The King of Torts

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He does do some good, like hiring his staff from the OPD and giving them big bonuses and gifts like a week in Paris for all of them plus one friend each, preferably a spouse, with all expenses paid. First class air, luxury hotel, the works. There is some bad language and violence but nothing graphic. There are sexual inferences and some lude remarks but again not graphic. I actually preferred this novel to The Street Lawyer which I also read recently. I didn't like the way that Grisham had focused on charity/benevolent work amongst the homeless almost as a selfish pursuit for the young lawyer to find himself. This novel, however, was different--it is totally secular with no real mention of faith/God or anything similar. Sometimes it is better not to try and mix the spiritual with the secular unless you are going to be accurate and ensure you represent the right principles. Meanwhile, Clay’s girlfriend, Rebecca, dumps him in favor of a corporate lawyer to please her rich family. Clay is deeply disappointed, but he’s too distracted by the complexities of the case to dwell on it. He focuses his energy on Tequila’s case—however, soon, he’s asked to resign as public defender, because it’s obvious he now knows too much. Clay decides to open his own law firm specializing in civil damages claims, or torts. He thinks this will impress Rebecca and allow him to sue the pharmaceutical company for huge sums of damages for his clients. Whenever I see another class-action lawsuit advertisement on T.V. I will always think of this book.

Another interesting story by Grisham, about the corruption in legal practice and greedy lawyers taking advantage of clients. It almost felt like a Mobster film, where the main character starts out from beneath, slowly works his way up making it to the top, then in the end everything goes south and starts to crumble. One day he reluctantly takes on the case of Tequila Watson, a man accused of a random street killing.This is one of those books I can't stop thinking about! I read it for a business law class I'm taking and it is great!

John Grisham's The King of Torts, a fast-paced, edgy legal thriller with surprises and twists along the way, answers these and other questions as we follow the rise and fall of one lawyer who gives in to temptation. Ever seen those ads on TV where the actor playing the lawyer looks at you straight in the eye and appeals to you," If you or a loved one, has taken this medication...etc. etc., call toll free, you may be entitled to some money…?" Desperate for money, Clay turns to a mass tort against Hanna, a building supplies company which had produced batches of defective cement. The company's directors are willing to offer a fair compensation to disgruntled homeowners, but only if Clay agrees to cut his share of the compensations. Clay refuses to give up anything, resulting in Hanna's bankruptcy, the loss of thousands of jobs, and an economic disaster for the town where the company is based. When it becomes known that the collapse was caused by "a greedy lawyer," Clay is ambushed and beaten by some men from the town. Class actions are a fraud, at least the way you and your pals handle them. Mass torts are a scam, a consumer rip-off, a lottery driven by greed that will one day harm all of us. Unbridled greed will swing the pendulum to the other side. Reforms will take place, and they’ll be severe. You boys will be out of business but you won’t care because you’ll have the money. The people who’ll get harmed are all the future plaintiffs out there, all the little people who won’t be able to sue for bad products because you boys have screwed up the law.

Do the regular average Joes actually get their money? Yes, but the lawyer is the one who profits. The fine small print at the bottom of the forms says that the lawyer gets a third of your settlement. And a third from the other thousands of clients. Readers can see that his upswing has to come to an end. They will shudder at the way he bleeds money, wasting it on frivolous things like, oh, a private jet and a house in the tropics for his trophy girlfriend. I'm a bad, bad man," he wailed. "I have followed the path of materialism and abandoned the path of righteousness. I have made innocent people suffer." But after reading The Street Lawyer and now the King of Torts, I had a hard time giving another of his books much thought. Unfortunately, in a bargain, I had bought many of his books and now I'm going to try and finish the lot (to get my money's worth). The happy ending literally made me want to throw up. Given how phony the love story was it was like a big F.U. to everyone who actually read the book.