Episode 50 with Raymond Johnson

Welcome to Victim to Victory. The Personal Injury playbook the podcast to navigating the complex legal system after an injury. We bring you the expert insights and guidance you need to navigate the legal system with confidence. Help you make informed decisions and get the compensation you deserve. Don’t let insurance companies take advantage of you. This podcast is designed to empower you with the knowledge you need to protect yourself and your loved ones. So sit back, relax, and let’s start exploring the world of personal injury law together.

Welcome to Victim to Victory. Today, we’re honored to have Raymond Paul Johnson with us. Ray’s career spans from being a decorated combat pilot in the US Air Force to a distinguished trial attorney named a Super Lawyer by Los Angeles Magazine, every year since 2006. He’s won landmark cases, authored key legal texts and penned the award winning thriller conspiracy ignited. Welcome to the show, Ray.

Well, hello, Lawrence, hi, a happy summer.

Oh, thank you. It’s been a little warm here in New Jersey. How’s it been where you are?

Well, I’m lucky enough to be in the LA area, so you know, it does get up to 72. But inland, Palm Springs was 119 degrees yesterday. So yes, you have to stay near the water.

Yes, that one’s brutal. That’s brutal. That sounds like Phoenix Arizona temperatures. That’s not pleasant.

Yes, actually, I was in Phoenix once, and a person actually dropped an egg on the sidewalk and it cooked, so, that was 115.

Yes, I believe it. So Ray, your background is incredibly diverse, from serving as a combat pilot to becoming a trial attorney. Can you share a bit about your journey and how it led you to specialize in personal injury law,

Sure, can. I guess my book Conspiracy Ignited, well, I’m a Hemingway type author. What does that mean? His greatest advice was, write what you know. So, when I sat down to write this, who did I know best, myself, right?

And so, a lot of my background is reflected in the in the novel. But to give you the Reader’s Digest version. I started in high school. I had a history professor who–she had me in sophomore and junior year, not in senior year. When I got accepted to college, I went to see her and tell her that I got into NYU. And she turned to me and said — Well, that’s great, but what are you going to major in? And I said, I’m going to become an engineer.

Aerospace Engineering will be my major, and then I’m going to become a pilot in the Air Force. And I was waiting for some type of reaction, and what I got was she laughed at me. Yes, she laughed at me. She said, you know, it was the old Ray Ray, you, pilot and an engineer. If you would have said, lawyer, I would have believed you. If you would have said writer, I would have believed you.

So, I went ahead and did — I’m a stubborn type guy, so I went ahead anyway, became an engineer and then went into the Air Force, became a pilot and while I was a pilot, I flew combat and also got signed a paramilitary paralegal, that’s the lawyer in me coming out, paramilitary to the essential intelligence agency.

Thereafter, I did go to law school at the College of William and Mary, and knew exactly what I wanted to do, because I was an older student. I was almost 10 years older than most of my classmates. And so, the one thing that interests me almost slept through trusts and estates and other things, but what interests me was trial law.

And I wasn’t sure what type of trial law, but I knew I went to trial law, and then one day it came to me, you know, I mean, I’m an engineer, I’m a pilot. I’ve got a lot of experiences that way. What really stood out in the coursework at William and Mary was product liability and aviation law. And really, although I started my own firm, and I tried to keep as  generalists in the sense that every lawyer had a specialty, maybe two or three specialties, but myself, I stayed pretty close to product liability, especially automotive product liability and aviation law, my whole career.

Well, great. Well, you’ve been named a super lawyer every year since 2006 and that’s almost 20 years. So what sets you apart in a field of personal injury from most other lawyers?

Well, again, I kind of specialized, and I’m a big believer in specialization, because when you specialize, you get experience and become more experienced than the other side and that happened to me a lot. So, I stayed in product liability and aviation law. Soon, I found myself deposing experts and deposing in-house experts at say Boeing Company and Hughes Aircraft Company and the whole litany General Motors.

And when I did, I realized that it was a great unfair advantage, because I could talk to the specialists and I could tell that the other side, the lawyer on the other side, was having trouble keeping up. In fact, I remember one particular case involving the F-15 fighter jet, and I was at Edwards Air Force Base taking the deposition of two test pilots who had flown the F-15, and because to my background, I cut right to the chase, and I wasn’t interested really in the jury understanding what I was talking about.

What I was interested in was getting answers from these two pilots who were subpoenaed that the other side couldn’t understand. Let it, let alone keep up with and after the deposition, my opponent turned to me, and he was excellent, by the way, excellent defense lawyer.

He turned to me and said — Ray, did you really understand any of that? That’s after two days of depositions. I said, yes, I’m afraid I did. He goes, well, I’m glad I’ve got experts back home who could take care of that. So that’s what we did.

So I think that’s, you know, if you’re asking me, what, how my background and abilities differ from other lawyers, it’d be because of my experiences.

Oh, it’s great. I mean, it’s got to be invaluable to be both an engineer and a pilot when you’re dealing with products in aviation law. So, that’s incredible. And in your book, Conspiracy Ignited, you highlight both the strengths and flaws of the US legal system. How do these elements affect personal injury victims?

Well, that’s interesting. In conspiracy ignited. One of my first goals was — I’ve been a thriller reader all my life, and legal thrillers in particular, and I always thought that there were two things missing. One, the authors tended not to really talk about the real world of trial lawyer. The second thing is, they tended always to have protagonists or heroes who were either — or anti heroes who are either criminal defense lawyers or corporate lawyers, not a lot of plaintiff lawyers, so, trial lawyers who represent real people against corporations and things in the government.

And so. that was number one I wanted to make Conspiracy Ignited, a real expose of what it’s to be a real trial lawyer in civil litigation. To kind of sum that up, one of my pre release reviews was written by a very well known lawyer out here. Her name’s Sharon Arkin. She’s also editor in chief of The Forum, which is our statewide trial law magazine, and she reviewed Conspiracy Ignited, and I knew she got it, because after first few introductory words, she said something like this. She said, Johnson’s bad guys are really bad with italics on the ‘really’, but his good guys are really real, and I love them.

So I knew she got it, that I was trying to let people read a novel. Have fun reading a thriller, but really get exposed to what it is to be a civil trial lawyer on a day to day basis.

Well, what were some of the things that you showed people in your book about being a real trial lawyer?

Yes, well, that Lawrence, goes to your question about flaws and strengths in the system. The first one that I  really emphasize and one of the weaknesses of the system or the flaws in our system, in my opinion, our agenda judges. What’s an agenda judge? I’m not talking about a judge that has a bias or predilection to one side or the other. I’m talking about a judge that when you show up day one of trial, and most of my trials went four to six weeks in length.

When I showed up day one, I could tell right away mine was made up. And of course, most times it was, mine was made up for the corporation that was the defendant, that I think needs to be done away with. If we can, we need to, we need to get fair judges who are open minded and take every case based on the facts and the law and make decisions. Because, as you know, trial judge has a lot of power in a courtroom, and that power isn’t necessarily what the government gives the judge.

The power is the power over the jury, because the jury senses that the judge may be the only neutral person in the room, and of course, many times that’s true. So, when the judge makes a face at a witness or makes a comment that’s derogatory, it weighs with the jury, and that judge, by doing that, is just changing the whole tenor of trial, no matter how good the lawyers are on either side, that judge has weight that lawyers will never have in a courtroom.

So that’s why I think it’s so dangerous.

I agree. I actually tried a case one time, and I think I lost every motion in the case, and I won the trial, and as I walked outside, a juror came up to me and said, the judge didn’t like you, but we did, and it was that kind of cut against the defense that way, because she was so biased towards the defense that it worked against her, and the jury could see through that bias.

So it’s amazing, and I’ve experienced what you’re talking about, it’s very unfortunate when you have the pro-defense judges. They  should be neutral. They shouldn’t be pro-plaintiff or pro-defense. That’s not what they’re there for. I couldn’t agree more.

Yes, the one thing that stood out in my career was I was in federal court, federal trial, and I had one of the best experts in the country who actually testified on behalf of plaintiffs and defendants. So, you know, wasn’t really biased one way or the other as an expert, and the judge, unfortunately, was a pure agenda judge. When that expert approached the bench to go in the witness chair, he had his briefcase with them and some file materials, which is pretty typical out here in California, and the judge just got all over him right from the beginning.

You know, don’t bring those things up to the witness stand, blah blah, blah, blah, blah, his testimony went on for a full day, and after the trial, which we won, right. After the trial, the expert called me and said, Ray, after 20 years of doing this, I’m going to take a six month sabbatical, and I’m going to do it because I have to think about what just happened.

So, you know, that’s the effect it can have. That’s a nationally known expert that did that. He did, took six months off and came back stronger than ever, but he did have to take that time.

That’s amazing. So, what are some common misconceptions personal injury victims have about the legal process, and how do you address them with your clients?

Well, one of the ones that really stands out in my mind is what we hear about frivolous lawsuits. And it’s not just poisoning the jury pool, but of course, it poisons potential clients because they are reluctant to even get involved in litigation, because they hear of such things. And I know you know this Lawrence, but the truth is, with a contingency fee lawyer with a lawyer that isn’t getting paid by the hour. There is really no upside at all to file a frivolous lawsuit, because first of all, we are the ones who advance the costs on those lawsuits.

In my cases, because they were so long and complex, I didn’t have any case that didn’t have 100,000 or more in costs involved in that case. And you know, if lawyers file frivolous lawsuits that eventually get overturned on appeal or whatever, and they’re putting out hundreds of thousands of dollars, not only in advanced costs, but in free work, because we don’t get paid unless we win, right?

And so, what I’m trying to say is that’s that is a one way ticket to bankruptcy. So if your lawyer isn’t bankrupt, then you could pretty much think that he’s not, or she’s not, going around filing frivolous lawsuits, that what we’re looking for is meaningful lawsuits. So anyway, that’s you got me off on a soapbox there, Lawrence,

No, you’re absolutely right with that, and people don’t realize that you’re dealing with billion-dollar conglomerates, these insurance companies that have incredible lobbyists. They put commercials out that are misleading because they have an agenda. Insurance companies have one agenda, and that’s to make money for their stockholders. They pretend like they’re struggling, and that there’s fraud and frivolous lawsuits. But yet, if you watch a Super Bowl where the commercials are several million dollars for 30 seconds, you’ll see a significant number of insurance commercials spending that type of money.

They love to take in the premiums, but they don’t ever want to pay out on a legitimate claim.

Along those lines, and conspiracy ignited, insurance companies play a big part, and in fact, one of the secondary but a very important secondary character in the book is known as the insurance czar of his area California, the California area. And so I can’t go into too much detail about that, but that is talked about in detail in the book.

Yes, it’s amazing and I’ve had actually defense lawyers come up to me and say, Yes, their theory is, deny, deny, deny, and hope they die so they don’t have to pay on the claim.

Right, Could I just say, just to finish that off a minute, yes, thanks. There is an exception to this frivolous lawsuit thing, though, and that is, and I know you know this business lawsuits, where one business files a lawsuit against another business just to pressure them into doing something, dropping a product line, going into different going away, whatever it is.

So, there are frivolous lawsuits, but not in the personal injury arena.

No. it’s like you said, for a law firm like us, if we lose a case, we don’t go after the cost, so we’re out the costs. Not only do we not get paid and we spend hundreds of hours on a particular case, but then we lose the cost that we put out and we lose a case and don’t get paid. So it’s nothing you would ever want to do as a plaintiff’s lawyer. So, that is a complete misconception or perception on behalf of the public. So what steps should someone take if they’ve been injured due to somebody else’s negligence? What should a victim do?

Well, it’s funny, you should ask, because I was recently a few months back, in a car accident, believe it or not, and so I had to put this into action. Luckily, it was, it was an intersection accident. Eventually the other driver admitted full fault. It was one of those things. But there I was. It was pouring rain. I had just got pretty good hit. Sideswipe ended up being $25,000 in property damage and but I wasn’t hurt, or at least I didn’t think I was hurt, and it turned out I wasn’t, in retrospect, but so I got out, and the first thing I did is what I’d recommend anybody do if they’re not in an injury situation at the at the accident site, and that is, Take photographs.

Today we all have cell phones. I took photographs every which way I could. I took pictures even of the other person. And what they showed in the end was that I was almost through the intersection, and they had barrel through. You know, I won’t go into the details, but the photographs themselves cause the other side to admit full fall.

So I that’s the first thing, try to photograph the scene. If you’re injured and you have someone else in the car who isn’t injured, you could have them take the photographs. Second thing is call the police. In this case, it was pouring rain. California doesn’t know how to handle pouring rain, and so there were accidents all over the South Bay area of Los Angeles. Eventually, a police officer arrived, but said, Look, I can’t take a report. I can’t do anything. It looks like neither of you are hurt. I’ll just escort you off the road, and you guys can exchange insurance cards and things, which, of course, is also a thing you should do.

Today, it’s easy. If you’ve got that cell phone with you, you just take a picture of the other person’s license and the picture of their proof of insurance and any other identification, and that you’ve got that notify your insurance company one way or the other, because, as you know, in some states, if you don’t notify your insurance company early enough they can deny coverage or full coverage.

Notify them and of course, if you’re injured, if that’s the situation, go see a doctor. Go see a doctor as soon as you can. And last but not least, talk to friends, talk to neighbors, get recommendations for a good lawyer. It may not be the lawyer you want to hire that’s recommended, but good lawyers, no good lawyers. And so if you need a specialist, you can find a great one that way.

Well, if you are injured, how important is it for an injury victim to seek medical attention immediately?

Very important. The case that comes to mind isn’t really my case, it’s as a very good friend of mine. She was in a Saab, which was that we’re going back to the 90’s here, but she was in a Saab. That’s a very safe car compared to other cars, and she was rear-ended, and she didn’t feel like she was hurt. And she didn’t get hold of a lawyer. I didn’t know her then, and turns out, five or 10 years later, she had back problems. She had been passed the statute of limitations so, she couldn’t bring a lawsuit at that point. And those back problems plagued are still plagued her today, the rest of her life, and they get worse and worse as she gets older and older.

So see a doctor and see a doctor as quickly as possible, and start, of course, with your family doctor or your internist, but don’t hesitate to go see specialists too, because what you have like in her case, it was an unusual spinal cord injury and a regular doctor didn’t see it, and of course, by the time it started to hurt her, the statute of limitations on malpractice was over two vis a vis the doctor, so she had no recourse.

Yes and insurance companies are also famous, if you don’t treat right away because you think you’re going to get better or you’re going to heal, they use that small gap in treatment against you, and they argue, if you were really hurt, you would have seen a doctor immediately. So, even if you are hurt, you know, and you try to deal with the pain for a week or so and then see a doctor, the insurance company will use that against you every time.

Yes, we have we’ve all seen that. Yes, all of us lawyers have seen that, yes, that’s a typical trick.

So, can you explain the role of a contingency fee in personal injury cases, and why are they beneficial for our victims or our clients?

Okay, well given me another soapbox here, but let me just say that again, in conspiracy ignited. I explore this because it’s dear, and dear to my heart in the context of the story in the novel. But contingency fees are the thing that allows lawsuits to go forward, except for business to business type lawsuits, I mean the average person, the everyday person who’s injured, cannot afford to pay lawyers, whatever 200, 400, 600 calls an hour, whatever they’re charging, not for the hours it takes for a lawsuit, that’s for sure. And so without contingency fees, there’s absolutely no way for most Americans to access the justice system.

So, it opens the door. It can’t be more important. It’s because of contingency fees that people can find justice in America.

Right because you’re absolutely right with the price of an attorney, or especially a good attorney, experienced one, it’s going to cost you a minimum of $50,000 in if they were billing you by the hour. So, the contingency fees, and there’s no fee unless you win, really helps people pursue a case when somebody else is negligent, causing them to suffer serious injuries.

Right, because as you know too, when people get a serious injury, let alone a catastrophic injury, their whole life changes immediately because of that injury, and their finances change immediately. So, even if they had a nest egg that they could use, that nest egg is probably going to get exhausted just because of the injury, having nothing to do with who caused what in the way of the injury.

What should, we touched upon this, but what should a personal injury victim look for when choosing a lawyer to represent them?

Well, I think, well, one thing they shouldn’t look for are billboard advertisements, which are becoming more and more prevalent out here in California and which they never were five or 10 years ago. There are some sections of the freeway here, where there’s battling, you know, three or four or six law firms or lawyers and battling for the most billboard space now that’s not, I mean, that’s probably the worst way to pick a lawyer. In my opinion, the best way is to get recommendations, get recommendations from other lawyers if you can. Because, as I said, good lawyers, no good lawyers. But if you can’t, if you don’t know a lawyer, turn to your neighbor, your friends, your family, someone’s hired a lawyer.

And even if that lawyer isn’t a litigator, say that lawyer is a real estate lawyer or a trusted estate lawyer, they’re going to know other lawyers, and eventually they’ll get to a good lawyer that is the type of lawyer that you need for your case, because lawyers know lawyers and that sort of thing.

And even if they don’t know a lawyer, do your due diligence, look up the lawyers, and we in New Jersey have certified trial lawyers, and less than one percent, if you could believe it, of all the lawyers in New Jersey are actually certified civil trial lawyers. You might want to start there. I always tell people, if it’s a matrimonial case, find a certified matrimonial lawyer. If it’s a criminal case, a certified criminal lawyer find an expert in that particular area.

Yes, that’s absolutely true out in California and. Lot of states, as you know, they don’t have certifications. We have no certifications. Well, I shouldn’t say no certifications. Let us say there’s certainly no certifications in product liability trial law or even medical malpractice trial law. There are no such certifications here.

So what do you do? I wouldn’t hesitate, I mean, after you try to get personal recommendations which are always best. But if that doesn’t work, Google some names that are given to you and don’t just Google and look at the first thing they say Google, and look for articles they’ve published in the area of law that you need, whether it’s because of an air crash or whether it’s because of a car crash or whatever, if they’ve written, if they’ve been published in the area, then you know you’ve got someone who’s experienced, because the editors aren’t just going to allow anybody to publish. So, that’s one way.

Another is to look at their websites, realizing, of course, everybody’s website is designed by the person that’s trying to get a client or a customer, but what’s in the website is important, and other cases that they’ve done, similar cases that they’ve done verdicts, although let me say this about that quickly. If you ever talk to a lawyer, in my opinion, and you ask, well, how many trials have you had? I’ve had blah blah trials. And what’s your win loss record?

Oh, I’ve won every trial I’ve ever been in. Look for the exit. Get out of that place. Because any trial lawyer who’s won every trial that they’ve ever had, either only had one or two or a few, or, let’s say, had none. We’re doing, I don’t know they were a prosecutor at a very young age, and did 102 day trials in three days, in three years, you know, something like that.

The key is, how many trials have you done similar to my trial that you’re going to have to do, and that sort of thing. And if you get an honest answer to that, then that’s fine. But if the answer is, I’ve never lost a product liability trial in my life, get out of town.

And so, if you’re real trial lawyer, you’ve lost cases. There’s no doubt about that.

Absolutely, otherwise, you’re just picking, what are you doing, picking the easy cases? You know, that proves nothing, you know, but it’s winning the hard cases that matter.

I’m going to give you a chance to get back on that soapbox here. So how can victims ensure their case is not unfairly influenced by insurance companies or other third parties.

There you go. You gave me a soapbox it’s two out two, Conspiracy Ignited my book, because it’s a big part of that too. Third parties affecting lawsuits. In fact, one of the minor themes, but important one it has, involves a thing called the silent conflict. I’m not going to get into that now, what the silent conflict is, but it is a theme that’s very important to insurance companies or other third parties affecting your lawsuit.

I think to avoid this, the best advice I have is, don’t speak to the other side of any I mean, if you’re in a situation that’s going to go to litigation, do not speak to the other side. Even in that accident, I mentioned that I just had a few months ago, and no, no one was hurt, but the insurance company for the other driver, before they admitted fall, was continuously trying to contact me directly, even though I had contacted my insurance company, and what I kept saying to her is, talk to my insurance company.

I hadn’t had a lawyer at that point. Had I been injured, I certainly would have had a lawyer, and I would have said, Talk to my lawyer, but don’t speak to them directly. It’s it can’t help you, and it could only hurt you, is what I think. Then. The other thing, of course, is hire a lawyer first. I don’t mean quickly, because you don’t want to do that quickly, but after you do your due diligence and you’ve checked things and you’ve got recommendations, then hire a lawyer and then everything becomes easy from that perspective, because you can tell any third party to just talk to your lawyer.

So if you had one and could only give one piece of advice to a personal injury victim who’s feeling overwhelmed in the legal process, what would it be?

Well, I’m going to say I’ve got two in mind. Let me tell you number one. Okay, number one is hire a good lawyer and rely on him or her. That’s number one piece of advice. Number two is it’s not too early now for any non lawyer to start looking at podcasts like this one, or novels and books like mine or non-fiction books, and learning about the system because you don’t have to be a lawyer, to know about the system, the legal system is there for all of us, and therefore learning a bit about it, or learning a lot about it, is only in your self interest, because eventually you or someone in your family or a close friend is going to get involved in litigation, and something’s going to happen to someone you know, and you’ll be in a great position to give advice.

Thank you very so much for your time, for being on Victims To Victory and good luck in the future with your with your caseload, your aviation cases and your products cases too, very difficult niche cases where you have the perfect background being a pilot and an engineer. So, good luck to you in the future.

Thank you, Lawrence, thank you.

All right, be well.

Bye, bye.

Thank you for tuning in to Victim to Victory the personal injury playbook. We hope you found today’s discussion insightful and helpful as you navigate the complex legal system. If you or someone you know suffered from a personal injury, don’t hesitate to reach out to us at 1-800-489-0004 our team is here to help take you from victim to victory.

Remember, taking legal action after a personal injury is a critical step in protecting your rights and securing your future. So, don’t wait, make the call today and let us help you fight for the compensation you deserve. We’ll be back next week with more expert insights and information.

This podcast is intended for informational and educational purposes only, and should not be considered legal advice. The content of this podcast is based on the laws and regulations of the United States and may not be applicable in other jurisdictions. Additionally, any information shared on this podcast is not protected by attorney client privilege or any other type of confidentiality. Remember, this podcast is for informational and educational purposes only, and should not be considered legal advice.