Framing the media message to honor and protect your clients

Join Karen Koehler in this episode of The Velvet Hammer as she shares how her team's adept maneuvering around the City of Seattle's media embargo was crucial in honoring and protecting their clients during the George Floyd BLM peaceful protesters lawsuit. By skillfully getting their message out despite the media embargo, they ensured their clients' stories were heard, playing a key role in ensuring comprehensive justice along with the $10 million settlement.

To learn more about the lawsuit, please visit: Black Lives Matter Injured Protesters Lawsuit - Stritmatter Kessler Koehler Moore

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Transcript

The Velvet Hammer, an inside look at trial lawyer life with Karen Kohler. Real-life stories about fighting the good fight.

Um, three and a half years ago, we filed a lawsuit against the city of Seattle on behalf of peaceful protesters who were in the George Floyd BLM protest. So I did a press conference on Thursday, and this is how it happened. I've been in court, in trial, in judge, uh, Rogers courtroom on the 7th floor of King County Superior Court.

I'm with Andrew against Seattle Children's Hospital, and we've been trying that case. Um, and there was no other way to go out and try to protect our clients than to arrange for a press conference. And the clients I'm talking about were peaceful protesters who we represented for three and a half years against the city of Seattle, 50 of them.

These were not people that lit fires, or that hit the police, or that attacked the police or attacked each other, or did anything violent. These were the peaceful ones.

It'd been quite a battle. One of the worst I've ever been involved in. It was so bad. At one point or another, almost every attorney in this law firm has worked on the case, some more than others, but literally, I've never seen so much resources of how many people worked on this case.

In addition, the city, not content with its own city council who were on the case, hired additional counsel from KL and Gates, which is one of the largest law firms in the country, one of the top two, or top in the state, uh, to work on the case. And they did so at a pace that was just breathtaking.

By the time the case was over, the bills that we could see were somewhere around 25 or $30 million. And again, that doesn't count. All the, quote unquote, free labor that the city used by having its own attorneys work on the case. That's an incredible. A lot of stuff being thrown at us at all hours of the day and night.

They try to bury us. They try to make us go away. They try to intimidate us. They harassed the clients. They made them go through independent medical examinations, which is a croc. They were involuntary psychiatric and medical examinations. They took their depositions for hours, some of them multiple days worth of depositions.

They looked at every single medical record that they had from the date that they were born, their employment records, anything they could grab their hands on. It was like the FBI doing an investigation, uh, uh, of someone that was alleging that the United States did something wrong. It was like the FBI doing an examination of the person that said the United States did something wrong.

Instead of doing the examination of the United States again. Never have I ever seen that much money thrown at a case by a defendant, and that includes insurance companies and big corporations. City of Seattle act like money was nothing in what it did, so we kept standing. How do we do that? How do you do that when there's, like, 15 lawyers in your office and you're up against a firm with, I don't even know how many have they have a couple thousand lawyers? I don't know. They're not, of course, all working on this case.

How do you do that when you're representing a third of your clients for free? Because when we started this case, it was pro bono, and I started it. I admit it. I was so upset by watching the protesters get pummeled, and I was so upset about what happened to George Floyd.

And I was also kind of scared about getting Covid. And I, at the time, was about 63, 59, 60 years old. I didn't want to go into the streets of Seattle, and I wanted to do something.

And the firm agreed and allowed us to start pro bono. But then there were more clients that kept coming and another law firm that had clients that wanted to get involved. And before you know it, there were 50 people, some who were pro bono and some who were not.

Our goal was to keep as lean and mean as possible.

So while the city was sparing no expense, we were trying not to spend any expense.

We did the work ourselves. We did not contract it out. We brought in three law students. Well, two law students. Wait. Initially, there were. I don't even know how many law students. One of them was Furhad, who's now a lawyer, working with us. He came in to volunteer for free, and we thought, we can't just have him work for free.

We should pay him like an intern. But then he stayed because he fell in love with our clients, with our cause, and wanted to continue with the law firm.

John. John, my son in law, he was one of our first initial interns. He just graduated from University of Texas and now works in Boston. We had to get creative. We had to get people that believed in the cause but would work on this case and just help us try to figure it out and deal with millions and millions of documents and videos and everything else that we had to look at.

It was exhausting.

And then, of course, Alysha, my middle, became involved.

Her work on the case was spectacular. She functioned like a lawyer. The things that she did look like there's something like that came out of a history book. And yet the case took a terrible toll on the firm. It happened during COVID We weren't healthy. We were by Zoom.

It really took a toll on my relationship with Alysha, honestly. She was working here. She's no longer working at the law firm. Exhausted. That was a combination of exhaustive and exhausting, exhausting litigation. But we never stopped.

And so we get to the point where the court orders us to have three mediations. First one doesn't work. Second one doesn't work. But there's progress made. And then we're getting ready for a third mediation. And I can't tell you what happens in them, because it's supposed to be in terms of, like, what was the money amounts and all that.

You're not supposed to talk about mediation because you want to encourage people to settle. But I can tell you what happened after mediation, and I can tell you what happened that should have happened that was promised to happen, that was taken back, and that is that the city acted dishonorably after coming to an agreement with us.

I have never had a situation, at least in the past 20 years, where a major defendant, in particular, a city, has made an agreement as to what's going to happen. It's been signed off on in terms of orally. This is it. Yes, this is it. This is it. The terms.

And then 2 hours later, when I'm saying, where's the written part of the agreement that we have to all stay and wait for? The mediator says, well, they're taking away one of their agreements, and it wasn't a money agreement, it was a condition.

So he didn't sign.

Ultimately, we end up settling the case. And on Wednesday, and I'm in trial, and they know it. On a Wednesday, they tell me, okay, they're going to finally sign what they already promised to sign back on Friday. They're going to sign it, but only if we agree to a media embargo.

Okay. I don't even know what a media embargo is, other than celebrities who are getting divorced might get a media embargo. What on earth is a city doing with a media embargo? Why would they even ask for that? I'm thinking, okay, they want to come out with their statement real fast, and they must be doing a really good job.

That's fine, because they're paying $10 million. And why are they paying $10 million? Because we wouldn't agree to settle for less. Because it needed to be a statement. It needed to be significant. Needed to be major. It needed to be historic for the city of Seattle to acknowledge that what they did was so wrong.

And they're thinking, uh, she's in trial, she's going to be, uh, distracted and not going to be able to get on top of, to. I know this is what they're thinking. They're thinking, we're going to establish the messaging, we're going to frame it our way. Well, maybe that works for Fox News media that wants to lead with that kind of a message, but it didn't work with the rest of the media.

So before the case had even settled, we had already prepared to deal with what happens if it did from a media standpoint, because we had seen another example of another city, Auburn, uh, coming out unprecedented and talking about why they settled a case before the ink had even, uh, uh, dried. So I thought, well, maybe the cities have all now gone to school and they've, uh, media school, and they've decided that whenever they settle a big case, they are going to be the first one to put out the message so they can frame what happened in their own way.

So I don't care. I can't do anything anyway. I'm in trial. I say, well, that's fine. You want a media embargo, get a media embargo. So the media embargo goes until Thursday at 03:00 p.m. 03:00 p.m. Is really too late for the news cycle. If you're an old fashioned person that's thinking that the news cycle begins or starts at a particular time.

For me, I know that, yes, there are some deadlines involved, but three in the afternoon is not too late. So Cassie in our office, our director of, um, marketing and pR, um, is all ready. Everything is done, everything is lined up. Joey Wieser weaser, one of our clients, uh, worked with us to create a video.

She had my press statement that I worked on on an airplane. And Alysha fixed further. Everything's ready to go. So at 301, Kassie hits the send button along with a letter saying, come to the courthouse, 7th floor, 415. We'll do a press conference. So I walk out of Judge Rogers courtroom at 04:00 exactly, and I see a few people down the hall.

And I walk up to them. It's our clients and some people from the office. And I said, do you think that the media can even get here in time? Do you think anyone's going to show up? And they point down the other hall and say, well, several of them are already here.

And indeed, about ten of them line up within the next ten minutes. And, um, the two dozen or so of us members from the law firm. Melanie came, Lisa came Furhad came, Alysha came, Katie came. Kristen didn't come. She should have come. Um, hope I don't forget anyone.

Shannon was on vacation, and then. So, ah, numbers of our clients were there, and the media was there, and we put on a press conference.

So what the city didn't think about was a, I was already agitated because I was in week two of a trial, so I was already in fighting mode. Number b, they issued a stupid press conference or, uh, release that said, we don't admit liability. We're just tired of having to waste so much time on this case.

So we settled it for $10 million. I'm paraphrasing it, but that's pretty much exactly what it said.

So my general irritation became Spitfire rage, and I raged, which made for a very good press conference.

It hit every single local media and made the front page of the Seattle Times. And let me just say that Mike Carter, who wrote the Seattle Times article, did it, and it got it to press in less than an hour and a half. So the city's attempt to beat the news cycle failed, and their attempt to take over the narrative failed, because all that they provided was a general politician statement, whereas we provided facts.

The lessons here that I'm sharing in this podcast really involve what we do and why media, why getting the word out is important in not just a high profile case, but any case that we do, but high profile file cases, you are going to get more media. Why was I mad? Was I mad just because the city broke its word and then acted like, as I said, a bully punk?

That's m irritating. That doesn't get me mad. What gets me mad is a very simple equation. The equation goes like this.

Disrespecting a client and disrespecting a cause is a recipe for Karen. Getting angry works every time. It's going to get me into full fight mode. And unlike many people who, when they get emotional or even cry, as I did in the interview, because they were rage cry, I was hangry.

I don't know that there is a word for crying while angry. I guess it's crangery. I was crangry, but my mouth still just goes just as if I'm not. I don't have any problem talking while I'm crangry. It's even better, probably more pointed, more raw, more direct.

It is incredibly important to make sure that your client gets full justice and is fully protected. And that just doesn't mean by settling a case and taking an amount, or getting a verdict and taking a verdict amount. The lawyer has a huge role in protecting the client in the public eye and making sure that the public understands what the fight was all about.

Because in the cases that I handle, for the incredible clients that I represent and substitute the word our office, our office handles, our office represents, they are righteous. I believe that with every beat of my heart and fiber of my soul. And for the city to try to crap on those protesters in a moment when instead the city should have just been dignified and used this settlement as the acknowledgment that it really was of wrongdoing.

If they could have just had the ability to be human and to put aside the ego of the bully punk and just say, this won't happen again, we acknowledge that people who are peacefully protesting and exercising their first Amendment rights and who did nothing wrong were brutalized. We didn't intend to brutalize them, but they were, and for this, we're sorry. That would have healed everyone and allowed us to move on.

Unfortunately, until the city or whoever the defendant is in a case like this, until they can actually acknowledge their responsibility and change it, all that's going to happen is I'm going to sue them again,

Over and out.