Tort (from Lat. torquere, to twist, tortus, twisted, wrested aside). A private or civil wrong or injury, including action for bad faith breach of contract, for which the court will provide a remedy in the form of an action for damages." Black's Law Dictionary.

King Of Torts, the book

by John Grisham

Much has already been written about the novel, The King of Torts, by John Grisham. I will write more. I have not read The King of Torts, nor will I. That will probably make writing a review somewhat difficult. It is alledged to be a legal suspense kind of book, but I couldn't attest to it.

The hardcover edition carries an ISBN of 0-385-50804-2 and was first published in 2003. The paperback has an ISBN of 0-440-24153-7, for those so interested, I'm not, but maybe you are. I'm more interested in the real Kings listed in the column to the left. I'm an attorney, I don't have time to read fiction.

If my friend, Bob Jimenez, is correct, the book is about a young struggling do-gooder type lawyer named Carter Clay or Clay Carter, who blunders into a giant pharmacetical coverup of a drug side effect that caused a client of his to become violent and kill someone. Was that a little pithy? Yes. At any rate, the fictional drug company, in the book called "Maximum Space", according to my friend Bob, who says he actually read the book while on vacation a Lake in Nova Scotia a couple summers ago. The drug company ends up paying off Carter to hush up the problem.

This makes the struggling barrister wealthy beyond his wildest dreams. Wealthier than a best-selling novelist, wealthier that a publishing company magnate. So wealthy that you can't put the book down, you wish you had one hundredth the money that this corrupt joker, Cassius Carter Clay, or whotever, does. And that ain't beans compared to the pharmacetical industry and their ill gotten billions and billions. Why do you think that US health care is the most expensive in the developed or undeveloped world? Because of books like this, that's why - isn't it obvious? And this joker, Griswald or Grisham or whatever he calls himself, how much does he pay for health insurance? I bet he gets his free from Max Space, Inc. or whatever company paid him to write this thing. I don't know if I can go on, I need a nap.

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Ahh... that was refreshing. A long luxurious nap. Where was I? Oh, yes, Torts, King of.. What is a *tort*, anyway, a French pastry? a French pastie? Oh, ho! NO!, Is it a Frenchie word for a wrong, an injury? Oh yes, yes, honey, yes! Tort law is a civil injury or wrong not due to breach of contract but that torts have legal private property protection involving an act or action that your lawyer has a legal duty to prove damages in a criminal court claim willfully brought by an person other than an alien against someone or some other person resulting in remedies for negligence liability not involving trespass by the injured party. That torts in a nutshell. It pays well, too. I think I'll go back to sleep now.

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Ah. Er. umm.. Coffee, get me coffee.... On with our story.. This fellow, Grisham, Bob says, writes legal thrillers like this all the time, but this is his most unusual legal suspense story ever. It's a story whose hero and villain are one and the same, that is to say, this young hotshot attorney, Carter Clay, (according to my friend Bob) "a young man caught up in an age old delimna, money vs morality." Bob says the author "disparages the entire mass tort legal industry - those famous high-flying lawyers you read about in the New York Times who win multi-billion dollar class action lawsuits against rip-off corporations, but pocket multi-million dollar fees off the top." What's the problem with that, I ask?

 The official story line, i.e. the plot: Carter Clay is a lowly legal beagle slaving away in a grimy Washington, D.C. public defender's office, he hates his job. He defends people he knows without a doubt are guilty of heinous crimes. One day, he is assigned to defend a teenage boy who gunned down another young man for no apparent reason. Just another random street killing? Anyway, as the case develops, Mr. Carter discovers that his client is taking a psychotropic drug prescribed by a doctor. Mr. Clay is then contacted a representative of the giant pharmaceutical company whose medication caused the young man, and others, to become insanely violent. The corporation offers to pay Carter ten million dollars to settle this one case, and offers him much more to help settle other claims being filed against them.

Clay quits the Public Defenders office, sets up his own law firm and goes to town figuratively. In return, the company gives him his reward - a class action suit based on phoney evidence but worth a hundred million dollars in new fees.

He enjoys the rewards of his greed and corruption for a while, but soon is brought down to earth. Of course, this kind of moral comeupance always happens in fiction and maybe in spiritual realities, but for some reason, in real life the greedheads seem to just keep winning, and go on winning. Will it always be thus? Maybe the poor will indeed inherit the earth, but what will remain of this ruined planet when the greedy coroporations get done ravaging it? Let us meditate.