Tony Buzbee: The $640M Verdict That Shook Corporate America | DSH #1443

Legal system do not really realize that in the civil system, you have 12 people who are going to decide what is the value of human life, what is the value of human loss, what is the value of mental anguish, what is the value of pain and suffering, what is the value of taking somebody who was who was like the

centerpiece of a family and removing them from that equation?

And how do you replace that?

Well, there's only one thing to do, and that is money.

All right, guys, in Houston, Texas, you got a legend today.

We got Tony Busby.

It's nice to be here, man.

Good.

I'm loving Houston.

I can see why you live here.

Yeah, welcome to our town.

Yeah, man.

How long have you been here?

Since I left the Marines in 97.

Wow.

Yeah.

And you didn't look back since?

No.

Nice.

So you got that law degree and stuck it out this whole time here?

Went to the University of Houston,

started practicing law here and kind of like made my made my bones here.

Did it take off right away?

Pretty soon thereafter.

Yeah,

I was lucky in that I was always looking for opportunity.

And as a young lawyer, probably two years in,

I stumbled across this case that I figured had some legs and ended up settling it for $75 million.

Wow.

As a second-year lawyer.

And I still remember standing in front of the...

the federal judge asking for a 30% fee.

And he said, well, you know, you did a great job, Busby, but I'm going to give you a 25% fee.

And,

you know, I got an $18 million check about two weeks later.

And I was like, okay, what do I do now?

I've been practicing, you know, coming on three years and

had a young family.

And so I decided to double down

and expand and put the money back into the business and grow the business.

And, you know, just kind of took off from there.

See, that's impressive to me because you were in your 20s when you got that check, right?

That could destroy a lot of people mentally.

Yeah.

Well, the Marine Corps, you know, kind of, kind of makes you grow up.

I spent four years in the Marines and

I was leading young Marines.

I was in the Persian Gulf.

I was in Somalia.

When the L.A.

riots occurred, I was patrolling the streets of Los Angeles, a very similar situation to what's been going on recently.

And so it really forces you to

grow up.

So when I went to law school, I was four years older than everyone else.

And so I treated law school.

like a job.

I would show up at seven and leave at six every day.

And just in between classes, I would study.

and and my first daughter was born two weeks before i graduated law school so so three years into my law career when i when i you know made made a what some would consider a ton of money um

you know it wasn't like hey let's see what i can go buy yeah i you know i paid off my house and um and put the money back into the business uh it's not How much money you make, you know, I know it's not very exciting, but it's not how much money you make, it's how much money you save.

Absolutely.

So

the rap on lawyers is you may see a lawyer driving a fancy car that has bald tires.

You know, they can't afford a fancy house, but they can't afford the furniture.

You know, it's, I've never had that problem since 2001.

I've never had any debt.

Wow.

I don't do debt, which helps me sleep well.

Dave Ramsey strategy.

Yeah, I just, I don't, I don't, I don't do debt.

So,

you know, when, when times are hard or, you know, there's a long gap between paydays, you know, I never stress.

Yeah, I was impressed because I was at the golf course yesterday and looking at the cars.

No one really had nice cars, but all the houses were like 20 million plus.

Yeah, I mean, you early, you know, I'm not suggesting that I didn't buy a lot of cars.

I mean, I've had 30 or 40 cars, but I figured out at some point in my life that,

you know, you can only drive one car at a time.

And cars are not a great investment.

There's a few that are, but most, for the most part, you know, the cars you see on TikTok and Instagram, those are not great investments.

Right.

And, you know, you may look cool for a little while, but nowadays, everybody can rent these cars.

So it's not really, you know, it's just all a facade.

And

what's most important is when you wake up in the morning, are you doing something you really like?

Are you doing something that's meaningful to you?

And, you know, are you taking care of your family?

Absolutely.

When did you know you wanted to join the Marines?

Was that always planned for you?

I didn't have any options.

I mean,

I didn't, my dad was a butcher, and my mother drove our school bus and worked in the cafeteria

and there was there was no one that i knew of that had ever been to college i didn't know a college graduate much less a lawyer so uh the marine corps gave me the ability to uh see the world do some really cool things uh and then ultimately paid for my my college

so uh i it wasn't that i always wanted to join the Marines.

It was that was the option that I had, and that's the one I took.

And then

after after

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Doing two different tours and going to some of the most, I think the most coolest schools, jump school, dive school, mountain warfare school, all these kind of special ops schools.

I thought, well, you know, I've done pretty much everything cool that there is to do.

Maybe I'll try law school.

So that's kind of was my progression.

And I think one of the things I tell my young lawyers and other people that I talk to is that you always got to be, keep your eyes open for opportunity and then not have any fear about seizing that opportunity.

Because

I remember when I decided to go to college,

my dad told me, I mean, I'll never forget this, he said, you'll be back.

And that kind of fueled me.

You know, I was never going to go back.

I was from a town of 1,300 people.

Dad was a butcher.

My granddad was a farmer.

My great-granddad was a farmer.

You know, I did not want to do that.

So I was had my eyes open, looked, looking, and the Marine Corps was the option I had.

Wow.

So your dad even didn't believe in you.

No, no.

I don't do, I don't play the I told you so thing.

You know, I could play that in a lot of ways with a lot of different people,

but I never forgot it.

You know, I didn't, I didn't, you know, show up in a Rolls-Royce and say, I told you so,

but

I did make sure that,

you know, I employed my mother.

I ended up employing two of my sisters.

Nice.

I employed my nephew

for some time.

And I think that's the most I told you so I ever did.

Yeah.

When it comes to parents, it's what they knew in their life, right?

So they're trying to give you the same advice.

Yeah, you can't blame them.

My dad knew nothing about college.

To him, it was just some great unknown.

He knew nothing about the military.

What they did know was the local tire factory.

That was a good job.

Everybody was really hustling to get that job or work at the paper mill.

He didn't get either one of those jobs, so he turned out to be a meat cutter.

And, you know, it wasn't an easy life.

We lived on

about a half acre farm.

We had chickens and geese and ducks and every kind of fowl that there is, one cow, two horses, a garden.

And every day, you know, before school, I would go feed the pigs and feed all the animals.

And when I got home from school, I would have to feed the animals again and then did some kind of project around the house, whatever my dad felt needed to be done that day, sometimes tilling the garden, picking tomatoes, picking potatoes, whatever.

It just wasn't what I saw for myself.

Yeah.

I mean, I'm not suggesting that that's not a cool life and it's not a good life.

It just wasn't the life that I wanted.

Humble beginnings.

Very good.

Wow, you've come a long way.

That's impressive.

Now, when you won that case your second year in, some might have called that lucky, but you've continued to win big and big cases.

What do you think separates a great lawyer from the rest?

Persistence, probably.

You know, a lot of people that I come across, they hit a roadblock in their lives and then they stop and go elsewhere.

Or they say, well, I'll come back to that, but they never circle back.

And I'm the kind of person that, you know, just because something, there's

a roadblock, I'll find a way around it.

And then, you know, I develop myself.

I read voraciously.

I really care about the art and of my craft.

I want to get better.

I've been doing this a long time.

I think I do it pretty well, but I know i can always improve you know that my audience is always changing you know the way that you communicate with people now as we as we're demonstrating here is much different than was when i started right you know i started using note when i first started note cards and flip charts you know nowadays everything is is uh digitized and you know we're using mostly video and because that's how people how people communicate and then you know you have to continuously make make your your uh what you're trying to communicate into smaller and smaller right attention span is going down very much And so, you know, people that continue to improve themselves will continue to be at the top of their game.

You know,

there are a lot of one-hit wonders in every kind of business.

You know, you think about the music industry, but other industries.

But, you know, I have not been a one-hit wonder.

That's beautiful to see that even at your current level, you're still working on it.

Always.

I'm always reading the book.

Always, you know,

I pretty much know all the good lawyers in the country.

But anytime somebody publishes a book, I usually pick it up and read it just to see, you know, if there's maybe there's something that I don't know or maybe there's some new technique I can try.

And always, you know, trying to engage the other lawyers in the firm because every now and then they come up with an idea I hadn't thought about and, you know, I try to incorporate it.

Now, you're handling a lot of cases right now.

What's the main focus for you?

You know, I got to keep the lights on.

I know which cases are going to make money.

I know which ones are not.

I know which ones

that really move me or important to me.

I have the luxury of working on any kind of case I want.

Usually, anytime there's anything significant across the country, I usually get a call.

I have the option of saying yes or no.

Sometimes I say no personally, but maybe one of my lawyers will do this.

I spend a lot of time talking to people.

You know, there's so many cases that people never hear about, that people don't want you to hear about, that I will handle.

A lot of times, a letter from me will resolve the issue

before we have to really crank up the whole machine.

Wow, that's how much authority you have in the space.

One letter will

mostly.

I mean, people take my call.

I mean, that's one thing that I've been able to create over the years: if I make a phone call to somebody, I will receive a phone call back.

If I send a letter to somebody, they won't ignore it.

That doesn't mean that it's always going to resolve.

It's always going to resolve favorably,

but I'm going to get their attention.

And usually,

most people know that a long litigation process

is never good for anybody.

It's not good for my client.

I guarantee you it's not good for the other side.

And so, you know, I'm trying.

So

many situations that we have come across, sometimes just very surreal situations

that, you know, you can sit in the room with somebody and resolve something just with a few words.

So I appreciate that.

I also appreciate when people

who are having a problem and they tell whoever they're having the problem with if we can't get this resolved i'm gonna call tony busby i appreciate that now i it doesn't get put money in my pocket but uh it makes me feel good that you know okay they're these people think i'm a backstop for them that that when they're having an issue uh they have an out they have somebody they can call you're just a great mediator

I don't know what it is.

I was thinking about a guy, a lawyer here in town who

told me that he was in in a a mediation and a big case with a lot of people had been injured and killed.

And he told them, if we can't settle this today, I'm going to call Tony Busby.

And the case settled.

And he made millions of dollars.

And I said, well, wait a minute, buddy.

What about me?

You know, you're throwing my name around.

What do I get out of this?

And he said, well, I'm going to call you on the next case.

I said, okay, buddy.

Yeah, because I guess in their eyes, they're going to have to pay more if you get involved.

Right.

Yeah.

That's funny.

You just achieved a $640 million burdette this year.

Yeah.

Was that your biggest one?

I've had several near that, but yeah,

that's the biggest.

Wow.

That's insane.

Yeah.

That's a single death for a man who was in his 50s who was crushed at a job site by a large air conditioning unit.

And I remember when his widow called me.

And she said, my husband, she called me probably two weeks after the funeral and said,

my husband's been killed.

And I know you, Tony, and I need you to find find out why my husband.

I hope you guys are enjoying the show.

Please don't forget to like and subscribe.

It helps the show a lot with the algorithm.

Thank you.

Was killed.

And so,

you know, we found out.

And

we got near the end of the case.

We had resolved the case with there were like three or four defendants or parties, companies that were, that were, we believe, were at fault that had kind of, you know, led to the death of her husband.

And we, the last one, the Crane Company, that was really the main defendant, defendant,

just would not pay this woman what I thought she was owed.

And so we had a four-week trial here in Harris County with mostly Houstonian jurors who decided that

they weren't going to tolerate it.

Wow.

And, you know, the way I proposed it was, you know, what is the value of human life in the state of Texas?

And what can we do collectively to make it such that the next time that they're doing an operation like this, they're going to realize that if somebody dies, there's going to be some serious consequences, not just to the family, but to the company that's running this job.

And

it was interesting to me.

This one of the first times this has happened that they had offered this woman, I think, $9 million to resolve her case.

And I told her, that's not enough, but it's close because you've already gotten money from these other companies.

And, you know, her position was, Tony, just do whatever you think is right, whatever you think is correct for my husband.

And

so I told them, it's not enough money for this case.

I mean, I know the facts of this case and it's not enough.

And they thought they were going to get a little froggy with me and they were going to buck up on me, which is the wrong thing to do with me is to buck up on me, to

thumb your nose at me.

Guess what?

There's going to be consequences.

And there were.

They

reduced their offer from 9 million.

to 6.9 million, like right before the trial started, literally as I was getting ready to choose a jury in the case.

Wow.

And

then after we got the jury seated and we got started, then they kept trying to call me like, hey, we want to revisit that.

And I was like, no,

that has passed.

So we went from, you know, they offered 6.9 million and the jury gave 600 million.

And, you know, I think the point was made.

Wow.

We made the point.

And so it's not just a point made to that company, but it's a point made to every other company that operates in Texas and in the United States that if you kill somebody, if you make a mistake and you kill somebody,

you can't just say, oh, well, human life is only worth X.

No, no.

There's going to be a group of 12 people sitting in judgment deciding what is the value of human life.

And I think a lot of people

that don't know a lot about the legal system do not really realize that in the civil system, you have 12 people who are going to decide.

What is the value of human life?

What is the value of human loss?

What is the value of mental anguish?

What is the value of pain and suffering?

What is the value of taking somebody who was like

the centerpiece of a family and removing them from that equation?

And how do you replace that?

Well, there's only one thing to do, and that is money.

That's how the civil system would.

We'd love to be able to bring somebody back.

That's not going to happen.

We'd love to be able to put somebody in jail.

Well, the civil system doesn't do that.

So the only thing that a jury sitting there can do is to try to compensate people for their losses.

And

that serves two purposes.

One, it compensates the family, but two, it sends a message to every company that operates across the country.

One of the things I said was

to the jury,

one of the benefits of doing what we're doing here is every corporate executive across the country is going to know this.

And they're going to know when they do their planning, their staffing, their training, their hiring, they're going to know.

that if they mess up, that there's going to be major financial consequences.

And in many cases, with a company, that's all they care about.

Most of them, right?

Most of the big ones.

Yeah, you set the tone for the rest of these big companies now.

Well done.

And the good news is, you know, every other client I have, you know, if I have an issue like that, I don't have to bark at them.

They know.

They know what I'm going to do.

And I don't have to make threats.

I just say, okay, we can resolve this here or we can do it the other way.

I can do it either way.

Yeah.

I loved your appearance on Pierce Morgan's show last month because you were basically saying how cases come to you.

You're not actively looking for cases because obviously you're involved in a lot of high-profile cases and there's negative PR around that.

But it was good to see your perspective on that.

Well, you know, let's talk about negative PR.

You know, first off, I don't worry with it.

I'm sure you don't worry with it either.

No, I don't.

Anytime that you put your head up and you, and people know you, they're going to be critical.

Either, I mean, for a lot of reasons.

In many cases, it's just jealousy.

really.

So if I spent my life worried about what other people thought, I'd never get out of bed.

Um, so I don't focus on that.

I focus on, okay, what am I going to do today that's going to advance what I'm trying to do, whether it be a case or maybe myself mentally, physically, spiritually, emotionally, whatever I'm doing that day.

Uh, I don't really spend too much time worried about people that are always taking shots at you because those people probably have nothing better to do.

That's how they make a living, some of them.

Yeah.

Yeah, journalists and YouTubers.

Yeah.

So I agree.

Um, the Shannon Sharp case was a big one, too, right?

Shannon Sharp, you know, handled as poorly as I've ever seen on the other side.

You know, I thought we had the case resolved.

It didn't get resolved.

We were still willing to try to get it resolved and we're still willing to try to get it resolved.

You know, when they hired this lawyer that has this press conference and discloses that they'd already offered this young lady $10 million,

I'm not sure how that was advancing their cause.

I'm not sure how that was, you know, on the one hand, he says he's going to sue me.

I mean, okay, sue me, buddy.

The next you know, next, you're going to sue this, this, um, this woman that sued him.

Uh, and then the next sentence, he says, and we've already offered her $10 million.

So, like, okay, what is your strategy here?

It doesn't make a lot of sense.

You say it's, you say it's frivolous.

You say it's, it's vindictive.

You say it's consensual.

But then you tell us that you offered her $10 million.

You probably want to figure out what your strategy is before you start running your mouth.

Yeah.

I thought him going public, and even Stephen A.

Smith, his coworker at the time, said that was a bad move.

I thought him going public with that was kind of.

I didn't understand it.

I mean, those people, I mean, I had an army of lawyers, what I call the Bowtie Brigade,

you know, who had spent all this time, effort, and energy, and money putting together an agreement that they didn't want us to say anything about what this negotiation process, which I was perfectly fine with.

Oh, so you were going to keep it not even in the public?

Yeah, I was perfectly fine with that.

I mean, that's what they wanted.

You know, my job is just to try to advance the interests of my client.

I don't need another

newspaper article or another, you know, another Twitter hit.

I don't need any of that foolishness.

I've had enough of that.

I was just trying to do what I could for her to get her.

She's 22, to get her down the road about her life.

So I was kind of shocked when they disclosed all those things.

I was like,

what is the strategy here?

I don't think they had a strategy.

But the good news is, we're going to continue to try to work to resolve that case.

I think there's people involved now who have the right mindset that

it's not good for anybody to have a long, drawn-out nasty fight yeah you know it's not good it may be good for for the lawyers you know who are getting paid by the hour i don't get paid by the hours really no so i mean rarely do i get paid by the hour so you know on all my cases i get 40

and so you know if it settles in one day i get 40 if it settles in 10 years i get 40 so i i think it pretty clear that I don't have an interest in trying you know fooling with something for 10 years when I could resolve it in two weeks.

I respect that so much because I've spent so much money on hourly lawyers and gotten very little in return.

I call them the bowtie brigade.

It's this group think they all get together in some silly conference room somewhere on the 40th floor of some building and they all talk to each other.

I went to Yale.

I went to Harvard.

I went here.

I went there.

They all think they're smarter than everybody else in the world and they get around and they talk with one another.

And they think they figured out this great, brilliant strategy of how they're going to beat Tony Busby.

And then I'm just sitting over here, you know, sitting in my house, smoking a cigar.

I thought I lost the money.

I just like sitting here, not worried a damn about what they're doing because I don't know what I'm going to do.

I don't really care what they're going to do.

And, you know, they send me some, they spend thousands and thousands of dollars sending me some mean letter, you know, which I skim.

You know, I don't even care about this stupid letter.

You know, many times I get a letter right there like that.

I'll just write on there, no,

send it back.

You know, I don't, I don't, I don't engage in letter writing

arguments via letter or via email.

But, you know, it's this group think mentality.

They all convince themselves that they've got this plan that they're going to win.

And they miss to completely miss the big picture.

I mean,

I can only imagine what was being said in that room when they thought it was a good idea to tell the entire public that Shannon Sharp had offered this woman $10 million.

I can't imagine.

I'm sure somebody somewhere with a bow tie on that went to Harvard had decided that was the strategy.

Well, it was a stupid thing to do.

And,

you know, it didn't get them very far.

And so I just prefer to

focus on the big picture and try to get the case resolved if I can.

You know, I don't have a problem with going to court.

You know, a lot of these lawyers that I deal with, I've never seen inside of a courtroom.

And, you know, I'm not specifying or

identifying or trying to pick on any particular lawyer that I'm talking about.

But

a lot, if I'm a client and I got a problem, the first thing I would ask my lawyer is, how many times have you been to court?

That's a good question.

How many times have you actually tried a case?

How many times have you stood in front of 150 people and been involved in the jury selection process?

How many times have you actually, not watched it on a continuing legal education, but actually done it yourself?

And what you'll usually figure out is very few people do that.

There's people in the world that I'm sure here in Houston, you've seen all the billboards, all these lawyers.

Personal injury lawyers.

All these guys,

with very few exceptions, have never been inside of a courtroom.

They've never been inside of a courtroom.

They convince some poor schmuck who got hurt that they're the best option for them because they got 10 billboards on the freeway.

And they have no idea that their lawyer just settled their case for 10% of what it was worth.

They never asked the lawyer, have you ever been to court?

Have you ever actually tried a case?

Have you ever been lead counsel in a case?

What is the biggest case you've ever tried?

Those kind of things.

And, you know, and it's, it's no criticism of the client.

They don't know any better.

They're going through one of the worst times of their lives, and they have some lawyer who has a billboard.

So they automatically think, well, that must be a good lawyer.

How can he afford a billboard?

Little do they know that most of these guys that have these billboards,

they're financed to the hilt, they're leveraged to the hilt.

And every time they get a case, they want to settle it quickly so they can pay their, you know, do the do their debt service.

So

I'm fortunate that

we don't advertise.

We don't need to advertise, but we do get really great cases just through word of mouth.

And a lot of lawyers across the country know for certain types of cases, cases are going to have to be tried in court.

We're going to get a call.

I always tell people when your product or service is so good, you really don't need to advertise.

You don't need to spend money on marketing.

You don't need to.

I mean, that would make some people, you know, really flip a lid.

Like, how is that possible?

Because I know that there's lawyers in this town, and they're actually good lawyers that are spending a million, two million a month on

internet type advertisement, but I don't do it.

I don't do SEO.

I don't do billboards.

I don't do any of that stuff.

I just don't need to do it.

Yeah, I mean, you have the opposite problem.

You're turning down cases.

We turn down 99% of the cases.

Wow.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But yet we're still filing five to 10 cases a week.

Jeez.

But yeah, we, we, We turn down a lot of cases and a lot of times we tend to turn down good cases just because I also want to, I just don't wanna spend my time on them.

Yeah.

You mentioned earlier like Harvard and all these Ivy Leagues.

When you're hiring lawyers for your firm, do you care about any of that college experience?

I've hired from every Ivy League school lawyers.

And it doesn't really matter the school they went to.

I mean, you gotta give them some credit that they were able to get into a school like that, that they did the work to get into a school like that.

But what I found is the people that are that are successful, it has nothing to do with the school they went to, has nothing to do with their background.

It has everything to do with whether they're hungry.

Because I can't teach hungry and I can't teach you to have a hunger when you wake up in the morning to wanna succeed.

You either have that or you don't.

So one of the things I sometimes do is on like a Thursday afternoon or sometimes a Friday afternoon, I'll send an email out to all my lawyers, you know, give them some vague task.

Hey, I need X.

The ones that respond immediately, that tells me something right there.

It tells me that no matter what they're doing, that the boss has said he needs this, I'm going to do it.

Then you have some that email back like, oh, I'm busy doing X, Y, and Z.

That tells me something.

Then you have somebody who emails me back on Tuesday afternoon the next week.

That tells me something as well.

And so when the best cases come in, the cases that may get media attention, the cases that may have a lot of dollars in play, the cases that really mean something to me, maybe it's a particular type of case or a particular client that really moves me in some way.

I'm going to be, I'm going to be engaging and staffing that case with those guys that emailed me back immediately because those are the people that are hungry.

Those are the people that are going to leave no stone unturned to make that case better.

Because, you know, we're given a set of facts and our job is to make those facts better, but we can't make the facts.

We can only make the facts better.

Alo, though.

I did want to ask about the Tate one.

So he comes on my show in Vegas.

Next day he goes to Los Angeles and then I see all that happen.

Did that one end up settling?

Uh-uh.

It's still ongoing.

No, we're in the process of trying to serve Mr.

Tate with the process.

We had to go through the Hague Convention.

It's a very drawn-out process.

We were able to get the temporary restraining order extended several times to keep,

and we're not really concerned about him,

just the background of the injunction that we received from the court.

We weren't really concerned as much about him having personal contact with Ms.

Stern, but instead any sort of email, direct message, message, that sort of contact.

We wanted to make sure that that didn't occur.

So, you know, beyond that, I can't really say much else about it other than what's in the pleadings.

But, you know, Bree Stern is our client, is a solid person.

She is not somebody that makes things up.

And, you know, I'm proud to represent her.

Yeah, we'll see what happens with that one.

Astral World, the Festival of Litigation, there was just a documentary.

I don't know if you saw it yet, but I guess they're sharing his side of the story.

Yeah, I did see it.

Astrow World, I represented a bunch of people, but

I guess my key client that convinced me to get involved in that case was

a young man.

I think he was 20 years old who was outside of the Washington area.

He lived in a very rural area.

And what he liked to do was go to these festivals all over the country.

And he flew from some rural area of Washington State to Houston,

shared a room with some guys he didn't know so he could go to the, he was really, really excited about going to the Astral Royal Festival, as many of those young folks were.

And,

you know, his parents didn't hear from him, didn't hear from him, didn't hear from him.

And the first time that they had, you know, they heard that there was an issue at the festival.

They heard that

there were people killed,

but they couldn't get any of the local officials from Houston to confirm whether their son was involved in that.

And the first time they realized that his name is Axel was killed was they saw it on the internet.

They saw a picture of their son.

Oh my gosh.

And it was just really traumatizing.

So when they called me, you know, I had, my son had gone to the Astral World concert several years prior.

And he had told me, he's like, dad, that's not safe.

And he loved, he loved Travis Scott.

He loved the performers.

And he said, but, you know, it felt like we were moving and there's nothing we could do about it.

We're just being moved by the crowd.

And I couldn't even, I was on my tiptoes and just being moved.

And, you know, I'd packed that away.

I was like, you know, I'd told him to don't go back, you know, because he didn't feel safe.

My son's a, you know, he's not a wilting violet.

He's not scared.

You know, he's, he's a typical young guy that, that likes to go to concerts and whoops it up and, you know, parties it up and all that.

But

so when Axel's parents or father called me, You know, I was like, you know, I kind of already knew that there was some issue.

And, you know, because I know most of the players in Houston, I know the police chief, I knew the county judge.

I knew all these people.

And I was trying to get information, like, what's really going on here?

And I think people were, you know, were really shocked to know that Live Nation would put together a concert like that without putting in these safety protocols that would protect these folks.

You know, these young people, mostly young people, obviously there's lots of older people that win as well, but the.

The primary crowd, obviously, was young people.

You know, they went there to let loose, have a good good time you know god bless them you know you're young go do that uh travis scott was was a you know he was a top of the world and and they just did not protect those kids and uh axel was crushed

and he was laying on his back

and people were using him as a step to step over the guard, the rails so they could get out of the crush.

And then they found him and he had went to the concert just with his phone

and he left his ID and his keys and other stuff back at the hotel.

And so they found this body and they couldn't identify him and they couldn't get into his phone.

And they posted his picture on the internet to try to identify him.

And even though the family had called us and our son's missing and they sent pictures of their son, somehow they didn't make a connection.

And so this poor family had to learn that

their son had been killed.

But each one of those young folks that died, there was a story like that.

It was just gut-wrenching and could all have been easily prevented because there were signs of this years before.

And there have been other concerts where Live Nation had been the host that they knew that they had issues and they didn't resolve them.

I think it was Travis.

He was like tweeting, you could sneak in the concert or something like that.

Yeah, I mean,

Travis Scott, I mean, he was a whole separate issue, and I won't go into it because the case is now settled.

But,

you know, he had a lot of issues that we explored in great detail about some of his conduct at these concerts and what, you know, some of the things he said before the conduct.

A lot of these folks were, these young kids were just, you know, they felt encouraged just to do some really outlandish things.

Crazy stuff.

Last but not least, the Diddy stuff that I'm sure you've been following the trials.

What are your predictions for how that's going to play out?

I think Diddy's going to be convicted.

Do you think so?

I think he will be convicted.

I think the prosecution, you know, although it's been very slow, it's been very methodical.

And I think they've dotted all the I's and they've crossed all the T's.

I've made a real effort to stay separate from that because I don't want anyone to suggest that I was, you know, gunning for a prosecution because the truth is, whether he's prosecuted and gets convicted or not really doesn't impact my clients.

But,

you know, from the Cassie testimony throughout this case, it has basically confirmed everything I have said that's going on.

And when people were wondering, how in the hell could you have that many people who came forward?

Well, now we know from the trial that this was happening

more than weekly.

This was happening for many, many, many years.

It was a centerpiece of

his conduct on a daily basis, on a weekly basis, according to the testimony.

And so we're going to start filing.

We filed all of our New York cases and we're going to start filing our California cases, probably file one today or certainly on Monday.

Well, because we have another group of cases that are going to be filed in California.

And there's some shocking things that are, that are, you know, some facts that, that even we haven't heard from this prosecution.

And let's, let's admit, there's been some shocking things that have come out.

from this prosecution.

And it just really makes you wonder, how is it possible that all these people that surrounded P.

Diddy, how did this continue to go on for so long?

And that's what I've always scratched my head.

Like, why didn't, where was the person to stand up and say, whoa, stop?

Somebody needs to stop.

And I think that will tell you, when you talk about coercion and you talk about the ramifications of speaking up, I think people were.

were fearful of speaking up.

Ligow having a kid cut you.

Yeah.

So,

but bottom line is, I think the prosecution has done a great job.

I think that Diddy has been represented as best he can be represented.

I think he has a good team.

I think they're a solid team, but you have to deal with the facts that you're dealt.

Absolutely.

I do want to talk about your animal rescue.

That's one of my goals one day to start one of those.

Wow.

Yeah, I love animals.

What made you start that?

Mostly because of my wife.

I mean, I had a ranch for, I've had a ranch since 2006.

about 7,000 acres that I kind of started.

I bought 300 acres and then I bought more and more and more and I've pretty much just kind of just kind of grew.

And I would go there and kill deer every year.

I mean, go kill, and we would shoot and drink liquor and blow things up.

I bought a tank once and ran over cars.

And

when I got married,

my wife, Frances, is

really into animal rescue.

She's always been involved in rescuing dogs and cats and...

other animals.

And so I decided to turn that ranch, which it had some hogs and it had some horses and cows, into a rescue.

And so we've rescued kangaroos, zebras, antelope,

stags.

Every year we go to the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo and

one of the steers that's going to be slaughtered.

We'll go buy it, put it on the ranch.

We've rescued llamas, alpaca,

all kinds of miniature animals, miniature donkeys, miniature horses.

I mean, any kind of animal you can think of.

I think people

know that, you know, if they have some kind of an exotic type animal that they can't take care of, with the exception, I don't mess with tigers or lions or giraffes.

Mike Tyson.

Yeah, I don't do any of that.

But, you know, we have a whole staff that

they truck in food every quarter and, you know, is

water buffalo and yaks.

I mean, every kind of animal you can think of.

And when we go out there,

Frances spends days and days and days petting each one, hand feeding each one.

You know, I'm just sitting over there in the car just like smoking and like, man, I would like to go home, but she's,

but she's doing a good thing.

And, you know,

I've killed as many animals as I ever need to kill.

I used to, you know, I started hunting when I was five.

So,

and there was never any catch and release.

You know, everything we caught, we ate.

Everything we killed, we ate.

So if I never kill another animal, you know, I've killed bears and every kind of animal you can think of, but I don't need to kill anything anymore.

So if we can save an animal, we'll do that.

There's

when Hurricane Harvey rolled through Houston, there was

the local animal rescue organization found a small cow in somebody's attic.

A lot of cow had, I don't know how this happened, but it was as the house was filling up with water, the cow made its way up into the attic.

It was like a little small cow like that that we call attic now

but you know we rescued that there was a chicken that was that was walking down the streets of Houston the SPCA grabbed it and we rescued it

so there's a lot of stories like that that are just kind of cool you know

there was a family that that that had some business where they used llamas and they couldn't take care of them anymore.

And they called us and said, hey, you know, we don't know what to do with these llamas.

And so, of course, Francis says, well, bring them to us.

We'll take care of them.

And

a car rolls up, and it's like a minivan.

And we're like, Okay, I thought they were pulling a trailer or something.

No, no, the llamas were in the minivan, but the llamas got out of the minivan like it would, like, they were from a clown car.

Right.

That's funny.

Um, so yeah, we do a lot of that.

And, and then we, so we, but that, that ranch is so far away, we bought another

farm closer by, about an hour from here from Houston.

And um, now we're just rescuing horses and goats and sheep and cows and chickens.

And I mean, pretty much every animal we have is a rescue of some sort.

And there's hundreds and hundreds of them.

That's awesome.

Thanks for doing that.

I know giving back is important to you.

It's important.

You've restored your old church as well, which is.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I'd like to do that.

I'd like to, you know, I mean, God bless me for some reason.

And I don't know why.

You know, I don't know.

It's making up for my childhood or what it is,

but maybe it's for me to do good works.

I I don't know.

I mean, it's hope that,

you know, that

I'm somehow in what I'm doing is somehow doing something good for somebody else.

I think that's really, really what we're put on earth here for.

And so if it's animal rescue or helping somebody that's, that's been aggrieved or wronged or cheated, I'm glad to do it.

You also got a podcast you're about to launch, Young Buck.

What's your goal with that show?

Young Buck.

Well, that's a young buck right there.

I would love to do a podcast.

You You know, I enjoy talking to young people and

walking them through kind of what's important, what's not important.

You know, people see me, they say, okay, well, look, he's on this, he's got this fancy house and he's got this Rolls-Royce and he's got this Rolls-Royce and he's got that.

And

none of that means anything.

It really doesn't.

I know it's hard to say that to somebody that doesn't have those things, but they don't mean anything.

What means something is at the end of the day, you're like, hey, I did something.

I did something that was meaningful for somebody.

And so that's kind of the focus of we, because

we get calls all the time like, hey, I just want to shadow you.

I just want to, I just want to, you know, you don't have to pay me.

I just want to go to lunch with you.

You know, all that kind of stuff.

I don't have time for that individually because I do have a very active legal docket.

But that's probably what the focus of it's going to be is just.

just talking about certain things, you know, the importance of meditation as an example, the importance of

developing yourself emotionally.

Things like that.

How can we, you know, because I'm working on it, how can we be better people?

We can be better people if we decide to do that.

A lot of people aren't very self-aware and they, you know, they never spend any time like thinking about themselves and like, not in an ego or an arrogant sense, but more of like, how can I be a better person?

And so I think that'll be kind of our focus.

Can't wait to see it, man.

Thanks for coming on, Tony.

Yeah, man.

Yeah.

Check them out, guys.

We'll link everything below.

Cool.

See you next time.