Jason Jordan recently joined Keith Fuicelli on the Colorado Trial Lawyer Connection podcast for a wide-ranging conversation covering everything from product liability investigation to courtroom trial strategy — and the “felonious killing” case that almost went to verdict.
The Case: When a Hospital Becomes the Defendant
Matthew Jones arrived at St. Mary Corwin Hospital in Pueblo at 5:06 a.m. with swelling in his legs. He was confused, mildly uncooperative, and wanted to leave against medical advice. He was 400 pounds, had substances in his system, and had no way home — it was 19 degrees, dark, and he was wearing shorts and a t-shirt.
What happened next became the center of a wrongful death trial in Arapahoe County.
After about 25 minutes of standing in the lobby waiting for a taxi that never came, four security guards surrounded Jones and attempted to force him outside. He resisted. They rolled him into a prone position, placed their weight on his back, and held a forearm to his neck — for over three minutes. A nurse on scene raised the alarm, telling the guards this looked like a George Floyd situation. They didn’t stop. Jones lost consciousness, never regained it, and died eight days later.
The hospital’s official story: he coded by himself and hit his head. His widow found out the truth six days later — not from the hospital, but from a sheriff’s investigator who called her out of the blue.
Jordan Law came in as co-counsel, alongside original attorney David Webster and trial partner Nick Rowley, and took the case to trial in Arapahoe County.
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The Strategic Decisions That Defined the Case
Why They Skipped the 1983 Civil Rights Claim
Jason addressed this directly: “I actually like being in federal court — I have two federal trials next month. A lot of lawyers don’t. That isn’t the reason.”
The real reason was simpler. Two of the four guards had been criminally charged with homicide. Charges were later dropped — something Jason described as Pueblo County nepotism at work — but their DOC and sheriff’s department training records were intact. Jordan Law knew they could establish conscious disregard of a substantial and unjustifiable risk through the negligence route and reach the felonious killing standard, which carries no cap on wrongful death damages. The civil rights claim wasn’t necessary to get there.
Building the Felonious Killing Standard Witness by Witness
Colorado’s felonious killing standard requires showing that the defendant consciously disregarded a substantial and unjustifiable risk. Jason’s approach was methodical: with every guard, every witness, he walked through the same predicate facts. Jones was not agitated. Not threatening. Not interfering with other patients. Not combative — until one guard, Randy Vilano, put hands on him and escalated the situation.
“I’m just walking each one of them down the path,” Jason explained. By the time he got to one of the guards on cross — Castro — the guard was crying. Jason asked him directly whether what the guards did was unjustifiable given that Jones posed no threat. “He’s literally just giving me the felonious killing standards.”
He finished that cross in 22 minutes.
Starting with the Right Witness: Officer Ruff
The opening witness was chosen deliberately. In his deposition, Officer Ruff had disclosed that his supervisor wanted the hospital security team to operate “more like a SWAT team” — to be able to “flip the switch and go aggressive.” Ruff himself had told his longtime friend Randy Vilano — the guard who initiated contact with Jones — on multiple occasions: this isn’t a prison, these are customers, you treat them differently. He’d had more physical confrontations at that hospital in two years than in 27 years with the sheriff’s department.
Jason had the deposition testimony queued up, page and line, for impeachment. When Ruff backtracked on the SWAT team comment at trial, Jason played the video. “Every question after that, he’s just giving it to me.”
The Punitive Damage Order as a Warning Shot
Jordan Law filed a pre-trial motion asking the judge to determine the felonious killing question as a matter of law. The judge deferred — as Jason anticipated — but in his order granting punitives, he noted that the willful and wanton standard was very similar to felonious killing and that there was a prima facie showing. “It was almost like a warning across the bow of the defense,” Jason said, “that it’s very likely, if the evidence comes in this way, that he would find for felonious killing.”
The defense rested with two experts remaining after Jordan Law closed. The case settled during the lunch break.
Humanizing a Client the Defense Tried to Destroy
Matthew Jones had methamphetamine, cocaine, ecstasy, and alcohol in his system at the time of his death. He had prior incidents involving domestic violence and substance abuse. The defense opened by calling him “belligerent” and leaned hard into his history.
The jury didn’t buy it. When the team spoke to jurors afterward, the feedback was consistent: they were not happy with how the defense tried to portray Jones as a throwaway person.
Jason credits the humanization work entirely to co-counsel Nick Rowley. “Nick is masterful at the human side of the story — trial by human, that’s his method.”
The approach started long before trial. Rowley had dinner with the widow, spent real time with her, and listened. “Your client’s not going to tell you a specific story because they probably don’t think you care or that you want to hear it,” Jason explained. “That little nugget is what’s going to humanize this person.”
Rowley’s framing in opening: Jones was a 90/10 man. Ninety percent of the time, he was the man she loved. Ten percent of the time — Super Bowl weekend, a few drinks with the wrong people — he was someone else. “Stay at your mom’s until you’re ready to come home.”
The jury understood. Everyone in that room knew someone like that.
The widow also had a moment that resonated powerfully with the jury: she had been lied to by the hospital for six days, told her husband coded and fell on his own. It wasn’t until a sheriff’s investigator called her that she learned four men had put him in that position. The anger she carried into that courtroom was real, and it showed exactly how much she had loved him.
Product Liability 101 for Car Crash Lawyers
Jason took a section of the conversation to address what he calls the “sniffer” — the instinct that a standard auto case might be hiding a product defap. His advice for when to investigate:
Eight figures in damages is your threshold. Product cases are expensive — Jordan Law spent over $870,000 in costs on one Oklahoma fire case. You need to be selective, and you need to know what you’re walking into.
Preserve the vehicle immediately and quietly. Before notifying the other side, secure the vehicle with a clean chain of custody. Do non-destructive photography and inspection first. Once you send notice, the manufacturer’s team mobilizes fast.
The tire case example. A referring attorney called Jason about a semi-truck that blew a tire, crossed into oncoming traffic, and killed both parents of three young children. The policy limit was a million dollars. Jason’s team isolated the vehicle, inspected it, and got a call back from their expert: two tires back would have blown the same way within minutes. Nine tires later off the same assembly line. “Litigation gold” — and a case that was now something fundamentally different.
The automatic braking case. Jordan Law currently has a Los Angeles case where a driver in the entry-level trim of a pickup truck drove into a broken-down car on the dark 405. Every model above that trim had automatic emergency braking. That one didn’t. “They don’t usually like to litigate those cases for too long — it’s basically them being cheap.”
His bottom line: reach out. “We do it all the time — initial screenings, guidance on next steps. Just call.”
Trial Preparation: How Jordan Law Actually Gets Ready
Focus groups at scale. When Jason runs his own focus groups, he fills a conference room with 40 people, runs Voir Dire practice, then breaks them into separate deliberation groups. One group is intentionally filled with people who would never make it past a challenge — they serve as a pressure valve so they don’t contaminate the others. On larger cases, he outsources to professional focus group consultants he uses nationwide. “Not cheap, but very good.”
Voir Dire philosophy. Jason credits Nick Rowley with reshaping how he thinks about jury selection. “He leans over before we start with 50 jurors and says, ‘Lot of souls right here that need love.’ Some lawyers talk about finding the enemy, finding the bad juror. That’s not it. These are human beings who come with their own stories. If you treat them that way, you’re going to get a very good jury.”
Efficiency over performance. Jordan Law regularly rents a house — sometimes Nick’s place in Montana — and spends a week doing nothing but going through the case together. The goal isn’t to add more witnesses or more exhibits. It’s to cut. “Less is more. When the point’s been made, you’re boring the jury. That’s not a good thing.”
Prepare your client in the actual courtroom. On the Friday before trial, when the audio-visual team is setting up, bring your client in. Have them sit in the juror seats. Have them sit in the witness chair. Walk them through where the judge will be, where opposing counsel will be, where they’ll be sitting next to you. “Saturday and Sunday are going to be the most anxiety-ridden time of their life. If you take them there beforehand, you’ve already taken away a significant amount of that fear.”
Direct is scarier than cross. “Direct examination is one of the most frightening things for me — unless it’s an expert. I never know what the hell’s going to come out of my client’s mouth.” Cross is control. Direct is a leap of faith. Which is why knowing your client deeply, and spending real time with them before trial, isn’t optional.
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On the State of the Profession
Jason didn’t pull punches on where personal injury law is heading. Hedge fund-backed firms entering the space, non-lawyer ownership in Arizona, cases treated as inventory rather than people — “your clients are literally like widgets to them.”
His concern isn’t just philosophical. When firms aren’t built to try cases, insurance companies know it. They offer less. Clients get less. And the leverage that forces accountability — the credible threat of trial — disappears.
“Try cases. Just try cases. It really is a shame how few jury trials there are compared to even a generation ago. You see it in the level of lawyering. You see it in judges who’ve never run a long civil trial. The only way to fix that is to try more cases.”
Listen to the Full Episode
The full conversation is available on the Colorado Trial Lawyer Connection podcast. If you have a complex personal injury case — product liability, catastrophic injury, wrongful death — and want to discuss co-counsel, call (303) 766-8153
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