On November 15, 1933, a then twenty-six year old Melvin Belli was formally sworn in as a member of the California State Bar. Sixty-three years, seven months, and twenty-four days later–nineteen days short of his 89th birthday–Melvin Belli died in the midst of bankruptcy litigation regarding his continuing ability to manage his firm.
In the interim, depending upon your point of view, Melvin Belli became a legend or an outlaw, the greatest trial lawyer of modern times or the biggest ham ever to walk into a courtroom.
To some, he was the “King of Torts,” the father of demonstrative evidence, the dean of medical malpractice, the fighter for the “little guy.” To others, he was a flamboyant, cocky, reckless lawyer who cared more about publicity and self-promotion than about his clients. I think there’s some truth to both sides. I should know. I had the rare privilege of knowing the real Melvin Belli.
In September, 1979, about six weeks after taking the California bar exam, I went to work for Melvin Belli in the historic Belli Building built in the 1840′s on the then infamous San Francisco Barbary Coast. I worked directly for Mr. Belli, not the firm. My office was in the basement, which I fondly called “the dungeon.” I didn’t mind. There was a spiral staircase connecting our two offices, and I heard everything that was said in his office. That itself was quite a learning experience.
I was hired to help him revise Modern Trials, his landmark work on tort law, trial techniques, and demonstrative evidence that was originally published in 1954, a year before I was born. During the first months of working for Mr. Belli, I kept a low profile, just doing my research and writing the best I could. After six months, Mr. Belli finally took me into his confidence. Our relationship slowly developed into one of which I have often called “father-son,” but it went much deeper than that.
When I began working for him in 1979, Melvin Belli was 72 years old. His mind was still sharp, his energy could be boundless (although he would sometimes fall asleep in his office in the afternoon, especially after a heavy lunch that included several full glasses of the best wine produced by California’s Napa and Sonoma Valleys vineyards), and his mood was unpredictable and stormy. One second he could charm the shirt off your back; the next he could turn on you like a rabid dog. I was fortunate: we always got along and never did an unkind word pass between us.
But at 72, Melvin Belli’s legendary days of hard drinking and womanizing were long gone. His life was really quite conservative when I knew him best. Some days his age would catch up with him and it was painful watching him struggle to walk. He would get angry with himself for forgetting things, for not having the same mental acuity and abilities he had had at his peak. He knew that Father Time was deteriorating his skills and ability as a lawyer, but he tried to deny it and fought it with all his might.
One of the best things about my relationship with Melvin Belli was that, at least once or twice a week when he was in town, he and I would go out for a two- or three-hour lunch by ourselves. This was quite an honor, since he usually went to lunch with a rather large entourage.
During our private lunches, Mr. Belli and I would chat about how the book, article, speech, etc., I was writing at the time was going, and how his cases were coming along. The best times, though, were when he had had a bit too much of the grape and fondly and longingly reminisced about long-ago cases and colleagues, friends, and celebrities he had known, many of whom had passed away years ago.
I remember an interview with George Burns a few years before he died, and he was asked what the worst thing about growing old was. Mr. Burns replied that it was missing all of the old friends from the early days, when everyone was struggling to make it, yet they were a close-knit family with an unbreakable bond. I knew Melvin Belli felt the same way about all of his colleagues who had died years earlier.
Melvin Belli liked to regale the media with his celebrated cases and drop names whenever he could. But when the two of us were alone at lunch, the cases he liked to talk most about–and seemed proudest of–were his earlier cases helping the average person, the “little guy” who had no money or power to fight the big corporations. Cases such as the diner waitress who picked up an unopened bottle of Coca-Cola which shattered in her hand, seriously injuring her, or the longshoreman who lost a leg because of a defective forklift. The blue-collar guy who was working long hours for small pay to put sausage or spaghetti on the table for his family; that was the person Melvin Belli loved to represent–especially if there was a large corporation or doctor on the other side.
Melvin Belli loved to talk about the early days when awards were minuscule and how he slowly got them raised. He told me about how he used demonstrative evidence to get a jury to award $5,000 for a client who had lost an arm, when the highest verdict before that was $3,000, and how in his next case he managed to obtain $7,500, then $10,000 for the same type of injury.
His whole life was based around getting his client an “adequate award.” He was not interested in the excessive award, at least not in the old days; all he wanted was that amount of money which fairly and reasonably compensated his clients for the losses they had suffered.
He told me how hard it was in the old days to win even the most obvious cases of medical malpractice, because the doctors’ “code of silence” was so strong it was nearly impossible to get a doctor to testify against a colleague. He often used a doctor he referred to variously as “sober-him-up” Smith or “clean-him-up” Smith, to whom the defense lawyer’s first question always was, “Are you still on probation, Dr. Smith?”
Another story he told me concerned a doctor he had brought into the office to interview as a potential expert witness. After explaining the case and the client’s injuries, the doctor went on a thirty-minute detailed explanation about the cause of the injuries and their severity, or rather lack thereof. After the doctor had finished, Mr. Belli said, “I’m afraid we won’t be able to use you, because that’s exactly what the insurance company is going to say.”
The doctor did a complete 180 and said, “Oh, I was just telling you what the insurance company’s doctor will testify to. Now in my opinion, . . ..” Mr. Belli used the doctor, won a large verdict, and the doctor was paid handsomely. One can’t be too critical of Melvin Belli for this episode, because, unfortunately, as we all know, this practice still occurs all too frequently today–on both sides.
At our luncheons, Melvin Belli would recount stories of his pioneering works in the use of demonstrative evidence, discovery procedures, and trial techniques. For instance, he told me how he was one of the first–if not in fact the first–attorneys to utilize a videotaped deposition in the case of Buehler v. Hilton in the 1950s. (In reality, it was not videotaped but recorded using the latest motion picture equipment of the day.) The plaintiff’s arm and leg had been cut off by the propeller when she was thrown out of hotel magnate Conrad Hilton’s speed boat while racing along the waters of Lake Arrowhead in the mountains east of Los Angeles. The jury awarded Ms. Buehler $265,000.00, probably the highest award to that date for the type of injuries she suffered.
As for Melvin Belli’s oratorical skills, I think the Houston Post said it best when it described his summation in the notorious case of Jack Ruby, the accused murderer of Presidential assassin Lee Harvey Oswald:
Gifted by nature with a velvety, hypnotic voice that could charm cobras out of their baskets . . . he played that voice like a symphony. It was by turns a Stradivarius, a bugle, an oboe, a snare drum racing at breakneck speed though the key pages of the trial testimony.
Besides his innovations in the use of demonstrative evidence, Melvin Belli also made important changes to the substantive law with his many books, articles, and cases. One important case in particular was Escola v. Coca Cola,1 a 1944 decision of the California Supreme Court. In that case, then Associate Justice Roger Traynor laid out in a concurring opinion the rule of strict products liability that would ultimately be adopted nearly twenty years later by the California Supreme Court in Greenman v. Yuba Power Products, Inc.2 Not long after, the drafters of the Restatement (Second) of Torts expressly adopted this rule in section 402(a).
Melvin Belli had many important victories over his lifetime, but he also had his share of losses, sometimes with devastating effects. For instance, one time he lost a wrongful death case and, after the verdict was read, the widow went home and committed suicide. Mr. Belli was devastated by this and blamed himself for her death, even though he had done everything he could to win at trial and was completely blameless.
I talked with him a few hours after he learned of the tragic news of the widow’s suicide. The depth of sorrow and guilt in his voice that day is indescribable. He cared for his clients, deeply and sincerely, as if they were members of his own family.
One day I was in Mr. Belli’s office when a reporter asked him whether he was an ambulance chaser. With his usual playfulness, Mr. Belli instantly roared: “Hell, no. I get there first! I wouldn’t be much of a lawyer if I didn’t. The next person who says I’m an ambulance chaser I’m going to sue for defamation!” The reporters, cameramen, and their assistants laughed uproariously.
Melvin Belli didn’t need to chase cases. Every day he would receive dozens of letters and the phones would ring off the hooks with calls from prospective clients wanting to be represented by the legendary lawyer. And every day attorneys from around the country would call to see if they could refer a case to Mr. Belli, or to ask Mr. Belli if he would associate in on a case with them and the two of them could try the case together.
Still that wasn’t enough to stop Melvin Belli from joining in the race for the roses in a big disaster. And he wasn’t always subtle about it, either. Probably the most obvious example was when a plane went down in Dallas, and he went so far as to rent a suite for use as an office in the same hotel the airliner was putting up the families of the dead.
But if you’re going to criticize Melvin Belli for rushing to the scene of a disaster, you’re also going to have to criticize hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of other lawyers for doing the same thing. Every time an airliner goes down or a hotel goes up in fire, or there is some other disaster, within hours lawyers from across the country are on the scene, using motor homes, folding tables and chairs, or whatever they can find as their “offices.”
Part of the game in a mass disaster is to sign up the first client and hold the first press conference, hoping that the exposure will result in other potential clients contacting you. Melvin Belli was a master of this technique, and enjoyed the added bonus of a great working relationship with the media that he had nurtured over many years. Every reporter knew that, if they were looking for a good quote, Melvin Belli was their man. So as soon as he arrived at the “scene of the crime,” reporters would scramble to get a sound bite from him to air on the evening news.
In all fairness, no matter how quickly they got there, Melvin Belli and the other plaintiffs’ lawyers still arrived on the scene hours after the insurance company’s adjusters and “grief counselors” had already visited each family, telling them that they didn’t need to hire a lawyer right away–especially not a big-time attorney–as they would help them through their grief and provide for them during this difficult period and “do right” by them.
The publicity in the last ten years of Melvin Belli’s life was more often on the negative side, focusing on Mr. Belli’s personal and professional turmoil and deteriorating skills. What gets lost is the tremendous contribution he made to the law over six decades. For the many years he was at or near his peak, he was without a doubt the best trial lawyer in the country, the Clarence Darrow of modern times, the last of a now-vanished breed.
And unlike a lot of other successful lawyers, Melvin Belli gave a lot back in return. If his schedule could accommodate it, he would rarely turn down an invitation to speak at a law school, local bar meeting, women’s garden club, or anywhere else that wanted to have him. And unlike today’s lawyers turned celebrities, he didn’t charge for his appearances. In fact, he often paid his own way. He just wanted to share his love for the law.
In the mid-1940s, Melvin Belli and a handful of other lawyers banded together and formed the National Association of Claimant and Compensation Attorneys (NACCA). This small group eventually evolved into today’s Association of Trial Lawyers of America, over 70,000 members strong but still true to the original intent of amity among plaintiffs’ lawyers, who find it much more effective to work together to fight Melvin Belli’s arch nemesis, the old “Holy Grail Insurance Company.” In 1950 and 1951, Mel even found the time to serve as President of ATLA.
Long-time members of ATLA will undoubtedly fondly recall years of attending the annual Belli Seminar, a two-day whirlwind at which top lawyers from around the country would talk ten or fifteen minutes about the latest trial victory, offering their secret strategies to a thousand or more lawyers who dared not leave their seat lest they miss the key advice that just might help them win their next case.
Every year it was chaos: Mel would always invite more speakers than could possibly be accommodated even in a week, let alone two days. Feelings were hurt, and egos were crushed of those who had been personally invited by Mel but didn’t get to speak because there simply wasn’t enough time for them. But come the next year, all would be forgotten and forgiven.
During his life, Melvin Belli did more to help the underdog and raise public awareness than anyone else. He was the original consumer protectionist. It is to him that people like Ralph Nader owe a great debt, as his efforts made their jobs much easier.
Every consumer and consumer lawyer should take a moment of silence to thank Melvin Belli for his never-ending crusade to make the world a safer–and better–place to live. I’m sure that many insurance companies, manufacturers, doctors, and their defense lawyers have already thanked God that Melvin Belli’s gone.
About 10 years before his death, I had secretly started wishing that Mr. Belli would just retire and become the elder statesman of law, making the rounds at law schools, colleges, television and radio talk shows, or become a legal analyst for a television network. Nonetheless, I always said that Mr. Belli would never retire, because law was his life, his love, his soul, indeed, his very reason for being. If he couldn’t practice law, I used to say, he would be dead the next day.
On July 3, 1996, a bankruptcy judge ruled that Melvin Belli was unfit to run his own office, and appointed a financial examiner to supervise the bankruptcy of Mr. Belli’s firm, which was allegedly heavily in debt. Six days later, Melvin Belli died.
After an autopsy amid suggestions of a “suspicious death,” the coroner listed hypertension and coronary disease as the official cause of death. Mr. Belli was also suffering from pancreatic cancer and pneumonia at the time, and had had a severe stroke a month or so earlier. But none of these killed Melvin Belli.
What killed Melvin Belli was the heartbreak of essentially being told that he was no longer competent to be a lawyer. The judge’s decision that Melvin Belli was unfit to manage his own law office was the death knell’s toll that killed him six days later.
I always thought he would die a more romantic death, in his sleep on an airliner coming home from Tibet, or at the end of an impassioned plea to save his client from the gallows–which his detractors would most likely criticize as just another gimmick to gain the jurors’ sympathy for his client.
One sad note is that Mr. Belli did not live long enough to see the tobacco industry finally brought to justice. He started battling the cigarette companies in the 1960s, claiming back then that nicotine was addictive and smoking causes lung cancer and other diseases. The day is coming closer that the tobacco industry will have to face the music. When the cases start going against the cigarette companies, I will take solace in the fact that the first refrains were written by Melvin Belli.
As for me, I found Mel to be a legal genius on one hand, and a constant attention-seeker on the other. Maybe it was the “only child” syndrome. I don’t know. Mel would sometimes resort to near buffoonery, and the media would rather write about his flamboyancies than his serious contributions to the law because it was more colorful and made better “copy.”
Mel, to me, was a dear, kind man, as loving as he could possibly be toward anyone. But deep down, Mel was an extremely lonely person with few, if any, real friends. I think that Mel may have had a deep fear of personal rejection which caused him to reject his friends and wives before, he feared, they rejected him. Yet whatever personal faults he may have had, Melvin Belli did more for tort law and consumers than any lawyer had and probably ever will single-handedly. The world is a better–and safer–place thanks to Melvin Belli, words that can be said of very few people.
Some years ago, after a particularly horrendous natural disaster had resulted in the loss of thousands of lives, one political cartoon depicted Melvin Belli, briefcase in hand, standing on the top of a mountain, with the words booming across the sky, “It’s Melvin Belli to see you, Lord.”
That’s the kind of person Melvin Belli was. He didn’t care whom he had to sue or whose feet he had to step on to get justice for the little guy. I imagine that in heaven now, he’s already got a complaint filed and depositions scheduled.
FOOTNOTES
1. 24 Cal.2d 453, 461 (1944) (Traynor, J., concurring).
2. 59 Cal.2d 57 (1983)