Aaron Siri
speaker
358 appearances
2 recordings
2 series
first heard Nov 2024
last heard Dec 2024
Aaron Siri’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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So I would get some of those cases that would kick off to our firm, because they trusted us to do good work. So we would do some of those cases for behalf of publicly traded and large corporations. So I did that for a few years. And then in terms of legally how I got involved, there was a law in California passed, the bill number was called SP-277 in 2014.
And what it did was eliminate non-medical exemptions for children to attend school. Okay. So all these kids, tens of thousands of children were thrown out of school in California because their parents made the medical decision.
And like I said before, these are often the folks who I find are most informed about these products, sometimes more informed than many of the pediatricians I depose about these products. And I was in New York at the time.
Senator Richard Pan, who's no longer there, and Senator, excuse me, and Senator Richard Pan and Ben Allen were the two members of the California legislature who drove that bill through. I mean, if you look back and see- Did Pharma back it?
I mean, you know, but it happened. And so they started, some schools in New York started kicking kids out of school, just kind of- In California. In New York, actually, even though they didn't need to. I was in New York at the time, so I brought some suits, to help those kids get back to school so they can get back in.
I got injunctions and got them back into those typically private schools that were starting, you decided where they don't want to have any of the kids who had religious exemptions. New York state allowed religious exemptions at the time. And here's the faithful moment. The city of New York required a flu shot for preschoolers.
And so my wife was also an attorney and partner at our firm, said, hey, can we challenge that? And I looked at it and I said, And after looking at it saying, yeah, we could, because it was not passed by the legislature, it was passed by the Department of Health. They don't have the authority to do it. So we can just challenge it on separation of power grounds. And she's like, okay, great, do it.
And I said, whoa, wait a second. I said, I mean, we have clients who are public traded companies. I said, if I prevail, if we prevail and we strike this down, I mean, you understand this will make headlines. I do not think our clients would like that. And she's, you know, I won't use the word she used because I don't know if it's appropriate for, the show, but he basically said, bring the suit.
And that was the end of discussion. And I did. Good for her. Absolutely. My wife's incredible. She is the, the North star to, you know, what is right and good.
Yeah. She's, you know, she does not compromise on what's right for anything. And so I did. I got it. I did win in the trial court level. I got the injunction and made national news. And as expected, you know, and so, you know.
As expected, the, you know, our commercial lit practice contracted. Really? Absolutely.
It just doesn't accord, I think, with what big Fortune 500 companies would. I don't think it fits well into their portfolio of lawyers that they would use for what they do.
Yeah. I'm not accusing all of them.
Like it's crazy. There is a very strong ideology around these products. And again, I stress their products. And so we started doing more of that work and there's, there's a lot more to that story, but I don't know if it's, I don't know why it's, you know, it could go on forever.
I will tell you that, oh no. If you asked me 10 years ago, I'd be doing this, that the New York Times run a headline that I want to, you know, basically take away the polio vaccine and give everybody polio again. And, you know, and senators would say, fire that lawyer, Mr. Kennedy. No, I would not expect to be in the spot. Nor did I expect to ever do vaccine work.
But did you have views on this subject? When I was in law school, no. I wouldn't know the first thing about a vaccine. And I will tell you, the very first time I ever looked at this topic, a long time ago, I was sent some material. I was actually still late to Milwaukee at the time. And like I said, a lot of it was medical. And I didn't know anything about immunology or vaccinology.
In fact, I didn't know any of this medical stuff. No idea what I was reading. But then I read about the National Childhood Injury Act of 1986. And I was like, I remember, I just like, was like, what? Because I don't understand medicine. I didn't understand that stuff. But, oh, I understood corporate conduct. And I understood fiduciary duties. I understood conflicts of interest.
I understood what drove corporations. I represented them in really important, critical, I understood those things very well. And I was, I remember thinking, I remember it was like late at night in my office when I read this. I remember being up there in the lipstick building in Manhattan. And I was dumbfounded when I saw that law. I couldn't believe it. I mean, I just didn't understand it.
Because I remember thinking like, this is the product they tell you is perfectly safe and it's given to babies. And you can't sue the manufacturers for injury. I found that to be immediately troubling. So you didn't know that? No, I did not know that until I read it. I didn't know that until I read it. I think a lot of people don't know that.
I can tell you they don't know that because obviously, because of the work I do. I meet people all the time in this area and they don't know that. And sadly, they don't know it until they do know it. And often they know it after they have some kind of personal experience.
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