Chewing the Fat with Jeff Fisher - Ep 221 | Who Owns Your Social Media Photos | Guest: Austin Pennington

Episode Date: October 12, 2019

A Philadelphia TV news anchor is suing Facebook, Reddit and others for $10 million. FTVLive reports that WTXF-TV anchor Karen Hepp contends an unauthorized security photo of her is being used to promote a dating site, erectile dysfunction ads and pornography sites. The lawsuit says the photo was used on Facebook to promote a dating site. The photo also appears on Imgur, which has 300-million users, in a section labeled “MILF”. Hepp says she’s not totally sure where the photo came from, but believes it was taken from a security camera in a New York City convenience store without her permission.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

So with so much in the news about facial recognition, we have headlines every single day of new reports of how facial recognition is being used. We have the, they want to make us believe that the facial recognition for all the students at the schools, this last headline was in China. But it was a good thing because it's for the children's safety. We have a lady in Pennsylvania that had her picture used to promote a dating site, and she doesn't even know where the photo came from. And that lawsuit is still pending against Facebook and Reddit. And we did a story not long ago here on Chewing the Fat about an officer that ended up seeing his face used as a promo picture for a dating website.

And he's trying to convince the wife that I didn't have anything to do with it. It was not me. And, oh, you know what? You know what? I did go there for just by accident. But they're using his picture for more than just that. And so I wanted to get a professional in here, someone who actually went to school, unlike me, and decided to actually get a law degree.

Austin Pennington, a trial attorney here in Dallas. Austin, thanks for joining us today. Jeff, thanks for having me on. Happy to be here. Absolutely. It's good to have you. Now, before we get into all the facial recognition, which is what I tease, now, since you're in Dallas, one of the things that, I know, as we were talking before the interview started, we talked, got into some really fascinating stuff about the facial recognition, which we'll get into. But since you're in Dallas, the Amber Geiger trial. Yes.

How much of attention did you pay to that? Probably not as much as I wanted to. had a couple of busy few weeks, but... I realize you had your own cases to worry about it. But it was a very interesting trial. It was interesting for a number of reasons for me. And if I can go into it, I mean, the fact that she was charged with murder, I thought was interesting at first because I thought this looked like a quintessential manslaughter case.

You had a mistake made. The mistake of fact defense was going to be her mainstay defense. And so, first off, I was surprised they charged her of that. More importantly, I was surprised she was convicted of that. Right. And then after being convicted of that, I was surprised that the jury only gave her 10 years. And the reason that surprises me is because, and so historically I've practiced a lot of criminal defense and never handled a murder trial. But typically, if you've got a case that you feels very strong, so for example, in this one, I thought murder was going to be a hard one for the state to prove.

So I thought manslaughter, you know, that's going to be what they get. The fact that the state convinced the jury to convict her of murder, if I'm the defense, lawyer, I'm thinking, well, I don't want that jury sentencing my client because you get the choice. You get to pick judge or jury on that. And so I was surprised they went with the jury. They just went with it all. And then the jury only gave her 10 years. So it's an interesting outcome.

You know, we have this saying in our profession, you never know what a jury's going to do. And this is a prime example of how that happens. Now we have now, after the case, we have them, you know, going after the judge for giving Amber the Bible. And you ever see anything like that in your days in court? And I thought, I didn't think it was that big a deal. I didn't think it was that big of a deal either. And I think, you know, the judge has a lot of leniency or freedom to kind of do what, you know, she wants in her courtroom. It was after the trial.

It was after the trial. I didn't think there was a problem with that. I didn't think there was a problem with how the judge allowed the victim's brother to give Amber a hug and come down off the stand. Whether he wants to admit it or not, John's brother is a hero. I agree. Wholeheartedly. That guy is a hero. Hero.

He said a lot of brave things on the stand. It was one of the most gracious and loving displays of courage that I've ever seen. I mean, we all want to wish that we could get there. Absolutely. And think that we could be there. I don't know that I could. I think we'd all be lying if we could just spot on and said, yes, we could. And so there's just a massive amount of forgiveness that came from that man.

No kidding. And I honestly believe he saved Dallas from riots. I've had a few conversations with friends and colleagues. and I agree with you wholeheartedly, Jeff. I think he saved Dallas. 100%. I mean, no question. All right, let's get to talk about it.

We could keep talking about Amber if you want, no problem. Because there's so many things that happen in that trial. I'm amazed at. But let's move to facial records. For the reason I actually have you here. So we have, I've found these cases are kind of the same, but they're different. Right? I mean, you're trying to say that really they're all.

under the First Amendment umbrella. Right. There's a couple different angles you can go with facial recognition issues. You know, the First Amendment issue is one of the big ones that you and I were discussing earlier. And then you get into a whole bunch of privacy issues that are independent of First Amendment that deal with, you know, employees, employers, things in the public nature, things in the public forum. And so those kind of, to me, those are the two on the civil side, the two areas that you see.

Okay. So the lady in Pennsylvania, I think, that. had her face that's suing. I mean, she's suing Facebook and Reddit and some others are on the case too for $10 million. I mean, good luck being able to prove it, but she

had her face or her copy of her likeness was used to promote dating websites and pornography sites and erectile dysfunction ads. And she claims that the picture was taken from

store security right camera well i mean we're pretty much all being filmed and photographed everywhere we go today unless you don't have a camera in your own home and then we've got to worry about a drone flying by and looking in my window right if you're not doing anything wrong what do you got to worry about but classic government advice there perfect right now if she walked into that store and as she walked into that store there's a sign there that says you know you're being filmed and you're on camera and then the store owner sells those pictures just like Sprint or Facebook or AT&T or Verizon because we all sign away our rights with our pictures.

I know everybody thinks that, you know, your Facebook picture with your kid and your grandma is yours, but you signed that away the minute you signed up for Facebook. I mean, that's their photo, right? Right. I mean, technically. Right. To a certain extent, yes. What is that extent then? Well, so there's multi-layers to this. So I kind of want to backtrack a little bit and get into it.

First, she's suing Facebook and Reddit. So to your point right there, that's the wrong person to be filing the lawsuit against in this situation. The reason she's filing the lawsuit against them, they have the pockets, they're easier to find, maybe wrangle some money out of them at the beginning. Facebook and Reddit are, they're creating a conduit through which a third party is advertised. on their site. Well, they're just creating the space. They're not the one that's actually putting together the ad. They don't have any say-so on what the ad looks like or says other than there's certain parameters, but they're not the ones that are necessarily promoting a product. They're just providing a space to do it in. So that's kind of the first thing that Facebook and Reddit, there's no real liability there for what they're putting out there.

They're still responsible for what goes into that space, though. They are. They are, and they can't post any illegal content or anything that's going to create what we call hate speech or things of that nature that's going to incite crime. That's one of the First Amendment restrictions you have there. But really the ad promoter, the company that's promoting the dating website or promoting whatever it is. Yeah, you know, the strip club that puts her on the poster. Those are the, quote-unquote, wrongdoers that she should be going after if, you know, that's assuming she has a viable cause of action. And they don't have any money anyway, so why go after that? Right. Right. And it's hard to find them. They don't have insurance policies and all that kind of stuff.

You know, it's funny. Actually, one of the first cases I ever had in my career, and I say case, it was a really short deal, but had a friend of a friend, she was a waitress. The company had a common owner, or the owner of the restaurant was also an owner of a strip club, and he had taken a picture of her and slapped it all over these flyers that went up on Facebook and social media and all these kinds of things. And so a very similar situation. Now, we never got to the point of filing a lawsuit. We just sent a demand letter. They took it down and everything was fine. And usually a lot of times with those things, you get the cease and desist and you go, oh, okay, sorry. Right. Sorry. Yeah. Didn't mean it. My bad. Didn't understand. Didn't know.

And that's, you know, that's what happened with our situation. Going to your point about the ownership and the fact that she walks into the store, the difference is with the cell phone companies and with everything else that you sign off on, you're waiving your rights or you're admitting or acknowledging that you know that if you have a picture of yourself that can be used from marketing purposes and other things like that. The difference is when she walked into that convenience store, she didn't sign any kind of waiver or permission to use any kind of security footage of her to be used elsewhere. So there is a distinction there, whether or not she can put together cause of action is a different question. But I do want to point that out. And I understand,

But even if there was, you know, his argument would be, I've got a sign right there on the front door. You can't come into the store without seeing the sign that you're going to be on camera. Right. Right. Now, the difference is if he's selling that, you know, knowing that you're going to be on camera versus knowing that you're going to use my likeness and picture to make money are two different things. Because that's what typically, you know, I'll just think of one of the things that comes to mind. You go to an apartment complex. You sign a lease and they say, hey, if we take a picture of you, you understand that we may use.

use this in our promotional materials and other things like that. Right. That we're obviously using to market for people to come sign leases. That's different than a sign on the front door of a convenience store that says you are on camera because really the purpose of that is to notify everybody, look, if you steal something, I might see you and there could be criminal prosecution there. Right. Right.

So now the guy that, you know, trying to convince his wife, I mean, again, that goes back to you, he signed it away when he signed up. up for, you know, his, I was just looking at the dating site, honey. Really, I love you, baby. I had nothing to do with it. I just happened to be there. But now the picture was like, we love it and you signed up and we can use it for anything we want.

How do you put us up to that? I'm going to be frank with you, I don't know. Because quite honestly, there's, we were just talking about the fact that you sign away some of your rights. Well, there's a limit somewhere. We haven't really tested that for those boundaries yet. That's kind of the crazy thing about law is that it stays gray area until finally we see enough situations to make it black and white.

So right now, especially with the dissemination of information on the internet, social media, and how marketing is going through social media platforms, I think that we're going to see a lot more of these situations come up. And maybe at some point we finally, a court will say, all right, here's the boundary. You know, we don't have any laws out there right now, definitely that say the boundary is here, but we're going to need some more test cases to figure that out. And where do you think those boundaries are going to be? I mean, that's a wide swath.

Right, it is. Of what can and can't happen with, you know, I say, sure, I want to be able to take a picture on my phone. So, yes, you can have the pictures. I just want to take the picture on my phone. Right. But really, I'm not. Here's, I mean, this is, this is my fight to that.

It's really, I'm not. giving you the right to use my picture. Right. But I know that I'm saying yes to your app because I just want to take the picture. I just want to take the picture of the stupid pumpkin that my kid carved. Right. You know what I mean? Well, and kind of what you're getting at, Jeff.

I mean, we're talking about consumer protection laws. I mean, the FTC is going to have to get involved and start looking at how do we protect consumers so that they know what they're signing, what they're actually waving and giving away. And so on a very small scale, what we'll start to see is, some beefed up language in some of these waivers and these acknowledgments and these, you know, assignments of rights that will fully explain everything. Does that solve the problem? No, because you're not getting on and reading the fine print.

I mean, I believe that most of the time using, you know, the picture app as an explanation. Right. As an example, the, I know. I know what you said. I know that. I know you said, yes, I can use, you might sell it, and it might be a third-party app, and it might go to, you know, Bill's clubhouse, and he might like it and use your picture. But really, again, I just want to take the picture. I said yes. I just, right. I know what it meant. Yeah. And I think an avenue that we can look to, to kind of create an analogy here,

is you've got many lawsuits that come out when someone or when a company uses a celebrity's what we call likeness for profit. So Ariana Grande had something come out a few months ago, about that she had sued. I don't remember what store it was, but she had sued a store for using a likeness of her in a commercial after she said she wouldn't participate in the commercial. It wasn't her. It was someone who danced like her. It was music that sounded like her. And they're still litigating that out right now. But obviously with a celebrity, you've got a compensable amount of damage. You can say, look, I'm worth this much. You profited this much from using my picture. And yes, that wasn't me, but everyone thought it was. Exactly. And so you know, you can quantify that.

What problem is someone like you or me? They use our likeness. I mean, we're not up there on stage. No one's really paying to come see us perform or anything like that. I hate to disagree with you. Hey, and you know what? I probably shouldn't have looped you in on that. I probably should just included myself on that one there.

Hello. I'm on Jim's websites all over America. There you go. There you go. But see, I mean, but you can understand the problem. Thank you. Thank you. I can't quantify with what.

what I'm worth because you've used my likeness. So when we have a situation like that, what the regulators, excuse me, have done historically is they create statutory penalties. They say, okay, look, if you use John Doe's picture, cell phone user, Facebook user, whatever, you put it on this site, he files a claim and you've used it to try and make money

in some way, shape, or form. There's a set flat penalty for how many times you've used it, how you've used it, And they can put obviously different gradations in there. Sure. But that's a deterrent because really educating the consumer sounds great. You know, I mean, utopian-wise, it would be great to be able to do that. It doesn't work that well, quite honestly.

Deterrence on the big boys, that's where you start to see some reform. Because if they know, okay, I am exposing myself, even if it's small penalties, you rack up enough of that stuff. It gets pretty expensive. Yeah, it does. And so that's really, I could see that happening. I haven't heard anything that's going down that direction. But if you look at how things have been done in the past with, and I know this really doesn't sound like it has anything to do with facial recognition,

but like the Fair Debt Collection Act, for example, you get debt collectors who call and harass and annoy and... Oh, man, do I hate those? Well, so what the FTC or what the government did was they said, okay, we can educate the consumer on what their rights are. That's not really helping. Well, guess what? Now we put these penalties in place that for every call you make,

violates, you get slapped with a $10,000 penalty. So you make 16 calls, 16 grand, boom. That's been a deterrent. There's been a huge reform in how debt collecting agencies have to actually jump through hoops now. Again, two totally different areas, but it's a situation where you've got a deterrent that actually created some change for a consumer issue. Right. There was some sort of line drawn to help the consumer out. And it made a difference. Where, I mean, I could just pay the bill. Yes. I could just pay the bill rather than worry about the debt collector calling, but why do that? That's a whole other topic for a whole other day there, Jeff.

All right, so then now we go into facial recognition for law enforcement. Yes. Cities have been trying to implement it across, I mean, we're pretty good at it now. You know, 20 years ago was, you know, a slow process. but I mean that's evolved. Right. We have some municipalities saying no. We don't want any facial recognitions.

Others are say, yeah, bring it. We want the safety. I mean, performers are using it to try to keep themselves safe from particular stalkers or whatever. So if you're, you know, if you're someone that's bad and they have your picture, they can put it out there. And if the computer finds you in the concert, you're done, right? Right. But for sure, law enforcement is, you know, monitoring. monitoring on the streets, which gets me back to just being filmed, right? Where's, where is that line

for that? Where are we at with that? Well, and it's always going to be a sliding scale of right to privacy versus safety of our, of our citizens. And we have the Fourth Amendment there about a legal search and seizure that always has to do with. You keep bringing up the Constitution. I do. I do. You know, it still exists. It still exists, despite some people's viewpoint and some people's perceptions. It is still there. And I could give a whole talk about how no refusal weekend is a, is a sham because you can't circumvent the Constitution. But, you know, we may not have time for that today. But going back to what you're saying, you're walking down the street in a public place,

you have a certain expectation of privacy, but it's much lower than what you would have if you're in your home. When I say expectation of privacy, you have the right to know that as I'm walking down the street, an officer is not allowed to just come up and empty my pockets and see what I have in there. At the same time, someone is allowed to see that I am on the street because I am there in a public place walking around. round. So let's kind of go down this hypothetical you were talking about. You're walking down.

It's a strip, strip mall, or let's call it a big mall, an actual indoor mall. Got security cameras everywhere, and the security cameras are watching, watching, watching. They've got facial recognition. Boom, they hit this. They automatically run a warrant search, see that you've got a warrant out for your arrest. Well, and again, this hasn't been tested yet, but my opinion, at that point, you're in a public place, and they've scanned you and you have a warrant out for your arrest. Well, the warrants public knowledge and whether or not, not, you know, you don't have an expectation of privacy to not be arrested at that point. You have a warrant that's already issued by a judge that's already said that there's probable cause

that you committed some crime. I didn't even know that warrant was out for me. Right. And a lot of times you don't. And there's a lot of people that get pulled over and their driver's license gets ran. Now, the difference there, they committed a traffic violation. So that's, there's a little bit more of a prompt. Well, they may have committed a traffic violation.

Thank you, Jeff. Thank you very much. Keep me honest over here. Keep me honest. But with the walking through the mall, you don't have an expectation of privacy of the people around you knowing where you are, because you're walking out in public. And so I don't have an issue with that because at that point, you're searching through

and you're finding someone has an outstanding warrant. Now, facial recognition, say that let's throw the warrant idea out of there and same person walking through the mall, I guess I struggle to see how facial recognition from a law enforcement perspective can do anything other than search for people who have outstanding warrants or have certain things that law enforcement is already looking for and then the facial recognition helps them find where they are where they're located at well what they what will happen is then if they're recording just stick on that and I want to I want to go back to the facial recognition to the warrants too but if you're out going through this mall and the mall is

filming, they could, I mean, it would take, I mean, it's going to take a huge database, but eventually you're going to have this database of all these faces, right? Right. To search through, which hopefully then you have, and I say hopefully on the police side, you know, then you're able to go through that database if a year from now, I commit a crime. Right. And they're trying to follow my trail. Then they're able to go back and follow my trail.

trail and document it that way, right? But I don't know what's what good that would do now that I talk about it out loud. Well, there's actually a similar concept they use with cell phone towers to do the same thing. And so you can, based on your cell phone sends out a signal to different GPS towers around. And historically, they've used that to triangulate where is this person located at. And that's been tested by the Supreme Court and there's been kind of ebbs and flows on how that's allowed to happen. And now it requires a search warrant to go and get that information because you're searching

the cell phone technically. But the information of the phone sending that out to the tower, that's not private information. That's your, the cell phone carrier sees that. So there's a third person involved. And so it's different than like a text message that I send from myself to you that's got more of a private side to it because the cell phone carrier can't get in there and see that. And so I'm making that analogy. I don't know. The court said. The court say. But that's kind of the analogy I would think of with your hypothetical there is, okay, you've been in a public place. The camera obviously is controlled by a third party.

You know or you should be able to assume that you're being filmed if you're in a shopping mall. And so that's not really private knowledge that is protected by the Fourth Amendment. And so for law enforcement to use that later down the road, it's really, it's an investigative tool that, in my opinion, doesn't really overreach on the Fourth Amendment. Wow. Are you working for the police now? See, I'm not. Austin, Pendington. Trial attorney from Dallas.

The funny thing is you talk to most of my friends and colleagues. I'm about as left as they come when it comes to individual rights and defending that kind of deal. But really, look, in today's world, I know that, you know, in today's world, you're pretty much on camera wherever you go. You are. I mean, we've all pretty much given into that. Right. I mean, we really have. I mean, I know it's easy to say that, you know, I'm supposed to, you know, I have that expectation of.

privacy. Right. But no, you don't. Shut up. You don't. Now, you can expect it all you want. You ain't getting it. That's probably, there's probably more truth to that than I'd be willing to admit or, you know, acknowledge. So, you know, at some point, I mean, that's where we're at with the facial recognition, right? If I'm walking through the mall and they start snap, and they're snapping pictures so that they create that database, and then that database is sold outside of, you know, Joe's mall. Right.

now we're, you know, we're making that picture even bigger. We are. I mean, the world gets a lot bigger. Yeah. Yeah, and we're moving out of the criminal realm at that point. You know, if you're selling that, it's kind of like selling data. Yeah. We see that all the time, like these line bikes and things around Dallas that, I mean, they're gathering data, they're selling it.

And then that's being used to market and do all those kinds of things. Obviously, with the line bikes, people are voluntarily giving that data up. They may not know. I know. They don't know where it's going, but they are, I mean, that's the distinction. I know. I know. You know, you don't have to get on the scooter and ride down the road. I just said, I just wanted to take the picture. That's all. I just wanted to take the picture. That's why I said yes.

Right. Right. And we kind of get back into this circular thing of, okay, well, the consumer needs to be educated. And they are. And their argument is, look, you don't use the app. Right. We gave you the option. Don't use the app. Okay. Right. But how are you going to connect with everybody if you're not using the app? I know. I know you don't want me to use the app. I just want to take the picture. Right. Then I don't have the picture of my kid's stupid pumpkin. Right.

See, and that means you can see how this creates a little bit of a circular situation, and it's a lot of gray area. And that's why the laws have to adapt over time, because we see different things happening and different facts situations. Okay, so just between you and me. No one else listening. Just between you and me. Yeah.

Who can we go after for $100 million right now? In a situation like this? We'll find, we'll pick something out. Well, I will tell you, the opioid epidemic is something that's been making a lot of headway in the news here in the last two months. I've actually been following that pretty closely. Have you? You just want to go off to anything. Okay.

So, all right, let's talk a little bit about that. Okay, okay. How is that the physician's fault? So they're not going after the physicians. I know. They're going after the pharmaceutical companies and the pharmacies. Right. You know, I mean, the physicians next.

Yes. I mean, which is agonizing. They are going after the physicians who are. are supposed to be, you know, the, the, just nothing but the pill doctors, the pill pushers. I understand that. But, you know, now, and we've reached the point now where anyone who is in real pain and can, I don't know if you know this, but the medicine actually works. It does. And it provides a service.

Right. Those people are treated like criminals now as well. They are. They have to. So, yeah, again, it's a pendulum thing, as all things in law are. and some of the discussions I've had about the opioid situation. The reason we're seeing the pharma companies get sued first, it's a couple different levels of that.

Hate the rich. That's it. That's it. You got the biggest pockets. And look, I hate to break it to you. I think that the law is a noble practice, but if you look around to who gets sued and who doesn't,

it's who's got the deeper pockets. I mean, that's what it boils down to. I have no problem admitting that. That's just, that's what it is. I mean, just pause for a moment. I mean, we've talked a lot on this show about, and we've joked around about it,

but it's really true on the class. Actions, you know, the class action, they've got $400 million, and I got a check for $1.85. Right, but the lawyer got a check for $20 million. But your people, your people did okay. Right, right. Now, on the noble side of things, we're here to ferry out justice, and we wouldn't be able to protect people's rights if we didn't have lawyers.

Oh, shut up. But, you know, I'm just, I'm just, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know. I know, I know. It's all in good fun. But you are. You're absolutely. And, and the thing is, though, is that. We're motivated, just like any other business owner, to go after the deep pockets. And so that's America.

That's the number one, exactly, capitalism. And that's the number one reason the big pharma companies are the ones that are getting sued. Now, digging into the legal side of that, the actual, what does the law say about it? The Oklahoma judge that levied the $572 million penalty against Johnson and Johnson, what he said, I think, is really the main reason we're seeing these pharma companies continue to take shells and start to settle things out because they see the writing on the wall. And this is the reason the physicians are not being pulled in just yet. The marketing side of these pharma companies is what the judge found especially deplorable.

So one of the main quotes that I keep slinging out there is that a lot of these sales reps were coached to say, listen, physician, only 2.6% of patients actually become addicted to these pills if prescribed by a physician. And they knew that was a lot. They knew that was a lie. Now, there is a systematic problem in the way. that these pharma companies were coming in and marketing to these physicians. But they do that with every medicine that the pharmacy, pharmaceutical company reps out. They do. They do. And so that's part of the problem. The other problem is the actual procedure itself. And so I have many friends and colleagues that are in the medical sales business,

whether they're doing lab brokerage services or they're helping physicians run their practices. What happens is these doctors, they've got a full day, full of appointments. They've got 10 minutes talk to this pharmacy rep. If that. If that. And they come in the pharmacy rep. They've got a relationship with them. They're friends. They trust them. The pharmacy rep is given the information. And then boom, they feed it to them. Here's some samples. Boom. Exactly. Here's some samples. Give these out. And so the doctor's not really, and I'm not criticizing the doctor. I'm criticizing the system and the process. The problem is the doctor's not fully getting all the information, all the scientific studies and not looking into all the details. He just wants to take

the picture. Right. He wants to take the picture. He just, I just want to take the picture. Right. I mean, He's just, yeah, I know there's a problem. And that's, yeah. And there's a lot of people that are saying, well, these doctors, they're smart. They go to med school. And yes, they are. But if you had five minutes to talk about something that's being, or to hear about something that's being widely used and being promoted by and used by a lot of your colleagues,

are you really going to question it, you know? And so there's no need. There's no need. Right. And so that's one of the things the judge pointed out is that these, these pharmacy reps are pumping this, this lie, basically, about how these things can become addictive. Second to that, the reason this is blown up even more is that so many of the patients who were using legal, prescribed narcotics,

stopped getting them, and then all of a sudden we've seen a huge methamphetamine. I understand meth and fentanyl and heroin. I understand that. I find I'm hard pressed to blame that on the pharmaceutical. And I'm not blaming that on the pharmaceutical companies. I'm saying that's part of the reason this issue is. was blown up so much and gotten so much attention is because of the kind of the waterfall effect of it.

And that waterfall effect is, you know, it's horrible. It is. Right? I mean, we've opened the floodgates to any kind of, to the cartels and to, you know, the drug, the big time drug, which for the illegal drugs. This is big money in that. Yes. But I'm really, it's very, I just have such a hard time with thinking that it's their fault.

Although you kind of convinced me on the sales in there. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, again, I think that's, in my opinion, reading the opinion by the judge in Oklahoma, who's the only one who's written an opinion on this so far, I believe that's one of the main reasons because he emphasized it so much that he slapped them with that penalty. It's because it was a deliberate choice by Johnson and Johnson to market it that way. Which makes it pretty plausible why the other companies want to.

settle. Exactly. Because they were all sending their reps out doing the same thing. They were. And a lot of them made more money than Johnson and Johnson did. Yeah. Really bad. Yeah.

So who are we going after? Which company? Well, Purdue Pharmaceuticals is already in bankruptcy. So I don't know. They may be weak at this point. Oh, no. We've got to find somebody else. Yeah.

Yeah. Austin Pennington, attorney here in Dallas, Texas. if you need an attorney, Austin Pennington. Where's your shingle at here at Dallas? How do people get a hold of you? Yeah, so we're at Walnut Hill in 75. Best way to find out more information about our firm, follow us on Instagram, the Dallas lawyer on there.

We pump out a lot of information. A lot of the different stories we're covering are pushed out on there. On Twitter, we're the Dallas Law, and then we've got a really good blog collection at pfdallis.com. Thank you. Awesome. I appreciate it very much, man. Thanks for your time.

Hey, glad to be here. Looking forward to being on again. I feel like I could have gone on for a whole lot longer. I have a ton of stuff to talk to him about. But, I mean, you've got to stop sometime, right? So just let me remind you that, yes, I know everyone's shaking their head like, yes, you do. You have to stop sometime, fat man. Shut up.

So just a reminder to subscribe to the podcast, Chewing the Fat, with yours truly, Jeff Fisher. It's easy. just go to the blaze.com slash podcast and click on chewing the fat and then we'll give you

options to whatever platform you want to use to download the podcast and it'll be in your little updated inbox

every day every single day you'll get a you'll get a boop see how easy that is my God again we've spared

no expense on sound effects and anything that we need on this show is oh my gosh Gosh, they don't care.

It's like it's an open checkbook. And don't forget, you only got a couple days. It's an open, I mean, it is, clearly. There's no doubt about it. You have until the 13th of October, 2019, at 11.59 p.m. Not 11.59.30, not 1159.40. Not 1159.52. 1159 p.m.

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and the promo code, J-E-F-F-Y-10, will get you 10% off anything. I give and I give and I give. You are so welcome. But you only have until Sunday night. So you are free to shop. Oh