Civil Warriors: The Legal Siege on the Tobacco Industry.

Civil Warriors: The Legal Siege on the Tobacco Industry

Dan Zegart Delacorte Press Random House, Inc. 1540 Broadway New York, NY 10036 480 pp., $25.95

The next time you're in an airport bookstore looking for the latest legal thriller by John Grisham, Richard North Patterson, or Scott Turow to read on the trip home, walk over to the nonfiction section and buy Civil Warriors by Dan Zegart instead.

It contains everything that a reader wants in a legal thriller and has the added bonus of being a true story. Every credibility-straining element of a Robert Ludlum novel is in Civil Warriors: a flawed hero, trusty sidekicks, flamboyant supporting characters, beautiful women, tragic love stories, mysterious helicopters, bomb threats, dramatic suicide by nicotine, political intrigue, riveting courtroom scenes, betrayal, millions of victims, billions of dollars, and a truly evil villain.

Civil Warriors is the story of how a group of plaintiff lawyers assisted by former members of the tobacco industry fought a long and expensive legal and political battle against tobacco companies. The fight resulted in the historic master settlement agreement that awarded the states hundreds of billions of dollars in damages and a few attorneys huge fees.

The hero is Ron Motley, a charismatic South Carolinian who perfected mass trials in asbestos litigation, founded one of the largest plaintiff firms in the United States, and risked it all to pursue tobacco litigation. Motley's life and loves provide the narrative backbone of the story. The author draws a picture of a loving man who has committed his life to tort litigation. The rewards and costs of being a big-time plaintiff lawyer are masterfully drawn.

Motley leads a life of constant motion. He rarely stays at his new mansion on the ocean or sails his new yacht. Instead, he flies around the world in his private jet to litigate trials. He lives in the best hotel suites, eats at the finest restaurants, and works. Work is the one constant of Morley's life. While he is in his jet, his car, and his hotel room, he is often writing frantically on yellow pads. The chicken scratches become the core of his trial work.

For five years, Zegart, an investigative journalist, was a virtual fly on the wall for many of the critical events in the war against tobacco. He interviewed many of the principal parties for the plaintiffs, including Jeff Wigand, a corporate whistle-blower and the subject of the Oscar-nominated film The Insider. In addition, Zegart obtained the cooperation of some of tobacco's leading players. He read, digested, and made comprehensible the thousands of pages of paper the hydraheaded litigation spawned. The story spans the country, from a ramshackle chancery court in Mississippi to the halls of the U.S. Congress.

The enemy was rich and powerful, and it was willing to spend whatever it took to defeat the challenge. The tobacco industry realized that the attack Motley led was the final battle, and it spared nothing to defeat him and his troops. Although the victory may not have been the overwhelming triumph Motley wanted, in my opinion, it is fair to say that the defeat of Big Tobacco was the greatest victory in the history of the plaintiff bar.

There is a wonderful supporting cast, drawn from the plaintiff bar: Scotty Baldwin, a Texan, a great statesman, and one of the pioneers in big-case litigation; Dick Scruggs, a Mississippi lawyer and former Navy pilot with the political connections to get the attorney general of Mississippi to push a radical new theory of law; and Wendell Gauthier, a New Orleans lawyer who convinced 60 plaintiff firms to pool assets to sue Big Tobacco in the Castano class action suit.

Zegart also draws fair portraits of the defense, particularly David Hardy, whose "scorched earth and wall of flesh" defense tactic was the mantra that held off the plaintiff bar for 20 years. The book includes an almost biblical scene with Hardy, a pipe and cigarette smoker most of his life, as he lay dying at age 59 from a series of heart attacks.

In addition to being a wonderful story, there is another important reason why Civil Warriors should be read. This book proves one overwhelming truth: Without this group of plaintiff lawyers who risked their fortunes and their reputations, Joe Camel would still be alive.

They weren't all heros. But many took on the litigation because it was the right thing to do. Ron Motley did it for his mother, who was a lifelong smoker and dying from emphysema.

This diverse group of lawyers forced the tobacco industry to radically change the way it markets cigarettes, to pay a huge judgment, and to disclose evidence that proved a longstanding conspiracy to hide the truth about the deadliest legal drug in the world. The lawyers did something that the government lacked the political will to do. Civil Warriors is full of examples of how the world is a better place because some lawyer for some reason decided to risk time and money to right a wrong.

If in the future any industry engages in the type of conduct documented in Civil Warriors, we can only hope that there is another Ron Motley to lead the charge.

Margaret Moses Branch practices law in Albuquerque, New Mexico.