Title: The King of Torts
Author: John Grisham
Published: 2003 by Doubleday
ISBN: 0-385-50804-2

John Grisham is an excellent, and rich, writer so I was a little disappointed by the quality of this book. The last one I read was The Rainmaker and it was a lot better. It did finally end better than I expected, which I was grateful for, of course, but the middle of the book was rather lacking.

The story is about Clay Carter, a D.C. lawyer stuck in a low paying job as a public defender. It's a job he's been working for 5 years since he passed the bar, but not one that he's enjoyed at any point along the way. He has the bleak resposibility to deal with the worst part of society, and in a city where crime is a major occurance no less. To think that only a few years ago he had such grand plans of graduating from Georgetown and going into practice with his father.

Along comes a murder defendent who seems to have shot another street kid for no reason at all. The guy freely admits to it, but has no history of violence, had no motive for shooting the victim, and in fact was doing really well in a drug rehab center. One day he just walked out and shot the victim. Something seems out of place and Clay digs in looking for clues.

Out of the woodwork pops a mysterious figure, Max Pace. He tells Clay that the murder, one among seven so far, is caused by an anti-addiction drug created by a US pharmaceutical company. Seems this drug causes a small number of patients to go totally bonkers and start killing. But just a small number (*whew*). The company has seen the error of its ways and would like to retire the drug and cover up its tracks quickly and quietly, for which they will pay Clay the sum of $15 million.

Well, how can you turn that down? He takes the cash, quickly puts together a law firm and files multi-million dollar settlements for each of the murder victims' families. Clay considers closing the doors and walking away with a wad of cash, but Max has another opportunity for him. A chance to sue another drug company for a drug that causes cancer.

From there Clay goes sort of nuts. He joins the world of mass tort litigation, flying around the world in private jets, staying in private island resorts, dating foreign models. The rich bum starts spending money like crazy and becomes rather a pathetic individual. He started out so noble. At a convention of tort litigators he questioned himself, "were these people so blinded by the money that they honestly believed themselves to be defenders of the poor and the sick?"

Oh, you just wait Clay Carter. You'll be one of them. I won't spoil the ending for you because it's such a welcome relief. I'll just tell you that Clay falls for it. He gets greedy and joins the rank of abusive litigators. It's sad, really but makes for a pretty good ending.

I get the feeling that Grisham is trying to emphasize how tort reform is needed. It's mentioned a few times in the book, and during the settlements it's quite easy to see how rediculous class action lawsuits actually are. Lawyers get to take generally 30% of any award that their victims receive. I personally am aware of a few settlements where the defendent offers coupons on further purchases to the victims. Yeah, that's really worth it. I bet the lawyers don't get paid in coupons.

My only complaint about the book is that middle section when I really just didn't feel inclined to finish reading. The story didn't seem like it was going anywhere. I expected a plot twist ... any ... minute ... now, but it just didn't happen. A slight one at the end I suppose, but nothing like The Firm. I honestly started to wonder if it was just a dull story about a man and his law firm. While I'm sure being a lawyer is an interesting career, I like my job too but I doubt anybody would enjoy reading about my day to day tasks. I therefore recommend this book only if you've got nothing else to do.