Hurt? Injured? Need a Lawyer? Too Bad!
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IT MIGHT SURPRISE ALVIN TO LEARN that the people who led the battle to take his rights away are very much like him: hardworking, churchgoing men of a certain age and experience who believe incontrovertibly that their determination to put an end to the spurious lawsuits supposedly clogging our courts is for the good of all. In fact, the words they like to attach to their efforts are terms like “civic virtue,” “level playing field,” and above all, “fairness.” I first met with the founders of TLR early this past summer in Leo Linbeck Jr.’s soaring home on one of the best streets in River Oaks, sitting down with four men who have created, in a little over ten years, not just the most powerful lobbying organization in Texas but also a social revolution in the way we treat our fellow Texans.
Central casting couldn’t have done better. In the sunny, expansive kitchen, which, complete with fireplace, resembled nothing so much as the breakfast room of a small-town country club, here was Linbeck, tall, grandfatherly, and though pale and pained from recent surgery, still chairman, at 73, of the holding company of his eponymous multimillion-dollar construction firm and other enterprises. Whenever he spoke—slowly, in soft, equitable tones—the other men, all middle-aged, listened raptly. Richard Weekley, the chairman of his family development company and vice chairman of Weekley Homes, coiled confidently in a corner, white-haired, tan, and assiduously fit. Richard Trabulsi, dark-eyed, with bountiful salt-and-pepper hair, chose his words with the precision and care befitting the corporate defense attorney he once was at Vinson and Elkins. Finally, there was Hugh Rice Kelly, the retired general counsel of Reliant Energy and the legal strategist and scholar of the group, a man whose stentorian voice, sharp intellect, and dry wit have long made him a respected presence in Houston.
As different in personality as the four men may be, all share two crucial characteristics: They are wealthy, and that wealth has been accumulated in businesses—from construction to alcohol—profoundly threatened by lawsuits. The existence of these lawsuits, in their minds, has less to do with corporate failings than with the greed of lawyers and what Linbeck describes as “the disengagement of the average citizen in the formulation of policy.”
“We all get busy in our lives,” he explained gravely, his long, tapered fingers splayed open in a gesture simultaneously apologetic and understanding. “For most of us, it’s a day-to-day tussle, living paycheck to paycheck, and esoteric issues like joint and several liability don’t really resonate. As a result, we tend not to be engaged. My concern was and is that issues like this need to be engaged by the average person.” Flaws in the civil justice system, he said, have a “perverse” effect on our lives without our even knowing it. People “didn’t understand why their wages were depressed. They didn’t understand why their job opportunities were fewer. They didn’t understand why the economy was not as robust as it would otherwise be. So I viewed this opportunity as one in which my personal bias and interest in civic virtue could be reflected in a tangible way.”
The other men in the kitchen nodded sagely at this cogent analysis, one that explained why the devastation brought about by what TLR likes to call “lawsuit abuse” had been allowed to persist and why Texas law needed to change. But outside this cozy scene, there are those who would strongly disagree. A 1994 Bureau of Labor Statistics report, for example, failed to uncover any decline in the Texas economy that could be attributed to frivolous lawsuits; Texas, in fact, led the nation in the number of new jobs created that year, when TLR was first becoming a force in Texas politics. That same year, Fortune magazine reported that, in the last quarter-century, Texas had enjoyed a 311 percent increase in Fortune 500 companies headquartered here. A national jury verdict survey found that the midpoint verdict for personal-injury cases in Texas was below the national average in every year from 1989 to 1993, including 45 percent below average in the last year of that period. In other words: What litigation crisis?
And why has the campaign against trial lawyers been so successful? Here’s how Republican political consultant Frank Luntz explained it a few years ago: “Unlike most complex issues, the problems in our civil justice system come with a ready-made villain: the lawyer. . . . It’s almost impossible to go too far when it comes to demonizing lawyers.”
Trabulsi put it another way: “A lot of people think we’re not nearly as aggressive as we should be in trying to reform a system that’s out of control.” People who suffer through the emotional and financial drain of lawsuits are very passionate about what they think the solution should be.
Leaning forward intently, he added, “We’re looking for fairness, balance, and restoration of litigation to its appropriate role in society,” he insisted. TLR isn’t trying to make sure the justice system favors defendants, as its critics have claimed. The four founders have all been involved in lawsuits; eliminating access, Trabulsi said, would be “bad public policy, and it would be against anybody’s own self-interest.”
The distant, high-pitched keening you might hear at this point in the story is the sound of some of Texas’s most successful plaintiff’s lawyers gnashing their teeth, rending their garments, and screaming in frustration. Mark Lanier, fresh from his $253.4 million verdict in the Vioxx case, still sees himself as an advocate for the common man, like many personal-injury lawyers. He has this to say about Linbeck and his three cohorts when I interview him later in his paper-strewn office in north Houston. “TLR includes what some might call a bunch of rich snots,” he sneers, the baby face that was so charming and affable during the jury selection phase of the trial contorted now with icy fury. “They’re entrepreneurial everywhere but the legal system. They don’t have a clue what it’s like to be stepped on by a rich snot.”
And there you have it, the two poles of a brutal debate that has been roiling Texas since the late eighties, one that has grown more intense and self-serving with time. “It will be difficult for you to find people in the middle,” TLR’s communications director Ken Hoagland suggested to me, and his was the voice of experience. Even the dean of the University of Texas law school, Bill Powers, declined to comment on the situation on or off the record. In the battle between trial lawyers and tort reformers, each side accuses the other of excessive greed and infinite mendacity; each side is convinced that only its side represents the truth. The middle ground is reserved for the all-too-human collateral damage of a bitter war involving big money and partisan politics, seemingly without end.
SYLVIA ANN FULLER’S LIFE ENDED just when she was finally able to savor it. The 68-year-old Tyler widow worked hard all her life, but the tight curls she wore reflected the unseen constraints on her psyche. She gave herself over to teddy bear and cookbook collections and lavished affection on her dachshund, but her ability to love her three grown children and two grandchildren was often eclipsed by inconsolable depressions. Then, in 2003, Sylvia sought treatment for the first time and, with the help of antidepressants, was reborn. A sunny day in August 2004 was one of the happiest of her life: She was picnicking with her whole family in Tyler State Park, the first time in two years they’d all been together.
But toward the end of the day, Sylvia started feeling ill, and early the next morning she felt bad enough to call her daughter, Karen Hindman, to ask for a ride to a local hospital. She had been vomiting all night and was frightened. Karen jumped in her car and drove the fifty miles from her home in Winnsboro to take her mother to a quiet emergency room that, she assumed, would give her mother the proper treatment.
Through serial workups, including two EKGs to measure her heart function, Sylvia could not stop vomiting, even with the help of medication. The doctor diagnosed food poisoning from the potato salad at the picnic and was not dissuaded when Karen noted that no one else who’d eaten it had fallen ill. He gave Sylvia morphine, to help her rest.
The next thing Karen knew, the nurses were saying her mother could go home. She didn’t see how. Sylvia was barely conscious from the drugs. “We will help you get her into the car,” they told her. “After that, you’re on your own.” Karen was reassured when her mother chatted a little during the ride. At home, she said she’d be fine alone; she just wanted to sleep.
But when Karen got back to her own house and tried to call her mother, there was no answer. After the night passed with no response, she returned to her mother’s house, in Tyler, and found her collapsed on the floor. She had been there for nine hours, too sick to reach the phone. As soon as Karen helped Sylvia up, thick, grainy blood started pouring out of her nose and mouth. Sylvia Fuller died before the paramedics could arrive.
