Free Cornered by Peter Pringle

Cabraser & Heimann.
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    I N HIS RECRUITING , Gauthier turned first to his Louisiana colleagues, many of them friends of Castano. But he knew he also needed some of the better-known members of the plaintiffs’ bar, the celebrity lawyers. As always in liability cases, propaganda would be a key weapon. Gauthier’s friend and grand old tort campaigner Melvin Belli, then eighty-seven years old, was an obvious choice. Belli was the living symbol of the flamboyant trial lawyer, with his yacht and his cowboy boots and his pen with gold ink and the sign outside his San Francisco office that proclaimed the title of his single-partner law firm as “Belli, Belli and Belli.” And he was no novice to tobacco litigation. He had brought his first tobacco case to trial in Louisiana in 1958 during the First Wave of cases. He lost. But he tried again in 1985. Again he lost. But over five decades Belli had left his mark on the profession. He had pioneered a powerful weapon in the liability lawyer’s arsenal with the introduction of demonstrative evidence—the graphic and gory pictures of personal injuries—and these had doubtless influenced jurors. It was his prompt arrival at the sites of air crashes and hotel fires that had given rise to the universal nickname for his colleagues—ambulance chasers. “I’m not an ambulance chaser,” Belli once complained, “I always get there before the ambulance arrives.”
    Among Gauthier’s other important recruits was Elizabeth Cabraser of the San Francisco firm of Lieff, Cabraser & Heimann. The firm had started in 1972 with three attorneys; by the beginning of 1994, it had emerged as a national player in lucrative class-action cases. Robert Lieff, the managing partner, acquired his taste for big-case hunting when he worked with Belli in the 1960s handling securities class actions and commercial litigation. Cabraser had joined the firm in 1977 as a summer law clerk. She was of a different generation than Belli but had instantly won the admiration of her colleagues for her prodigious memory of case history and class-action procedures.
    Despite her fragile appearance—she’s so tiny she looks as though she might be blown over in a gust of wind—Cabraser was as robust and competitive as any of the trial lawyers. She had even adopted some of the trappings of her trade—including a purple Mercedes-Benz 300E whose license plates read FRCP 23—the federal rules of procedure governing class actions. She was known for working through the night and sleeping on a couch in her office on the top floor of a thirty-story high-rise overlooking Alcatraz and the Bay. Robert Lieff, her admiring managing partner, installed a shower especially for Cabraser’s nocturnal bouts.
    Cabraser had also been on the short list for a judgeship on California’s northern bench, and her colleagues thought she was more than qualified. She wasn’t chosen—she thinks because of philosophical differences with Senator Dianne Feinstein, especially over the death penalty. Cabraser opposes it, Feinstein is for it. Cabraser has also said one reason she was turned down was because she is openly gay.
    Pragmatic and serious, she has a strong social conscience. To any liability class action, Cabraser would bring a well-defined concept of her role. “I don’t think that corporations are the guardians and insurers of American health, welfare, and safety,” she has said, “but they do have a responsibility not to hurt people if they can help it. And they can actually help it.”
    Gauthier’s next call was to Stanley Chesley of Cincinnati, who is one of the least liked of the leading members of the plaintiffs’ inner circle, mainly because of his seemingly uncontrolled vanity and relentless name-dropping. Chesley is a big contributor to local charities as well as to the Democratic Party, which has earned him