Rounding out the five-lawyer Reese Marketos team that secured a $150 million false claims verdict against Janssen Products last summer was a young, chipper associate named Whitney Wendel.
Wendel, who joined the Dallas-based firm in 2023, did the work of 10 people, name partner Pete Marketos said.
In her short career, Wendel has fortified herself as a litigator, her colleagues said.
The Kansas City native graduated from the University of Texas School of Law in 2021 and worked as a law clerk to U.S. District Judge Stephen R. Bough in the Western District of Missouri before joining Reese Marketos.
On the day of The Texas Lawbook’s November interview with Wendel, she helped prep name partner Joel Reese for a pre-trial conference in a breach-of-contract case against pipeline giant Energy Transfer. Their team went on to win a $51.9 million bench verdict this month following an 18-day trial.
Wendel suspects her background in theater has helped her legal career. She enjoys preparing for trial, which she compares to memorizing lines and building sets before a stage play.
“Pre-trial stuff is kind of like a dress rehearsal,” Wendel said. “You’re investigating and crafting, writing your script, taking depositions. It’s all this lead-up to this one big event at trial, and it’s live, and you have one chance, and it feels very similar to me.”
The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.
What would you point to as some of the biggest trials that you’ve handled?
Janssen, in terms of the damages that the jury’s awarded, the potential recovery, the complexity of the case, the amount of resources that were spent on it.
Are there one or two high profile public matters that you are currently involved in that we can highlight?
The Pennsylvania case.
What news, developments or trends in law are you particularly keeping an eye on at the moment?
The big one that’s on our firm’s radar is the constitutionality of the False Claims Act qui tam provision. My colleague, Allison Cook, wrote a really great article about it. Basically the Supreme Court in dicta in one of their opinions … invited a court to question the constitutionality of a private citizen to bring a claim on behalf of the government. A lot of False Claims Act cases are declined by the government, so private individuals and their lawyers take it through to litigation. It’s a big practice area, and something our firm is really ramping up, and we’re expanding our FCA practice so the constitutionality of that provision is a big deal for us. And we recently went to the relators bar conference in D.C., and that was a big topic there, so that’s something we’re keeping an eye on.
It is really interesting. Its constitutionality has been upheld since the Civil War; it’s a provision that was put into law in the 1800s. But it’s kind of taken on a new life of its own in this context where — it’s mostly in the medical field — pharmaceutical companies and hospitals are facing these really big judgments, and private citizens are getting really sophisticated, and these big law firms that have resources to take on these big companies are now focusing in this area. So now that the stakes are going up, there’s a lot of fighting over what’s going to happen with that statue.
What is one trial that you weren’t involved in that you wish you had been and why?
So the first one that came to mind is when I was a clerk. I clerked in the Western District of Missouri, and while I was there, my judge was assigned a class action, Burnett v. National Association of Realtors. It went to trial probably six months after I left, and I wish I would have been there for that. It spurred a bunch of copycat lawsuits, even in Texas. Basically, the lawsuit was over whether the National Association of Realtors — and realtors in general — their 6 percent traditional commission scheme was anti-competitive or not. It went to trial and the plaintiffs won, with the court finding that was anti-competitive and there was a conspiracy among realtors to kind of fix these commission rates, which was inflating home prices. So that’s a case that kind of changed the landscape of the real estate industry. And I wish I would have seen that because it’s a very unique perspective clerking to see a trial from a totally neutral standpoint and watch the lawyers separately.
And then here, I was going to go be on the PharMerica trial team. It’s another FCA case, and it settled right before we went to trial. So I wish I could have seen that, but that was due to a settlement.
Do you have any pre-trial rituals?
So one thing that I really like about this firm is everyone’s really close. And at the trials I’ve been to, we choose a team song for the trial. We listen to it in the car or when we’re taking our van. It’s kind of like a pep song. It kind of keeps us in that team mindset. Then personally, I like sneaking in little moments of self care where I can. I always keep those collagen under-eye patches in my mini fridge at my hotel and do those every morning. It wakes me up and makes me feel better.
What was the team song for the Janssen trial?
“Peace Train” by Cat Stevens, and we were calling it “Pete’s Train.”
What is your favorite task to handle at trial, and why?
I’ve been so lucky to have what I feel is a really hands-on role in pretty much the entire trial process. My favorite is probably helping with the witness outlines. For Janssen, for example, I got to be present for the witness interviews, and then they let me take a first stab at the witness outline and picking which exhibits I thought would be useful to use with that witness. And then I got to watch them take the witness in real time. So I think it’s kind of a priceless way to observe the process and get inside these really experienced attorneys’ heads of why are we asking these questions, why are we asking them in the order we’re asking them, what tools do we use to get the information we want from this witness out. So that’s invaluable.
Do you at this point have a least favorite task to handle?
I don’t know about a least favorite. Most stressful is during cross-examination of the other counsel’s witness, sometimes we have to kind of scramble on exhibits and, as generally the youngest person on the trial team, I should know the exhibit list, so they’ll look at me. I have 30 seconds to do it, and that kind of puts me on the spot a little bit. That’s nerve-racking. But, again, I’m adding value, I get to be there, I get to sit at counsel table and be a part of the team and contribute in a real, tangible way.
How do you celebrate after a trial win?
We go to the hotel bar and have a drink and kind of talk through the process. I feel like it’s kind of like Ocean’s Eleven, the last scene when they’re all at the Fountains of Bellagio after this big heist they pulled off. It takes so much time and effort and energy. We’ve done this huge accomplishment. We’re all just kind of exhausted. So we have this moment where we kind of debrief and then go our separate ways, and then I sleep for two weeks.
If you weren’t a lawyer, what career do you think you would have chosen instead?
I think that changes pretty frequently, but the one that I’ve been saying right now is maybe a therapist. I love one-on-one connection, and I think it kind of translates into the practice of law as well. People skills and being able to communicate effectively and read non verbal body language is totally an underrated skill, especially in trial when you’re interviewing witnesses or taking a witness or speaking to the judge or presenting in front of a jury.
And then another aspect of legal work that I don’t think people talk about very often is the theater aspect of it. I grew up singing and dancing in musical theater, and it’s totally a performance. Pre-trial stuff is kind of like a dress rehearsal. You’re investigating and crafting, writing your script, taking depositions. It’s all this lead-up to this one big event at trial, and it’s live, and you have one chance, and it feels very similar to me. There’s a performance aspect to it, and it’s about storytelling and crafting a narrative that the jury or the judge, if it’s a bench trial, is going to find persuasive. When I do discovery or earlier on in the process, I’m thinking, how will this translate at trial? In theater, 95 percent of your time is learning your lines, building the set, costumes, practicing where everybody’s going to stand on stage, and then you have one, two, three or four nights to just do it and leave it all out there, and then it’s over. It’s such a similar experience.
What am I not asking you that you’d like to share with our readers?
I’m just so new in my career; I don’t know what I have to say that would be helpful to anyone, but the qualities that have helped me the most with jumping in feet first and swimming rather than sinking, if you could say that I’ve been doing that, is being open minded and positive and willing to work and being a team player. Just kind of saying, “I’m not sure that I know how to do this but I’m going to try my best and do everything I can to the best of my ability.” And keeping an optimistic mindset. That’s what I’ve found makes me feel the most confident.