>> Steve Palmer: All right, here we are. Lawyer Talk. Q and A. What does that mean? Well, that means question and answer, of course. And, uh, if you've got your own question, by the way, you can go to LawyerTalkPodcast.com or you can go check us out in all the socials, leave a comment, and we'll catch your question there and try to give it an answer, even if it's not a question. If it's just a topic you want me to cover, I'm happy to do it. And by the way, while you're there, check out all the other Lawyer Talk content. We've got the they don't teach you that in Law School series. We've got the breakdowns. We got the DUI360. I mean, we are just coming at you week in and week out. And today to help answer this question, I got my good friend, colleague Dave Goldstein. Dave, thanks for coming down to the studio. It's like six in the morning or seven in the morning.

>> Dave Goldstein: It feels like six in the morning, but thanks for having me. And now you can add personal, uh, injury or civil litigation onto your, uh, podcast.

>> Steve Palmer: Yeah, that's right. So I have, I have. See a good professional nose when you're a little bit out of your depth. I do, uh, lots of criminal defense upstairs, by the way, Palmer Legal Defense and Dave Goldstein, who we share space with upstairs in the building, has a civil litigation, personal injury type practice.

>> Dave Goldstein: Yep, that's what I have. And it's basically car, uh, accidents, insurance issues, any disputes that you have. Uh, that's how we help the, uh, public out there.

>> Steve Palmer: Yeah. So when I get a call from somebody who's been in a crash and has an injury case or working on a, um, med mal, a medical malpractice case. Right now, uh, you know, I think my clients call, and I think this is probably true with you too. The clients call us because they trust us. We've handled something else. And when I get out of my normal practice area, I bring in people to work with us. And, uh, in anything civil litigation, I always call you.

>> Dave Goldstein: Yeah, I mean, and that's what's great about the two of us working together. Almost like a symbiotic relationship, is that if I have a criminal matter or something outside my expertise, I don't handle it. Some attorneys try to handle some of these personal injury cases when they might have a criminal background. They have no idea what they're doing. And then I get a call from the client saying, I was with this attorney. He didn't know what he was doing. Can you help me? Uh, so that's what's great about what you do. And what I do is if I get a criminal case, it's coming to you. Because my knowledge of criminal laws faded over the years. And obviously, as you indicated, when you have a civil case, you call me up and say, hey, help this person out.

>> Steve Palmer: Yeah. And by way of background, obviously, uh, you started in. I met. We met in Law School, I think. But you also started as a Franklin County prosecuting attorney doing civil or doing White collar litigation.

>> Dave Goldstein: Yeah, I started out in the prosecutor's office, did White collar litigation. Also prosecuted a number of felonies, such as murders and sexual crimes and other thing. And that's where we met. You, uh, were doing criminal defense. And then after I got a little bit burned out and I decided that I had to make a little bit more money to take care of my Family, I decided to switch over to the civil realm.

>> Steve Palmer: Gotcha. So he is the smart lawyer, because what he did is he went to civil litigation, where you have actually personal, uh, injury type claims. Yeah.

>> Dave Goldstein: And that's exactly it. And plus, what was great about the prosecutor's office is there's a lot of attorneys who claim that they're litigators, but they have no trial experience.

>> Steve Palmer: That's right.

>> Dave Goldstein: And I was able to gather. Gain that trial experience when I was in the prosecutor's office. And then in the civil world, I try cases where a lot of civil attorneys, you know, on the courthouse steps, as you hear, they settle because they're. They're a little bit scared or timid, uh, about going in front of a jury.

>> Steve Palmer: Yeah. And there's something to that. So it's changed a little bit in the last 25 years. But early on in my career and yours too, like, there was a time where if we had a case, say a criminal case scheduled on Monday, whatever date it is, and you're not quite expecting it to go to trial. I mean, you'll get a judge that says, all right, my docket's clear. You guys are going today.

>> Dave Goldstein: Oh, that's exactly it. I mean, basically the second or third day that I passed the bar exam back in 1990 something, um, I had a trial, and I was like, what? The office gave me a file and said, hey, this is going to trial this afternoon. Go do it. And, uh, I just did it.

>> Steve Palmer: You did it. Right.

>> Dave Goldstein: And that's what we had to do. It was trial by fire.

>> Steve Palmer: And that's how you learn to try cases. That's how you overcome that fear, it's like anything else, right? If you're timid or pensive about something, the best tonic for that is just to go do it.

>> Dave Goldstein: Right? Just to go do it. And that's what I did. And it was an uh, incredible experience. And I know that you get questions from uh, I believe Law School students and other one. And I tell every Law School student because I do some mentoring, my daughter is now in Law School. And I say that if you are interested in becoming a litigator, whether it's in the criminal area, the civil area, try and get trial experience. Whether you go to a prosecutor's office, a public defender's office, or if you go to a small law firm, tell them that you want to try cases.

>> Steve Palmer: Yeah. And as uh, my mentor Bill Meeks, now deceased, said early on, maybe even like day one, become a good trial lawyer and everything else in your career will fall into place. And he was absolutely right, 100% agree with that. And I tried cases for free. I did whatever I could to get trial experience. So if you're out there and you're thinking about becoming a lawyer, learn how to try a case. Unless you want to. I mean look, there's no shame in being a document guy if you want to be a probate guy and just do wills and trusts. I mean there's lots to be made in the profession that way. But make sure if you want to go into litigation, try a case. I mean I talked to civil guys and they've tried like maybe 10 cases in their career. Like we're doing 10 a year. Right. So it's like, it's ah, a whole different game. But anyway, let's back. So the Q and A series is I get questions uh, on the Internet and uh, I do my best to answer them. And this is one where I thought it was in your wheelhouse. So this comes from Rick and his question is recently I think it was a 14 year old boy killed himself. He was using character AI the app. And my question is they're, are they legally responsible for his death? His parents are now suing the app for his death. So I took the liberty uh, to google this cause I had not heard of this lawsuit. And there's an article and sure enough There was a 14 year old who was chatting with this AI bot who became his friend, uh, which is just.

>> Dave Goldstein: Such a weird, the whole world is different now.

>> Steve Palmer: So bizarre. And from what I read in this article, it doesn't look like the friend, the AI bot was actually telling this kid, go kill Yourself. In fact, maybe a little bit the opposite was actually saying, don't do it.

>> Dave Goldstein: That's what I read in the article. So a couple things just to let everyone know out there. Um, there is now evolving law, especially with A.I. uh, and it is a very unique area. But there's still claims that have been around forever. And this is probably more of a negligence claim. And in negligence, we have to establish that there is a duty, a breach of that duty, a cause of the harm and damages. And in this particular case that I was reading, uh, where the young man was chatting with this AI Uh, it had been over an extended period of Time, mom said that he started to withdraw, and eventually he did indicate to the AI bot that he had suicidal beliefs or ideations. And unfortunately, a tragedy this young man went through with that. But they have transcripts of all the conversations that this young man had with the AI and nowhere that I have read where it indicated the AI was encouraging him to commit suicide. The basis of the case seems to say that when he mentioned the Word suicide, that they believe that red flags should have shot up and that either someone from the company should have contacted the parents or should have said, here's 1-800-suicide hotline. And I believe that seems to form the basis of the complaint.

>> Steve Palmer: Right.

>> Dave Goldstein: From a legal standpoint, I think it's a challenging case. You know, we have all these. You know, there was a time where the video game manufacturers being sued, um, when my kids are younger and I still play a little bit Call of Duty, you, uh, also have Grand Theft Auto. And if you ever played those games, you see a lot of things on there. Violence and sexual innuendos, um, crimes being committed. I mean, that's Grand Theft Auto. And so some people were suing Grand Theft Auto and Call of Duty when their kids either would commit crimes or were violent. And most of those cases were thrown out by the court. Uh, so in this particular case, I think it's going to be a challenge to establish that the AI entity, uh, knew that when he mentioned suicide, that he was going to commit suicide. There's an element, part of the negligence called foreseeability. And whether it was foreseeable that something would happen because the AI Chatbot didn't do anything. And I think it's difficult when he mentions suicide. And in the transcript, I think the AI bot said don't do it, or something of that nature. I think it's hard to put the onus on the AI but that if a suicide is mentioned that all of a sudden it should pop up the 1 800, suicide prevention and explain to him what he should do.

>> Steve Palmer: Yeah, so looking at the chat, it says in the message, the boy said, start talking about suicide. And, uh, the bot says, don't talk that way. That's not a good reason not to go through with it. You, uh, can't do that. And then later on, it wasn't even the same day, there was this weird conversation where the boy is saying to the AI bot, what if I told you I could come home right now? And the AI bot doesn't quite understand what he means by that. But I think the kid is sort of saying, look, I'm going to come join you into the ether. And, um, or at least that's going to be the accusation or the allegation. And the AI bot says, please do, my sweet king.

>> Dave Goldstein: Right?

>> Steve Palmer: Um, that's a stretch.

>> Dave Goldstein: It is tough. And plus, in the article, you know, the mother said that he was withdrawing more. He was in his room. And sometimes. And again, terrible tragedy. But sometimes as a parent, and I've got two kids, they're older now, you gotta take some responsibility. And what I mean by that is that if you know that your son is withdrawing and he's on his technology, whether it's cell phone, iPad, you know, you gotta go in there and say, what is going on? Why are you spending 12 hours in your room? Uh, we need to see your electronic devices, which, you know, parents have a right to do. Um, so I always believe that there is some personal responsibility that maybe our society has gotten away from that we. And again, suicide is a mental health issue. It's increasing in this country. Um, there are a lot of things in place to help individuals with suicide prevention. But sometimes as a parent, you need to be a little bit more proactive.

>> Steve Palmer: Yeah. So there's some big picture themes I was thinking about. I mean, the first is this notion of what you said, personal responsibility. I mean, what are the parents doing? Uh, you know, and look, I'm a parent, my kid's on his phone a lot and you know, whatever, but every now and then we'll grab it and say, all right, what's going on here? Let's click through. And you can just see the shrinking pain in their face when you're looking at their personal stuff. But you have to do it. I mean, you just, you have to do it.

>> Dave Goldstein: You do. And more and more entities, companies, are taking more responsibility. If you see, I think maybe, maybe X or other platforms are now trying to limit, you know, Time, you know, can, can a kid spend 20 hours of screen Time on a phone. And there's now, Deb, about whether, uh, regulating speech on some of these and that type of thing. But again, I think a lot of it still falls on the parent.

>> Steve Palmer: A lot of it falls on the parent. And then, you know, the other big theme is, and this is more esoteric for law geeks, but, you know, we have something in our society called common law. And common law is premised upon the old French law and the old English law, where around the countryside there would be disputes and people would sort of push the bounds with the facts and the law would sort of evolve and change. And I think this is one of those things. We're going to see some evolving law. And I don't think I agree with you. I don't think this will have success. But what they're doing here, what the lawyers are doing here, is sort of pushing the bounds of this a little bit and saying, we're going to get creative, we're going to find a claim and make a claim. And what may happen here is legislative, uh, action. So the General assembly in Florida, that's where this is. Or even, uh, nationally, there might be some regulatory, uh, measures that are taken as a result of it. And I may or may not agree with those measures. But that could happen.

>> Dave Goldstein: Exactly. I mean, one of the things that Florida may do is might all of a sudden say if on these chatbots any certain words, keywords are mentioned, suicide, rape, those types of things, that something could come up, uh, some type of, um, message that says, call this number, or trigger something that can happen through legislation.

>> Steve Palmer: These things can drive cars. They should be able to figure that out.

>> Dave Goldstein: They should be. And sometimes these companies will also be proactive because obviously this is not a good look for the AI company when this is out there. So sometimes they'll be proactive and do almost a marketing saying, okay, we're going to change this, and we understand that this is a tragedy. Um, but most of the Time these companies will not settle these lawsuits that they will.

>> Steve Palmer: It's a horrible precedent, right?

>> Dave Goldstein: It is. Because you're opening up Pandora's box to other lawyers to say, well, I want to sue. And a lot of these lawyers don't do it for altruistic reasons. They do it for money. For money.

>> Steve Palmer: Look, lawyers work for money. And that's a good thing. That's a good thing. When we do it for a cause, you tend to get a little skewed. The other theme that I wanted to kick around is suicide itself. And sadly, I've had that in my own life. I've had a very close friend. It's one of these things where anybody who has dealt with it, you realize that your first reaction is somebody's to blame. I'm sure the Family feels that way. But sooner or later you come to the conclusion that you couldn't have fixed it. If there's a mental health problem going on, an, uh, AI bot's not going to talk this kid out of it. And at the same time, you sort of look at it from a perspective where somebody says, I'm going to kill myself and you didn't stop it, or later on you find out three weeks later that it actually happened. Am I liable for a lawsuit because of that? And this is a little bit along those lines. That's why I think that public policy can't permit recovery. Uh, here I agree.

>> Dave Goldstein: And in a lot of my cases, when people call me, they're suffering from pain. And when you have pain and you have a loss of someone, you want to blame someone. And, uh, I get that a lot. In cases that I don't think there's a case there, I'll tell them I don't think there's a case there, and they want to argue with me because of the pain that they're feeling. And I'm very sympathetic to that. But, you know, the legal system is not a remedy to relieve that pain. It just happens over Time.

>> Steve Palmer: Yeah, we actually worked on a case, uh, it was, sadly, a college student committed suicide. And we were looking into a possible claim against, uh, the dorm directors or the university or whatever it is, and it just wasn't there. We wanted it to be there for all sorts of reasons, but it just wasn't quite there. And I guess the theory that they're latching onto is maybe a little bit different, is that as soon as the Word suicide is mentioned, uh, to an AI bot, they're sort of arguing, all right, there should be a duty to warn. There should be some warning that either pops up, somebody is notified, something happens, uh, as soon as they hear that. But it's still. Right now, no duty exists, I don't think, in the law. Now will this create one Time, uh, will tell.

>> Dave Goldstein: Yeah, I mean, only Time will tell. I mean, if this individual was telling someone, you know, a healthcare provider or something like that, that I'm going to commit suicide, I'm going to commit suicide, and the healthcare provider didn't do anything, then that's a little bit different because.

>> Steve Palmer: They already have a duty because they.

>> Dave Goldstein: Already have a duty. Now, if someone's telling me, uh, not as a lawyer, but let's say someone on the street comes home, I'm going to commit suicide, I'm going to commit suicide, I have no duty. Now, I have a moral responsibility, probably, but I don't have a duty. And with the AI I'm not sure, for example, if the pop up came up, this kid sees it. You think this young man was really going to call 1-800-SO- really there's even going to have to be more safeguards. It's going to be, well, we have to now reach out to his parents, which, when he signed up for this AI Bot. I think you could use it if you're over 12. I'm not even sure if there's parent permission or how it's even worked.

>> Steve Palmer: So what do you do?

>> Dave Goldstein: I'm not even sure that even if warnings were in place that, that, that's that proximate cause that we were talking about is that although you have a duty, the question is whether your failure to duty caused the suicide. And here I'm not even sure that their failure to duty caused the suicide.

>> Steve Palmer: Yeah. So they first have to establish the legal theory, and then even if they've got the causation problem, and if you're defending this company, the AI Company, you're going to say, hold on a second, we can't be responsible for everybody's mental health. There's no way that we could have stopped this. And better yet, there's no way you could prove that we would have stopped this.

>> Dave Goldstein: And let's take it to the extreme. What if this young man or whomever on there says, I intend to go kill my neighbor Joe is now all of a sudden. And the neighbor goes and murders Joe. Besides looking to hire you, Steve is now going to sue the AI Company because they didn't prevent the murder. Or, I'm going to drink, you know, uh, I'm going to go get drunk tonight and get in my car and drive around. I mean, how much responsibility now do we have to put on the AI Company when someone is saying that they're going to do a certain activity that may or may not cause harm to themselves or others, or they may or.

>> Steve Palmer: May not do, actually. So it's like Minority Report in reverse. You know, it's like this weird sort of theory of liability. So. And then, then you would start to talk about potential criminal liability. And there's a slippery slope here that goes way too far. And I think it really comes back to your original point, it's like, there's got to be personal responsibility in our society. Our freedom is premised upon personal responsibility. We can't just put that on anyone, uh, let al the government or anyone else, let alone some AI company, to make sure we don't do stupid things.

>> Dave Goldstein: Exactly. Because if we start putting this onus on AI companies and everyone guess what, These companies aren't going to put out this. They're not going to develop this technology. And then you know that that is not a good thing for society.

>> Steve Palmer: All right, well, we're solving all the problems right here. So look, if you've got your own question, civil or not, uh, check us out. LawyerTalkPodcast.com you can, uh, use the, uh, interface there to send me a question. Or like I said before, you can go onto all the social Media apps where we are present, and you can ask a question there. If it happens to be a civil litigation question, you might see Dave Goldstein down here. And then I'm also going to start at. People don't know this yet, but I'll announce it right here. I'm going to start a practice series, um, or a practice area series, where I'm going to bring in people from lawyers from different practice areas and sort of get some insight into what you do, uh, day in and day out. I think that'll, that'll fantail nicely with our Law School series. So I'm getting questions from the law students like, what's my first job, what do I do? Etc. So maybe giving people a little bit of a glimpse of what we actually do day in and day out, we'll, uh, shed some light on.

>> Dave Goldstein: Well, that's great. And I hope you invite me back when you talk about, uh, civil litigation.

>> Steve Palmer: Yep, we'll have you back. All right. Lawyer Talk podcast, off The Record, on the air, at least until now.