Objection! (12 page)

Because my number’s unlisted, I expected either a cop due up on the stand the next day calling about his subpoena or my investigator.

Wrong. On the other end of the line was a silky-smooth voice, like those deejays on late-night jazz stations.

“Hello, Nancy?”

No niceties on my part with unnamed callers. “Who is this?”

7 6

N A N C Y G R A C E

After a brief pause the caller continued, “I’m calling about your accident this morning. How do you feel? Any discomfort?”

“Who is this?”

“Just a friend inquiring if you have a lawyer?”

“Who is this? Because you’re talking to a felony prosecutor who’d love to nail you and the sleazebag lawyer you work for. I know you’re a runner. You give the law a bad name. Speaking of names, what’s yours?”

Click. If I hadn’t been headed into day two of a major felony prosecution, I may have actually tracked the call and busted him. That night, I was already worn out after day one of a murder trial and didn’t have time to stomp roaches. I had a jury to convince.

It’s not just the ambulance chasers who belly up to the trough. Re-spectable, silk-stocking lawyers can be just as bad. I won’t compare them to common streetwalkers, though. They’ve got more in common with the well-dressed hooker sitting at the bar in the Ritz nursing a Cosmo. Same profession, different uniform. Personal-injury lawyers take up to 40 percent of a client’s jury award or settlement. They’re those guys who represent litigants in car crashes, slip-and-falls, dog bites, medical malpractice, and emotional-distress cases. Think about it: Would you pay your real-estate agent, a headhunter, or even a waiter 40 percent of the tab? No way!

T A M I N G T H E B E A S T

I support a grass-roots
movement to stamp out exorbitant “contingency fees.” The two main objectives of this worthwhile mission: limiting how much clients must pay for an appeal of their case and placing caps on how much lawyers can make off pain-and-suffering awards. To date, such laws have passed in eleven states and are pending in twenty others. There has also been talk of tort reform that would lessen the incentive for ambulance chasing by limiting lawyers’ percentage of a O B J E C T I O N !

7 7

client’s jury-verdict award. I’m fully behind reducing the lawyer’s cut to a reasonable 10 to 20 percent of the gross award, as opposed to the whopping 33 to 40 percent they get now. In 1999, the top ten jury awards totaled almost $9 billion, up from $750 million two years before. Under the current contingency-fee framework, the lawyers took around $3 billion of that. The total of the top one hundred jury verdicts in 2002 was three and a half times greater than in 2001. Do the math—

if you can stomach it.

Contingency lawyers claim in their own defense that without them, there’s no one left to protect the so-called little guy. That could be a convincing argument if they, the lawyers, weren’t pickpocketing the little guy to grab huge fees for themselves!

Then there are cases that affect thousands of people: the massive class-action suits in cases like the phen-fen disaster, certain breast-implant cases, drug- and product-recall tragedies. In these instances, individuals join together in a single cause of action. Unfortunately, the truth is that the individual often gets a very small settlement while the lawyer gets a percentage of the overall award, often reaching into the millions. There’s something very wrong with that picture. The solution? The law must put caps on class-action lawyers’ fees. I’m not holding my breath waiting for that to happen, though, because the deep-pocket plaintiff’s lobby have a sympathetic ear in Congress and the state legislatures, because both bodies are populated by—you guessed it—lawyers!

Please don’t misunderstand me. There are serious, life-changing injuries, both physical and emotional, that call out for down-and-dirty lawsuits. Money awards in those cases serve justice in their own way. More power to those hauling the well-deserving to court and in front of a jury!

My disgust is reserved for the others who slither into court—the gluttons dining out on what Lady Justice blindly offers to everyone. They need to be stopped, as do those who believe the civil system is their own private piggy bank, their lucky lottery ticket. They are fueled by the avarice of lawyers who’ve traded in their law degrees for dollar signs. They give all 7 8

N A N C Y G R A C E

lawyers a bad name. Forget those sorry excuses for lawyers—they use and abuse Lady Justice as if she were a cheap one-night stand.

A U T H O R ! A U T H O R !

Jurors aren’t the only
ones who cash in by writing courtroom exposés.

After Louise Woodward’s “nanny trial,” I was reading through a mountain of court documents and found some civil plaintiff’s filings. One was a motion to stop Woodward from selling her story and making a profit. In a footnote, I was stunned to see all the books spawned from the Simpson trial offered as proof that everybody and their house cat is making money off the misery of others. The authors include old girlfriends, ex-wives of lawyers, a niece of Simpson’s, lawyers who had nothing at all to do with the case, of course jurors, witnesses, and detectives. Let’s not forget that Simpson himself did a pretrial book and an audio version in which he “answered” questions from fans who had written to him while he sat in jail. Take a look at the text from the footnote: Baker, Terry (with Kenneth Ross & Mary Jane Ross),
I’m Not
Dancing Anymore: O. J. Simpson’s Niece Breaks the Silence
(1997), New York: Kensington; Barbieri, Paula,
The Other Woman: My
Years with O. J. Simpson. A Story of Love, Trust, and Betrayal
(1997), New York: Little, Brown & Co.; Berry, Barbara Cochran (with Joanne Parrent),
Life After Johnnie Cochran: Why I Left the
Sweetest-Talking, Most Successful Black Lawyer in L.A.
(1995), New York: Basic Books; Clark, Marcia (with Teresa Carpenter),
Without a Doubt
(1997), New York: Viking Penguin; Cochran, Johnnie L. (with Tim Rutten),
Journey to Justice
(1996), New York: Ballantine Books; Cooley, Armanda; Bess, Carrie; & Rubin-Jackson, Marsha (as told to Tom Byrnes with Mike Walker),
Madam Foreman: A Rush to Judgment?
(1995), Beverly Hills, CA: Dove Books; Darden, Christopher (with Jess Walter),
In Contempt
O B J E C T I O N !

7 9

(1996), New York: ReganBooks; Dershowitz, Alan M.,
Reasonable
Doubts: The O. J. Simpson Case and the Criminal Justice System
(1996), New York: Simon & Schuster; Eliot, Marc,
Kato Kaelin:
The Whole Truth. The Real Story of O.J., Nicole, and Kato, from
the Actual Tape
(1995), New York: Harper Paperbacks; Fuhrman, Mark,
Murder in Brentwood
(1997), Washington, D.C.: Regnery Pub.; Goldberg, Hank M.,
The Prosecution Responds: An O. J.

Simpson Trial Prosecutor Reveals What Really Happened
(1996), Secaucus, NJ: Birch Lane Press; Goldman, The Family of Ron (with William and Marily Hoffer)
His Name Is Ron: Our Search for
Justice
(1997), New York: William Morrow & Co.; Kennedy, Tracy,

& Kennedy, Judith (with Alan Abrahamson),
Mistrial of the
Century: A Private Diary of the Jury System on Trial
(1995), Beverly Hills, CA: Dove Books; Knox, Michael (with Mike Walker),
The Private Diary of an O.J. Juror: Behind the Scenes of
the Trial of the Century
(1995), Beverly Hills, CA: Dove Books; Lange, Tom, & Vannatter, Phillip (as told to Dan E. Moldea),
Evidence Dismissed. The Inside Story of the Police Investigation of
O. J. Simpson
(1997), New York: Pocket Books; Persaud, Tara (with Lewis Smith),
O. J. Simpson Murder Case: The Story of the
Mystery Woman
(1997), Shippensburg, PA: Destiny Image Pub.; Resnick, Faye D. (with Mike Walker),
Nicole Brown Simpson: The
Private Diary of a Life Interrupted
(1994), Beverly Hills, CA: Dove Books; Resnick, Faye D. (with Jeanne V. Bell),
Shattered: In the
Eye of the Storm
(1996), Beverly Hills, CA: Dove Books; Shapiro, Robert L. (with Warren Larkin),
The Search for Justice: A Defense
Attorney’s Brief on the O. J. Simpson Case
(1996), New York: Warner Books; Simpson, O. J. (with Lawrence Schiller),
I Want to
Tell You: My Response to Your Letters, Your Messages, Your
Questions
(1995), New York: Warner Books; Thomas, Marguerite Simpson,
Life with O.J.
(1996), Avenal: Random House; Uelman, Gerald F.,
Lessons from the Trial: The People v. O. J. Simpson
(1996), Kansas City, MO: Andrews and McMeel.

8 0

N A N C Y G R A C E

It’s amazing that so many people are suddenly inspired by a literary muse after somebody else gets murdered. Although the Simpson defense team holds the record for killing the most trees, plenty of other defense attorneys have gotten into the publishing business. Timothy McVeigh and his lead defense attorney, Stephen Jones, locked horns in a bitter lawsuit when the condemned Oklahoma City bomber learned a week before his 1998 sentencing that his own lawyer had signed a deal with Doubleday to write a book about the trial. Jones landed a nonre-turnable advance of $600,000. McVeigh’s appeal attorneys argued Jones had violated Colorado (the trial was held in Denver) and Oklahoma rules of conduct for lawyers. For his part, McVeigh said in a court filing that the book deal added a “sense of betrayal” to a “deep feeling of distrust” that he already had for Jones.

O U T R A G E O U S F O R T U N E S

Looking to make a
quick buck? Hang out at the courthouse or, better yet, take the witness stand. Brian “Kato” Kaelin became the nation’s most famous houseguest during the Simpson trial. A day on the witness stand became the basis for an entire career. Using his newfound fame as a springboard, the shaggy-haired aspiring actor scored a morning radio show in L.A. and acting gigs on shows like
Roseanne
and Show-time’s
Beggars and Choosers
, where he had a two-year stint. He even popped up in several B movies on the big screen. Now, there’s a witness who went far. I wonder how the families of Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman feel about his celebrity status—especially since he saved his real impressions on who murdered Brown and Goldman for after the trial.

Years later, he told Barbara Walters, “I believe in my heart [Simpson] is guilty.” He did, however, make sure to set the story straight when the
National Examiner
proclaimed in a cover story during the trial that

“Cops Think Kato Did It!” Kaelin filed a $15 million libel lawsuit against the tabloid and settled for an undisclosed amount. Cha-ching!

O B J E C T I O N !

8 1

Speaking of pseudocelebrities fleecing the courthouse, remember Jessica Hahn? She’s the former church secretary who shot to fame after her affair with PTL televangelist Jim Bakker was exposed in 1987. She received $265,000 in hush money taken from the preacher’s ministry to keep quiet about their tryst. Bakker was booted from his TV ministry and indicted on charges of fraud and conspiracy. In 1989, he was convicted and sentenced to a forty-five-year prison term. His sentence was later reduced to eight years.

For her part, Hahn seized the media moment and capitalized on her infamy.
People
magazine inexplicably named her as one of the 25

Most Intriguing People of 1987. The following year, she bared all in
Playboy.
The Long Island native went on to launch her own 900-number phone line and popped up on television programs like
The
Howard Stern Show
and
Married . . . with Children.
While Bakker’s sexual shenanigans and tearful apology failed to ignite a tinderbox of television deals, Hahn milked her pop-culture curiosity status as long as she could.

To find one of the most blatant examples of cashing in on legal proceedings, you need look no further than the White House’s most infamous intern, Monica Lewinsky, whose affair with former president Bill Clinton resulted in his 1998 impeachment and made headlines around the world. In exchange for cooperation with special prosecutor Kenneth Starr’s investigation, she was granted immunity. Rather than maintain a low profile (heaven forbid!), Lewinsky grabbed on to her newfound celebrity and began showing up at glitzy parties, including
Vanity
Fair
’s annual Oscar bash in Los Angeles. She’s been dining out on her role as “the other woman” ever since. She was reportedly paid $700,000 for an interview with Britain’s Channel 4, where she recounted her version of her affair with the former president.

Lewinsky also told her side of the soap opera in the 1999 book
Monica’s Story
and launched a career designing handbags sold in a few stores and on her own Web site. HBO coughed up plenty for her first-person account in a special entitled
Monica in Black and White.
In 8 2

N A N C Y G R A C E

1999, she landed a contract as a public spokesperson for Jenny Craig but was dropped by the weight-loss company just a few months later, after the public made clear they weren’t buying her as a role model even if it was just for a diet program. Undeterred, in 2003, Lewinsky signed on to host the reality show
Mr. Personality
on Fox, where she handed out—believe it or not—advice on dating.

Lewinsky is still wringing every last penny out of an experience from which most people would desperately try to distance themselves.

In 2004, reports surfaced that Lewinsky was selling her story to Hollywood and wanted actress Mandy Moore to star in the film. Stories circulated that two different movies would be made: a racy one for foreign audiences and a tamer version to be shown here on U.S. cable television. A momentary lapse of good taste? Stay tuned.