The King of Torts

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Watson insists that he somehow wasn't in control of his body when he pulled the trigger, a story which Clay tries to dismiss, but can't get out of his mind. This novel tells the story of Clay, a young lawyer struggling to make a name for himself at a little known firm. He is approached apparently randomly by a man who promises riches and fame if he follows his instructions to the letter. The requirements seem at first to be ethical and Clay is drawn into the web. He becomes a millionaire and the King of Torts leading mass civil litigation where-ever it exists. But it all seems a little too good to be true....... The man explains to Clay that his defendant was on a drug called Tarvan, which was amazing at cleaning up junkies had one serious problem-- after about a week of being off the drug, some of it's users had the uncontrollable urge to kill--totally at random. The drug company was now asking Clay to pay the victims' families (and Clay) a substantial sum of money to keep the story quiet. Clay agrees-- and so begins his slippery journey with big pharmaceuticals and mass cases. This is one of those books I can't stop thinking about! I read it for a business law class I'm taking and it is great! The Maxatil case collapsed and Clay went bankrupt. "Oh, Rebecca," he sighed, "leave your husband and let's just live on love and goodness and air."

Patton French appeared briefly in Grisham’s novel The Summons(2002). As a fictional character, he serves to voice the philosophy of greed and materialism. The character Dale Mooneyham, an old-fashioned, Clarence Darrow type of lawyer, seems to have been created for the express purpose of stating the thesis of Grisham’s novel. In an interview with Clay, Mooneyham, who believes in handling only one client at a time, says:

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Meanwhile, after some attentive investigation by Clay into the murky drive behind his latest client's crimes, a dark stranger by the name Max Pace who represents a pharmaceutical company drops into Clay's life and offers him an opportunity to make riches. However, this would be by changing teams to settle potential lawsuits of families affected by both his client's crime and a slew of other criminals in the D.C. area who have been influenced to commit the crimes. Representing all these families early in a class-action lawsuit a.k.a. a mass tort, would stop cold the chance the lawsuits going to a courtroom trial and avoiding potential sky-high punitive penalties against the influencing organization responsible. This is a good book for those who believe that if they get that promotion, that new house, that new car or whatever it might be, it will satisfy. It won't. Readers can see that his upswing has to come to an end. They will shudder at the way he bleeds money, wasting it on frivolous things like, oh, a private jet and a house in the tropics for his trophy girlfriend.

Another interesting story by Grisham, about the corruption in legal practice and greedy lawyers taking advantage of clients. It almost felt like a Mobster film, where the main character starts out from beneath, slowly works his way up making it to the top, then in the end everything goes south and starts to crumble. The main character really didn't appeal to me. He was a guy who had a fortune handed to him, blew it all on stupid shit, made stupid decisions, and basically screwed himself, and yet still comes out unscathed. The very next day a mysterious man walked into Clay's office. "Forget about Tequila," he said. "The reason he did what he did was because the pharmaceutical company hadn't tested his Tarvan properly. So sue the company instead. Here's how you do it." Most people are chasing money in some form or another. The point that this novel makes is that even when one gains more of it than they know what to do with. They will not be happy. It brings out the consequences in terms of friendships, relationships, health and just generally the emptiness of a life focused on temporary things that will be worthless in eternity. Clay signed the clients but the other lawyers weren't so impressed. "I'm not sure you'll win this one," they said. A little while later Clay discovered the effects of Dyloft were more severe than expected and that he had ripped off his clients.

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Clay, like many other young John Grisham heroes, is losing his idealism about the law as he is ground down by overwork and association with the dregs of humanity. He is demoralized by trying to defend clients who deserve to be behind bars and who cannot be honest even with their own attorneys. He is in love with beautiful, sophisticated Rebecca Van Horn, with whom he has been having sex five times a week. She enjoys that aspect of their relationship but wants a husband who can provide the kind of upper-class lifestyle to which she is accustomed. Her parents regard Clay as a hopeless underachiever. They make him feel unwelcome at the upscale social affairs he manages to crash. His future looks grim. Then a violent incident in the slums of the big city changes Clay’s prospects as well as his entire moral and psychological outlook.