In Trial Work, Edwards Left a Trademark
By ADAM LIPTAKand MICHAEL MOSS
Published: January 31, 2004
The Raleigh News & Observer
John Edwards, who made a fortune in personal injury law, after a trial. Of
his clients he said, "Their cause was my cause."
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RELATED
_The Stump Speech: Edwards Promises a Positive Vision and to Change the 'Two
Americas'_ (http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/07/politics/07STUM.html)
(January 7, 2004)
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The News & Observer
John Edwards representing the family of a young girl injured in a swimming
pool. He won a $25 million verdict in that 1997 case.
n 1985, a 31-year-old North Carolina lawyer named _John Edwards_
(http://www.nytimes.com/top/news/washington/campaign2004/candidates/johnedwards/index.html
) stood before a jury and channeled the words of an unborn baby girl.
Referring to an hour-by-hour record of a fetal heartbeat monitor, Mr. Edwards
told the jury: "She said at 3, `I'm fine.' She said at 4, `I'm having a
little trouble, but I'm doing O.K.' Five, she said, `I'm having problems.' At
5:30, she said, `I need out.' "
But the obstetrician, he argued in an artful blend of science and passion,
failed to heed the call. By waiting 90 more minutes to perform a breech
delivery, rather than immediately performing a Caesarean section, Mr. Edwards said,
the doctor permanently damaged the girl's brain.
"She speaks to you through me," the lawyer went on in his closing argument.
"And I have to tell you right now — I didn't plan to talk about this — right
now I feel her. I feel her presence. She's inside me, and she's talking to
you."
The jury came back with a $6.5 million verdict in the cerebral palsy case,
and Mr. Edwards established his reputation as the state's most feared
plaintiff's lawyer.
In the decade that followed, Mr. Edwards filed at least 20 similar lawsuits
against doctors and hospitals in deliveries gone wrong, winning verdicts and
settlements of more than $60 million, typically keeping about a third. As a
politician he has spoken of these lawsuits with pride.
"I was more than just their lawyer," Mr. Edwards said of his clients in a
recent essay in Newsweek. "I cared about them. Their cause was my cause."
The effect of his work has reached beyond those cases, and beyond his own
income. Other lawyers have filed countless similar cases; just this week, a jury
on Long Island returned a $112 million award. And doctors have responded by
changing the way they deliver babies, often seeing a relatively minor anomaly
on a fetal heart monitor as justification for an immediate Caesarean.
On the other side, insurance companies, business groups that support what
they call tort reform and conservative commentators have accused Mr. Edwards of
relying on questionable science in his trial work. Indeed, there is a growing
medical debate over whether the changes have done more harm than good.
Studies have found that the electronic fetal monitors now widely used during
delivery often incorrectly signal distress, prompting many needless Caesarean
deliveries, which carry the risks of major surgery.
The rise in such deliveries, to about 26 percent today from 6 percent in
1970, has failed to decrease the rate of cerebral palsy, scientists say. Studies
indicate that in most cases, the disorder is caused by fetal brain injury
long before labor begins.
An examination of Mr. Edwards's legal career also opens a window onto the
world of personal injury litigation. In building his career, Mr. Edwards
underbid other lawyers to win promising clients, sifted through several dozen
expert witnesses to find one who would attest to his claims, and opposed state
legislation that would have helped all families with brain-damaged children and
not just those few who win big malpractice awards.
In an interview on yesterday, Mr. Edwards did not dispute the contention that
the use of fetal heart rate monitors leads to many unneeded Caesarean
deliveries or that few cases of cerebral palsy are caused by mishandled deliveries.
But he said his cases, selected from hundreds of potential clients with the
disorder, were exceptions.
"I took very seriously our responsibility to determine if our cases were
merited," Mr. Edwards said. "Before I ever accepted a brain-injured child case,
we would spend months investigating it."
As for the unneeded Caesareans, he said, "The question is, would you rather
have cases where that happens instead of having cases where you don't
intervene and a child either becomes disabled for life or dies in utero?"
A Talent for Trials
Lawyers in North Carolina agree that Mr. Edwards was an exceptionally
talented lawyer, endowed with a prodigious work ethic, native self-confidence, good
looks, charisma and an ability to talk about complicated subjects in
accessible language.
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