The Real Suits: Champions for the Injured – Ep. 6 Douglas DiSandro

Larry Bendesky interviews his law partner, Doug DiSandro about his background, career, and experiences. They discuss how his upbringing and time at St. Joe’s Prep and St. Joe’s University shaped his values and work ethic, and how his love for baseball and his experience as a player taught him the importance of hard work and dedication. Doug shares some of the cases he’s worked on and highlights the rewarding aspects of helping clients with significant injuries. They also talk about the importance of leadership, and Doug’s involvement with Cristo Rey.

 

 

Larry Bendesky
Welcome to The Real Suits: Champions for the Injured, using our platform here at Saltz Mongeluzzi Bendesky to highlight some of the cases that we work on and the people we work with. And it is our great pleasure to have my friend and my law partner, Doug DiSandro here today. Doug is, and I’ll throw it out there at the beginning, the hardest working person I’ve ever met in my life.

And I don’t say that lightly, and I don’t say it about anybody else. Say it about Doug DiSandro. So Doug, we’re so glad to have you today. And I actually made you take away 45 minutes from working on your cases and helping our clients to be able to be with us today. So thanks for being here.

Doug DiSandro
Thanks for having me. I’ll make it up tonight.

Larry Bendesky
I’m sure you will. So tell us about growing up. I know you’re from the Philadelphia area. Tell us a little bit about yourself.

Doug DiSandro
I’m born and raised in Philadelphia. Went to St. Joe’s Prep for high school, St. Joe’s University, and then went to law school at Widener down in Delaware. So I’ve been here the entirety of my life.

Larry Bendesky
So, and I know I said to you beforehand, you’re going to actually have to spend about 45 minutes talking about yourself. Are you okay doing that?

Doug DiSandro
I’m not at all. No, no, not at all. I have a lot of great people in my life to talk about, so hopefully I’ll be able to do that.

Larry Bendesky
All right, you could do a little deflection, but we want to know Doug DiSandro today. So you first mentioned St. Joe’s Prep. What’s the deal with St. Joe’s Prep?

Doug DiSandro
It’s the best. It is the most loyal group of alumni and graduates that I’ve ever seen.

Larry Bendesky
What makes it so special?

Doug DiSandro
The people, for sure. And the way that they bring young men into the school and by the time you graduate, you are ready to go forth and do great things as they say. But I think the mission of the school is to be a person for others. And I think people who go there buy into that and that

you carry that for the rest of your life and that really applies to the work that we do because everything we do is for other people and for our clients and to try to help those who are in need of help. And that is absolutely true. And also I found that the people that go to St. Joe’s Prep really go to bat for other people that went to St. Joe’s Prep.

Larry Bendesky
So I know you’ve handed a couple of resumes to me as have Drew Duffy whose son went to St. Joe’s Prep. There seems to be a real strong network of not only helping people generally but helping other st. Joe’s prep grads.

Doug DiSandro
Yeah, I think anytime you see that school on someone’s resume you have a pretty good idea of who they are as a person. What makes them tick and what you can expect from them both professionally and personally as well and that means a lot

Larry Bendesky
I know your dad really well. He’s an outstanding lawyer in the city. What did you kind of learn from him growing up and did he, did you want to be a lawyer because of your dad?

Doug DiSandro
Growing up it was the opposite. Everyone assumed I wanted to be a lawyer because of my dad and being the stubborn person that I am I’d always say no, no, no. I’m gonna do something else. I’m gonna do something else.

Larry Bendesky
What did you want to do?

Doug DiSandro
I love baseball. I wanted to be in baseball. I think I was smart enough to realize at an early age that as a player that wouldn’t take me too far but work for the Phillies or be involved in the business side of baseball was always interesting to me. Growing up some of my earliest memories outside of playing with my siblings or my friends were going to sporting events, going to restaurants, just being out in public and people coming up and knowing my dad and saying to me, ‘you know, your dad’s a great man.’ He’s done great things for me. And that’s something that sticks with you. And you don’t appreciate it at a young age, but as you get older and as you start thinking about, you know, what is it that I want to do? How can I make a difference? How can I help people? It always came back to that. And knowing the effect that he had on people and how he was able to help them, I wanted to do that. So the stubborn kid decided, wait a minute, maybe there is something to this. For sure.

Larry Bendesky
And you were talking about wanting to get into baseball. You were a baseball player growing up, right?

Doug DiSandro
Yep. Played at St. Joe’s Prep, played at St. Joe’s University, and it ended there.

Larry Bendesky
And you were a pitcher?

Doug DiSandro
Yes, left-handed pitcher.

Larry Bendesky
All right. And how good were you?

Doug DiSandro
Good enough to be on the team. This guy who brought up the GPA of the team, we’ll put it that way. But I was honored to be voted as a captain my senior year at St. Joe’s University.

You know, high school, I’ll always remember after my tryouts junior year of high school, the coach came to me and he said, listen, you’re a great kid. You’re a hard worker. You’ve given a lot to the program. Talent wise, I don’t know if you’ve got it, what it takes to make it on the varsity level in high school. We’ll keep you around because we like you. But all you’re going to do all year is you’re going to be the guy who counts pitches. You’ll keep track.

And I don’t know if he was trying to dissuade me from sticking around or if he was just being honest or maybe a little bit of both, but that was the conversation that was had with me at the end of tryouts. Basically, you’re not good enough to be a high school pitcher, but we’ll keep you around because we like you. So I remember my dad was really upset about that. I was upset as well, but I’m always pretty critical of myself. And I thought, OK, I deserve that. Maybe I’m not good enough and I need to prove that I am. So junior year turned into that.

I sat on the bench, I counted pitches for most of the year. By the end of the year, there were a couple of blowouts and I got opportunities. And he had told me before, you might pitch seven, 10, 15 innings all year long. You sure you want to do this? Yeah, I want the opportunity. I’ll try to prove myself. And throughout the course of the season, I didn’t get a chance to pitch too often until the end. And then I got some opportunities. I did well, I got more opportunities, I did better. So by the end of the year, wasn’t

I wasn’t good by any stretch, but I had kind of proven to myself, all right, I do deserve to be here. And I thought I had shown the staff that maybe I was a varsity high school pitcher. And then I had a good summer season, had a good fall season, and then got a real opportunity come senior year and took advantage of that and got some attention and was able to ultimately play in college.

Larry Bendesky
So you were a late recruit, really. And do you think the coach said that to you because he wanted to be straight up and honest with you and reduce expectations or do you think he said that to you to motivate you to try to improve?

Doug DiSandro
I’d like to say it was to motivate me. I think he felt that he was honestly being direct and honest with me. Maybe so that there wasn’t an issue where I complained about the lack of innings I was pitching or I complained that I wasn’t playing enough. He didn’t know you very well if he thought you were just complaining about anything.

So it worked out and I still have that pitch counter that hangs from my rear view mirror in my car. It’s just like a little, you know, that was given to me as the only tool I’d need in my high school baseball career and eventually turned into something else.

Larry Bendesky
And do you keep that as a reminder? To motivate you?

Doug DiSandro
Absolutely. Absolutely.

Larry Bendesky
So you go to St. Joe’s. How hard are you throwing at this point?

Doug DiSandro
Low 80s.

Larry Bendesky
Okay, which is for our viewers and listeners isn’t generally hard enough to throw at the Division I collegiate level.

Doug DiSandro
Correct.

Larry Bendesky
But you obviously make the team, and you continue to pitch on the team. Did you start to throw harder, or was it just kind of craftiness and just kind of working your way through situations?

Doug DiSandro
Primarily craftiness. Added a couple miles per hour as I got a little more mature and with the training programs we had there. I still was only topping out at 84, 85, you know, by my junior, senior year. Which isn’t hard for Division I level. Not at all. Certainly not now where everyone’s throwing 90 plus. But even then. Back then, yeah.

Larry Bendesky
Did you, were you able to take any of those lessons for just kind of working and being crafty and figuring things out to other aspects of your life?

Doug DiSandro
I think it always comes back to hard work for me, which is something that was instilled at a really young age.

And I think it applies to everything. I’ve always had that kind of thought in the back of my mind, like, am I good enough? Do I have enough talent? And to me, if you can outwork and really dedicate yourself, it can sometimes close that gap if that doubt exists in your mind.

Larry Bendesky
Your dad, I assume, is a very hard worker. You saw that as well.

Doug DiSandro
Again, growing up, a lot of late nights, I know that he tells me when I was very very young he was working a lot of weekends but I truly appreciated that by the time that I was old enough to remember certainly throughout grade school and high school and college he was there for everything so there weren’t many fathers who could be there on a Tuesday afternoon at three o ‘clock for first pitch if I was pitching but he was always there and always there for us and we knew that he had to make it up elsewhere and that was through hard work but he always made us a priority.

That was another thing that as I was getting to the path of, you what do I want to do? What kind of life do I want for me and my future family and also professionally? I’d always go back to those memories of him being able to provide for us, him always being there for us, which was another factor that’s obviously important as you decide your path in life.

Larry Bendesky
So at one point you talked about the influence your dad had and how it kind of quietly resonated with you as you kind of went along in life. At what point did you say, okay, I want to go to law school, I want to be a lawyer?

Doug DiSandro
It wasn’t until late in college, probably after my junior year. I’d worked for the Phillies, the Philadelphia Phillies in college. Vast majority of people who work for the organization started off in ticket sales as summer interns. So I was kind on that path. I did that for a number of summers and really, really appreciated my time there. Loved the people there. It’s an amazing organization. Unbelievable. And it all started with the late, great David Montgomery, we were 20, 21-year -old interns working literally in a cubicle-filled room on the first floor of the building, tucked away. And he would walk through and he would know every single person’s name. He’d say, how you doing? How you enjoying your summer?

And when you have someone like that in leadership, it all just flows down throughout the organization. So every person that you worked with, great professional, but great people as well. So you want to be around that kind of atmosphere when you work. That’s what we have here. So I feel very fortunate about that as well. But I thought that would be the path. And then ultimately, end of junior year, I started to think, maybe I should stop being so stubborn. And I liked the critical thinking. I liked when I had talked to my dad about cases he worked on and issues that he was presented with, I finally got past the stubbornness and said, you know, is where I should be.

Larry Bendesky
So you decided to go to law school. I know you’ve always worked. Did you have jobs in high school? Did you have jobs in college? Did you have jobs in law school? It’s tough if you’re a baseball player, but were you able to balance all those things?

Doug DiSandro
I begrudgingly had my first job at Michael’s Pizzeria, which was a five-minute walk from my parents’ house in high school. And I remember my parents saying, you’re not sitting around the house on Friday nights and Saturday nights, and you’re not going to be running around with all your friends. You’re going to get a job. So I started working there. By the end of high school, I was probably working close to 40 hours a week there, between Friday night, all day Sunday, Tuesday night, Thursday night.

Larry Bendesky
And you were in school at St. Joe’s Prep, which is a very good school. And you were on the baseball team.

Doug DiSandro
Correct. And again, I’m so grateful for that opportunity, not only because it taught me very early, you have to work hard and figure out how to make it all work. But the relationships I developed there, just having the chance to interact with people, it reinforced the fact that I wanted to be in a business and in a profession where I could work with people, work around people, and kind of help people too. It’s a pizzeria, you’re not really helping people, so to speak, but you know.  You’re helping in some ways, but if I get called into the back of the kitchen because it’s insane and they needed help handling whatever kind of mess was going on back there, I’d pitch in and help.

And it was a team approach to how we work there, which again is what we have here. A very team oriented approach and I think you never want to be on an island by yourself. You want to be around people you like, that you enjoy working with so that when you accomplish things together there’s a greater sense of satisfaction than just, look what I did.

Larry Bendesky
You talked about the team approach here and being on teams, I mean that helps us as a law firm don’t you think?

Doug DiSandro
100%. And we’re so fortunate to have great leaders like you and Mongo and Drew and Jeff and every leader here because you will never be in a situation where it’s focused on one person. It’s always, if there’s a problem, how are we going to fix this? If there is an upcoming important case event, how are we going to approach this? When we’re strategizing how to handle cases, you or Mongo or anybody could say, this is what we’re doing because I say so, but it is never that. It’s what do you think? How would you address this? How would you approach this? And that’s not only good for the client, but it’s a tremendous opportunity for young lawyers and lawyers who want to learn from the best because you get to get a sense of how people think about things. So having that team approach the cases is so beneficial for the law firm, for me individually, but ultimately for our clients too.

Larry Bendesky
Listen, I don’t know everything. Mongo doesn’t know everything. It’s important to get the opinions and the collaboration of everybody here. We wouldn’t hire people if we didn’t think they were capable and bright. And we want their input as part of the team, as you talk about.

So you graduate from college, you go to law school. Your dad does what we do. Did you know that that’s what you wanted to do? Did you think you wanted to do something different? What was the thought process there?

Doug DiSandro
Yeah, again, kind of front of the mind for me here is that I was inclined to go towards what we do, but at the same time, I pushed back on it a little bit because again, the assumption was, this is what your dad does. This is what you’re going to do. I was still thinking maybe baseball was something that I could do. In terms of administration or working your way up the Phillies, that sort of thing.

Or even a sports agency. The affiliates were great in that they gave me a number of contacts at big sports agencies and smaller ones too. And I spoke to a number of agents. Roy Halliday’s former agent I spoke to and he was very gracious with his time. I had a friend who worked for Scott Boras who was very gracious with his time as well. So I was exploring that as a possible opportunity while always keeping in the back of my mind, knowing what a great line of work this is and what good can be accomplished.

So I spent some time taking corporate law classes and business law type classes and ultimately realized I kind of hate reading contracts all day and kind of hate just sitting at a desk and staring at a screen all day and came to the realization that that wasn’t for me and came back to again people and trying to help people and representing individuals.

Larry Bendesky
So how long have you been here?

Doug DiSandro
I’ve been at the firm now for seven years.

Larry Bendesky
All right, and you mentioned Drew Duffy and you mentioned Jeff Goodman. You’re working with them. So tell us about the work that you’re doing and the cases you’re working on.

Doug DiSandro
We work all on the same team and handling catastrophic injury cases and the really interesting thing and kind of, I don’t want to say fun because every case is tragic, but the thing that makes every day unique is that we handle cases in any kind of area of law. We have construction cases, have product cases, we have a lot of maritime cases, trucking cases. Basically, if the injuries are significant enough, we’ll handle the case and we get to learn different areas of law and different specialties.

Larry Bendesky
Tell us about some of the cases that you are most proud of in your career.

Doug DiSandro
I think the cases I’m most proud of that we’ve handled, that we’ve been involved in, are the ones where the case comes to us and somebody says, listen, the injuries are really, really significant and really serious. We don’t really know what case there is. Those are the most challenging cases, but ultimately the cases where if you’re able to dig in and develop a theory and to ultimately get a good recovery for a client, those are the most rewarding. Particularly because they are such significant injury cases. The clients come to you and they’re desperate. They’re looking at either crushing amounts of future medical bills or it could be a husband or a wife who lost their spouse and now have to figure out how they’re gonna support their family and put their kids through college.

And if it’s not immediately apparent on the face of the case what happened, they’re assuming that they are not going to have any support for the rest of their lives. And the cases where you’re able to dig in and develop theories and come up with a way to provide for them, those are the most rewarding to me.

Larry Bendesky
Tell us about a couple of those cases.

Doug DiSandro
So one case that comes to mind is, you know, we had a lot of construction cases. And there are certain protections that are afforded to employers in the construction cases through the workers compensation immunity.

Larry Bendesky
And just to let our listeners and viewers know, you can’t sue your employer under Pennsylvania law.

Doug DiSandro
Correct. So if someone comes to you with a case and on its face, it looks like the employer was the only one who did something wrong. A lot of people will look at and say, hey, I’m sorry, the only claim you have is through your workers compensation claim. And we’re fortunate we work with a lot of great lawyers who handle those claims and do tremendous work for our clients. But those kinds of claims are limited as far as what recovery you can seek.

So there was one case that kind of stayed with me and was really significant where that was the background. Really, really serious brain injury to a young man who had been working in the construction industry for five years already was on the path to being supervisor, superintendent, and doing great things in the field, and he’s never going to be able to work again. And he has tremendous amounts of medical bills, and there is a concern about being able to support him. And it came to us as, this is probably a case that’s only against the employer. We don’t see any other potential defendants or anything else that went wrong here. And going back to being fortunate to be here, a lot of firms might look at that and say, yeah, that’s just an employer case. We’re not going to pursue anything. But we’re very fortunate where we look at cases like that that might seem to be the case apparently on its face, but we’ll be given the okay to file it, to pursue it, and to do as much work and to spend whatever time and resources are needed to determine whether or not that is actually true.

So as a case where, it’s just the employer, we were given the okay to investigate it, to do more digging we ultimately were able to determine that there was a product that was involved that didn’t perform in the way that it was supposed to, that there was another construction company that was actually involved where people had said there wasn’t, that failed to maintain its own safety responsibilities on the site. And about 25 depositions later, and goodness knows how much time and a lot of money, we were able to get the case resolved right before trial for a very significant amount of money on behalf of a client who will be taken care of for the rest of his life.

All of his medical bills will be taken care of. His parents have been very involved in his care. They’ll be able to kind of return to some semblance of a normal life that they had before this happened and have that burden relieved of them. And nobody has to worry about how are we going to pay for the treatment he needs? How are we going to make sure there’s a roof over his head? How are we going to make sure that the rest of the family can tend to their own family’s needs? The parents don’t, in so many of these cases when it’s a child or a young man or young woman that gets injured, the parents have a very serious concern that when they die, who’s going to take care of this person?

Larry Bendesky
You took away that very serious worry.

Doug DiSandro
Absolutely. And those clients, like so many of the clients we’re so fortunate to represent, are just incredible people who are so appreciative. And being able to deliver that to them and know how much that meant to them, that means more than you can ever describe.

Larry Bendesky
You mentioned depositions. We haven’t talked about depositions at any of these podcasts. Tell us what a deposition is.

Doug DiSandro
Well, Larry, it’s a question and answer session where we are attempting to find out what people know about what happened, generally speaking. They’re under oath. They are under oath.

They have the same force and effect as if they were provided, the testimony was provided in front of a judge or a jury. And for our purposes, the civil world’s a little bit different than criminal, where in the criminal world they don’t get to do depositions. So when a witness takes the stand and starts to testify, that’s the first time the parties are hearing what they’re going to say. We get a little bit of a sneak preview as far as what witnesses in a case will testify to a trial through that process of taking depositions.

And that’s the number one tool that we have at our disposal as far as working up a case, developing theories, figuring out what happened and what went wrong. And we videotape those depositions. And again, we are very fortunate that we have the okay to do that here. A lot of firms don’t. Every single deposition we take is videotaped.

Larry Bendesky
Do you find that people are more likely to tell the truth if they are being filmed as opposed to just a court reporter transcribing what they say?

Doug DiSandro
I think so and I heard a very smart lawyer provide a presentation on depositions and talk about how sometimes it’s kind of more about what they don’t say in response to a question and that gets captured on video and it never gets captured on stenographic records. So for instance, if a particularly difficult question to answer is asked of a witness and there’s a long pregnant pause, they kind of look at their lawyer and they look at the ceiling and they’re looking around and then 35 seconds later they provide an answer. After that silence the answer almost doesn’t matter because that silence speaks volumes to what they know they should be saying or what they don’t want to say and you can really read into that. On a stenographic record you just see question, answer and for all you know it’s the question immediately followed by the answer and because we videotape depositions the mannerisms, the pauses, the looking over to the lawyer, all of that is captured and that’s really, really powerful.

Larry Bendesky
And just so our viewers and listeners know, the stenographic, there’s a court reporter taking everything down.

Doug DiSandro
That is whether it’s videotaped or not, but when you don’t videotape it, that’s all there is and you’re right. You don’t have a sense, if you’re reading that to the jury or the jury sees that, of somebody’s facial expression, somebody’s body language. Were those pauses that you discussed? I always think about one of the first cases I worked on that I had the privilege of working with, Drew on when I got here, was a very significant construction case. It was a fall from height, a young man who had a family, lovely wife and daughter. And it was the most important deposition in the case of the superintendent, so kind of the ultimate responsibility of the general contractor on the site.

Pretty typical Drew fashion, he’s a complete gentleman. He’s always respectful, always very even keeled. At the end of the deposition, he kind of summarizes the litany of failures of this particular superintendent. You failed to do this, correct? Yes, I did. And you failed to do this, correct? Yes, I did. And Drew has this way of asking questions and presenting information to witnesses where they admit to everything under the sun and he’s so nice and polite and respectful and how he does it that they don’t even realize what they’re saying and this guy’s just going along with everything that Drew says and by the end of it he looks over to his lawyer and he says I’m not really sure where I stand here almost acknowledging the fact that he admitted to doing such a poor job that his entire position with the company was at stake and that look over at his lawyer was captured on the video.

And it’s something that’s kind of burned in my mind when I think about that deposition. And if we didn’t videotape that, the record would just read question and answer. And that look over, like, I don’t know what just happened here today is essentially what he was communicating with that look. That would have never been preserved or recorded, but for it being videotaped.

Larry Bendesky
Drew has that style. And you’re absolutely right. He’s always a gentleman. He’s always courteous. But do we dictate? What people’s styles have to be here?

Doug DiSandro
No, absolutely not. Which again is very fortunate because there aren’t any number of styles. I haven’t had the pleasure of sitting with you through a deposition. I’ve seen some of the video clips. I’ve been with Mongo in depositions and his style is very different from Drew’s. Much more aggressive. And that’s perfect for him. That’s who he is. He’s not trying to be something he’s not. Drew’s different. Jeff’s very different as well.

And I like to try to take certain things from everybody, but at the end of the day, I’m who I am. I can’t change that. I can try to be better. I can try to be different, but I am who I am. And no one forces me to try to be something that I’m not, which is great because I think if I try to be Mongo and I’m not Mongo, it’s not going to go well. I just am true to who I am and pick and choose things that maybe fit in my personality and my style.

I think I’ll be better off, but no one’s ever gonna pull me inside and say, hey, you need to be more aggressive. I’m sure there are points where appropriate constructive criticism can be given where you had an opportunity here to continue to drill down on this and go for the kill shot or really go in on this particular point and maybe I backed off it. I’ll always welcome that kind of constructive feedback, but it’s never you need to be more like this person or less like yourself or no one’s ever trying to push us that way.

Larry Bendesky
It’s a little like your baseball career, right? I mean, you know, you received constructive criticism, I’m sure, from coaches all the way up the line. You took that information and tried to make yourself better, but they didn’t try to make you be somebody that you weren’t.

Doug DiSandro
100%. And that’s kind of the calling card of a great coach or a great leader is you figure out who the people are, what makes them tick, what works for them, what doesn’t, and then you work with that. And you draw out as much of the talent and skill as you can, but you always have to be mindful of who someone is and what they can or can’t do.

Larry Bendesky
I know that leadership is important to you. I know you’ve spent time cultivating leaders, and I know you’re involved in Christo Rey. Tell us a little bit about Cristo Rey and what Cristo Rey does.

Doug DiSandro
Absolutely. We’ve been very fortunate that you and Mongo have supported Cristo Rey, which is a local charter school here in Philadelphia, formerly run by a prep grad, so it should come as no surprise that it’s a fantastic institution. But Cristo Rey is a charter school here in Philadelphia that serves a population that doesn’t have many opportunities otherwise.

It’s a high school, so 9th through 12th grade, and every single student who passes through Cristo Rey’s doors before graduating has to work throughout their high school career. So they’re not in a classroom five days a week. They have to work one day a week each year at various companies throughout Philadelphia. So it’s a program that is set up to give these students who might not have the same kind of role models and the same opportunities to be exposed to professionals in the Philadelphia area.

It gives those students a chance to be exposed to professionals, some of the biggest companies in Philadelphia, and to learn professional skills so that by the time they graduate high school, not only do they have the academic chops that other high school students have, but they have a foot up on the other high school students that they have four years of experience working in the professional world, developing some of the skills that other students don’t, developing the work ethic and the dedication to a job that a lot of students their age don’t. And then they get to apply those skills throughout college.

I believe, I could be mistaken, but I’m almost positive that to this day, 100% of Cristo Rey students have been accepted into colleges, which for a Philadelphia high school is an unbelievable accomplishment. It may be unprecedented. And our firm has, you know, I’m very glad that we’ve been able to be involved with Cristo Rey, right through your urging, frankly. And we’re very glad that you’ve done that. It’s an incredible program.

It’s a place kind of like the Prep. You step foot inside that school and there’s an energy and you can just feel the culture that is contagious. And to have high school students here, I think is also really good for us as a firm because there is an enthusiasm, there is an excitement, there is a sense of awe that you get from a high school student that sometimes in the professional world where you’re dealing with adults who have been working for decades and maybe don’t have that same youthful excitement, it’s great to have it here for everybody I think. I think it’s also good for us who are now in a very fortunate position to be able to help other people to see that there are people within the Philadelphia community that all they need is just kind of a chance, a leg up. So I’m glad we’re very much involved.

Larry Bendesky
So you have a family. Tell us about your family.

Doug DiSandro
My little boy Dougie the third, so my dad is senior I’m junior and then Dougie is the third one of the earnest Douglas DiSandro’s running around and then we have a daughter who’s two and a half years old, Adley, and and my wife, who dedicates more than anyone should given how much I work.

Larry Bendesky
She knows who you are. I mean, I know you’re involved in your family and care about your family, but working very hard is deep within you.

Doug DiSandro
Katie’s father’s a personal injury lawyer as well. He practiced medical malpractice in Chester County throughout his career and she’s one of six. And he was able to put six girls through private school. Practicing primarily medical malpractice in Chester County, which is a difficult place. So, you know, he was a darn good lawyer to be able to provide for his family that way, handling those kinds of cases in that venue.

Larry Bendesky
Are your kids involved in sports? Is Dougie a baseball player yet?

Doug DiSandro
He plays baseball. Yeah.

Larry Bendesky
Is he a lefty or a righty?

Doug DiSandro
Unfortunately, he’s a righty.

Larry Bendesky
What do you mean unfortunately? It’s many more opportunities as a righty. He can’t play shortstop as a lefty. Can’t play third base, can’t play second base, can’t play catcher.

Doug DiSandro
Yeah, he’s playing all the sports. So we want him to figure out which ones he likes. We’re not going to force anything on him. Loves soccer, basketball, flag football, baseball. As long as he’s outside running around, we’re happy.

Larry Bendesky
And the final topic I want to get into with you, you live in the city. You live in Chestnut Hill. And tell us about the house you bought and the house you pretty much built, correct?

Doug DiSandro
Yes, that was our COVID activity. So we closed on a house after looking for probably a year and a half, going under contract on houses, not ultimately closing on them. Every house we looked at was great, except for one thing. So it would be a great house, but there’s no parking. It would be a great house, but there is no backyard. Great house, but on a busy street. And then we found a property that had a backyard and parking. And it was on a great street with great neighbors and great people. But the house really left something to be desired. The bones were there. And I remember my dad, the first time we walked through, he’s like, wow, this really could be something.

And my wife was like, it could, but what’s it gonna take? But again, a testament to my father and his vision. We ultimately closed on that house and then proceeded throughout quarantine time to demolish it floor by floor, room by room, one trash can at a time, hauled out the back to the dumpster that we had in the backyard for about six months.

Credit to my dad, my brother Rob, my brother Joe, my sister Maura, my wife Katie. It was a team project. I think my sister-in -law Joanna was over there too at some point just taking sledgehammers to walls. And it’s an old house built in 1906 by a bunch of Tyroleans from Italy, I believe is what my neighbor told me. So it’s an old house. Had plaster and lath. So this is just thin drywall on the walls. It’s wood slats with heavy plaster. I think it was 22,000 pounds of debris we took out. So we demoed the entire house to the studs and then started to put it back together.

Larry Bendesky
Were you involved in the construction of putting it back together?

Doug DiSandro
Not so much the putting it back together. Gideon, who was the general contractor on the project, allowed me to tag along from time to time and be there. But we left that part to the experts.

I can swing a sledgehammer and haul out debris. I’m not technically skilled.

Larry Bendesky
And is the house done?

Doug DiSandro
We’re almost there. I think my wife would have a different answer.

Larry Bendesky
When did you buy the house?

Doug DiSandro
March of 2020. We moved in in 2022, so almost two years later. We’re almost there. We have some outstanding projects, but for the most part, we’re done.

Larry Bendesky
Well, thank you so much for being with us today.

We’re so glad that you’ve been with us on The Real Suits, Champions for the Injured. Please, if you’re interested in this episode, please feel free to click the subscribe button and let us know if you liked the episode or didn’t like the episode, any thoughts about any of the past or thoughts about upcoming episodes.

Thank you for being with us and thank you, Doug DiSandro.

Doug DiSandro
Thanks for having me.