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It wasn’t the Lifetime Achievement Seminar that Frank Julian envisioned hosting, but the virtual Indiana Trial Lawyers Association conference last month gave the organization some ideas that likely will carry on even after the world stops social distancing.
“It went surprisingly well,” the South Bend attorney and former ITLA president said. He said he’s done a few Zoom depositions since the COVID-19 public health emergency, some admittedly going better than others. “So I was really worried about how this was going to go down.”
While he said there is no substitute for in-person conversation and networking, Julian credited the ITLA staff with hustling to find pros who could establish a solid format that allowed 45 different speakers from across the state to make presentations that hundreds of members could view and interact with.
Sponsors also had to be convinced that the format would work for them. So, Julian said, ITLA created a “virtual exhibitors hall” on the ITLA website where sponsors maintain a presence — a sort of virtual business card that will be available to members — long after the conference.
In a time of social distancing, arm’s-length award presentations and face masks replaced traditional handshakes to recognize ITLA’s 2020 honorees.
The association recognized Terre Haute attorney James O. McDonald with the ITLA Lifetime Achievement Award. “I’m very proud of receiving it and humbled by it,” said McDonald, a past president who’s been practicing law since 1972. He said he considers the award the highest a trial lawyer can attain in Indiana.
ITLA also honored W. Kent Winingham of Wilson Kehoe Winingham as the Max Goodwin Young Lawyer of the Year. Winingham said he was grateful ITLA members determined he was worthy of the award. “It feels pretty special.”
Cows and electricity
McDonald has been a well-known and respected trial lawyer for decades, distinguished by the neckerchief and boots he typically wears in place of a tie.
The country lawyer is up at 4 a.m. most days to feed his 20 or so head of longhorn cattle on his 400 acres west of the Wabash River. He heads to the office early, and you can count on him being on the farm “piddling around” after work and on the weekends. “That’s my Prozac,” he said.
Cows also figure in a case that McDonald says springs to mind as one of his most interesting. McDonald and Max Goodwin — for whom Winingham’s award is named — tried and won a Parke County case in which a jury awarded more than $1.68 million for a claim of “stray voltage” that was causing Gregg and Susan Fischer’s dairy cows not to milk and for related damages. The 1995 judgment in Fischer v. Tipmont REMC was affirmed on appeal.
McDonald recalls with infectious delight some of the nuances of the complex case — including the REMC utility’s claim that the Fischers hadn’t taken sufficient steps to mitigate their own cows’ damages when they were shocked on the farm. He recalled deposing an expert who said the Fischers could have mitigated their damages by perhaps having their cows wear rubber boots.
“One of the enjoyable things about trial practice is you find out so many things that you never knew,” McDonald said. “It’s fun trying lawsuits.”
Family ties
Winingham came home to Indianapolis to the firm that bears his father’s name in 2017 after launching his career as a litigator in Chicago. But it wasn’t his dad, Bill Winingham, who sold him on joining the firm.
“Bruce was kind of the impetus behind it,” Kent Winingham said of name partner Bruce Kehoe.
Winingham and his wife, Ashley Hadler, were persuaded to make the move. She also is a plaintiff’s lawyer practicing at Garau Germano in Indianapolis, and Winingham says he owes much of his success to her.
Winingham’s practice is largely focused on personal injury and medical malpractice, including nursing home negligence. He said the latter is likely to see much litigation in light of the coronavirus pandemic, which has disproportionately affected long-term care facilities. But lawyers will have a high bar, he said, and may have to prove willful and wanton negligence in coronavirus-related cases.
The father-son legal team tried their first case together earlier this year, Kent said. “I didn’t know what to expect when I came back here to work with dad and Bruce. My dad is a very even-keeled person; I never knew him as a lawyer. I thought, ‘What if he’s a totally different person?’”
Turns out he need not have worried.
“I can walk into both of their offices and everything is very transparent and collaborative,” he said. “We talk about work, we talk about our families all the time.
“It’s been transformative to me. … It’s a pretty blessed position to be in, so I’m thrilled.”•
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