Fred Baron dies - Edwards advisor 2004 & 2008

October 31, 2008, 12:53 pm
Remembering Fred Baron, Pioneering Lawyer
Posted by Nathan Koppel

By now many of you have probably heard that Fred Baron, the legendary trial lawyer, died yesterday due to complications from cancer. Baron pioneered asbestos and mass tort litigation in the 1970s, building a Dallas law firm, Baron & Budd, which once ranked among the most powerful plaintiffs firms in the country.

This morning we spent some time calling around to get impressions of Baron from those who knew him and his work. “Fred was one of the pioneers in asbestos litigation,” says plaintiffs lawyer Joe Rice, a kingpin tobacco lawyer at Motley Rice. “Asbestos was the first tort to become a national mass tort, and the roadmap those lawyers created will be with us forever.”

Baron later branched out into other toxic torts, representing a wide swath of plaintiffs, from Arizona to Costa Rica, who were exposed to various contaminants.

Big business, of course, was not among Baron’s fans. “Fred Baron was an innovator with respect to mass litigation,” says Darren McKinney, a spokesman for the American Tort Reform Association. “Whether that’s a good thing, history will have to decide.”

He amassed a fortune, which he lavished on the Democratic party. He was a top advisor to John Edwards in both his 2004 and 2008 presidential runs. Near the end of his life, Baron got dragged into the scandal involving Edwards’s relationship with Rielle Hunter. Baron helped move Hunter away from North Carolina.

more....http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2008/10/31/rememberging-fred-baron-pioneering-lawyer/

... the last few days.

Notice how they were hush-hush about too much detail with Baron's death?

Probably because Edwards was there, and he's on virtual media blackout now.

Baron was the lawyer who was paying Lisa Druck Hunter up to $20,000 a month because he "felt sorry for her" -- and no one knows if that money came from Edwards or Baron, or who it came from. Baron said he did it out of the goodness of his heart. Yeah, sure. The rich are like that. And it sure incriminated Edwards. And he also payed to move her to "Grifter Lodge," the compound in Santa Barbara, along with Andy Young, his wife and Hunter's psychic. Out of the goodness of his heart...