Transcript of interview with Jim Olson by Stefani Evans and Claytee D. White, February 2, 2017

i AN INTERVIEW WITH JAMES RALPH "JIM" OLSON An Oral History Conducted by Stefani Evans and Claytee D. White The Building Las Vegas Oral History Project Oral History Research Center at UNLV University Libraries University of Nevada Las Vegas ii ©The Building Las Vegas Oral History Project University of Nevada Las Vegas, 2017 Produced by: The Oral History Research Center at UNLV University Libraries Director: Claytee D. White Editor: Stefani Evans Transcribers: Kristin Hicks, Frances Smith Interviewers: Stefani Evans and Claytee D. White Project Manager: Stefani Evans iii The recorded interview and transcript have been made possible through the generosity of the UNLV University Libraries. The Oral History Research Center enables students and staff to work together with community members to generate this selection of first-person narratives. The participants in this project thank the university for the support given that allowed an idea and the opportunity to flourish. The transcript received minimal editing that includes the elimination of fragments, false starts, and repetitions in order to enhance the reader’s understanding of the material. All measures have been taken to preserve the style and language of the narrator. In several cases photographic sources accompany the individual interviews. The following interview is part of a series of interviews conducted under the auspices of the Building Las Vegas Oral History Project. Claytee D. White Director, Oral History Research Center University Libraries University Nevada, Las Vegas iv PREFACE "It was striking to see the absolute line—like somebody painted the black soot on the walls right where the sprinkler started . . . It always struck me that if this whole thing had been sprinkled, the fire would have been stopped." As Las Vegas native Jim Olson looks back on his law career, he keeps returning to the case that gouged a sooty scar on his memory, altered legal practice and technology in Southern Nevada, captured the world's imagination, and changed international building codes—the MGM Grand Hotel and Casino fire of November 21, 1980, that killed 85 people and took eight years to litigate. Olson became involved with the litigation because his firm, Cromer, Barker, and Michaelson, represented the MGM Grand's insurance company, INA, Insurance Company of North America. Juggling thousands of claims, Olson ended up working with the MGM's corporate counsel in Los Angeles, a legal firm in Denver, Lloyd's of London, and a special master; renting additional office space for taking depositions; hiring graveyard-shift transcribers, and purchasing the legal world's latest technological marvel—a fax machine. As a first grader, five-year-old Jim was known to walk home during the school day whenever the St. Joseph nuns scared him. As an attorney whose career path was inspired by Perry Mason and augmented by his argumentative streak, Jim offers insights into litigation about some of Southern Nevada's most iconic buildings, signs, and spaces. In this interview, he recalls his mentors, Al Gunderson, George Cromer, Bill Barker, and Kent Michaelson. He talks of construction defect cases including his first MGM Grand litigation, in which his firm represented the architect, Martin Stern, when faulty siding fell off the building, and the 1994 lawsuits that followed when the top of the newly constructed, 365-foot Las Vegas Hilton sign blew down in a windstorm. He shares tales of legendary fellow attorney Mike Hines and his annual Nevada Bar Association parties on the Mike Hines Ranch, and he speaks to litigation between Hank Greenspun, Howard Hughes, and Hughes Tool Company. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Interview with James Ralph "Jim" Olson February 2, 2017 in Las Vegas, Nevada Conducted by Stefani Evans and Claytee D. White Preface…………………………………………………………………………………..………..iv Childhood in Las Vegas and North Las Vegas; mother's and aunts' restaurant; father's carpentry and co-operative building; St. Joseph's Roman Catholic School and Bishop Gorman High School; J.D. University of Arizona College of Law 1974; mentors Perry Mason, Al Gunderson, George Cromer, Bill Barker, and Kent Michaelson ……………………………………..……………. 1–12 MGM Grand fire 1980 and litigation, Lloyd's of London, Judge Louis Charles Bechtle, and Judge Paul Goldman; PEPCON explosion; MGM fire and sprinklers, fax machine ……………… 12–22 Las Vegas Hilton sign 1994 and litigation; construction defect cases and The Arbors; arbitration, Darling Park, and the City of Henderson; MGM case and legal technology; MGM Grand, architect Martin Stern, and faulty siding……………………………..………………………….……. 22–30 Hank Greenspun, Howard Hughes, and Hughes Tool Company litigation; Mike Hines, parties, and Mike Hines Ranch………………………………………………………………..…………. 30–36 vi 1 Good morning. It is February second, 2017. CLAYTEE: Groundhog's Day. Yes, Groundhog's Day. Thank you. And Stefani Evans and Claytee White are here with Jim Olson. So, Jim, would you please pronounce and spell your full name for the tape, please? James Ralph Olson, O-L-S-O-N. And Ralph, R-A-L-P-H. James, J-A-M-E-S, the usual spelling, nothing crazy. Nothing fancy. Thank you. Let's start by talking about your childhood. So you grew up in Las Vegas? Yes. I was born in Las Vegas, December tenth, 1948, at a hospital that no longer exists, the City of Las Vegas Hospital. After my birth it just went downhill after that until it finally burned. It had served its purpose. It couldn't repeat the experience. It served its purpose. Why don't you tell us why your parents came here? What did your dad do for a living? My dad was a carpenter, actually. I do have a picture right before the war. He was in Los Angeles. He and a group of other young men formed a company and they built fine furniture for the well-to-do in Southern California. Their advertisement was all of them in business suits, just to portray the fact that they were fine furniture carpenters. He became pen pals during the war with my mother through his sister Audrey, who lived here in Las Vegas and introduced them by way of pen pal. Then, when he was discharged after World War II, he came here, met my mother. They hit it off, got married, and decided to remain here in Las Vegas and he became a heavy construction carpenter and also a superintendent of 2 various construction jobs. He worked on the original Sands Hotel for Bugsy Siegel. What company did he work with? I don't remember the company back then. But over the years he worked mostly at the [Nevada] Test Site for various government contractors, Reynolds Electrical and Engineering Company [REECO], Bechtel, various contractors, and was an area superintendent working on projects at the Test Site. My mother was already here prior to the war, she and several of her sisters. She came from a very large family. They originally came from Boston, moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico, where her parents started more or less a general merchandise store in Albuquerque. I should say a suburb of Albuquerque; Bernalillo, New Mexico. She and three of her sisters moved from Albuquerque to Las Vegas in 1939 and opened up a small restaurant, diner in Las Vegas. What was it called? I think it was called The Diner—that's what shows in the pictures. The oldest sister was Sadie, and her restaurant in Albuquerque is now an institution in Albuquerque, Sadie's Restaurant. I've been there. Yes. But I think this one was The Diner. My aunt Sadie, my aunt Camille, my mother, and my aunt Nora opened that up. Then eventually, later on my aunt Thelma came. What kind of food did they serve? Just good old American hamburgers, breakfasts. It was a diner, the types of things that truckers like and all that. That's what it eventually became also in Albuquerque when my aunt Sadie—they closed it down. Everybody was getting married, leaving. So they sold it and my aunt Sadie went back to Albuquerque and started her restaurant there. Oh, my goodness. 3 So where was the restaurant located here? It was on Las Vegas Boulevard. I can't give you the exact location, but it was on Las Vegas Boulevard more towards North Las Vegas. I think that their major clientele—that was a major highway going through Las Vegas. There was no freeway. That was the old highway going to L.A. So truckers would always stop there, as well as locals. Earlier you said that your father worked on Bugsy's. Did you mean Flamingo? The Flamingo. Thank you for correcting me. Yes, Bugsy's Flamingo. He used to talk about seeing Bugsy out there during the construction of the hotel. Oh, my goodness. After the Flamingo, did he mainly work out at the Test Site or did he work on other big projects? He worked on other projects. There were other casinos. He mostly worked on commercial projects. But as long as I can remember—I was born in 1948; they were married in 1945—as long as I can remember he worked at the Test Site. So where did you live? The first home I remember we lived on Second Street out by where you would—I believe it was Second Street, but it was near where the . . . The Stratosphere? The Stratosphere. The street names were different back then. We lived in a small house near where the Stratosphere Hotel and Casino is located now. Then my dad sold that. I think it was only about two or three years old. We lived in a mobile home in a mobile home park until I was eight years old. My dad built our house, my childhood house. He and a couple of his friends built it from scratch. I mean, he was a master carpenter. He knew just about every trade, but he had other friends that had other trades, like electricians, plumbers helped him. He used to like to say 4 he built our house—this didn't include the price of the land—but he built our house for five thousand dollars. Where was that? That was in North Las Vegas on Bassler Street. Do you remember the address? What was the address? My brother probably remembers it. He's nine years younger and he continued to live there long after I left. It was 2139 Bassler Street. Great. So did he and his friends help each other build houses? Yes, yes. So they did a round-robin kind of thing? Yes, they helped each other in trade. I remember personally going with my dad to another friend's house, and he was working on framing the house for him. He was an electrician and he had worked on our house doing the electrical work. What was that; barn raising that they used to do? Yes. You might say it was very similar to that kind of concept where neighbors came and helped raise the barn. In fact, my dad was a farm kid. He was raised in Wisconsin—born in Minnesota, but lived in Wisconsin and South Dakota—and he was a farm kid until he left during the Depression and became a carpenter, because it was a tough life on the farm. His favorite saying is, "We worked dark till dark." And they just pooled their skills. Yes. That was the thing he had learned when he was growing up in the Midwest. So what schools did you go to? I did not attend any preschool. I didn't go to kindergarten. My mom started me right into the first 5 grade when I was five. I went to St. Joseph's [Roman Catholic School]. I didn't like it the first day and kind of walked away from school, walked all the way home. We've heard this story before. Yes. I said, "I didn't like it; the nuns scared me." The first day my mom had dropped me off with a little friend from our neighborhood. She took me to the class. I said, "Hey, I don't think this is for me," and I walked home. I still remember as a young kid walking home and seeing George Franklin, the district attorney back then. This was 1953. I still remember him because I had to walk through the downtown area to go home. I knew him, because I'd see him on TV as a kid. I watched a lot of TV when I was a kid. I saw him and he looked like he had had something vigorous for breakfast because he was sort of trying to catch his balance as he was walking. I still remember that after all these years. That was on your way home from school? On my home because I didn't like this school. But then I finished St. Joseph's, first through eighth grade, wonderful school, no longer in existence, just like the hospital I was born. We're seeing a trend. Yes. Where did you go to high school? Then I went to high school at Bishop Gorman High School in its original location on Maryland Parkway, which is no longer the school. So are you seeing a pattern here? And college? I went to the University of California at San Diego and finished at University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and then went to the University of Arizona, College of Law, and graduated from there in 1974 with honors. 6 And UNLV is still standing. Yes. And so is the U of A, still standing. So maybe the curse . . . Of course, Bishop Gorman is just standing in a different place. Exactly. So did you work as a young boy? Yes. I worked mostly at the Safeway. There was a Safeway grocery store right there on the corner of Lake Mead and...It's where the library is in North Las Vegas. [Ed. Note: Perhaps Doolittle Community Center.] There's a little shopping center there. Anyway, I worked there at a Safeway, along with a paper route. Man, we're really getting old-school here. I had a paper route for the Las Vegas Review-Journal for several years and then boxed groceries at Safeway for probably two or three years. Is the Safeway still standing? It's still there, but I don't know if it's a Safeway. I don't think it's a Safeway. So who were your mentors? How did you decide to go to law school? You know what? Probably Perry Mason. I was a big Perry Mason fan as a kid. I loved watching that show, and I seemed to have just a natural inclination for argument and all the things that at least I thought would be important to be a lawyer. That was probably . . . It sounds pretty mundane. Then I would read a lot in regard to things that would be in the law, the Supreme Court, and things like that. So it really piqued my interest, and I got more interested when I was in high school. As my classmates used to say, I was always arguing in class, sometimes to their detriment, over certain issues that would come up. So it probably just grew during high school. So did you do debate? I was in the debate group for Gorman. Brent Adams, who went to Las Vegas High School, was a judge up in Reno. We were classmates in law school together and in a study group together, and 7 he was on the debate group from Las Vegas High School. So kind of a small world there. But, yes, I got just really interested in the law. But I would have to say it was probably Perry Mason that got me interested in being a lawyer. And you have a daughter who's in law school now. My youngest daughter. I have three daughters. Amanda is a dentist, practicing in Seattle. Both Amanda and Alycia graduated from the University of Colorado at Boulder. Alycia got her marketing degree; didn't like that, then got another degree in interior design. She's living here in Las Vegas as a designer at Pottery Barn. Then Ashley, our younger daughter, is in her first year of law school at Boyd. She decided to stay here at UNLV. She has a great interest. I love to see—as you get older, you get to my age, I like to think I still have the same zeal for the practice of law, but not like somebody who is entering. I love to see the fresh-faced enthusiasm of somebody just starting in law school. She's kind of reviving my interest in some other areas of the law that I usually don't get involved in with our practice. So what seem to be her interests? Her interests, I think she really likes international law, international relationships. She's talking about doing her internship in international law. In fact, she's seeing former federal judge Phil Pro tomorrow, interviewing him, because he was very involved when he was on the federal bench in a number of international conflicts. He was appointed to assist in the World Court and handle certain matters. So that seems to be her interest. She could be like me; you change as you go through law school, meet other people, have other classes, and your interests change. So how did you get involved in your practice? Well, clerking, graduating from University of Arizona. I was a member of the Arizona Bar, but I didn't want to stay in Arizona. I came back to Las Vegas. Al Gunderson, who was on the 8 Supreme Court, gave me a clerkship for the Nevada Supreme Court; I hope it was for my ability, but Al Gunderson was madly in love when he was a young man with my aunt Thelma and constantly proposed to her. They remained friends. They never married. But they were always good friends. He was an early mentor after law school. Then I interviewed a number of law firms in Las Vegas. It was, I have to say, a much better atmosphere then for new lawyers coming. There were lots of jobs and lots of offers back in 1974, uh, a long time ago. So I interviewed a number of firms, including my wife's late father's firm, Lionel Sawyer and Collins, which no longer exists. But, see, I'm not responsible for that, because I never worked for them. And we weren't married, hadn't even met my wife at that time. I interviewed with Sam Lionel and Jon R. Collins, my future father-in-law. But I really liked George Cromer. I liked that it was a smaller office back then. I didn't take a job with O'Melveny and Myers in Los Angeles because they were already four hundred lawyers in 1974. I didn't take a job with the O'Connor Cavanagh firm in Phoenix because I thought they were too big. Back then they were already about ninety lawyers. George Cromer was an absolutely wonderful trial attorney. That was my evolution; now I wanted to be a trial attorney. I didn't start off that way. I was going to be a tax lawyer when I was in law school; that was my interest. In fact, I was admitted to NYU's tax school. Their law school has [a degree] called an LLM. This is strange. I know I'm backtracking. No, this is great. Now you get a Juris Doctor degree. A law degree is considered a Doctorate degree. Before it used to be a Bachelor's degree because you can go to law school after—you didn't have to have a college degree; you could go after two or three years of school and then get your Bachelor of 9 law. That was then your Bachelor's degree. Then everybody said, "No, you're going to have to have a degree and then come to law school." So now it's a Juris Doctor degree. Well, under the old method your advanced degree was called an LLM, a master's of law, and then you got your SJD, a doctor of laws. Well, this threw everything off. So it's weird that the next degree is a master's degree, a master's of law after your juris doctorate. Anyway, I was really seriously thinking about getting the LLM in taxation and going to NYU for that. One of my professors, who was the dean of NYU at one point, I aced his class and he wrote a very nice recommendation and I got in. But I decided when I graduated, I don't want to do this now. I changed. So I wanted to be a trial lawyer. Anyway, that brings me full circle. George Cromer was an excellent trial lawyer. He had a great reputation at the time. So I took the position with him. I learned probably more from him than I did—in a different way—about litigation than you would ever learn in law school. Law school doesn't really teach you to be a litigator; it teaches you to be a brief writer and work as a law clerk. So what was the name of the firm? It was Cromer Barker and Michaelson. Cromer, C-R-O-M-E-R; Barker, B-A-R-K-E-R; and Michaelson, M-I-C-H-A-E-L-S-O-N. Here in Las Vegas? Yes, here in Las Vegas. George had started the firm in 1960. It was a different name at that point. He had a different partner way back then. I can't even remember who his partner was. He had various partners. But at the point I joined it, it was Cromer Barker and Michaelson. And these were all litigators? Litigators. 10 Well, that's what Perry Mason did. Yes. There you go. I came full circle. My buddy Perry brought me back. So does this firm still exist here? We are Cromer Barker. It changed. We took over the firm. Back in the day the bar rules did not allow you to keep the name of any lawyer who was no longer with the firm unless they were deceased. But you are the heirs apparent. We are the heirs. We are the heirs. We took over the firm. All three of them now are deceased. All three were great people, great lawyers, great teachers, too. They all had different strengths as far as litigation. George Cromer was probably the best cross-examiner I've ever seen in a courtroom, and I've seen a lot of them. So I learned a lot from each of the three of them. Kent Michaelson was a folksy guy who always got the jurors smiling. Bill Barker was a detail man, every "T" crossed. There was nothing that got by him. So I had some pretty good mentors. So what's your style? Hopefully a combination of all of them. I'm probably not the detail man Bill Barker was, but I like to make sure every "T" is crossed and "I" dotted in a case. I think I have pretty good cross-examination skills. I hope that I'm relating to the people I'm talking to and trying to convince. So I'd say a combination, maybe not as good in those areas as any one of them, but probably a good combination, at least that's the way I like to think about it. You sound pretty humble. People in this office wouldn't agree with that comment, humility. Humility, attorney? Yes, they don't go together. 11 So what was the first case that you argued? Well, you mean—okay. That you were in charge of. Oh, that I was in charge of. The first case that I was in charge of was a run-of-the-mill automobile accident. That's the way you learn. You tried a lot more cases then. There was no arbitration. There was different rules. The law didn't favor arbitration. People had their day in court, and you either settled a case or you tried it. My first case that I was in charge of—not the first case I was involved as a trial attorney because I was second chair in a lot of cases before then—it was an automobile accident. It was what I would consider probably a draw; the plaintiff got some money, but not nearly as much money as they had demanded or they asked the jury for. It was just a small percentage. I remember it was a tough case because she was a nice lady. She was a grandmother-type. I had to impeach her, and it was difficult. I learned from that case you've got to be very careful impeaching a grandmother that looks like a grandmother. So I learned a lot of lessons from that case. Yes, because you go too hard on her, and then you're mean. Oh, yes, yes. Look, I've got to relate to these people. I don't want to come across mean; she's lying, but I can't say that. It's a difficult position, and it was my first case. It was going to be a loser because it was a rear-end case; our client had rear-ended her. So it was just a matter of— Your client rear-ended the grandmother. Yes, my client rear-ended the grandmother. And you were how old? Let's see. I was twenty-six years old. 12 Going after a grandmother. Nice work. Yes. Twenty-six years old going after the poor grandmother. You're lucky...Yes. But she was a naughty lady. She was a naughty lady. Well, good job that you—yes, very good work. Yes. They gave her something, but they realized she was a naughty person and had exaggerated a number of things, including the extent of her injuries, since we also had her on surveillance doing things she said she couldn't. Like playing basketball? Like walking without a limp. Well, there you go. So how did you get involved with the MGM fire? That occurred in 1980. So I had already been practicing approximately six years because I started in 1974. So I had been practicing about six years. What was interesting about that morning is the late Neil Galatz, a very prominent plaintiff's attorney here in Nevada—very good plaintiff's attorney—he and I were flying to San Diego to take a doctor's deposition, a hand surgeon's deposition, who was an expert in a case. We were both defending a medical malpractice case. Neil was a very prominent plaintiff's attorney, but he had gotten so many good verdicts against doctors, they all agreed that—and medical insurance was in such a crisis back then in 1980 that a whole group of doctors in Nevada formed their own insurance company and they hired Neil and Peter Chase Neumann, who was their nemesis up in Reno, as their lawyers to defend them. So the chickens hired the fox to protect them. I remember that. That was some of the doctors. Then I had a doctor who was involved in this case. It was a hand 13 surgery issue, and I had the anesthesiologist and we were defending the case. I had another insurance carrier, the carrier for this doctor. The expert was in San Diego, and so we had to fly to San Diego on a Friday to take the deposition. Neil didn't like to take regular public transportation planes. He chartered a private plane, a jet to fly us there. He was very good; he didn't want the full half-price for this, but just some compensation for that. I said, "Yes, I'll go with you; that way we can get down there and fly right back out." Well, we flew out that Friday morning, the day of the fire. Did you fly right over it? We flew right over it and we didn't think much. At that point there was smoke rising, but it looked like it might be some sort of kitchen fire, something like that with the smoke coming out. Neil had an investigator who he used not only to investigate but also to haul his horses around all over the country because he was into Morgans, Morgan horses. He joked and said, "Neil, can we have the pilot throw some of your cards out there? There might be something going on down there." Nobody knew that this was going to be such a horrendous event. Well, we land in San Diego and before we start the deposition, I had calls from a client that I had done work for, for some years; it was called the Insurance Company of North America, INA, which no longer exists in that form. We have this thing. They were the insurer of the MGM and they said, "You've got to get back over here right away. There's been a disaster." That was how I got involved in the MGM case; they retained our firm. The MGM also had their own corporate attorneys, a law firm that no longer exists in Los Angeles, the Weinmann Bautzer firm. They got heavily involved with us. Then we needed help through the course of the case because there's thousands of claims of all kinds. So we had experience with another firm called Hall and Evans out of Denver. They still exist under a 14 different name. The three of our firms represented the MGM in the fire case, and then later I was involved with the MGM as plaintiffs against their insurance companies for the settlement monies that they were refusing to pay. It gets a little complicated. How long did it take? This whole thing lasted from 1980 until around 1988, when we finally settled the insurance case during the first week of trial. What happened is during the course of what I call the fire case, the tort case, there were hundreds of defendants, not just the MGM; but every contractor, anybody who ever touched that hotel was sued as not doing their job properly to allow the smoke—because all the deaths were smoke inhalation cases—to not planning it right. The architect was sued. Everybody was sued. People who supplied furniture, because it wasn't flame retardant. Everybody was sued. We settled out. There were over eighty deaths. It ran into thousands of just personal injuries, smoke inhalation cases, and things of that nature. I went to London on this. We obtained what's euphemistically called "retroactive insurance." We didn't feel we had enough to cover this disaster, and so we went to Lloyd's of London and we negotiated additional insurance at a very high premium, as you might say, because the event had already occurred. But they were betting on how much the cases would settle for as opposed to the premium. Hey, if the cases would settle for, as an example, fifty dollars, but over three or four years, we'd collect two hundred dollars in premium. Then we make a profit and we'll pay off the settlement. But we're here behind you, MGM, as your insurers, so no problem. I didn't even know you could do that. Well, neither did I until we got there. But think about it, it's just a business decision. They're betting on the settlements are going to be far less than over the three or four years that they're 15 collecting premiums, and the premiums were very expensive. So we feel that we've got a great settlement with all of the plaintiffs. We get rid of everything for 75 million dollars, every claim. We're out of this thing. The case had gone to multi-district litigation, which was relatively new then. It's kind of common now for large cases dealing with plaintiffs from the various states and foreign nationals. We had a lot of very wealthy Mexican patrons who were there at the hotel. And so there was a process that had been developed in the federal courts, and we managed to get virtually all the cases into federal court. We got this into a multi-district litigation. You had to do certain things to have the federal courts accept this as a multi-district case, and that means a new judge, not one of the judges here in Las Vegas, but a new federal judge would be appointed to handle and litigate all the cases, and that was Louis [Charles] Bechtle from Philadelphia. So he was the multi-district litigation judge. So even the local cases, he handle those? He handled them all. Most of the time he would come to Las Vegas, because he consolidated the cases all here, and various times he would have court hearings with all the lawyers, a hundred of us or so lawyers, probably more than that, because all the plaintiffs had their various lawyers. They were represented by a plaintiffs' legal committee of about a dozen lawyers. But there were far more plaintiffs' lawyers, because everybody who was here that was in the room was from somewhere else. So they had their lawyers in their local places. So the plaintiffs' legal committee was kind of representing all their interests, and then we had so many defendants in the case. It was something that really had to be managed, and Judge Bechtle was that type of person. He could manage cats or herd cats, as they say. Yes, he was a good person for that. But we agreed with the plaintiffs' legal committee and it was agreed by Judge Bechtle to settle the case for 75 million dollars. Then our friends in London didn't want to pay. They said 16 that was too much. We said, "Frankly, it was probably on the lower side of the settlement range." So then we had to sue them, and we sued them in state court. Judge Paul Goldman, the late Judge Paul Goldman got the case. That went all the way up until the first week of trial. We had a big room out at the Thomas and Mack Center, a huge room where they built out the courtroom and everything. We had probably fifty tables—this was going to be a jury trial—for all the various counsel, for all the various insurance companies that were involved in this. Can you imagine being on that jury? Yes. We started picking the jury and then they agreed. Not only did we get the $75 million, we got $90 million. And Lloyd's settled? Yes, they paid us $90 million because we were suing them in bad faith. Wow. So what about INA, did they have to be sued as well? No, no. What happened is INA was the initial insurer. All these hotels, the same thing; they'll have the initial insurer that takes care of most of the small regular claims, and these will have about one million bucks; that's all they have. They threw it in. They said, "Here, MGM, we're off, take our million." And MGM agreed. So then we were going into the next layers of coverage after that. Then INA was gone. INA was gone after the first couple of months. They just said, "This thing is huge; here is our million; thank you very much." And we are done. Yes, yes. MGM agreed to that. They didn't have to. They could have said, "No, INA, you continue to defend." But they [MGM] wanted to get control of the case. They knew that they 17 needed to be in control of the case. So they agreed to let INA off the hook if they just tendered the million to them. That was complicated. Yes, yes. So eight years of litigation. Eight years on that. Then we had the Hilton fire, which I worked very briefly on. Another partner, Hank Rawlings, handled that case because I had this MGM fire case. This [the MGM case] was still going on? Yes. I had the MGM fire case