Nuns & Priests in a Courtroom: Catholic Hospital on Trial

A mother and her son from the Jehovah’s Witness community go to trial in a birth injury case against a Catholic-affiliated hospital in Corpus Christi.

In this episode of the Truth & Justice League podcast, Mark Mueller tells the story of how he was able to navigate jury selection, religious bias, hospital media efforts to prejudice the jury, and a bogus claim of tampered videotape evidence, as well as address a courtroom packed with nuns and priests brought in for the closing arguments, as he wins this birth injury trial case for his client and her brain-injured son.

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Mark Mueller is a nationally recognized trial attorney and the host of the Truth & Justice League Podcast, where justice meets humanity. With over three decades of experience fighting corporate negligence, environmental harm, and medical injustice, Mueller brings listeners inside the real-life cases that shaped his career, and exposed the systems that put profits over people. A pioneer of the historic Transvaginal Mesh litigation, Mueller has also represented Indigenous communities, including the Blackfoot Brave Dog Society and Lakota Sioux Sundance Chiefs, in landmark cases defending sacred land and cultural rights.Through weekly episodes featuring frontline advocates, artists, legal experts, and "Stories from the Vault" drawn from Mueller’s own case files, the podcast shines a light on the machinery of injustice, and the people working to dismantle it. Equal parts legal exposé, personal reckoning, and call to action, the Truth & Justice League Podcast is built to inform, inspire, connect and empower a rising movement of everyday heroes.

0:35 Introduction to the birth injury trial case in Corpus Christi.1:30 The church’s influence on the community and the hospital. 2:00 Picture of Marc Mueller in his early days as a renegade lawyer. 5:00 Difficulties in selecting the jury with the influence of the church in and out of the courtroom. 5:35 Mark relies on his client’s intuition when selecting the jury. 8:59 What actually happened during the labor, and how the nurses notes were different. 10:19 Two days into the trial, the defense claims video evidence is altered and has a videographer witness testify. 12:50 Max Freeman, a lawyer in Dallas, Texas, helps Marc find an expert witness to testify that the video is in fact not altered. 16:20

Closing arguments delivered in a packed courtroom of nuns and priests. 17:58

Marc faces the crowd and calls them out in front of the jury. 19:10

Jury deliberates and awards Marc’s client seven figures. 19:50

The defendants appeal, and unfortunately, the baby who was injured during birth dies, while his mother and Marc reach a fair settlement.