King of Torts
By John Grisham
Doubleday, 2003 27.95
Clay is an attorney in the Washington, D.C. Office of the Public Defender. He has been there far too long and has dreams of a better job in a top legal firm with a salary to match.
Clay is assigned to the case of a young man charged with a gruesome street killing which he thinks is just another of the multitude of street killings that occur every month in D.C.
Clay starts to investigate it with a ho-hum attitude, but as he checks into the background of his new client, he discovers a cover-up that is too horrendous to belive.
A drug company has put a product on the market that has lethal side effects, causing murderous reactions in certain people. Clay is contacted by a smooth-talking man named Max Pace who is supposedly (operative word) representing a mega-corporation whose bad drug has been causing people to go berserk and kill.
Pace persuades Clay to accept $10 million to settle with all of the victims, on the hush-hush, of course. Clay briefly examines his conscience, then decides to quit his job with the public defenders’ office and set up his own firm. The media dubs him the “King of Torts.”
He accepts mass tort cases worth tens of millions in fees. Clay is rich — private jet and Porsche rich. Some proficient mass tort lawyers win billion dollar class action settlements from companies selling harmful products.
They then garner outlandish fees off the top, with much smaller settlements going to the victims that were harmed by these products.
This is a classic story of a good person gone bad. I found myself hoping he would come out like a good person and also get what was coming to him in the end.
Although this was not one of his best, if you like Grisham you will probably like this book.
Carolyn Lewis works part-time in The Pilot’s Carthage office.
