John Rushing, managing partner of Rushing McCarl LLP, was recently featured on the Great Trials Podcast. In the episode, Rushing explains how his firm secured a $17.78 million federal jury verdict in Virgin Scent Inc. v. BT Supplies West Inc., a contract dispute the firm took on during the COVID-19 pandemic. The episode offers practical lessons for trial lawyers at every stage of their careers by challenging conventional wisdom about courtroom toughness and showing how candor and strategic humility can sometimes win the day.
The Virgin Scent v. BT Supplies dispute began in early 2020. As the COVID-19 pandemic triggered a nationwide shortage of masks and hand sanitizer, Rushing McCarl’s clients moved quickly to meet the need. They pivoted their cosmetics company, ArtNaturals, into one of the largest manufacturers of hand sanitizer in the country. BT Supplies West ordered five million bottles of hand sanitizer at $2.40 each and ten million masks at $0.63 each. ArtNaturals delivered — but BT Supplies refused to pay. At trial, BT Supplies’ principal claimed the sanitizer was supposed to be made in the United States.
Rushing McCarl structured the plaintiff’s case around two betrayals. The first was contractual — the broken promise at the heart of any contract claim. The second was societal: vital pandemic supplies sat in storage rather than being paid for and distributed by the buyer who ordered them. This layered framing gave jurors a clear way to understand what might otherwise have been a dry, abstract dispute. By casting the breach as a betrayal, lead counsel John Rushing elevated the case’s moral stakes and focused attention on broken promises and hoarded supplies. As Rushing explained, “You win big cases by telling a moral story. Jurors resolve moral discomfort with a verdict. Money is imperfect justice, but it’s what the law allows.” The task is to construct a narrative that creates moral discomfort resolvable only through a verdict for the client.
That framing also shaped how Rushing presented ArtNaturals’ witnesses. Rather than allowing the defense to reduce the plaintiffs to faceless corporate actors, he put the company’s founders on the stand to tell their story themselves. “My strategy was humanization,” Rushing explained. “Tell the story in first person. Make it about securing a future, not profiteering.” The founders were young entrepreneurs who had risked everything — taking out a $9 million loan and leveraging hard-won relationships with distilleries to meet urgent market needs — only to be stiffed by the defendant.
The trial turned on a series of tactical decisions many trial lawyers would consider risky. During opening statements, opposing counsel objected when Rushing attempted to show a WhatsApp video sent to the defendant depicting the hand sanitizer being manufactured in China. The judge sustained the objection. Rather than move on or contest the ruling, Rushing turned to the jury and said, “Well, I made a mistake by showing you that. But you’re going to see a video, and you can decide what it means.” The moment defused the setback, made Rushing relatable, and turned the excluded video into the case’s “elephant in the room.”
When the evidence later came in — including WhatsApp “read receipts” showing that the defendant had seen the video despite denying it on the stand — the jury was ready to connect the dots. The Great Trials podcast hosts later called this a “Perry Mason moment,” but the groundwork was laid much earlier, when Rushing chose vulnerability over defensiveness. As he put it, “Jurors forgive mistakes. What they don’t forgive is pretending you didn’t make them.”
The full episode is worth listening to for Rushing’s detailed breakdown of the trial strategy, including insights on rebuttal tactics, witness examination, and the role of storytelling in trial advocacy.
Rushing McCarl LLP is a trial and appellate litigation boutique based in Los Angeles, California. The firm handles complex civil litigation with a focus on business disputes. For more information about the firm’s practice, review our brochure or visit rushingmccarl.com.