His lawsuit against a funeral industry giant produced a $500-Million verdict and brought him national recognition.
Profiles of Stuart lawyer Willie Gary -- and there are piles of them -- almost inevitably begin with show and tell. There is the desk, handcrafted in England from mahogany he selected himself; the office, a dark-paneled sanctuary of carved and polished wood with claw-footed furniture, an elegant marble fireplace and a full-service bar. One of his cars is a cream-colored Rolls Royce. And no one fails to mention the plane: a 16-passenger, leather-upholstered Gulfstream with table settings by Lenox and Waterford. There's no mistaking it for that of some other corporate jet setter -- Willie E. Gary's signature is painted right there on the fuselage below the jet's moniker, "Wings of Justice."
Gary clearly likes to make an impression. But more than a decade after cashing his first million-dollar paycheck, he still seems genuinely delighted by his own success. "I'm a goal-setter," he says, flipping open a binder to a brochure for a Boeing 737. "That's my goal. It's gonna have a full bedroom and three bathrooms."
That's three bathrooms more than he had throughout much of his childhood as one of 11 children in a family that -- after losing a 200-acre farm to medical bills associated with Gary's birth -- earned its living as migrant farmworkers. Upward mobility was a two-room shack and a produce business in Indiantown in 1960. But from there, Gary managed to finish high school, talk his way into a college football scholarship and go on to law school.
Gary's skills in the courtroom were evident from the start. After a brief career as a public defender, he began doing civil work and put together a steady record of winning auto accident and personal injury cases. In 1985, he negotiated a settlement with Florida Power & Light for the accidental electrocution deaths of seven family members in Jupiter. The confidential settlement was reportedly in the range of $50 million, and Gary's profile rose considerably.
But it was his representation of a Mississippi funeral home operator in 1995 that brought him national recognition. Gary's client sued the Canadian-based funeral industry giant Loewen Group for allegedly trying to force him out of business. The trial lasted seven weeks. When it was over, Gary had a verdict for $500 million.
His style is described as that of a courtroom preacher, his voice rising and falling in simple, but emotionally provocative descriptions, for example: "He was just an ordinary truck driver, but he was a good man." In 1997, Gary was named American Lawyer magazine's lawyer of the year.
Gary has had more than finances to overcome. He suffers from dyslexia, and even today, reading is a struggle. He relies on his partners to do legal research, then reviews it with them, taking detailed notes. His courtroom notes and speeches are typed out for him in large type and he prepares endlessly. F. Shields McManus, a partner of Gary's since 1993, says Gary works his partners to exhaustion in preparing for a trial, then continues to rehearse long after they've called it quits. "I thought I was a hard worker until I started working here," McManus says.
Though he doesn't advertise on TV, billboards or radio, Gary is not above self-promotion. He doesn't go anywhere without a stack of glossy booklets and videos heralding his rise "from migrant worker to multimillionaire."
W.C. Gentry: Meticulous
He'll forgo a big payout if a cause stirs his passions.
Outside the courtroom, Jacksonville attorney W.C. Gentry doesn't fit the image of the flashy, limelight-seeking plaintiffs lawyer. Case in point: When he won a then-record $16-million jury verdict in a wrongful death suit against International Harvester in 1982, few people outside the plaintiffs bar heard about it -- which is just the way Gentry likes it.
He refuses to have his picture taken in front of his riverfront home. "I don't own a yacht," he says, promptly ending any talk of getting him to pose with something, anything, to represent the wealth he has amassed over a quarter of a century as a personal injury lawyer.
Fact is, he doesn't hesitate to forgo a big payout if he finds an issue that engages him. In 1987, he took on Jacksonville's paper mills -- pro bono -- as a favor to his former high school classmate and then-Mayor Tommy Hazouri, who had vowed to eliminate the city's odor problem. Two years later, the paper mills agreed to clean up their emissions. "We were squeezing the hell out of them," Gentry recalls. "It was a full-court press."
The win was especially sweet for Gentry, who grew up on Talleyrand Avenue down the street from one of the mills. He vividly remembers the noxious smell.
Gentry is renowned for meticulous preparation. He once learned to scuba dive in order to better represent the family of a man who died in an underwater accident. He's adept at filing appeals, something many trial attorneys pass off to specialists in appellate cases. And, unlike many trial attorneys who prefer to appear in court solo, Gentry always appears with his longtime law partner Kitty Phillips, a former nurse.
Gentry has been thinking about the next challenge. He submitted his name for an opening on the Florida Supreme Court, but didn't make the cut. For now, he's busy plotting a legal challenge to tort reform laws passed by the Florida Legislature earlier this year.
Gentry might run for the Florida Senate. He's especially intrigued about a race that would pit him against one of his biggest foes, Speaker of the House John Thrasher, a former general counsel for a medical malpractice insuror and the Florida Medical Association.
Stuart Z. Grossman: 27 Years, 3 Losses
"I don't need a goddamn jury consultant to tell me who the perfect jury is going to be because I'm not going to get a perfect jury."
The doctor sits between his lawyers, staring out across the courtroom at nothing in particular, looking miserable. He has an excellent lawyer and, by insurance industry statistics, a better than 70% chance of vindication. His patient had a preexisting condition and died of a relatively common infection.
But none of these things will save him from the soft-spoken, gray-bearded man who is quietly winning over a group of prospective jurors across from him. Stuart Grossman does jury selection the old-fashioned way: No Ph.D. consultants advise him ("never, ever, ever"), and he doesn't have a private investigator prying into their backgrounds.
"I'm not going to ask a question that someone else tells me to ask," he says. "I don't need a goddamn jury consultant to tell me who the perfect jury is going to be, because I'm not going to get a perfect jury."
Instead, Grossman says he goes on instinct. What shows is the charm. Leaning casually against a podium, he speaks in a quiet, conversational tone. And then apologizes for it. "My mother always had to tell me to speak up," he says. A week later, he wins an $8-million verdict.
For Grossman, the process is largely about convincing jurors to choose him, or at least his version of the case. They usually do. In 27 years, he has lost three cases -- not bad for a guy who never really wanted to be a lawyer.
Grossman was serving in the Coast Guard's search and rescue division when he decided to give law school a try. He didn't really like it until he met J.B. Spence, the legendary Miami plaintiffs lawyer who later offered him a job.
Grossman found his niche -- and his fortune. Today, he and partner Neal Roth won't even take a case unless it's worth at least half-a-million.
But once they do, they spare no expense in preparing every case for trial. He'd much rather go to trial than negotiate a settlement: "I'm the world's worst settler," he says.
Grossman's career has not been spotless. In 1993, he suffered the embarrassment of a client who faked mental and physical injuries and won a $2.6-million verdict against a neurosurgeon who allegedly had botched a back operation. Following the verdict, the neurosurgeon hired a private detective and obtained videotape of the man working on his yacht and carrying luggage up stairs.
Though both the Florida Bar and the trial judge concluded Grossman and his partner were not to blame, the tape made national television, sent Grossman's client to jail and buoyed tort reform efforts across the country.
Wayne Hogan: Finding Answers
Next on his agenda: helping mount a challenge to
tort reform
At first glance, it's hard to imagine Wayne Hogan prowling a courtroom, pouncing on discrepancies in a corporate defendant's testimony. Here, sitting in a small conference room in his law firm's downtown Jacksonville suite of offices, he answers questions in a thoughtful, deliberate manner. There's little excitement, certainly no bravado. Hogan even seems shy, as he looks off in the distance, reaching for the right word, finally answering in a deep baritone.
Yet, Hogan, who stays trim surfing and playing tennis, is one of Florida's top trial attorneys. He doesn't succeed through courtroom guile; he wins by knowing the facts cold and empathizing with his clients. Being a good trial attorney is "a matter of real determination," he says. "You have to have a belief you are going to find the answer for your client."
Hogan made a name for himself in 1981 when he won a $1.8-million verdict against asbestos maker Johns Manville on behalf of a retired U.S. Navy sailor. Until then, Manville hadn't lost a court case in Florida. Manville appealed, while seeking to protect itself by filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization, but the verdict was upheld. "I'm comfortable with motion practice," Hogan says of his skills outside the courtroom. "I've handled all sorts of motions in different trial courts."
What he's not comfortable doing is talking about his financial successes. He politely declines to reveal his biggest verdict. For his role in the Florida suit against Big Tobacco, he and his firm will collect about $180 million over a yet-to-be-determined number of years.
Hogan grew up in St. Augustine. His father was a line repairman for Southern Bell and a union man. In high school, Hogan had thoughts of one day becoming a politician. Strapped for money, he attended St. Johns River Community College in Palatka for two years before transferring to Florida State University, where he received his bachelor's and law degrees. He is contributing $1 million to the law school and another million in scholarships to graduates of St. Johns public high schools and the community college.
For now, Hogan plans to continue his law practice. He's working with his friend and fellow Jacksonville trial attorney W.C. Gentry to mount a challenge to this year's tort reform package. He surfs when possible near his mother's home in Crescent Beach. Dreams of a political life have faded. "What I know to do is practice law," he says.
Jon Krupnick: Show and Tell
The "king of demonstrative evidence" doesn't leave much to the jury's imagination.
When Fort Lauderdale lawyer Jon Krupnick describes the scene of the accident, it's as if you are there. That's because, if you are a juror in one of his cases, he probably has had it built for you in painstaking detail. To say that Krupnick has an eye for details is like saying Clarence Darrow had a way with words.
A 5,000-sq.-ft. warehouse in Fort Lauderdale testifies to Krupnick's obsession, a penchant that has earned him the nickname "the king of demonstrative evidence." It is a museum of tragedy, crammed full of wreckage and the meticulously reproduced models of accident scenes and defective machinery. For an accident case involving a Ford Bronco, Krupnick reproduced the entire accident scene, including both cars. It was too big for the courthouse, So Krupnick had a courtroom built in his warehouse, complete with jury box and judge's bench.
Krupnick does not believe in leaving much to the jury's imagination. For the case of a client who lost his arm in a woodchipper, Krupnick had a full-size model of the machine built, then he climbed in to demonstrate the impossibility of a defense theory that the man had climbed into it on his stomach, intending to commit suicide.
Krupnick began his career doing defense work. He says he wasn't really that good at it, and he didn't like it much, either. Then in 1972, he happened to take a case involving a boating accident. It ended with Broward County's first ever million-dollar verdict. Two years later, he formed the 17-lawyer firm he works in today.
Krupnick declines to discuss finances in detail, but says it's a disappointing year if the firm's 10 partners earn less than $500,000. "If they're over $1 million, we're pleased." Then there was 1994. After 2 1/2 years of work, the firm settled a case against DuPont for the allegedly defective fungicide Benlate, for $214 million. The firm earned $34 million, after costs. Krupnick rewarded his staff with $1 million in bonuses.
Krupnick has found himself on the wrong end of the tort. In 1997, his firm was sued for malpractice over its handling of a case in which the lawyers agreed to waive punitive damages in exchange for an admission of liability in a train derailment case.
His clients, the children of a man who died in the accident, filed suit, alleging that the agreement not to seek punitive damages was negligence, as evidenced by the fact that a plaintiff suing over the same accident a few years later was awarded $50 million in punitive damages. The malpractice case resulted in a confidential settlement. Krupnick says the suit was meritless. His clients ended up with $2.8 million, which Krupnick says is a record-breaking verdict for adult children plaintiffs. And he says the appellate court came close to overturning the verdict as excessively high. He would not discuss his reasons for settling the case.
Fredric G. Levin: Lightning Rod
He's one of Florida's most controversial trial attorneys -- and has 30 verdicts in excess of $1 million
Fred Levin has his own way of preparing himself emotionally for trial. Moments before the judge enters the courtroom, Levin, sitting next to his client at the plaintiffs table, will bury his head in his hands and convince himself he's the heavyweight boxing champ of the world, and there's no one in this courtroom who can beat him.
Levin hadn't planned on becoming a trial lawyer.
He liked business and wanted to become a tax attorney, but changed his mind after winning his first trial shortly after graduating from law school. His client's house had burned down, and her insurance company offered her $17,500. A jury awarded her $50,000; Levin pocketed $7,000. "I thought, 'This is better than tax law,'" Levin says. "You don't have to be the brightest, but if you work hard enough and prepare, you can succeed."
By the mid-1970s, Levin was in full-stride. He won a $2.1-million suit against Kmart for giving the wrong prescription to a child. In 1981 he "hit" an $18-million verdict against a railroad in the wrongful death of a husband and wife. In all, he's had 30 verdicts in excess of $1 million.
Along the way, Levin has become one of Florida's more controversial trial attorneys and a lightning rod for critics of the plaintiffs bar.
The Florida Bar Association reprimanded Levin in 1991 for betting on football games. Two years later, the Florida Bar charged him with using inappropriate language during closing comments in two trials he won, but lost on appeal. A judge hearing the complaints eventually ruled in Levin's favor.
More recently, Levin stirred the ire of some of his fellow University of Florida Law School graduates when he donated $10 million in exchange for renaming the school after him. "He's always on the ethical fringes," says James Rinaman, a Jacksonville lawyer who publicly complained about the name change. "He's a loose cannon in the courtroom."
Why the attacks over the years? Levin says he doesn't know. He allows that he speaks his mind sometimes when he shouldn't. And he also hints that anti-Semitism plays a role. Regardless, the criticism hasn't slowed him down.
In addition to being his firm's "rainmaker" -- bringing in new business and trying two to three cases a year -- he also pursues his other passion: boxing. He manages Pensacola sensation Roy Jones Jr. and is in the midst of trying to create a new professional boxing league. A large orange and blue sign sitting on an easel in the corner of his spacious Pensacola office sums up his drive: "University of Florida's Fredric G. Levin College of Law." "Two hundred years from now," he says, "the great, great, great grandchildren (of my critics) will be getting their law degrees from a school with my name on it. It's a good feeling."
Robert Morel Montgomery Jr.: No Apologies to Anyone
He will pound a table and, in an Alabama drawl dripping with venom, zero in on an opponent's weaknesses.
In the midst of his campaign for $1.2 billion in tobacco suit fees two years ago, Bob Montgomery posed for a news photographer in the ballroom of his oceanfront Palm Beach mansion. He is surrounded by gold leaf and marble and the uncomfortable-looking furniture of the too rich.
A public relations consultant might have told him that was no setting from which to argue that he wasn't just another greedy plaintiffs lawyer arguing for an obscene amount of money. But then, Montgomery might have told the consultant to go pound sand.
Montgomery doesn't apologize to anyone for his success. His approach to the practice of law is equally blunt. Where many other trial lawyers hone a kind of low-key, even-tempered presence in the courtroom, Montgomery moves in for the kill. He will pound a table, and in an Alabama drawl dripping with venom, zero in on an opponent's weaknesses.
Depositions and cross-examinations are his forte. "He will bite you," says J.B. Spence, whose own record-breaking career as a plaintiffs lawyer earned him the nickname "dean of torts." Spence, who teaches trial technique at the University of Miami School of Law, says he advises his students to emulate the careful, soft-spoken style of a Chris Searcy or a Stuart Grossman. But he'd rather watch Montgomery. "You would be sitting on the edge of your seat," he says. "He's a terror in the courtroom."
Veteran insurance defense lawyer David W. Spicer of West Palm Beach says Montgomery is "the most dangerous" plaintiffs lawyer he has ever faced. "He's one of the most effective trial lawyers, I've ever seen," Spicer says. "He's just a bulldog. Absolutely no nonsense. He has the knack of taking a case and either getting the insurance company to pay what he wants or getting the jury to pay what he wants."
Montgomery has a similar sense of his own abilities. "By the time I am in that trial I absolutely feel invincible," he says. "I don't want to settle. I want to see a piece of paper with V-E-R-D-I-C-T. I want to try the goddamn case."
Like his peers, Montgomery also has the luxury of taking only the best and the biggest cases. But it's a luxury he's perfectly willing to squander to make a point. "If I get pissed off, it could be (worth) $1.80 and I'll take the case." He once sued a doctor who went around town bragging he would never be sued because he carried almost no liability insurance. "I took him on, and I broke his butt, too," Montgomery brags.
The son of an attorney from Birmingham, Ala., Montgomery's first taste of success was not as a plaintiffs lawyer. He was the self-described "darling of the insurance industry" for 18 years before he says he got sick of dealing with "the MBA boys" and switched sides in 1975.
Sheldon Schlesinger: Mechanically Inclined
Like his good friend and fellow tobacco case lawyer Bob Montgomery, Schlesinger can also be something of a bully in the courtroom.
If Sheldon Schlesinger ever decides to give up the practice of law, he could probably find a new career manufacturing automobiles. But you wouldn't want to drive one. The cars Schlesinger knows best have a tendency to burst into flames. He has handled about a dozen of what have become known as "post-collision, fuel-fed fire" car crashes.
But Schlesinger doesn't simply rely on the engineers to tell him what went wrong. He crawls around in the wreckage, takes things apart and makes himself an expert, too. Then he puts his jurors through the same course, even if that means hauling half a station wagon into the courtroom.
In 1998, Schlesinger became the first lawyer in the country to successfully convince a judge to let jurors read the "Ivey memo" -- a decades-old internal General Motors document that plaintiffs lawyers say shows the automaker calculated how much such crash cases would cost the company per vehicle.
Though the memo had been available for more than a decade, judges had consistently refused to allow it into evidence, until Schlesinger convinced a judge in Fort Lauderdale that it was relevant. Schlesinger won a $60-million verdict in a case that has raised the stakes for the automaker in every case since.
Like his close friend and fellow tobacco case lawyer Bob Montgomery, Schlesinger can also be something of a bully in the courtroom and in depositions. During the state's case against tobacco makers, Schlesinger's brutal deposition of a Phillip Morris executive was considered a turning point. "He just simply took the gloves off," says Montgomery. "There was absolutely no friendliness."
Like Montgomery, Schlesinger has no apologies for the way the ensuing fight over lawyers' fees played out. He concedes nothing to those who say the in-fighting further tarnished the image of trial lawyers. "Contrary to what some more timid trial lawyers may think, it's my opinion that the whole profession was well regarded by what a handful of us did in the tobacco case," he says.
After 45 years of practice, Schlesinger, whose sons Scott, 40, and Greg, 37, are also attorneys in his firm, says he has no plans to retire.
Christian Searcy: Making Personal Connections
His office is decorated with scenes of battle and a sword from the Crusades, but his courtroom style is far from combative.
Christian Searcy's first big break was his own inexperience. Only four years out of law school, he was approached by Bob Montgomery with a case: A young man had lost his legs to a passing train after he ended up on the tracks at 3 a.m. following a night of drinking. Just about every decent trial lawyer in south Florida had already passed on it. "It's a dog, but it's yours if you want it," Montgomery told him.
With a few more years of experience, Searcy probably would have smelled a dog, too. Instead, he pulled the accident report, and was intrigued that an engineer had reported seeing something on the tracks. He did some more research and discovered the engine's spotlight threw a beam of light 800 feet down the tracks. The speed limit was 25 miles per hour -- slow enough, Searcy calculated, for the train to stop in 800 feet. If the train wasn't speeding, the accident could have been avoided.
Further review of the medical records revealed a bump on the back of the victim's head not related to the accident. And his wallet, stuffed with bills from a just-cashed paycheck, was nowhere to be found. What had looked like an accident induced by alcohol and stupidity was starting to look like a bankable tragedy -- a twice-victimized young man, mugged, then run down by a careless engineer. The railroad settled for $1 million, making Searcy, 30 at the time, the youngest lawyer in the U.S. to obtain a million-dollar recovery.
Today Searcy is the senior lawyer at the law firm built by Montgomery, who left in 1989 after a bitter dispute over money and management. Though Searcy says Montgomery was both his mentor and his closest friend, the two have never reconciled.
The meticulous research that earned him his first victory is still a trademark. A one-time college boxing champion, he says a good courtroom battle is his "fix."
Searcy has decorated his office with scenes of battle and a sword from the Crusades, but his courtroom style is far from combative. His voice, a soft Virginia drawl, is on occasion accompanied by tears. He comes by them honestly, he says, because of a strong personal connection to the kind of tragedies he's hired to present. When he was 13, he was in a car accident that killed his 6-year-old brother. And a delivery-room mistake 25 years ago left his son permanently brain-damaged.
Both events, he says, guided his choice of specialty, though he is also the son of a plaintiffs lawyer. "I think one of the reasons I have the success that I have is a very real sense of what (victims) are going through."