◆ SpookStack

- -_ iielinelte! tee tolied ff naan ae At ion aDrey ae a pene De a ee eee LS a de een aed cet ae tne le aN enna La aeniamatet at amangtnt tantra Sin ial oe tne tee Trewera, Uy . 7 z tase bbeeash ge beet es Davie ~ . Uheir fives to a whe bora bouse, or ends, hb ally Po taurned out the three ae * to the indignities o velo and bindtder volun iat were published in 1955, | 1 * iucontinence. : Called wodern Trials. Pm happy tousay Let me give you an esample af a typi- 2 cal case of mine and lee you deci’ '- whether. the award I won for my client : was “too, high” or not. He was a happy, ! that its become something of wv standsard _ textbook in the field. , "i, PLAYBOY: What about your Belli Sem. inars? Will you describe what they are ‘ redheaded kid,. just back from the War, | and what they do? r° ‘He had a wife, a-child, a job, and then | . Belt For the past 13 consecutive years, 7 his life was-ruined in an accident caused | ; 2 and my associates have het these y j. by-the negligence of the San Francisco : Belli Seminars in almost every state and¢ ant ; Municipal railway. He suffered a crushed mijor city in America, and they ha € 25 ‘pelvis, and a rupture of the urethra at! : : been widely _ and enthusiastically it 13 ithe juncture of the “prostate gland. He! tended and accepted ‘by wial lawyers, 4 7 will be! impotent for the rest.of his life. : law students and even some faynien. Tn 1S And-every tenth day:for the. rest of “his oe them’ we teach in all phases of modern pM . life-he* must. endure a painful urethra - ; : trial law, on civil and ‘criminal, su : 6. j catheterization, or-his urethra will close, , ; Stantive and procedural law. These semi-§ - 7 - whereupon. his -bladder would burst. _ mars have done a lot for the law, bit, 8°: . His hospital. and’) doctor bills were - not-one has failed to draw criticism from 9. " over’;$25,000 atthe time of trial, and. . 7.) Some local member of the American’ Bur ¥ 0. they will be “atleast $2000" year’ as : .° 7: Association, some insurance lawyer, or .. long’as he lives, Two ycars afterward, ° . some large law firm with a “business practice.” They raise their old cry: My. lectures are “illegal” or “unethical.” | ¢PLAYBOY: On what grounds? BELL: I'm teaching lawyers how to raise awards to injured people. I'm tcxching them how to sue mialpracticing doctors 4 who refuse to testify and who condor. q :T'saw: that boy again, and what I had : '"4 tfeared within myself ‘had Ahappened—*- | iis wife had divorced him, his home . 7was gone; he had nothing Jeft but the: 3 io j “remainder. of his award money. Would. f 2 “you swap places with that boy for the. a ~ $125,000 he was awarded? Gr for a mil. - : ! lion dollars? Two million? Yen million? , : I-think nov tg ; _ spiracy of silence. I'm teaching lawyezs { . ‘ Yer according to them, the noble. stal- + how to sue the reluctant Insurance con - . : yo ; pany and how to serve the proce. s evader, Among the politicians and the fat cats of the A.B. A. Nierarchy, need- less to say, none of this haw for the fwiow ow twee wart simon-pure insurance companies are ; * being “victimized by-fakers” for $50,000 and $100,000—just for having lost a : lousy arm or leg! When F staried win- IMmOVDINGVAW \ ence ath ere wove A oaks ai ee rte nines eee the American Medical Assocization’s cor tt ning this kind of award. they began sending out levers and buying expensive ads aimed at potential jurors i: personal- injury cases: “Keep those awards low, , or you'll. force your automobile insur. personal-injury awards higher than ever before, insurance-company stocks are among the best market buys. . Anyway, when I won three ‘verdicts , for more than $160,000 apiece in 1949 ' and 1950, I really began to draw fire | from the insurance companies. “Belli is a Barnum!” they screamed. “The court- rooms are being turned into horror chambers!” But. headway was’ being made everywhere, Asking not a cent of . fee, 1 began lecturing all over the coun- try—to law students, to bar associations, to groups of plaintiff lawyers. Sometimes my speaking in a. state would start an : immediate rise in personal-injury awards. . _ An example of that is Mississippi, which : was for many years one of this counitry’s ° : : lowest-verdict states; soon weer I ad- - dressed its State Bar Association in 1951, Mississippi awards rose sharply—to. at least an equitable level. Finally I decided that [ would write a book of all tha: I chought was modenyr and just in wixl procedures, in both ‘oq Criminal and civil law. It took me two years to write it; in those two ycars, Dav. ; (aati 6 es wm Semen ellen, NN iets ee mmeiblle ent ot em eee Tete anes cee ete ve ance to go up.” Bushwa! Today, with. _— benehe of the litle man is parucalarly popular—thozgi social-circuiting A. B.A. presidents are constantly trumpering on the muajestie subject “The Uelense of Unpopular Causes," ancl prochuming courageous .representation of his un- fortunate brother, however vopopular he is, however heinous his crime. These are the same great vocal defenders who whimper, from behind their corpo- * rate desks, when some poor unfortu- nate’s unpopular case hus to be tried, “Sure, he’s entitled to uy best delense. but you defend hini, I can’t alford-to!” Even worse, these preachers of lofty sen- . timents are che quickest to impose guilt * 4 by association on the lawyer of the heinous-crime cient. And these same | A, B.A, presidents are approving the ab- . Olition of law-school courses that would teach the student lawyer iow to oy an : unpopular case! If we continue dimin- ishing the hours devoted to criminal ; how in our law schools snd increasing those devoted to taxation, accouiiti and che like, we may as wet: “over into the businessadmise . schools. Vhen whe few of us renanai criminal levycers and gene abo writ an mity as well be displayed ay die mouk i hotseWire?e the public can seihTT S, that it’s every lawyers. duty to give a