AI: my unexpected ally against a giant

 

You are not alone.

I know it feels that way. It felt that way for me.

Companies like Hershey count on that feeling. They count on you not knowing your rights. Not knowing your deadlines. Not knowing how to fight back. They have entire law firms on speed dial for exactly that moment when someone like you decides to push back.

Most people don't push back. They take what they're given and move on. I almost did.

Then I found something.

Artificial intelligence — ChatGPT and Claude — can help you understand the law. Build your case. Write your documents. Think through your strategy. At two in the morning. For free. On your phone.

I used these tools to file my own case in federal court against one of the most recognizable companies in the world. Pro Se. No attorney. No money. Just the tools anybody can access.

This book is going to show you exactly how I did it. So you can do it too.

Because the fight isn't over just because you can't afford a lawyer.

They have lawyers.
You have AI.
If you find this helpful, share it with someone who thinks they are alone.

 

ClickChapter 1: This Is How It Started

This is why I had to file my own case in Kansas Federal Court.

Pro Se.

Case No. 2:25-cv-02682-JWB-TJJ

I worked for The Hershey Company at their facility in Edgerton, Kansas. It was the plant that produces Dot's Pretzels.

Like most jobs I'd had in my life, the idea was simple: show up, do the work, go home at the end of the shift. I wasn't looking for a fight with Hershey. I was just trying to do my job.

But one day something happened that set everything in motion. And once it started, there was no turning back.

I already had documented foot neuropathy. The shifts were twelve hours long. In their own training videos, Hershey made it clear — they were responsible for providing rubber safety mats, and workers who needed them could request one. It said it right there in their own materials: if you need one, just ask.

Those mats were readily available in the production area. The same mats we stood on every night when the line was running. When the line was shut down, they were still there — lying on the floor, protecting nobody.

But every twenty-seven days, the production area would shut down for mandatory sanitation. When that happened, many of us were reassigned to the warehouse.

The warehouse floors were solid concrete. The mats we normally stood on were sitting just fifty feet away, protecting no one. The shifts were still twelve hours long.

So I asked for a mat. Just like the training video said to do.

Lee Timmons said no.

No explanation. Just no. Despite what the training video said. Despite what Hershey's own safety policies required.

He chose to refuse.

So I spent twelve hours on the dock floor. Standing on solid concrete with a documented neuropathy condition, while the rubber mats I needed lay fifty feet away doing nothing.

When I got home that morning I asked my wife to take a picture of the bottom of my foot. There it was — a small, pimple-sized blister. I didn't think too much of it. It was small. But I knew I had to report it.

It was the start of my three-day weekend. When it was time to go back, the first thing I did was head for the managers' office. It was a group office — all the production managers and leads. My manager and lead were in there. So was Lee Timmons.

I was reporting my injury to my direct manager and lead. Out of nowhere, Lee jumped all over it.

For about forty minutes, he tried to manipulate my statement. His goal was to make me say my injury was the result of my neuropathy — not his decision to deny me a mat. I kept telling him my injury was caused by his choice to make me stand on concrete when the mats were right there. He kept pushing me to reword it. To blame myself. He knew my condition, and he had still refused to let me use a mat lying on a floor fifty feet away protecting no one.

It felt like an interrogation. Like I was on The First 48. The only thing that mattered was Lee Timmons' version of the truth.

After about forty minutes I told him I was done talking to him. He kept going. I refused to respond. He eventually dismissed me.

Lee was a retired Marine. A major. Claimed to have been an intelligence officer. He ruled that facility through intimidation. But I never laid down for him. I'm thinking that pissed him off. I was the old white guy he couldn't push around. He was going to break me one way or another.

I left his office believing I had done what I was supposed to do.

A few days later I went back to Lee and asked when they were sending me to a doctor.

He told me there was no doctor appointment. Because I had said my injury was my neuropathy.

That was a bold-faced lie.

I reported this to the HR lead at the facility. She said the report showed my injury as neuropathy — not work-related — and that I had stated that myself. I told her that was a lie. She said she would look into it. I never heard about it again.

Over the next couple of months I limped around. The small blister grew worse. It developed into a full-blown, rotting, ulcerated wound. My manager and lead tried to protect me — they avoided assigning me to the one workstation that didn't have a rubber mat. But when they weren't there, Lee Timmons made sure I ended up at that one spot.

That spot had a large window looking directly into it. Lee would stand in the office and watch me limp. Watch me suffer. Proud of himself.

That one spot was actually the easiest job on the line. People wanted it. Work at your own pace, no line to keep up with, a one-person job. There were fifteen to twenty other people he could have assigned there. He put me there. And he watched.

We argued several times about the reclassified injury and the refusal to get me treatment.

Eventually the head of safety spoke to me on a video conference. I mentioned the training video showing that mat requests were Hershey's responsibility to fulfill. He argued that the videos said no such thing. Then he ordered me to a forklift job. A stand-up forklift. He never looked at my foot. Never sent me to be examined. He just put me on a machine that required me to stand and operate with the very foot that was rotting.

That only made it worse. The pain destroyed my ability to focus. I had three accidents in the next three weeks. I should never have been put there. That was their decision. They made it knowing what they knew.

 

* * *

 

That is the story discovery will prove. The story I will be sharing with a jury.

But it is not the main story this book is about.

This book is about defending yourself from companies that hurt you — and hurt you, and hurt you — without consequences. Hershey hurt me worse than anything that has ever hurt me before. And when I tried to fight back, the first obstacle wasn't Hershey.

It was my own lawyer.

Roger Fincher was my workers' compensation attorney. From the time I hired him, I asked him — over and over — about suing Hershey for everything they had done. The ADA violations. The safety failures. The fraud on that injury report. The retaliation.

In an email I have, Roger himself documented that I asked him eighty-five times about pursuing those claims.

Every single time, he told me the same thing: I had nothing but workers' comp claims.

What I didn't know was that I had a 300-day deadline to file those other claims. I knew nothing about that timeline. I relied on my attorney's legal advice — as anyone would. And while I was relying on him, the clock was running out.

It was 420 days from the time I hired Roger Fincher before I even received the workers' comp doctor's report. Several months more before we settled. By then, every deadline had passed.

He killed my timelines.

At one point he told me Hershey was willing to throw in an extra three thousand dollars if I agreed to drop everything else.

Three thousand dollars. To walk away from all of it.

I've thought about that offer many times since. And I keep coming back to the same question.

Who was he working for?

I'm pretty sure it wasn't me.

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