Free Cornered by Peter Pringle Page B

all-important instrument is the steering committee, and to get on it, you must be a decorated veteran of the bar or have clients. The more you have, the more clout you can command on the committee.
    Belli arrived in Bhopal declaring, “I am here to bring justice and money to these poor little people who have suffered at the hands of those rich sons of bitches,” but by then Coale had “fixed” the local mayor and had the names of 30,000 local people who had retained him as their lawyer. His story was that they had implored him to take their case as he walked around the devastated villages before the other American lawyers got there. He even claimed that “through an intermediary” he had been contacted in Washington by the mayor of Bhopal. What actually happened was that Coale, on arrival, had arranged to have an invitation typed up from the mayor’s office asking him to come to Bhopal “because of our business relationships and common problems.” It was backdated to the day after the accident.
    Coale returned to the U.S. to face the wrath of the more senior members of the bar, who considered him an irritating upstart. Chief among them were Stanley Chesley and Wendell Gauthier, neither of whom had been to India or, in fact, done anything more than attach themselves to Belli’s lawsuit. Chesley was co-counsel on Belli’s $15 billion suit and wanted Coale to hand over the names of his clients. Coale would receive a fee but not the riches he might earn if he got onto the committee. Once they had his names, Chesley and Gauthier were planning to settle out of court and walk away with a large percentage of the $350 million offered by the company.
    Sensing that Coale would not be a pushover, Gauthier, the consummate manager, asked him and a few other lawyers to lunch in New Orleans. Coale recalled, “Wendell sent his Rolls-Royce and an attractive legal assistant to meet me at the airport. I wasn’t impressed. I knew you could pick up an old Rolls for next to nothing.” Over lunch, Coale was noncommittal. He knew that if he simply handed over his client list he would be in on any deal, but he would be way down the line for a decent payoff.
    After lunch Gauthier took Coale aside and asked what he was going to do. Coale replied that he had had a lot of fun with the case, that it had been interesting for him watching how it all worked—the formation of the committee and so forth—but he was upset he wasn’t on the committee. Waiting outside the room, Coale told Gauthier, was a reporter from Playboy to whom he intended to give the whole story of the American lawyers seeking to settle the cases of the unfortunate Bhopal victims and make a bundle of money doing it. That was also a lie, but Gauthier and Chesley weren’t sure. They agreed to let Coale onto the committee. Coale struck his own deal for his clients names: 45 percent of the lawyers’ award money, when it came, and all his expenses—amounting to $80,000—for his trip to India. Coale was now a member of the club.
    As it turned out, none of the American lawyers made a cent. One of those who worked with Chesley and Gauthier was Mike Ciresi, then thirty-eight and a member of the big Minneapolis firm of Robins, Kaplan, Miller & Ciresi. Ciresi had earned his spurs in several landmark liability cases, including the 1985 Dalkon Shield contraceptive litigation that resulted in a settlement award of $38 million against the manufacturer, A. H. Robins Co. Unlike Chesley and Belli, Ciresi’s instincts were to spend a lot less time with the leaders of the committee and a lot more time checking out other opportunities. He got himself hired to represent the government of India in its own suit against Union Carbide. While the others were trying desperately to arrange a quick settlement in the United States, Ciresi was biding his time waiting for the case to be transferred back to India. He was sure that was