SUED FOR SELF DEFENSE? AOR's Civil Coverage

Added: 2026-05-20

[00:00:00]Aora ramps up the strength of our civil department with our new chief civil counsel. Today we've got her in the studio to talk about all things self-defense and defending you if you're forced to defend yourself or your family in a civil court. Stay tuned.

[00:00:20]This is attorney Andy Markell and attorney Mark J. Victor. the partners of the Attorneys for Freedom Law Firm and today we are joined in the studio by our new chief civil counsel Susan. How you doing today, Susan?

[00:00:31]>> I'm doing fabulous. Thanks. Thanks so much for having me, Andy.

[00:00:34]>> Fantastic. Mark, how you doing today?

[00:00:36]>> Fantastic. Every day, man.

[00:00:37]>> Yeah. So, we wanted to make this video to introduce you to your chief civil counsel if you are ever sued as a result of an act of self-defense. Because, you know, we always talk, Mark, there are really three battles in every self-defense case. There's the battle in the street. That's actually defending yourself, your family, a third party with a firearm or otherwise. And surviving that is its own challenge. And we talk about that extensively. Then there's battle number two. That's really where we live, which is the criminal prosecution. Preventing the prosecution in the first place, always the preference. But if you are charged with a crime, our job is to get you the best possible result. But that's not the end of it. There's a third battle. a lot of people don't think about.

[00:01:22]>> Yeah, we've been talking a lot about, you know, building out, as we call the Justice League, and we've gone pretty far to build out the Justice League on the criminal side, but until this point, AOR members got, you know, their choice of a local civil attorney, and that's great. I mean, there's a lot of good civil attorneys out there, but it's not the same as having another member of the Justice League, an attorney who's right here at our law firm at the Attorneys for Freedom on the team standing by.

[00:01:52]>> Absolutely. And having somebody involved from the very beginning when we get that first phone call, cuz these calls come in round the clock. You guys know about our strike force. you know that it is always manned 24/7 365 by a criminal defense attorney standing by to help you in your emergency situation. But having a civil attorney involved as well right from the beginning has huge benefits as you'll learn today. So why don't we start by just having you introduce yourself Susan.

[00:02:22]>> It is truly my privilege to have been invited to join the attorneys for freedom law firm. For me, that was really a watershed moment in my career to be able to become part of a team like this. And so, my name is Susan. I'm an attorney for the attorneys for freedom and I'm now the chief civil counsel. So, what does that mean? As the chief civil counsel, where does that play a role in in your defense? Well, I am your attorney. If you are a member of the attorneys on retainer association and you have this this third thing happen to you, a civil matter against you or even a civil claim against you, instead of outsourcing that, maybe somebody from your community who who is not familiar with all of your rights under the policy and with your defense. That's a subpar civil defense for you and that's that's not good enough. So, as an attorney for the Attorneys for Freedom, I'm going to be your attorney. your civil attorney.

[00:03:20]>> You know, Andy, one thing that I think is really great about this program is uh you know, the skies didn't just open up and drop Susan here. That's right. At the law firm, >> we poached her. This is that's just how I say it, right? That's what we're doing now. We're searching around and we're saying, who's the very best attorneys that we can get here at the Justice League for our AO clients? And I've been in the trenches with Susan. I mean, this isn't hypothetical. I'm not wondering about how Susan is. I've been in the trenches with her. Man, if I was a plaintiff's lawyer, Susan would be probably the last lawyer I'd want on the like, she knows every pain point for plaintiff's lawyers. She knows how to make it miserable, how to drag it out.

[00:04:00]Like, you wouldn't want her on the other side of the case. That's exactly what we want when people want to try to sue one of our attorneys on retainer client.

[00:04:11]There's a full breakdown of who Susan is, what's her background, all of that on the Attorneys for Freedom website.

[00:04:18]It's under, I think, the Meet the Team section. People should check that out.

[00:04:22]If you're an AO member, you should go to the website. Go to attorneys4freedom.com, check out the meet the team section, check out Susan, so you will know who your chief civil counsel is going to be.

[00:04:36]And obviously this now means two lawyers on all civil cases. Bam, there it is.

[00:04:42]Not just one lawyer. Two lawyers is definitely better than one lawyer. And we're just getting ready to get into why it's so important to have a civil attorney on the case from day one.

[00:04:52]>> Yeah. When we say that you have two civil attorneys uh on your case from day one, uh we're talking about Susan plus a local counsel, somebody from that jurisdiction where the incident took place. So Susan, why is that important?

[00:05:07]>> There's nothing more important, candidly, because you're going to have a civil attorney from your community who's a member of that local bar, who knows the the local rules, who knows the local jury, who knows the local court system.

[00:05:19]And I'm not licensed in all 50 states.

[00:05:21]no one is. And so that way we're sure that we have that local presence. And that's really important. And that's not going to be just somebody who who knows some basic things and signs some paperwork. I need a partner locally who can help me navigate the best defense for you. And importantly too, I'm going to be working with you from day one. So I'm not just some outsourced attorney um in the local community who maybe gets a file from you. I'm going to be with you from day one. In fact, from minute one, I get all of the strike force emails, too. So, from the outset, I'm going to be involved in your defense. So, really getting your civil defense prepared before there's even a civil claim.

[00:06:06]>> Yeah, let's talk about that. So, a lot of people are surprised to know that they can be completely acquitted and still get a civil lawsuit, a huge civil lawsuit, cuz you know, in the type of work we do, self-defense cases, almost always these are going to result in somebody being injured or killed. So, as far as damages go, we're talking about high number damages that often time either the plaintiff, that's the person that you had to defend yourself against or their estate if they died, bring some sort of a civil lawsuit. You know, Mark, we recently uh talked about the Salisbury case. And if people aren't familiar with that case, you definitely should go check it out on our YouTube, but this is a case where our client was defending a Jewish preschool from a bad guy and had to shoot and kill him. Uh he was in an extraordinary situation, had to act in self-defense, and unfortunately, the man died. And this was as clear a good shoot as we could possibly imagine as criminal defense attorneys and still he faced civil liability.

[00:07:12]>> You think even a prosecutor in Portland looks at this case and says, "You know what? Even I don't think that this is a bad shoot. It's not even a questionable shoot. This is clearly a good shoot. And yet he's being sued civily."

[00:07:25]>> Yes. So, if the question is who can be sued after a self-defense shooting, if that guy can be sued, the answer is anybody can be sued. So, Susan, why is it important while we as criminal defense attorneys are handling a case, working through motions, showing up to court hearings, strategizing, choosing what to present to the court and the prosecuting jury? Why is it important to have a civil attorney involved in that process to protect our client in the civil suit, the third battle?

[00:07:53]>> Thank you, Andy. There are a number of good reasons why you'd want your civil attorney involved from the beginning.

[00:08:00]Otherwise, what happens is the uh criminal defense has has decisions to make. Often times agnostic decisions about what would still be an excellent criminal defense. You could do this or that in terms of evidence, neither of which has any bearing on how you present an excellent criminal defense, but it could have an incredible bearing on your civil defense. So being able to work with you from the beginning and and help work through that process with you when you're making those important decisions uh will really bear fruit later in the civil defense.

[00:08:35]>> Yeah. And you know with other programs out there that do also provide civil defense in addition to criminal. A point that you made earlier is such an important one, which is that it's kind of different steps of the process to the point where it happens kind of one after the other. And this creates a whole lot of work and disconnect between the criminal team and the civil team. So, how it works in a lot of these other programs is, okay, we'll pay for a lawyer. We don't know who the lawyer is going to be necessarily, but we'll get you a lawyer. Uh hopefully they have a good experience in self-defense, but after that lawyer resolves your case.

[00:09:11]Okay. Well, uh, assuming you're still covered at that point, and there's some reasons to believe you may not be, >> imagining you haven't had your coverage dropped for any of the countless exclusions, but that's another video.

[00:09:21]>> Yeah. Right. But but but assuming you've survived and you still have your civil coverage, what happens then? They then find you a different law firm, presumably, a different civil attorney, and now there's a huge transition cost where the criminal team has to take the file and basically transfer it to this new civil attorney who knows nothing whatsoever about it, who's never touched your case, and they have to start from square one. And we wanted to address that sort of an issue by adding an in-house chief civil attorney to our team. And what I'll be doing then from from the beginning is working not only with the criminal team but with all of the experts, all of the evidence. So by the time your civil matter comes to fruition, and it could come early. It might not be after the criminal case, there could be some discussion very early on about civil. I will actually be involved with the evidence, with the experts, with with the jurisdiction, really learning what the ins and outs of that are for the civil matter that will inevitably be coming.

[00:10:27]>> Yeah. Often times, uh, civil cases can drag on and on and on. Criminal, there's certain rights that attach uh from the constitution and local statutory law that ensure a speedy trial and that the process keeps moving and everything like that. Though frankly, criminal cases can drag on for much longer than our clients would prefer, but civil cases can be way worse. And I know that usually what happens is that civil case kind of pauses. We call it a stay of proceedings while the criminal case first resolves and then the civil case picks up at that point. Now, normally in these other programs that maybe offer you both, that whole time in my view is kind of wasted time for the civil attorney. the civil attorney can be prepping and getting ready ramping up the defense and getting ready for that third battle during that whole criminal proceeding.

[00:11:19]>> Well, and agreed and not just ramping up, you know, candidly, we could be working together in that process. So, instead of me just getting up to speed, I'm going to be participating, right?

[00:11:29]when there's a significant criminal motion, when there's a significant criminal hearing in in that case, I will be participating either in person or remotely so that I'm not just fully up to speed from the background, but fully engaged.

[00:11:42]>> Yes.

[00:11:43]>> Because those civil cases, they do drag on. I mean, I've had cases that have lasted years, not just 8, nine, 10 years is not unheard of for a civil case, especially if it's going to go to trial because there is no right to a speedy trial. Just know that it's a long and arduous process or it can be and you need your own attorney involved.

[00:12:04]>> Yeah. Mark and I made a video called what it's like to be prosecuted and a lot of you were very interested in that video and we think it's an important video. I think frankly everybody should watch what it's like to be prosecuted just to mentally prepare yourself for the process. But we're releasing another video called what it's like to be sued and it's not a pleasant experience. No, if you've never been sued before, and I hope you've never been sued before, if you've never been sued before, it's it's a process and and it can be a really daunting one, especially after you've been acquitted, >> right?

[00:12:37]>> Do I think about how annoying it is sometimes, you know, when you call customer service and you got this huge problem and you spend all this time go explaining what happened, you go through the whole thing and they're like, "Oh, you need to you need to explain that to a different department." you got you get transferred over and then you there's this faint hope that you know were you briefed on everything. Do you know everything and they say no what's your name again and you're starting from scratch. Oh my god could you imagine that like times a thousand you just went through this huge criminal trial right you've spent all this time with the lawyers explaining every little nook and cranny of what happened in every possible way and you've just run that gauntlet. You've gone through that. You beat fight number two right in the criminal courtroom and now here's the civil complaint and here comes a new lawyer and it's like okay your name is what and tell me what happened start from the beginning you're like oh my god like do you know anything about my trial like who the experts were what happened no I'm just getting involved in the case right now I mean the mental strain from that situation I mean again you know stepping back from all this Andy as you and I think about the attorneys on retainer program we always think about it in the same terms. If it was me, if it was my butt that was in this situation, what would I want? Right? As the owner of a law firm, what would we want? I would say get the civil lawyer involved from day one because look, we're criminal defense lawyers. Like, we focus on the criminal case. You know, in fairness, they're trying to put you in a cage in the criminal case. We're not really thinking in our heads about that civil case fight number three that's looming out there in the background. But you know, when you bring Susan in, somebody like Susan who has so much decades of time defending these kinds of cases, you bring her in and her brain immediately goes to, "Huh, how could this what they're doing right now affect the civil case?" And to have her counsel say, "Hey guys, could you say it a little like this instead of a little like that?" We think, "Well, that's no big deal." And she thinks that could make all the difference on the civil side, right? the the way that our client just said it might still leave me some wiggle room to defend that civil case and still get what you want to get done on the criminal side. I mean, again, under the category of what would I want if it was me? I want a really junkyard dog civil attorney. I want a chief civil counsel that has experience, that's tried cases, that knows what they're doing, involved in the case from the very beginning. And yeah, I want a local counsel. I want that chief civil counsel screening out that cuz how does the average person know how to pick a local civil attorney? Like, let's be real about this. They have no idea who's good. You need somebody like Susan who's got that radar looking for another junkyard dog on the civil case. She's gonna want the best team possible. She knows what team she's representing. She knows she's standing up for the attorneys on retainer program. We don't need some sort of halfass program. We want the best. We We are committed to excellence. Susan knows that's what we want in local council and it's Susan's job to make sure that's our civil team for fight number three. There's a point that you made that I think is worth dwelling on with Susan a little bit here because I think it's really really important and people might take it for granted, which is that criminal attorneys and civil attorneys think about things very differently. Very differently. We're governed by different rules, different burdens of proof when things go to trial. We're we're playing really in two different arenas. And there are things that when a criminal defense attorney is in the heat of battle and doing everything that they can to try to keep their client out of a cage like Mark and I do, there's things that they could inadvertently do to make the situation worse in fight number three in a civil case. And there's things they could do to better defend their client in fight number three.

[00:16:36]>> Absolutely. I love call being called a junkyard dog, by the way.

[00:16:40]>> A well-earned title, Susan.

[00:16:43]that I I'm going to earn that. Uh so, you know, one of the other things that uh Mark was talking about that really resonated with me, Mark, was that when you're talking about outsourcing your civil defense, you know, lawyers make money by billing by the hour, typically.

[00:17:00]>> What a great point. And and so when that civil attorney out in the community gets this giant file related to a really complex self-defense matter, the first thing they're going to do is say in their heads, cha-ching.

[00:17:13]>> Yeah.

[00:17:14]>> And they're going to spend as much time as possible grinding and grinding through the very complex file, which they need to. And that's an extra drag on our client who's already gone through an incredible ordeal on the street and in the criminal case. Now, that third ordeal is all the harder because the lawyer wants to make as much money as possible. That's not the case here. I'm an attorney for the Attorneys for Freedom. I don't make any more money or any less money. Doing an excellent job being a junkyard dog.

[00:17:47]>> No, this is such a great point. First off, imagine paying for that out of your pocket. That's right.

[00:17:51]>> Right. Imagine you don't have attorneys on retainer. You're in this situation.

[00:17:55]You survived fight one. You survived fight two. Now you're drained cuz you paid to have a criminal defense lawyer on your case out of your pocket. Here comes the civil lawsuit. The civil attorney does just what Susan said. Wow.

[00:18:06]Chuch-ching. Payday. I got to review every like by the hour you're paying for this. There's a flip side of this, too, which is, you know, Susan's attitude is, dude, you want to go to trial? I there's no problem with money here. I'm happy to go out. Susan's attitude is I love trial. Let's make it expensive. A plaintiff's lawyer is working. You know, often times they also work on a contingency, right? So, they don't want to put a lot of money into the case. If it's somebody who's doing a contingency case, they want to make a quick hit and get out of town. Susan's attitude is, "I got plenty." Like, there's going to be two of us. I got endless resources. I know all the experts. We're ready to go.

[00:18:43]Everything's lined up. Happy to try the case. They're like, "Oh, man. This isn't going to be write a quick letter and get a quick settlement." Now, if you do need to settle, and Susan understands this point as well, some cases you need to settle. And then that's why the attorneys on retainer program has some money involved in it just for the purpose of settling the case. That's why you need good counsel in fight number three.

[00:19:04]>> Absolutely. You know, in the civil arena, one of the things that that's important is that taking the temperature by the plaintiff's lawyer. They want to know, are you really going to be able to try this case? Because if you aren't, the settlement demand is much higher.

[00:19:18]The the drag on the the the defendant because you're the defendant in both cases. That's the same title. the defendant is much harder for that person because the attorney on the other side, that plaintiff's attorney, is is just looking to make that claim as as large as possible. And if if they don't perceive that your civil defense attorney is ready to go to trial, and I love trial, if they don't perceive that, then it's much harder on you. So, they need to know that you have a junkyard dog on your side. Otherwise, they they're going to run all over your you're a civil attorney. Now, that said, there are cases where we're we're going to want to settle, just like in the criminal arena, there are going to be times when it makes sense to settle. You know, for example, in a self-defense case where, you know, there's an innocent bystander who gets injured. And and that's a good example of when we might want to settle.

[00:20:09]>> Yeah. Or you might have screwed it up. I mean, we're we're not one of those companies that only takes the crystal clean self-defense shoot. I mean, you might have acted in good faith, but you know what? You might have blown it. And on the criminal side, we're gonna tell you, we think that's the case. Probably don't want to take the thing to trial.

[00:20:25]At least we're not going to drop your ass, right? We're gonna still defend you. But the same is true in fight number three. You might say, "Look, we screwed it up. Let's get the case settled and get on down the road." And >> and even even if you didn't screw it up, you know, even if you it was a good self-defense case, >> maybe you just don't want to be tied up in a civil lawsuit for years.

[00:20:42]>> Right. Exactly. We have that flexibility and and the way you settle a case is you build the case. And and if you wait years to build that case, that's years of your life trying to defend it before you settle. There's no incentive to me to to wait to settle if in fact it's a good time to settle. So again, I'm not looking for cha-ching. I'm not looking to do that. What's right for you is is what's right for us. And so this program is built around doing the right thing for our clients 100% of the time.

[00:21:17]There's no incentive for us to to drag it on. There's every incentive for us to get it exactly right.

[00:21:23]>> Well, Susan, we are absolutely honored to have you on our team and it's my privilege.

[00:21:28]>> Mark and I would like to welcome you to the Justice League.

[00:21:31]>> Thank you so much. When do I get my cape?

[00:21:34]>> Not all heroes wear capes. Some wear some carry briefcases.

[00:21:37]>> Oh, okay.

[00:21:38]>> All right, guys. Go to attorneysonret retainer. us to learn all about our self-defense program and what it can do for you and your family. Learn more about our team, including Susan, by going to attorneys forfreedom.com.

[00:21:52]Click on meet the team. Learn all about your self-defense lawyers and the great team that we put together to defend our clients in not only the criminal context, but the civil as well. Also, if you enjoyed this video, make sure to leave us a like on the video, comment down below, share this video with a friend, and subscribe to the channel.

[00:22:11]Until next time, this has been attorneys Andy, Mark, and Susan signing out.

[00:22:16]Peace.