In memory of my friend, Jon Teller Z’L
I’m doing something a little different on my Tort Talk blog.
I’m talking about my friend and fellow Los Angeles attorney Jon Teller, who died last week much too soon.
“I hope you’re taking notes.”
I was an inexperienced lawyer, new to the field of personal injury. Through a mutual acquaintance, I reached out to an accomplished PI lawyer with decades of experience. I needed help with a detail on one of my first cases, and reached out to him hoping he would be gracious with his time and knowledge.
Hard truth. He wasn’t. He was a jerk. His impatient, “I hope you’re taking notes” ensured that I never called him again. He wasn’t the first or last jerk I encountered in the personal injury space.
Contrast that with my good friend, Jon Teller. Jon was a partner and trial lawyer at the Wilshire Law Firm here in Los Angeles. Jon passed away last week after a courageous battle with cancer.
I first met Jon in the summer of 2011. We had both just graduated from law school and were studying to take the California Bar Exam. There were a few of us kosher-observing students, and we stuck together during the BARBRI course, talking about Torts and Contracts in-between our exquisite kosher lunches from Jeff’s Gourmet.
I learned that Jon was from Toronto, went to law school in New York, met and married an LA girl, and was taking the California Bar so he could begin his new job on the West Coast.
Fast forward a little bit. It was the second day of the Bar Exam. Back then, the Exam was a marathon of three days. The test was administered at the Century Plaza in Century City, and I, like many other exam takers, moved into the hotel for the week. I lived close enough to the hotel where I could go home for dinner, see my family, then immediately high-tail it back to the hotel to get ready for the next day’s testing. As I did so after the second day, I took the elevator up from the lobby.
The door opened, and in walks Jon. “How was it?”, he asked me. I honestly felt like I knew the material and wasn’t as panicked as some of the other test takers. Jon told me he had the same feeling. We both agreed, however, that the Civil Procedure essay was something neither of us were expecting. So what did we do? “Make it up!”, mimicking the voice of one of the Barbri professors who advised us to “fake it” if we encountered a subject on the test that we were unprepared for. We both had a good laugh and gave each other a fist bump. “You got this” Jon told me as we wished each other good night. We both passed the exam.
Fast forward some more. In 2014 I started my own practice as a plaintiff’s personal injury lawyer. A few years after that I signed up a new case that had unusual facts. I posted a question on a legal listserve, asking if anyone else experienced this particular fact pattern. The first response I got was from Jon Teller. We hadn’t spoken since that night of the bar exam several years earlier, but here he was being the first one to offer guidance on how to navigate my issue. It wasn’t the last time Jon helped me out.
Over the years, Jon became one of my go-to for questions on Torts and personal injury matters. He was always just a text away. Whether it was his opinion on whether an insurance policy was open, or his recommendation on which mediator to select for a premises liability case, Jon always gave good advice. When I needed to see what a Minor’s Compromise with all the hundreds of pages of attachments looked like, Jon was there for me. If I needed a products liability sample complaint, one email from Jon did the trick. Jon worked hard and achieved incredible results for his clients. But he didn’t keep his accomplishments for himself. He shared them with others. He was always keen to share his knowledge and expertise with colleagues like me.
The brutal truth is that some plaintiff’s lawyers don’t want to help other plaintiff’s lawyers. There are a lot of “gatekeepers” in this profession. Some lawyers think that there is only so much success to go around, so helping a competitor is bad for business. The lawyer I mentioned at the beginning of this essay was a gatekeeper.
Jon Teller wasn’t. He viewed his fellow plaintiff’s lawyers as friends and fellow soldiers. A rising tide lifts all ships. Jon believed that helping another plaintiff’s lawyer will help fight insurance industry tactics that have exacerbated the pain that injured people have already suffered. He dedicated his life to this goal. I was proud to call him a friend. He was taken too soon.
Our industry and our community could use more of Jon Teller’s compassion. Next time a young lawyer calls you, be gracious with your time. If another lawyer wants to take you to lunch, find the time to make it happen. If a competitor posts a question that you know the answer to, help him out. Helping another lawyer or even a competitor doesn’t make you weak. There is enough success for everyone. Don’t be a gatekeeper—be a gate sharer like Jon Teller.
