Lawyers defended at Tort Museum

WINSTED — California- based trial attorney Thomas Girardi was the first speaker in the American Museum of Tort Law’s Leaders in Law lecture series on Thursday, Sept. 27, and he used his time to remind the audience that more than anything, lawyers are in business to protect private citizens. 

Girardi, who has been practicing law for over 50 years, has won several multi-million dollar verdicts during his career, including cases against pharmaceutical company Merck, Lockheed Martin and the Los Angeles Dodgers baseball team.

In 1996, representing 650 residents of Hinkley, Calif., he won a $460 million settlement in a case against Pacific Gas and Electric Company.

The company was blamed for causingt cancer and other diseases from contaminated water leaked from its gas pumping station.

The case inspired the movie “Erin Brockovich,” which was released in 2000.

In an interview before the event, Girardi said he wanted to convey to the audience the importance of lawyers and juries when it comes to protecting people.

“What many lawyers do for a living is protect people who get hurt due to the bad conduct of companies,” Girardi said. “Jurors are all people who do not have a dog in the hunt when it comes to a case. They are going to listen to everything that is being presented. To me, governmental entities like the Food and Drug Administration are not effective when it comes to stopping anything harmful. Trial lawyers and juries are the ones who can make a difference.”

He said that an unfair stigma has developed about lawyers.

“For people to think of lawyers as greedy is crazy,” Girardi said. “Corporations are encouraging this kind of stigma because they don’t want us out there. The last thing big companies want is people like us who can stop them from doing bad stuff.”

Girardi spoke to an audience of 100 people about his career and how he presents cases in court.

“I want to know how the people on the jury are going to react to a case,” Girardi said. “I want to know how they think and in what direction to go in order for me to be persuasive.”

This involves studying the body language of jurors as he is presenting a case, for example.

“Sometimes I use body language experts, who can tell how jurors react to a witness,” he said. “Also, you have a lot of stuff that happens outside of a jury room. You have to be careful with your clients and what they do because those jurors are all looking at them, even outside the courtroom.”

Girardi told the audience that, despite working hard and sometimes losing cases, being a lawyer has been a rewarding career.

The next speaker in the series will be Thomas Fortune Fay, the former president of the Trial Lawyers Association of Metropolitan Washington, D.C. He is scheduled for Thursday, Nov. 8, at 7 p.m.

For more information, go to www.tortmuseum.org.