The Dumb Zone FREE - DZ 7-3-25 | Lawyer Roundtables Parts 1 + 2

Episode Date: July 3, 2025

Shows are free all this week!Relive the court case versus the cloud with parts 1 and 2 of the Lawyer Roundtables! Part 1 - Dan and Jake walk away from the Ticket, handed cease and desist for podcast, assembling the dream team, and preparing for a trial. Part 2 - The team knowing Dan and Jake helped, Dan changes the entire case, prepping Dan and Jake for the stand, and mediation (00:00) - Part 1 - Dan and Jake walk away from the Ticket, handed cease and desist for podcast, assembling the dream team, and preparing for a trial (01:21:32) - Part 2 - The team knowing Dan and Jake helped, Dan changes the entire case, prepping Dan and Jake for the stand, and mediation ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

Hello! I'm professional broadcaster Dan McDowell, letting you know that you are about to hear one of our free podcasts. But if you'd like to subscribe at DumbZone.com, you'll get four shows per week, plus the weekend wrap-up and any bonus sodes like our Business Wednesday interviews. So, if you forgot how to use the 15-second rewind, that's DumbZone.com to subscribe. That's dumbzone.com to subscribe. Now, on to today's program. The Dumb Zone. The key to muscles and wealth, it's Game Day Men's Health. That is right. Go to gamedaymen'shealth.com and find a location near you. If you're listening to this in DFW, you will find one.

We go to the Grapevine location, and it's been fantastic. I've actually heard from the folks at Gameday Men's Health that they've had people come in from outside DFW. Whoa. Tyler. So you can find one at gamedaymen'shealth.com. You go in, you get your test done, get some lab panels done.

They can measure testosterone. They can do inflammation markers, thyroid function, metabolic health. There are a lot of different things that they can measure at Gameday Mins Health. And they can help you find solutions for the ones that you're not hitting on, you're not firing on. You can go there just for a free testosterone level check. You can't. You can't.

Just see how your levels are. And then 10% off TRT for life whenever you tell them that you're a friend of the dumb zone. If you're feeling a little down, Game Day Men's Health can help you feel a little up. So check them out. Tell them the dumb zone sent you to gamedaymen'shealth.com. The game demons health calm well Hello. Hello your friends Dan and Jake here. We're actually on vacation, but this is a pre-recorded message for the show We're putting out on Thursday July 3rd Happy birthday to the country Jake happy early birthday Independence Day Eve yes, we

Text the country tonight at midnight Yeah, set up a test you're doing well, yeah Anyway, we want to promote or this is like our intro for what's coming up on today's show So we of course want to promote don't forget like next week Tuesday we're going to be at that Whataburger, El Dorado in the Tollway at 1130. We got a bunch of car trays to give away exclusively there. Not doing a commercial here or anything, but we really would love if lots of people showed up to that because that's a pretty big deal for us.

And for you, with the culmination of the car tray, like your dream as a young lad. The year of Jake may be back. I'm thinking things are looking really good. But the year of Jake might not have started with the calendar year of Jake, you know, like who's to say when the year starts. And you know, despite the fact that things turned out OK, 23, pretty stressful. So not the year of me. The year 20, 2023?

Yeah. Oh, so the audio that is coming up, now you're into, let's promote, let's say what we're doing here today. Trying. Like, what the hell are we doing here? I thought I was just having some fun. We're going to talk. So Blake put these together

and these are lawyer round tables. I think when they first came out, it was in four installments. Remember we recorded like an all day and Blake edited them together and he had four different shows. And a lot of people have told me, I really liked those shows.

That was really informative and blah blah blah So we're putting it out again, especially if you haven't heard them before maybe you'll like it We have two episodes today, and then we're gonna have two episodes tomorrow see how the math works there with four shows and two days and Four walls and two balls see how all these things just flow together? You like Kobe? In the world of the dumb zone? Exactly like Kobe and Kyrie was born on the eleventh and uh... he has eleven

uh... fingers or something. Here's the lawyer roundtable. Alright well here we are high atop my garage and uh... today All right. Well here we are high atop my garage and Today it is actually Friday March 1st when we are recording this live to tape And it is our lawyer round table the highly anticipated lawyer Roundtable by us where actually the table is more rectangular and we have a couch and that's where many of the lawyers are But let us introduce the lawyers. What we're doing today, so a lot of people obviously have questions about a lot of things, you know, dealing with the

ticket and then once we left the ticket and then what's happened after the ticket. So we're not going to really deal with a lot of the, you know, behind the scenes negotiations that's what got us to the point where we met all these lawyers. We'll do that later. But today we're going to time shift it like Pulp Fiction, great reference. And we'll take you to around the end of July when we actually got sued. Two little guys, two just guys Skipping through the woods like little red riding hood. Uh-huh get sued by the big bad corporation so our lawyers

Philip Kingston is the first guy he was actually working with us during our contract negotiations Great job on that. Philip Kingston, would you guys each like to just kind of say, you know, who you represent or who you work for and blah blah blah, give any statement? Opening remarks. Winnepsd, which is the least friendly law firm name to spell or to market. We have some other partners named Utah and Andrews, which I think would be a much better firm name, but the checks clear. Yeah. The checks clear. It's all fine. And they handle my stuff.

Um, and I'm a former politician and trial lawyer and I do a lot of different things, including try to help my friends in radio. One time we block walked together. Indeed. Yeah, went out and knocked on doors for another local politician. For the great Scott Griggs, who I don't think there's a single person with the possible exception of Eric Johnson Himself who thinks that Eric Johnson is a better choice for mayor than Scott Griggs would have been

At this point everybody who voted for that guy ought to have some Regret Okay, that's a left turn. That's a yeah Can we say that we actually got in trouble for that? Yeah, but I don't know that that's a story for today Okay, but yeah, we were we were involved in that because of a Philip and TC and Always the two people you want to follow. Yeah, yeah Always the two people you want to follow. Yeah, yeah.

Follow their path. We got called into a room. We've never gotten in trouble. And told, hey, no, it was for a video we made for Scott Griggs. It was a quick whatever. Yeah, we were like, I don't know. But we're dumb. That would have put him over the top.

That would have been out there, yeah. I think the course of history could have been different. So the second guy we worked with is another guy we've known for a long time. Matt Brunig joined us second in this whole thing. Matt joins us on the Zoom. Greetings, everyone. Gentlemen, Liz, how's it going? Our labor attorney.

You wanna give your bio? My, well, you know, I'm a labor lawyer. I worked at the NLRB for a couple of years. That's the National Labor Relations Board., I'm a labor lawyer. I worked at the NLRB for a couple of years. That's the National Labor Relations Board. And I'm a solo practitioner. I represent unions and individuals in front of the NLRB and do some other random stuff. I'm also a think tank guy, peoplespolicyproject.org

and have a podcast with my wife, the Brunix, patreon.com slash the Brunix. So I got lots of little things going going as you'll notice in each case. They are Solitary endeavors because I've not been successful in inside institutions for long periods of time. So Okay, you mentioned Liz we have Elizabeth Griffin here. Hi Who's not Matt's wife? No, I not. Not Liz Bernigan. Yeah I'm a litigation attorney at Clark Hill. It's a full-service national firm in Dallas. Used to be Strasburg and Price. I do litigation and mostly appeals and do you

want us to get into how we got involved or we gonna come back to that disclaimers thank you i think make sure you might explain uh... i just need to say at the top and speaking on my own behalf these are my opinions i'm not speaking for the firm and not fighting any legal advice okay i guess we'll be doing to not endorsements my everything i'm giving you is advice you should follow You should clarify that you are not giving advice to listeners you are not creating an attorney-client relationship by anything

It's been so long I love it I love it anyway, yeah, we'll get back to how we all came to to be together Matt left one thing off of his bio, which is that he is in the top 1.1% of internet trolls. Okay, you guys go at it. I got yeah Yeah, you're right ready from the takes one to know one. I was yeah No for real that I get a big Twitter following from just trolling and stuff and then I switched into more serious things So there's some advice for kids who want to get a big following that's how it goes then we have Frank Colley Was one of our dream team members who was actually in the courtroom? Yes. I'm Frank Colley I I am a litigator been litigating cases for over 25 years now.

I've got my own firm, Colley Law Group, original name. I'm not smart enough to be a think tank person or an office holder. Just a plain old country litigator. And we found out you used to long ago be at the firm I'm at long before I came. I was at Strasburg and Price right out of law school. The firm that Liz works for is now a different name, but it was once Strasburg and Price and I was a young litigator there in the late 90s. And a Baylor Bear fan. And a huge Baylor Bear fan, sick and bare.

And then also a guy on our Zoom who is going to be popping in and out because he actually is in Houston. This is McCool Kelker. I've never said your last name, so I hope I pronounced it correctly. You nailed it, Dan. That's exactly right.

OK. And McCool is a guy I had been talking to. I will at least, well, go ahead and give your bio and then I'll tell everybody how I actually met you at least, well, go ahead and give your bio and then I'll tell everybody how I actually met you. Yeah, sure, sure. So thank you, Dan and Jake and Blake and hello other lawyers and listeners. My name is Mukul Kelkar. I am, well, actually two weeks ago, I made partner at my firm, so that's super exciting.

All right. Yeah, you can clap, yeah, absolutely. And so I'm a partner at the law firm called Dentons. So it's like the city of Denton with an S at the end. We're one of the world's largest law firms. And I actually interviewed at Strasburger when I was in law school. And they said, you know, thanks so much for coming to our office and drinking our drinking our fine sparkling water. But no thanks. But that's okay. I still love a lot of

guys over there. I'm a I'd like to call myself a trial lawyer and litigator also. And, and not to get into the backstory, but I met Dan and Jake just because I'm a huge P1, and I wrote to them one day when I was working on some non-compete work for work, and they were talking about it on the radio, and so that's how we met. But we can kick that out a little bit. Well, no, we'll address that real quick. Yeah, some have pointed out, hey, you guys did a bunch

of non-compete stories this year. I mean, it was mentioned in the State of the Union address. True. But perhaps we might have focused on it a little more than others as our contract talks were happening. And McCool was one of the guys that gave us the, I don't know, the thought that, yeah, we're allowed to do what we're doing. And this is now after we came to an impasse and contract talks with the ticket or with cumulus we

Decided to do a podcast and put it behind a paywall and not have advertising We did a lot of things we thought that were that were saying hey, we were really not trying to compete. We're two guys We couldn't come to an agreement So we're just gonna do a podcast McCool was one of the guys who did look at our contracts and say, you know I feel confident that I Now I'll paraphrase and you could correct me if I'm wrong. I thought you said you felt good that yes legally You should be able to do this now you might still you know, they might push back on that Because that's what big companies will do because they have, you know, they have the money and it's two guys who generally don't have the money for a

bunch of attorneys. Is that right? Yeah, that's exactly right. I mean, you can definitely see bigger companies sort of money whip or intimidate, you know, two guys trying to start a podcast as sort of the litigation strategy. And so it's, you know, I started as a prosecutor and what we would say is you can beat the rap but not the ride. And so even if you're going to maybe come out successful, it was going to be a long journey, should they decide to sue you guys, which is clearly what they decided to do.

Okay, so that's how I met McCool. So actually kind of knew him before really this all kind of got going. I knew Philip very well through the years. We've known Matt Brunig very well. Matt might have been another one who we showed our non-compete and say, yeah, what if we started podcasting? Certainly, Philip, what if we, you know, and I think everybody kind of nodded and said kind of the similar thing that McCool did is, I'm not saying they won't come after you, but if they do, this is legally, I think this is legally sound in the state of Texas, you're going to be fine. Now going to be fine

didn't take into account you might have you know high six figures to pay back a bunch of lawyers, which we do. But anyway Now let's let's go on I guess to Let's go chronologically, and I think this way we will get to this is how we will get to where you know how Liz came in how Frank came in but chronologically the the ticket negotiations did end at a certain point you know we they oddly said, will you send us a resignation note? Like we were talking back and forth, they're throwing us out, they're throwing us out,

and it got so far away from where we were talking that eventually we said, hey, I just don't, I think we're at an impasse, I don't, we're not going to accept what you guys are saying and they're saying, well, we're not going to give any more. OK, will you send us a resignation letter? I thought it was odd, just because our contracts had just run out. Did Jason Garrett have to send a resignation letter to Jerry Jones, or did his contract run out? Yeah.

So we did on a certain day. I can't remember exactly what day. Yeah. So we did on a certain day. I can't remember exactly what day. Yeah, and for me, I had been out of contract for over two months. Yes, yours was April. Mine actually ended mid-June. And then they asked us on whether it was a Sunday or a Monday or a Monday morning, whatever it was,

to send it in that day. And we're like, I mean, I guess. Yeah. That's what you need. But we hadn't been at work for two weeks at that point. Yeah, it was mid-July. Yeah, and I think part of it was the email. Yeah, and I think part of it was we had some built-in vacation.

Possibly that ate up a little bit of that time. But for the most part, Yeah, it was like well We haven't been here so Right. It's pretty clear. We're not Yeah, but I believe they did pay us through that period or whatever so for at least part of it Yeah, yeah, so that would mean that okay. Yeah, we Resigned so that but yeah, but what did I don't think we quit and I don't think they fired us I think we just didn't come to an agreement. That's sure been my shot all along

So it's weird when you see it in in print or something. That's wrong. It's probably June 30th is The day where I kind of heard in y'all's voices That you were done now we fucked around with it for another couple of weeks But as you recall we were getting absolutely nowhere. But yeah, we had a comp- I was confident we could get to an agreement though. I thought we would. We would go back and forth day by day of how confident we were about that matter. Over that two weeks, yeah. But it was weird.

It wasn't zero yeah yeah so okay so now we we stopped working for the ticket on the day that see Matt it's your fault Liz yeah now we stopped working for the ticket on the bus at the dog the dog is gonna there's a very emotional week for us. Yeah. We, you know, talking to our friends there and, you know, we had talked to our friends previous to that week too. But then once, you know, you heard it on the ticket when now the hardline, the musers actually address it, then you know it's really real. So that was on Friday. The hardline could have been a Thursday. In fact, I believe that

Thursday night is when we put out a youtube 15 minute thing we recorded at cash saroi studio Which was a uh ticket. Goodbye, you know, and we had called our boss there dan bennett at the ticket and said hey We're going to release a video just want you to know Uh, we uh, you know a lot of people had been emailing call, and we had not made any public comment on it. So here, we're going to put that out.

He signed off. Not that he had to sign off on it, but we thought it was our, I don't know, a common courtesy. We certainly didn't have to do that, but you know. I've worked with these people for over 20 years, and I didn't want animosity. No, and his response was actually like, you should do that. Yeah.

So, we did that, and then over that weekend is where we came up with the brilliant idea of, well, let's do a podcast. We're pretty sure that we legally can. So we're going to, you know know we named it the dumb zone We have dragon den productions was our We're gonna set up an LLC. That's where we're now like what is it? What are we doing? You know so now we we actually recorded a podcast

That Monday, so we put out a podcaster too and Then we got a cease and desist letter. Hmm. When we got the cease and desist letter, we certainly shared it with Philip and we're very good friends with Matt Brunig anyway. And shared it with Matt Brunig. And I think that's where Matt Brunig's role in this stepped up a little bit. Let me see. Anyone jump in if I get something wrong? Yeah, yeah. Let me say this real quick though. rolling this stepped up a little bit. Can anyone jump in if I get something wrong?

Let me say this real quick though. Yeah, yeah, I'll, yes. Are you just doing a Gordo bit? What are you doing trying to? No, sorry, sorry, it's a little choppy. I'll say the way I got involved was when you quit on the 17th, I heard about it and I texted you.

I was not previously like involved. I didn't tell you to quit or that you could podcast or whatever. You know, a long time ago, I had looked at some of these non-competes, but that's what happened. I got the text here like July 18th, congrats on the quit. I'm sure you've got a plan in place already,

but let me know if you want any help. I figured, you know, I knew a little bit about the situation and I thought, oh my god, this could be a problem. But then, yeah, then you got the cease and desist and you contacted me. And the reason to, you know, even look at the non-competes ahead of time while we're in contract negotiations was we've both had some diff, like I don't want to get dive into the story, but we've had difficult contract negotiations in the past. We're told, you know, at certain times zero money, we have no raise, whatever, nothing, you know, how about a pay cut after

being successful here for a while? Will that be? I mean, that's just the way things are. And I'm not upset about that. It's, you know, sad maybe a little bit, but that's how life is. I get it. Can I just throw in that you and Jake and by the way a lot of other people who've worked at the ticket have like Stockholm syndrome. Like the the idea I remember prepping y'all and hearing the story with Frank and Liz were all in my conference room and hearing the stories that you guys told Going back. It's not normal like yeah, it's exceptionally abusive behavior by management well that is your opinion and

I definitely think we'll get to the prep Saturday and Sunday more, but I think also part of it is just, you know, there is a qualitative effect to it where, you know, I grew up with it. So I'm like pricing that in a little bit. I just thought it's the price of, I don't know, a job that you like. We're big. Look, this is part of the big famous semi-fantasy, you know, media guy, you want to be in this game. This is the way it is. I mean, nobody notices you, but management drops everywhere. Yeah, yeah. No, I know Matt Hates hearing that, but for me, the one thing I was going to say that I mean reading about Major League Baseball and their dealings and players and agents and I'm like, well, this is how it is is you want to be in this game you know we can go

You know do something else and not have this kind of a thing But this is I thought it was all just part of the game and none of it bothers me to this day So sorry no I was just gonna say like so we started that Monday and and what really hit hard for me was I Don't know that they hire process servers that look like me, who have Kermit Mantis arms. They hire big guys. And a guy came to my house on a Saturday at 10 a.m. And at this point Carter's like six months old.

And, you know, it's 10 o'clock in the morning not a lot of people knocking on my door at 10 o'clock in the morning on a Saturday do you feel that's intimidating yeah yeah I did and you were like out of town or something or maybe like somehow they didn't have your address or I don't remember what happened I ended up getting it on the well I don't know if they did or not, but I know that they showed up. Yeah, so it must have been that weekend then after we first started. Well, and there's just like a knock on my door.

I've got the sun in the diaper. And they're like, yeah, you have to sign this now. Well, you have to understand what a horseshit this is. Like, they know who I am. They've sent me the system assist letter what am I give it to him any normal lawyer seeking to practice in a respectful way to their colleagues would pick up the phone and ask whether I was going to accept service like this it's again it's egregiously bad behavior yeah and that's especially true in

federal court where if you don't wa and that's especially true in federal court where if you don't waive, what you typically do in federal court is you ask the other side, will you waive service? If they refuse to waive service, you can tax that against them and get your money back for the service. So in federal court, there's absolutely no reason

not to at least reach out to the other side if you know they have an attorney and ask them if they will accept service. So the only thing you can take from that is it was intended to intimidate. Correct. Yeah. My wife is looking at me like, what are we doing now? See, that's what I thought would happen.

Truthfully, I thought- Well, it turns out right now I don't know. I thought there may be a problem. I didn't think there'd be no problem, but I thought, okay, a phone call will happen maybe to us, maybe to our attorney, but then it can be laid problem, but I thought okay a phone call will happen maybe to us maybe to our attorney But then it can be laid out. Hey We're behind a paywall. We're absolutely not going to even if we're allowed to which you know I think some of you lawyers Said somebody looked at our contract and said you could accept advertising right now It says you can't solicit advertisers, But we had actual advertisers call us and say,

I want to be a part of what you're doing. Yeah, that was me. And we said no. We said no just because, and maybe this is Stockholm syndrome, but I did not want to have even the appearance of that we are, air quotes quotes competing with the ticket. Like, um. Yeah, we were.

Just being extra cautious. Yeah, sure, we were being. You get that Liz. An abundance of caution. You get that, yeah. Dance theme. I'll wear a mask. I'll do whatever, an abundance of caution, I'm all for. And I just wanted to just kind of do our thing. We're just doing our thing.

We're not trying to Take down. It's one of the best radio stations in the in the nation we Are gonna take it down or compete with it? That's silly. Anyway, you're seeing your theme from the beginning was be cool. We're gonna be cool we want everybody to be cool and That sounds really good and it did not sell. Well, I just thought they might have talked to us before sending the threatening letter, but um...

I still think I probably could have kicked the guy's ass. Well, you think that about everybody you see. And I think he might be able to. So that happened. everybody you see. And I think you might be able to. So I think Matt and I were talking in the middle of July shortly after y'all did your formal resignation and we were trying to decide about the utility of filing an unlawful labor practice claim with the NLRB. So this is right after we got the cease and desist. Yeah. And the specific question we were asking ourselves, which now seems very stupid,

is, well, if they haven't done any, you know, if if Susquehanna hasn't like done anything or, you know, been aggressive toward us, are we buying ourselves a fight if we go to the NLRB first? And so I've got an email from July 26th from Matt right after we got the cease and desist letter that says, well, this makes the question of filing the ULP a little bit easier at least. Yeah, so we get the cease and desist

that says you're violating your non-compete and reminds you that you have a non-solicitation. And so the question we're presented with is, should we file an unfair labor practice charge alleging that those contract clauses are illegal under the National Labor Relations Act? Just get that out before they file a lawsuit. And the problem with that is once you file it, as we'll talk about later, you can't really unfile it.

And so there's some thought maybe they'll just send this letter and they won't do anything and that would be the preferred outcome, right? Is we'll just talk to them and they'll just buzz off. But if we file the charge, that's it. Like we're gonna have to fight them one way or another. And yeah, like that email shows, okay, well, they did eventually file the lawsuit anyway, so it didn't matter.

Like, you know, we were wise to file the charge when we did. So you say the resignation letter that we sent was the 17th? Yeah. OK, because on the 18th is when I first got contact. I'm trying to think otherwise, why did I think that their lawyers would just call us? This is when a guy from Birmingham, Alabama

contacted me and said, hey, we used to work for a cumulus station in Birmingham Alabama we broke off like they did their whole show broke off they even had a sales guy with them they had all the stuff we started our own YouTube he just said hey I think there's a good model for you to to succeed out here we started our own YouTube thing the second we started it we got a letter from Cumulus, a cease and desist letter.

But then their lawyers and our lawyers talked. We worked out an agreement, blah, blah, blah. Now, after this all went down and we ended up getting sued, my Birmingham friend said, maybe our success is what caused them to not talk it out with you. Yeah. That was all speculation.

But since they actually did prove a working model that they could be successful outside that world, they didn't want it just to keep happening and keep happening. Hey, maybe we shouldn't have let the Birmingham guys do what they did. Maybe the next guys that try something, we need to go after them hard. Yeah.

All speculation on my part. And as successful as those guys have been, and I think they've been extremely helpful and instructive to us, you're a way bigger deal than them. I'm not going to say us. I think you should say we. But it's true.

It's the ticket. Yeah. Like they're not going to let somebody get away from something that. Right, we had never heard of the Birmingham story. Ever, until it happened. But yes, the ticket is the number one station, probably, in Cumulus.

I mean, billing-wise, it's got to be up there. So you're not going to let something that happens at double A happen at your big league ball club. And that's not to say that I'm better than those guys. It's not what I'm saying. You are. You'd been around for a while. I'm so much better than most people.

So we're at the point now, we're still at just the cease and desist. Now Matt, have you kind of totally recapped? I'm trying to remember that now you send a... We file unfair labor practice charges alleging that the non-compete clause and the coworker non-solicitation clause violate section 881 of the NLRA. And that's both just a strategy in and of itself and also puts us in a...maybe it could scare them away from filing their lawsuit or if they do file a lawsuit, it's a good thing to have as far as defending ourselves in the lawsuit.

At least call. At least they'll call us. I thought you said there was language in the cease and desist also that was like, hey, they can't say this. Oh, well, the cease and desist threatens, you know. So, yeah, you're right. So it's not just that the contract clauses are illegal. It's that the cease and desist itself is illegal because the cease and desist threatens to take legal action against you as far as in the form of enforcing illegal contract clauses. So you end up having essentially three unfair labor

practices. You have the two contract clauses and then you have the cease and desist, which is a third separate unfair labor practice. Can I say one thing too, as far as like the Stockholm syndrome thing? I didn't mean that to be insulting. It's okay. No, I mean, we were, we did it. Every single attorney that I ever had look at my contracts outside of the one that was actually representing me was like, you should not sign this. Well, and then, and- And I love the guy.

Like, he was my agent for a long time. He was a super, super great dude. But he had like a pooled interest of risk, I suppose. Because he represented other people at the station. And in some ways that worked out for me, in some ways it didn't. But like, every single other attorney that I would have look at it, it doesn't matter if they were like oil and gas, if they were like criminal, if they were real estate, like they would look at my contract to be like, I don't

know man. Right. It's like some of this stuff is not something you should sign. That's what helped lead us to this decision because I had the same thing and I think that's part of another discussion about our contracts and just how certain clauses in our contract. But think about when we heard that guy, that national guy, that national, was he like an East Coast blowhard type guy like talking about our case? Oh, on his podcast?

It might have been a radio show, whatever. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And he's like, yeah, this is just the way that these contracts are written, and it's written that way, I would imagine, because the expanse of where you can go work is very limited. Yeah. And I mean, I talked leading up to, I mean,

I talked to people in other companies, and I knew what their contracts were. And not every radio companies got the same boilerplate contract. So there are things you can ask for. I've talked to guys who are we may talk to them that are CEOs of companies Who have said yeah, well when you are in a position of negotiating that's you can ask for this you can ask for this These are all But I think that's part of the stuff that just kind of led us to here

Yeah, yeah, which we will will definitely go go over in the future. But now We're at okay. So now now you file the unfair labor practice. And the next step, I think, is, and while we're trying to do a half-assed show, I got one piece of audio. We don't have an open. We have whatever. We're recording a show every day. Just because you really wanted to,

just because it's what we do. And we could just sit around talking about all this stuff all day, or we could actually, let's do two hours or an hour and a half and talk about sports and things we just can get away from this stuff with. Sure. I think that's why we're doing it too. Sure.

For ourselves, we're very egotistical. We think people need to hear us. Or he more than me. I'm fine with just kind of laying back in the shadows, but you know, Jake. All right. So now, how soon after the unfair labor practice charge do we get a lawsuit? August 4th, I think. Yeah, so the charges filed, the initial charge was filed on July 27th.

So we had what, seven days, and then they filed their lawsuit. Okay, so at first it was the cease and desist. We did not cease and desist. We didn't do either of those things. And yeah, then the lawsuit comes down. The paperwork on the lawsuit came to the house on my birthday. Oh, wow. Yeah, that was... You'll never forget.

August 5th. It was nice of them. Didn't one of those go to some prior residents? Yeah, we did joke about that a little bit, that somehow they had like my Fort Worth address. So somebody in West Fort Worth over off Camp Booy definitely got served either a cease and desist or a notification of being sued.

I think you said it was some guy who was probably locked on TCU. It's definitely over by TCU's campus. Okay, so now we have a lawsuit. Could be a lady, I don't know. And we have Philip and we have Matt Brunig on our side. And you guys are talking, what is the reaction right then we don't we don't know Liz or Frank yet correct correct quite literally just pulled into a condo building in Colorado for a vacation this is totally like just

hyper privileged complaints but every single time you guys have something bad happen to you. You're on vacation. I'm on vacation. Yeah, I've noticed that actually. So yeah, I just pulled in there. So I wasn't doing anything with it on that Friday. I think I did talk to Matt. And we were, you know, glad that we had filed the ULPs. And we were, you know, glad that we had filed the UOPs. But I think it was... I think didn't really get media attention until maybe somebody had it on Sunday, but I think it mostly was Monday the 7th. And Monday the 7th, I spent...

I think I spent the entire day drafting a response because they had nominally asked for a temporary restraining order and a temporary or preliminary injunction and we thought that their pleading was probably not meritorious that they would have a hard time but also we wanted to get a bunch of stuff in the record about how y'all had been cool and how you had not violated any of the terms of the employment agreements that you had. And so we, I think I drafted a long and according to the internet, extremely bad and unlikely to succeed response to the TRO. Where my choice of font was criticized.

A lot more editing, a lot more criticism than I'm used to from my legal work. I remember we didn't hop, we hopped on the phone a couple days later and I remember this because I was at a Legoland they have this giant Legoland and gosh in New York and it was burning hot and it was just me and the two kids and I was running around trying to talk to you guys about it and My what I was looking for was the other clauses because they had threatened to sue you on the non-compete and Mention the co-er non-solicit. They end up suing you on both of those and then they added in a breach of the confidentiality clause, a breach of a non-dispersion clause, a breach of a no recording rule, some IP violations,

stuff like that. And so I was looking at the other rules and saying, oh, well, we need to amend our charges because these rules are illegal too. Well, and the pleading also had a verification. Basically, Dan Bennett swore under oath that all the stuff in the petition or the complaint was true, including some very specific allegations that you all had solicited ticket advertisers. Yeah. And you know later as we developed evidence we understood how he developed that idea

but it's definitely nothing he should have put his signature on. And that's what that really shocked me because in everything like let's say Matt had to get our statement for the NLRB charge or whatever, our responses to the lawsuit. And I would tell you something and then I would get back to you a couple hours later like, I don't know, maybe it was July 17th, not the 8th. Like I wanted to make sure everything I say, like I thought it was kind of I was under oath if I sent that.

Yeah, yeah. And signed my name to it. I would stay up like at night like, am I forgetting something? Yeah, that was the one that really bent me out of shape because I don't know anything about the other things Matt Bruning is saying and I don't understand, I've recently been unfrozen.

So I don't get the- Frightens and confuses. All the little clauses that Matt says this is illegal, okay, maybe, I don't know I'll believe you you're Matt Brunig you work for the NLRB. I I knew though We didn't come close to soliciting a sponsor. In fact, I had a couple sponsors call me directly that day when we they heard about the news and said What if I cancel my advertising? Will that help your situation? Like will that help them come to the table and get

you what you want or whatever? I mean I think Adam Romo, I don't know if this is the time to bring in Adam Romo, but I said no, do not cancel your advertising. The ticket with or without us is a juggernaut, very strong, lots of people listen. Your business will do well. And it's good for your business. That's my opinion. You could do whatever.

I would seriously go through my DMs. I would go through my emails and be like, dude, am I forgetting something? Yeah, did I? I know I have a lot going on. Did I intimate that? No. Like my text messages?

And I said, don't cancel. I know you're mad. It was so weird to me. This is just business, and it's fine. And then the next thing is, hey, I want to sponsor you. What can I? No. I don't want to do that.

I think I might have gotten one that I said, we'll call you eventually. And that was it. So that's what, you know, a lot of this doesn't bother me. I think it's business. That actually bothered me, because it was like a blatant lie. I mean, in my opinion, it was a lie.

But like Philip said, I understand where they came up with that eventually. Like, oh, but our sales manager, somebody canceled. And then he came up with the opinion that these guys must be it be telling people to go yeah, but you know and We'll continue to like introduce like the the timeline of how everybody was involved here I feel like they deal in this world. We're like

Sometimes you are just throwing things at the wall Like for you, and I were like what the fuck but lawyers deal with throwing Yeah, or like you know and clients can sometimes just be like, OK, well, let's see if you can disprove this. Yeah. Like for you and I, we were like, that doesn't make any sense at all. We didn't do that.

We were never involved in that. Whereas I feel like the lawyers in general are like, eh, well. Let me push back on that just a little bit. It's one thing to put in a petition or complaint Hey, we we suspect that they're violating this non solicitation Provision because how else you know, they assume that's how you want to make money or whatever to swear to it is an entirely different deal and We can we can discuss why it didn't kill them as bad as it should have later, because I

think I understand that also now. But no, it's like from the beginning when I saw that thing, I was like, we're now holding a bunch more cards than we were before they made these really reckless sworn allegations. No, that's absolutely true. In petitions and other sort of contention pleadings, people put bullshit in there all the time. But once you, once you sign it under oath and attest to it, especially in federal court in support of a complaint, that's that takes it to a whole new level of a

big deal and you got to be pretty certain that you're factually correct. You make those as kind of assertion. Well, but what they did was throw in that one phrase that you know raised the question of whether it was even a valid you know verification to begin with of saying to the best of my knowledge not making it personal knowledge not saying based on corporate records I've reviewed just vaguely to the best of my knowledge well you go you lawyers have tricks. All we got to do is say that, and we could kind of say anything. Maybe.

Hey, there's the dumb zone. I'm Dan. I'm Jake. I'm Blake. And? I'm Clayton. That's right. Clayton's here because we're here to promote our Whataburger

remote, which is Tuesday, July 8. We're going to start at 1130. We're giving away 75 Whataburger slash Dumb Zone branded car trays. This is exclusive to this remote. The only way to get one of these is to come out to this remote. It's while supplies last, so 75 of them. You might want to get out there early.

And what would you suggest people order while they're there, Clayton? You're the expert on the menu. Double water burger with bacon and cheese, grilled onions, mustard mayo. This is your regular order? This is what I'm going to probably eat one or two of. Then just a three piece chicken strip by itself spicy ketchup with the gravy Yeah, it's a side which one of you would win the menu like a trivia game

Why you know I think I'm like a fairly picky eater But like that's the thing about water burgers you can just like so for me I put avocado on the burger I go double cheese two types of cheese avocado no bacon And then yeah, if you do a side of chicken, you've got to get the gravy with it. And then the spicy ketchup is, to me, the only ketchup that exists. I don't really recognize the other option.

Chicken strip sandwich, substitute the barbecue for honey butter sauce. Damn, that is a vet book. Come out, come out. The barbecue sauce honey butter sauce. Damn, that is a vet move. Come out, come out. The barbecue sauce is a lot. The barbecue sauce is a lot. Argue about this amongst yourselves. Rather dip it.

July 8th, 1130, we'll be there. Whataburger, Frisco, El Dorado, the Tollway, and free car trays while supplies last. Okay, so where are we? We got the, the lawsuit is now filed. The, is the lawsuit and the temporary injunction, you mentioned that, Phillip that Philip that the same No, okay

Well, I mean it's it's all a part of the same deal like that It's a complaint where they had asked for they later filed a separate Application they didn't call it an application they call I can't remember what they called it emergency application for TRO that's one of the first things I notice is they waited from the fourth to the eighth to actually seek and then said it was an emergency yes so is that is that a preferred method obtaining a TRO advice on this usually those two together the same day right you'll file that complaint that TRORO right? You're trying to convince a judge to take to give you an extraordinary remedy because the house is on fire and it's got to be

done right now it's got to be done ex parte meaning without without the other side present and you got to do it now or else there's going to be hellfire brimstone calamity. And when you wait four days that automatically cuts against that emergency. To be fair two of those days were a weekend but I had the question when I saw the docket of why file the complaint on Friday if you're going to wait until Tuesday. It was also weird because the temporary restraining order, it would just rehash of the complaint. You didn't need any time to just copy paste most of it.

Also, I just know this from message boards or whatever. Wasn't there also something with that that they didn't inform you of it? Well, what they ultimately did is later that week But that's why it was summarily dismissed, right? Wednesday or Thursday. They went down and tried to get an ex parte TRO and again The level of bad behavior here is hard to explain to civilians. They know who I am I've communicated with them since the cease and desist

my office has communicated with them since the cease and desist. My office has communicated with them since they served the lawsuit. And they made no effort to get in touch with me or any of your other possible legal counsel and went down there to try to get relief without us being there. And it's, ex parte relief when the other side is not there is the most extreme form of extraordinary remedy. And so it's, the judge is going to be asking them, which she did,

have you tried to get in touch with these guys or their counsel? Do you know who their counsel is? Which at that point they had to admit they did and so you know she the the order I think you can read on the docket sheet and it it's I think the language probably will inform most people that she wasn't amused see Blake this was our life yeah and this seems stressful Yeah they're like telling us all this stuff and we're like is this good? Yeah and we're idiots. We don't understand most of it. Is it bad? Well and the level of work we had to do very quickly was large because when you when you go for TRO you're essentially saying

the house is burning down and when the house is burning it down there's a whole lot of shit to do right so we were forced to get you guys under oath in in affidavit form to have as part of the response to be able to explain to the judge you know very clearly the the be cool strategy that that's a response to the temporary restraining order yeah Yeah, we filed two actually. The first one we filed, we got on file before they went down to try to get the TRO, which may have helped us depending on if the judge was able to review it or not. And then the second one was after Liz and Frank were in the case. And I think I'm a pretty decent trial lawyer and I have certainly done some appellate work, but Liz specializes in appellate work.

Her both her form and her method of putting together stuff is superior to mine. By the time we got that on file, which was mostly, I would characterize that more as a response to the application for a preliminary injunction. It's primarily to be used in that context. We had a very, very good pleading on file. Now, I got some jokes in the original one that I think probably were pretty good. That I then removed.

You didn't remove all of them. I really appreciated it. Okay, so Liz is involved now. then Liz and then Liz had her own jokes Well, sweet. So we clarify that the temporary restraining or preliminary injunction. They're trying to just get an order to stop the podcast Yeah, that's all about that's pretty much it is that we're doing irreparable harm. Yes And that that it has to stop now until they want to stop it right away before the trial, before anything. Yeah. And it's a super big deal because what they were asking for is a prior restraint of free

speech, which is the hardest injunction to get in US law. That's not something that judges ever really want to do. Didn't they also try to get any money we had made thus far from the podcast or is this later? No, that's in there. That was in there. Okay. Yeah. And it wasn't that much. It's called disgorgement. Okay. I know you like words. Yeah. And they were going to have you pay all their fees and it was, it was a lot. Right. And, uh, is there something called tolling that I remember? That was a different, that's a different issue different issue. So anyway, I think that the, I think publicity started to really fire up

on Monday the 7th, and I'm pretty sure that's when I met Liz and Frank. No, it was this following Saturday. So, here's my recollection of learning about this. I'd been very busy, so I wasn't really listening to anything. But my husband knew that you guys had left, started podcasting. We went to dinner that Thursday, Thursday the 10th, 9th or 10th with friends who also listened to it. They were talking about

it and I was like that some of that doesn't sound normal just you know from the idea of you know how the TRO went and things like that. And so I went home and looked at the docket and yeah, it was that the TRO was denied on, let's see, on Wednesday, the day after it was filed. You guys filed your initial response on Thursday. And then Saturday, like Friday night, Saturday morning is when I sat down and I had just print out everything out of curiosity, started looking at it. And thank you for the compliment, but your writing is very good. Like

you said, the house is on fire. I could just tell from looking at it that it was rushed and you guys didn't have like the resources of like a word processing department. And I had thought based on listening to a couple of your podcasts from like Thursday when we went to dinner and learned about it that y'all had a huge legal team. So I was like, oh, it's not worth me like, you know, reaching out or anything. There's a ton of people on this. And when I start looking at the pleadings, I was like, there's only two people. One of them's in DC. The other one is, I know who Philip Kingston is and there's clearly no word processing department so I'm betting there's no other big firms on this.

I ran it, you know, by the people I needed to do to see if I could offer. And then I emailed Philip on Saturday and I got a call or you either picked up or you called me back within like 15 minutes and said, yeah, can you get on a call in three hours? Well I should clarify that I wasn't really doing a whole lot of work on the like district court stuff. So I think you had written a very large part of the response. I did write, yeah, I actually did not intend that to go in. And Philip was just like, just throw this in there.

Well, I think on the 7th, we did actually talk to some other lawyers. We started to get offers, essentially, of people who love you and want to help you come to aid us. And it was a pretty easy conversation with the two of you to say, look, I can't afford to do all this for free. If we're going to get some help, you know, it would be valuable. Okay, I think essentially in the week following y'all getting sued, we had, I mean, I think you had all of your friends reach out and offer support,

but we had lots of lawyers who wanted to come help. And so assembling a really good legal team actually became kind of easy. When did you come in, Frank? Same day. On the 10th. I don't know what I just looked at my email. The first email I sent you was on the on the 10th. The and I knew that you were going to be getting a lot of requests for for help on the case. So I did mine a little I sent you an email where I did a little differently. I actually briefed a little bit of the issues for you and said it to you as kind of a, hey here are my thoughts on some arguments you can

make and you'd also worked with my son-in-law. He's on the Dallas City Council so I kind of name dropped because I really wanted to be involved. From the very beginning when I read the complaint You know we've often used the David versus Goliath analogy That's really what it looked like to me and when I saw the big firms on on on On the signature block for the cumulus for the Susquehanna You know I really thought my skills would be well suited for that That type of a case and so I really wanted to skills would be well suited for that, that type of a case. And so I really wanted to be involved.

I'll of course, I like the guys. Um, but it was, it was an opportunity for me, uh, which was really appealing to put kind of my two loves together, the practice of law and sports radio. And so it was really one that I wanted to be involved in. And so I, I made it obviously wanted to be involved in and so I made it Obviously in hindsight a compelling case for you Well, I think all four of us are Are in this because we're p1s and of the four of us

You're definitely the biggest. Yeah. Yeah yeah and I was gonna mention this a little later but here's as good a spot as any. There was a little bit of a paradox in my mind because the ticket was the soundtrack of my young adulthood. I set my alarm clock for the first day they went on air with Skip Bayless. Um, you know, so I had been listening literally from minute one of the start of the station, uh, and I even streamed it when I was in law school. Um, and so. You didn't leave with skip. No, in hindsight, maybe I should have, but it put me in an awkward position of advocating

for you guys against the station I grew up listening to. That was sort of hard and that really came, I was going to mention it later because it really kind of hit home when we were in trial and I was cross-examining Jeff Catlett. But getting back to our timeline, it was August 10th, I sent you the email and you got back to me fairly quickly and we got rolling from there. I think Liz came on like the next day. We had a Saturday Zoom meeting to introduce ourselves. Yeah, that's why, because you were involved in my first notes. I just want to know, and I don't know if I've ever told any of you this,

but I reached out to Philip thinking like, you know, I do appellate stuff. I know this is like a TI thing. Maybe they just need like some light help with briefing. And then it kind of, because it was, you know, then the urgent nature of it, it quickly spun into something much more involved, which was, you know, was great. But I had no idea. Um, yeah, for me, for me, I remember like the first time that, uh, at least all three of us, if not all four of us were on a Zoom call together. And Dan and I, you know,

I mean, we play it up a little bit, but we are just not intelligent people. And we just don't live in the world that you guys live in. We don't live in the real world at all. We've always, as I think Groob's used to say, we shop in the candy aisle. Like our lives are, we get to just entertain. And so I remember the first time that I was on a call

with all of you and being like, this is real. Like these people are talking about real stuff. I needed to take notes, I couldn't sleep after that. It was just like, when all of you got involved, it was like, all right, well these are like incredibly smart people who when all of you got involved, it was like, all right, well, these are like incredibly smart people who spend all of their time on stuff like this. And now that's when it became like super, super real to me.

Like when I saw Liz's Stanley Cup, I was like, oh, fuck. I'm no longer just like talking to Dan and Philip, who we've been in a bar together at 2 a.m. many times that's like oh wow like we're really we're involved now it felt it felt way different then Frank called me and I think I somewhat knew you from Twitter but it was just within like a span of 48 to 72 hours, it just became very clear to me that it was like, this is going to be a way bigger deal than I thought it was. And the time we ended up putting into it all, I just remember, you know, we talk about,

or Blake says, boy, I didn't know. It was every night. Going through all this stuff. But just like, just on the phone with Brunig and Philip, perhaps responding, what's our response? Well, we wrote our own, well then they go through it, now let's read line by line everything and make sure we double check it. It's just, the amount of work you guys do is incredible. It's insane. It's just insane. And we would get the 11pm email from Frank, the 1230 email

from Liz, the 230 email from Liz, the 2 a.m. email from Philip. I'd wake up in the morning and see Matt Brunig somehow run a four page whatever. He did it last night after we got off. Matt hit us at 3.30 in the morning. Yeah, I'm just like, what is happening? Like how are these people, people?

They're just robots. We're not, we're lawyers. I don't know. I did feel bad for you guys on the first call where I met y'all, because we'd talked once before about briefing, and then, and I thought, you know, because I figured we probably wouldn't interact

with you guys, because you know, it's like Philip will handle it, we'll just be, you know, help as needed. But then the next day, we got on, and it was like, we don't have any time to mess around. We have to talk about what our brief is gonna look like. And he said, you guys were gonna be on.

And so y'all got on, we said hi, but then yeah, we did deep dive into legal discussions. There were not a lot of niceties, yeah. So I didn't know this at the time, but I formed this opinion as things were happening and then certainly by the end of it all. And I don't know if, Philip, you did this on purpose. I know I've formed the opinion you're an excellent delegator, but also just that the mix of people

we ended up with, everybody seems to have their own style, their own, just you're just so different, but then it all blended so well. You know, you got your bulldogs, you got your, hey, let's be cautious, you got your, I don't know, the, you know. Peacemaker. Research attorney, peacemaker, you have your, you know, yeah, there's just so many, I don't know, your analyst, your, you know, I'll face this from a logical point,

I'll face this from, well yeah, but this is the way it works when you're dealing with a judge. Dude, it's crazy, like, you know, somebody made that meme, but my daughter, as I've told you, has recently gotten extremely into the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. The Turtles work because they're four different personalities.

And at the time I was just like, holy shit, like all these four people are like the smartest people I've ever met in my life, but they're all so different. And I don't know. And I guess it's like a team or something. You don't want four of the same kind of hitters or the four, you know. It was just cool. It was really, really cool to watch the person. Like the collective intellect.

No offense, Phillip, you don't want four Phillips, right? You don't want four Bruno. I don't want two Phillips. You need a mix. I don't want two Phillips. And it's harder to do. I think Phillip did a great job. It's harder to do than anybody can really imagine.

Because any time you get four lawyers in a room talking about an issue you're going to get five different opinions. And I thought that was a worry at first with Philip because you're a very opinionated guy. You know your way is right. Also, Bruning is very similar to that. And you're usually, you guys are right. And I didn't know how you would, if you would want other people interjecting their thoughts and opinions into what you already know is right. And I didn't know how you would, if you would want other people interjecting their thoughts and opinions into what you already know is right. But you guys absolutely welcome that. No, no, I didn't. No, I don't welcome that at all. And I hate it. It's just that I've

been trying cases for 25 years and if you got smart lawyers telling you something, you know, you're being an idiot if you don't listen. So it's not my personality. It's a question of having learned by doing the wrong thing. I think somewhere along the way I introduced you to McCool, who I had talked to behind your back and said, hey, I don't know if McCool, did you ask for the introduction? I don't recall how you ever got in touch with Philip. Yeah. Did you ask for the introduction? I don't recall how you ever got in touch with Philip. Yeah, I just, I come from a larger firm,

a firm of equal size or greater than the one that you guys were facing. And so I said, hey, look, I have certain resources, extra manpower here if you wanna bounce off any ideas or bring in some other heavies. But what I loved about it is, yeah, I concur with what everybody's saying that it's really easy to have many cooks in the kitchen when it's a bunch of lawyers. Everybody is competitive and everybody thinks that they're the greatest gift to the profession. Just ask them, they'll tell you. And, and, you know, whatever I saw from the outside looking in, it's just, uh, there was,

y'all four made some real magic here. Well, I think it's an interesting psychological experiment for, I don't know, for lawyers, because usually when you do have four lawyers on a team, it's, it's something where there's a clear chain of command and there's one person that's going to be managing things and you're just reporting up. And this was very unusual in that it's people you've never worked with before. There's four of that. You and Matt may have worked together before, but Frank and I hadn't worked with either of you. And

Philip you're lead counsel, but in practice, like, it seems like we all, you know, we were all kind of equally heard. Well, I've managed legal teams before where everybody is junior to me. And, you know, that's a more directive type of situation with, I don't think. If nobody tells Matt Brunick what to do, I can, I've already figured that out. And I don't think I would have been serving our interests at all if I had been directive with you and Frank.

Because of your experience level, because of your expertise, like that just didn't seem like that was going to go my way. Yeah. And I think, yeah like that was gonna go my way. Yeah. And I think, yeah, you guys definitely benefited from that. I've never worked with another attorney on anything, but I was doing the NLRB stuff. Does not play nice with others.

And if someone had come in and started opining about the NLRB stuff, I probably would have slipped their throat, but for the rest of it, everyone would seem very respectful of my NLRB stuff, I probably would have slipped their throat, you know, but for the rest of it, everyone would seem very respectful of my NLRB theories. So, I was cool to just relax and, you know, leave the other stuff to others, you know. Yeah, and I think that's one thing we as a team did a good job of was not stepping on the toes of the person who had the expertise in that particular area. I know I personally stayed completely clear of any NLRB stuff because it was nothing I had ever

done before. Heck, I would have been... I'm not sure I could have told you what NLRB stood for when we started this thing. And so I, you know, I told myself at the very beginning, you know, I'll let Matt and Philip handle the NLRB stuff. I'll handle, you know, in courtroom litigation type things. And so I tried to stay in my lane. And I think, I think most of us did that. And, you know, and that I think that's why the team gelled so well is, is that we did

our own thing and we didn't try to encroach upon the others. I made Philip hug me after the mediator left the room one day though just to calm things down. Well, you know, in any certain scenario, like I said, when you get four lawyers together, you're gonna get five opinions and there was friction at times. But, you know, we all, I think we all understood that we had one goal and that was to get you out of this morass that you found yourself in. And I think, I think we all did a good job of putting our normally large egos aside, you know, most of the time there were, there were moments of friction, but A lot of friction. I think the, the issue is that not everything you're dealing with is legal.

Right? It's a lot of questions. Once it gets to strategy, that's where we don't have to find lanes. And so that's where I think we would rub a little bit. And I, there's no like, yeah, it's no secret. Like Phillip and I butted heads a lot. And I will say, I don't think Philip, if it had been a different case, I would have had as different of opinions to you as I did in this case,

but I'm not used to representing individuals, especially individuals that do not have legal experience. So I just came into it once I was not just going to be briefing and I was directly going to be, you know, interacting with clients. I was just wanted to be so cautious about making sure you guys always knew even if it's a one percent chance, here is the absolute worst case scenario from any given decision and you guys decide what you want and so, Philip, since you tend to have a more aggressive approach, I was even more cautious in this case than I am in any other.

But now we just sit on the couch next to each other. I know. Now we're best friends. Yeah, no, that was definitely, I don't know. I mean, I probably tend more towards Liz's approach to life other than the fact that I guess I recently nuked my career. But yeah, she would tell us, hey, here's what could happen

And I'm like damn dude. That's probably what's gonna happen Well, it didn't seem like everybody had confidence that it was over 50% chance that if it went to trial That we would prevail. I Don't know I felt like that that felt like at least the prevailing thought But you know the other thing about it said if it didn't you never know you got a judge I got this circuit all that judges and it could end up this could be a years-long process And that was a worst-case scenario painted by you at times Well, and also yeah not and not and this is another kind of gray area of a lot of the advice that I felt like

I was giving wasn't really necessarily legal It was based on y'all's you know thought of we didn't want to be in this position We didn't want to be fighting a lawsuit and so a lot of it was tailored to not whether you would win But even if you win, what is your life gonna be like for the next year year and a half in order to get there? yeah, and it was tough for me too, because I was just, I was constantly like trying to remain Dan's ally, but also reminding him like, dude, I got a lot going on right now. Like the Tom Brady, I'm 45. I got a lot of shit going on. I was like, dude, I'm,

uh, I don't know, man, like I gotta, I gotta take both these kids to school every morning We're going to court. We may have to keep doing this for another six months 12 months 18 months and you know I Think everybody was really cool about it But there were days where I would want to call Philip and Matt and be like I'm sorry you guys think I'm a huge pussy, but. You did that three times. I feel like we need to kind of just count our winnings here

and feel good about what we did. There were just times where I felt, I don't know. It was a tough couple months for me. I think this is a good time, as any, of letting your listeners know what the dynamic was because we're kind of skirting around the dynamic here. But the dynamic was that, you know, Philip and Matt were kind of scorched earth, burn the boats, fuck these guys. Let's take these guys down.

Well, and yet at times Matt and I would be more aligned because we both have a pellet background. They were also, that was interesting just to watch the... Liz and I had a separate channel of communication. And Liz was like the mom in the room of a bunch of kids. You know... Do you guys have any idea what you're doing? Yeah, she was the one that tried to drag everybody back to some form of reasonableness.

And somehow I just kind of landed in the middle on most things. I was sort of the Switzerland of trying to, you know, yeah, I see both sides, but maybe, you know. Well, this came from your mouth, Liz was so I don't think I'm good I'm not it's not something that sprung from my head. I believe you describe yourself as having yappy dog energy Oh, I am I have anxiety for sure yeah That actually came in quite helpful for me in court Yeah, yeah, Jake is like because I can tell him like you are having a panic attack.

If you're having a full blown panic attack. And I was like, you need, cause I know and he'd said it's stomach stuff for him and so I was like just tell the judge that you need to go to the restroom, she'll let you go. And he got up and went to go vomit. That did happen. Twice. You literally vomited. In the courtroom. I think I threw it in the courtroom. In the court bathroom. Yeah, had to throw the tie. So it's probably. Over the courtroom. I think in the courtroom in the court bathroom. Yeah had to throw the tie So it's probably over the shoulder. It's probably worth going into a little bit of like the actual law Governing the case so I've been

advising y'all for a long time and I've always thought that the the boilerplate Susquehanna restrictive covenants in the employment agreement had some severe problems. Not maybe totally unenforceable but essentially they were going to be tough to enforce. Now you guys got a good dose of what McCool said earlier, you can beat the rap but maybe not the ride. They can put you through a lot of pain, but we felt really confident on the language of the contract we were going to litigate.

Then I think that Matt's advice from the standpoint of the NLRA was that there was even a different way. Under Texas law and federal procedural law, we thought we had a really good defense. And then Matt thought that the separate track of going to the NLRB was gonna create a different defense, which it has and continues to. But then the actual lawsuit itself was so odd that it really boosted my optimism about prevailing

because filing this in federal court is inexplicable. Texas state law concerning injunctions for violation of restrictive covenants and employment agreements is entirely more friendly to corporations than federal law is. So they didn't need to file in federal court. And then beyond that, once they filed in federal court, you guys live in Tarrant County, which is in the Fort Worth division of the Northern District. And if they had directed their case toward the Fort Worth

division, they probably would have gotten a judge that was more friendly to employers. And if they'd filed in state court in Tarrant County, we're probably, I mean, maybe there's no podcast. I don't know. Yeah, let me jump if you don't, I'm so sorry. Let me just jump in for a quick second for two things. One is I need to echo what Liz said about disclaimers also, especially when we're talking about the law. This is not legal advice. I'm here in my personal capacity. I forgot to say that at the very beginning about an hour ago. So too late, too late.

Given any advice yet. So you're good. But to Phillip's point, um, you know, I know you guys get a lot of emails from people saying that they're day one DFs and I've been listening from day one. But I think and I'll have to go back and look at my order confirmation. I became a paid subscriber probably within a couple of days of the complaint coming down for exactly the reasons that Philip was talking about. I mean, I just, I read the complaint and you know, I respect that firm quite a bit.

And this, my guess is that this was client driven and the client was like, look, these guys represent sort of an existential threat to our radio host contracts and our dynamics. And so we got to throw the suit out there. But my optimism went up quite a bit. I think like, Philip, like what you're saying, once I got into the meat of the complaint. So was I circumspect enough on that, Dan? I'm going to have to look that word up to figure out how to answer it. So where are we? Frank and I got involved and then I don't

think what happened next? I mean essentially the the next thing that happens is we're preparing for the preliminary injunction. Was that the next day? Was that that Sunday? It was pretty quick. Or was it a week? We had a week. We had a week to Saturday, right? Yeah. Yeah. And uh, so yeah that all during that period of time. This is early August? Yeah, this is the yeah, I came in on the 12th and then I guess that next week we were doing the briefing. Yeah, it's mid-August. I mean that whole week was us doing the briefing to try to get the judge up to speed on the legal issues. Now we got very fortunate that this judge is somebody that I practiced in front of for a long time, I think Frank also, because she used to be a

state court judge and I think she was actually an associate judge in the state court system when I first got licensed and she knew these issues. But then we were coming down to needing to go to court and put Dan and Jake on the stand and so that involves with people who have not done this before quite a lot of prep. And woodshed weekend. We do call this taking the woodshedding or taking the witness to the woodshed. And I hope it's not as unpleasant as that sounds, but it's not great. And we spent two solid

days getting you all prepped. And that's where we had the whole like going through your history at the ticket and all the things that have transpired particularly in an HR context that you know the three of us were just looking at each other from time to time going I can't believe that's real and it's going to sound so good on the stand. Okay so. One at the same time all the things that were in your declaration we're trying to get you know I'm thinking of it, of like, well, how do we get this in as evidence versus just, it's great that that's

the story, but... Yeah. And I think it's important to, I think Philip kind of skipped over something. What we're really doing here is within a week, week and a half period, preparing a case for trial. Because in this area of the law, the outcome of the preliminary injunction hearing is likely the outcome of the case. And so we're having to get our briefing in order, because we had to, Philip said they

filed an initial brief, but then we had to file an amended brief. So we had to get all the briefing in order and then we had to marshal our evidence to get ready for the hearing and then get the guys ready. And so we literally, the lawyers literally through the week of the 12th, that's all we did was just hammer out a brief and then get our stuff together to prepare for the hearing and then get the guys in on Saturday and Sunday to woodshed them to prepare them for their testimony on Monday.

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this is something where they can definitely save you some money over one day. They'll help your remo. They'll help your remo. One one day doors. So again that website onedaytexas.com slash promo 30. Alright like Frank said it was time to get Dan and Jake ready for the stand. That's a lot of the meat of the next episode as well as how Dan's conscience shifted the entire case and got the dream team in a little bit of hot water

with the judge. I feel like we benefited from having people around us that knew who we were, that were listeners, that were kind of personally invested. Yeah, see, okay, see, that's why I feel like we can get like somewhat, well, maybe we should do the hearing first, but I feel like at Mediation, that became like extremely clear to me, was that every single person in our room like really understood the facts on the ground and

The mediator who was awesome super super nice guy super brilliant Very patient very very patient Philip would come back I was meaning just the amount of time would come back and forth. Oh, I was meaning just the amount of time. Would come back and forth from room to room. And he would come back from them. And it's like Dan Bennett was really cool to us through this process. And he's a pros-pro. But he manages like 12 radio stations, or whatever it is.

Eight. I don't know. Yeah, he doesn't know the inside stuff. Yeah. And so the other attorneys that they had in the room with him were not people who worked in radio. So they would have nobody who worked on the ground on their side and then us over here.

And they would come back and they would say the most asinine things to us. What is a benchmark? They want the news. Like, the news? Right, you can't, like, they're alleging that we were doing the same show. Like, every radio station in the country does that. Yes, they do the news, they do an open. Are you guys reading birthdays? Yeah, now that's...

We're just like, what? That's a little farther down. I wanted to just mention at least some dates So you guys talk about all this prep work you're doing preparing for you know getting ready to even get us ready So this is before we had the the weekend because I remember I drove my daughter to halfway to Clemson I Stopped in Birmingham, Alabama, but on the phone the whole drive there You know she was driving and I was on the phone with you guys back and forth.

I'm sure she loved that. Prepping, this and that. She was fine. She doesn't pay attention to me at all. Because then I met the Birmingham guys, checked out their studio, looked at their model, talked to their business guy. Also we're trying to set up a business plan for the long term while we're doing this, while we're doing a daily podcast of trying to actually just talk sports or whatever we're

interested in. So yeah, and some of, okay, I mean you got a lot going on, but I'm driving a kid to Clint. Sure, no. I feel you. That was the ninth is when I flew home from Birmingham. So I guess Monday and Tuesday or whatever must have been must have been that Monday. I was driving So then you say Frank we worked throughout the week at the 12th I did come home and I guess the 19th and 20th because the 21st

had to be the hearing date. Yes, because I Remember they had given that to us and it's like, hey, two weeks from now you're gonna have a hearing. Well, I already have a flight to take my other daughter to Ithaca, New York. And I had this big plan of I'm gonna stay in Ithaca for two days and I haven't seen my mom in a couple years. So then I'll drive to Cleveland from Ithaca and then I'm going to fly home from Cleveland. Well, this hearing, I never drove to Cleveland just because now we're in mediation that whole week and I had to be on the... you know, now I'm taking my daughter out to the Target to buy some stuff and hold on, I

got to go outside and now I'm talking to a mediator and the judge or whoever, I don't know, that was quite a hectic week, but we're not even there yet I guess. Well, I mean we're getting there, but I mean. We gotta get to our prep weekend, that was a big deal. Yeah, that was probably like the biggest deal, but I will tell you.

The first of multiple, I think. The first of multiple, that's right. I will tell you that first of multiple the first of multiple. That's right. I will tell you that I Don't know I would have never told you to do anything differently You know, I don't know you don't want to miss memories with your kids ever But I was fucking terrified to be there without you Like the idea yeah, it wasn't like great when I was no no. No, no, no. And I know you didn't feel great about it. Someone else could do it. No, but I was just like, works.

So they're just going to put them up on a screen? As you know, if you have a wife that works, and then you do this, it's kind of like, well, you could do that whenever. Exactly. That's easy to do. And you could just, well. It's not work like what the lawyers do.

Yeah, this isn't like actual work that you have to go punch a clock. OK, I guess you're right. So I'll fly to Ithaca. I'll record a podcast. And I'll guess you're right. So I'll fly to Ithaca. I'll record a podcast. And I'll do, you know. But actually, I guess we had, we didn't do the podcast that week.

No. Because we had been told to stop. But you were going to do a court appearance in a coat and tie and I believe gym shorts. Yeah, on the Zoom. Liz made you take a coat and tie. She's like, you have to do it. I was wearing it on the plane.

Which I also think. But then, oh, okay, it didn't get lost? No, the rest of the luggage got lost. Yeah, the stuff I took on the plane did. But I was, dude, I was so afraid to be in there without you. Like, I don't know. I just, it feels like so much of this is a collective thing. And I wouldn't just say that about you,

but I would say that about, if it wasn't for them then I would have probably just stayed home. Like I felt confident enough with you know Frank Liz and Phillip but without you being there man I was like damn dude I really don't want to do this and then the way that it ended up turning out when we actually both did have to go on the stand Only reinforces my thought on that. Oh just because it was like I just needed you there with me. Oh, okay I thought like that. Yeah, I don't know. I was intrigued by yeah. Yeah for sure I was intrigued by going on the stand. Yes

But yeah, so we go in there that weekend. Yeah, you could have thrown up four times four times instead of two Yeah, so we go in there that weekend And I, you could have thrown up four times. Four times instead of two, yeah. So we go in there that weekend. And I think the main thing that Dan and I came away from on that Saturday evening, Saturday night, was like, I think, again, I think we just thought it was going to be about the contract. So we had a hearing Monday, and the prep was going to be Saturday and Sunday. Yeah.

All day Saturday, and then whatever we need Sunday. prep was gonna be Saturday and Sunday. Yeah, it's all day Saturday and then whatever we need Sunday That was still five or six more hours. Oh, yeah. Yeah, but we got there at like 9 a.m Saturday at Liz's or at Phillips Phillips. Okay. Yeah, we were at different places at different times And I think both of us just thought like okay. Well, what's this gonna be? Like here's the contract. Here's what we think about it it what do you guys think about it and then it turned into tell me your life story I don't know dude like a like a full ethnography of your entire existence professionally so that's where okay so we did that all Saturday shit so we did that all Saturday where Philip yes is going through our history Dan's

laying on a couch. Issues we've had. Well, I've got some back situations and I've got other stuff. It's a long day. I've got a lot of things, a lot of problems. And then it was a lot of like, let's dig up some dirt. It was kind of like if we were going to trial, I got this. You say this.

These are things that, like you say, Phillip, we had Stockholm syndrome. And I do say, I consider them par for the course. I'm fine with it. That's business. Whatever you're going to do. You might, in another profession, you might say, I can't believe they would do that to you,

or treat you like that, or say that in negotiations. So Phillip is bringing all these things out. So this is all day Saturday, like eight, nine hours, I can't remember. That's when I went to bed Saturday night and I'm thinking, okay, why is the law set up like this? The first time, and I'll get to my second time I said that, was in mediation, if you remember night one. But why is the law set up like this? We have a hearing scheduled that we have to air all this dirty laundry, and then we try to work out an agreement. To me, it's, whoa, whoa, whoa, how about we talk?

I don't want to publicly flame I'm not so concerned about cumulus as a whole but I didn't want anything negative I don't from the start I did not want to stain the ticket I've worked there for so long I love it the ticket is my life the ticket is why we're known the you know we're just that group. When they say it's a family atmosphere, I totally believe that. I am best friends with all those people.

I work closely with them. I actually do like them. You know, when we go to a camp out or another station tries to recreate, you know, hey, let's mix with other shows. Well, no. It's real. We like mixing with the other shows. I like them all. So then I didn't want to say things that would give local listeners a really, really bad taste about that ticket. I don't want people saying, I'm never listening

again because of what you did to those guys. Whatever. I didn't want to be a part of that. If you form that opinion on your own, you're a human. I can't tell you what to do. So Saturday night, I'm like, why does it, is there any way, and I went in, the first thing I said to you guys Sunday morning is, is there any way to delay this? Why can't we do it the other way around?

Tell the judge, hey, I don't want to get up on a stand and say things that are negative towards My employer. I just I think they've got a bad case. I don't think it should go any further I think they should know you know whatever So that's when you said I guess somebody told said yeah, you can actually request a Whatever I guess somebody said, yeah, you can actually request a whatever. Continuance. Yeah, continuance. There you go.

Yeah. And then I believe Jake and I both, you said, hey, well, let's see if we can get a message to the cumulus lawyers. So I called someone I know at the ticket, like good friend, Jake called someone he knows and said, can you get this message to like, to Dan Bennett, our boss at the ticket, the general manager was, hey, like, I think what we're going to say could be,

our lawyers are saying, this is the good strategy, you got to say these things. I think that's going to look really bad on the local ticket and I don't want that to happen. So you got to get to your get to the lawyers and and say, can we all agree to let's let's do the talking first and then if if we can't come to an agreement, let's go to a hearing. But I was the one saying we have to push this hearing. Yeah, and I appreciated that, for sure. And for me, it was like, what's the flip side of it? What are they going to say about us?

You were very concerned about that. Well, yeah, but I mean, more than the stuff that we talked about in private or whatever, it was more just like, are they just going to say you're violating this non-compete? OK. the stuff that we talked about in private or whatever, it was more just like, are they just gonna say you're violating this non-compete? Okay, well we know that's what you think. What we're gonna say is.

I didn't understand how law works because I was thinking, I said this to Philip, why do we have to bring these things up? Why do they have to bring these things up how they air quotes unfairly treated me in the past or whatever. I don't, like, just look at a piece of paper. Like, look at, this is written like this. This is the law.

We think this, you think this. I had other lawyers look at Texas law and look at this contract and say, yes, I believe, you know, now you come to an, isn't that what a judge does? Why do I have to say anything? I don't know anything. Yeah. I'm a guy.

Brunig seems like a guy that's just like, hey, yes, I look at this factually. This is an objective. But now we are bringing the subjectivity of a judge, and then opinions, and the feeling. And I understand, I guess, if it gets to a jury, having to pull on emotions, but I just didn't understand it in this case. Like I thought the thing is just we are violating clauses that are written.

Can that not be proven without us saying negative things, perhaps? However, I will tell you that I have not lost a home front argument since that Saturday. Yeah? Yeah. What do you attribute that Saturday. Yeah? Yeah. What do you attribute that to? Frank. The prep? The prep that Frank did. So then on Sunday, yes, we did get a message to them.

Apparently they agreed that if we could get the judge to bump it, that they would agree with that. Yes. So the reason the hearing didn't happen on the 21st was us. Yeah and I'd like that Frank you were handling that and he you know because the judge did not you know she's like we had to set up a ton of equipment for you to be remote. Very eleventh hour. Yeah and it was we showed up for the hearing and said can we please move this and so Frank did a really good job of explaining why. Yeah. And that Sunday, it was kind of a cluster.

I mean, we didn't really know how to get in touch with the Atlanta lawyers. They were in transit. And so, and we knew if we just reached out to him, like any other lawyer, they would say no because they would just think, Oh, they're trying to put it off because they're scared. Right. Right. And so what we decided to do, and I think it was actually my suggestion to Jake was, Jake, why don't you call, I don't know if we're supposed to mention any names.

Don't, don't, don't. Okay. Why don't you call so-and-so and see if he can talk to Bennett and Bennett can talk to the lawyers. And the idea was let's go to mediation and see if we can hash this out before we have to air a bunch of dirty laundry in a public court proceeding. And that's what happened. You guys backchanneled to Dan Bennett and Dan Bennett talked to the lawyers and we ended up coming to an agreement that we would temporarily postpone the hearing, go to mediation. And I know I don't want to mention any names, but the one thing I remember about that day

was the person that you backchanneled, his biggest question for you was, were you gonna have to wear a suit? Yes. That way I'm like, yeah, yeah. And now I remember. I do want to talk about that weekend just for a moment more.

Yeah. Like, these are like the sweetest people, I do want to talk about I do want to talk about that weekend just for a moment more. Yeah like you know, these are like the sweetest people I'm not Philip but Super sweet people you've known him for a long time now But then Frank's like let's go down the hall And I'm like, oh no And he's just doing witness prep, and it's like you know. We're just sitting there I've got my vape. He's got his dip He's just a nicest guy in the world, and then he's like alright. Well does he turn mean he's like We're about to start because you have to emulate

You're trying to ask and he's just like the sweetest dude in the world like and we had talked on the phone a bunch of times And I'm like oh whatever you know and then it just starts and you're like holy shit like this is I don't know I don't want to say it's like an actor but it is a different human. Not Philip, Philip was the same. When he acted like their attorney, he was the same as he was real. Liz is sitting there with a notebook, giving me pluses and minuses. I'm grading you guys.

Yeah. Oh, that's right. I didn't do well for Liz. It's pro football focus. Yeah, Liz is like, OK, three points, you shouldn't have done this. Yeah. I'm just like, oh my god.

Because Phillip would ask a question that I would answer, and then she would like, you shouldn't do that, or you shouldn't. Well, and it wasn't like you're saying the wrong content. It was, you know, it's like your tone. You're saying I'm too cocky or too whatever. Yeah, I was like, that's absolutely true, but you know, just say it a little nicer.

Well, you would also talk like very lengthy sentences at sometimes in the press. Yeah, like cut it off. Just say the facts. Get out of the box. Don't get like opinionated. Is that what we say guys? Yeah.

Frank and I have very strict. That's what the document says. And get out of the box. Frank and I have very strict rules for witness prep. And we taught you all the rules. We reviewed the rules many times. Can you say that? What?

Can you say what that is? Like there are a couple. Yeah, no, every trial lawyer has a basic set of because I heard them When their people had to testify they would say some phrases and I'm like, okay Their lawyer taught him that The whatever if you're not exactly sure say so could you replace the question? But the way the two of you reacted to the training was very interesting Jake

Followed the rules to the letter at all times, did not go off script. Dan figured out what the rules meant, and he didn't really need them anymore. And I don't say that as a criticism of the way that you testified. I actually mean it as praise. There are some witnesses who get comfortable enough that they can freelance and that they can create a better answer than the lawyer can tell them to create. And so that's what occurred. When I think we determined as we were going through everything, you know, at a certain point, I don't know if it was the first weekend or the second weekend

that, okay, we have, you guys have to learn not to do just the yes. No, I don't know because there was Narrative stuff that you you guys were the only source of it. So you had to be ready for that Yeah, so we make the call that Sunday a couple couple calls and then we show up Monday Dan's not there I'm freaking out. I don't know if it was like 8.59 in the morning. But whatever time we were supposed to be up there, we were no longer up there. And my flight is landing at like half hour after.

He might not even be available remote. If it gets delayed. And I'm freaking out. Yeah. Freaking out. And I'm texting you the second you know I get any I think I'm not allowed to have my phone. You bought the Wi Fi because you thought you might have to testify from the play. I've never bought Wi Fi before. I had to force Dan to buy Wi

Fi I think twice. Yeah. Yeah, the so the judge went along with this ultimately because she was convinced that you all were sincere, that specifically Jake, who was the only one who was there, could stand up and say, we wanna do this because we're trying to make this less of a potential negative outcome for everybody. Public spectacle. And she did not believe that before she had Jake stand up and tell her. She thought it was shitty lawyers trying to get out of a hearing.

So at first she was upset. She absolutely was thinking that I was like... At least performatively, she was very not... Well, and I mean, because it was very last minute. Like, you don't ever want to walk into a courtroom for a trial or a hearing or anything and say can we please not do this but it really was necessitated by the circumstance we couldn't have anticipated it any earlier yeah and I don't know how it happened but Liz is right somehow I got nominated to be the

one to pitch this to the judge. She was already pissed at me. Yeah, well, I think that's what it was. But what happened was not only was she angered by it, she wasn't going to go along with it at first. She said, no, we've spent, me and my staff have spent a hundred hours going over this over the last week. We are prepared to go forward and that's what we intend to last week we are prepared to go forward

and that's what we intend to do we're going to go forward and then you know then I had to kind of backtrack and and and explain to the judge well here I kind of peeled back the curtain I said and told the judge just what you said a minute ago Dan I said this is a request from our clients, not from the lawyers, that they want to see if we can go to mediation and work this out before they have to air a bunch of dirty laundry about their former employer and about their coworkers. And I think that's what turned her is she realized it wasn't lawyer driven. It wasn't like Philip said a minute ago ago wasn't shitty lawyers who weren't prepared

She wasn't gonna take that as an excuse But once you once she understood that it was it was the clients that wanted this then she was all for I Want to interject here just you know not to but you know this was all a big mistake right in retrospect Yes, we'll get to that. We'll get to the fact that Dan's Dan's request was ultimately a Negative for us Why is that just in terms of time spent? Well? Yeah, because then we had to go through those mediations that were of no value at all running up who knows

six figs of fees for right we just run that hearing from the get-go right so I want to I want to even address that because so I wasn't there but you said the way the judge reacted was very positive for us overall yes that's what I was getting at was after we after we, after we got the judge on board with giving us a continuance so we could go to mediation, she called us back to her chambers to talk to all the, all the parties.

Now I don't want to get into what, what the judge said, but we came out of that meeting very, very confident in our position. And when we came back out, she gave both of the parties another chance said do you still want to put this off to both sides? Yeah. Okay. And the other side I think was on board with pushing it off. I can't I might not be right. Well and she had I mean yeah we don't want to we want to make sure that the judge feels like she can trust us not to quote her outside of her chambers and we're gonna do that but I don't want to, we want to make sure that the judge feels like she can trust us not to quote her outside of her chambers. And we're going to do that. But I don't think that I'm talking out of school to say that she gave some indication of how she was leaning

on key legal issues that we thought at the time and should have meant that the other side would be extremely amenable to settling the case of mediation because frankly they were going to have severe obstacles getting anything that they were asking for. That's a really good point that Philip makes is that that gave us a lot more optimism that mediation would work because the strength of the information we got out of that meeting had to have landed hard on the other side. Yeah and I'll just say this about that that situation not to quote the judge at all but that was like

that was the most surreal moment for me it wasn't even just being in the courtroom it was more like when we were back there and again this is a situation where Dan's not there and it's just the four of us and then you know a guy that I've worked for for 15 years And a bunch of lawyers on the other side and then a lady who's a judge She's dressed like a judge She's sitting there. Just like I was like man. What the fuck? What are we doing here? You leaned over at one point and asked me what some word was. Yeah, I was like, I don't know what that means.

It was very much like doing a podcast. Well, it's like, I don't have any idea what she's talking about right now. And it was so weird, dude, because in my mind, I think I thought that Bennett or Kat or whatever were somewhat gonna be like uninvolved I just thought it would be lawyers and lawyers and then we would just be there sort of as figureheads Maybe but Bennett's there, you know, he's in he's at the head of the table in

that room And I'm like man, you know I've worked for this guy for 17 years. It was just super super weird and then we leave and we get on the elevator and We saw a guy that we know through some previous creative dealings and I start talking to him and Liz like kicks me in the knee She's like no don't like don't talk about the ticket at all in public, like in court. Because of the wording of the order.

Yeah. They told us, don't speak about your former employer to anybody at all in any, that's when we had to stop doing the podcast. I think there was some line about not even referencing the station. Yeah, so it was stopped in a podcast while the mediation was going. But it was an illegal order, by the station. Yeah, so it was stopped in a podcast while the mediation is going. Right, but it was an illegal order, by the way.

Right, right. We are well aware that, yes. But in, you know, but I'm coming from the place of like, you guys don't want any trouble, you don't wanna have anyone complain about anything, so just be extra, extra careful. Yeah, she kicked me. And that's a good point.

What I failed to mention was part of the agreement to go to mediation was that the podcast would be temporarily shut down. And that we weren't gonna talk about, everybody was gonna be cool, nobody was gonna talk about each other, and we were gonna try to go to mediation and get it resolved.

And I think for some of the public, which I learned later, that appeared to people on the outside. It looked like we had taken a loss. And we knew it would. And that's what I think throughout the whole thing. It was like, yes, on paper, it looks like you guys are getting your ass kicked, but you just have to not let your ego get in front of it.

And this is when Frank found out about ticket message boards. That was at mediation. Dan informed me about a couple of different sources of ticket information out there and sent me down a rabbit hole. But we were okay with looking like we were shutting down for a period of time because we thought that would also incline them more toward settlement and so showing how reasonable you're're being all this goes back to Matt's point This did not work in any way. It was a colossal failure, but I think that the legal team was okay

Our move was a failure. Yeah. Yeah, but yeah delaying. It was not a good idea. I think in an ordinary case It would have like we all the lawyers from the different backgrounds with all the different experience, we were all in the same page that oh this is the right decision, this is going to work because we had never had an experience like what happened. 100% no. I was absolutely not on board with this. Oh yeah you were not. Not in any way. But yeah. We have a victory here as we go forward. Yeah, what I thought, but the thing that made me stand down is it's what you wanted. And if it had worked, how good would that have been?

Yeah, I think for me it was mostly just like, I don't know if anybody else has divorced parents, but if you just put your pillow over your head and you're like, as long as it's not today, yeah, maybe I won't have to deal with this. So for me, I was just like, as long as I don't have to do this tomorrow, if we put it off for two weeks,

maybe I won't have to do it then. I do take that back. I remember, I think maybe that was our first fight. Because you were like, our case is so good. There's no way we're pushing this off. Yeah, so we'll- He was right about that. you gotta give him that one. Yeah, you were?

One more thing about the elevator, when I got shin kicked, the guy who was there, who was in court with us, he was there as like, I guess, just a pedestrian. He overheard, I think I can say this, right? We can edit it out if we have to. Yeah, you gotta tell this. But he overheard,

cause like the weirdest thing to me, and like Dan, I think you and I both shared this sentiment, for you the second time, for me both times, is like these people are all really nice to each other before and after like the whistle blows. The lawyers. Yeah, yeah. All the clients, everybody's like,

oh hey, it's nice to meet you. You know, it was super, super weird because then you get up there and they're like. They're hammering away at you. Yeah, yeah. So. That's why they say in the end, the only winners are the lawyers.

Right. Indeed. Because they're not. They're all just billless hours. Yeah, they're the only ones that came out of this better financially. Yeah, so one of the guys, you know, you shake hands beforehand and I'm like a sweaty guy, as Blake and Dan both know, especially for a skinny guy, very sweaty. And the guy that was in the elevator with us that we were talking to overheard The guy that was in the elevator with us that we were talking to overheard our former boss and one of the attorneys talking and one of the attorneys said

Is Jake's are Jake's hands always that sweaty? Oh, okay? Yeah, and our former boss recognized the guy and was like hey So for me like when we got to mediation, the biggest downside to the fact that we didn't actually settle it at the mediator's office, was I had this like brilliant plan of just drenching my hand in water. Like just right before we walk out and we shake hands, I just dip it, just douse my hand in water

and go shake hands with a fish hand. So you did that? No because we had to go back to court. Oh okay. And just to clarify, so there's no question about what you were doing, the thing that I kicked you for was completely innocuous. You just mentioned like a hardline remote a couple years ago. Yeah, I was like, oh we saw him at such-and-such and she didn't like that Okay Yeah, cuz I remember the phone call Philip making said Made told us both that night like this is great. The what happened today is is great

You guys like almost like this is over now Well, it should have been like that's what your opinion was. That's the thing. The judge was very much signaling that she did not want to have a hearing on this and that if she were forced to have the hearing, it was going to go a particular way. And she was fast tracking the trial so that if these guys still didn't get it through their heads that they were holding too few cards They they were gonna get to put on all their evidence in mid-June in mid-December And I got something I'd never seen was it six month trial setting and it wasn't even six months Yeah, and and the you know

There's sort of an informal Rule that nobody tries cases in December, particularly not after the first week. Because lawyers, you know, we make the rules so we're not going to step on the high. You know what I learned during this whole thing? The only profession that is not subject to non-competes, lawyers. You You have a constitutional right to counsel Dan. You can't you don't want anybody to take that away from you. Can't have a non-compete. Amazing how that all works. Okay go ahead. So it uh you know I don't know it's it's hard for me to I'm

not critical of what we did because it was a strategy that if we'd had a rational counterparty on the other side, it should have worked. And it really sucks that they got in a situation, we've all speculated on why, they got in a situation where they felt like they had to get a courtroom outcome, either because the lawyer needed that for his client or because the client was driving it. We don't really, that's all speculative, but it was not rational. It was wasteful for them and for us,

and it was the wrong thing to do. And it's not defensible. It's not like, it's not like you have, Liz and I can try a case two different ways and we'll never agree on the same strategy. Fine. I, I know what she's thinking and she's not wrong. There's no way for me to look at what they did and say it wasn't absolutely wrong. It was just very inefficient from any perspective we could see. Well, here's my

opinion though because I do think in the end like was this just a colossal waste of time and money nobody won just the lawyers like I said we've got six-figure lawyer bills they easily they've got higher than us probably because they had some prestigious lawyers at least you guys said, oh, that's a big firm or whatever. But is the reason to go through with it, again, speculating, is it because they have a big company with lots of other people who work for them? And if I'll take these guys to this length,

because in the end, we were doing after the exact same thing we were doing before. We weren't taking advertising. We weren't, we were live streaming once, or not, or you know, we were doing a stream on the weekend. We were not disparaging. We were not disparaging, like exactly the same before. So if they had called us and we just kind of worked something out, we were just doing the same thing.

We would have all saved a ton of money and time. But is there a message sent to the rest of the company that, look, the company will take these guys into a hearing. You better believe if you work in Birmingham or wherever. Yeah. That's what it is. And that's all it is. Because look at this.

Even if they won and you had to stop the podcast it would have cost them more To bring the case and win then they would have saved from you not doing the podcast They weren't really gonna save any money from you not doing the podcast or maybe they have some theory where you there's a little bit Of the listeners go or share of your amount that they're spending on the lawsuit would have always exceeded Any gain they could have gotten from it So it had to have been intimidation and deterrence of other people. Oh, and you know, we forgot Matt is Matt and I started very early in the case Trying to win this in the media

like You guys did the Washington Post Interview on like the 10th, right? I don't remember when we did it, but... That ended up being an issue that we had to contend with. Yeah, let's pick it up right there in a second. This is a good break time. I think we need to drain things and all that kind of stuff. King of the seas and more, they fix your garage door. They always keep their calm. It's TXTridon.com.

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Jeremy came up to the studio. We met him and his team out at the Dumb Zone Generic Summer event. They were part of that as well. So So if you got needs in the garage space, it's T X Trident comm 8 1 7 5 1 2 12 12 They're not gonna freak out That's the thing They're they're gonna keep their calm at T X Trident comm we left it with some Washington Post talk because that did weigh in somewhat

and I guess we should just get the timeline on that exactly and Matt of course Matt Brunig that's the reason we were in the Washington Post is the filing so how did we get in the Washington Post, Matt? So I pitched Jeff Stein on the idea of the article. He's a White House policy reporter. And I explained to him, hey, you know, there's I know the White House has done a lot of stuff on non-competes. The FTC has put out this rulemaking where they're going to basically ban most non-competes. At least that's what they're kind of suggesting they're going to do.

The NLRB has put out this memo saying that they now think non-competes violate the National Labor Relations Act. And, you know, I know how this all works. You're going to want a story that actually highlights the effect of that policy, right? So you can write a story talking about these changes, but also you want like a personal face to it. I've got the best story for you. It's offbeat, it's weird, and it is literally like, you know, kind of drifting off these policy developments because part of a big part of our counter argument is going to be

this NLRB memo. And you know, he picked it up and thought that was a great idea. And the as I recall we did this interview and it took like a month for it to actually get in the paper. At least. Yeah. Because it would drop I think during a time was like, hey, let's not do anything publicly against each other. Not against, but even just don't talk about the ticket publicly. You guys don't talk about these guys publicly. And then all of a sudden, it dropped. And it's like, oh, man, did we violate?

We didn't violate something because we had done the interview way, way before any of this started. Yeah, you did the interview before any agreement was made. The precise thing that seemed like people were worried was some kind of informal verbal agreement people had made to the judge not to talk about it. I didn't even see this or what the content of it was, or I still don't even understand what it would mean to violate Something like that

But Liz insists that we couldn't do it Well, even so I think from the date you said like y'all done the interview before I ever even came in the picture So that was definitely before anything. Yeah, it never could have possibly violated it But I also was sort of curious as to what is the nature of this sort of head nod? Well, I mean, it's you just you don't break a promise to a judge. Yeah. What happened was that when we went to our first, when we went to the second hearing, the one that actually was going forward, Susquehanna had filed this thing they called a factual update. And what it was, was a bunch of complaining about Philip in things that he had said on his podcast

And it was it was just basic. That was fun. Yeah, it was basically just Trashing Philip for things that Phillips said on his podcast and so the judge and the tweets They were really more upset about the tweets. I'm going to die sooner Well, you fast-forwarded I guess you did you guys have fast-forwarded a little bit Yeah a whole month but because also in that complaint was like a Sound bite that we use for the open which is from David and Goliath. Hoosiers David and Goliath Yes, a 30 second sound bite. This shows that we are we're mocking it. You're mocking it. You're mocking it Well, what they what they did was they put together the fact that you guys used the Hoosiers David and Goliath open

For the day after the hearing when she denied their their PI and then Philip tweeted but everybody forgets that at the end of the story David walks away with Goliath's severed head. Yeah, that was a fun one to wake up to. And so they were pissed off that Philip had said those things, and so they brought it up to the judge. The judge didn't really have any time for any of that, except for to kind of browbeat us a little bit about shut up. Yeah, she seems to dismiss it. Why did I have to read this? Yeah, and she basically us a little bit about shut up. She seems to dismiss it like, why is this even, why did I have to read this?

Yeah, and she basically just told us all to shut up. And then she told him, yeah, why don't you back off, bro? Was this the same time that Jake got scolded for identifying himself as Kemp et al in his Zoom video? Probably. I remember that. Yeah, it was around, yeah, cause I mean, that's obviously like somehow I became like the lead person on the filing.

Yeah. Which makes no sense. It makes perfect sense. It's just whoever's listed first. I'm following you. Okay. Yeah. I don't remember when that came up, but yeah, they were irritated by the Kemp et al moniker

on the video. The whole, I mean what we're doing is painting a picture irritated against the law that's what I keep saying well we're we're painting a picture of a litigant that is extraordinarily like immature and and really sensitive to stupid like the David and Goliath tweet was not even about your case like shut up every freaking client I have is David. No one believes that. It's just coincidentally. Absolutely.

No one right after we. So, so I. And the open wasn't about the case either. It was just like, I love who's your. Smell of napalm in the morning. Yeah. And the podcast comments about opposing counsel. Yeah.

It was not even about them. My particular favorite was the episode where you came on with Victory for the Boys. Yeah. And it was a Cowboys victory Monday. You had won your flag football game. Correct. And we had all that.

It was a victory Monday. It was a triple entendre. Yeah, we felt good. Want a big game? In our situation. Cowboys want a big game? Oh no! So you say, Frank, right around when, okay, so we pushed the hearing back and we said let's have mediation. We all thought that's one day. And I will get to my second point of where I was like, why is the law like this? I think I remember it's it's late at night now or Eight nine o'clock, but if you've been there since eight in the morning, that's late at night And for me because I'm a I'm an old man and now Blake will point that out

Nine o'clock is late at night for me So I said and and we're all frazzled. Yeah. I mean, Nervs, Jake is a mess. We're all a mess. That day wasn't so bad because... But I just... But, but... You guys had been in the same little room all day.

I had been... Eight of the 12 hours are doing nothing. I had been trying to move my daughter into a room while buying her stuff, while going to dinner with her, running out, like, now I'm back in my hotel room. We're just spent. And they were like, they wanted us to come to an agreement, like that night.

And I said, is this how the law works? Like, you just wear people down to where no one's really thinking clearly and then we're supposed to sign off on something? 100%. That's how the law does work. Yeah, I think it's both times you had the novel idea that well why don't we just sleep on it? Right, wouldn't we all show up with a clear head? We've gotten the time to think about what happened all day. And think about this, the guy who was kind of spearheading the whole thing, again, who was awesome, is probably 70?

Yeah, and he's, yeah. And he's just like, yeah, we just have to keep going. You know? And I'm like, dude, I'm tired. But it's not so much just the law. I mean, think about like whenever you almost went to the fan. Or the legal system.

Yeah, well. Contracts. Yeah, well. It was Sunday night before all of us were like, OK, I guess this is what we're going to do for the next five years. It was Sunday night. Right. Yeah.

Yeah, and we went to mediation. It was supposed to be a one day mediation. And we made good progress, but we were there till late in the night. And then you rightly said, well, why don't we sleep on it and come back in the morning? And that was a good idea that time the next time it was a bad idea But we mediated Probably 12 hours that first day and then we decided to come back the second day and

We came back the second day. We mediated all day and at the end of the second day We all had an agreement in principle. I mean, we had a framework for a settlement. It was all but done. And there was one issue related to the NLRB that became a sticking point. We went to bed that day thinking we had, they were supposed to go back to Atlanta and get us a draft final settlement agreement and it should have been a formalit. And they changed their mind on a key issue that blew the whole thing up that second. And then we didn't get an agreement the third day and I don't remember if there was a fourth day then.

Well one of them was at my house. There were six days total but some of you, at some point it was like we took a couple day break. Cause that's when I canceled my, I won't drive to Cleveland cause we have to do this again tomorrow. I'm in New York. But having to put like a, do they call it like a leaf in your dining table? Yeah, your dining table so I can extend it out so that we could have a full...

So this is once I got back. Yeah. Now it's like four or five days later, whatever it was. Yeah, we were all at your house all day long. Yeah, and here comes little maniacs running through. That was just a wild time. Yeah, I forgot about the day at your house. Yeah, we did two straight days at the mediator's office and then we skipped a few days and

then we had another day at Jake's. We did the mediation fee as well. Then back to the hearing. So yeah, the 20, I was there, I guess I was in Ithaca for a whole week. I don't know. Taking your sweet time. It's all, it's all. I was out know taking your sweet time. It's all it's all I was out there taking bullets

Broad level the the thing that blew up the first Mediation was that just not taking seriously the NLRB stuff, right? People just shunted that off into the back and then not us but them and then eventually they're like, alright You know, like this is some sort of formality Well, we'll figure this out at the end and then they went to figure it out and it was not what they thought it would be But it was what you seem to have been saying the whole time It was and they what happened was they had just poo-pooed everything Matt was saying up to that point About what the NLRB was going to do and so so we worked out a, I thought was a very creative solution to that. And it was, okay, you guys don't believe us about what the NLRB is going to do.

Why don't we just say that whatever the NLRB decides becomes part of the ultimate agreement. And that was, and we were good with that. And then my suspicion is that's when they hired their NLRB council and he told them Matt was right all along about what the NLRB was likely to do and that's what blew it up. I was specifically told that this individual listens to my podcast, the person that they consulted and they did say it was a woman. So OK, so now we go through that whole week. Oh, I also just want to say, I think it's awesome how lawyers' offices have a person who's

run their office for 30 years, especially the ones who have a lot of money. And all their drinks are lined up. Blakey would have loved it. All the drinks are like, I mean, for, if you have like a minor neurodivergent brain, like this break room is, you can't be in. Just all the diet cokes you've ever wanted.

And they're all in order. Color-coded. Every color-coded of La Croix and every type of, you know, snack you could possibly imagine. And we were there for two days and I was like, I don't really want to leave. It was great. Yeah.

The money's worth it. We've already paid the money. Yeah. We've already written a check. It was great. And she was very helpful. So I'm trying to remember a timeline. So we go through that whole week.

It does not come to fruition. We did not get a settlement like we all thought we would on Monday Now they schedule a hearing at some point. I just can't recall exactly when they scheduled the hearing for was that The judge scheduled the hearing the day that we went in and asked her for a continuance I don't know if she did it from the bench or if she sent it It's it later, but we knew what the date of the hearing was gonna be from from the 21st it later but we knew what the date of the hearing was gonna be from the 21st. Okay from the end of the mediation when that didn't work out. Yeah and it was the 29th. She gave us like eight days and then... The hearing was the 29th? Right. That's when the second date and then remember late at... we were

preparing to go to the hearing that day Because that was your second weekend in the woodshed. That was our second weekend doing the woodshedding. And then late the night before, we get a mediator's proposal from the mediator. The great Bob Arnett. Yeah. And that included within it, putting off the hearing once again. To keep talking. To keep talking to keep talking

and That was part of the mediators proposed. Do you want to explain what a joint explain Frank? What a media is for yeah mediators proposal is when the parties get when the when the mediation breaks down But the mediator thinks that the parties are fairly close or within striking distance of reaching a deal The mediator will come up with his own proposal which, which is what he thinks is a fair resolution for the case. Now, most of the time what that means is it's not necessarily the mediator's opinion about how the case should settle, but it's his opinion about what he thinks will settle the case. It's sort of a pragmatic thing. I think if I give them this and take this away from them and put it on paper, what you have to do then is when you get the mediator's proposal, you have to either accept it or decline it. The

other side doesn't know what you do. So only if the mediator gets back an acceptance by both parties is there a settlement? If either party says no, then there's no settlement. And fast forwarding head spoiler alert, we said no. Okay, so Blake reminds me we are cutting this episode up into multiple days. Minimum two could be four. Who knows? But this feels like a mediation thing. We might be here till tonight. I cannot be here until tonight. This will be like a three week type thing. But we should reset perhaps voices that are included here. Philip Kingston was the first lawyer that we were involved with.

Hi Dan. Very famous. Elizabeth Griffin is the lady voice. Hello. Frank Cowley. Hello, Dan. Do you not think this is right? I mean, it's fine. It just feels like.

Jake is looking at Blake. Matt Bruning is joining us by Zoom. He's our NLRB guy. It feels like something that was beaten into him by. And McCool. This could be day three, though, of this whole thing. So we're just kind of resetting. Reset. McCool. This could be day three though of this whole thing. So we're just kind of resetting. Reset.

McCool is one of our lawyers and you have to listen to previous episodes in order to really catch up to who these people are. Maybe we should just tell people that, Blake. They listen to us all the time. Listen to all the episodes. That's right. Yeah. Alright.

If people are listening over... I mean they're not going to hammer this out in one day. So just a nice little reset for people listening over a couple weeks stretch is not the worst idea. It takes 15 seconds. But now it's taking a minute. I thought it was a great idea. Jake was the one rolling his eyes looking at you as if you're a.

But fine. Yeah, let's continue to stop down the show. If you're still anachronist, you're in this old medium that. Hey, how's the transmitter? Transmitters great. You're gonna get paid enough. Thank you. Oh, he gets paid plenty.

All right, to tease ahead. Blake wants me to tease. No, I'm just kidding. But to tease, we still haven't gotten to like the actual hearing and that's what I think a lot of people wanna hear about. But how do we get to the hearing dates now? We tried more mediation.

We're at Jake's kitchen table. That didn't work. And it eventually. And then it was Labor Day weekend. Because I had a conference, and we were still doing some mediation. Y'all were doing it and I came and talked to y'all on Zoom in the afternoon. So it was definitely another week. Okay I have Liz's Zoom call on a Friday the 25th in my phone at least. I

don't know if that's what you're referring to. I mean we were doing Zoom calls every day. The ultimate hearing ended up being September 15. Yeah, the week of September 4. That is when I think we had the last mediation stuff. Okay, that was at Jake's house. Okay, yeah, here it is mediation. And after that day, I really like I Had trouble sleeping that night I woke up and I realized why is because I was embarrassed as shit that I had let that go on that long And I'm still embarrassed like the the amount of time we put in a mediation was a deadweight loss and a bad idea

And probably a lot of that was my fault. No, I don't think so honest with you. Yeah. No, no I was just I was just, I was so hopeful that something could work out. You didn't want the hearing. I did not want the hearing. I didn't want, and I didn't want trial. I didn't want appeal. I just wanted, again, I mean, I know it sounds to use Jerry speak trite now, but I just didn't, I just didn't want this all to happen. Yeah. I wanted it to be over and I thought if I can make it over in two weeks, even though that two weeks should have only taken two days, at least that two weeks, then it's over as opposed to it taking six months.

And in Jake's defense, we were really, really close after the second day of the, of mediation, we had an agreement. I mean, it was, yeah, they went backwards. They went backwards on it. And I think it's probably because there's another thing I want to say about this whole whole process later, but leading up to it. One of the stark memories I have about this entire case was the when we found out they had gone back on the agreement we

reached with respect to the NLRB, that we got on a, we got on a zoom call and Jake was as livid as I've ever seen a person. He got on that call and was just screaming obscenities. was just screaming obscenities. And it was, I mean, it was, it was a moment in time in that, in the case for me in particular, because I saw the effect that it was taken on Jake. Yeah. Yeah. And I feel I, I'm not proud of that moment at all, but it was just one of

those types of deals where I had convinced myself and I had told my wife in particular, but some other members of my family, like, hey, I think we're through this. I'm going to be normal again. And then just to have the rug pulled out from underneath you, I just couldn't handle it. I was just like, man, we were so close to being back to regular life. And then everything just turned within it felt like like overnight you know and I just I didn't handle it well which and you know I should probably say this like I'm sorry for some of the stuff I put you guys

through just from an emotional you know beating standpoint because I was definitely not like an easy person to deal with throughout this process You know I mean It's just it was a lot man. It was a lot from from a public again like I didn't think we knew Totally when we went into it how public it was gonna be I had a little kid thing my wife was changing jobs All these are excuses just to say that like There were stress points that I did not handle like super, super well. And maybe if I would have, we would have handled things a little bit differently. Maybe we would have, maybe we'd still be in court right now to be honest, you know,

we would have gone to trial and then they would have appealed and we'd be back in another daily zoom call situation, but I just couldn't handle anymore, man. Yeah. And I brought that up not, not to come down on you you No, no, I don't know it was that way it was For me that was a seminal moment in the case Because for me that that you know, I'm a lawyer I deal with these cases all the time but that was a that was a moment in time where I really saw the the toll that it was taking on you and That's kind of where the enormity of it all hit me, was seeing that outburst that you had, which I think was totally normal. We were so close

to having a deal. Philip the ever pessimist was like, said something in an email to the effect of, I don't know that we're going to get this done. And the mediator bet a mistake that it was going to get done. The mediator thought we had it done. I never got that stick. You never got the, but, but that's what really hammered it home to me. The enormity of what we were going through. And, and I think that caused me to redouble my efforts to really, to, to

really try to get this thing resolved in your favor. I appreciate that. I feel the same way. And I think that may have led to a little more friction between us because I think we all felt that way. And so we all felt like we have to pursue as hard as we can the plan that we individually think is the likeliest to resolve this as soon as we can the plan that we individually think is the likeliest to resolve this as soon as possible and so then when we had differing opinions we were I know I was more dug in of like I need to make sure everyone has heard

and understands this and makes an informed choice you know that they want to go another way well but even in Jake's defense I know you were going through you know you're like can't go through this I can't do this, but there were times when Even in the back and forth and hey there could be a settlement if we this and you'd be like we just can't Like this is not fair. Yeah, I mean I wasn't just completely laying down right now you you you know We would all talk it out, and even with that backdrop of,

we're doing everything we can to get a settlement, but it can't be that's what you're, you know. Sure. Because there was a couple things that they tried to, you know, in my opinion, I don't know anything about this, but it feels like they were trying to put in like a poison pill or something that would

blow it up in the end if it didn't go their way in the long run or something and to your you know defense you wouldn't you wouldn't just accept anything you were not ready to just end this you were just you know yeah yeah and i appreciate that but but it certainly wasn't we weren't going to do the uh let's burn it all down you know which which could have been a strategy you know check the beginning and maybe it could have been successful too probably Jake I've had a lot of exposure to your contract stuff over time and when we when I started this case, I knew that the stress was not going to be great for you.

And so none of what you did struck me as negative or hard to deal with. Like that didn't like, truthfully, I'm just really proud of you. Dude, the first time that, uh, that you said that to us, I was like, man, for some reason that just means so much to me. Just I, it's probably because you've dealt with like so many different like extremely high pressure, you know, high leverage type situations that whenever, I don't remember if it was when we were done or when we first left the station or whatever, but when you were like, Hey, I'm proud of the way you guys have handled this.

And I think actually both of you guys might have said something to me like that too and I was like man okay that's different than your mom telling you that no she tells me that if I pick up the kid from school well these guys wanted to make sure you'd send the check that's true too yeah that also helps that also helps you know, this is McCool, the guy on the outside looking in, I was talking to Philip during a lot of this, I remember. And these guys come in storming into court saying that they have an emergency. And I was talking to Philip, I remember at the time, and these mediations are collapsing. And it's like, if there's really a fire, if their house is really about to burn down because of you guys

leaving to start your own podcast, you don't allow six weeks to dribble out before you run into court and actually get the hearing. And just like with each day that went on from the outside looking in, my optimism for you guys just kept going up because of that. So even before we get to the hearing, Frank mentioned that during mediation, that's when you learned of the ticket confession and the Reddit, all these other,

there was a lot of amateur, or I guess actually professional lawyers, I think I remember a local podcast, somebody, a couple of ladies, lady lawyers were talking. That podcast is great. Lawyers behaving badly. Yeah, that is good.

But I'm just saying there was a lot of chatter about it and a lot was Phillips an idiot, along with this moron in DC, you know. And I know Matt, you're certainly an internet troll, so you were well aware of all of it. What was your guys, what was going through your head as you're sifting through all of that? Because not to be too big time, like we get negative things written about us all the time, so I read that stuff, but now you're getting negative things written about you.

Yeah, I mean, I get negative stuff all the time as well for policy stuff. The first time I've had anyone sort of critique legal stuff per se. I mean, I've had newspapers critique some of the stuff I've done at the board but not say it was incompetent. They're just mad at what I'm doing. There was a piece in the Wall Street Journal a few years ago about a charge that I filed against the Federalists and they were, you know, grave constitutional concerns,

blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, but yeah, I have some of these teed up, just a few that I could find. There's no doubt. Some of them are good. So I wanna, you know. These are a little neurodivergent, folks. I think it's important, you know, cause you remind me of Baker Mayfield when I would read this stuff Yeah, I'm like, ah, no one thinks I can win this

There are other comments that are very positive. So, you know, don't fixate so much But my ticket confession was probably the most negative and we've got this One, you know, someone asks something like why didn't Jake go on IJB this week and the commenter says probably because they've got this one, you know, someone asks something like, why didn't Jake go on IJB this week? And the commenter says probably because they've gotten a better lawyer than Brunig in to read the contract and are waving Jake off IJB for the lovely phrase out of an abundance of caution. It's possible that Jake wins in court, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's also possible a good lawyer sat him down, read his contract to him, explained the big words and pointed out Jake and only Jake signed a non-compete.

Et cetera, et cetera. So it's, you know, Matt sucks as a lawyer. They finally got a good lawyer. Right. And that actually is what happened. I... Yeah. Yeah, our contracts are slightly different,

and that was kind of one of the things that led us to where we got is just the imposing of a new, this is the new standard contract, and there is no negotiation about that. That's just the way it is, because I'd signed a deal five years prior, Jake had signed one three years and then one year prior. So, like, and all of those contracts had different language that was just like, well, no, there's no negotiation. Everybody signs this boilerplate contract. Yeah. And that's what helped lead us to getting here. Sorry.

So now the next, so I think it's fun to follow the evolution. Obviously, I'm cherry picking a little bit, but we have all these comments that are especially about Philip and me being stupid and not knowing what we're doing. And then, you know, the tide starts to turn a little bit, but we have all these comments that are especially about Philip and me being stupid and not knowing what we're doing. And then, you know, the tide starts to turn a little bit. And here's another comment again from my ticket confession that says has come so some people would call them cumless. That was their joke, I guess has cumless legal dream team scored any victory for their client up to this point in the proceedings. Seems like hapless Brunig and Kingston not actually not be so hapless after all." So, you know, tide was turning. And then I'll give you the last one. And Frank wrote that.

I've seen a lot of comments about the strange- For the legal minds listening, that was a joke. We also had that pointed out. Oh, yeah, it was joking and yeah, sorry go ahead I've seen a lot of comments about the strange nature of Dan and Jake's counsel I would have personally used a local Dallas non-compete firm who has experiences taking cases to trial I also got my ass kicked by Matt Brunig at multiple debate tournaments almost 20 years ago so what do I know? My favorite one certainly. Alright Frank you were new to that world. Yeah I had never heard of my ticket confession and I had never been on a subreddit before and you introduced me to both of them. You meaning Dan. Dan did. Not me. And it sent me down a rabbit hole. I was probably on my computer that night for eight hours reading through all that stuff and it was... Liz doesn't even have a Twitter.

Well yeah I mean we've later learned we assigned work wrong because at some point we knew it was being discussed and you guys are getting ready for the hearing but someone I think yeah I have felt per Phillips email it's like someone should go look at that and just make sure there's nothing in there that we need to know Frank was on and so I I went through and read all of it the whole time just being like oh my god and then Frank is doing it for fun yeah those significant management failure on my first yeah I mean I'm young.

You would probably assume I would be on social media. And if you'll hearken back to what we said earlier, after the very first hearing, we had a meeting in chambers with the judge that told us all we needed to know. Maybe other people didn't get the message. We did. And so when I, it's with that backdrop that I'm reading all this stuff that's predicting failure on us. And I know what's going on inside the rooms. And I'm reading all this stuff about how bad

D and J's lawyers are. They're losing, their strategy is horrible. And every little thing that happened, like I mentioned earlier, the break we took from the podcast, that signaled defeat for D and J, they're done. They're gonna owe cumulus millions of dollars in attorney's fees. And I'm reading all of this stuff just laughing

to myself but it is also making me angry. What was nice about it though is that you could view it and I had the same feelings like these guys have no idea what's going on. We see what's going on. Everything's really going our way and but eventually they're going to see it you know because in other contexts when I'm getting critiqued with my policy stuff people say my policies Suck and whatever and I can try to prove to them that it doesn't but whatever like no one ever does my policies So we don't ever get to demonstrate that but here, you know

We know the trains coming down the track and people are gonna see that podcast is gonna keep rolling. So Well, and I've run for office five times so I mean I've had an office five times, so I mean, I've had an whole super pack dedicated to telling the people of Dallas that I'm an asshole. So the my ticket confession was really just like humor reading at night with a drink after however long we'd spent on the case. Yeah, you're I think you're probably the only one of us, maybe Matt, that's had like a campaign directed at you personally. Oh yeah.

Oh yeah, definitely Matt, but it was a weird deal. Not that formal though. Yeah, maybe, yeah, not 529, but it was weird to me how online Dan got. Because I feel like I kind of learned from Dan to just recede a little bit, and I spend way less time on the internet now I don't really tweet at all unless it's promoting stuff for the show I try to just like limit my screen time. I didn't I literally have not looked at ticket reddit

I swear to God since we left I've not pulled the website up and then in like the months afterward Dan was like since we left. I've not pulled the website up. And then in like the months afterward, Dan was like all over the internet. I was like, Blake and I were like, what happened? They love us. It was the weirdest thing. The internet likes us. Now that he's getting adulation.

You're being nice to me. I just, I don't know. For me it was just. You know, trending, I think that's where he really got hooked is the trending Yeah, yeah, they really liked you guys and they didn't like your lawyers that was an And I think I think Matt Because of what he was reading on the my ticket confession

I think Matt wanted it was sort of the misery loves company thing We were on a zoom call and he informed me that there was an entire subreddit thread about how bad I sucked. Oh, good. Now they said that you were a terrible cross examiner, which I thought was funny because it was when the transcript came out. But all the quotes were, yeah, you had a ton of quotes.

Exactly, so it was like on the subreddit, you had five different threads that were just Frank zingers and then people being like, Frank sucks, he stumbled over himself and whatever. It was a whole thread and I told friends and people that I know, I've achieved my lifelong goal of having a subreddit thread trash me.

Lawyers not used to the heat of the public. We aren't even into the hearing yet and things on the outside are not looking good, but the team feels good about how this will go at the hearing based on the judge's behavior. The next episode is juicy. It's all about the hearing and how the case was won. Dan and Jake take the stand,

and the team reveals Frank's big gotcha moment during cross-examination. examination. I'm going to be a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a

little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a Thank you.