LAWYERS, GUNS, AND MONEY

...But there's a Catch-22 in American product liability law: If manufacturers can be forced to add safety features to their wares, it becomes easier to sue them for not improving their products sooner...

...If the New Orleans handgun lawsuit seems sophomoric, there's a good reason...

...And if I disparage those strawberries in print, he adds, "I'll sue the s— out of you...

...Abel says Shane first brought up the idea to Gauthier last year when he was a college sophomore...

...Of St...

...The gun industry should take note: All this firepower was marshaled against a single hotel for a $220 million settlement...

...And inflamed public opinion, not the law, will be crucial to the success of Gauthier and his counterparts...

...In their L.L...

...Scruggs says the Castano Group is "the best bunch of bulls—ers you'll ever see...

...No matter that some of these technologies—like "smart guns" that won't fire without a radio signal from the owner's transmitter—have yet to be proven reliable...

...Since the city prohibits the sale or possession of handguns that weren't registered before 1982, Chicago is pressing a public-nuisance claim as opposed to New Orleans's product liability approach...

...If they settle, they might have trouble scratching up enough ransom to sate the mayors and their attorneys...

...But Gauthier's defining characteristic is the infectious, perpetual, coprophagous grin...

...It has now even received the blessing of President Clinton, at least indirectly, when he called for "child trigger locks" on handguns in his State of the Union address...

...And since the $2-billion-a-year gun industry earns a tiny fraction of the Big Four tobacco companies' annual profits, the gun manufacturers are in a bind...

...It is a minor hypocrisy in a city that passed a law in 1996 encouraging it's citizenry to shoot carjackers, after Ms...

...Epochs wane...

...Many lawyers do...

...It's hard to win a product liability lawsuit when the product in question is intended to be dangerous and is not "defective" by any ordinary understanding of the word...

...What makes Gauthier and his colleagues so formidable is their bellicosity...

...But Morial denies seeking to fill city coffers...

...While some of the local pawn shops it is suing sold fewer than 50 guns last year, the city of New Orleans redistributed thousands...

...I come back lookin' kind of smug, and Edwin pulls me over to the side and says, 'You stupid coon-ass!' I say, 'What's wrong?' He says, 'This afternoon, those Yankees were gonna think we couldn't shoot worth a damn...

...During last June's meeting of the U.S...

...Mostly, however, they are sue-happy...

...we are a bad dream for the gun industry...

...They are happy to sit next to a neighboring table of full-sweatered southern magnolias ("The one in the blue should open a dairy farm," Alligator Mick observes...

...Rodham was recruited by Gauthier, who was determined not to get "out-brother-in-lawed" by rival Scruggs, who is married to Trent Lott's sister...

...A veritable Zelig of mass-disaster litigation, Gauthier has twice ranked as one of the National Law Journal's "100 Most Powerful Lawyers...

...Though his New Orleans comrades call him "Goat" (his name is pronounced "Goat-chay"), he's better known as "the General" for building the A-team of ambulance chasers—a roguish band of overpaid and outsized egos whose displays of plumage and aggression have earned them wrestling-card sobriquets like "the Girths," (a group of Castano lawyers known for their sybaritic corpulence...

...If they don't settle, they face not 50 lawsuits, as Big Tobacco did against the states, but hundreds of lawsuits from cities across the nation...

...These guys are shrewd and well-funded . . . and don't give a s— about anything except how much money they can make...

...Boy, that'll be fun...

...While soliciting clients at a Conference of Mayors gathering in Chicago, Gauthier emits confidence pheromones, speaking in a thick-Cajun brogue that he must save for the road, as country lawyers travel well...

...For the New Orleans suit, Gauthier and Mayor Morial enlisted the help of Sarah Brady's Center to Prevent Handgun Violence—which for years brought unsuccessful suits against gun manufacturers for accidental deaths...

...Hennigan fumbles and fails to unlock the gun in a well-lit room with no intruder at the door...

...Gauthier responded by appointing the two men co-chairs of the Castano Group's public relations committee...

...There is of course, no cry for the heads of swimming pool manufacturers, lifeguards, or Huffy executives...

...They are a garrulous and jovial crew...

...Toys are not really us," Abel says, though Gauthier has owned a piece of the New Orleans Saints, a RollsRoyce, and an interest in a casino...

...New Orleans's idea was so swell that the city of Chicago filed a similar suit two weeks later...

...Martin hunts alligators with rotting chickens and shark hooks...

...To complete the transaction, the department also agreed to trade guns confiscated from criminals in a three-way-transaction with a distributor who supplies police departments and who also sells guns commercially...

...Over the same period, 950 drowned and 500 died in bicycle accidents...

...And while Gauthier also insists his motives are more pediatric than pecuniary, he'll take 20 percent of any settlement and 30 percent of any judgment should the case go to trial...

...We won't be representing them," Gauthier offers jauntily...

...They are happy to be here with their families, eating calamari stuffed with Gulf shrimp and slurping sherry-laced turtle soup...

...off since Gauthier's first client, New Orleans mayor Marc Morial, filed suit on October 31 against 15 handgun manufacturers, three trade associations, and several local pawn shops...

...If the gun manufacturers think the Gauthier crowd will be deterred simply because they are not, like tobacco, the biggest torts prize in history, they're in for a shock...

...Scruggs, who led a rival faction to Gauthier's in the tobacco litigation and made out much better, may be overstating...

...The fire had been deliberately set by three angry Teamsters in the midst of a labor dispute...

...At the time, "we were doing the other s—, tobacco, which is about children," explains Abel...

...But like New Orleans, Chicago is in it for "the children...

...Likewise lives that are lost to gun accidents are exponentially offset by the 2.5 million times a year law-abiding citizens successfully employ their "unsafe" guns defensively...

...From the 1982 Pan Am plane crash to the 1980 MGM Grand hotel fire, from bone screws to breast implants, if it burns, leaks, seeps, or (praise God) explodes, chances are Gauthier is heading up the plaintiff's committee, siphoning 25 percent to 35 percent contingency fees from the multi-million dollar jackpots relinquished by accident-prone companies waiting to get milked in class action lawsuits...

...After once commanding his weeping client to convince a jury of her botched operation by baring her deformed breasts, Belli recalled that he "could hear the angels sing and the cash register ring...

...He agrees with the gun manufacturers that this is a naked attempt to accomplish judicially what couldn't be accomplished legislatively—nationwide gun control...

...One might think he's bluffing, though in the courtroom, Gauthier is not known as a gambler...

...Alligator Mick' and theguv'nah If any of these cities wants to file suit, there's a place it can go to get great legal representation: Vizard's in the Garden District...

...Like New Orleans, Chicago is seeking damages for everything from police overtime to the cost of wiping blood from the streets...

...He shoots the second bird and just nicks it...

...Indeed, no one ever has won such a suit against a gun maker...

...With his track record, who wouldn't...

...actually moved to the island before the cinders had cooled...

...At least 15 other mayors, from Baltimore to St...

...Undercover officers posed as gangbangers, militia members, and "motorcycle toughs" (the press release's words) while baiting suburban gunstore merchants by saying they needed to "take care of business...

...He had a starring role in the state lawsuits against Big Tobacco that may end up netting him and his nationwide 64-firm consortium—the Castano group—hundreds of millions in fees...

...While chain-smoking Marlboro mediums, Abel moderates a slurred Sazerac-influenced symposium on the evils of tobacco and firearms...

...Cities that operate on austerity budgets may not be able to fund protracted litigation or conduct sting operations...

...He tests every aspect of his cases, making such elaborate use of mock trials that he even had a courtroom built in his law offices, complete with hidden cameras and a jury box...

...The suit accuses gun makers of not incorporating safety designs that prevent the use of guns by children or other unauthorized users...

...Though the hour is late and the Quarter is infested with loutish tourists, we are secure in the knowledge that Abel has a .32 caliber Beretta in his truck...

...Gauthier has made a career of plundering relatively small targets that keep him and his colleagues bringing in seven and eight-figure sums a year...

...As the University of Chicago's John Lott has noted, in 1996, 230 children under the age of 15 died from accidents with guns in the United States...

...Martin suddenly adds drama to the discussion by pushing back from the table and drawing a snubnose .38 from under his jacket...

...Martin...

...Abel knows Gauthier better than most...

...He clipped that guy for a fortune...

...That was one short decade...

...His successful laissez-faire management style, he explains is: "Let 'em scrap...

...It's kind of understood...

...We're just a bunch of country [boys...

...Rather, they tend to advertise it...

...All these cities need legal representation, of course, and here, Gauthier and his colleagues will prove a godsend...

...As he emerges for an interview in his Metairie office north of New Orleans, Gauthier is suppressing yet another grin...

...Safe," he says...

...But Gauthier makes no such missteps...

...And he's skeptical that the cities will curtail death rates...

...Later, when I break the news to Gauthier that a gunowners group called the Second Amendment Foundation is threatening to sue the cities for violating their civil rights, Gauthier shrugs: "We gonna sue them before they sue us for interfering with our contract...

...Unlike New Orleans, Chicago is suing with city lawyers and two civic-minded law firms that are serving—gulp—pro bono...

...Rather than put anyone out of business, better to let them go on doing the producing, then step into court and tap them, Masai-style, right in the neck...

...Conference of Mayors in Reno, Philadelphia Mayor Ed Rendell launched a task force to work with the gun industry, promising any litigation against manufacturers would be "10 years down the road...

...But that's just small change...

...The case was so unwieldy—over 2,300 plaintiffs brought suits—the judge had to build a special courtroom just to contain the lawyer traffic...

...Gun manufacturers have already started grousing about the unfairness of it all...

...While the gun industry is vowing to fight, its various parties are a diffuse, iconoclastic lot who are resistant to pooling resources for a united legal front...

...There is for one thing no evidence to suggest they concealed the fact that their products, when used as intended, kill people...

...Louis to Los Angeles, have already declared their intent to sue...

...He has full-bodied Atticus Finch hair, and he's tailored like a mogul from Milan...

...It's what industry types call the Masai Move—named for the African tribesmen who don't kill their cattle for steaks, but repeatedly draw blood from the beasts for a nutritious beverage...

...Finally, disengaging the safety, he apologizes, "Most people aren't as klutzy as I am...

...When he's not hunting the offshore personal-injury cases that have made him one of the richest men in the state, St...

...The tobacco lawsuits effected the largest transfer of wealth in the history of civil litigation— without a single judgment ever being entered against the industry...

...This year, Gauthier will earn about $2.2 million...

...Martin from Houma, La., whose friends call him "Alligator Mick...

...The legal offensive against gun makers has taken Matt Labash is a staff writer at THE WEEKLY STANDARD...

...If fatty foods and alcohol are next on the mass-torts hit list, as some suspect, it is clear that these lawyers will bring into the courtroom an extensive personal knowledge of the products...

...Since its only noticeable safety is that the hammer isn't cocked, I ask St...

...Louisiana had her Ford Taurus boosted from her driveway...

...Having captured our undivided attention, the Alligator conducts a teach-in on the perils of showing one's hand, which may explain why Gauthier grins his coprophagous grin and fails to elaborate about his strategy in the gun suit...

...Dennis Hennigan of the Center to Prevent Handgun Violence drops the ball in front of a roomful of reporters, while trying to prove the efficacy of Saf T Lok, a purportedly easy-to-use combination lock in the gun's grip...

...Back at Vizard's, I ask Gauthier how he's going to win what looks to be a weak case...

...Last February, the New Orleans police department traded in 715 Beretta 92 Series pistols for 1,700 Glocks...

...This is perfectly legal, of course...

...We gonna win this thing in Loo'siana, ain't no doubt about that...

...The result is poorly lit video footage of gunstore clerks with bad mustaches selling weapons to cops who speak in B-movie criminalese, asserting that they're protecting their "spot," which is supposed to give the clerks the idea that they are dealing with druglords...

...The city's suit faults manufacturers for not developing the technology to keep "unauthorized users" from firing guns...

...While Daley has loudly touted the unlawful behavior of the clerks selling guns to these apparent criminals, not a single target of the investigation has been criminally charged...

...Gau-thier's coalition, however, sued not only the hotel (which was carrying a mere $1 million in liability insurance), but also 200 manufacturers, right down to the makers of the dice in the casino...

...They strictly prohibit grabbing checks or taking a swallow without their topping off your wine...

...Martin, Fayard warns, "He'll sue anybody but his doctor...

...But who can be sure these days that the law will trump public opinion...

...They contend the mayors will never get a judgment by applying untested legal theories (similar cases against the industry have been dismissed), but that's hardly a sure thing...

...Edwards and the Alligator once found themselves—shades of Tom Wolfe's A Man in Full—quail-shooting at a Georgia plantation with a group of New York stockbrokers...

...Those who know Gauthier best say litigation for him is not just about the settlements—or even the beloved children—it's about the contest...

...If the cities don't collect, the trial lawyers will eat the litigation costs...

...The letter to Glock from Police superintendent Richard Pennington that consummated the deal is signed and approved by Mor-ial...

...Herman even called Coale a "cesspool" in print...

...And scrap they do...

...With a soft Cajun accent, he's a fount of country-lawyer malapropisms (he says his old friend Edwin Edwards, the frequently indicted former governor of Louisiana, has a "photogenic mind...

...This type of litigation is a science, really, designed to force quick settlements, since protracted class-action judgments can mean financial ruin for companies (and a meager payday for those who sue them...

...He comes walkin' back and I say, 'Goddamn Edwin, those were easy shots.' So I walk out there, they threw two birds, and I blew 'em to dust...

...We were gonna be able to shoot against them for fifty to a hundred thousand dollars, and you just f— it all up...

...According to Jannuzzo, over half of the guns traded in were redistributed commercially in cities from Abilene to Carpentersville, Illinois (a suburb of Chicago...

...As one bloodied tobacco lawyer says of Gau-thier's Castano Group, "The gun manufacturers are really in for it...

...Law partner Danny Abel, who has an encyclopedic knowledge of French Quarter watering holes and off-menu specialties, explains Gauthier's love of the hunt to me and his young litigation assistant Shane D'Antoni, as we slop oyster po' boys at the Napoleon House...

...Hair grays...

...For "the action" is shaping up as the next big thing in industry-gouging, trial-lawyer ransom demands...

...Bean jackets and double-billed caps, the New Yorkers "couldn't hit their ass with both hands," says St...

...Instead, Daley appears to have taken the unusual tack of dedicating police resources to facilitate a $433 million civil lawsuit against not only the gunshops, but the 4 distributors and 22 manufacturers who are allegedly overrunning the suburban market with products they know will be used within city limits...

...Ironically, the morning the New Orleans Times-Picayune announced Morial's lawsuit, the front page also carried an account of a gun-toting good Samaritan warding off a knife-wielding stalker in a parking garage just minutes from Gauthier's law office...

...We comin' after 'em...

...that both cities' cases are absurd on their face...

...Fayard promises to send me some of the best strawberries in the state...

...Their chief defense is that the law is on their side...

...There's Calvin Fayard of Denham Springs, nicknamed "Calhoun" after the shyster lawyer from Amos 'n Andy...

...This shamelessness serves as the bedrock of a litigation philosophy pinched from Gauthier's "idol," the late Melvin Belli, aka the "King of Torts" (a Castano member until his death in 1996...

...So they walked in to Gauthi-er's office with the gun idea and said, "This is about children...

...It's just simply what amount and when," he brags before a roomful of mayor's aides and city attorneys...

...Like the states that made claims for the medical expenses of smokers, the city hopes to collect damages for everything from tax revenues lost from dead citizens to the cost of laundering the emergency-room scrubs of the doctors who treat gunshot wounds...

...Money's not the major issue...

...Gauthier built on this tradition...

...But more important, "If Chicago wins, they'll put those guys into bankruptcy, and New Orleans won't get anything...

...Gauthier, you see, has declared war on gun manufacturers for—brace your-selves—making guns that kill people...

...Second Amendment rights...

...Shane and I are smoking Dominican cigars as thick as babies' legs, which Shane was kind enough to purchase after lecturing the employees of the tobacco shop on how cigarette companies target children...

...Indeed, an opposing lawyer once objected to a judge that Wendell Gauthier smiled too often...

...Boolsheet...

...Martin how his wife feels about light gunplay during dinner...

...If the mayors win, jackpots will abound, and nobody will quibble with the lawyers' 30 percent cut...

...But attacking gun manufacturers is a no-lose proposition for big-city mayors...

...In the publicity downdraft of the New Orleans and Chicago lawsuits, Rendell now speaks of the possibility of up to 100 cities filing suit within the next six months...

...They appear tough on crime to constituencies that are generally more tolerant of gun-industry bashing than their rural cousins, and they are effectively gambling with someone else's money...

...Mike St...

...So the guv'nah gets out there and shoots at one bird and misses altogether...

...The mayors' crusade Gauthier has little cause for worry—nobody is anticipating an epidemic of pro-bono largesse amongst the bar...

...While the suit faults manufacturers for not being innovative enough, it goes after everyone from pawn shops to trade associations for encouraging the sale of "unsafe" guns...

...Belli was fined for suing on behalf of a man who had died 12 years earlier...

...Buy a reporter, get a good story," Wendell says with a wink...

...Scruggs says he has no plans to join the latest "gangbang...

...It's enough to make even a trial lawyer take pity— and no less of one than Mississippi's Richard Scruggs, who masterminded the states' anti-tobacco attack...

...Now they know you can shoot, and they never gonna gamble with us.' "That afternoon, Edwin gets in a gin rummy game with one of them," adds the Alligator, shaking his head while Gauthier beams admiringly...

...Coale, who once solicited the family members of ValuJet-crash victims by mailing them pictures of his CNN-commentator wife Greta Van Susteren, referred to himself as a "pirate" and suggested Herman was putting on airs to compensate for not going to Harvard...

...Though calls right now are running four-to-one against the suit, Gauthier says he'll get what he needs in discovery...

...But if the specious logic of New Orleans's own lawsuit is applied, the city could technically become a defendant in other cities' lawsuits...

...He is, after all, alleging that the industry hasn't properly warned people about the dangers of its product...

...It is at this restaurant, a former bordello that is owned by one of Gauthier's law associates, that I break paneed sweetbreads with Gauthier, Abel, and other Castano lawyers...

...Scruggs thinks litigation will drive legitimate gun dealers out of business and foster a thriving black market...

...This has drawn abject ridicule from writers who cover the gun industry, like Massad Ayoob, who says, "Highway departments must be negligent for not putting up signs that say 'Do not drive off bridge.' Hell's Angels are negligent for not having a sign outside their favorite bar that says 'Do not stand in doorway and scream 'Kawasaki rules.' There are certain basic laws in life...

...And there's Michael St...

...The mass-disaster bar has similarly grown wise over three decades of pillaging...

...But the odds are great that other cities will want to follow the examples of New Orleans and Chicago...

...Toys are not us...

...They were fraternity brothers at Southeastern Louisiana State...

...The supposed remedy for the undocumented spate of suicides and accidental shootings for which New Orleans is ostensibly seeking damages would be for manufacturers to incorporate push-button combination locks in gun grips or develop "smart guns" that require the owner to wear a wrist-band radio transmitter to fire (only Colt has developed a prototype, which they say is still years away from working properly...

...Never mind that it has neither the loaded-chamber indicator nor the magazine-disconnect—the safety features that Gauthier and the city of New Orleans call for in their "safe guns" suit...

...I'm payin' when [gun victims] go to the hospital...

...rather, he is suing on behalf of "the children...

...Gauthier says that during tobacco negotiations, Coale, who was kicked out of high school for stealing hubcaps, actually started an elevator fistfight with fellow lawyer Hugh Rodham, brother of Hillary Rodham Clinton and member of the Castano Group...

...But Morial's own police department has placed itself in the distribution chain—with his approval...

...Mayor Richard Daley, up for reelection this year, had his police department conduct a three month sting entitled "Operation Gunsmoke...

...Martin's lesson about not giving anything away comes courtesy of their hunting buddy Edwin Edwards, who used to earn three times his gubernatorial salary at the craps tables...

...At least their non-flame-retardant products were present at the time of the fire...

...There's just not enough money to go around...

...He has just been on the phone with Johnnie Cochran who, he says, "wants in on the action...

...According to paperwork supplied by Glock, Inc., and accounts of the transaction by Glock vice president Paul Jannuzzo, the city traded over 8,000 confiscated guns, at least 40 percent of which were semi-automatics, and nearly all of which are "unsafe," by the definition of the city's lawsuit...

...What is a major hypocrisy, however, is the behavior of Gauthier's client, Mayor Marc Morial...

...In the early days of Castano, New Orleans lawyer Russ Herman swore that he'd never work alongside John "the Wizard of Bhopal" Coale, the lawyer who famously signed up 7,000 defendants for a class-action suit against Union Carbide after its plant explosion in Bhopal, India, though it was rumored that many of his Indian clients couldn't read their retainer agreements...

...And while the tobacco settlement works its way through the courts, Gauthier and the Castano group have trained their sights on another politically unpopular industry and are moving in for the kill...

...After the 1986 Dupont Plaza Hotel fire in San Juan, Puerto Rico, which killed 97 people, Gauthier and Co...

...A week later, I'll see what he means...