The King of Torts

The Ha

After fifty years of sound management, the company employed four thousand of the eleven thousand residents of the town. A

Marcus Ha

On the day the lawsuit arrived, Marcus was in a meeting with his first cousin, Joel Ha

“Are you Marcus Ha

“I am. Who are you?”

“A process server. Here’s your lawsuit.” He handed it over and left.

It was an action filed in Howard County, Maryland, seeking unspecified damages for a class of homeowners claiming damages due to defective Portland mortar cement manufactured by Ha

A quick search by a secretary found an impressive collection of recent articles about the plaintiffs’ attorney, a certain Clay Carter from D.C.

It was no surprise that there was trouble in Howard County. A bad batch of their Portland cement had found its way there several years earlier. Through the normal cha

They had inspected several of the homes. Current thinking put the number of potential claims at five hundred, and the cost of repairing each unit at about $12,000. The company had product liability insurance that would cover the first $5 million in claims.

But the lawsuit purported to include a class of “at least two thousand potential claimants,” each seeking $25,000 in actual damages.

“That’s fifty million,” Marcus said.

“And the damned lawyer will rake forty percent off the top,” added Joel.

“He can’t do that,” Marcus said.

“They do it every day.”

More generalized cursing of lawyers. Then some specifics aimed at Mr. Carter. Joel left with the lawsuit. He would notify their insurance carrier who would assign it to a litigation firm, probably one in Philadelphia. It happened at least once a year, but never one this big. Because the damages sought were much higher than the insurance coverage, Ha

The full-page ad in the Larkin Gazette caused quite a stir in the small town hidden from the world in the mountains of southwest Virginia. Because Larkin had three factories it had slightly more than ten thousand people, a regular population center in the mining country. Ten thousand was the threshold for full-page ads and Ski

According to the ad, the screening would take place the following day at a motel north of town and would be conducted by a medical doctor, a real physician. It was free. It was available to any person who had taken benafoxadil, aka Ski

At the bottom of the page, in smaller print, the name, address, and phone number of the D.C. Law Offices of J. Clay Carter II were given, though by the time most readers got that far they had either quit or were too excited about the screening.

Nora Tackett lived in a mobile home a mile outside Larkin. She did not see the ad because she did not read newspapers. She read nothing. She watched television sixteen hours a day, most of the time while eating. Nora lived with the two stepchildren her ex-husband had left behind when he hit the road two years earlier. They were his kids, not hers, and she was still not sure exactly how she’d come to possess them. But he was gone; not a word, not a dime for child support, not a card or a letter or a phone call to check on the two brats he’d forgotten when he fled. And so she ate.

She became a client of J. Clay Carter when her sister saw the Larkin Gazette and arranged to come fetch her for the screening. Nora had taken Ski

Her sister loaded her into a minivan and thrust the full-page ad in front of her. “Read this,” MaryBeth demanded. MaryBeth had started down the road to obesity twenty years earlier, but a stroke at the age of twenty-six had been her wake-up call. She was tired of preaching to Nora; they’d fought for years. And they began fighting as they drove through Larkin and headed for the motel.

The Village I

Third in his class at Yale Law School! Wined and dined by the blue-chip firms on Wall Street and the heavyweights in Washington. His father was a prominent doctor in Buffalo. His uncle was on the Vermont Supreme Court. His brother was a partner in one of the most lucrative entertainment law firms in Manhattan.

His wife was embarrassed that he was off again in the boondocks chasing cases. And so was he!

His tag-team partner was a Bolivian intern who spoke English but did so with an accent so thick even his “Good Mornings” were hard to understand. He was twenty-five and looked sixteen, even in his green hospital scrubs, which Oscar insisted he wear for credibility. Med school had been on the Caribbean island of Grenada. He’d found Dr. Livan in the want-ads and was paying him the stiff sum of $2,000 a day.