Is That Even Legal?

The Patient Died...Can the Practitioner Still Practice? When a License is on the Line...

Attorney Robert Sewell

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The rules appear uneven. The outcomes seem almost random. But what happens when a doctor, a dentist, a nurse, etc., makes a mistake...or is negligent? Can they practice or do they go to jail?  In this episode, you are going to hear some wild stories...

If you are a professional...what do you do? If you are a consumer, how do you protect yourself?

Bob explores the razor-thin line between human error and negligence in the healthcare industry with professional license lawyer and industry expert David Williams. We take you on a journey through the complexities of healthcare licensing, where the fate of professionals hinges on the decisions of regulatory bodies.

The contrast between an Arizona dentist who maintained his practice despite a history of complaints, and a Tennessee nurse facing severe penalties for a single mistake sets the table for our conversation.

We tackle the arduous process healthcare workers endure to obtain and retain their licenses, and the psychological warfare they face under the scrutinizing eyes of licensing boards. Our guests shed light on the self-corrective mechanisms within the industry, revealing the delicate balance between upholding patient safety and supporting the well-being of medical practitioners.

What do you do if you are a practitioner and you have a complaint? Make a mistake?  How can consumers protect themselves, report mistakes?


Listen now.

Attorney Bob Sewell:

It's a phrase from popular movies. It's also a question that comes up in our daily life. The question is is that even legal? We talk about the things that drive you crazy, the things you won't believe and the things you need to know and understand. I'm attorney Bob Sewell, and this is the podcast. Is that Even Legal? Let's get started. Today's guest on the show is David Williams. David Williams is an attorney that practices in the area of administrative licensing and professional defense. David is an expert in the field of administrative licensing. Dave, welcome to the show. Thanks, bob. I want to tell you a story, two stories actually, and they just opposed against each other. They seem odd. I'll be honest with you. The first story is a story of a dentist in Arizona. This dentist has a history of being he's having his hands slapped if you will by the Arizona Board of Dentistry.

Attorney Bob Sewell:

He was working on a patient, for example, and an instrument dropped on the throat of his client. He was working on the patient. He gave the patient five different types of sedatives and medicines and during the process of his procedure, the patient dies. And then, after he begins, after when he's supposed to be being disciplined and he's not supposed to be practicing, he goes and practices anyways and he ends up getting some complaints based on putting these people at risk for his poor professionalism.

Attorney Bob Sewell:

On the other hand, we have a nurse and this nurse is out in I think she was in Tennessee and, through a series of unfortunate events, she is administering the wrong medication.

Attorney Bob Sewell:

This is not a person who is an evil person, is not a person who's going out and trying to do bad things. We're talking about a nurse and we all know these nurses are overstressed, they're pushed to the max. There's not enough of them and in the heat of the moment she grabs the wrong medication, she administers the wrong medication if I got the facts right and the guy dies, she ends up losing her license. All right, fair enough. But then she takes it one step further, or the state takes it one step further and they criminally prosecute her and she's found guilty of criminal negligent homicide. Frankly, I'm flabbergasted because on the one hand, we got some guy who's out there violating the terms of his sanction from the dental board and he kills someone when he's practicing, and on the other hand, we have someone who doesn't have a history of misconduct and now she's being charged with criminal negligent homicide and found guilty of it, even losing her livelihood.

David Williams:

It just seems outrageous. Yeah, these are two extremes of it. These are two opposite ends of extreme situations. So the case with the nurse out of Tennessee. She was working as a nurse and she's working under the authority of a prescribing physician. There was an order put in for a sedative medication because the patient was going to have a closed MRI scan and instead of giving her the sedative, the nurse actually gave her a medication that actually caused paralysis and it caused that patient to stop breathing as she died.

David Williams:

That nurse, setting aside her error like she made an error, but she did the right thing as far as she reported her error to her supervisors there was an internal investigation at the hospital where she worked. Then there was an investigation by her licensing board in the state of Tennessee that issued her a nursing board license and then she lost her license, she lost her job. There was actually a lawsuit that was filed that resulted in an out of court statement to the person who passed away. But then the state of Tennessee, a local district attorney, criminally prosecuted her and that case raises a whole number of questions because you don't want to criminalize a medical error and by doing that, if you criminalize a medical error, what you're doing is you're scaring nurses, or scaring health professionals in general, not to acknowledge when a mistake is made, because we only learn from our mistakes in these situations.

David Williams:

Now you've got the opposite end of the spectrum with this Arizona dentist who had a history of some sort of prior discipline from the Arizona dental board of examiners and still was practicing unsafely, which resulted in the death of a patient, and then, rather than immediately taking this dentist license, they put him on a restricted practice, but then he violated those terms again. So you have almost two extremes where you have lax regulation, not enough regulation from one entity and over-regulation on the other. So how do you reconcile that? And I think before you can reconcile that, bob, I think you have to understand how people get licenses generally for health professionals and then how do those licenses get regulated.

Attorney Bob Sewell:

So let me just start there, ok, well, OK, yeah, before you go there, I want to go there, I do, but I just want to say it is offensive in many respects because I have to be licensed right and any professional who practices knows no professional practices perfect at whatever they do. They know it's not possible. We're not perfect. We will do things that we know later that there's better ways to do them, it's just the way it is. It's called a practice right and I spent three years of my law school, four years of undergrad. Nurses spend four years of undergrad and sometimes we have people with masters in nursing and you have doctors who spend four years of undergrad, four years of residency, four years of med school, then four years of residency or less or more, and you spend all this time, all this money, and we have to be perfect. That's what I feel like and we're getting set in gas. And it's outrageous that nurse who was criminally charged outrageous.

David Williams:

Yeah, it is absolutely outrageous. So that's the tension that's built into a system where you give people the privilege of having a professional license that lets them serve the public. Now keep in mind this every person that seeks medical care is seeking and is putting their trust in the hands of a trained professional. They are putting their life in the hands of someone to treat whatever medical ailment they have, whether it's a root canal, a heart procedure, whatever the thing is, and so you put your life in the hands of someone. You want to ensure that that person knows what they are doing, that they're properly trained, that they're credentialed, that they've gone through a review process to make sure that they are competent to be able to provide the medical services that you are putting your life in their hands. So in most states, every state has a licensing process for a health professional, and so I practice in Arizona, and Arizona has different licensing boards for different health professionals. In fact, in Arizona we have over 30 different regulatory boards that cover anything from licenses for a barber to an acupuncturist, to health professionals, and before you can get a license, you have to be trained. You have to go get a formal education through medical school or chiropractic school or dental school, nursing school, and then you have to take a licensing exam, and then you have to go and pass a background check, and then you get a license that's issued by your state licensing board. And then the purpose, though, of these boards is not to protect the professional. They are there to protect the public from the professional, and so their mission, in every state that licenses a health professional specifically, their goal is to regulate their profession, and the state actually allows the professionals to generally regulate themselves. They basically appoint to these licensing boards doctors and people who work in that area to regulate themselves, and so those boards regulate their profession to ensure that the people that work in their profession are qualified, competent and safe to practice For the health seeking public. Now, that's the way it's supposed to be.

David Williams:

What is scary is you have these two extreme situations where the system broke down, and, with respect to the nurse, the system did what it was supposed to do, like she lost her license, there was compensation to the family, and then the hospital where she worked implemented changes. You had the extreme situation of a prosecutor that decided they were gonna criminalize that process, which I think is completely in error and blows the system up, because the licensing system is built upon recognition of errors. We are not trying to create a perfect situation where people don't have a problem and problems never occur. What you want to do, through a regulatory system that allows you to practice, is to create a system where you can recognize an error and you can correct it, either by and we could talk about this in a few minutes correcting that error by maybe retraining the physician, giving that health provider some education, having them come under a tutor like a professional practice manager, or maybe you pull them out of the practice for a while, you suspend their license and don't let them practice. So the system is designed to be self-correcting. In the Arizona dentist example, the system did not self-correct, and that's the problem. So let me, before we kind of get into that, though, in order to understand why the system kind of had these extreme results, you kind of need to understand how the system works. So let me sort of start there.

David Williams:

So, like I said, every person that generally works in a health profession has to have a professional license issued by a professional licensing board, and the way these, like these physician, these health practitioners, are governed is they are governed when a complaint comes in. So something happens that triggers an investigation by that licensing board, usually from a complaint by like a patient that's been harmed, or from another professional, like another doctor that practices with a health professional that made an error, or a hospital reports them or a lawsuit was filed. And then there's a report from something called the National Practitioner Data Bank. So a complaint gets filed and then a licensing board opens an investigation. They gather facts, they bring the health professional in to provide testimony or evidence and from there they then undergo a process to correct that health professional. And that process can involve a lot of different things.

David Williams:

It could involve just re-educating the doctor or the physician or the health professional, making them do some continuing education.

David Williams:

You could limit their practice for a period of time, you could put them under a practice monitor for a probationary period, you could suspend their license for a period of time or, in really bad examples where there's really no way that they can be rehabilitated, you take away their license. And that is very scary. That licensing complaint process is very scary for a health professional because you just identified. They go to school, they spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in their undergraduate education, their graduate education to get a degree that they stick on the wall, and now suddenly, because of some issue that comes up sometimes rightfully or wrongfully, they run the risk now of losing their income and their ability to provide for themselves and their family, and so that is a very scary thing for a health professional, but at the same time, that's needed because you have the medical seeking public that wants to ensure that the people that they're getting services from are safe to practice. So the system, like I said, is supposed to balance itself out.

Attorney Bob Sewell:

But let me challenge you on that Now, and I'm not saying that we should get rid of these. There's a portion of me that agrees with everything you're just saying. That is so we can have a safe practice. There's another portion of me that says come on, dave, it's practically a rubber stamp to get the license, and then they only discipline you after there's a problem arises. Right, it's only after there's a problem that you get any sort of discipline. It doesn't train them to be a good doctor. There, it is right, I mean. So is it really helpful to the public?

David Williams:

It is, and so it's helpful to the public on a couple of different levels. One is let me take like a medical board Generally. A medical board you have to be, you know. You have to go through all of your professional training. You have to go through medical school and then you have to go do your residency and then you have to get your specialization and you have to pass your certification boards and then you have to pass the licensing exam for that particular, you know, to obtain your medical license. So there's a lot of education and on the job training that goes into that.

David Williams:

Then every medical, every health professional that has a license anywhere across the country, even lawyers, have to do this. They have to have continuing ongoing education every year, every two years, to keep their license, and so if they don't continue their educational process then they can run the risk of having their license taken from them. And then the third way that it's self-correcting is when a complaint comes in and a complaint is investigated and validated. Then there could be some sort of ramification, some sort of what we call discipline against that practitioner's professional license. So there are those things that are built into it.

David Williams:

But, frankly, for the licensed professional going through a complaint investigation is a very, very stressful process because on the extreme they could lose their professional license and their way of earning income. So it's very eye-opening for a lot of my clients, especially some of my clients that you know. You sometimes get a God complex when you're a health professional and you sometimes think that you are error-proof or bulletproof and it's a very, very humbling process to have yourself sort of put under a microscope by your peers through a complaint process and it's very stressful for a lot of them and that in and of itself that process is sometimes all the education a professional needs because they are now very self-aware that their future income opportunities could be put at risk.

Attorney Bob Sewell:

You know you help a lot of healthcare professionals over the years. Do they? Are they repeat customers or are they one and done? Tell me that they're one and done. Yeah, most of them are one, and done.

David Williams:

Most of them are one and done and in fact, like in the health area, let me just stay with like a doctor, for instance.

David Williams:

You sort of see certain fat patterns that develop as you do this long enough. But most of these are one and done. You typically see a complaint arise when there's a what we call an adverse event. You know there's a. Somebody makes a medical error, you know they. Something happens during a surgical procedure. There's a failure to diagnose, there's a medication error, like the Tennessee example. Maybe there's a failure to prescribe medication. There's a they don't get informed consent from the patient. The patient doesn't understand the ramifications of a procedure. Or you know, you get the extreme situation where somebody drops a screw down your mouth during a dental procedure, like the Arizona example.

David Williams:

So you see certain fact patterns that happen from from what I call practice related issues. That's where the majority of complaints come from. But you also see complaints come about because physicians deal with substance. There's they might have something that affects their fitness to practice, like they've had a medical. They've had an injury, like a back injury, and they start taking meds and pain meds and so suddenly they become addicted to a pain medication and so now they start dealing with substance abuse issues you have. Sometimes you'll see situations where there's opiate issues or sometimes you even get inappropriate contact with a patient, you would be surprised. There's actually been a heightened awareness, especially coming out of the Me Too movement, of physicians that are inappropriately touching or inappropriately being involved with a patient, which then obviously compromises their medical judgment. If you're dating your patient, but some people just lose their sense of sense of balance sometimes.

David Williams:

So you see a lot of these kind of similar fact patterns when you deal with health professionals. But on the most part, medical complaints that come in while there are, you know there are high numbers sometimes most of them do not result in a taking of the physician's license, because the majority of the types of complaints that come in are things that can be dealt with through rehabbing or educating the health professional so that they know not to do that, or putting in place certain guardrails like a mentor or a practice monitor or making them go through some sort of retraining process. Nine times out of 10 solves those problems, so you don't get the reoffender.

Attorney Bob Sewell:

So let me ask you I'm a healthcare professional, bob, so I became a doctor and, of course, because it's me, I am a fantastic doctor. Okay, and, anyways, I become a doctor. I never want to have to talk to you, I never want to have to hire you. Okay, what am I going to do? What am I going to? What type of? How am I going to go about my practice? That's going to make so I don't need you, bro.

David Williams:

Well, I think the first thing is education, making sure that you've put in best practices and being on top of cutting edge things. So, if you're in a field because most people that work in a particular health field are generally specialists, at least in the medical area, in nursing that's more of a generalized, obviously medical field chiropractic, naturopathic medicine, some of these integrative kind of like non-medical, what I would say, non-traditional medical practices, what I would say is two things education, making sure you're staying on top of the new trends, things like that, being involved in the medical community, what you serve, and then following up and trying to make sure you've implemented best practices. Are you taking care of yourself?

David Williams:

First of all, are you doing the things to take care of yourself on a personal level? Are you? Do you have guardrails in place when you're in your practice, whether it's a hospital, a doctor's office, a private office? Are you taking care of your staff? Do you have good systems in place? On the business side, are you doing your medical billing correctly? Are you? Do you have a good office manager, things like that? So it's more like what am I doing on the personal level to take care of myself? What am I doing in the professional world in my own professional development. And then what do I have systems in place around me? If I run like my own practice, or I have a team around me that makes sure that my practice is firing on all, on all pistons.

Attorney Bob Sewell:

Oh right, I mean that makes some perfect sense to me, because if I'm distracted with all the business aspects of my practice you know I have a bunch of HR concerns and you know a doctor is typically a great, great at medicine but they're not necessarily trained in how to be a business manager, how to run a business. So if I'm dealing with all these business issues that are not in my wheelhouse, I'm not going to be able to focus. And on the healthcare I'm providing, you know, and so that makes perfect sense to me to eliminate the distractions, focus on what I do best.

David Williams:

Yeah, and I think also you have to look at there's two different, probably two different people that are two different people that are listening to us today, that are gonna be listening to us. There are the non-professionals and then there are the professionals. So let me talk to the, let me speak to like the general person right now. If you're going to a doctor and you have concerns about that doctor and you feel like there's been a problem, sometimes you can go talk to a lawyer, but the medical licensing process for that professional is there to protect you. So if you're concerned and you think that doctor did something wrong, first talk to your medical provider and raise concerns, ask questions and be an active consumer of your medical care, be involved in making informed decisions and then, if you feel like something happened, talk to the physician, make sure you get your questions answered. If you think that there was something wrong and then if you don't feel like you're getting your questions answered, then go seek redress, either by hiring a lawyer and honestly, most medical problems never turn into a lawsuit and make you millions of dollars. That's not the point. But if you want to seek redress, you can also file a complaint with that doctor or health professionals licensing board. So there are ways that you, as the medical seeking public, can take care of yourself.

David Williams:

Now, if you're the health professional and you get one of these complaints, the first thing I would always advise you to do is talk to a. There's two people you should call. Talk to a lawyer, find a lawyer that practices in this area and seek their advice. The second thing you need to do is call your insurance broker, cause most likely, you have some sort of medical liability or professional liability insurance that you need to make your insurance carrier aware of, and they may actually have a lawyer available to you to talk to for free, or they may hire a lawyer to help you through that process and then talk to that lawyer about the process and make sure you understand what you're getting involved with, and let your lawyer be your advocate through that complaint licensing process.

Attorney Bob Sewell:

Yeah, I'm gonna challenge you a little bit about that. I think you're 100% right. But there's been a lot of studies on who gets sued by their patients. Okay, who gets the complaints? It's the unlikeable doctor who gets the complaints generally. It's the guy who is arrogant, who is boring, who is mean, who's not compassionate. They get the complaints. It tends to end to be. The people who complain tend to end up having a personal difficulty with the professional rather than necessarily practice the difficulty generally speaking. But if the doctor is humorous, they find, or is encouraging patients to talk to them and ask questions, and they're helpful and they're prompt and they apologize if something went wrong. Hey, I'm sorry about that, that's not how this was supposed to go. They tend to have less complaints, less likely to be sued. Do you think this is wise counsel?

David Williams:

Yeah, I think so. And here's what I think you're going to find is the reason you have a complaint filed against a health professional through their licensing board. Nine times out of 10 is because there was a failure to communicate. The doctor or the health professional did not see this from the perspective of the patient and they did not proactively address the concerns of the patient during that process. And that can happen for a lot of reasons, like doctors get busy, they have too big of a high patient load, like there's a bunch of reasons why sometimes communication breaks down. But nine times out of 10, most complaints come about because there's a breakdown in the doctor-patient relationship on the communication level.

David Williams:

And so if you are a physician listening to this, making sure that you are adequately talking to your patient, don't talk medical to them, talk regular, talk to them, you know. Talk to them, not at them, and listen to their concerns. And if you could do that most of the time, you will calm that patient down, because that patient's just scared. They're just scared that something's happening and they don't understand what's going on in their own body and they're looking to you, mr Doctor, mrs Doctor, as the person that's going to help them through this process and so not only are you a medical professional, but sometimes you have to be part therapist also and you have to be able to listen and empathize and be empathetic to that patient. And if you are, a lot of times you can work through these situations. And that happens with every licensed professional. That's not just a doctor, I mean. That even happens with lawyers, like clients that get mad at us and our legal profession nine times out of 10, they get mad because we haven't communicated to them adequately, help them understand where they're coming from, and so it all breaks down really to a relationship Are you there to take care of the people that are being entrusted to your care? And if you are, then nine times out of 10, you're going to float through this very smoothly.

David Williams:

And then, for the one-off situations where something extreme happens, recognize where there's a problem, seek help from a legal professional if you're a doctor and the health professional and get ahead of that process instead of being the surgeon that does their own surgery on themselves. That's where I see a lot of people screw up is that they try to do this themselves. They don't recognize, they're not humbled through the process, they get defensive, and that's where the doctor or the health professional makes mistakes through the investigative complaint process. Because they don't recognize their error, they don't seek legal help and they try to do it themselves and they try to minimize what actually happened, versus taking it very seriously, recognizing their licenses on the line even if it's a minor complaint that their license could potentially be on the line and being proactive and working through an attorney to get ahead of that process. And if they do that nine times out of 10, it's going to work out in their favor. I mean, work out in their favor is a better result versus them doing it themselves.

Attorney Bob Sewell:

David, you know I'm going to close the loop on a couple different things here. The first thing is when a medical professional gets that letter or that phone call from the board and they say we're concerned about your conduct with regard to whatever patient.

David Williams:

When do they call so?

Attorney Bob Sewell:

um, they call a view.

David Williams:

I should say yeah, I would say the sooner they can. There's two people they should call at the beginning of this process the minute you get contacted by your licensing board and typically it's going to become a letter that says, hey, a complaint's been filed against you and we want you to provide a written response. That's what starts the investigative process, the investigative complaint process. The minute you get contacted, there are two calls you should make. You should call a lawyer first, somebody that knows what they're doing and that's not your, not your. You know your next door neighbor who you got a referral from, but find somebody who's qualified in this area. The second person you should call is your insurance broker. Okay, and then, if you work in a hospital setting, the third person you should probably call is you need to report it up your chain of command. If you work in a medical office, medical practice, um, but those are really the three calls you need to make. You need to call your lawyer, you need to call your insurance broker and you probably need to report it up your training command, depending on the environment, the medical setting and what you work. Um. Once you get involved with a lawyer early, then we are more able to help you navigate that process sooner and the investigative process looks different based upon what particular licensing board and in what particular state. But generally here's what it looks like A written complaint comes in um. That medical board will sign as an investigator who will go and gather facts, gather the medical records, talk to the patient, talk to the family members. If there's other witnesses, they may talk to them. And then they will reach out to the medical professional, the licensee, and then seek their input and typically they'll ask you to provide your records, your charts, um provide a written response and then that medical investigator, that investigator, will gather all of that information. They may want to interview the medical professional, um, and so obviously you would want to have a lawyer with you during that and then eventually that that once the investigation phase is completed, then it will be considered by the entire medical board or the medical licensing agency, um, on how to resolve that complaint.

David Williams:

And at least in Arizona, um, a medical compli a a a a professional's license, can only be disciplined if they engage in a very specific term called unprofessional conduct and they have to buy. An unprofessional conduct has a bunch of different scenarios by which something can rise to unprofessional conduct. But what the medical board or the licensing agency is looking at is is what happened here? Does that rise to the level of unprofessional conduct? It doesn't fit within one of these enumerated categories of unprofessional conduct. And if it does, how are we going to resolve that?

David Williams:

And so once the medical board or the licensing agency considers that, then they can dismiss it. They can require the, the professional, to have some education. They can, they can take some what we call non-disciplinary steps which don't doesn't affect the license of the professional or um. They can take some action against the license, put them on probation, make them do some ordered um continuing education under under, you know, under a uh, somebody who's going to watch over their practice um, have a practice monitor, suspend their license and there's a whole bunch of things. Now you also would have due process rights around all that. Maybe you have an administrative hearing, but ultimately the medical agency has to figure out how to resolve that complaint. And getting a lawyer involved early to help you navigate that process is how you do it. And that's really what I do in my practice is helping medical professionals or health professionals work through that process and hopefully educating them about it and helping them hopefully get a positive outcome on the back end.

Attorney Bob Sewell:

That makes sense to me. The reason why is if you're a medical professional, you're trained in medicine. You're not trained in advocacy and lawyers. Jobs are to package the story and why the story is supposed to work out favorably of favor of client or make the story in. You know, show the story in the best light. That's in the best light in favor of our client. So that makes perfect sense to me. We want you're going to help people package, package themselves more palatably for the board. One question I'm a consumer and I don't want to pick the doctor that has 1000 complaints against them. Is there a way for me to know that doctor or medical professional has complaints against?

David Williams:

them? Yes, and it depends. It depends a lot on the state in which you're looking for them. But if you go to that local state agency, licensing agency or state regulatory board, go to their website. You can typically type up and do a search for the doctor you're looking for and if that doctor has been disciplined, had action actually taken against their license. That's typically available online for a period of time. Some states limit it to like five years, some states go back 20 years. It just depends upon which the state. It will not tell you if a complaint's been filed. It will only typically show you information on whether that physician's been disciplined.

David Williams:

The other place you can look at it and it's kind of a you know what the default for a lot of people do is. There's websites like health grades or Yelp or Google reviews that give at least information, that give you a little bit more information about that professional and then also realize sometimes you're limited by your insurance plan and sort of where you can go and sometimes your insurance plan will also provide a grade or a review or a assessment of the doctors in that health plan. So there's a couple of different resources you can go to. You can go to the state license, the state licensing board. You can kind of look online and do your own research or you can even look at kind of how that person is graded by your insurance carrier. So that's usually a good way to get your questions answered. Or, you know, maybe sometimes even seek a second opinion from a physician If you don't feel comfortable at the end of meeting with that physician.

David Williams:

For, like, this is for non-emergency issues, but you don't feel comfortable, you always can go talk to another doctor. You are not locked into that particular doctor. And so what I would tell the medical public is be active in your medical care, be educated about your medical care, don't just be a passive consumer. Be an active consumer of your medical care. And if you do that nine times out of 10, you're going to be fine.

David Williams:

Yeah this is good advice, Dave.

Attorney Bob Sewell:

Dave, thanks for coming on the show.

David Williams:

Thank you very much. I really appreciate you having me, and this is a fun topic to talk about.

Attorney Bob Sewell:

If I am a medical professional, I need to get your services. How do I contact you?

David Williams:

You can contact me on my website at wwwDavisMilescom, or you can contact me through my email address at dwilliamsdwilalimascom. Talk to you in a day.

Attorney Bob Sewell:

Thanks. Thank you very much. Have a great day. Thanks for listening to. Is that Even Legal? Remember this isn't legal advice. If you have a legal question for yourself, reach out to an attorney. Remember that we're fun, we're lovable and we are here to help you, To my listeners in 62 countries across the world. If you have something you want to explore, email us at produceratevenlegalcom and don't be shy about leaving a review for this podcast on your favorite podcast forum. See you next time.