Who is the real Joe Jamail?

Joe Jamail takes a deposition defended by Edward Carstarphen

It's hard to believe, but the lawyer off-camera doing the questioning in this crazy deposition video is Joe Jumail, Texas superlawyer. Here are some other aspects of the man; they really need to make a movie about him.

It's Good to Be the King, Texas Superlawyers:

He may be the richest lawyer in America, but even at 78 Joe Jamail shows no signs of slowing down.

The King is 45 minutes late when he walks out of the elevator and into his penthouse office, high atop 500 Dallas Street in Houston. His pace is slow and regal through the lobby, as he is being politely acknowledged by his staff. He doesn't need to explain where he's been. After all, he is a man who claims more trial victories than anyone else, ever. A man who forced the withdrawal of three products from the marketplace because he deemed them dangerous. A man who won the largest civil damage award in history. A man whose legal victories are so astounding and groundbreaking that he was acknowledged in the Guinness Book of World Records. But this is no mere man. This is Joe Jamail — King of Torts

-Oh, yes, the King likes to imbibe on occasion. In fact, a morning's worth of Jamail's stories tends to start out the same way: "I was drinking with a couple of my buddies when ...”

For instance, where was he when he was first inspired to become a lawyer? In a saloon in Lafayette, Louisiana, trying to score with the barmaid when an attorney named Kaliste Soloom intervened to spark Jamail's curiosity about the law.

Where was he when he decided to take the bar exam on a dare -- with only three days to prepare? Drinking off-campus with some law school buddies. He passed by one point -- and boisterously claimed that he had overtrained for the test — then headed right back out to celebrate.

Where was he the night before he was to deliver his closing arguments in the historic Pennzoil versus Texaco trial? Drinking with Willie Nelson and former University of Texas football coach Darrell Royal. "Willie and Darrell showed up in a white stretch limousine and started pounding on the front door They kept me up drinking and bullshitting past midnight," says Jamail.

-Despite that highly unusual all-night liquid strategy session, Jamail still nailed the summation and cemented his footprints into the legal walk of fame with the verdict that followed.

By now, a trainload of ink has been spilled over that trial, and Jamail still considers it the shining jewel in his crown. It took place in the mid-1980s, a period often perceived as a decade of greed. Getting a jury to care about two big oil companies fighting over more money seemed a daunting task. What's more, there would be substantial testimony of Wall Street dealings and business acquisitions and a whole mess of other financial stuff that might confuse or bore a jury.

Jamail was representing Pennzoil, who claimed that Texaco knowingly savaged its deal to take over Getty Oil. He agonized for weeks over how to argue it. Finally, he found the clarity he was seeking and saw the situation as a matter of honor, and that's the foundation with which he chose his picks for the jury "[Pennzoil] didn't have a signed contract, but we had a word. We had a handshake. So I was looking for people with long marriages, long church affiliations ... people whose word meant something," says Jamail. "I had to try to make them understand that they didn't give up their common sense when they got to court. And it worked for me."

Oh, it worked all right. Jamail compelled the jury to get excited enough to send a warning shot across the bow of every company in America that morality and ethics have a place in business just as they have in life's other arenas. And it was a big shot. The largest legal shot in history, in fact. It was an $11 billion shot, and, of course, Jamail got a lawyer-sized cut of the award. (And even though the case was ultimately settled for $3 billion, that's still a lot more money than most attorneys will rack up in a lifetime of litigating.)

-He's charming and talented, but Jamail is also a warrior. He’s extremely hard-working and thorough when preparing for a case. "When you really prepare — and that's one of the things that I'm noted for: I really get ready — then it looks like it's all coming right off the top of your head. But look, the only thing that comes off the top of your head is dandruff. So I drive everybody around here nuts picking apart every little thing,” says Jamail. "Anybody who thinks they're smart enough to go to court and the Holy Ghost is going to descend upon them with all the knowledge they need to win is ... goofy. It just doesn't happen like that. If you're not prepared, you're just not gonna win." ...

The discussion swings toward the current political climate — which he is none too happy with and what he perceives as an erosion of civil liberties. He then leans in to make his last point crystal clear and the soon-to-be octogenarian assumes the role of warrior king again. "There's never been a bigger assault on people's privacy and their liberties and on the Constitution itself ... because of some hocus-pocus cry of `war-time president!' thereby revoking all our constitutional guarantees. Give me a break. I don't believe that. I don't like that and I'm not going to put up with that. I'm going to fight that."

High profile: Joe Jamail, Dallas Morning News:

-A grocer's son and of Lebanese descent, Mr. Jamail grew up in Houston in the "Jamail Compound," where aunts, uncles, and cousins also lived.

As a neighborhood runt and facing pressure of being as good as his older brother, George, he quickly grew to resent authority.

But the chip on his shoulder "the size of a manhole cover" taught him to fight back, long before he started taking on big corporations.

Once, sick of being a bully's punching bag, young Joe kept a sock loaded with marbles handy.

"I just got tired of it, so when he got close, I nailed him," Mr. Jamail recalls. "It taught me something. If you don't stand up for something, then what are you going to do?"

-"He almost always uses very traditional theories of liability," says Bill Powers, who is the dean for UT's School of Law and still teaches tort-law classes.

"His forte has always been his technique. He takes the core legal principles and tells a great story to the jury under those traditional principles: If they are violated, then someone ought to pay."

Mr. Jamail will stun juries with blunt deliveries, just as he did one afternoon when admitting that his client, paralyzed in an accident, registered a .31 blood alcohol content – more than three times the legal limit.

He went on to convince the jury that his client, despite being drunk, was not weaving or causing his own peril but was forced off the road by a commercial truck. The jury returned with a $6 million award.

"Any attorney who goes into court thinking he's going to flim-flam a jury is nuts," he says.

"That's why I told the jury during voir dire: 'I want you to know right off my client was drunk. I don't care what you've seen, you've never seen anybody as drunk as he was the night this happened, so if anyone who feels it's open season on drunks and they are not entitled to protections of the law, I need to know.' Half wouldn't give a drunk a fair trial."

From his own, idiosyncratic website:

"As for doctors, I was in this debate once with the head of the Harris County Medical Society, and it was being televised. He went off on lawyers; it was terrible. And the last couple or three minutes the moderator looked at me and said, 'Mr. Jamail, I'm sorry he's taken most of the time but you have thirty seconds if you'd like to respond.' I said, 'That's more than enough time. I would like for you to remind the doctor, and I hope he doesn't mind if I call him a doctor. I would like for you to remind him that when his professional ancestors were putting leeches on George Washington to bleed him, mine were writing the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.' That ended that shit."

A blog entry entitled Lawyerin’ Ain’t Easy has the following:

Jamail didn’t get to where he is now by being a softy, though. In Paramount Communications Inc. v. QVC Network Inc., Jamail represented one of the Paramount directors. During the course of the case, Jamail was defending a deposition when the following exchange took place:

Q. . . . Do you have any idea why Mr. Oresman was calling that material to your attention?

MR. JAMAIL: Don’t answer that. How would he know what was going on in Mr. Oresman’s mind? Don’t answer it. Go on to your next question.

MR. JOHNSTON: No, Joe –

MR. JAMAIL: He’s not going to answer that. Certify it. I’m going to shut it down if you don’t go to your next question.

MR. JOHNSTON: No. Joe, Joe –

MR. JAMAIL: Don’t “Joe” me, asshole. You can ask some questions, but get off that. You could gag a maggot off a meat wagon. . . . .

This exchange was apparently only one example of a number of similar exchanges. The Delaware Supreme Court actually added an addendum to its decision, noting “an astonishing lack of professionalism and civility that is worthy of special note.”