Chapter 8, Part 3

By Frank Tursi, Susan E. White and Steve McQuilkin
JOURNAL REPORTERS
© Winston-Salem Journal

To Melvin Belli, a personal-injury attorney from California, suing the tobacco industry was the most rational idea in the world. More important, it was a crusade.

The flamboyant Melvin Belli considered tobacco companies evil. (AP Photo)

And unlike other plaintiffs' attorneys, Belli truly frightened the cigarette companies.

He was bold and arrogant. Even worse, he was entertaining. The last thing the tobacco industry needed was some hotshot plaintiff's attorney who could hold a jury's attention. But Belli knew how to do just that -- and more. Life magazine called Belli the ''King of Torts.'' The portly lawyer had a flair for using props -- aerial photographs, models or expert witnesses -- to prove his cases.

''I learned that jurors learn through all their senses,'' Belli said, ''and if you can tell them and show them, too, let them see and feel and even taste or smell the evidence, then you will reach the jury.''

Belli approached each courtroom as if it were a stage. With his flamboyant style, no one was better at painting graphic and gory images for juries. (New York Times footnote) (Los Angeles Times footnote; personal and professional information on Belli.)

The R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. was once the largest cigarette company in the United States with a powerhouse of best-selling brands: Winston, Salem and Camel. But times changed, and as the case against smoking became more pronounced in the 1960s, RJR failed to adapt to the marketplace. Its rivals would eventually rush past it, and RJR's efforts to catch up would have a profound impact on the company and the cigarette industry.

Belli's tactics gained particular attention during the 1940s when he represented Katherine Jeffers, a young mother whose leg was severed by a San Francisco trolley. A jury awarded Jeffers $65,000, but attorneys for the trolley company said that the award was too high and appealed.

During the retrial, Belli came to court carrying an L-shaped package wrapped in cheap yellow paper, tied with white string. Everyone stared, wondering what was in the package. During his summation, Belli carefully unwrapped the paper, revealing Jeffers' artificial leg.

''Ladies and gentleman of the jury,'' Belli said, walking toward the jurors, ''this is what my pretty young client will wear for the rest of her life. Take it.''

Belli dropped the leg on the lap of the first juror. ''Feel the warmth of life in the soft tissues of its flesh,'' he said. ''Feel the pulse of the blood as it flows through the veins, feel the marvelous smooth articulation at the new joint and touch the rippling muscles of the calf.''

After only 20 minutes of deliberation, the jury returned and awarded Jeffers $100,000 -- $35,000 more than she received at the first trial and 10 times the going rate for the loss of a limb.

The tobacco lawyers could only imagine the tactics Belli would use to describe an ailing smoker.

One of Belli's first smoking lawsuits involved a New Orleans man who chain-smoked for 55 years. Frank J. Lartigue picked up his first cigarette at 9. Eventually found to have cancer of the larynx and lung cancer, Lartigue died in July 1955 at age 65. His widow sued R.J. Reynolds and Liggett & Myers -- the makers of her husband's brands -- on the grounds that the companies had failed to properly warn the public that their cigarettes could cause cancer.

Henry Ramm, RJR's general counsel, knew of Belli, and he was prepared for him. Inside Ramm's bottom desk drawer was a file folder nearly 10 inches thick crammed with information on Belli.

Though he typically used private eyes to investigate the lives of plaintiffs and not their attorneys, Ramm was certain anyone as flashy as Belli had something to hide.

If Belli had an Achilles' heel, it may have been his eccentricity and his list of clients, which included gangsters and gamblers. Belli made no secrets that he lived an audacious life filled with alcohol and lovers. After he was introduced to actor Errol Flynn in the 1950s, the two ran off to Europe together. ''And he (Belli) did everything and everybody that Flynn did,'' said Caesar Belli, Melvin's son. ''They were a perfect pair.''

But Belli also loved fighting for the little guy, and, as he saw it, the tobacco industry had stepped on too many of them.

The Lartigue case, which went before a jury in 1960, was the first smoking lawsuit to make it to trial. After nearly three weeks of hearings, a jury ruled in favor of the tobacco companies, primarily because it did not believe that the companies could have known that their products might cause cancer.

A similar lawsuit filed against American Tobacco Co. in 1957 came closer to winning than any other lawsuit filed at the time. The widow of Edwin L. Green sued American for $1.5 million because, she said, the company's Lucky Strikes caused her husband's lung cancer. By selling its product, the company had implied that its cigarettes were safe, she said. (New York Times footnote) (Pringle footnote; details on Green lawsuit.)

In 1963, a Florida jury agreed that smoking had caused Green's cancer but it awarded no damages because it said that American could not have reasonably known before Green's diagnosis that its cigarettes might cause cancer.

The plaintiff appealed and got a new trial. This time, she was required to prove that Lucky Strike cigarettes had harmed other smokers. She couldn't. The industry could not be condemned solely on one instance of illness, the jury eventually ruled.

Green, like Lartigue, had lost, but the defense did little to celebrate. The industry had barely squeaked by.

Though disappointed in the Lartigue case, Belli knew that the tobacco companies could be beaten.

''He (Belli) used to say that the jury told him that if we let you have this, the next thing you'll be doing is suing Elsie, the Borden cow, for too-rich cream and Jack Daniels for cirrhosis of the liver,'' recalled Paul Monzione, a lawyer who used to work with Belli. ''And Mel would say, `Elsie the Borden cow maybe, but never Doctor Jack.' ''

Belli firmly believed that the tobacco industry was run by a ''bunch of lying, rotten, stealing, conniving, evil bastards,'' and he was determined to sue the cigarette-makers again. He didn't know it at the time, but he would get another chance.

• Coming Thursday: Death of a Prince