Jeffery Campiche

I had two mentors. The first one was my father, who was a doctor, and he told me that we are in professions first, business second. We put our patient or our client first, and when we do that, we will be more successful. We will have more clients, more patients, and the people will know that if you’re all about making money and not about taking care of your client or your patient, you will not be as successful and it will not be as meaningful. When I would call him and tell him I made a lot of money in a case, he was never interested in that. He would say, how did you help your client? He just stayed with me on that. During those years where you’re a young clerk lawyer, sort of taken with yourself, and he really kept me humble. The other lawyer that was such a great guy to me was George Kargianas, and he was a terrific lawyer. But George always was polite with everyone, and he didn’t get into that, “All insurance companies are creeps, all insurance adjusters are jerks. They’re just trying to screw everybody over.”

 

There’s a story from George I’ll never forget. If we were trying a railroad case, and the issue was that the couple had been killed when they were crossing the railroad track in a car. And the train hit them. And it was in a rural county in Washington state. And our theory was that the railroad had not cleared off the brush that got close to the track, and the driver of the car couldn’t see the train come, and it was an unmarked crossing.

 

Halfway through the trial, the railroad company’s lawyer said, judge, I’ve got a new witness. I didn’t know about this person. And he saw the accident. Uh oh. It was a 15 year old kid, and his story was that the car started across the railroad track and then stalled. And then the train hit it. He hadn’t told anybody this. And the judge let him testify. So I’m sitting there next to George and I said, you know, I can’t think of a question for this kid George. He says, well, I’ll handle it, but it’s got to be polite. So George starts questioning the witness, the boy, Tommy. And George says well, are you by yourself here today, Tommy? And he said, no, I’ve got my parents. I see, and who’s that? Well, that’s my teacher. So this is pretty important. Yes. And you’re important. Well, yeah. But you’re probably used to that. Probably a great athlete, right? No, I didn’t really make the team. I see, well, you’re probably a straight A student, right? No. But today you’re important, aren’t you?. Yeah. But you didn’t see it, actually did you, Tommy? No, I’m sorry. And George said, I’m sorry, I had to ask that question, but I had to, Tommy. And he did it so nicely that the jury liked George. They didn’t dislike him for beating up that kid. And the kid probably wouldn’t have said no, I didn’t see it if I had done it, because I’d have gone right after him, right?