Word: belli
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Diverted Thief. The answering machines are only mildly Buck Rogerish compared with Marcom Inc.'s call diverter. A thumb wheel is set with the number where the owner will be, and incoming calls are transferred there. Lawyer Melvin Belli has one, switches early-morning calls to the hamburger stand where he breakfasts. And since the call is transferred without the caller's being any the wiser, the device should be a boon to wayward husbands or junior executives who have slipped out for a quick pick...
MELVIN M. BELLI San Francisco
...week at the Miami convention of the American Trial Lawyers Association-a group so dedicated to winning personal injury suits (fee: up to 50% of the judgment) that the delegates spent eight hours a day buying such trial props as plastic skeletons and listening to such maestros as Melvin Belli, who lovingly lectured on his tactics in winning a $215,000 judgment for a Navy pilot's widow against the manufacturer of a helicopter that crashed during military operations...
...Said Belli: "Servicemen take it for granted, and they're also told by the Government, that if something is defective it's their hard luck. They don't know that even if they're on patrol in Viet Nam, and their rifle goes boom and injures them because it's defective, they can sue the guy that manufactured it." To hear Belli tell it, he could collect damages for the families of the men lost when the nuclear submarine Thresher went down...
...least partly belying Belli, many judges are still loath to stack all the odds against manufacturers, and the doctrine of strict liability is unlikely to be applied universally to all products. Even so, it is easily the most spectacular development in modern tort law-the most potent new weapon aimed at making business safeguard consumers...