Trial Lawyers Help Edwards Make His Case
Excerpt from The Buying of the President 2004 Follows the Edwards Money Trail
June 25, 2004
In 1981, John Edwards and his wife, Elizabeth, moved from Nashville, Tennessee, to North Carolina, where Edwards was raised. Elizabeth took a job as an attorney at one of Raleigh's leading bankruptcy law firms, while Edwards joined a firm known for its criminal defense work, Tharrington Smith & Hargrove. He was soon asked by Wade Smith, one of the firm's founders and a former chairman of the state Democratic Party, to take on a malpractice case. Edwards turned down several settlement offers, according to The New Yorker, including one for $750,000 made just before the case went to the jury. Ultimately, Edwards won a damage award of $3.7 million for his client, his first million-dollar verdict and a record in North Carolina at the time. The following year, 1985, Edwards won a $6.5 million judgment for a 6-year-old girl who'd suffered brain damage at Pitt Memorial Hospital in Greenville.
Edwards went on to try no fewer than 63 major cases during the 1990s and, according to media reports, brought in more than $152 million for his clients, almost all of whom were victims of medical malpractice. He became so admired and so feared that doctors would settle cases for millions of dollars rather than face him at trial. The high-stakes victories earned Edwards and law partner David Kirby the Association of Trial Lawyers of America's national award for public service. The courtroom conquests also netted Edwards an invitation to join the Inner Circle of Advocates, the exclusive, secretive club of 100 lawyers who have won multimillion-dollar verdicts.
Edwards gave up his law practice in 1998 and parlayed his fame and personal wealth—financial disclosures put his worth at between $13.7 million and $38.6 million—into a seat in the U.S. Senate. He went from relative obscurity to front-runner status against Democratic primary opponent D.G. Martin, who was well established in local politics as a former lobbyist and two-time congressional candidate. The political greenhorn won the primary and won again against his Republican rival, incumbent Senator Lauch Duncan Faircloth.
The campaign against Faircloth was financed largely through two sources: the wealth Edwards won in the courtroom (he loaned his campaign $3.2 million from personal funds) and contributions from attorneys from around the country. In fact, his deep-pocketed supporters have been drawn from the ranks of his professional brethren, America's personal injury lawyers—colleagues Edwards has willingly tapped throughout his political life for their resources, connections, and riches.
Trial lawyers, records show, have been his most generous contributors. Of Edwards' top 25 career patrons, 22 are fellow members of the plaintiffs' bar. (The remaining three are soft money mogul and movie producer Stephen Bing, Goldman Sachs Group, and Wakefield Development, a real estate developer.) In early fundraising for his White House run Edwards relied heavily on his fellow lawyers, some of whom have been generous beyond what federal election law allows.
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