Joe Jamail, ‘King of Torts’ Who Won Record Verdicts, Dies at 90
Source: Bloomberg Business
Joe Jamail, the Texas billionaire who became the richest practicing attorney in the U.S. after winning jury verdicts in civil lawsuits that included a $10.5 billion award for Pennzoil Co. in its landmark case against Texaco Inc. during the 1980s, has died. He was 90.
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Dubbed the “King of Torts” for his victories against large corporations, Jamail was lead counsel in more than 200 cases that resulted in verdicts or settlements of at least $1 million for clients in personal-injury matters, according to his website. His representation of Pennzoil in a case against Texaco over the purchase of Getty Oil Co. led to a record jury verdict of $10.5 billion and helped make him one of the U.S.’s most sought-after lawyers during his five decades in practice.
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The grocer’s son who was bullied as a child represented clients on three cases that resulted in product recalls for the Remington 600 rifle, Honda’s all-terrain three-wheel vehicles, and the prescription drug Parlodel. His victory in Coates v. Remington Arms Co., in which his client was a man who had been paralyzed from the waist down when his son’s hunting rifle discharged with the safety lock on, resulted in a cash settlement of $6.8 million in 1978, the largest in tort law history at that time.
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A whiskey connoisseur who preferred barrooms to country clubs, Jamail was on the winning side in the $560 million negligence and fraud case U.S. National Bank of Galveston et al v. Coopers & Lybrand et al in 1992. He was also successful for the Hugh Roy Cullen family, one of the richest in the U.S., in its 1983 probate fight against two estranged grandsons.
Read more: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-12-23/joe-jamail-king-of-torts-who-won-record-verdicts-dies-at-90
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Everybody talking at once, over each other, not complying when the court reporter tells them to talk one at a time, stop arguing, stop mumbling, spell their names, or whatever.
This is why I'm nuts. I was a court reporter in Houston for twenty years. And Joe Jamail was a good lawyer but I fortunately never had to take one of these out-of-control depositions with him in it.
His son Dahr Jamail is a good lawyer too.
I never got a steady job as an official reporter in a district or county court because I didn't know the right people, or didn't grovel properly, or something. The term I came up with was "It's who you know or who you blow."
