Following is a transcript of the video Preston J Douglas – Lawyer with a Crooked Edge (Part 2). It has been modified slightly in order to make it more readable.
Now, if you pay a professional for a service you get something in return. If you pay your accountant $2,000 they’ll file your income taxes. Just like I paid $750 for an independent autopsy at a major New York City hospital where they pinpointed a specific cause of death directly related to the surgery.
Now, at the time the case was dismissed, I had nothing in writing whatsoever regarding Crooked Edge’s expert witness’s opinion. I didn’t have anything on his letterhead and I didn’t even have anything from Fuchsberg and Fuchsberg regarding his opinion. What I did have, however, was Crooked Edge’s legal arguments which apparently reflect what his expert witness was willing to testify to.
Yes, That’s how Crooked Edge prepared this case. First, he looked at the dates and he immediately discounted the fact that we could sue the other two surgeons and the hospital. And as far as Dr. Hollin is concerned, my guess is he was probably 99% certain that the case was a loser based upon the fact that Phyllis didn’t see Dr. Hollin within the last two and a half years.
So, what does Crooked Edge do? He sends his unnecessary expert witness incomplete medical records. As I mentioned in the other video, all he did was send him the information regarding Dr. Hollin’s involvement in the surgery and the follow-up care. His expert witness didn’t know all the facts regarding this case.
He didn’t know Dr. Hollin lied to Phyllis and her parents for eight and a half years and concealed an aneurysm. He didn’t know that Dr. Klein filed a falsified hospital report and discharge sheet. He didn’t know Dr. Hollin lied to the obstetrician and family doctor and told them about one aneurysm.
And the reason he didn’t know about any of that is because Crooked Edge didn’t send those medical records. So, Crooked Edge had already made a pre-determination that all the relevant information necessary to get the case in the courtroom and which is fully documented in writing was completely irrelevant. He wasn’t going to bother his expert witness with that information.
And that’s why, as I mentioned in the last video, if you’re going to use an expert witness you have to get an opinion on the entire case. You can’t get an opinion on one little microcosm and somehow try to generalize that everything else is irrelevant. Although Crooked Edge already made a pre-determination, he had already determined by himself that everything else was irrelevant which is ridiculous.
If he had just sent all the medical records off to his expert witness his expert witness could have reviewed them and said, well, obviously there’s something seriously wrong going on here that needs further investigation, you know. But instead Crooked Edge made a determination about the case, which indicates he doesn’t have a clue as to how to deal with an expert witness which is not surprising at all since he apparently doesn’t have a clue as to how to properly prepare a medical malpractice case. He didn’t do anything he was supposed to do, didn’t read medical records, didn’t review the medical records he knew about or the facts he knew about, didn’t depose a single witness, didn’t have anybody else help him.
Like I mentioned, a paralegal could have done all that. So for two years, two months and 19 days, nobody did any actual work on this case at the law firm of Fuchsberg and Fuchsberg, which is pretty goddamn pathetic. And you know what this indicates? This indicates Crooked Edge’s attitude towards his client’s legal affairs.
It is totally obvious from the way this case was handled that Crooked Edge does not give a damn about his clients or their legal affairs or what happened to the client’s wife. Not once did I hear a word of sympathy or concern from Crooked Edge like, whoa, Dr. Hollin and his associates did something very nasty to your wife. We’re going to get them but good.
As a matter of fact, all I heard was the exact opposite. Oh, we can’t do this and we can’t do that and we can’t sue this one and we can’t sue that one and that records useless and we can’t do that. Negative, negative, negative.
That’s all this attorney ever did was dump his own self-defeatism and negativity all over this case. And it was all based upon looking at a date, apparently. He didn’t review any facts, period.
He obviously doesn’t give a damn about the facts. Crooked Edge apparently thinks that if you haven’t been to the doctor in the last two and a half years, you don’t have a case, period. That’s it.
The facts are completely irrelevant. And then he tries to hide behind his excuse of fraud’s hard to prove. Really? A doctor’s been lying to a patient for eight and a half years and concealing a lethal ailment like an aneurysm that he surgically mistreated without their knowledge of consent and all of a sudden fraud is hard to prove. As we reviewed Crooked Edge knew about 10 fraudulent malicious acts that were perpetrated by Dr. Hollin and his associates. Every single one of them was fully documented in writing and easily proven.
But according to Crooked Edge, fraud is hard to prove. Well, now we know why fraud is hard to prove for Crooked Edge. He is just a bumbling incompetent of an attorney, plain and simple.
That is it. The fact that Dr. Hollin concealed the aneurysm was more than enough evidence to allege fraud and get this case into the courtroom and win it based on that alone. And here’s another thing.
We discussed fraudulent concealment which is totally obvious. The patient consent form and Dr. Hollin’s operative report proved that. We also have what’s known as lack of informed consent.
That is another critical plaintiff oriented legal issue that is used by plaintiff’s attorneys on a routine basis. Phyllis and her parents did not consent to have that second aneurysm wrapped with muslin. They didn’t even know it existed.
That is what’s known as lack of informed consent. And that is another legal issue that should have been made to get this case into the courtroom. We have fraudulent concealment and we have a lack of informed consent.
And you know, these are totally obvious staring you in the face right from day one. Crooked Edge knew this information from day one. He knew there was a lack of informed consent on the wrapping of that aneurysm, that the patient and the family didn’t even know it existed.
And he knew that the aneurysm was concealed. How much more obvious could it be that that’s the route you have to take this case in? Well, not according to Crooked Edge Douglas. To him, this is completely useless information.
And he sees nothing wrong with Dr. Hollin’s actions in this matter which is a joke, considering that he’s marketing himself as a plaintiff’s attorney. Well, Crooked Edge is no plaintiff’s attorney. He is, in fact, a stealth defense attorney and that’s exactly how he handled this case.
He didn’t handle this case like a plaintiff’s attorney. Any normal plaintiff’s attorney would have just presented the evidence at face value, but not Crooked Edge. He’s busily in there rewriting this entire case to make it sound like ordinary negligence and without any consideration for what the real documented facts of the case were.
Now, how much time did Crooked Edge Douglas spend actually working on the Dr. Hollin case? Although the term work is clearly a misnomer, we should say performed activities related to. That would be more accurate. Well, as we reviewed in part one, from the time Crooked Edge took over the case until the time he spoke to his expert witness and came to the conclusion that the case was a loser was approximately seven months.
And as we already reviewed during that time period, Crooked Edge did not read medical records, didn’t depose a single witness, didn’t have anybody else assist him. Instead, what he did was he met with me to discuss the case, but he completely ignored everything I told him. He attended that meeting with the judge and the opposing attorney, and I sure as hell hope the judge did serve cocktails and hors d’oeuvres so Crooked Edge had a nice little snack before heading out to the gym, and he filed that legal document that had to be filed in the courts.
He sent the cover letter to his expert witness with some medical records, and he spoke to his expert witness. When you put it all together, how much total time did he spend? My guess is no more than five hours, probably less, but let’s figure five hours just for the heck of it. So in the first seven months, Crooked Edge has spent a grand total of approximately five hours on this case, and he hasn’t done any meaningful work on it, and he’s come to the completely wrong conclusion about it.
So Crooked Edge has now come to the conclusion that the case is a loser. Well, what does your average attorney do when they come to the conclusion that a case is a loser? I would think they would drop the case right then and there and Crooked Edge had the right to do it.
In the retainer agreement it said something like, you know, if the attorneys come to the conclusion there’s no viable case, they can drop it and that’s what Crooked Edge clearly should have done but he didn’t bother to do that. So what’s the alternative if you’re not going to drop the case? The only alternative I can think of is to try to figure out some way to win it. Well, Crooked Edge didn’t even bother to do that either.
Instead, he just rammed the case into the dumpster. Since he didn’t do any work up to this time, you know, in seven months, he decided that he was going to sit on the case instead. Instead of dropping it, he decided he was going to do nothing further, period.
He could have read the medical records or had somebody else review them or just get a second opinion on any of this and, you know, corrected the error of his ways, but he didn’t bother to do any of that. He came to the conclusion the case was a loser, so after seven months of fiddling around, he now decides to do nothing for approximately a year and five months. That’s 17 months.
That’s more than double the original seven months where he did little to nothing. Now for the next 17 months he literally did absolutely nothing. He attends my deposition, which took maybe an hour or two, let’s figure two hours, and he had no choice to do that.
I’m sure if there was any way to wangle out of that he would have figured that one out, you know, but that he had no choice. So now we’re up to seven hours, and what does he do after the deposition? For the next three months again he does absolutely nothing. He waits until the motion for summary dismissal comes in to sit down and write his legal arguments.
So it appears he spent a grand total of maybe seven hours preparing this case and how long did it take him to write his four-page legal argument, two pages of a statement for me, a total of six pages? I estimate no more than one workday. So we’re figuring he spent approximately two workdays on this case. In two years, two months, and 19 days, medical records weren’t read, key witnesses weren’t opposed, and no real meaningful work was done on the case during that entire period of time.
After all, if Crooked Edge Douglas comes to the conclusion that a case is a loser, you can rest assured that Crooked Edge is going to prove it’s a loser, just like he did in the Dr. Hollin case. And let me tell you another thing that I think was motivating Crooked Edge. I think Crooked Edge didn’t like the fact that maybe his client was a little bit smarter than he was.
After all, I basically walked in and handed him this entire case on a silver platter, a landmark of historic proportions, with every medical record that he needed, an independent autopsy report, and instead of just taking it and going with it, what did Crooked Edge do? He did the exact opposite. He did the exact opposite of everything I told him, and everything that was documented in writing. Why? As far as I can tell, to prove me wrong and prove how smart and clever Crooked Edge thinks he is.
After all, what can clients possibly know compared to Crooked Edge and his biology degree, and his lecture circuits, and his court TV, and all that BS crap? You know? So I think that was a motivating factor. So the motivation now is not to win the case and do whatever is necessary to win it. The motivation is now to prove the client wrong and how smart the attorney is.
And when you throw in not only that, but we have to nickel and dime the case to death, we have to do as little work as possible, you’re talking about a total disaster. This is a recipe for disaster and it’s called Crooked Edge Douglas. That’s the recipe.
Now, how much money did Crooked Edge spend on the Dr. Hollin case? Well, Fuchsberg and Fuchseurg paid Ted Friedman $1,177.91 to take over the case, apparently to reimburse him for whatever expenses he had incurred up to that point. And you know what? That appears to be about it. That is approximately all that was spent on this case.
Crooked Edge did not spend a wooden nickel on the prosecution of the case. And what I mean by prosecution is deposing witnesses, filing additional lawsuits against Dr. Hollin, the other two surgeons and the hospital. That’s what I’m referring to.
So to spend that little money on the case of this nature is pathetic but it goes hand in hand with the fact that no work was done. This was obviously Crooked Edge’s goal to do no work and spend no money. And I have to admit, he accomplished his goal.
You can’t do less work on a medical malpractice case than not reading medical records and you can’t spend less money than $1,177.91. Although I guess you could theoretically spend zero, but let’s face it, $1,177.91 for a case of this nature is totally pathetic, especially considering even back then there were law firms that would spend $100,000 or more to prosecute their client’s case if they thought they had a good case on their hands. But this is typical of Crooked Edge’s nickel-and-dime-the-case-to-death, both time-wise and money-wise mentality. Yeah, see, this is the problem with Crooked Edge and one of the many problems.
Instead of having both eyes on the medical records, he’s got one eye on his watch and one eye on his wallet. And when an attorney is more concerned about cutting corners than he is about winning the case, the Dr. Hollin case, this is what you wind up with. You wind up with made-up legal arguments done at the last minute which are obviously total garbage.
Now, how much time would it have taken to properly prepare the Dr. Hollin case? I estimate it would have taken approximately four weeks. That would include doing all 14 depositions, reading the medical records, putting the case together as I outlined on the Dr. Sidney Hollin website. And you know what? Even if it took five or six weeks, it still would have been well worth it.
But I think this case probably could have been wrapped up in four weeks. And remember, Crooked Edge had over two whole years. He had plenty of time to properly deal with this case.
And if he wasn’t going to do it, he should have either dropped it or had another attorney do it or told Abe Fuchsberg that he needed some assistance on this case. But he didn’t bother to do that, obviously. And here’s another issue.
It appears that both Abe Fuchsberg and Crooked Edge himself grossly overestimated Crooked Edge’s capabilities as a medical malpractice attorney. It’s kind of shocking as to how grossly incompetent Crooked Edge is, especially his handling of this case. Apparently, Abe Fuchsberg didn’t have a clue.
He seemed to have complete trust and confidence in Crooked Edge’s capabilities as an attorney. And based upon the way this case was handled, that’s a joke. It also appears Mr. Fuchsberg never checked up on Crooked Edge which turned out to be a big mistake.
You would think he would have somebody review every case that went out the door to protect the integrity of his law firm’s good name. He didn’t do that. Any paralegal would have read the medical record and seen that Crooked Edge’s legal arms were ridiculous, you know, and they could have nipped it in the bud there.
But it’s obvious that Mr. Fuchsberg just completely trusted Crooked Edge. So both of them grossly overestimated Crooked Edge’s capabilities as a medical malpractice attorney. As a matter of fact, the only way I can think that Crooked Edge has managed to survive in this industry this long is enough patients bang their knees, stub their toe, or slip on a banana peel in a doctor’s office where the case is so ridiculously simple and obvious that even Crooked Edge Douglas can figure it out.
And let’s face it, 99% of all personal injury and medical malpractice cases are ridiculously simple and obvious. They involve auto accidents, slip and fall, or a crane falls on your head while walking down the street. And, you know, the same thing is true with medical malpractice.
A lot of medical malpractice isn’t medical malpractice, it’s blatant stupidity. Like a case I read about not that long ago where a woman went in for a knee transplant and the surgeon’s put in the right transplant device in her left knee. After the surgery, she was in severe pain and that’s when they discovered the error of their ways.
Those are the type of cases they’re going to be knocking down your door to settle because there’s no excuse for stupidity. And if you make enough noise about yourself, which Crooked Edge is good at, you probably get enough people calling up with those kind of cases. And let’s face it, success in this field, a lot of it is the luck of the draw.
If you happen to be the attorney who answers the phone when somebody just got hit by a Walmart truck and was severely injured, hey, you hit the jackpot. So that’s what it is. And that’s why a lot of these law firms advertise like crazy.
They have to get the right quality of cases. Well, this one was handed to Crooked Edge on a silver platter. You remember at the beginning, I mentioned I was referred to them initially by that neurologist that seemed to have faith and confidence in Fuchsberg and Fuchwberg regarding neurosurgery cases.
But it appears that that was misplaced or maybe he knew of some other attorney that had success. And I would say that couldn’t possibly have been Crooked Edge as this attorney doesn’t know diddly squat about neurology or neurosurgery for that matter.