Your Legal Pathway To Mold Exposure & Health Safety

Ann Shippy, MD

Welcome to the Mold, Mycotoxins, and Chronic Illness Summit. I am your host, Dr. Ann Shippy. Next, we get to speak with Kristina Baehr. Previously, she was a high-stakes corporate litigator and an assistant U.S. attorney for the United States. Currently, she has a national trial lawyer for sick families, helping them recover from governments or companies that made them sick. Thank you so much for joining us. I know this has been a really busy week for you.

Kristina Baehr

It has been a huge week, but it is perfect timing. I am so glad to be here.

Ann Shippy, MD

Thank you so much. I would love it just for the audience to really get to connect with you if you could start out a little bit with your own story and what brought you to this point.

Kristina Baehr

Well, I was born in New York City. No, I am kidding. I was working in big litigation, doing IP litigation, which was very detail-oriented and involved billion-dollar cases. I started feeling dizzy and having blurred vision. I started having some strange thoughts I had never had before. Maybe I should drive into oncoming traffic. I think I should. Wow. I had never had anything like that before. I was feeling really angry. I would wake up and feel like I had been hit by a truck. I had these rashes that would not go away. I started getting headaches and then migraines. I had never had migraines before. I started going to the doctor. Great doctors. Really great doctors who told me, You have four children. You work in big law. Maybe you should think of a new job. I believe them. 

I left my big law job and went to the U.S. attorney’s office, and I was Kristina 2.0. I was gluten-free, sugar-free, and dairy-free. Dr. Shippy, you would have been really proud. There was no alcohol. I was exercising. I was asleep for 8 hours. I was determined to get well. I only got worse. Then they sent us to work at home. That was when I really took a deep dive. My family did, too. I could not figure out what was going on. I knew something was wrong with me, but I got everybody into therapy. My daughter was in therapy. She had become violent. My son was regressing in his developmental milestones. He started running into walls. I think I thought that I was just supermom, getting everybody the extra help they needed without realizing that there was a root cause. Dr. Ricardo in Austin gave me a mycotoxins test, and my scores were through the roof. I had already been tested for Lyme, parasites, and a whole host of other things. But she had the guess and is just thinking it might be mold.

Ann Shippy, MD

It is expensive to test that degree of symptom with you and your children. That was really good detective work.

Kristina Baehr

It really was. I was determined to get well, and I think she saved my life. We hired a wonderful mold inspector, Tim Taylor, and he came to my house, sat down in the living room, and he said, Tell me about your family. He is an inspector. Why does he want to know my family? But I told him about Maddie. He took a flashlight to her wall, and he said, I often find it behind the wall of the kid, most of it. He found faint water damage.

Ann Shippy, MD

Really? You could not see without the flashlight.

Kristina Baehr

He took an air sample right by the wall. We found Stachybotrys, and we opened the wall, and it was full of Stachybotrys. That was the beginning of the rest. I started building our case and detective work, figuring out when I was doing personal injury for the U.S. Attorney’s office at that time. I knew what a good case looked like. I thought if there was ever a case, this was it. As a family of six, we are super sick; we lost our house and everything in it in the middle of the pandemic. I started calling around, and no one would even return my call. There was no personal injury. Lawyers wanted to talk about it. I found one lawyer near here who does wrongful death cases. I just said, Hey, can I have 15 minutes of your time just to pick your brain? He was the only one I found who had mold on his website. He did not return my call; he did not even have a paralegal call me or an assistant call me. I thought.

Ann Shippy, MD

That is bizarre as an attorney to an attorney.

Kristina Baehr

I know.

Ann Shippy, MD

He did not even talk to you. If you cannot get the attention of another attorney, how is the average person supposed to?

Kristina Baehr

Do you have to die to get representation in this field? What does that even mean? I left the U.S. Attorney’s office, and I thought I was going to help other families. I built a personal injury firm that I could not find for my own family. I called it Just Well because my husband came up with it, actually. I just wanted to get well. That was all I wanted. That is all I said over and over again. I just want to be well. That is what my clients want to do, and that is what I want for them.

Ann Shippy, MD

When you get that sick, that really is all that matters as well. That is a great message.

Kristina Baehr

I am inspired by you because that is what you do. You do that detective work all the time, and you can get well.

Ann Shippy, MD

I am so lucky to get to do that. You are so lucky to get to do it yourself, right on the legal side. But, unfortunately, we have had to learn through our own bodies that you can get well. Even when you are devastatingly ill. Tell me more about your journey. I know you have some news to share.

Kristina Baehr

We won our own family’s case this week in a jury trial. The jury came back on Wednesday and awarded $3.1 million. We went to trial against the HVAC company. We sued the builder, the roofer, the engineer, and a few others because this house really was a comedy of errors. As we got into it, we found more and more problems with it. But for that company, they offered 30 grand to settle the case. That is really how trials happen: when one side is completely on a different planet and the parties are so far apart on price. But that lawyer offered $30,000 and got a $3 million verdict against him.

Ann Shippy, MD

That is groundbreaking. That just happened. There is not much precedent for that.

Kristina Baehr

I am not aware of a jury trial in Texas about mold—a real loss to the home family case since the Ballard case 20 years ago. In a lot of ways, this is like the Ballard case, because the jury was very upset at the idea of toxic mold. You lose your home. We lost her. Not everyone dispersed, but we lost our home and everything in it in the middle of a pandemic. I hope that this will be the beginning of many more cases. They are hard cases to win. I do not want any of your viewers to be watching this. I am just going to get $1,000,000 tomorrow. That does not happen. They are hard-fought, but they are worth fighting for because our mission is to educate and make sure that this does not happen again.

Ann Shippy, MD

Well, and for the people doing the work, doing the construction, and doing HVAC systems to realize how important their work is for the inhabitants of the buildings just to be healthy, they are really what really matters.

Kristina Baehr

It really matters. I think you may know the history, but what happened legally in Texas is the Ballard case. I got that tens of millions of dollars judgment against an insurance company that was in the 2000s. After that, personal injury lawyers stopped bringing cases because the personal injury portion of that case was thrown out. Personal injury lawyers were, I am not, and we are not going to bring these cases anymore. Then there are insurance lawyers. Well, the insurance defense just generally went in and changed insurance policies to exclude toxic mold. As a result, you can switch back, and they can come back and say our insurance policy did not apply. The person you are suing is judgment-proof, so you do not have a case. As a result, that really killed more litigation in Texas in the 2000s, and nobody until me has had the guts to really take it on. I should correct that, because that is not true.

There is another wonderful lawyer who has been doing these cases for decades; her name is Karen Ferris, and she has done a tremendous job, but she has only one person, and people could not find her. I could not find her when I was looking for a lawyer in the beginning. There is just a need for this in Texas and around the country because if we do not hold them responsible, they do not care. The jury system is what enforces safety rules in our country. If we do not enforce the safety rules, builders stop caring about mold, and they build houses. HVAC companies do not have any problem with resizing systems because people just want to be cool, even though they know full well that they are going to create mold in the walls. I think that there is a real opportunity for change here, but we have to get that out there and educate. You are doing that, and that, Dr. Shippy, in your sphere. This is my little contribution from my little legal sphere over here.

Ann Shippy, MD

This is huge because, really, it just feels a bit futile, too, for people to engage in any legal situation. I myself had a situation that I ended up just walking away from and paying a bunch of money to a landlord because I did not know if it was just going to end up being I was going to end up spending more money on the lawsuit than, and then just paid the rest of my lease, and so we really do need these changes to be happening so that there are some precedents.

Kristina Baehr

We do not charge. We only work on contingency for that reason because I have been in your shoes. I actually had to pay my lawyer, so I paid my lawyer almost $1,000,000 at this point and hundreds of thousands of dollars. Now, thankfully, the jury verdict actually included attorney’s fees. I am going to get a lot of that back. But it was an enormous expense, and I did it for the good of the order—not for our family, but for everyone. But in my own case, because I remember how that felt and I did not have the cash, I had to beg, borrow, and steal to make that happen. I do not take hourly work. I do not charge anyone for our services. I only work on contingencies so that our interests are totally aligned. I win. You win.  

One of the things that I am really passionate about is that I want everyone to call back. Not everyone is going to have a viable case. These cases are hard to prove in Texas and around the country, but I want people to at least have a call with someone who cares and who says, Here is why you have a viable case, and here’s why you do not. I learned, by the way, early on that it could not be me because CNBC did a story on my family and I got a thousand calls in two weeks. I tried to do this, and this week there has been some news coverage, which is really great. My intake director has said, Step away from your computer, Kristina. You do not have time to take every call. But I am so passionate that that may not be me, but you will talk to somebody.

Ann Shippy, MD

I know you could find a great team.

Kristina Baehr

I will find lawyers around the country who will take these cases so that you can call just well, and we will send you the list of resources we wish we had had, including how to get a mycotoxins test, how to find a good mold inspector, how to find a mold doctor who is qualified, just the stuff that you wish you had known or I wish I had known. Then we will do a call with them and talk to them about the possibility of a case. If they are in a state where we have partner counsel, we will send their case to that counsel for them to do another call with a lawyer in their state. We cannot take every case, but at the very least, we can help every single person who needs help.

Ann Shippy, MD

I love that mission, and I know it really comes from your heart based on what you and your family went through in that year. It sounds like you really felt your life falling apart. But look at you now.

Kristina Baehr

Never in a million years would I think that I would be doing this. My lawyer asked me at the trial, when I was talking to the jury on a direct exam, Did you ever think that you would be a plaintiff in a case? I said, Absolutely not. Lawyers do not. That is not what we want. Not only that, but I sat through a trial where they presented some brain images that showed that my brain was damaged. What I told the jury was that I lost part of my brain, but I gained this tremendous superpower, which is empathy for my clients. I think going through trials was the last step for now. I have been through the whole process, and I have tremendous empathy for the people who have been through toxic exposure. I understand. I think that is why that is going to lead to a lot of good in the world, because I have this new understanding that, even if it is a sad superpower, it is very real.

Ann Shippy, MD

It is important, though, because it really fuels you on the hard days. Let’s talk a little bit more. Do you mind talking a little bit more about your case?

Kristina Baehr

Sure.

Ann Shippy, MD

Why do you think it was actually successful so that the people listening could get their heads around what is possible?

Kristina Baehr

Yes. Let me tell you the things that I look for when I am taking a case, and I can talk about them. I look for: did you hire an independent certified mold inspector? A lot of people are in these houses and these big apartment buildings, and they want the builder, the owner, or the landlord to hire a certified inspector. That is natural. Of course, you do. That is their job. Their job is maintenance. They should hire someone. I guarantee you that the person they hire will not be objective. They will come in, they will take a mold sample in the middle of the room, and they will tell you that your house is fine or your apartment is fine.

Ann Shippy, MD

Literally, there are inspectors who do not believe that molds a thing. They are more supportive of the real estate industry, and they are just known for that.

Kristina Baehr

Yes, it is not hard. I have a really fun time deposing those people because they ask, Well, where are you most likely to find mold if you are looking for it? If the mold resides in the walls, are you more likely to find it in the middle of the room or close to a wall? They never want to answer that question because they are coming in and just taking these air samples in the middle of the room, the least likely place to find the mold, and of course, we know that the Stachybotrys and Chaetomium are heavy. They are not going to show up in those air samples anyway. Did you hire a certified objective mold assessor? There are some that I really love working with. If you reach out to our office, we will send you a list of the ones that I really trust. But in any state, you can find them through the particular associations that you want to work with. We can get you that. Is it time-barred? If you have been in that apartment and have been dealing with it for four years, you are probably not going to have a case because the statute of limitations in most states is two years. We ask, When did you find the mold?

Ann Shippy, MD

I did not know, that is important. That really does give a sense of urgency.

Kristina Baehr

Is there a wrongdoer? Okay. The fact that there was mold is sad, and I am sorry. I do not really have a great jury trial case if it just happened. But did someone know about it? Did they tell you it was dust, which happens all the time? Did they refuse to hire an inspector? Did they hire a mediator who wasn’t licensed? Did they get a carpet cleaner to clean your air ducts, which happens all the time? Why is it that a carpet cleaner was their first call to a painter? All of those things are bad signs and deceptive. We can bring a deceptive Trade Practices Act claim for that wrongdoing. We always look for wrongdoing. Then are you willing to move out, or have you left? Because, Dr. Shippy, I know that lots of your patients and lots of my would-be clients are not able to move out. I understand that. That is okay. I cannot tell you to leave your home, but I just cannot take your case because I cannot say your house is uninhabitable if you are still living there. Likewise, whether that is your house or a rental, I cannot say it is uninhabitable if you are still there. I learned that, really.

Ann Shippy, MD

That is a big thing for me, too, because it is really hard to get people well if they are not willing to leave or at least do the right level of remediation.

Kristina Baehr

You can move in, remediate, or move back. That is okay with me as long as the remediation is fine. But when you have brain fog, it is really hard to understand. You need to leave your house. Yes. when you are dealing with somebody else’s brain fog. One of you might be able to see through the brain fog and say, Maybe we should get out of this place. In my own story, by the way, I did not want to leave, and my husband sure did not want to, but I remember having drinks with a friend, and I was crying. It was a house, and she said, You do not feel good in this house. Maybe you should leave it and go somewhere else for a while. I have four children, one of whom was running into walls and screaming all day. The other kid has become violent against her big brother. This is not a scenario that I can just take into a friend’s house; I have nowhere to go. Then she tossed me her keys to her house nearby. It was 30 minutes away, and we were able to go there for free. I have empathy because not everybody has that scenario.

Ann Shippy, MD

What is amazing to me, though, is the number of people that, once they are, I really need to get out of here. Something opens up like that. There is somebody’s guest house or a place where you can go.

Kristina Baehr

Or a tent.

Ann Shippy, MD

To help you.

Kristina Baehr

Tori Spelling is right now staying in a camper. She is a movie star, and she is a camper. I am a have, and she has posted pictures online of her in her camper. She has evacuated for mold. You figure it out? Because if you do not, I want to be really clear about this: mold can kill you. I had a 31-year-old client who moved back into the house that I told her to leave, and she died on her couch in the house I told her to leave. I just cannot.

Ann Shippy, MD

Not on my watch.

Kristina Baehr

Not on my watch; I cannot. I will not even talk to people unless they have or are willing to move out. That is it. I had another client who called in to say her kid was going to die, was going to die of anaphylactic shock, and was still wondering, Should I stay? The brain fog is real. I just do not take the call until they are ready to move out. Sometimes it takes some time for them to decide to move out. But those are really the things that I look at, and then the defendant solves it because I do not want to take a case against some landlord who rents the house next door. That is just not going to be good for me. It is not going to be good for my client, and it is not going to lead to a valid or viable recovery. Not everyone’s going to have a case. Not everyone’s going to have a case. But lots of people do. They should have representation because it is through that representation that we can accomplish change. I even have people put it into the settlement agreements that they are going to change their policies. That is, I have done that several times to explain.

Ann Shippy, MD

What do you mean? Explain that. That sounds interesting.

Kristina Baehr

Well, I use depositions, and I use the case itself to educate them. Let me give you one example. I am talking about this privately owned place in Dallas, a big apartment complex. They have sewage leaks periodically, as they have pipes, and there are sewage leaks in all these places sometimes. It happens when it happens. They put a fan on it. That is the word; we just put a fan on it. I am deposing this woman. Okay, well, sewage water is toxic, she says. Well, I do not know what toxic means. I do not know the toxin, and I do not know what contaminants are in it. Fair, sure, yes. If you put a fan on wet materials with contaminants in them, it is going to spread those materials and those contaminants into the air. Well, yes, I never thought of it that way. Now that we have thought about it that way, will you ever again put a fan on the sewage leak? No, maybe not. Well, let me ask you this: Now that we have had this conversation, would you spend even one night in any of those apartments where you have put a fan on sewage water? We talked about how it circulates in the air, and she said, No, I would not. case closed. In settlement negotiations in a few different cases, I have had them say in the agreement that they will reconsider their policies in light of the IICRC, and I cannot force them to change. But when I was against a military housing company, it privatized the military housing company, and I went to mediation, and that was a big deal to my client. She was bringing this case up to make sure it never happened again. They put that into their agreement. They would reconsider their policy in light of the IICRC.

Ann Shippy, MD

Well, and I think this is how we get change. It is really the hard way to learn, but it is really how to get change made because then you are changing the bar for everyone.

Kristina Baehr

Yes, absolutely. We are making it a safer place. If I embarrass them for putting fans in sewage water, they are not going to do that again. Or hopefully, they are not. If they are saying they have gotten hit with a big price tag for that conduct, they are not going to do it again. In my case, I can go back to my own case. I learned that the flasher when we looked at Matty’s wall, the roofer had not slashed the chimney. At the chimney, you need to have a mason and a roofer flashing it, working together. They were not there at the same time. The roofer then told the builder, Hey, it is not flush properly because I was not here when the mason finished the builder and not the builder himself, but his foreman said, Do not worry about it, just make it look rigged on the outside. Just do the best you can. It passed inspection because it was rigged on the outside to make it look like it was flashed. It was not actually flashed. We deposed the roofer, and the roofer acknowledged, Yes, I knew it was not flashed properly, and I knew it would cause water intrusion. Again, think about that cross-examination. You know that water damage causes mold. You know that mold can hurt people. You allowed this to be flashed improperly, knowing that it could result in water damage. Did you not just poison this family and every other family that lives in that house? I try to just bring it down to the basics. Look, it is good that I lost some brain matter, because now I can, just that I am dumber. These are just

Ann Shippy, MD

Pretty smart to me.

Kristina Baehr

These are just simple concepts. It is not hard. We had the builder and the roofer poisoning my family. There is that, and not intentionally. It is not what they said; we are going to poison a family today. But that is what happens when you cut these corners, and they need to learn that you do not. You do not mess around with the brakes of a car, for example. This is that important.

Ann Shippy, MD

That important. 

Kristina Baehr

It is that important. This is the air you breathe. To acknowledge this, do you agree that the landlord should provide a safe home with safe air? Yes. Do you agree that a builder should provide a home with safe air? Yes. Do you agree that each faction installs a system that provides safe air? Yes. Do you agree that air is a good intended for human consumption? Yes. That, by the way, is an exception to these mold exclusions and insurance policies, so we can get the defendants to agree that, Yes, conditioned air is a greater product intended for human consumption, and therefore it is covered by the defendant’s insurance policy. I guess that is what I had, but I had a construction expert come over, his name is Stewart Norley, and he is a friend of a friend. He took one look at Matty’s wall, and he said, This is not just a leak. You have an HVAC problem. He explained to me that new houses, we are building them with spray foam, and ours had open-cell spray foam that was full of mold.

Ann Shippy, MD

Say that again.

Kristina Baehr

You are building houses with spray foam. Ours had open-cell spray foam. Now, the problem with that is that these houses are very, very tight, and they do not breathe. One, if there is water damage, you do not know it is there. But also, if the system itself does not have super dehumidification or if you do not have a whole home dehumidifier as part of the system, then it is creating moisture in the walls that cannot dry out because it is so tight. What we have in this country right now is an epidemic of toxic houses because we are building them tight to be energy efficient. That is great. But we are not properly installing the right HVAC systems, and as a result, we are creating toxic houses where, when you are inside, the house is not breathing. All you are getting is toxic air. Now, let us think about coding. We sent people to go into quarantine at home, but they were not outside. They were not going to buildings where there are big systems where they are pumping air through them all the time. There are not those kinds of regulations that monitor indoor air quality at home. No wonder we saw all of the mental health issues during COVID. We saw more abuse at home. We saw so much. I am not saying it is all because of toxic air, but do you think some of it might be?

Ann Shippy, MD

Absolutely. I would draw a couple of conclusions based on what you are saying. It is back to the flashing not being done properly. I think anybody building a home needs to get an additional inspector to inspect it every step of the way so that even if the contractors that the builders are working with are doing their best to try to not cut corners and do things right if they are making mistakes, that it gets caught because every time I tell the patient to do that, they think they are building their perfect mold-free home. There are major things that happen that the inspectors fix, and that flashing being done improperly was part of my home mold story. The reason I ended up learning about mold so deeply is that I had a chimney flashing that was not done properly. There were leaks that were happening that were enough to cause mold, but not so that I could see it through the paint.

Kristina Baehr

Yes. Was it at your house?

Ann Shippy, MD

It was a house I was renting.

Kristina Baehr

Yes. That is the exact same situation as a chimney. then it is gathering the wall and what we needed when I had a great lawyer. I had two fabulous lawyers, Kevin Terrazas and Bob McKee. They are great lawyers, and they did a great job of explaining to the jury why it was invisible. Because how could there be? I made a diagram of the floor plan, and I had all the mold results all over. It was bright red. The whole of it—millions of spores of Aspergillus. Millions of spores Stachybotrys. Just hovering our belongings in our living space. We found eight feet of Chaetomium in the kitchen, right next to

Ann Shippy, MD

That is enough to wipe out a whole city.

Kristina Baehr

Yes. It would, but it is hard to get a jury to understand. It was invisible to us. We lived there for eight years before we found it. We need to know. It is what you are saying. It was just bad enough. We also had to explain to the jury why we did not pick up on that humidity problem. Our HVAC is basically our HVAC expert, who is wonderful; his name is Les Wallace. I feel like I want to tell you all the people’s names because we built your team. Find your helpers. When bad things happen, we look for helpers. We had so many helpers for our family. Now I have the privilege of turning around and being that helper for others. But Les Wallace looked at our backs, and he has one of our helpers. He said this was never set to dehumidify. There was a piece missing in the unit. You are supposed to pull it out in order for the precipitation to dehumidify. I was actually thinking about the stakes. I did this today. I got a toy for one of my kids, and I had to pull the thing out to have the battery work. There was a jumper that you had to just pull out. The piece was still there ten years later. It had never been dehumidified.

Ann Shippy, MD

You had a dehumidifier that you paid for in your house that actually did not dehumidify and protect you. That mold was less likely to grow, and it never got started.

Kristina Baehr

Then, Mr. Woods, by the way, I love that I did a jury trial because I can tell you all the details. Had it been a confidential settlement, I could not. But I can tell you everything. Mr. Woods takes the stand, and he agrees that the system was supposed to dehumidify what they had and that the builders had chosen. I do not use the builder’s name because he is a good guy and he did not want to poison my family. Okay, but Mr. Woods testified that the system was built supposedly to have a dehumidification feature precisely because it was a spray foam house and it was so tight. You have to dehumidify it. On Wood’s website, you can now find so much information about mold and indoor air quality, which is such a big deal now that it is perfect for these cases because we took his own website and explained to the jury with his website why you should not have a system that is oversize because if it is oversize, it is short cycling and building excess humidity, which leads to mold. He’s using those exact words: mold; short circuits lead to mold.

Similarly, you have to have an x-ray dehumidification system if it is a spray foam house, and that is also said on his website. He agreed with all of that. Then we showed that it was never done. It was incredibly satisfying to go to court to prove the case, show the jury, and have the jury believe. I know that does not always happen. I know that you never know what you are going to get. You can go either way. I understand that. But man, to have that result was such a validation. Because, Dr. Shippy, I am sure you hear all the time about the gaslighting, their whole defense, in this case, was basically that Kristina Baehr read too much on the Internet and made it nasally. Yes, they said they hired a Princeton Ph.D. Evan and I met at Princeton. We love the school. I have to believe it was intentional that they hired a Ph.D. from Princeton as the expert to look at our daughter and say that our parenting of her was unconscionable because we did not get her into a psych ward.

She gets to her deposition, and she says in her deposition that we are great parents. but it was, that was their defense. It was so validating to have the jury look at me and believe me and award mental anguish damages for me and see what this was for me as a mom to be sick and taking care of sick kids and trying to work at the same time, Of course, their defense is also that I am just a working mom who was just stressed during COVID, and the jury saw, No, I was doing the best I could, but this just put me over the edge because my brain was on fire. 

Ann Shippy, MD

That is a lot to process.

Kristina Baehr

But that is not just me. That is all, my client. All your patients—many of your patients. CNBC told a little story about our family when we filed our lawsuit in the beginning, and I just created my little law firm, which is linked to my website. My website, by the way, had been built by my 13-year-old son, and it was nothing fancy and barely on the internet. But the CNBC article linked to my website, and I got a thousand calls in two weeks. One of those calls was from Hawaii. They had been poisoned. Can you help? I flew over to Hawaii, and I met these women who said that the Navy had had a huge oil spill and jet fuel spill that had contaminated their water source for 93,000 people.

The Navy knew that there was gas in the water and told people there was no indication it was not safe. They let people use the water. They became very sick. At the time, the Navy was apologizing. We are sorry; we are going to make this right. The Navy was saying it was going to be in and out of your body in 48 hours. Do not worry. It is just food poisoning. You are going to be fine. There are no facts. I was just, and I do not think that is right. Even if it were right, in my own story, these are people who were poisoned by the homes they were living in. That is worth something, and that is worth fighting for. You do not get to let people drink water that is contaminated. That cannot be the world in which we live. I took one case and then another case and then another case, and people started talking and sharing my name, and I now represent 5300 people against the United States of America in one of, I think, one of the most important toxic exposure cases in history, because we are not aware of any other case against the United States where the United States has actually admitted the negligence. They said in court that they are not contesting negligence. Now it is just a question of how much our clients will recover.

Ann Shippy, MD

That is so disturbing. It just boils down to individual accountability. In most of these stories, did the person actually activate the dehumidifier? Did the flashing get done? Did people get warned that there is a problem: making these decisions needs to realize that they are impacting other lives in such a profound way?

Kristina Baehr

It is the air we breathe and the water we drink. It is air and water. Our brain is 73% water. If the water is toxic, our brains can be toxic.

Ann Shippy, MD

There are so many different ways we could go here. But for our listeners, any words of wisdom, just anything that will help them through their next steps?

Kristina Baehr

Hang on. There is light at the end of the tunnel. My prayer for you, if you are listening and you are in a dark place, is that you would prioritize getting well and that you would put your own oxygen mask on first if you are a mom. That is hard to do because you are worried about your kids, who may be sick too. But you have to put your oxygen mask on, and you have to focus on getting well at whatever cost. If it is moving out, if it is moving into a tent, if it is moving to your mom’s house, you do not even, okay, do what you can to get out and get well. My prayer for you is that a year from now, you will be well enough to turn around and help the next person. You do not need to start a business doing this or anything like that. Just think that you would be the person that your friends would call when they have a friend who has a friend who’s going through this. You would be well enough to help other people. That is my prayer for you.

Ann Shippy, MD

That is beautiful. That is really what this summit is all about opening the light where different people need it to find the reserves inside them to take the next steps that they need to get well. that is so beautifully said, with such warmth and possibility.

Kristina Baehr

It is possible.

Ann Shippy, MD

It is really the only possibility. You just have to keep going until you get there. One day at a time.

Kristina Baehr

Sometimes it will be one hour at a time.

Ann Shippy, MD

Exactly.

Kristina Baehr

All you have to do, if you are in a dark place, is breathe and make it through the next hour. If you need to call my office and have us tell you that you will make it through the next hour, we will do that. But find your helpers and your people. There may be a lot of different people along the way who will be helpful to you, and again, you will find your helpers, but then turn around and be the helper for the next person. I have confidence that you will.

Ann Shippy, MD

Let us go back just a minute before we conclude. In a data collection process, sometimes it really is a decision between: do I spend the money on getting the evidence, or do I just spend the money on getting well and getting to the other side of this? It is always a financial tradeoff. But if people are going to quit something, if they have a new home that they think they may have a case against, or if they are in a situation where they might actually want to build the case, it would be great to spend a few minutes on what that evidence might be really not to miss there.

Kristina Baehr

It is always going to be worth hiring a certified mold inspector because you cannot do anything without that. At least in my world, there are very few lawyers in this country who do this. By the way, if you are listening to this and you are a lawyer and you want to do this, please call me because I will give you all my resources. There is no competition here. I want you to succeed, and I will give you everything that I have and will send you cases. Please call me if you are a lawyer. But every lawyer I know needs to see a certified mold inspection. Just do it. Just spend that money. It will also help you because you will know what you were exposed to. I believe a doctor should be able to tell me. I know there are different schools of thought, but I do believe that the treatment may be different depending on what you were exposed to, what the levels were, whether it was Stachybotyrs or Aspergillus, or whether there are different symptoms for each to look for. I think it is important from a health perspective and a legal perspective to get the certified mold inspection and the tests.

Ann Shippy, MD

Also, most houses have more than one problem. Say you have had a little roof leak, and you did not know that you needed to rip it out. All the wallboard, you may have just painted over it, and you are okay. It was probably that leak I did not handle properly. It is worth it to make sure that there are no other hidden problems.

Kristina Baehr

Yes, especially if you are in the midst of trying to figure out what is wrong with your house. Although I also tell people to be careful, sometimes you might not want to know every problem with the house if you are going to sell it, for example. There are different considerations that we can talk about. But a certified mold inspection, if you are considering any legal action, is the first thing. But the other thing I would say is that a picture says a thousand words. I want you, if you are listening to this, to look up a CNBC story. Just Google CNBC mold and you will see a picture of my big kid holding my little kid, and their doctor will max out an office in Austin after they have done a million blood draws. It just tells a thousand words about what this time was in our family. I also have a picture of a tent that was where my son slept because we connected it to an air purifier. We built a bed for him. Look, I do not know if that worked or not, but it shows how desperate we were to get our kids’ health. This was not just a roof leak that we had to move for. This was worrying about our very lives.

I really had a tumor, and I thought I was going to die. So, pictures. I have a client—that client I was talking about earlier with sewage. I had a picture of the dumpster with the unicorn in the back of it. The toy unicorn, the dollhouse, just says a thousand words. This is not just getting rid of your stuff for fun because you want your stuff. These are my kids’ Lego kingdoms that they spent years collecting and building into universes. Could we clean them? I do not know. Maybe I could have taken them out and cleaned them. I do not know. I am learning now. Maybe there were ways to clean it up, but when you are, that defeats the universe’s desire not to keep their kingdoms. Mold inspection pitchers—that is the best. When you get to any timeline, create a timeline of who says what to whom, and when. But I have been talking to other lawyers, wanting them to do these cases. Some of them say The mold client will come to your office with boxes and boxes of stuff. Just be thoughtful about not overwhelming the lawyer because you show up with boxes and boxes. They are just going to be eyes glazed over. Most lawyers are used to doing very basic car accidents where you have the police report and an x-ray. If you show up with boxes and boxes, it is not going to go well. A timeline, mold inspection, or some very compelling pictures. You are going to be in good shape.

Ann Shippy, MD

Beautiful. Well, thank you so much for taking this on. I know you are plowing new ground because it really has been pretty futile to hold people accountable for what they need to be, and you are also teaching them how to help them know how to do their jobs better, keep people safe, and really feel good about what they are providing. I am so grateful for this work that you are doing and for really building a network of people who can help.

Kristina Baehr

That is what you are doing. We just need to do more of it together and find more intersections and ways that I can help you and what you do. Really, for anyone listening, we want to be a resource. We want to help. If you are really anywhere in the country, we will take the call. We will point you in the right direction, and we are committed to building a network of lawyers who can help around the country and work with the doctors to get people the holistic care that they need because they need a financial recovery that they can spend on the good medical care they need. These treatments are not cheap. These wonderful doctors are not cheap, and they need financial recovery so they can get well. That is really what we want and what they want. I tell every client that your job, your number one job, is to go forth and get well. My job is to try to get you a financial recovery so that you can go forward and get well. But it is never futile. It is never futile to pursue it because I cannot guarantee that I am going to get you any outcome, but I can get you resources, we can listen, we can point you in the right direction, and I am going to leave it all on the field trying to get you financial recovery. In almost every case, it is going to be something. I have not lost a case yet. I have settled cases for less than I wanted to, but I have not lost a case.

Ann Shippy, MD

That is amazing.

Kristina Baehr

We are going to get you something. It is not going to be $1,000,000. It is not even my case. It is not going to be $1,000,000, but it is going to be something, and it is going to be something that you can contribute to towards your health and your kids’ health. I do not think that you are pursuing what? This is actually a story that I wanted to tell me, and I am in my jury trial. The opposing counsel at the closing said that when bad things happen, we should just be thankful for what we have. The Baehrs have lots of resources here. That really hit me because we have tremendous gratitude for the people who helped our family and for what we do have. We spent a lot of those resources on this case, not for us but for others. We can have gratitude and pursue justice at once. A friend actually told me that gratitude and justice equal Shalom. That is what I want for all of us—that we can go forth and pursue health, justice, and gratitude all at once for ultimate Shalom.

Ann Shippy, MD

That is beautiful.  That is really true. We can hold all of those things together. Then, the real thing is, let us be doing prevention. Let us keep people from getting sick in the first place. I think your work is really important for doing that piece of the puzzle as well because as these vendors and providers learn how to have safe buildings, we will have fewer people getting sick. It really is an epidemic. How do people find you?

Kristina Baehr

Just Well, the firm is called Just Well, my name is Kristina Baehr, and the website is well.law. You can put your information in there, and someone will give you a callback. We have been inundated with calls this week, and it might not be immediate, but you will absolutely get a callback in short order. Thanks for listening. I am so glad to be with you, and I look forward to continuing the conversation in the future.

Ann Shippy, MD

Me too. We have a lot of work to do together. Thank you so much.