Ep. #44 - Jason DeSouza: Protecting Oilfield Workers’ Rights After Injury

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In this conversation, Travis McCaughey and Jason D'Souza discuss the complexities of the oil and gas industry, particularly focusing on the legal aspects of injury representation. Jason shares his journey from a blue-collar background to becoming an injury attorney, emphasizing the importance of understanding the unique challenges faced by workers in this field. They explore the intricacies of litigation, the common injuries sustained, and the misconceptions workers have about their rights. The discussion also covers the role of OSHA, the implications of drug testing, and the importance of company culture in ensuring worker safety. Jason provides valuable insights into the legal process, the significance of having a specialized attorney, and the resources available for injured workers.

Whether you’re an operator, contractor, or anyone working in the field, this episode sheds light on what happens after an accident and how to protect yourself, your family, and your future.

DeSouza Injury Lawyers - https://jfdlawfirm.com/

(210) 714 4215
intake@jfdlawfirm.com

Address:
4047 Naco Perrin
San Antionio, TX 78217

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Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Oil and Gas Careers
• 3:00 The Journey to Becoming an Oil and Gas Attorney
• 6:00 Litigation in Oil and Gas: A Complex Landscape
• 9:00 Common Injuries in the Oil and Gas Industry
• 12:00 Understanding the Legal Process and Timeline
• 15:00 Workers' Rights and Misconceptions
• 17:00 Navigating Injuries and Legal Representation
• 26:00 Navigating Post-Injury Protocols
• 30:00 Understanding OSHA's Role and Implications
• 33:00 The Impact of Substance Use on Workers' Compensation
• 38:00 Company Culture and Employee Rights
• 44:00 Addressing Bullying and Leadership in the Workplace
• 48:00 Accessing Documentation After an Injury
• 55:00 Understanding Oil and Gas Operations
• 58:00 Trial Preparation and Strategy
• 1:00:00 The Role of Honesty in Legal Representation
• 1:06:00 Resources for Injured Workers
• 1:10:00 Insurance Considerations in the Industry
• 1:17:00 Connecting with D'Souza Injury Lawyers

Transcript

Travis McCaughey (00:26.37)
 oil and gas is so diverse in the jobs and support people that I kind of want to highlight those and.

Travis McCaughey (00:44.182)
Yeah, so tell us, Jason D'Souza, you're an oil and gas injury attorney, is that correct? Cool, so how did you kind of get into that profession? Have you always been interested in, you know,

Jason DeSouza (00:49.733)
Yeah, okay, that's interesting.

Jason DeSouza (01:01.669)
Yes, that is correct.

Travis McCaughey (01:12.172)
debate and those type of things or was it a family business or what's going on there?

Jason DeSouza (01:16.549)
So I was born and raised in Canada in Toronto and I came and went to school in Michigan. I met my wife there and I had I just couldn't really deal with a whole lot of the the weather anymore and Michigan weather is a lot more severe than Toronto. They've got the whole lake effect and they've got the peninsula going on. So I made a deal with my girlfriend now wife at the time and said hey, can we move down south anywhere anywhere down south? Give me one to three years of just like year-round summer.

And she was like, sure, no problem. And that was 2009. And when she realized in 2015 that I was going to start my own firm, she was very supportive. My wife's always been very supportive of everything I'd done, but she cried because she was like, we're not, we're not going back to Michigan. And I was like, I mean, maybe we can go back and I can have a remote and this and that. She's like, we're not going back. And she's like, okay, that's okay. I married you. We're here together. We'll do this. And so I got.

immediately into litigation because I think I just enjoy the competition. I don't know that I enjoy debate per se or arguing per se. think the litigation seems to be maybe, in my opinion at least, maybe the purest form of competition amongst the subcategories of law. There's more competition involved in litigation than there is in, say, writing up contracts or in like title work or transactional work, buying companies, merging companies.

Competition aspect is what drew me to litigation. And then what drew me to be a trial lawyer is that it seemed to be an even higher level of competition involved because it involves taking that case that you're competing with the insurance company on and taking it all the way through to a courtroom and trying to persuade a jury that you've got the better case and more so that your client's deserving. So I got into that. And when I started my own, I was licensed in 2010.

And when I started my own firm in 2015, I'd been working for other guys and a lot of them took the position of, you know, w do a lot of 18 wheeler work or they do company vehicle work or regular car accidents, which is fine. No problem. There's good money in that, but I wanted to kind of spread my wings and see what else is out there. I became an attorney because I wanted to see what I can do. So, you know, could I do it? And I wanted to check out maybe pharmaceutical litigation a little bit.

Jason DeSouza (03:41.711)
check out other kinds of stuff, business litigation, and oil and gas was also out there. And we're in South Texas and there's so much going on in terms of oil and gas in Texas. And in South Texas, we've got the Eagle Ford. So I said, why don't I try that out and see how that's going? And slowly, slowly, slowly, I kind of got into it more and more and more. And I found that there's a real opportunity available for good.

a trial lawyers to defend good working men and women, largely men, because it's mainly men who are in the oil field. But just the opportunity to defend and represent their interests. And coming from a blue collar background, my father being a machinist and my mother was an admin assistant. You know, know what it's like to have working parents and have blue collar parents. I know what it's like. My dad got injured in the late 80s, so I know what injuries are like and how that can derail a family life.

Travis McCaughey (04:16.536)
Yeah.

Jason DeSouza (04:39.129)
You know, so I kind of felt that and I was like that. just seems like something that I can identify with. And when I'm speaking with like these oil field workers, I understand them on a bit of a better level because I grew up in a blue collar home.

Travis McCaughey (04:52.128)
Right. Do people specialize in, you know, you said there's different types of litigation, so how do people specialize and then like, can you jump around or how long does that kind of take or what's that process look like?

Jason DeSouza (05:14.041)
Yeah, I think it's like a both, you know? I know there's lawyers here and I think they just focus in, and when I say here in San Antonio, South Texas, Texas even, and they just focus on 18 Wheeler crashes. They're the truck accident guys. And I think that they just decide that there are so many 18 wheelers here in Texas. There's a lot of money to be made. They want to dive deep into the business. They realize that maybe 18 Wheeler crashes have

Travis McCaughey (05:28.833)
Yeah.

Jason DeSouza (05:43.595)
less moving parts than say an oil and gas case. They know that the ability to market for 18-wheeler crashes is much wider. You're going to have a much, much, much bigger audience than the niche market of oil and gas. And even hiring attorneys to work for you, think attorneys, plaintiff lawyers at least, getting to the second part of your question, can move easier between say firm A to B to C to D.

Travis McCaughey (05:55.661)
Yeah.

Jason DeSouza (06:11.828)
if they have trucking experience. I think you can move, I think if you're in litigation, my opinion is I think you can move at any time. think if somebody walked in with say a sexual assault employment claim in my office, I think I could represent them. I wouldn't feel necessarily comfortable and I would certainly bring on a local council advisor who handles employment law. But if they were insistent on, you know, I really need you to represent me, I'd say, okay, well, I'm gonna bring in somebody who knows.

who works in employment law and works in the space, because at the end of the day, what you're looking to find is, can you meet the elements of your claim? Right? Like whatever you submit to the jury, was there a breach of contract by this company? Was there sexual assault by your supervisor? Was there negligence while on the oil and gas site? You still have to meet your burden of proof, right? So if you know what the elements are of what you got to prove, you know where to start.

which rocks to start picking up and which ones are red herrings, you know, that get thrown at you.

Travis McCaughey (07:16.92)
When you say there's less mechanisms with the 18 wheelers, does that mean, you saying that it's more clear cut in that there's somebody maybe that got in an accident, the person who was injured and then like the insurance company versus like oil and gas where there's...

operator, the owner, there's all these contract companies. Like what do mean by there's, you know, mechanisms are more streamlined I guess.

Jason DeSouza (07:53.253)
Sure, so you know in an 18 wheeler crash you'll get company A that's driving the tractor and they'll rear end my client the plaintiff. So you got the tractor, you've got whoever the trailer is, and you're gonna also add a broker into the mix and maybe a shipper. Maybe for example there's company A, company B and company A is hauling for company B and company B has a contract with Toyota

So there's Toyota auto parts in there and then there's also a broker, right? So it's a little bit more like linear, whereas on the oil and gas side, I'll find like what you said, there's an operator, maybe there's a vacuum truck there, they could be doing a cementing job. Maybe you've got a work over crew there. The work over crew could be doing a rod pulling job and depending on the type of rod pulling job they're doing, I mean, are they just pulling rods or are they changing the pump out, right? And did a product fail? Did the rod cup fail?

or was the guy who was handling the block getting too rushed, right? there's just so many different companies. I think oil and gas is one of those industries where you have so much cooperation between the various companies. you've got say Conoco out there as an operator, you've got, you've got the, the work over rig, you've got maybe a production guy, you've got a water guy.

Some of these guys are just sitting, you got a torque and test guys. So they're all there to do the job and they all kind of know what they're intended to do. Kind of like on a Ford plant line where they're assembling vehicles, Ford assembly line. They all know what they got to do. But when these incidents in oil and gas happen, it's somebody, know, hey, what's the company man doing? I don't know. He's sitting on his thumb doing nothing, sitting in the truck scrolling Facebook.

Travis McCaughey (09:36.172)
Yeah.

Jason DeSouza (09:47.553)
But he's staring at the site though in his Ford pickup, right? Yeah, he's staring at the site in his Ford pickup. Or is the guy who's the driller, is he just moving too fast? He shouldn't be moving too fast. Or is there a responsibility for somebody else? So there's just so many more elements involved in oil and gas. There's the engineering aspect, of course, which is also fascinating to me. So I think when you add all those elements into it, the average, say, 18-wheeler lawyer looks at these things and they're like,

Travis McCaughey (09:50.764)
Yeah.

Travis McCaughey (10:07.682)
Yeah.

Jason DeSouza (10:15.224)
Hey man, I don't think that I'm the right guy for this. There's just too much going on. And the jury charge, for example, also looks different than a jury charge for an 18 wheeler crash. you you can do it, but I wouldn't recommend diving headlong into it, you know, just because it's very complex.

Travis McCaughey (10:35.212)
Yeah. How many people on a, I'm sure every case is different in this oil and gas injury. How many people normally are on a, on a case for you?

Jason DeSouza (10:50.599)
like in my office?

Travis McCaughey (10:52.118)
Yeah, like say you're representing somebody. How many people, how much resource are you going to typically dedicate to any given injury? Or is it just a constant mix of research and, yeah.

Jason DeSouza (11:08.452)
So, you know, the way that I set my firm up, know, whenever people say like, I'm going to start my own gig, usually they're motivated by they got fired, or they're like, I could do it better than the last guy. Right. So I didn't get fired. But I was like, I could do it better than the last guy that I was working for. And I was convinced of it because I already had like the model in my head. I just needed some time to kind of like, apply that model out. So

Travis McCaughey (11:22.456)
Yeah.

Jason DeSouza (11:34.532)
The way that we do things at my firm, the traditional law firm that's working in personal injury, you'll have, it'll get signed up at the firm. It'll go to a lawyer. That lawyer will have a paralegal and a case manager, maybe a law clerk, a briefing attorney. And the four of them will be on that island together. And they'll all kind of row that boat until they get to the finish line. However long that boat may take to get to the finish line, that's what they'll do. My concept was a little bit different in that

we have departments that people will work in. And, you know, we in those various departments, you know, I have, for example, two paralegals and they just work on setting depositions. That's their sole job. And I kind of figured that if we're doing that, all those paralegals will know how to do is they'll know, you know, who who the right people are to email to get depositions set. They'll know that if somebody quashes a deposition, that means they they

they cancel our deposition that the other side set. They'll know, hey, this is how the court handles it. And this is how various courts are different. And they handle these deposition issues differently. They'll know, they'll build a rapport, say, with certain lawyers at certain defense firms who show up repeatedly in our cases about how to set things and what certain preferences are. And if that's all they're doing, then we could really rocket away at setting depositions.

group on the depositions, for example, is just one department that I have here at the firm. And they'll just work on only setting depositions and hiring experts. For example, I've got another department and all they do these two paralegals do is they respond to discovery and they, and discovery is some of the most difficult and tedious work. But these two paralegals are phenomenal. They're very good. And that's all they do day in day out. And so they specialize in it. And they're like, Hey, you know, I know.

I know that this insurance company or this company is asking for too much of our client and they know not to produce it or to file an objection and let the lawyer handle it. Or they know, hey, look, you know, the position that I've always taken too is I don't want to hide the ball. We're here to prove something. I'll prove everything that I've got. If I've got a video of the scene, I'll produce the photos. If I've got witness statements, I'll produce the witness statements. If I've got medical, I'll produce it. Anything I've got, I send it over to the other side and I say, hey, this is what I got.

Travis McCaughey (13:37.923)
Hmm.

Jason DeSouza (13:56.356)
because I got nothing to hide and we're going to rock and roll in this case. So there's no point in hiding the ball or being cute about things. So it's very, we've got 35 people here at the firm and on the commercial litigation side, we've probably got about probably 25 or so. So I'd say on just about every case, you're going to get at least one of those people who's going to get a hold of it in some way and involve themselves in some way on a case.

Travis McCaughey (14:07.854)
Bye.

Travis McCaughey (14:26.743)
That's quite a number of people. what do you think is common in your experience? What are some of the common injuries that you're seeing or that you're having to represent?

Jason DeSouza (14:41.187)
you're to get orthopedic injuries. So you're to get, you're to get the, the neck back knee shoulder, ankle, wrist, elbow. I had a client who called in yesterday. sorry, I had, I had a client, I have one day of just client meetings where I just introduced myself to clients, talked to him for about an hour. One of those clients was working and, he, he broke his, his, forearm and elbow, because the rod cup came flying off, and hit him.

because the guy operating the block was moving the rods too quickly. So that's an example of one. There's another fellow and I don't recall offhand what it was, but I think there was some sort of tubing that fell off a rack and cracked his collarbone over here. You know, one of my first oil and gas cases, very sad case, because it was a fellow who had five children and his mother hired me. And they happened to have the rig located underneath a power line.

Travis McCaughey (15:26.808)
day.

Jason DeSouza (15:40.182)
an active power line. And the owner of the land was the one supervising the job because he was like a real small time well operator. had like three wells in total. So he was there. He was telling these guys exactly what to do. And he said, hey, put the rig underneath his live power line. And so as soon as one of the one of the rigging poles went up, he my guy had put the rigging pole up. It connected with the power line. He got thrown off the rig. You know, rigs are pretty high up, about 24 feet got thrown up.

Travis McCaughey (15:41.72)
Yeah.

Jason DeSouza (16:08.931)
thrown off and he was dead before he hit the ground. So they're so they're so very I mean, we went to trial in November against the oil and gas company because a thumb got amputated in the operation of a rod cup. It was a defective rod cup. The ring the ring had the ring had deteriorated massively. And because the ring was no good while he was changing the rods, his thumb got caught and just sliced clean off. So they're so varied. They're so varied. You know, Travis, they're very different.

And it's very, in my opinion, very...

It's somewhat sad when I deal with these cases, knowing that these companies can put safety policies in effect. And I think that there's a mentality and I can never confirm this, but I think there's a mentality sometimes with some of the more careless companies that employees are disposable. know, hey, he's a hand. The hand got hurt, get rid of them, insert another hand here. And that's, think what bothers me the most about this. And that's the other reason that drew me to oil and gas is that

There's a lot of good working men that are being used up in the oil and gas industry. And I don't have a problem with the industry at all, but I just think that it's very unfair to these men and their families to have these really, really bad injuries. And then they're fought. They get fought by the companies when it's their fault and they should know better. They get embroiled in two to three year litigation when everybody knows off the bat, hey guys,

Why didn't you do another, JSA? did a morning JSA. Why didn't you do an afternoon JSA when you knew that the job was going to substantially change? Right.

Travis McCaughey (17:51.968)
Yeah. Or repair equipment or whatever. Yeah. We've seen two in the industry. I think we're kind of evolving out of that, but.

Jason DeSouza (17:57.207)
Yeah.

Travis McCaughey (18:05.358)
categorizing or, you know, what is, what is the cost of a death of an employee, you know, and baking that into their operation, whether they're intending to do it or not. I'm assuming that they're not intending to, you know, kill people on an annual basis, but that is something that, you know, I think in the past companies have looked at, you know, having that number.

instead of just saying we're going to keep all of our employees safe, kind of no matter the cost. when you're a smaller operator, mean, all that stuff drives your bottom line. I definitely, not that it's right, but you definitely understand people's motivation to take shortcuts and everything.

But then again, you're, but if you're, if you don't have the money and the resources to do it right, should you even be in the business in the first place? I don't know.

Jason DeSouza (19:01.994)
I agree with that 100%.

Jason DeSouza (19:14.484)
And, and, you know, I'll just qualify what you just said. It's not even the smaller operators. You would be, I'm sure, you know, but some of your listeners might be surprised or maybe not surprised. It's all the way up to the super majors that are doing that type of thing, trying to save pennies on jobs where they should know better, you know, their stock prices move more in a day than the amount of money they're trying to save on the site.

Travis McCaughey (19:38.518)
Yeah. What's the most surprising thing that when people come in about the legal system that they didn't understand?

Jason DeSouza (19:57.25)
I think it's always the length of time.

Travis McCaughey (20:04.046)
How long are these some of these cases taking potentially are we talking like with the finger accident that you were talking about is that you know is it two years or is it a year or kind of give us a feel of what that kind of process timeline looks like.

Jason DeSouza (20:04.556)
Think it's low.

Jason DeSouza (20:22.146)
Sure, sure. I think that because I've been involved in litigation from the start, one of the things that happened, and you know, we're still feeling the reverberations of COVID in every industry, but the courtrooms in Bexar County, which is where San Antonio is in, is in Bexar County. It was shut down for two and a half years. And courtrooms across the state were shut down for two and a half years. And while that was happening,

People were still being injured, crashes were still happening, businesses were still suing each other, people were still getting divorced, et cetera, et et cetera. But the courtroom was on pause and the courtroom was closed down. And we're still feeling the impact of that because cases that may have been signed during that time and then filed during that time, we're now dealing with the backlash of the courts now have double the backlog.

And then even now cases that maybe I signed in 2023, those cases are still having to deal with the backlog of what's behind them. So typically I think somebody will come in and then there's also the period of time where somebody will get medical treatment. You know, I mean, if you've got a casing or tubing that's going to land on your clavicle and crack it and a doctor finds that, well, for one, you've got a fracture clavicle, but for two, your neck is completely

messed up now, there's going to be a period of time for which you'll need medical treatment. And you've also got to get in line for all and get that medical treatment that's needed. Because if you want to get yourself back out there and work and get things taken care of.

It's all good. Dad hugs are all good.

Travis McCaughey (22:10.638)
Close the door, please. Close the door, please.

We're second day of school, we're doing this before we take him to school. It happens every time.

Jason DeSouza (22:24.726)
Hey man, eventually they stopped doing that, which is what really kind of, I've got a 12 and 11 year old and now like the random hugs have stopped and it's like, man, I kind of miss that.

Travis McCaughey (22:36.104)
Yeah, maybe a side hug or a fist bump. That's all you're getting. Yeah.

Jason DeSouza (22:39.53)
Right, right, exactly, But, but generally speaking, I think it's going to take somewhere between two and four years for these cases to get to get moved. If you've got a serious injury and there's serious compensation that's involved, there's a lot of depositions to take. There's a lot of root cause analysis to figure out. And two to four years, I know sounds like an extremely long time. mean, four years is a college degree, right?

Travis McCaughey (23:04.972)
Yeah. Yeah.

Jason DeSouza (23:07.682)
I always ask people to think of, know, just a couple years ago is 2023, four years ago is 2021, time tends to generally move quickly. And if you are in good hands with a good lawyer, we send out email correspondences every two weeks telling people what happened with their case. So if a case is gonna take, you know, two years, you're gonna get, what is that? You're gonna get 104, not 104, you're gonna get 52 emails from us.

You know, every two weeks you're going to get an email. tell you exactly what we've done in last two weeks. We've, I've got a, a policy in my office where every single case has to be touched every two weeks. A new update has to go up to the client every two weeks. Something must happen. Because I think that if I'm touching the case, if our firm is touching the case 26 times a year and my opponent is touching the case once a quarter. I mean, I'm going to, we're going to hammer them. We're going to hammer them. We're going to hit them hard.

And if hitting, if we're touching the case 52 times over two years, and again, they're still only touching the case once a quarter, you know, you'll know who the better lawyers are from the result.

Travis McCaughey (24:13.59)
Yeah, that is quite a long period of time. I can see where a lot of people are getting antsy and wondering about how things are progressing. So that makes a lot of sense that you're communicating with them as frequently as you are.

Travis McCaughey (24:38.726)
What are some misconceptions workers have about their rights and protections?

Jason DeSouza (24:52.435)
Oil field workers are first and foremost afraid that they're going to be blackballed. The number one threat made to an oil field worker is that number one, you're going to screw up our safety bonus. You file a report or a claim with, with workers comp, even forget about hiring a lawyer. You're going to screw up our safety bonus on the, on the crew. Don't be that guy. Number two, even if, even if you do go file a claim, you'll never work in this business again. We're going to call every single company and we're going to make sure that you never work again.

You're a guy with a 10th grade education making, you know, 75, 100 grand a year. I mean, that's a credible threat. That's a real threat that many, many people take seriously. Um, and it's a misconception because, uh, for one, it's illegal to make that threat, but how am I ever going to prove it? It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter what you know, it matters what you can prove. Right. So how am I ever going to prove it? But number two, I tell these guys, I say, Hey, look, do you think it's easy?

to find people to get out there and work in the 130 degree midland heat doing a pump change. You think you can just go to go find some random guy in the street who's going to do that job even for 75 or a hundred grand a year. Forget it. You think you can find people to go to Alaska and work in the North slope in like the freezing cold temperatures. It's not going to happen. It's not going to happen. These companies at the end of the day they got to get this stuff out of the ground and they need good experienced loyal workers. And if they don't treat you right.

Travis McCaughey (25:57.57)
Thank

Travis McCaughey (26:07.447)
you

Jason DeSouza (26:18.581)
then you have every right to file claim. And if it's a different company that was on site that caused your injury, it was the torque and test guy. If it was, you know, the company man, if it was somebody else who caused that injury, you have every right to get compensation and hire a lawyer. You have every right. you know, and lawyers like myself, we don't work, we work on a contingency. It's only, we only collect, if we win or if we, only charge a fee and recover expenses if we collect money on a case.

And if we don't, then you're not gonna get a monthly bill from us. You're not gonna have to pay anything. If we don't win, then you don't pay, simple as that.

Travis McCaughey (26:58.39)
Yeah, that's cool. I'm sure that's the other thing people are thinking is like they're hurt. Now they have to get someone to represent them. You know, maybe they're already strapped for cash and how are they going to afford it? If someone does get injured, what would you recommend their process be for? You know, I'm sure there's some things you would want to say to the company that you're working for or

the company you're not working for. What should an employee that's injured, what should their first action be?

Jason DeSouza (27:38.379)
First thing you gotta do is get to the hospital. I know that seems like the obvious statement, but the first thing the company's gonna want you to do is get tested. know, are you dirty or are you clean? They're gonna wanna know that, right? They don't care whether you get to the hospital or not. mean, like, you could have your arm hanging out, or you could have your one arm in one hand and your arm severed. They're gonna wanna know, hey, are you dirty or are clean? Right, do you have drugs in your system or not? You gotta get to the hospital. Don't worry about going to Concentra. Don't worry about the urgent care.

Travis McCaughey (27:49.219)
Yeah.

Jason DeSouza (28:08.044)
Don't worry about all that stuff. You get yourself that medical treatment because your body matters. Okay. And that's, that's the number one thing. Second thing is the next thing is the company is going to want to talk to you. They're going to get either the VP or they're to get the safety man, or they're going to get the HR rep and they're going to say, Hey, we want to have a discussion with you about what happened. We want to figure out what happened. We need you to talk to us. And sometimes some of the more unethical companies, which is highly illegal is they'll try to hold your pay.

And they'll say, Hey, we really need you to talk to us. And if you don't talk to us, I don't know if we can get you paid. If you're in Texas, that is, that's actionable and you can contact, I cannot remember the name, but there is a state agency, that you can contact, if your employer withholds your pay for any reason, for any reason, whether it's. It's, something like that. It's, it's, it's the people who handle unemployment.

Travis McCaughey (28:58.057)
like Department of Labor or

Jason DeSouza (29:06.401)
Whatever is the agency in Texas that handles unemployment? I run my own firm. you know, I'm not contacting these guys. Um, but whoever it is that hand that you would file an unemployment claim with you, contact those guys and they will get involved immediately. They're very aggressive. They do not like companies that withhold pay. And the third thing that I would say is, and it sounds fairly, um, it sounds, uh, unusual to say this, but the third person.

that you got to make sure you do not speak to is OSHA. And I know the government may not like me saying it, but I'm going to be honest with you though, Travis, OSHA is going to show up and their sole goal, they've got a, OSHA has a, I guess they'll call it a dictate. They've got a directive and that directive is to blame your company. So you're going to show up and you're going to say, Hey, I worked for,

Travis's oil field services and you know, I broke my leg on site and they're gonna say, okay, talk to us, tell us what's going on. And then they're gonna write the report in such a way that Travis's oil field services gets fined. And the fact of the matter is, is that it could have been the operator, it could have been a torque and test, could have been a piece of equipment, it could have been an employee of another company, it could have been the water guy, it could have been the vacuum services truck, it could have been anything.

But as soon as you talk to OSHA, what's happening is they're going to tag your employer. And once they put it in writing that, it's your employer's fault, when in fact it could be somebody else's fault, very clearly somebody else's fault, now there's a document saying that it's your employer's fault. And why not just get taken care of at the hospital, go talk to a lawyer? Because if you tell a lawyer something, I'm going to listen to what you're saying, I'm going to figure out, hey, who are all the players?

that are on site. Because if it's clearly somebody else's fault, maybe the CO2 went out. And that's why you weren't able to tell that there was an H2S leak, right? Because your H2S sensor went out. Well, that's an equipment malfunction. Or maybe the company that rented it to you didn't know that. So I'd say those two things. Go to the hospital. Don't talk to your company. And don't talk to OSHA. I think that's taking care of yourself first and foremost. And that's the most important thing to do.

Jason DeSouza (31:29.908)
And then after that, take some time, decide if you want to talk to Laura. If you don't, no problem. But at least take some time for yourself.

Travis McCaughey (31:36.606)
Why do you think it is that in your opinion OSHA is targeting, or maybe targeting is not the right word, but is always going to place blame on the employer?

Jason DeSouza (31:54.689)
That's a question. I think that's how the department is set up. I think that that's how the investigators are trained. All of this is speculation, so I have no idea. I'm sure an OSHA inspector will correct me very forcefully in the future and also maintain my opinion, but that's okay. We can have a difference of opinion. I just think that that's how the department is set up. think that, you know, if you're working, ironically, OSHA recognizes

Travis McCaughey (32:05.559)
Yeah.

Travis McCaughey (32:14.678)
Right.

Jason DeSouza (32:24.072)
the multi-employer scenario, where you have a controlling employer, but you also have other types of employers on a site, in the construction scenario. But I don't know. I think that that's just how it's set up. And I think that that's how the bureaucracy is intended to work. And I think that because of that, they're able to open and close files much faster in that manner.

Travis McCaughey (32:52.206)
I mean, this is your experience giving you that opinion, correct? Yeah, okay. It just kind of want to be, you know, so people understand where that's coming from. You're not making that opinion up in a vacuum. That's, you know, your experience. So.

Jason DeSouza (32:57.108)
Yeah. Yeah.

Jason DeSouza (33:07.84)
Sure, sure. And I think the OSHA investigators and inspectors that I've worked with are very cordial. They're very civil. They're very professional. They're very respectful. They're very much in the workers' corner. I just think that the problem with OSHA reports is that they will always blame the employer. And then you go and hire a lawyer. And the first thing the operator's lawyer is going to say is, I got an OSHA report that says your employer's at fault.

and now you're pointing the finger at the company man for the operator. I mean, you're already behind the eight ball at that point. It's almost game over.

Travis McCaughey (33:46.092)
Yeah, you already have documentation saying that it's somebody's fault, so now you've to fight your way out of the corner.

Jason DeSouza (33:55.475)
Exactly, exactly.

Travis McCaughey (33:57.012)
When you say...

You know employees get injured go to the hospital and then they take a drug test Does that qual disqualify them from any like Like representation or fault or you know ability What are we saying when what is the importance of an employee? Being dirty

and the consequences of that on the injury that they have.

from a legal standpoint.

Jason DeSouza (34:35.672)
sure. so, so what I found is that, truck drivers seem to like meth and oil field workers seem to like cocaine. wherever the truckers get the meth from, I don't know, but what I'll tell you is, the, the cocaine on the oil field site, the companies are well aware of it. They know what's going on. They're intentionally turning a blind eye to the cocaine on site. so.

So we start there. We start with an injured worker who has cocaine in the system, right? And he's already gone to concentra and he's dirty and he's got it in his urine. Concentra is, yeah, they're kind of like an urgent care here in town, but they're more geared to doing employer-based drug tests and employer urgent care type thing and that type of thing. And they're a very good organization. I'm using their name just kind of because it's so

Travis McCaughey (35:15.136)
What's Concentra? Is that a drug testing service?

Jason DeSouza (35:34.548)
They have such a recognizable brand. They're very good at what they do. I like them very much. But people here in Texas tend to recognize that, you went to Concentra and at that location, at that urgent care is where they'll do the drug test. So for me, doesn't, if somebody has, if somebody is dirty and they've got something in their system, the real question becomes how long has it been in their system for? Because cocaine will remain, the metabolites will remain in your system for up to three days. So the question is, you know, has the cocaine metabolized?

Travis McCaughey (35:47.714)
Okay.

Jason DeSouza (36:04.254)
by the time the injury happened, meaning like, did you do cocaine 14 hours ago? And now 14 hours later, you're injured and it's still in your system. But it will disqualify you from workers comp benefits. So if you do have a drug, an illegal drug in your system, you will be disqualified as a worker from workers comp benefits.

As a lawyer, I have taken numerous cases and to me it's not of any real, it's obviously concerning to me, but at the same time I have expert witnesses who are able to determine from the results and from the concentra file or the urgent cares file how long it's been in the system for. And if it's been in the system for not a very, for a very long period of time, it's still going to show up, but we know it's going to be metabolized.

and it's not going to be active. That's all I mean by metabolize. It's going to show up in your system. Yeah.

Travis McCaughey (37:02.508)
Yeah, were we high at work or were we partying off the job?

Jason DeSouza (37:09.138)
Exactly. Did you smoke pot 10 days ago and now you haven't smoked it for the past 10 days? That didn't affect your, your, reason you got injured.

Travis McCaughey (37:16.076)
Yeah. So even though they're, let's say that they are high on the job, they get injured, we're still going to look for the mechanism of injury, even if it's not the employee's fault. And that still is some pathway that we go down. Or if they're high and they get injured, does it like immediately disqual them from anything?

Like if it's a tool, a tool breaks or malfunctions, well that's not the employee's fault that potentially it broke and he got hurt, even if he is high and got injured.

Jason DeSouza (37:58.356)
You know, oftentimes I bring up that the employer looks the other way. They know, they know, for example, that maybe the drillers making some money on the side selling on the job and the employer is well aware that this has been going on and chooses to turn a blind eye to it. And when they're turning that blind eye to it, they clearly have no problem with the crew being high or the crew buying.

you know, these drugs because the job's getting done. So if we establish that in some way through witness testimony that they know that, say, Carlos has been selling for the past three years and they've all been on the same crew for the past three years, well, they've been getting the job done for the past three years, right? So it doesn't seem like the drugs really had anything to do at all with this injury. It looks like there was something else that you add to the mix now that caused this injury to happen.

The counterpoint to that, of course, is, well, yeah, you can drive drunk for three years until you crash into somebody, and the alcohol is the reason you crashed into somebody. So I'd say there's a counterpoint to drugs in a worker system. I will just say that it's not something that scares me off on a case.

Travis McCaughey (39:20.492)
Yeah, I think, you know, not that that's a positive thing, but just that awareness for people, you know, like you said, you're not trying to hold the ball in, you know, hide it or anything that if somebody is high at work and they get injured, I mean, that's still something potentially that they can take to an attorney.

Jason DeSouza (39:46.655)
Sure, sure. And you know, I think that if there's enough liability, meaning fault on third party companies, and it's fairly clear about what happened, I mean, a good lawyer is going to be able to fight it, you know?

Travis McCaughey (40:13.74)
Are there any, so we kind of talked about on the employee side, there, do you represent the companies on these as well? Are there any mistakes that you see on the company side?

Jason DeSouza (40:31.135)
I, I will, I do not represent companies. I don't want to represent companies and I have no intention in the future to represent companies. not cause I have anything against them, you know, it's just that this is the side, this is the side that I'm on. This is my team. and this is the team that I play for. so I mean, I think that companies, they, they create this, I guess they'll call it like a mirage, you know, like, like,

Like you're in the desert and you see water. And what they tend to do is they tend to tell employees and themselves that everybody always has stop work authority, right? And they'll say, Hey, look, you know, this guy, this guy knew that this was this dangerous activity was happening and he should have just called for stop work. You know, just use the magic, just use the magic words and, stop work. And as soon as you stop work, everybody on the job is going to stop work. Okay. Yes.

In theory, you are correct, sir. Had the employee called out for stop work, then the injury would not have happened. However, the reality of the situation is as soon as you call out for stop work in the oil field, you're A, label the troublemaker or weak, and B, you're invited to go home and not invited to return again. Stop work is all well and good in theory.

But as soon as it gets used, it tends to upset quite a number of people, starting from the company man and the engineer all the way on down to the hand. And people just see it as somebody causing trouble. And so if the company actually allowed their workers to stop work, I'll give you the example of Toyota. Toyota changed assembly lines in North America and globally because

You know, General Motors and the big three, what they used to do is they would say, no, we can't stop the line for any reason. Vehicles need to move down the line, move down the line. Do not pull the cord and bring them down the line. Well, the result was. Subpar vehicles from the domestic manufacturers. Toyota said, no, you could pull that, pull it. Let's stop it for, you know, a minute and let's correct the actual problem down the line. You're going to be fine. Your job's going to be safe. The supervisor is not going to yell at you.

Jason DeSouza (42:52.905)
You're not going to be terminated. You're not going to be penalized, but let's build the best quality vehicle we can. And then let's keep the line moving. And I mean, we all know the end result of that. Toyota is the best, in my opinion, one of the best manufacturers in the world. don't drive a Toyota, but they dominate the market, you know, and it just is what it is. And they decided that stop work was good and okay and not wrong. And I think that if employers actually adopted that, what they say,

didn't just give it lip service, you'd have a better culture, you'd have a safer culture, you'd get a better product, you'd get less injuries, you'd have people who could stop and think for a moment. Just stop and think, man. Just take a second, right? Are we doing it the best way? How long will it take to get a replacement part? Can we stop for two hours? I mean, what is the best way to do things? I think there's a lot of rush in the oil game to get that oil out of the ground as fast as they can.

and get it upstream and get paid on what comes out of the ground and the per barrel rate. And I think the fear is, hey, man, if we don't get paid now, there's going be a crash. They're going to crash the global oil markets. You remember the crash 2014, we all got laid off. Let's get it out, get it out, get it out, make it happen as quick as possible. And it doesn't need to be that way. You could just slow down just a little bit more and do things the right way. And that's what I would, if I represented companies,

which I don't, I would say just use stop work, not a big deal. Just use stop work and get the safest thing done possible. You know, it's okay.

Travis McCaughey (44:28.994)
Yeah, sometimes rushing, and I just wrote this down, speeding. Because how many times do you speed, you pass somebody, and you get there like a minute sooner? Or you meet them at the next stoplight or something. So some of this rushing, it's a pressure that we put on ourselves to just keep going, keep going, keep going. And yeah, just taking that stop work authority.

Jason DeSouza (44:42.942)
Yeah.

Travis McCaughey (44:58.734)
is really important.

Jason DeSouza (45:01.064)
Sure. And I'll just add, know, my firm, I have a company vehicle and I've got one main employee who drives and I never ever rush him ever. If he's driving, if he's coming in from South Texas two hours away and I'm like, hey, you we've got this client's got to be here at 11. He's like, Jason, it's 10 o'clock. I'm at least 90 minutes out. No problem. We'll reschedule, man. Whatever this whatever's got to work. You just take it easy. You just take your time. You don't rush. Just take whatever time. And he loves listening to football on the radio.

And I say, just turn the football channel on, man. I know it's August, but how about them Cowboys? Just take it easy.

Travis McCaughey (45:36.334)
Right. Is there anything else that you see culture-wise that potentially we could change? know, just not kind of from an outsider's perspective, what cultural issues inside oil and gas that you see are potential things to change or look at?

Jason DeSouza (46:02.623)
tend to hear a lot of bullying from guys who hire me. For example, like the Derek man will talk about how his supervisor would bully him on the site. There tends to be a lot of this, know, seniority machismo type thing. You see a lot in factories also. You like I said, my dad was a machinist, so he worked in a factory. In high school, I would work in factories, his factory and some of his customers' factories. And I think there's a lot of that kind of

I've been here, you're a rookie or you're new or you've been here for less time than me. I know how to do this faster, better, cheaper, get the bonus. And if you can't keep up with me, that's too bad. And we're just going to get going, you know, I'm going to, I'm going to, I don't care how fast the block is moving. What do mean you don't know how to, you need to use this proper tool to do it. We're going to use, you know, we don't need a scissor lift to do this. We'll do it this way. You know, I think, and I think that that's the result of like,

culture of men, right? I get it. Like that's that's how men are right? Like you go to a bar, you're drinking with your buddies and you know, what do mean you don't want another shot? We're all doing a shot man. Come on, right? Like don't be that guy, you know, and it's like, it's cool, man. Just just take it easy. It's all you're not soft. If you do things the right way, you know, you're not soft if you just take a second to do it like I know it's real hot outside. I know y'all been working hard since six in the morning. I know you're doing you know, you're in the middle of a

Travis McCaughey (47:05.088)
Yeah.

Jason DeSouza (47:29.906)
You know, 14 day hitch. I get it. I get it. But I think that if the bullying is no longer rewarded, then I think you'll have I think that in the oil and gas field, it'll be a better I think it'll just be a better culture for everyone. Nobody really likes being bullied. And the people who see the bullying, they're being bullied by extension, because they don't want to be in this guy's crosshairs. So they're like, hey, I'm just going to go along with it because

This guy is just pushing everyone around. Well, the problem is with the guy that's pushing everybody around, eventually push comes to shove and something bad happens, right? It happens in the hospital.

Travis McCaughey (48:09.336)
So it's more of a leadership, it's a leadership issue.

Jason DeSouza (48:12.317)
Absolutely, absolutely. It happens in the hospital setting too. You know, I mean, you've got surgeons who are the old school surgeons and you know, they're, God gifted them with the hand of God. And if you don't know how to cut the way I know how to cut, you know, and you're the new school and you're soft and you're one of these millennials or Gen Z types or blah, blah, blah. It's like, hey man, just, you've got to modify, you've got to have good leadership, you know, just cause I mean, Phil, who was Jordan's coach? Phil, I just scared it out of you, right?

Travis McCaughey (48:40.662)
Yeah. Yeah.

Jason DeSouza (48:42.94)
Yeah, you know, I look at some of these coaches, right? And they've got championship after championship after championship. Derek Jeter, I he was the leader on the Yankees in the 90s, right? And he must have been a very good leader because people responded to him. Kobe, another great leader. Pop in San Antonio, another great leader. They don't, I don't think that great leaders demean or belittle. I think they bring the best out of their people.

And I don't think you need to demean or belittle or bully somebody to get the best out of somebody. think you get the worst out of somebody, you know, and hiring good people and bringing them around and just kind of teaching them. And culture, you know, culture always comes from the top, right? So if you're kind of, if you're, hey man, if you're a bad person and you think that hiring more bad people beneath you, things are not going to get better. You know, they're going to get worse.

Travis McCaughey (49:31.616)
No. Yeah. Yeah, that might be your red flag too to stay working on that rig or start looking for another one. You see the culture. Yeah, if you can. mean, sometimes you can't, and like you said, you gotta work through it or heaven forbid you gotta go along with it, but that might be your first clue.

Jason DeSouza (49:41.032)
Sure. Absolutely.

Jason DeSouza (49:53.392)
Absolutely, absolutely.

Travis McCaughey (49:55.958)
When we talked about these injuries, what, I have documentation wrote down here, what should employees,

have reasonable access to. Is that you requesting files on their behalf or is the employee going to be requesting files or like.

Yeah, I guess we'll go with that.

Jason DeSouza (50:28.084)
And you're talking about after somebody hires me?

Travis McCaughey (50:31.339)
like if they're injured, yeah, and they hire you or maybe they're just trying to they haven't hired you yet, but they want to get like documents together. What should they expect to have access to?

Jason DeSouza (50:46.437)
Nothing. They, they, they, you're, you're dealing with a situation where, know, let's say you got four companies on a site, really they'll apart from their business contracts and their, JOCs joint operating, JOA's joint operating agreements and the lease agreements and the, that type of thing. They'll have an MSA, a master's service agreement between them. Excuse me. And all the master's service agreement will do is.

Travis McCaughey (50:47.82)
Okay.

Jason DeSouza (51:13.511)
talk about who indemnifies who in the event of injury or a breach. But apart from that, you work for Jason's company, I can't get access to Travis's files because we're two separate businesses. It might be my employee who is doing work for Travis, but you're going to turn around and say, sorry, buddy, you're not going to get it absent of subpoena. You can't just get documents from my office and vice versa. Because if you sent me a letter without a court order saying, hey, I need to get

Travis McCaughey (51:28.205)
Mm.

Jason DeSouza (51:43.867)
the following documents about this lease, I'd say you're not gonna get it. It's not gonna happen. It's all proprietary anyway. So if you've got a court order, go get a court order. the only real thing that workers have access to is their medical. And I think it's important to know that because that's really a big deal. That's what's theirs. The company does not get access to your medical. Even if you went to an urgent care, even if you went to...

the workers comp doctors. That does not mean that the company gets access to your medical. You own your medical. And if you don't want to disclose it to the company, you have no reason to disclose it to the company. Now the company can turn around and say, well, hey, look, you know, we want an independent evaluation done on you, an independent medical exam done on you to clear you to come back to work. And again, that's your decision. If you're like, I think I've had enough of you guys and I'm going to go my separate ways.

That's your right. If you want to disclose it to them, that's your right. If you want to hold off while you continue to get treatment, you know that say, if you've got a head injury and you're still not quite right and you don't want them to know it, again, that's your right. So those are your documents and your things. And you walk into my office, you could sign a contract with me, sign a HIPAA. I can get those documents from all those medical providers right away.

Travis McCaughey (53:07.63)
And then we're going to go into a probably some sort of investigation, say you're brought on board. And then we're going to go into site investigation and all that.

Jason DeSouza (53:23.919)
Well, the first thing I want to know is what site it was, you where did it happen at? What's name of the lease? What's the location? Sometimes they don't even know that. So I'll say, okay, well, how are you getting there? And they'll say, well, you know, I would get picked up in the crew truck and I'd say, okay, well, let's look at your location services so I can figure out the site that it happened at. Once I figure out the site that happened at, I've got various software to figure out and various public information to figure out who was, who the lease was given to and which companies are working on those leases. So lease from there.

I can say, well, let me get these companies my letter of representation. So they know there's now a lawyer involved. And they know on top of that, if it's still a continuing site, I want to get access to it. If something really bad happened, there was an explosion or something, I need immediate access to it because I got to figure out what went down. On top of which you're going to get, if you have real bad oil and gas cases or numerous fatalities or injuries, you're to get OSHA involved. You're going to get the Chemical Safety Board involved.

You're going to get in Texas, you could get the TCEQ involved, text commission on environmental quality, them involved. You could get various state agencies involved, the railroad commission, they'll get involved. I mean, at that point, it's like, hey guys, game over, know, shut it down because this site is not going to be active for at least a month while the investigations are occurring.

Travis McCaughey (54:43.5)
Yeah, so an employee shouldn't feel frustrated if they're trying to get documents after the fact because they shouldn't have any expectation that they're going to be given anything after an injury.

Jason DeSouza (54:56.573)
They're not. mean, you're going to get, you should have the expectation that you're going to get as many documents after an injury that as you got before when you showed up to that site, which is none. You know, the company man, the engineer, they're not sharing things with you. They're not sharing the blueprints with you. The leases, the JLAs, the MSAs, they're sharing nothing with you. You showed up, you know, you got to assemble the rig or the rig's already assembled and you've just got a job to do. So I, I,

You've got to trust that that I think that's where a skilled lawyer comes into place is that you got to ask, hey, guy, what kind of experience do you have in in going after this kind of company? Right. Or what kind of experience do you have with this type of incident when you describe what happened? You know, like did gas bubble up out of the cellar and then cause an explosion throwing me to the cellar wall? Have you had a case like that before? Does that sound familiar to you? You know, does that is this something that you could handle?

You know, what are you going to get from me to prove that, you know, it was a cementing company, for example, that screwed up that job, right? If you walk into just anybody's office, you walk into a lawyer's office who handles, you know, criminal defense and family law and probate and some personal injury, and they're not, they're just not equipped, you know, like you get cancer, you're not going to get treatment from your family doctor. Not going to happen. You know, you're going to go to the guy who knows how to handle

You got kidney cancer, you go to the guy that knows how to specifically handle kidney cancer, because that's your dude.

Travis McCaughey (56:30.126)
So you're telling people to find a lawyer that is, this is their practice.

Jason DeSouza (56:38.416)
and they've done it before and they've recovered before and they know who the players are and they know who's going to show up and they can predict the actions of the other side. They can predict the lawyers actions for the oil companies and they can predict the actions of the oil companies themselves because from my perspective, everything comes out of a textbook. So you're to get a textbook response from the insurance defense lawyers and you're going to get a textbook response from the oil companies.

And if you don't know what that textbook looks like, or your lawyer doesn't know what that textbook looks like, well, you're going to be in for, it's going to be a frustrating time because nothing's, you're going to get, the ball is not going to get moved forward on that field.

Travis McCaughey (57:22.584)
How much, I'm curious now that you're talking about all this, how much education do you do for yourself to understand oil and gas operations? Like you said, the different drilling techniques, the different pipe and employees and how much of that do you do yourself? And are you potentially like, you bring experts in to brief you and those types of things?

Jason DeSouza (57:53.769)
so both. So, we're bringing experts in on every single oil and gas case. We're going to bring in an engineer. We're going to bring in a company man expert. We're going to bring in a safety man expert. we're going to depose all the various guys that are going to be on the site. we're going to, I've got, I've got people who there's, there's a difference between like a testifying expert and a consulting expert. So a testifying expert is going to.

You know, look into the case, get the information and then testify in front of the jury. A consulting expert is a guy that's going to educate me that the other side doesn't even know about. So I won't even disclose that guy because I don't have to. And that guy will educate me. So, you know, we're hiring those types of people on every single case. But on top of that, I mean, I'm reading all the depositions that my lawyers are taking. I'm talking to the lawyers who are on these oil and gas cases and I'm pushing them.

And I'm pushing them in a way that might be in a direction that's outside of their comfort zone. Obviously nothing unethical, but in a direction that's outside of their comfort zone. But I'm also pushing them in a direction of take this case to trial. Don't back off. Don't try to posture it for settlement. Take this case to trial. Cause you take this case to trial, you're going to find a lot more skeletons than the lawyer who doesn't take the case to trial and just tries to rattle a cage for a settlement.

The difference between a guy that rattles a cage and a guy that takes him to trial is the guy that finds the real evidence. And so that's how I'm educating myself. We also have an in-house engineer at my office. He's got an aerospace background. So he worked for one of the big commercial airlines. And he helps educate me too. So he'll write reports in office.

And he'll help get us a greater understanding from an engineering perspective of what's going on on that site and what caused the failure. So from a very, very early time in the case, we've got our engineer working on what's going on. We've got our investigator working on who the players are and what happened. And then we've got the lawyers who were on there starting to put together their own analysis of the case and how we could bring it to

Jason DeSouza (01:00:20.878)
a successful trial verdict.

Travis McCaughey (01:00:24.96)
You said you want to go to trial. Is that always the case or is there kind of Is there kind of just a best outcome for each scenario like sometimes is it settlement versus going to trial or Your cut your hard and fast rule in a sense is like like you said, let's go to trial. Let's do some more discovery in front of the court

Jason DeSouza (01:00:50.812)
Every lawyer is bound by doing what's in the best interest of their client. So regardless of, while I, we prepare every case to go to trial. We take every deposition that's necessary. We hire all the necessary experts. Whatever medical treatment our client needs, our client will, we support their decision in getting whatever medical they need. But I think that

If your case is prepared to go to trial, then you will get the best outcome for your client. Which sounds intuitive. It sounds like, well, yeah, that's how it's supposed to work, right, Jason? You know, a lot of things are supposed to work that way. But the problem is that when you get these settlement lawyers involved who just decide that they want to do whatever they can do to hustle a company out of paying as much money as quickly as possible, there's a difference between the two types of lawyers, right? One's a hustler and one's a trial lawyer.

Travis McCaughey (01:01:30.912)
Yeah.

You

Jason DeSouza (01:01:49.045)
And sometimes the difference is hard to spot.

Travis McCaughey (01:01:55.126)
Yeah, so you're saying you're prepared for the best outcome, which is the trial in your opinion. And then if you fall somewhere before that or if it takes a different route, that's okay, potentially.

Jason DeSouza (01:02:10.908)
Travis, could you say that again? I kind of missed that part.

Travis McCaughey (01:02:15.694)
So you're saying you're kind of preparing for, in a sense, the worst case scenario, which would be the trial, and then you're working your way backwards if there is something else that happens.

Jason DeSouza (01:02:29.445)
Sure, yeah. think that no one wants to go to war and I think a client's for both sides. think from a defendant's perspective and a plaintiff's perspective, resolution is always best. You always want to resolve problems for people. I think the defense lawyers and myself, we share that in that they want to resolve this issue for their clients as well. They know that their clients who are the oil companies have gotten themselves into a problem.

I know that my client has gotten himself into a problem, an injury problem. And eventually we're trying to figure out what happened so that we can put people in the best place as close as possible to where they were before the injury happened, as best we can. As best we can. And I compliment my friends, my defense lawyer friends on the other side, because I think oftentimes they do a thankless job. Because the plaintiff lawyers, we tend to take all of the glory for ourselves.

Travis McCaughey (01:03:14.317)
Yeah.

Jason DeSouza (01:03:27.343)
because that's the nature of our business. But a lot of times it's defense lawyers who are doing their best to advise their clients of the risk of dealing with a skilled lawyer and advising their client that it's in their best interest to settle a case.

Travis McCaughey (01:03:39.532)
Yeah. When you talk about these experts that are counseling you or ones that may go to trial with you, I just think of people that have industry experience and if they, how would you find these people? And if someone is qualified, how might they go about being part of these trials or?

litigation if that's something they're interested in potentially participating in.

Jason DeSouza (01:04:12.326)
Sure. So there's a company that I use called Expert Institute. That's one of the places that we find experts at. Another place we find experts at is we just go online and Google it. But there's also another company that's called, of course, I can't remember it right now, but they're a technical expert company, a technical expert service company.

Travis McCaughey (01:04:40.344)
So kind of like an agency or something potentially.

Jason DeSouza (01:04:43.035)
Um, yes. And I think that that company may take a percentage of the experts fees when they get retained, uh, expert Institute, what they do is they'll say, okay, well, Hey, uh, you know, this oil field engineer expert, uh, goes for 495 an hour. Uh, Jason, we'll charge you 2,500 to successfully connect with the right expert. And then once I get that expert, I pay the full 495 an hour. There's other places where they'll say, okay, well, you charge 495. We're going to take five to 10 % of your hourly.

or we're to take a hundred bucks an hour or something like that. So I think if you just connect with expert Institute or you just go online and, if you as, and you act as if you were me, I'm looking for a company man, expert witness. And then you'll see a bunch of different companies, expert finding companies. And you say, you just contact them. say, Hey, here's my CV. Cause you'll always need a CV. And then you'll say, here's my testifying list. If you've never done it before, you obviously won't have a testifying list, but step one is.

Get a CV ready. And CVs nowadays are, it just sounds complicated, but it's, you know, they're very easy. A CV stands for curriculum vitae. And all it is, is just a fancy resume. And it just talks about your education, knowledge, training experience on, you know, a one to two to three page document. You know, who'd you work for? Where'd you go to school? What's your relevant experience? What's your pertinent experience to this? And, you know, why should we hire you? And that's all it is. A CV is just a longer form resume.

Travis McCaughey (01:05:48.13)
What is the CV?

Travis McCaughey (01:05:55.145)
Okay.

Jason DeSouza (01:06:11.76)
That's all it is. And you take that and you submit it to these expert companies. You say, right, somebody needs a pumper gauger expert. Call me. Somebody needs a trucking expert. Call me. Somebody needs a flooring expert. Call me. And then you just kind of go from there, you know?

Travis McCaughey (01:06:12.92)
Gotcha.

Travis McCaughey (01:06:27.778)
Yeah, it just seemed kind of an out of the box thing that if people are in, like I said, in this industry that have those qualifications, something that they might not have thought about, you know, maybe they're doing it inside of a company, but if they're now not working for that company, they're being a consultant, this could be something they could do as well.

Jason DeSouza (01:06:50.395)
Sure, sure. And I've got a company man that consults for me. He's always slammed. He's always on location. He's always busy. But he always makes time for my calls. Always. And he always makes the point to tell me how busy he is in the moment. But he's always got time for me. Yeah, exactly.

Travis McCaughey (01:06:58.702)
You

You

Travis McCaughey (01:07:06.765)
He's hooked up. Well, we're all hooked up when someone calls. I'm busy, boss.

Jason DeSouza (01:07:15.883)
Right, right, right, right. So, so, you know, it's, it's great. And then so, you know, every time he talks to me, if we talk for like 30 minutes, I'll be like, all right, man, hey, I appreciate your time. And then a check will go out in the mail to him at some point. So I appreciate him always taking my calls and I'm sure he appreciates cashing my checks, you know, right, right.

Travis McCaughey (01:07:35.118)
It's mutual.

Travis McCaughey (01:07:47.074)
Yeah, I don't know if I have any more pressing questions. I mean, think we've done a really good job at kind of giving everyone a broad scope of what they can do and how they should think about if they get injured, what the next steps may be.

you know, of course, when to get a lawyer involved. Is there anything that you think that we missed that you want to cover? And then you can tell people how to reach out to you or.

Jason DeSouza (01:08:24.891)
I, we charge no fees and no expenses. We advance the cost of litigation. We work with various funding banks for people who are injured or lost their jobs. I just want people to know, workers to know that the lawyers are on your side. And the main rule that I always give people

which is what one of my first paralegal taught me was, hey, lie to your friends, not to your lawyer. So, you know, just be truthful with your lawyer. It doesn't matter what the truth is. It doesn't matter what the truth is, but just be truthful with your lawyer and tell them everything and tell them what you've got and what you know and what happened and all of it. And I mean, look, if you had something in your system, it is what it is.

The problem always becomes if you make something up because you're afraid, you know, that will always kind of go south pretty quick. And a lawyer, myself, it's happened less than a handful of times in my career. If I find somebody who has lied to me or misrepresented to me, I'm immediately off their case, like instantly. I'm not going to deal with it. I'm not going to give any reason for why I've left.

I'm just gonna, as soon as I find out that it's something egregious, not like, you know, my memory is kind of hazy and you know, maybe it started, maybe my day started at 6 a.m. or maybe it started at 6 p.m., I don't know, you know, or something like that, but something fairly egregious, just be honest with your lawyer, you know, no matter what. And even if you're on the company side, be honest with your lawyer. Don't make it up with your lawyer on the company side. The guy who's defending you, you wanna be honest with those guys. You wanna tell them the truth. You want to make sure, because...

Both sides are going at each other hard. So even the defense side is going to plaintiff hard. And if the plaintiff has lied, that defense side is going to find out. And then they're going to throw it in my face. And similarly, I'm going to go at the company hard and I'm going to find everything. And so if you're honest on both sides with whoever your lawyer is, just tell the truth and they'll be fine with it. They don't, it's, already done, right? It's already done. Be better in the future, but whatever happened, whatever's happened, it's already happened.

Jason DeSouza (01:10:46.914)
And let your lawyer be equipped. Don't let your lawyer get embarrassed because they're just not going to like it. So that's the best thing I can say. And maybe my last thought is, hey, man, just be patient with the people who are working for you. From a company side, be patient with your workers. From a worker side, be patient with the supervisors. Understand that they're dealing with a lot of stress. There's a reason that maybe they are the way they are. Maybe they're wound up for a reason.

and they're not trying to get on you for something bad. They're just dealing with some things that are going on and they're dealing with stuff from head office, from Houston, and there's a lot of pressure coming out of Houston. So that's what I would say. I think if we have a better understanding of each other, maybe we could be safer and maybe we could kind of go about things a little bit better where people aren't getting injured and things are happening in a better way.

Travis McCaughey (01:11:41.292)
You mentioned kind of briefly there, and I'm just thinking about potentially the money and different things. Are there resources for people that can't, like, need to be represented but can't afford it?

Jason DeSouza (01:11:59.34)
like on the defense side or on plaintiff's side.

Travis McCaughey (01:12:02.478)
the plaintiff's side I mean I know you're saying that like you don't get paid unless you win but I could see where there's different organizations different funds and stuff out there that might like provide support to workers is that something you've heard of or is that something that's common

Jason DeSouza (01:12:28.135)
I know that in Texas we have something called the crime victims fund. so if for example, you know, something bad happened, in my experience, crime victims fund tends to get used for plaintiffs, most often in the case of drunk driving, fatalities and injuries. so somebody will contact the state and they'll say, Hey, how do get ahold of crime victims fund? I was a victim of a crime and I became injured or my family member was killed as a result of this crime.

So they got crime victims fund. I'm not personally aware of any other resources on the plaintiff's side. I know on the defense side, if you've got insurance, your insurance company is required to tender you a defense. Every now and then, you will get a scenario of an insurance company who's going to say, no, we're not going to cover them.

because there are certain language in the policy where now this incident happens. So let's say I've got a case where there was a leak underground and the pipe started leaking and there's the clause in the insurance policy that says you have to notify us within three days of this event occurring. I don't know how anybody is supposed to know that there's an underground leak for a small operator down in rural South Texas when this guy's got maybe 150 wells. know, I mean, it's an impossible provision, right? And it's kind of a

Travis McCaughey (01:13:50.093)
Yeah.

Travis McCaughey (01:13:54.039)
Right.

Jason DeSouza (01:13:55.236)
kind of a fraudulent provision in my opinion. In that scenario, that company is up the creek because that insurance company is not providing a defense.

Travis McCaughey (01:14:07.542)
Would you recommend, so I hear some guys that, mostly I guess I've heard of it from crane operators where they carry their own insurance policy. Is that something you're familiar with and would you kind of recommend that? Like you have your company's insurance potentially, but carrying your own insurance, what are your thoughts on that?

Jason DeSouza (01:14:32.094)
You know, insurance is kind of a complex game, right? So you might not even be able, if you're working on a site, say as a Derek man, and you're like, well, I'm like way up in the air as a result of being there. Maybe a Derek man could get their own disability coverage because the risk of falling off the platform is so high, right? But could a Derek man carry his own liability insurance when he was working for a company, you know, like he's an employee of a company.

I don't even know if an insurance company would turn around and say, yeah, we'll insure you individually, Mr. Derekman. Because I think an insurance company would turn around and say, well, you're an employee of a company, a work over rig company, and they have their own insurance, or they should be carrying their own insurance. And if they're not, you shouldn't be working for them. I know that there's been a new trend maybe in the last 10 years where company men have been forming their own entities.

And then the operator will hire a company man and the company man will be on site and the company man will have his own entity and his own insurance coverage. And it tends to create an additional layer of liability and control in terms of getting after the operator. So the operator meaning that the operator can now point to the company man as the one who was responsible for what happened versus the liability being put on the operator themselves. So I think if you've got your own entity,

you know, you're an owner operator or you're a crane rigging operator and you're hired as a contractor, then I would say certainly get your own coverage. know, it never hurts to get your own coverage. And you know that at a minimum, you can lawyer up and your insurance company will give you a defense if there's something that happens or goes down. That's on the upside. On the downside is that you've got to pay for that insurance, right? It's not going to be free. And I don't know that

Travis McCaughey (01:16:02.062)
Yeah.

Travis McCaughey (01:16:20.759)
Yeah, right.

Jason DeSouza (01:16:25.306)
I mean, maybe you could price it into your rate for the day. think that's actually a phenomenal idea. I wish I'd see it more often.

Travis McCaughey (01:16:32.364)
You've never seen it where the two, I'm sure you do see it, where the insurance, like you have the company's insurance and your insurance, and now they're just going back and forth with each other and not with the defense potentially. Or it just makes the whole process longer and more convoluted.

Jason DeSouza (01:16:53.185)
No, see it all the time. And what will happen is you've got the MSA. So the MSA allows, say, three companies on site, you know who's going to pay it out. You know who's going to provide the primary defense. You know where all the settlement money is going to come from on the basis of this MSA, this indemnity agreement between the parties. But then oftentimes what will also happen is we'll have this

this underlying lawsuit going on with the injury. And then there's a federal court declaratory judgment action that'll get filed where all the insurance companies will sue each other. They'll just get into it. And because of the direction of this injury lawsuit, this case gets filed. This never even existed, but all of sudden this will get filed because something happened here and something went south over here where it was supposed to be. It was supposed to be this guy who's going to pay.

But all of sudden, hey, wait a minute. Now it looks like it's going to be this guy that's going to pay. And then they go and sue each other. And interestingly, when that tends to happen, that puts settlement pressure on the underlying injury suit because now it's like, hey, they're about to get a decision in that federal court real soon. So you plaintiffs better figure out what's going on here pretty quick because you want the money from insurance company C.

Travis McCaughey (01:17:58.488)
You

Jason DeSouza (01:18:20.13)
and they might be let off the hook and insurance company A is going to pay you guys nothing. Right. So it certainly does happen that way. Because, know, insurance companies, their whole goal, they're in the business of selling insurance. They're not in the business of paying it. Right. Exactly. Exactly. They got to sell as much insurance as possible. And then when you file a claim, they're like, you know, who this? Who's this? I don't know. You know.

Travis McCaughey (01:18:34.951)
Right. Retaining revenue.

Travis McCaughey (01:18:49.009)
Jason who? Travis who? Yeah, again that might be valuable information, know, or valuable perspective. Just, you know, because you do hear it somewhat frequently with guys that feel like their decisions are going to be more impactful to the people around them. Like I said, the crane operators, they're heavy loads, they're overhead loads.

Jason DeSouza (01:18:50.381)
Yeah, what?

Travis McCaughey (01:19:16.942)
So I can see in a certain sense why they would carry their own additional policy. like you said, a company man who's, they're, I would think they would if they've started their own entity and kind of their own company and they're not being brokered by somebody that, you know, they're gonna have their own policy. So.

Jason DeSouza (01:19:38.945)
Yeah, yeah, I think I think it never hurts. But I think that there's a practical aspect of if somebody is not going to pay you extra for carrying that insurance, now it's just going to eat into your bottom line. You know, the practical aspect is I ain't going to carry it. It's just not going to happen.

Travis McCaughey (01:19:58.435)
Yeah.

Well, cool. How do people get a hold of you? Where can people go and find you?

Jason DeSouza (01:20:08.356)
Sure. So if you get online and you search for D'Souza Injury Lawyers, D-E-S-O-U-Z-A, D'Souza Injury Lawyers, you'll find us. You can click through and contact our intake department if you've got something going on, an injury case that's happened to you. If you're not sure about whether you, you know you've been injured, but you're not sure about whether you have a case, you can still call us. Everything gets vetted at our office.

We've got internally a central kind of intake message board that I personally participate in. So I'm going to see these things that are going on. It costs nothing to hire us. you can always, if I think there's a case, I usually will get the final say on signing a case. You can always hire us. It's no cost to hire us. We can always get our investigator going. We can always try to get our, we'll get our intake department going so we'll get more information from you.

our investigator will get going. And hey, if there's a case there, there's a case. If there's not a case, well, at least, you know, you can find out that there's not a case there or we can't represent you. In which case, we'll just politely send you a declination letter and we'll go our separate ways.

Travis McCaughey (01:21:26.336)
And you serve what area? Just so people know.

Jason DeSouza (01:21:30.455)
We serve the state of Texas. We're located in South Texas, but we have clients all over the state of Texas. We're located in San Antonio. All of our boards, our billboards are located across the Eagle Ford. So between Laredo in the West and Corpus Christi in the East. But if somebody's, you know, they're out in West Texas, they've got something going on.

We've got cases that are out in Victoria, which is close to Houston. We've got cases up North and Dallas. I've had a few people, one fellow hired me from North Dakota, because there was a Texas company operating up there. And I know there's there, they do a lot of shale drilling up there in North Dakota. I'm happy, I'm happy to speak to anybody. I enjoy, I enjoy what I do immensely. I think that, I really enjoy, representing people who.

who do the real work, who get their hands dirty, who are out there powering America, who are doing good work. I'm all for it. I drive big V8s, so I'm buying your product too.

Travis McCaughey (01:22:40.334)
Do you have a phone number handy just in case that's easier for people?

Jason DeSouza (01:22:48.44)
I sure do. I sure do. Yeah. Our office number is 210-714-4215. 210-714-4215. And you're welcome to call that number. A very nice lady will pick up the phone. She also speaks Spanish. So hablo Espanol. And you can speak to us in English or Spanish. And we'll be happy to speak to you. I've even got one lawyer who speaks Spanish, English, and French.

So if you want to speak some French, you know, if you're from Quebec in Canada, you know, by all means give us a call if you've got an injury case.

Travis McCaughey (01:23:24.558)
Perfect. Thanks, Jason.

Jason DeSouza (01:23:25.484)
Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for having me, Travis. Thanks for talking to me. It was really enjoyable. And you've got a wonderful podcast. I listened to some of your other pods and you've got something really good going on. So if you want to have me on in another year, I would absolutely love it.

Travis McCaughey (01:23:42.092)
Yeah, heck yeah. I'd love to talk to you again. Hey, I appreciate your time.

Jason DeSouza (01:23:44.032)
Absolutely, absolutely. Okay, absolutely. Thank you, brother. Appreciate it. See you later. Bye.

Travis McCaughey (01:23:47.992)
Yup. Bye.