Dain Batty
Business Management 2050
Julia Butler
Book Report
“The King of Torts”
By John Grisham
Clay Carter is the main character in John Grisham’s, “The King of Torts.” Clay has been a
defense lawyer in Washington DC’s OPD (Office of Public Defender), for several years now. He
never anticipated being there for such a long time. The OPD was supposed to be a stepping
stone to something bigger, better, and more prestigious. In the novel, Clay is confronted with
an ethical decision that will change is life forever. His decision to do that which is morally
wrong leads him down a path of many more morally wrong decisions that eventually catch up
with him in the end.
Clay was selected to defend a murder defendant who shot and killed someone at
random. As Clay investigates the case he finds that there is something fishy about how the
shooter, Tequila Watson, came to shoot the victim. As Clay comes closer to finding the answers
he is lured into meeting someone at a motel for a supposed job interview at a prestigious law
firm. Instead, he is met by a man who calls himself Max Pace. Max Pace is considered to be a
fireman who comes in and puts out big fires for large corporations and in this case for a large
pharmaceutical company that made a bad drug that caused Tequila to murder someone. Max
Pace offers Clay millions of dollars to quietly settle the issue of the drug with the victims’
families. If he does this Clay will have to stop being Tequila’s lawyer and knowingly allow him
to go to jail for murder while he may be completely innocent. This is the first ethical issue that
Clay is presented with.
Clay takes a few days to ponder what he should do. He meets with Max a few more
times and gets more details. As a side note, I believe one of the factors that influences Clay in
his decision, is that he just broke up with Rebecca who he had been dating for many years.
Rebecca comes from a very rich, snobbish family with parents that are always trying to
influence her life and meddle in her affairs. Rebecca however, is nothing like her parents but
they expect her to marry someone rich like they are and they particularly do not like Clay at all
because he isn’t rich. Clay loves Rebecca but hates her parents and all he wants to do is to
elope with Rebecca some place far away where they can be alone. He loathes the type of
people that Rebecca’s parents are, rich, snobbish, and fake. After he breaks up with Rebecca
he feels that he needs to “show them” that he isn’t a no-body, and I believe this pushes him
over the edge to make that first unethical decision to accept Max’s offer.
The decision to accept the offer leads Clay down a road of many more ethical decisions.
Some of those include insider trading on information that only he and a very select number of
people have, pushing for quick settlements at the detriment of his clients, asking his friend to
lie about his knowledge of insider trading, causing a well known company to file for bankruptcy
and thus cause the layoffs of many citizens of a small town, and to continue to do business with
Max Pace which in of itself is a very unethical decision.
After Clay settled the cases with the drug called Tarvan that caused people to go out
and kill, he was given some inside information about an arthritis drug that caused, what he was
told, benign tumors in the bladder of some of its users. Clay gets ready to file a lawsuit against
the company but before he does so he shorts the company’s stock on expectation that it will go
down after the lawsuit and reports come out. Clay knows that this is unethical but he seems to
not care because he can only think about getting richer and showing Rebecca and her family
that he can succeed on his own. After the stock goes down he is told by Max to buy it back and
then to buy shares of it because the price will be going back up. Clay does this and makes a
major profit on the trades. Clay only does insider trading once because he knows it isn’t right
and that it would be hard for anyone to prove the insider trading for the trades he placed.
Another reason why this was the only insider trading incident was that he didn’t have as much
money at the time and he wanted to make a killing on the stock.
As Clay acquires more and more money through mass torts and settlements he began to
believe that he needed more and more things. His riches began to corrupt his mind and change
is point of view. A great example is that as he was just starting out he thought it outlandish that
anyone should have their own private jet that costs millions and millions of dollars. He thought
it to be a waste. As time went by and as he had the opportunity to fly in a private jet he slowly
started to change his mind and eventually bought his own jet. His thoughts were why should
he, a rich and prosperous lawyer, have to book a flight and fly in first class? He felt that that
was below him. Another example is where he filed a mass lawsuit against a cement company
that made a faulty product that caused many homes to start to crumble away. All Clay could
think about was money and would not settle for a lower amount. He was not thinking on
behalf of his clients but only about himself and his law firm. Since clay would not budge on the
settlement numbers the company immediately went and filed for bankruptcy since they could
not pay the settlement amount that Clays firm was asking for. Everyone lost in this situation
because Clay didn’t get any money, the homeowners were stuck with their crumbling houses
and had to wait longer for them to get fixed, and many of the workers at the company’s plant
were let go. Clay became more and more corrupted by his money. Another example is that
Clay started to date a super model just to make Rebecca jealous. Rebecca ended up marrying
some lawyer which made Clay jealous. Rebecca and her husband really didn’t love each other
and Clay new it. To spite Rebecca for what she did Clay started to date a supermodel who was
with him only because of his money.
As mentioned earlier, Clay started to go wrong with his legal dealings when he accepted
the offer by Max Pace. He knowingly let a man go to jail when he was innocent and he received
a very handsome reward from doing so. From there, things just went downhill. All Clay had to
do was reject Max’s offer and everything else that followed would never have happened. It
took just one little lie and that lie soon became his whole life. His main problem is that he was
unhappy because Rebecca left him and he couldn’t be with her. If she would have remained
with him he would have probably thought about the impact his decisions would have had for
the both of them. Since they weren’t together he saw this as the only way for revenge or to
make her jealous that she didn’t stay with him. This was his motivating factor to do most of the
things that he did.
The case that would make it or break it for Clay was one that he had no control over. It
was a case in regards to a drug for women that caused cancer and other health issues. An older
lawyer named Mooneyham, who had never lost a trial case, brought the drug company to
court. Mooneyham didn’t believe in mass torts and was suing on behalf of his client. He did
the homework and was ready for the case. The reason why this case was so important to Clay
was that if Mooneyham won, then the drug company would probably settle with Clay and his
mass lawsuit he brought against the company. If Mooneyham lost then it would be almost
impossible for Clay to when in court. A lot of money was on the line for Clay in this trial.
Mooneyham did an excellent job in court. He did so well that the company was practically
begging that he settle with him. Mooneyham was not interested in doing this and in this aspect
was not looking out for the best interest of his client. He actually ended up losing the case as
the jury found the company not guilty. I believe there may be one of two reasons why this
happened. One is that Mooneyham was not able to prove a direct causation between the drug
and the health issues of his client and the second is a conspiracy theory that someone within
the jury may have been tampered with. In any case Mooneyham lost and that brought about
the downfall of Clay Carter.
The reason why this case was so important to Clay was that he was being sued by his
former clients for not looking out for their best interest when he sued the drug company for
making a drug that caused what he thought were benign tumors in the bladder. Well it turns
out the drug caused cancerous tumors and many of Clay’s patients were going to die and all
they got from the lawsuit was less than $50,000 when they deserved so much more. This
lawsuit would bankrupt Clay if Mooneyham didn’t win. The best thing that could have
happened to Clay Carter was that Mooneyham lost the case. He became bankrupt, he was able
to get back with Rebecca after she divorced her husband and he left the super model. He
eventually got what he always wanted and that was to move far away with Rebecca.
Clay received a lot of help from his friend’s Paulette, Jonah, and Rodney. They had
helped Clay with his first few tort and settlement cases. He brought Paulette and Rodney over
from the OPD and Jonah was his roommate. They had known each other for years and Clay was
very generous with them in paying them each over $10,000,000 for the work they had done.
They soon left the firm with their money. They left and got out before the major problems
began to surface for Clay. They really were not there to see their friend change his attitude and
become corrupt. They had a desire to help him because he was first and foremost their friend
and second, Clay looked out for them and helped them to gain the fortunes that they now
enjoyed. By the time they came back into Clay’s life he was already in the process of changing
back to who he once was. In the end, Clay comes out about the Tarvan drug and its side effects
that cause people to kill. This will eventually get Tequila out of prison.
The one thing I learned about mass tort litigation in this book is that many times the
lawyers are there to fill their own pockets. They prefer to settle fast and thus save them time
and effort from having to go to trial. They just want to make a quick buck. They also want to
settle as soon as they can so they can move on to the next mass litigation. For the most part
the members of the class action suit get the short end of the stick. It is too bad that there has
to be a lawyer in the middle who gets a large chunk of the settlement. It is harder to trust a
lawyer involved in a mass class action lawsuit because they lose touch with their client base and
for the most part think about getting their big paycheck at the end of the day.
I also learned that there really shouldn’t be or isn’t an airtight contract. It’s kind of like
the saying that says “if it sounds too good to be true then it probably is.” I would be more wary
of lawyers saying that they have an airtight contract than if it came from anyone else. I learned
that even though the contract may appear to be airtight or close to it, that it is always
important to consider all consequences and possibilities that may come from performance of
the contract.