the jury any benchmark number that might limit their award for pain and suffering.
8. The jury awarded $150,000 for past pain and suffering and $75,000 for future pain and suffering, totaling $225,000.

Ready to refer or collaborate on med mal, medical negligence, and catastrophic injury cases? Visit our attorney referral page at PAMedMal.com/Refer. We handle cases in Pennsylvania and across the United States.

“I thought that was insulting,” Todd Hollis says of a defense offer of $500,000. His client agreed, and Todd went “guns banging” to trial. The case involved a woman who was killed when the driver of a rental car, who had a suspended license, hit her head-on. In this breakdown with host Brendan Lupetin, Todd describes how the rental car company acknowledged that 15% of their 525,000 annual rentals potentially go to drivers without valid licenses. When the defense argued that the legislature doesn’t require electronic background scans, Todd argued that the legislature does say that a rental car company can’t rent to anyone who they know is incompetent to drive. Tune in to hear how the jury responded with “millions” in punitive damages.

☑️ Todd Hollis | LinkedIn

☑️ Todd J. Hollis Law on Facebook | YouTube

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☑️ Lupetin & Unatin, LLC

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1. Todd Hollis describes “jumping” from criminal defense after a painful moment waiting for a client to pay him $200 that he would use to buy Christmas gifts for his son. After a humbling experience selling hotdogs for a year, and after his daughter was born, he switched to the plaintiff side.
2. In the Everson case, Todd sued a rental car company after it rented a car to a driver with a suspended license. That driver killed a woman after he crossed into the opposite lane and struck her vehicle head-on.
3. The rental car company charged drivers under 25 an additional $25 per day because they're "higher risk" but did nothing to ensure these drivers were actually licensed or safe to drive.
4. Todd’s theme in the case was community safety: How many rental cars on the road have been rented to a driver who is not legally safe or competent?
5. Todd and his client rejected a defense offer of $500,000 before trial. “I remember what you told me, and you said you form a reputation when you start to accept unreasonable numbers,” Todd says of host Brendan Lupetin. “I had made a conscious decision that I was not going to allow that to happen.”

Ready to refer or collaborate on med mal, medical negligence, and catastrophic injury cases? Visit our attorney referral page at PAMedMal.com/Refer. We handle cases in Pennsylvania and across the United States.

An unwitnessed fall, a client with prior back problems, 10 years of unemployment, and over $5 million in disability benefits already paid – this case had every reason to fail. Yet trial partners Brendan Lupetin and Greg Unatin secured a record-setting $7.25 million verdict for the former chief of pain management at UPMC Hamot. In this case breakdown, Brendan and Greg reveal the strategies that shaped their victory: exposing UPMC's betrayal of their client through a series of emails, levering focus group insights to develop their winning liability theory, and highlighting their client’s loss of his passion in life: being a doctor.

☑️ Greg Unatin | LinkedIn

☑️ Brendan Lupetin | LinkedIn

☑️ Lupetin & Unatin, LLC

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1. Their client fell on snow-covered ice while exiting a UPMC surgery center through a required after-hours door, suffering severe back and shoulder injuries that ended his career as chief of pain management at UPMC Hamot.
2. The team strategically navigated the issue of their client’s prior back problems by explaining to the jury that he’d recovered from a spine surgery; the issue at trial was his shoulder injury: “I think that that ultimately played just fine, and we really made it all about the shoulder,” Brendan says.
3. The attorneys dropped their theory about a code violation relating to a defective step after focus groups showed that jurors cared more about the snow and ice issue.
4. Their winning liability theory became simple: When UPMC directed staff to exit a specific door, they had a duty to ensure that door was safely maintained.
5. A trail of emails revealed UPMC's corporate betrayal: praising their client as their "golden boy" when he was profitable, then ghosting him after his injuries when he desperately sought ways to return to work.
6. The decision to bring in their client’s disability benefits ($22,000 monthly for a decade) actually helped the case by showing that he was legitimately disabled.

Ready to refer or collaborate on med mal, medical negligence, and catastrophic injury cases? Visit our attorney referral page at PAMedMal.com/Refer. We handle cases in Pennsylvania and across the United States.