Kevin Kiley Speaks About the Firm, Part II Kevin Kiley Speaks About the Firm, Part II Transcripts:
Interviewer: When you started working here, and your father was here, was there ever a case that really stands in your mind? Did your father send you on a project, or something to do?
KK: Well, actually, there was a case that I still think about when I first got admitted. Or actually, before I was admitted, when I first came to work here. We had a client who was assaulted at the Queens Botanical Gardens. They had a function every year there - what was it called - it was an Oktoberfest. So we had a client, he was at the Queens Botanical Gardens and he was at an Oktoberfest. At the Oktoberfest, he ran into people who he had a conflict with, who he had had prior disputes with. He supposedly, according to his testimony, he went up to this fellow and indicated to him, ''Are we cool,'' and the guy said ''We're cool,'' so the guy thought everything was okay. At the end of the evening he and another guy were leaving and they were jumped by a group of gentlemen, kids, who beat him to a pulp, near death. They fractured his orbitals in both eyes, multiple facial fractures. My father gave it to me, he said, ''Investigate this case; let's see where we can go.'' Now obviously the people who assaulted him, you know, they didn't have insurance coverage, they didn't have money - I don't believe they were in a gang, but they were that type of an element. They were not good people, because good people don't assault people like that. So I started looking into the Oktoberfest, investigating who they were, what type of security was there. I did a lot of research on it and I actually came across a case called Filpot vs. the Brooklyn Dodgers. The premise of the case, or the legal theory of the case, is that if you gather a large number of people together for your profit, then you must be diligent in providing security for them. Now the witnesses that I had found had said there was no security at the time of this assault. It broke up simply because the guys who had beat him to a pulp ran away and left him there, and then people came to his aid afterwards. During the course of the discovery, the company that ran this Oktoberfest, it was determined, had exclusively undercover security. They had no uniformed presence. Now, I had an expert in security who I consulted with, who basically told me, ''If you want to protect property, or money, you do so with undercover security. If you want to do crowd control, you do so with a uniformed presence. If these people had seen uniformed security there, they probably wouldn't have assaulted him.'' In the end we went to trial on this case and I still remember Judge Duranti, I'm sorry, Cosmo DiTucci was the judge.
Now, typically when you go to trial, we have a volume called the Jury Charges, published by Matthew Bender. Most trials are fairly routine, where the same principles of law are read to the jury, so in the beginning the judge instructs the jury, in the end the judge instructs the jury, and he usually reads them from these Charges. Well, I wrote a jury charge myself, and gave Filpot vs. the Brooklyn Dodgers as the principle, the legal theory behind it. The other side opposed because it's not in the book, and Judge DiTucci said, ''But it's the law,'' and he actually gave the charge. We actually won the trial, and it was preparation, which is something my father had said to me, before you bring a case you don't just say ''Somebody was hurt here, you're responsible,'' you prepare. You find out what the law is and then you see how it applies to your case. So here I actually did the depositions on the case, although my father tried it I think it was the first year I was admitted, I was able to ask the gentleman questions which he thought were innocuous, ''When you ran this Oktoberfest were you trying to make a profit?'' ''I was trying to but I didn't.'' Of course I don't believe him, he collected a lot of cash at that thing. He basically spoon-fed me everything I needed. ''How many people did you hope to draw?'' ''As many as possible.'' ''How many could you hold?'' ''It's a Botanical Gardens, it could have held thousands.'' ''What did you do to attract them?'' ''I advertised in all these newspapers, it was on the radio...'' I said, ''Did you have any security?'' ''All of my security was undercover.'' ''What did you do to protect people?'' ''Well, I had security.'' I said, ''But, if somebody did not know who the security were, how would they go to them to alert them of an incident?'' ''Well, I was there, too.'' So, because of the preparation of that case, for me it was actually very satisfying. I think the person who had that case had actually gone to another attorney before us who told him, ''You don't have a case, it's going to take us forever to get it,'' and then the people they were going to get a judgment against - you know, as they say you can't get blood out of a stone - they don't have any money.
Represented by Donald Kiley Jr., concertgoer claims he was "attacked and assaulted" by fellow unprovoked concertgoers who felt "comfortable to engage in mischief and physical violence" at the encouragement of the rappers. Read
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