Word: belli
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...trial attorneys like San Francisco's Melvin M. ("King of Torts") Belli, whose courtroom success once moved a California physician to speculate: "If Melvin Belli were removed from the California malpractice scene, our insurance rates* would drop 50%." Quickwitted and Darrowesque, Lawyer Belli estimates that he has filed more than 1,000 malpractice suits (75 actually went to trial), relieved doctors and insurance companies of $8,000,000 in judgments and out-of-court settlements...
...state with the strongest law holding a manufacturer responsible for the purity of its products is Louisiana. To San Francisco Lawyer Melvin ("The King of Torts") Belli, who has made a career out of damage suits, Louisiana seemed the ideal place to establish a legal precedent that tobacco companies can be held liable for death from lung cancer...
...Belli's plaintiff was Mrs. Victoria St. Pierre Lartique, who wept as the defense attorney described her late husband as "a human chimney"; she testified that he smoked so much that she had to get out of the house to breathe. From the age of nine he smoked two to five packs of cigarettes a day. His brands: King Bee and Picayunes (both made by Liggett & Myers) and Camels (R. J. Reynolds). Lartique died five years ago at 65 of lung cancer...
Star witness for Belli was famed New Orleans Surgeon Alton Ochsner, one of the most outspoken of all doctors in his conviction that smoking causes cancer. Said Ochsner: "I have yet to see the physician who will not admit that tobacco causes cancer except the doctors employed by the tobacco companies and the doctor who is addicted." Ochsner said he had examined the autopsy material on Lartique and was positive he had died of lung cancer induced by excessive smoking...
...long and 7 ft. 6 in. high has been Caryl Chessman's world. In it he has, in his own words, "read or skimmed 10,000 legal books, and written between two and three million words." In the opinion of celebrated Liability Lawyer Melvin ("King of Torts") Belli, Chessman has become "one of the sharpest and best-trained lawyers I have met." With the help of various lawyers, self-taught Legal Expert Chessman managed to keep his case dragging back and forth through the courts for twelve years after he was sentenced to death. His major appeals have revolved...