Mike Cristalli, who has primarily been involved in the Criminal Law field, is not necessarily an ideal attorney that the media should interview about potential civil liability matters in a case of this magnitude. I'll be the first to apologize if I'm wrong, but there are a good number of accomplished attorneys who have decades of experience in high profile, massive civil matters(including disaster cases),but I don't necessarily think Mike would qualify as one of them.

Excellent attorney in my view, very bright and personable, and a master at public relations with great media savvy, and those abilities and connections enable him to score these type of media interviews. And because he has those abilities and attributes, I'm surprised he gave such a lazy, uninspired interview where he merely repeated some obvious observations, which many others have been offering repeatedly. If someone really wants to write a substantive article which actually gets somewhat into the weeds as to all the civil aspects, there are many attorneys who could be interviewed instead.

If they had simply phoned Eglet, or any other number of attorneys with decades worth of massive, successful civil experience(including disaster litigation, and litigation with many diverse parties as defendants) there would have been some observations offered which went beyond what we have already heard 1,000 times.

Presumably Mike knew he was to be interviewed and had time to prepare, and ask for some ideas from those with extensive experience in disaster litigation, or at least with extensive civil experience of this sort. Instead Mike simply stated, without much further elaboration and without any additional interesting observations, that potential sources of liability is the estate of the shooter, the Casino, the concert promoters, and the firearm accessory manufacturer.

There's nothing unreasonable about any of those observations, and there may be theories of recovery against all of them, pending extensive(perhaps massive) discovery and litigation.

But Mike didn't really offer any meaningful observations as to what would need to be discovered or determined in order to succeed with liability against any of the four sources. I suppose a theory for recovery against the estate of the shooter can be fairly obvious–the decedent murdered and injured a bunch of innocent people, but there still needs to be some observations about how recovery vs. the estate would be accomplished, and the factors at work to determine how proceeds would be divided, etc. But as to the other three sources of potential liability and recovery–the casino, the concert arrangers, and the firearm accessory manufacturer, he only identified that they could potentially be liable, but he didn't explain how or why to any meaningful extent, or explain what would need to be uncovered in order to be successful.

When he basically limited his observations to the fact that these are four sources of possible recovery, he was merely repeating what every single talking head has said on television since the night of the shooting. If one takes interview opportunities for granted, and does not prepare or try to think of interesting observations that have not already been suggested over and over, such individual will find out very quickly that the media outlets in the future will seek subjects for interviews who actually have something fresh or interesting to say.

Granted, many print interviews are short, and many broadcast interviews are also just for a very brief period. So, there is not much time to get too far into analyzing matters beyond the surface. That is certainly true. But even if someone is just afforded a few minutes for a print interview(because the article will be short and there is not much space for it), or less than a minute for an interview snippet which may be broadcast on the news, if there is time to tell us what everyone else has already told us over and over, there is time to make a couple fresh, interesting observations.

Cristalli did add a few statements about past disaster litigation.

I understand that there was not much offered about what needs to be shown to establish liability against any of the four sources, but, as you say, there is very little opportunity in brief interviews to get into the weeds.

I also agree that he is an excellent attorney, but, yes, IMO there are others who I might turn to first when discussing massive tort litigation(like Eglet, as you mention).But although Cristalli does have civil experience of impressive note,like you do I perceive his main expertise as being in the Criminal Law field. But I could be wrong, just as you say you could be wrong. With thousands of attorneys in town it is a moving target and it can be difficult to say who the experts are in certain areas.