Law&Crime Sidebar - Attorney for Plaintiff in ‘Jackass’ Brain Damage Lawsuit Speaks Out

Episode Date: August 29, 2022

Jesse Weber sits down with John M. Phillips, the attorney representing the man suing Jackass stars Steve-O and Chris Pontius for millions over a stunt gone horribly wrong.GUESTS:John M. Phillips: https://twitter.com/JohnPhillipsLAW&CRIME SIDEBAR PRODUCTION:YouTube Management - Bobby SzokePodcasting - Sam GoldbergVideo Editing - Michael DeiningerGuest Booking - Alyssa FisherSocial Media Management - Kiera BronsonSUBSCRIBE TO OUR OTHER PODCASTS:Court JunkieObjectionsThey Walk Among AmericaCoptales and CocktailsThe Disturbing TruthSpeaking FreelyLAW&CRIME NETWORK SOCIAL MEDIA:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lawandcrime/Twitter: https://twitter.com/LawCrimeNetworkFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/lawandcrimeTwitch: https://www.twitch.tv/lawandcrimenetworkTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lawandcrimeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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will keep you on the edge of your seat. Don't let your fears take hold of you as you dive into this addictive series. Love thrillers with a paranormal twist? The entire Oracle trilogy is available on Audible. Listen now on Audible. I realized that it was Steveo and Chris Ponches, a jackass guy. They took two jet skis and pulled themselves apart and they had this bungee type thing in between them the bungee that they were using broke, I ended up being seriously injured. I was taken out of the water, self-preservation wall kicked in. That's when everything kind of went crazy. It is the multi-million dollar lawsuit against two of the stars of jackass. I'm going to be joined by John M. Phillips, the attorney representing the plaintiff in this case, and we're going to break it

all down. Welcome to Sidebar, presented by law and crime. I'm Jesse Weber. So two stars of the Jackass franchise are now headed to trial. And this started with a man named Michael Vincenzegro. He has filed the lawsuit against Jackass stars Chris Pontius and Stevo. Steveo, whose real name is Stephen Gilchrest Glover. And he's accusing them of almost killing him during a Jetsky tug-of-war stunt gone horribly, horribly wrong. This happened back in Puerto Rico on March 11, 2018. Someone had asked Vincent Segura at a marina to use his jet ski for the stunt.

He complied, and then he actually took a part of the stunt. Now, what happened was the jackass stars rode away from each other on separate jet skis. They were tied together by a bungee cord, but during the stunt, the cord snapped, and it struck Vincent Segura, who was actually in the water between the two watercrafts. It struck them right in the head. There is video that has been released of this event, and it is. It is shocking to see. Woo!

Ready? Ready? One, two, three. Alright, it hit Mike. It hit the mic. Okay, hit him. Oh, you. Hit Mike, get Mike.

Get Mike. All right. We got to go and run. I hope he's all right, though. Yeah, please. Now, Mr. Vincent Seguer claims that as a result of Steve-O and Pontius's negligence, he has suffered extreme injuries and should be compensated for pain and suffering, his medical bills, and the loss of income, all totaling in the millions of dollars.

A judge has set a jury trial for March 7, 2023, joining me to discuss. discuss this is a very special guest. It is Mr. Vincent Seguer's attorney. John and John M. Phillips. John, it's great to have you here. And welcome to Sidebar. Good to see you. Thank you. Good to see you, Jesse. So I want to actually start with talking a little bit about what your client said about his injuries. I'm going to play this. And we'll talk about it on the other side. My wife, who must have been terrified, she told me that she saw me fighting for my life. As I started to come back into consciousness, they started to explain to me the extent of my injuries. I suffered an epidural hematoma bleeding in my brain when I saw the CT scans. I understood immediately that the big block bud have pushed my brain into the center.

I also had a C5, C6 injury of a herniated disc. My nerves, my neck, and my arms were damaged and... And I had difficulty using, especially my right hand at the beginning. They had to do classes of surgery and my ears to kind of put it back together. And I had to get a traeatomy, which means that they break your skull open, expose your brain, and scoop out all this blood. So, John, I mean, that is pretty horrific, the description of those injuries. What can you tell us about what your client has been through

or what he's currently going through? So, Mr. Viscence was an air traffic controller before this, and he's completely lost the ability to safely operate, you know, the direction of airplanes. He has completely changed related to how he is as a father, how he is as a husband, and his, you know, the stuff that we take for granted every day about how our brain functions, both from the, the thinking perspective and the ability to control our arms and legs have all drastically changed because of the significant brain injury. Now, I'll get into the legal parts of the case, and we'll talk about that in a second, but how did you get involved here? How did you come to be aware of this?

Because my understanding is Mr. Fitzsendzger had other counsel before you. He did. So Michael had counsel, yeah, it's an incident that happened in Puerto Rico. I'm in Florida. That's a little different. And Michael had local council, counsel that lived right there in San Juan. And the case wasn't moving. In fact, it had completely gone stale and nothing was happening.

And he reached out to a local attorney that's a friend of mine that's bilingual. and Mr. Leon, Jose Leon, my co-counsel knew us from high-profile litigation, you know, whether it's Amarosa v. Trump or Joe Exotic's case and said, well, you go down to meet the potential new client with us. And we flew down to Puerto Rico and look, all it took was seeing the photos. And you realize this is, this is a catastrophic injury. I mean, the, the, the ear being stitched back on like a piece of flesh and, and, you know, the skull fracture were horrific, horrific injuries. And then to hear how it happened is one of the most ridiculous gross cases of negligence I've ever seen. So before again, we get into that. One of the

most disturbing aspects of his account is that as a result of these injuries, it affected, you know, not only his everyday life, but you said it affected the way that he thinks, right? So my understanding is, didn't he get sort of homicidal tendencies as a result of the brain injury? Can you speak about that? Yeah. So we were sitting over dinner in Puerto Rico. And, you know, it's kind of my job to get into the nuts and bolts of what we're going to expect the evidence to show. And he started crying and his wife started crying and I started crying as he told me the story about how because of his brain injury, he,

He had homicidal thoughts about killing his kids and suicidal ideation. And fortunately, he never did any of it because he realized, you know, kind of this out-of-body experience was just his brain misfiring and got counseling and, you know, has set that straight. But, you know, his brain was misfiring to the point that it was telling him to kill the people he loved in life most. He's a great father. And they said that it's attributed to the injury, right? I mean, there's nothing that happened to him before or anything after. It was because of the injury.

Absolutely because of the injury. Unfortunately, his counseling and his healing, his, has healed that aspect of it. You know, he still has twitches and can't use, can't use several digits on his hand. He's got issues. But, you know, that's how those were the darkest days. You know, and here's a guy that was making a significant living as an air traffic controller who moved in with his, you know, with his in-laws, you know, was on food stamps at a point. And it just catastrophically changed their life. It's just how fragile the brain is. It really is. And look, so I want to go back to the date in question because there were videos that were released of this.

this is what happened after the he gets hit in the head with the bungee cord let me play this for you guys we got hurt i'm hurt large safety guys hurt oh but i didn't lose the tugged oh my god the thing snapped and just hit me in the fucking leg oh okay he needs to go to the hospital we only want to know if this is a real emergency that said that you have oh it's not a Okay. We're doing a document. Okay. This actually happened.

You got a head trauma and you had to go to open up. Okay. Okay. Okay. So, John, it seems right after from Pontius and Stevo, I don't think they understood the gravity of the situation. Can you walk us through what they said after to your client right after he got hit in the head with the bungee cord, then he starts bleeding from the ear?

What did they say to him? So Michael was in the ocean when this happened. and essentially stevo goes in one direction and pontius goes in the other direction and the cord snaps the whole point was to pull somebody off tug-a-war whoever came off the seat who first loses right that's how those stunts work well it wasn't it was a archaic homemade design system and so the the quaint cable actually snapped off of stevo went flying hit um michael in the head and then he hit Pontius in the leg. So Pontius was worried about his, you know, his abrasion to the leg and Michael was just the person in the water trying to make sure that the Cedus could take off despite the waves. And even Michael didn't realize, he knew he had been hit in the head, but he didn't know he had this gashing wound until they got him out of the water and realized his ear was literally flapping. And, you know, at that point, because there's,

there's video of him on the C-Doo after the incident. And once they realize, oh, because the water kept washing off the blood, once they realized, oh, this is, this is significant. They got him to the beach and they helicoptered him to the hospital. And it was, you know, surgery after surgery after that. So obviously at this point, negotiations broke down. This is headed to trial. Now, I want to get into the law of this because it is their position that your client, assume the risk. And I'll actually play something else for you. Steve-O had signed a waiver. Again, I want to play this for you right now. We'll talk about this. Signing our lives away.

Where do I sign? Your name, address? I've been doing forms for a long time, man. I'm going to give it to you. So you see Steve-o. signing this waiver, I'm assuming it's with able to use the jet skis and perform this stunt, but my understanding is your client signed a waiver too, right, saying that he understood he was going to be part of this incident, or am I wrong? So you're wrong. What Michael signed was an appearance release. You know, there was also filming going on. Obviously, this was,

this was not a jackass production. It was their secondary project. There's been numerous names. I don't know which one it was wild boys or what but they were they were filming and if you'll if you'll watch the beginning the first time they attempt this the C2s weren't stable enough to be able to pull off the stunt so Michael um who's a at the time was a near professional surfer and diver super athletic his his whole thing was he was going to make sure that the C2s could take off um and then he was going to deep dive out of the shot but they didn't tell him to do that, right? He was absolutely necessary. You'll see from shot one to shot two that somebody had to get these C-dos aligned. And Michael had signed an appearance release

to potentially be in the show. He was never going to be in the show. His was just kind of a facilitator sort of role. But, you know, obviously there's a huge, huge difference between an appearance release saying, I grant my rights to be on TV versus a liability waiver, say, you know, which you would expect with the jackass project, frankly. So, so, John, just to jump in for a second, I'm looking at the answer to the complaint. And it says that in this guest performer release that your client signed, it includes a hazardous activity waiver. Is that not correct? I think it overstates it. I don't think that's, that's, you know,

you know, what it says. And I'm happy to, I'm happy to, if you give me a break or we take a break, I can, I can go through it with you. But it's not, it's not a liability waiver. That was not the intention. And further, those waivers and releases, particularly under Puerto Rican law, aren't designed for, for situations like this where there's, this isn't just, you know, being injured while being a part of a production, it was a negligent design of a stunt. It's more than just negligence, you know, performing the stunt or during the capacity of the stunt. It was, it never should have been designed and assembled in this way. Glover, again, Steevo, has said that he told your client to get out of the way to clear the shot. Is that not what happened?

No, I mean, where does he say it? We have the video, and at no point did he give any warning to Michael. And second, because we have video, we can see that. Third, they needed Michael to be in the shot because they couldn't perform their stunt. They tried it once, and they couldn't get going simultaneously without somebody essentially holding the C-Dus in place for them to go in opposite direction. So they couldn't have performed it without it. So wait, just two things on that. Number one, I'm reading this from an answer from Steveo's representation.

Are you saying they're being dishonest in this filing? Because again, he's saying he told them to get out of the way. I mean, you know, when it comes to critiquing, you know, complaints and answers, you do that in a deposition. And we haven't been provided with Steveau's deposition. We've requested it. It was just since the case was set for. trial that that you know we're moving to that stage we'll let it all come out in court but i i love our side so so when we say assumption of risk right that is a legal defense to negligence

the argument would be and again i'm like challenging on this because i i think it's a really important issue is they didn't tell him to be a part of this they didn't tell him to go in the water and separated he could have just been like hey here's my jet ski if i'm going to give it for you the stunt if it doesn't work i'm getting my jet ski back right it was his choice to go in the water and be in between them as they did this stunt though now no no and i get it if if he's run over by a jet ski right if this stunt is performed in a way if the if the if the waves push the jet ski on top of him that's a completely different situation than almost the product's liability situation of them having this rigged up uh jackass caliber

negligent, uh, design stunt. I mean, there's obviously with the assumption of risk comes the concept of comparative negligence, right? So I mean, certainly a jury could determine that, that Michael never should have associated with steveau anyway, because hazard follows him. Um, but then you get into kind of the secondary aspect that this isn't, this wasn't being injured in the ordinary foreseeable course of of a stunt it was whoever designed the bungee cord whoever designed the stunt created something so imminently hazardous that only they would have known not michael who assumed um that these stuntmen would perform something you know that wouldn't fly off and and crack his head who made the bungee court do you know anything about that so the bungee cord

G-Cord came from a company that's no longer in business. Their production company, as I understand, as best as we understand, then kind of rigged it up with the hooks and the life-ness. But are they, so they're not liable at this point because you said they're no longer in business. I mean, I guess the question is, how did this happen? Was it the fact that this was just an, because I remember I saw an actual prior test run of this. And Steve, gets thrown back into the water. It might have been Ponti, so it gets thrown back in the water. But it doesn't break. The cord doesn't break. How did this happen? How much is it really the fault of them versus how much is the fault of the maker of the product? Well, the bungee cord itself didn't fail. The bungee cord didn't break. It's the connections that they, that they rigged up. This was not, look, a bungee cord is not designed to go between two jet skis. I don't know that that use has ever actually occurred before this point in time. And so the bungee cord in and of

itself didn't cause, it didn't fail, it didn't cause injury. It's, it's, you know, what attached the bungee cord to a human to a jet ski that failed. And that was all within the design and scope and use of their, or misuse of their promotion, of their stunt. Well, we know at this point negotiations have broken down right i mean this isn't going to a settlement at this point it's headed to trial can you tell us why that's happened i mean it seems i've talked a little bit about that christ pontius and stevo believe that they did nothing wrong and that your client assume the risk they think they i'm assuming they think that they could win a trial how why did negotiations break down because usually they would want to settle this out of court right and i can't speak to

i've been involved since the beginning of this year and so i obviously can't speak to you know what happened in the years before with prior counsel. I can tell you from looking at the docket and discussing it with my client, as much as I'm allowed to repeat that, that nothing happened. And the fact that this case has been in court for multiple years and no depositions have taken place is an indictment on the justice process to this point. But once you start taking depositions and pinning down people as to what happened and who designed it and why it happened and who knew what, then you put it, you put yourself, you put your case, and you put a jury in a position to decide what really happened and who's at fault for it.

There was a quote from you where you provide, you will help provide this video. You release the video of this incident and you say, quote, we provide this video looking for witnesses and people who know about the creation and execution of this stunt. If you have information, please contact us. So you're still in the beginning stages of this, right? I mean, you still have more information. What are you hoping to learn? I mean, we had to start over.

There wasn't much done. In fact, when we got the prior file, it was literally a box. And within that box was a bungee cord, I guess the bungee cord that had never been opened. And so, you know, now we opened up the box. We've had some people look at it. I don't want to go into too much detail. And, you know, I imagine the defense. lawyers are going to be watching this too. And so, you know, we had to conduct our, our investigation.

We actually sought to leave to amend our complaint. And the court said, no, you haven't shown, you haven't shown need given the length of time. Like, well, our problem is, you know, some species of legal malpractice that this, that these claims weren't included initially. But, you know, until we get into depositions and I get to sit in front of, of Mr. Glover and figure this out, you know, we're still, we're still in dire need of discovery, right? Absolutely. And I guess the question is, is where you think this is going to go. I mean, do you anticipate it is actually going to get to trial? Do you think that there's a situation where you obviously want to learn more information? What are you hoping to learn from Pontius and

Stivo? I mean, what do you think their responsibility is to your client? And I know this could be a trial that has big ramifications, not only for them, but for the jackass franchise and maybe for other franchises that deal in these stunts. Look, when dealing, when calling yourself a stuntman, right, and you go to a foreign jurisdiction and say, look, we're going to rent jet skis, we're going to bring aboard staff and you're going to have an appearance release, and we're stuntmen. We have this professional franchise behind us, and you do that, and somebody gets a brain injury. It's one thing if Steve O or Pontius gets injured and they do this all the time,

but they went into Puerto Rico and found, you know, a Puerto Rican, you know, who happened to own a jet ski and said, hey, why don't you, why don't you, you know, loan us your jet ski. Oh, by the way, we kind of need your help. And, and he's injured. Well, workers comp doesn't apply because he wasn't an employee and and he didn't he didn't injure himself he didn't design this thing and so somebody has to answer to his damages and and given the lack of of release although we don't think a release would cover this situation it you know it's headed to a jury trial certainly reasonable minds can prevail but again we've we've been on this case for seven eight months now and still haven't had a deposition because we've been waiting on the court to rule

and set a trial date. And so now we have a trial date. We have, I mean, what, nine months before trial. So it's time for some heavy-hitting depositions. And usually once tough questions are asked, parties kind of wake up to what exposure they might have. And has Steve-O or Chris Pontius, have they reached out to your client? Have they apologized, even at the very least? Or have they been mostly silent throughout this whole process? There was a series of emails between Mr. Glover and Mr. Vison's that I probably don't need to discuss too much. But they started off pretty friendly. And then Mr. Glover was quite rude and manipulative.

and, you know, accused Mr. Vison's of kind of the stuff that you see in their answer. But it wasn't, you know, it wasn't the stebo you see on television in these emails. And I think people will be surprised by them. But, you know, again, it's stuff that will come out in court. We're going to be able to see this trial? Is it going to be televised? You will be able to cover it here on law crime? Yeah, I mean, that's always the hope.

That's my problem with my. my federal court cases you know i want joe exotic's retrial to be televised too but you know federal courts don't love cameras and so um you know we've got to figure that out john m phillips thank you so much for taking the time uh to talk about this really you know incredible case um i think it's going to be have a lot of eyeballs on it especially if it ultimately does go to trial but appreciate you taking the time and breaking it down a little bit more with us my pleasure all right everybody Thanks for joining us here on Sidebar. Please subscribe on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, wherever you get your podcast.

Sidebar is produced by Sam Goldberg, YouTube manager Robert Zoki, Alyssa Fisher as our booking producer and video editor Michael Dyniger. I'm Jesse Weber. Speak to you next time. now on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.