Word: belly
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Melvin ("King of Torts") Belli, the San Francisco lawyer who has made being struck by an automobile almost as profitable as striking oil, unsettled the American Bar Association Convention at Miami Beach (see NATIONAL AFFAIRS) with a "special seminar." His lecturer: "Professor O'Brien," a Buddha-faced little man in a $285 suit, who solemnly told the 100-odd lawyers present: "I probably got more courtroom experience than any of you guys." Expounding on income tax, O'Brien advised the barristers that the only way to come out even is to "borrow money from your friends." As other...
California's thrice-married, twice-divorced Melvin Belli (rhymes with dwell I), 51, knows exactly what he is talking about. He is the recognized if not the revered leader in the most phenomenal field of U.S. law: personal injury. In the last ten years, average jury awards in personal-injury suits have soared by a spectacular 266%. His worst enemies admit, indeed insist, that flamboyant Melvin Belli, who has won more than 100 cases in the past decade with awards exceeding $100,000. is the lawyer most responsible...
...Grisly Package. Belli's most noteworthy contribution to tort-trials is in his use of "demonstrative evidence," i.e., visual aids. He will take his skeleton, named "Elmer," into the courtroom and show the jury by experts' testimony exactly where plaintiff broke a bone, then stalk to his portable blackboard to draw diagrams of the accident scene. Often he chalks figures to justify the damages he is demanding-so much per hour for pain, so much for medical bills, so much in lost wages, etc., etc.-occasionally makes a deliberate mistake in addition, so as to let an alert...
...Lawyer Belli's methods sometimes exceed traditional limits. In one celebrated case, in which he acted for a woman who had lost one leg, Belli brought a grotesque, leg-shaped package into the courtroom. It was wrapped in butcher's paper, tied with twine. Throughout the trial, the jury stared in horrified fascination at the package. Finally, near the end of the trial, Showman Belli slowly and deliberately opened the package-and handed the contents to a startled juror. It was an artificial leg, of the sort the plaintiff would have to wear for the rest...
...Tear. Next only to insurancemen, Melvin Belli (University of California Law School '33) dislikes doctors most. He maintains that in malpractice suits the medical profession is a "conspiracy of silence"; few physicians, he declares, will risk testifying against a fellow doctor, for fear either of reprisal by medical associations or of loss of their own malpractice insurance. He got a measure of revenge in a 1949 case in which he appeared for an aging woman who charged that a specialist had promised to give her "the breasts of a virgin." The doctor, complained the plaintiff, had mutilated her instead...