Title: $25 Million & How Diacetyl in PAM Cooking Spray Caused Lung Injury
Downloaded: 2026-04-10 14:44:18

Welcome back to another episode of the Auto Accident Attorneys podcast brought to you by the Auto Accident Attorneys Group where our motto is simple. We take care of you. Today I have attorney Allan Hulcom with us in themes of taking care of us. Allan has just battled uh a proverbial Goliath and I wanted him to come and discuss some of the trials and tribulations that he has experienced and uh whether you're a consumer this is typically consumerbased but I think today's episode is something that other attorneys can actually get some benefit out of as well.

So, we're taking care of consumers and our fellow bar associates. Uh Alan Hulcom joins us from Tor Herman Law. Allan, welcome. Uh I know you're local to the office, so it wasn't too bad of a drive, I hope. Right. >> 7 minutes. >> Fantastic. Well, I do appreciate you coming uh and sitting down with me and and recording today. I can't wait to get into uh your war stories from LA. Uh, but before we get there, I asked you a question before we started recording. Who is Allan Hulcom? >> Yeah, that's a deep question, I think.

Uh, and I'm still trying to figure it out, but I guess if you just wanted to do the stats, um, I, uh, I'm a lawyer here. I live in Marietta, Georgia. Uh, I do catastrophic injury, wrongful death, product liability cases kind of all across the country. I uh I'm from Mississippi originally uh and moved to Atlanta in like 1989. I grew up out in Snellville, Georgia and went to uh Brookwood High School. Then went to uh UG for undergrad and Emory for law school. I did do a stent in Miami for a couple of years.

I I did my first year of law school at Miami and then transferred to Emory. Um married, have two kids. My wife grew up here in East Cobb. Um, most of my best friends from college grew up here in East Cobb, Marietta, Georgia. Um, and so we moved here about eight years ago. Um, so yeah, that that's basically kind of me in a nutshell, I guess. >> Allan in a nutshell. Let me out of the nutshell. I didn't know your wife was a local East Cobb. >> Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. She uh she went graduated from Walton and my most of my best friends that I went to college with and then a lot of the I was a defense lawyer for 10 years at Weineberg Wheeler Hudgens Gun and Dial.

>> We won't hold that against you. >> No. Yeah. I mean I do I do a lot of videos myself that I end up having to delete so I don't make my friends angry. But most of them went to Walton also. >> So yeah, it got very kind of incestuous. >> Walton produced some some great kids. Uh even outside of law. >> Yeah. some of them. >> I I I say that because I'm a Walton Raider myself and uh I'm trying to put myself into that really good company. >> Okay. Yeah, there you go. >> Um Allan, let me ask you, you you're in a very unique area of law, and I just realized that you've got a chip on the edge of your glass, so please don't drink from the far side.

>> Gotcha. We're all good. >> We'll throw We'll get rid of that later. >> Yeah. All good. Um, you're in a very unique area of law. Your practice, you focus on I don't want to butcher it because you do have single incidents, but you're you're really in in like a a mass do I have it correctly? You're in a mass tort world. >> You do big cases. How do I say that? Sounds smart. >> Yeah. Yeah. So, my entire career when when I was at Weinberg Wheeler, Weinberg Wheeler kind of specialized then and still they still do now.

They did all excess carrier defense basically. So, you know, before I had kids, I was working for a guy named Billy Gunn and Dave Dial and these guys who were just going in and trying bring basically parachuting in to try the worst of the worst cases across the country. And they were mostly just, you know, truck wrecks that killed like, you know, five kids or something crazy like that. Um, and then also product liability cases, some lung disease cases. Um, and then I've kind of transferred that over.

a jumpside seven years ago and I've kind of straddled this world between mass tors and single events. So at at my current firm, uh we're like I'd say 80% 85% a mass tort firm. I help run the single event department uh which are mostly just all catastrophic injury wrongful death cases. So stuff like uh I have a bunch of negligent security cases, medical malpractice, um truck wrecks, um you know, a slip and fall if the injuries are bad enough. Um and then I kind of straddle that world in the mass tort world.

Um I don't really work much on the daytoday of the mass tor cases unless it's maybe for like a deposition or something like that. And then um we have a trial team that consists of me and my one of my partners, Jake Plattenburgger. And we once the mass torque case gets to the trial phase, then we kind of jump in, learn everything, and then dive in and try the case. So yeah, I'm straddling those two worlds at this firm. >> And and you're in a unique I think when consumers especially think about an attorney, it's the the local guy, uh you know, someone that that is near the courthouse.

you're in a in another unique uh you have another unique experience where your local council across could I say continental US. >> Yeah, I've had cases in I think close to 30 states. I've tried cases I think in 12 12 or 13 at this point. I I I kind of lost count a little bit and I don't mean that in a weird way. I literally just can't remember. I'm going, you know, have dementia or something. But, uh, yeah, it's a national practice and, um, a lot of that's because Weineberg Wheeler had a national practice.

Um, I think I've tried something like three or four times as many cases outside the state of Georgia as I have inside the state of Georgia. And then when I flip sides, I was worried about getting referrals, right? Like I I'm here in Atlanta. I knew some of the heavy hitters because I had paid them a lot of money through the years, but I really didn't know a lot of guys in the, you know, in the community. So, I had to market myself as kind of this national trial guy who would go anywhere at any time, um, to get cases.

And so, uh, that's it's just been kind of a natural progression. I'm trying to get a little bit more local now as I get older and my kids are, you know, growing up and stuff like that. But, uh, yeah, I I'm licensed in California, Ohio, Mississippi, uh, Georgia. I've had cases in Idaho, and New Hampshire, and, you know, you name it really. >> So, those those jurisdictions where you're actually licensed, do you get licensed? Did did you do it ahead of time, or are you going through that process when there's a case that's on?

>> So, I did Mississippi because I'm originally from there. And um at the time I think they were I think kind of the legal climate there they were finishing up a bunch of tobacco cases and I was kind of thinking that might go on for a while. Maybe I could try to get some of that business as a defense lawyer. Um California is pretty interesting. So in 2015, I tried a case um in San Diego, California that actually involves the same lung disease case or the same lung disease as the Kagra case that you mentioned earlier.

And there was really no defense at all. Uh we were like the third defense lawyers who got put on the case. I basically moved to San Diego for, you know, three months, was taking the red eyee back every week and, you know, we really had no defense, but we out lawyered the defense lawyer um he asked for like 75 million, I think, in economic damage. Yeah, the plaintiff did uh in closing and we got complete defense verdict. >> Wow. >> And after that, we kind of started getting flooded with some California work.

Um, and so I got to a point where I had so many ProHawks open. Prohawk VJ. So that's where you get admitted for a single case and you have to have a sponsoring local council. Well, I don't think California has like a hard number that you're allowed. Uh, but I guess somebody noticed or maybe somebody complained that I had so many open. And so I I got a letter from the California Supreme Court that said, "Basically, you're illegally practicing law here and you need to come take the bar exam." So, I went ahead and took the bar there, which was a pretty intense um experience, actually.

>> So, did you take it when it was still the three-day? >> It was a three-day, but I was five years in, so I only had to take two of the three days. >> Okay. >> But it was the way I describe it. I'm really surprised I passed it to be honest with you. I had a uh my wife was working full-time at the time. We had a uh our son was going through like a fourmonth sleep regression, so he was not sleeping at all. I had a full case load. I really didn't have any time to study. Um, and I tell people the California bar is what they tell you the Georgia bar is going to be like or like what you see in the movies.

You know, I went to the Georgia bar expecting chaos and high pressure and there was some of that, but it, you know, Georgia has like a 90 something% passage rate. Like it it ain't that hard. And no offense to anybody who had to take it more than once. It just, you know, this is the statistics show that it's not that difficult. Then I took the Mississippi bar and I took it in the basement of a church and I wrote it by hand and they actually give you their the scores there and I got like 99% >> on site.

>> Not on site, but you get them once you learn that you >> pass. They'll send you like your actual scores, which a lot of states won't do. >> Yeah. Like in California, you don't know how much you passed by. You just know that you passed. >> Exactly. And then I get to California and I took it in uh Santa Clara right across the street from the 49ers stadium. And I want to say in the first 15 minutes I was there, you know, three or four people are slamming their laptops, crying, you know, running out of the room.

There's 4,000 people in the same room. And that was one of the satellite places. It wasn't even supposed to be one of the large, >> you know, locations where people were taking it. So I uh I get to the third day and when I show up on the third day I realize there's a lot of people missing and so it really became like a war of attrition. I'm like if I just finish this I have like a decent shot, you know. >> Yeah. >> And then I just Ohio I just uh I had so many cases there at a certain point in my career that I just waved in so I didn't have to take the exam there.

>> Amazing. Um I I have my own California bar exam story. I don't remember the year now because I'm like you. I'm getting old and I feel like maybe I'm getting a little bit of dementia. But if you took the Ontario bar exam the the the year that I took it, it was during summer on day three. I was the one that was uh wheeled out in a wheelchair before they let anyone else go. >> Really? >> Yeah. I was on stimulants to get me through day three. I had skipped lunch. Instead of uh having lunch, I think I had like two Red Bulls.

So for the second session on day three, uh I felt my upper lip getting really really stiff and then my fingertips started getting numb. So I stand up in my seat and I'm typing as I'm standing. So a proctor comes by to tell me to sit and I was like with with my stiff upper lip. I'm like I can't. >> Yeah. I mean, you see a lot of that out there, actually. And when you're talking about Ontario, you're talking about Ontario, California, on Pasadena, and all that. >> Yeah. Um, but yeah, so everyone I I like to bash on Kim K as much as anyone else, but when everyone's bashing on Kim K for not passing the California Bar Exam, I was like, "Hey, you guys don't know." >> Well, it's funny like I looked up after I passed.

It was my wife was kind of like laughing when I passed. She's like, "Wait, you passed?" Uh, and I looked it up and on some of these lists or surveys or whatever, they have it as like the third hardest standardized test in the world. >> Mhm. >> And so anytime my kids are like, "Well, you don't you know, you don't know this, you don't know that." I'm like, "Hey, I passed the third hardest test in the world, buddy." >> Yeah. >> Have you done that? And so >> the first hardest being looking your mom right in the eyes, >> right, >> after 18.

>> Yeah. Yeah. Well, let's not talk about that. Yeah. >> Okay. So, all right. I think we've got a good foundation. Hopefully, our listeners, my my number one listener, by the way, Allan, um I know you've listened to the show. I don't know if you've caught on yet. It's my mother. >> She is my number one. Yeah. Hi, Mom. I love you so much. Thank you for listening. Uh right now, she's I I already know when I get uh home and we're talking about this episode, after she sees it, she's like, "How come you can't be more like Allan?" >> No, she's she's one of the only ones.

So, uh, now that we we we have an understanding of really the the battles that that you see, uh, I reached out to you unsolicited after I watched Oh, by the way, we'll tag it in the body, but if you share your Tik Tok handle with us because that's I saw the videos of Konagra and your behind-the-scenes war room and I was like, this is I want to hear more. >> Yeah. >> What What's your Tik Tok handle? >> Uh, I'll have to look it up. >> Yeah. Okay. We'll tag it here. >> Yeah, I'll look it up. But, uh, yeah, the Tik Tok thing is new to me and I I just happened to make a video as I was leaving the Sky Club on the way to come home, literally 18 hours after the verdict, just talking to the camera and all of a sudden I had like 400, you know, 350,000 views or something and it kind of freaked me out.

I was like, I've never I don't know if that's a lot or a little bit. It was a lot to me, you know. >> Yeah. Well, it's it's um first off, your content is is real and it's content that not every I think I've got the best auto accident podcast out there for sure. >> It's the only one I listen to, >> but let's not joke ourselves. There are tens of if not hundreds of thousands of us doing uh MBA cases. It's a much smaller pool doing what you're doing. So, when you put that content out and you you pull back uh the the the curtain a little bit and show us behind the war room, uh you you show us the details of what you've gone through and as a traveling litigator, no less.

It's really compelling uh content. So, I I was naturally drawn to it and I really wanted to talk to you about it. >> I appreciate that. The specific case I wanted to talk about is um Conagra the and then I I'll ask questions you because uh of the fact that it's it's sort of active right now. You just tell me uh what you can and cannot discuss and I'll just ask the questions. >> Uh I believe it's it's a $25 million verdict which is the largest verdict for a plaintiff that was not for a consumer. Right.

They've they've had it for employees if I'm not mistaken. >> Correct. >> This is the first time a a consumer plaintiff has ever gotten a verdict this large. >> Correct. >> Um Kagra is the parent company of is it PAM? >> Right. So Kagra is a a major industrial food manufacturer. They own PF Chains. They like own I didn't know that. >> Yeah. They own the Blue Bonnet. They uh brand. They own Pam. I mean it the list goes on and on and on. I mean they're they're massive. >> So you took on this massive conglomerate Goliath.

Had anyone you told us that uh when you were on the defense side there was a plaintiff that had suffered the same disease and they had brought a they had asked for $75 million and they got defensed. Thanks. >> Yeah. That's a lot of the reason I'm a plants lawyer. I I uh we didn't do anything like unethical. It's just really good lawyering, but I didn't think we really had a defense. And the guy was very very sick. And it should have been a major >> victory moment for me. And of course, I was happy to win because of the competitive nature of what we do, but it was that was kind of the beginning of the end of my defense stuff.

I said, I you know, I just don't know that I um really want to do this too much anymore. Well, I'd say that it seems like you're you're bringing a little bit of uh equity back into the universe, right? Like you're you're swinging the pendulum to the other side. >> Trying to Yeah. >> Uh which I love and I on behalf of all consumers and uh the oppressed. >> Thanks. Thanks for coming the light side. >> You're welcome. >> Uh tell us I I don't want to butcher the the setup. I'm just going to sit back. Can you tell me about how this case came to your doorstep and then let's walk through where it is right now?

>> Yeah. And jump in anytime you want because it's, you know, I'll try to be brief, but it has a long history. So, there's a chemical that exists in nature and it's called diacetil or diaol. Nobody really knows how to pronounce it, including like food scientists. It's naturally occurring. It's in butter. It's in the bourbon that I have in my hand right now. Uh it's in coffee. Um naturally occurring. It's really no issue um by itself. Uh the problem is as is the problem with uh most chemicals is when companies get a hold of it.

And so there was this lowfat or fat-free craze in the mid to late 80s really going into the early 90s with you know the Atkins diet and all this other stuff that was going on. And so everybody wanted a fat free product. So what these major industrial food manufacturers did was they took the fat out of the stuff that we eat every day. Um and they in they would synthesize and increase the amount of diacetil or diainyl in the product so that it would still have that full they call it a uh what they call it like cream flavor in your mouth.

Um, it's the reason why microwave popcorn still tasted really good in the '9s, even though they took all the fat of the butter out of it. >> Um, and so, you know, no harm, no foul for quite a while. Um, although there was a lot of stuff going on behind the scenes in the '9s that people didn't know about. But in the year 2001, there was a major outbreak of this very rare lung disease called bronchulitis obliterance. Now today it's known as popcorn lung and it's called popcorn lung because they first discovered it in a on a mass scale at least um in these microwave popcorn facilities.

So you had these workers in very rural areas, mostly in Missouri, Indiana, Ohio, um a lot of Kagra employees, uh who were essentially dumping this butter flavoring that had high levels of diacetil into heated vats of oil. Um and diacetil, like pretty much every chemical, at a certain point it becomes an irritant. So if you breathe it in, it's fine to eat all day long. You're good. No, no harm, no foul. Uh, but it's a lung irritant. And, um, like I said, in 2001, they found basically a cluster of popcorn lung or bronchily obligants at a microwave popcorn manufacturing facility in Missouri, in a place called Jasper, Missouri.

Um, and then it it started popping up in all, you know, no pun intended, popping up in all of these other microwave popcorn plants from 2001 to, I don't know, 2007 or something like that, which is how I got involved in the year 2010 2011. So 2011, I'm at Weinberg Wheeler. Um, I've been doing mostly like commercial evictions. They had a very kind of small commercial practice there. I actually wanted to be a construction lawyer, but they stuck me on the torch side and I was not happy about it at first.

Um, but Billy Gunn, who means a lot to me and was a a really great trial lawyer, kind of old school, you know, warhorse type trial lawyer, walks down the hall and he says, "Hey, do you want to come uh help me try a case?" which really meant like help me, you know, carry my bags and, you know, do stuff like that. Uh, in a place called Shauny Town, Illinois for these popcorn lung cases. I had obviously never heard of it. Um, I didn't have kids at the time. I wasn't married at the time. So, I'm like, "Hell yeah, let's go." So, we jump on a private jet, fly to uh fly to Marian, uh, Indiana or where were we?

Yeah, Marian, Illinois. And, um, you know, it settled three days in on a global scale. I think there were like 300 pending cases, but we took over the largest defendant in in that litigation. Before we got involved, there had probably been I mean, I had the stats in my head at one point, but I think there were like 10 to 15 verdicts against my client, our client, International Flavors and Fragrances for this particular lung disease for diacetil. Um and then we ended up trying one of the all of these cases that were going to trial were the workers, the people who were working in the Kagra plant, the people who were um you know who were dumping large amounts of this uh chemical into heated uh vats of oil without respiratory protection.

So uh in 2012 a consumer of microwave popcorn came down with bronchily obliterance. ever worked in a plant. It made uh Good Morning America and all this stuff. His name is Wayne Watson. Um actually he he came down with an '07 and then his his trial was in 2012 and he got a $7 million verdict. And so a bunch of consumer microwave popcorn plaintiffs started showing up. So people who it sounds weird, right? Sounds kind of implausible, but these are folks who wanted to go on low-fat diets. And so they would literally eat like 10 to 12 bags of microwave popcorn per day for years.

>> Jeez. >> Yeah. I mean it it it does sound strange and that was one of the concerns with taking on this Kagra case that we're going to discuss. Um but we went uh and tried one of those consumer cases in 2014 in the Northern District of Iowa. Um we got the ever living kicked out of us every day by the plants lawyer. Uh, but we ended up getting a defense verdict in like an hour and 15 minutes. >> Wow. >> And after that, I kind of took over the role. I was a fourth year lawyer at that point. I took over the role of national coordinating um, and trial counsel for this large, it was the largest flavoring manufacturer in the world at the time.

Um, and so I probably ended up handling uh, I don't even know 500 of those cases over the next few years. Um and so you know I flipped sides in 2019. I started a firm called Turnbo Hulkcom which is where I was before uh I I came to tort Herman. Um and kind of had flushed most of the diiaetil story out of my head. I you know it's it's it was probably 60% of my work when I was at Weineberg Wheeler the last five or six years. Um, and about three or four years ago, my good friend, who's now my trial partner, Jake Plattenburgger, and I'll just throw this disclaimer out there, Jake is the most uh talented trial lawyer I've ever worked with and should be like a household name at this point.

So, I just want to throw that out there. He's >> Jake Plattenburgger. >> Jake Plattenburgger. He's in Chicago. He's one of my best friends. He's a lot of the reason that I I jumped over to Tor Herman law. But I got to know him when I was a defense lawyer, him and to Herman Tor in these diacetil cases. Well, uh about three years into my plans practice, he calls me in like mid June and says, "Hey, do you want to come try a diiacetil case with me in Warren County, Ohio?" Well, you know, I Google Warren County, Ohio, and it's literally the most Republican county in the in the United States.

I'm like, well, >> why why does that matter as a trial attorney? >> So, it it doesn't matter as much now. Uh, and it probably didn't matter that much then, but when I was coming up as a defense lawyer, one of the best predictors of whether somebody was going to be a pliff oriented juror or a defenseoriented juror was their political affiliation. Republicans would generally be pliff, I mean, I'm sorry, defense, and Democrats would be, uh, obviously pliff or worker, you know, oriented. that has really changed and I've I've actually done surveys on it uh with with jury consultants to try to figure it out.

Nowadays, it doesn't really matter as much if you find the right Republican jury because we're in the era of Trump and nationalism and that type of thing. Um you if you there's some places they're very rural, very conservative, very, you know, Southern Baptist Christian, all of that. But if you have the right case, they will absolutely hammer the defendant. M >> and um >> but still I would if I had my choice, you know, I'm going to downtown Los Angeles instead of Warren County, Ohio. >> Yeah. >> Um so we go out there and we try a case and it's really uh tough case.

The defense lawyers weren't very good. I'm comfortable saying that at this point. Um but we had to we had to prove intentional conduct and we got a $4 million verdict, which was the highest verdict in that county, I think, ever. Um, and it kind of went away again, like, okay, I'm done with diiacetil, hands clean. So, I jump over to tour uh Herman with Jake. Uh, Jake was already there, but to to practice with Jake, uh, last year, and we get a call, or Jake really, Jake gets a call la in the summer of 2025, uh, from one of the lawyers who worked up those very first cases out of Jasper, Missouri, where the plant workers had gotten sick.

and he said, "I have this guy named Roland Desparza um in Los Angeles uh and I've been litigating his case for almost five years and um I want you guys to take a look at it because his name is Scott Hall. He's a brilliant brilliant lung disease. He's he's probably the best lung disease lawyer I've ever come across." I learned, you know, Billy Gun, uh, the guy I worked for, I learned a lot from watching him, but he was older by the time I got to him. So, there wasn't a lot of hands-on, this is how you do things.

Uh, I learned a lot of how to do the medicine and the science in these cases from watching Scott and going actually against him in depositions and him just really kicking my ass. Like, he's brilliant, brilliant guy, but he's not a trial guy. >> Mhm. Um, and so, so he called us and said, "Hey, would you take a look at this? Uh, it's going to trial in September." I think he called us. Actually, I I remember exactly where he called us because I was on the beach in Sea Island. It was in May of of last year.

>> Great resort. >> Yeah, it was wonderful. And, um, so we looked at it. Uh, a lot of, you know, we get calls on these cases and a lot of times the people aren't really all that sick. um maybe they have some decrease in lung function, but when we got the medical records and looked at this guy, it was really clear that he had this actual disease that he had bronchilitis obliterans. And I guess I should give a little bit of context on that. Bronchilitis obliterans, it's a very rare lung disease. It's caused by a few things.

Um but it's a signature disease if you've been exposed to >> diaetil. M >> uh what it does is it targets the smallest airways in your lungs. So your lungs you have two big branches kind of or one big branch that that goes down from your trachea. Um and then it splits off like a tree like tree branches and then at the very end of the tree branches you have these uh things that look like grape sacks called avoli. And that's where the oxygen exchanges with carbon dioxide. Um, this disease happens in the smallest airways right before you get to that um to the grape sacks and it's an inflammatory disease.

So, if you think about I like to think about it like a um you know like one of those cocktail straws. They're very small airways and just over time the inflammation keeps going on. Your body's trying to repair it and it shrinks and shrinks and shrinks and it and it develops scar tissue. And that's why they call it obliterans because at a certain point it becomes fixed and you can still breathe oxygen in but when you exchange or try to exchange oxygen to carbon dio or yeah to carbon dioxide um you can't breathe out.

So it's called an obstructive lung disease and there's no cure for it. They can give you inhalers. They can give you predinazone to try to clear up your airways and make it look more comfortable for you, but there's no cure. And really, if you get it bad enough, the only thing they can do for you is give you a lung transplant. The problem with a lung transplant is most people only survive five to seven years after a lung transplant. >> Wow. Also the number one side effect of bronchulitis obligerans and after you and after you get the lung transplant the number one side side effect of a lung transplant is the development of bronchulitis obligerans.

>> Wow. >> So you can get the lung disease get be one of the very few who actually get healthy lungs. So, I had to die for those lungs, >> right? >> And then live five years and your your quality of life is better. You can spend time with your family and all that. And then you can develop the same disease again and you're probably going to die from it. >> I have a weird question that I don't know if you're going to be able to answer. Is is the that you said that that's the number one uh disease that you could get a post lung transplant.

That's for people that have the bronchulitis obliterans or that's for all lung transplant recipients. >> Anybody who gets a lung transplant, the number one way that the body rejects the uh the new lungs is the development of bronchiliants. >> That's terrifying. >> It's horrible. And and the way I described it with our pulmonologist during the trial was it's a cruel irony. >> Yeah. I mean, you can be super happy that you're getting a new set of lungs. >> Um, but you know, you still have a death warrant out against you.

It's 5 to seven years and, um, you're most, you know, I don't want to say most likely going to get the disease again, but you certainly are at pretty high risk of getting it again. >> Wow. Okay, that was heavy. >> Yeah, it is. So, so we get the case and we look at it and uh, it's it's kind of a crazy thing. So Roland Esparza, who's a wonderful guy. I I really got to know him really well because I handled the settlement negotiations and went through two uh mediations with him before we went into the trial.

But he was kind of like a man's man, like the the he's the type of man that like I wish I was like, you know, like I I don't do anything cool, you know? I practice law. I play golf every once in a while, you know. I don't I'm not a cool guy, you know. But but Roland was an ex-armmy guy. Um he served overseas in like Honduras and Egypt. Um he came back and he uh became like a bodybuilder. He owned his own nutrition store. Um and he was a you know I messed the degrees up, but like a third or fourth degree brown belt, which is my understanding is very high.

It's like right before you get to black belt in jiu-jitsu. um you know, shot guns, worked on his own motorcycles, just he was a stud. Like an absolute stud. You see the pictures of this guy and it's like, you know, he is he he's a man. He's the man's man. >> Yeah. >> Um and then but the medical records that we saw told a different a completely different story. He had, you know, um about 15 to 20% lung function left. uh which means if he catches a cold, if he uh gets COVID, uh he could very well die. Uh he's on 24hour supplemental oxygen, so he's basically chained to an oxygen tank >> at all times of the day.

Um and he got really, in a weird way, he got very lucky. So he got very sick all of a sudden and he went to these uh good doctors. I mean, you know, at Torrance Memorial Hospital there in Torrance, part of Los Angeles, uh, and they diagnosed him with COPD and nobody, but the problem is nobody could figure out why he was sick because he was so healthy. He was running like eight miles a day. I mean, like I said, this guy was a stud. Um, and they were kind of they kind of got to the end of their treatment were like, I don't know why he's sick and he's getting worse.

And so they sent him to uh the University of Southern California and to a doctor uh named Dr. Chang who I now call Dr. House. So Dr. Chang is a brilliant doctor, probably one of the best treating physicians, treating lung doctors, pulmonologists I've ever seen. >> You said UCLA, >> uh USC. >> USC. >> Yeah. Southern Cal. Yeah. She's a lung doctor there. It's a tertiary center, which means if basically if they can't figure out what's wrong with you or they can't treat you somewhere else, they send you there kind of as a a last resort.

So she so she gets his medical records, goes through it, she starts doing her literature, and she sees that this lung disease, well, she sees that he most likely has popcorn lung and it's not COPD based upon all the tests. um which became a big part of the trial you know whether you had COPD or bronchily um and then she does she tries to figure out the cause so she does a literature search and reaches out to colleagues like the the top thoracic uh radiologist at USC you know who's probably one of the top like 10 radiologists in the country in the world and they figure out that he has bronchily blerans and then she finds this um link in the medical literature between diaidal and butterflavoring exposure which sounds weird because dasil is in butter flavoring and this particular disease.

So Roland goes into her office. I can't remember the the date and I don't want to say something wrong because I know the defense is probably listening and they had a statute of limitations um defense so I don't want to give the wrong date off the top of my head but you lost that one. Um the uh so she goes into him and he and she says, "Do you eat a lot of microwave popcorn?" Cuz she had read about Wayne Watson, the guy I was telling you about earlier. And he's like, "No." >> I'm sorry to interrupt the story.

This is on because I'm I'm thinking on a completely different side just about how there's really incredible people in every industry and like people that are just pushing papers. Dr. Chang did this like she took this proactive step and went out and researched the medical literature on her own to start connecting these dots. >> Nobody asked her to. It did her no benefit. She is an angel of a woman of a doctor. Uh saved Roland's life. Um he would not be here today without her. I can't say enoughcredc about her.

She's the best treating lung doctor I've ever seen. And the defense attacked her >> during trial. So she um she asked him about microwave popcorn. He goes back, he's like, "No, I didn't do any of that." So he goes back and he does his own research and sees that uh back in 2008 2009, Kagra had put out a press release that hey, we're taking diacetil out of PAM, which was weird because there there really had been there maybe been one report of somebody getting sick from it, but not a lot. And he goes back into her and says, "Hey, listen.

I've been using Pam butterspray for like 30 years as part of my bodybuilding routine. So I'm eating >> he was eating 12 to 15 eggs per day for like 25 years. And in fact he used to train other people and that was part of the training plan that he would give to people is hey you know eat seven eggs in the morning with like you know ground beef on the side and stuff like that. And so he's spraying this Pam spray um you know every day in an confined in a confined environment in his kitchen um not using ventilation um and he asks you know could this be linked up.

She does some more research and she comes to the conclusion that the most likely cause of his lung disease is this Pam butter spray. And she went through every test he she put him through every test that you could ever go through multiple times. and tried to figure out any other cause and the only one that she could come up with was Pam Butterspray. Mhm. >> So, at that point, knowing that the guy was really sick, we had a big corporate defendant, Kagra, who used to be my codefendant in a lot of these cases, um, and that we had a good, uh, venue in downtown Los Angeles, um, in at the Stanley Moss Courthouse, uh, we decided to get back into the diiacetil fight.

>> Incredible. >> Yeah. I'm assuming uh this is you said he was in uh Torrance Hospital. Uh uh Mr. Espanzo was like in an apartment in Southern California. >> Uh I'm trying to remember where he lived then. He lives now in a house kind of south central Los Angeles. >> Okay. >> Yeah. But he he he had you know it's just an indust not commercial a residential kitchen. He didn't use any ventilation. >> Right. Well, that's exactly what I'm thinking. I I I went to school uh law school in Pepperdine, but I lived on the west side and every apartment from Santa Monica all the way if you come inland to like you can go as far as Ontario really.

It's not like in in Atlanta when I was in Athens at UG, you know, there was air condition in HVAC units with air conditioning. If anything, you have like a window unit AC in Santa Monica, for example, but that's few and far between, too. Those apartments have been built years ago. So, you're talking about a small small footprint of a kitchen. >> Exactly. Yeah. And uh I mean, I think people who live on the East Coast or in the Midwest probably don't grasp just how And I love California. It's a wonderful place, but the the property stuff is just in that the cost of housing is like insane.

And the um so the houses are much smaller, the kitchens are much smaller, so you don't have the big, >> you know, hoods over your over the uh >> over the stove like you would out here. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> That's incredible. Wow. Uh again, I want to stop and and recognize what was Dr. Chang's first name. >> I can't I'm going to butcher it because it's Chinese. It's like Xiang Fay, I think. Uh but I just called her Dr. Chang. So Dr. Chang. I actually called her Dr. House because, you know, she I thought she lined up with that TV show.

>> Uh I that really stuck out. That fact stuck out to me because there are so many I myself personally just as a as a patient like trying to receive health care. I'm dismissed so often and not not in a rude way. It's just nobody really goes out of their way to try and figure out what's wrong. You can have the same symptom for months and maybe even years until you find a physician that is really that dedicated to what it is that their purpose is to to in this particular case was to either diagnose or to heal or in an attempt to heal at least diagnose.

So Dr. Chang, thank you so much. >> She's an amazing woman. >> That's incredible. >> Yeah. Amazing doctor. Um, you guys won against Konagra. >> We did win. Yeah, it was. So, the trial ended up getting moved to January. It was supposed to be last September. The defense lawyer, uh, the main defense lawyer for Kagra, who's a guy I've traveled the country with when I was a defense lawyer. I know him fairly well. Um, came down with, uh, an illness, uh, you know, a serious illness. And we delayed the trial until January.

and they kind of got a new trial team up and running. We mediated the case a couple times uh in late December and you know I was I I I don't like mediation. I've actually mediated a few times for some friends and stuff but I'm not a huge fan of mediation. I feel like I can uh value the cases myself and I don't need somebody else to try to tell me what the value is. Um but I agree to it here under certain conditions. We had, you know, some pretty strict conditions. Um, and we were gaslighted the whole time during mediation.

Basically, I was actually I was told to my face on Zoom with my client there that my demand was like arbitrary and didn't wasn't tethered to any reality whatsoever, which is funny because this mediator had no clue what she was talking about. >> Oh, this was from the mediator. >> This was from the mediator. >> Oh >> Yeah. Like December 30th, you know, our trial started January 5th. So, uh, so we we we start trial. We're supposed to start January 5th. We end up going, uh, I think we went five weeks of trial and I was out there six weeks.

Um, you know, people who have litigated or tried cases in California will know they have a lot of dark days. They um, because the traffic's so bad, you don't really start till later in the day and you end really early. It's a union shop, which I support unions, but because of the union contract is my understanding is is why it's the case. There's an hour and a half uh break for lunch every day. So, you don't get a lot of time actually in the courtroom. >> Mhm. >> Um and so this trial went on five weeks.

Um we were going up against a very large we were going up against Norton Rose Fulbright, which is a very large uh corporate firm. you know, the local pe people here in Atlanta. It's like King and Spalding or Alson and Bird. Um, >> so yeah, it was a fiveweek trial and we end up with a $25 million verdict. Yeah. >> You ended up with a $25 million verdict on behalf of Roland Esparza after this is this was a five-year battle. >> Over five years. >> Over five years. >> Yeah. And this is involving a plaintiff that is what's the what's the clinical way of what's the clinical description?

>> He had endstage lung disease >> and on the verge of I mean if he doesn't receive a lung transplant >> he's going to die. >> His his rate of survival is very very low. >> No I mean it's even stronger than that. I I was worried that he was going to die during trial. during trial >> during trial. So, you know, we're an opening statement. Um Jake was doing opening statement. We kind of have, you know, if he brings the case in, then, you know, he usually does void iron opening. If I bring it in, it's the opposite.

So, we kind of have a system worked out. So, this is a case that um you know, Jake generated. And during opening statement, I'm sitting next to Roland and he's breathing so heavy and um you know, he's hooked up to his uh oxygen tank and I'm have to look over at him at him every once in a while and kind of put my hand on his leg and on his knee and say like, "Hey man, like are you okay?" Um very very very sick. He's not in a wheelchair, but we ended up putting him in a wheelchair. And it's not because of like plaintiff lawyer tricks to try to make him believe me this guy's not mingling and we weren't trying to make him look like that.

>> It was just too hard for him to walk from the entry of the courthouse to the courtroom. He would get there and be completely winded and done. I mean just just completely done. And >> um so I you know we didn't make him come to court every day. Usually he could come in for like half a day and that he'd need to take a day and a half off, something like that. Um, so I was he was so bad off probably midway through the trial that I I personally had major concerns that we needed to get him on the stand to testify because he may pass away during the trial.

>> He's that he is that sick and been battling this long. And I'm assuming this was not I I don't know what the terminology is, but it's not like a it's not the first glance of this disease. There have been other cases. Obviously, we've had it with workers and then there was the case of consumers prior. >> Correct. >> So, it's not what do they call it like first glance >> a bellweather like it? Yeah. It was not >> it's not a bellweather case. >> No. Well, it was a bellweather as it related to Pam Butterspray.

This was the first Panam Butterspray case ever, which was actually a thing that gave me, not so much Jake. I had some skepticism of the case because it was Pam Butterspray. And the reason is everybody who is listening to this podcast, and I'm sure everybody in this office either has it in their in their kitchen right now or had it growing up, everybody's used Pam Butter Spray, and there's not an epidemic of lung disease, right, that we know about. Mhm. >> So, you know, we had won when I was on the defense, we won our consumer case in an hour and 15 minutes after we got the kicked out of us for two weeks.

And when I talked to the jurors, this was back in 2014. It had been the worst trial experience of my life. I have never gotten beaten every day so badly. But when I talked to the jurors afterwards, they were laughing. They were like, "We never believed this for a second. You were always good." >> Wow. >> And so there was this weirdness factor to it, right? like this guy's using Pam that much. It's Pam butterspray. Everybody uses Pam butterspray. My aunt uses it. She's a she works in a bakery. She's not sick.

>> Yeah. >> So, um that was that's one of the proudest parts of it to me. The the number is fine and the number will will take care of Roland and all that. Uh but it's the fact that it was the first PAM case. Now, if you actually look at the science of diacetil and diacetil exposure, it makes a lot of sense. So, >> not to go on too much of a science thing, I'll try to keep it short, but diacetil, all of the medical literature, all of the studies that they did in the plants back in the 2000s show that it's particularly dangerous when it's in an aerosol form and when it's heated.

So, when it's in Pam butterspray, it's in an it's made already in a aerosol spray. It vaporizes at like 88 degrees Fahrenheit or something like very low. >> That's actually very low for a chemical. >> And you're meant to spray it onto a hot surface, your pan that if you're on medium heat, it's about 450°. It can get to into the 700°. So, you're spraying it onto a hot surface in a form that's already more dangerous with no ventilation and about I think we did measurements and stuff. I think it's about 2 and 1/2 3 feet below your breathing zone.

So, it's actually the perfect vehicle to cause a lung disease. And just because there's not a lot of other verdicts out there about Pam Butterspray causing this lung disease doesn't mean that a lot of people haven't gotten sick. Um this disease is a really difficult one to actually diagnose. Um it's usually misdiagnosed as COPD like Roland was initially. >> Uh so God knows how many people through the last 30 years have actually gotten this disease or a similar disease like asthma or some other obstructive lung disease using Pam Butterspray but didn't know it.

Well, I will say not, this is going to sound like a a setup, but uh Jaime's mother about three years ago was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer, never smoked a day in her life, walks every day, super healthy. So I when you say uh you know we don't have this epidemic I think a lot of it is it may not be an epidemic but I think there are probably a lot of cases that have been uh di either misdiagnosed or undiagnosed. >> I don't think there's any doubt. >> Yeah >> I don't think there's any doubt. >> That's incredible.

Allan um I am uh thankful for you. Uh I'm thankful that the universe brought you from the dark side to fight for the people. Uh our selfish plug we our tagline is we take care of you. We take care of the community podcast is about empowering just the consumers. I I view the world right now very much uh there's a lot of division but I'm convinced that the world is only amongst right now the battle of halves and have nots and there's a bunch of people that believe uh mistakenly that they're part of the halves and they're not they're actually the have-s and uh when I look at you I think that you fight for the haveotss so I appreciate it >> yeah that means a lot and my uh my trial partner Jake, he said it uh and we kind of all know it on this side, but especially doing the type of work I do and seeing how much corruption is in the FDA and you know I do a lot of automotive product liability so Nitsa and all these government organizations um when you see those internal documents and how the game is played at that level um we and I don't and I'm not just like fluffing ourselves up.

But this is true of car accident lawyers. It's all plenty of lawyers in my opinion. We are the only thing left that is protecting the everyday American. And if it wasn't for us manning the gate, these corporations would run even more wild than they already are uh and take more advantage of us. Um, and so it's hard work and it can be backbreaking work mentally, physically, every which emotionally for every type of trial lawyer. But you know what you should know is that what you do uh is really important and there's nobody else looking out for these people.

>> Yeah, I absolutely agree. Usually I I turn it over for a closing thought, but I think you just gave it to us. >> I can't say it any better than that. That was beautifully said. Uh Allan, thank you so much for your time. Uh I definitely want to have you back on. Um hopefully I know you're you're going through an appeals process. Maybe we can have you on post appeal and and we can get through 100% of the details. >> Well, it's a 7-minute drive, so I guess I can bring myself to come over here. >> I appreciate it.

I appreciate it. Allan, thank you again so much. Um you guys listening, mom especially, I hope you really enjoyed it. I know for a fact you're about to come over and take over uh my cupboards and remove any sprays, anything in an aerosol can. Uh my mom is very organic in that way. >> Love it. >> Uh love you, Mom. Thank you for listening. Everyone else, I appreciate your time. Hope you got something out of it. Uh if you're not going to subscribe, I won't ask you too hard, but at least drop me a like, comment, share the videos.

Uh it would mean a lot to me. Thank you everybody. Take care.