Searching for the Heart of John Edwards

Through it all, the fundamental John Edwards remains something of a mystery.
It’s difficult to know his political imperatives because his record of public
service is thin, his short time in the Senate unremarkable. To some, he brings
to mind John F. Kennedy, who served just over one full Senate term. Kennedy,
too, projected idealism and intellect. JFK also was driven by his father’s naked
ambition to have a son become president.

As for Edwards, his courtroom brilliance is documented, his oratory speaks
for itself and his personal values stand upright, but his commitment to causes
beyond the political benefit of the moment remain a trial without yet a verdict.

Fast-forward to a week ago. The Edwards that I caught up to in South Carolina
barely resembled the laid-back moderate at the Town Hall. It was as though Edwards,
a youthful 50, had been injected with adrenalin and charisma — and it
wasn’t just the rockabilly soundtrack that pumped his entrance and exit. He’d
come up with a truly seductive stump speech, delivered with passion, about “Two
Americas”: one for the rich and the corporations — “those who have everything
they need” — and one for the rest of us, living “paycheck to paycheck.” The
speech is short on specifics, but long on populism and drama. Perhaps he was
still a Southern moderate, perhaps not. It was sort of hard to tell, even as
the cheering rose, almost without fail, every time he thundered: “Not in our
America! Not in our America!”

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I, too, had underestimated this silk-tongued Southerner, who’s won over increasing
numbers in the jury of voters. All of which is no surprise to attorneys who
have seen him at work.

“Whether it’s 12 people sitting in a box with him, or it’s one person or it’s
the whole country, he’s not up there giving a speech, he’s talking — he connects
with people,” said Raleigh criminal-defense attorney G. Bryan Collins. “He finds
a way to relate to people. He’s got an almost unique ability to communicate
with people of all walks of life without being condescending or patronizing.”

When John Edwards the lawyer interviewed prospective jurors, he’d roll his
leather-bound swivel chair right to the carved wooden railing of the jury box,
sit down and have an eye-to-eye conversation. He wanted to know each individual’s
heart and intellect. And during the trial, he always watched each jury member
closely. At what moments did a person look bored, engaged, confused? And what
was he going to do about it? For a panel that included a real estate agent,
for example, Edwards explained complicated evidence with metaphors drawn from
the real estate business.

Once, when his junior associate, Mark Holt — the friend I grew up with — called
for advice during a trial, Holt started to describe how the testimony had transpired
as planned. Edwards interrupted impatiently. He didn’t want to know about evidence.
He counted on Holt to handle that capably. It was the jury he wanted to hear
about. What exactly had the faces of jury members shown throughout the day?

It took a while for Edwards to translate this one-on-one courtroom magic to
an auditorium and a television audience. Because he has, he has a chance to
be president. But what is this achievement but the skill of a talented politician,
one who predictably defines himself as something different and fresh? That’s
a familiar and none-too-fresh claim.

In the end, how much is Edwards the malleable advocate, with positions based
on what he thinks most people want to hear, especially if it will advance his
career? Does he hold progressive core beliefs that he could marshal into progressive
policy?

Edwards’ courtroom victories suggest a positive answer, showcasing as they
do his desire to right wrongs, to see justice — in financial terms at least
— delivered to victims who’ve suffered because of medical malpractice, a defective
product or an indifferent corporation focused exclusively on the bottom line.

One notable case involved the family of my friend Harry Howard, with whom
I’d also grown up. Harry’s brother and his brother’s wife had died when the
driver of a 30,000-pound tractor-trailer lost control, crossed the center line
of a narrow, dangerous road and plowed into their car. Their 4-year-old son
was orphaned. Edwards and his team, which included my lawyer pal Mark Holt,
argued that the driver was negligent and that his company’s policies encouraged
unsafe driving. One reason that Harry’s mother had pursued the case was to send
a message to trucking companies. Edwards later noted, “Trucking firms in North
Carolina were soon placing greater emphasis on driver-safety training. They
were equipping more and more of their vehicles with governors to regulate driving
speed. Some companies even abandoned the practice of paying drivers by the mile.”

But Edwards was less encouraged by another response. Insurance-company lobbyists
subsequently prevailed on a bill that disallowed punitive damages related to
an employee’s actions, “unless that particular action was specifically ratified
by corporate officers,” wrote Edwards in Four Trials, his book published
to coincide with his presidential campaign.

“Yes,” wrote Edwards, “our lawsuit had sent a message, and that message ultimately
was: If you don’t like the law, change it . . . The message to me, on the other
hand, was one I’d confronted over my legal career and I’d grown to appreciate:
If you can’t help enough people being a lawyer, consider being a lawmaker.”

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Edwards’ legal career was not noteworthy for public-interest law or pro bono
work. And while Edwards’ clients were typically sympathetic victims, their good
fortune in the courtroom also was his. The firm typically received 25 percent
to 40 percent of the judgment as its fee — standard for lawyers who work on
a contingency basis. Edwards’ firm would receive nothing for its work in a lost
case.

“The practicing of law wasn’t about money to John Edwards,” said Kirby. “It
sounds like a ‰ disconnect here, but that’s true. He was financially secure
for a lifetime. He could have retired at age 40. He practiced law because of
the mental challenge. He was a fierce competitor, and most importantly, he practiced
law because he truly loved his clients.”

The size of the judgment in the Howard case, which would support the orphaned
boy, was due in large measure to Edwards’ skill at portraying what a fine man
Harry’s brother had been. Indeed, everything he said about Harry’s brother was
true, and the jury responded. But would the jury have awarded less money to
the family of a more ordinary man who died under the same circumstances? Such
is the lottery-like nature of tragedy, courtroom outcomes and the caliber of
your advocate.

Many doctors and insurance companies blame skyrocketing malpractice rates
on lawyers like Edwards, who win huge damages awards by successfully playing
on a jury’s heartstrings. The North Carolina Medical Society has gathered disturbing
anecdotal evidence, such as the case of a 51-year-old Hendersonville-area neurosurgeon.
This doctor, in a high-risk specialty, saw his insurance rates rise from $60,000
in 2002 to $194,000 in 2003, even though, he said, no one had ever successfully
pursued a malpractice claim against him. He was the only neurosurgeon in that
part of the state when he packed up for another state. Million-dollar verdicts
in North Carolina grew from 5 percent to 20 percent of cases over a 10-year
period, said urologist Joseph Jenkins, who headed the Professional Liability
Insurance Reform Task Force for the North Carolina Medical Society. Said Jenkins:
“John Edwards set in motion, with his success, and in particular, his pursuit
of cerebral-palsy cases, a litigation lottery mentality, built, for example,
around the unscientific concept that if a child has cerebral palsy, it’s automatically
the doctor’s fault.”

Attorney David Kirby, in turn, pointed out he and Edwards carefully screened
inquiries for cases with genuine merit. He also cited estimates of 98,000 deaths
a year from medical mistakes. He blamed rising malpractice rates on insurance
companies that can no longer count on high dividends from premiums invested
in the stock market as well as on the rising cost of medical care.

The senator’s critics, in essence, argue that trial attorneys, with Edwards
as a trendsetter, have done harm to the masses while helping individual, sympathetic
clients and also enriching themselves. Jenkins added that Edwards has protected
trial lawyers at the federal level, too. Edwards would counter that he’s protecting
the rights of the clients of trial lawyers. Overall, a Democratic voter
might well conclude that Edwards’ empathy with victimized clients could translate
to better governance than George W. Bush’s natural empathy with the already
rich.

As they pursued their legal careers, John and Elizabeth Edwards doted on their
son, Wade, and daughter, Cate, now a college senior. Edwards, recalled a colleague,
once flew home from a deposition in Denver just to see Wade play in the YMCA
league, then flew back to Denver. Edwards’ habit was to go through intense periods
when he’d focus on a trial, then compensate for it with intense parenting. An
end table at his old law office groans with plaques and trophies from when he
coached his children’s sports teams. Photos of his children cover another bureau,
along with a framed black-and-white photo of his wife as a raven-haired young
beauty. In preparation for the courtroom, Edwards sometimes found inspiration
by contrasting his clients’ grief with his own personal happiness. He’d compare
the loss of one client’s parents to his own joyous times spent with his son
and daughter. He’d look at a child with brain damage and note that she was almost
exactly the same age as his son.

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These images loom like an omen in Edwards’ book, when he describes the sweetness
and intelligence of his son, and how Wade would have made a good minister, and
how Wade talked of someday joining his father in the law firm. In the summer
of 1995, Edwards and son tackled Mt. Kilimanjaro together, something for which
Wade had prepared all summer. Edwards, busy with legal work, had not trained,
but typically declined to back down from the challenge. Both made the summit,
the elder Edwards in a world of pain, but buoyed by the promise of the young
man blossoming before him.

Wade Edwards, 16, died the following year, on April 4, 1996, when a sudden
gust of coastal wind caused his Jeep Grand Cherokee to flip over. His father,
who’d mastered every situation the courtroom could throw at him with daring,
brains and relentless preparation, suddenly had no answer. “Here’s a guy who
has more energy than any human being you’ve ever known, and he was paralyzed,”
said a family friend. “John and Elizabeth would sit on the couch and we would
sit on chairs, and we would just look at each other.”

His law partner David Kirby lived a few doors down from Edwards’ elegant white
colonial, and he’d stopped by almost every night to talk to Edwards, and virtually
assist him to bed.

Edwards returned to life with projects that honored his son — at Wade’s high
school, a memorial bench and sculpture shaped like the tail of a flaming comet;
at the gravesite, a 10-foot-tall, 10-ton sculpture of an angel carved from Vermont
marble by a noted artist. And across the street from the high school stands
the Wade Edwards Learning Lab, with computer-assisted tutoring for any student
who needs it.

As a friend tells it, the building had not been for sale when Edwards inquired
about it. “I need this building,” he told the owner, who said it still wasn’t
for sale. “You don’t understand,” said Edwards persistently. “I need this
building.”

Edwards and his wife also dealt with their loss by having two more children,
the youngest, Jack, was born after Elizabeth Edwards had turned 50.

Edwards finally returned to work and won his two largest judgments ever, $25
million and $23 million, in the last two lawsuits he ever tried. Each tripled
the state’s largest previous awards in contested cases for product liability
and malpractice, respectively.

The case of Valerie Lakey had clear public-policy implications for the future
senator. Valerie had nearly died at age 5 when caught in the suction of a pool
drain. The accident tore out 80 percent of her small intestine and 50 percent
of her large intestine. Valerie’s father, David, spearheaded a successful legislative
drive requiring pools in North Carolina to have two drains, a safety feature
that could have prevented the tragedy. In the trial, Edwards and Kirby uncovered
a series of previous tragedies that had not spurred the company to remedy its
product.

In 1997, little Valerie Lakey drew a picture to thank attorney John Edwards, who won a record judgment in her case. Now 16, Valerie declined to have her picture taken, offering instead this more recent drawing.

Valerie, now 16, faces a lifetime of expensive health challenges, but has
emerged from her ongoing ordeal a smart, slightly sassy teen, with a waif-like
attractiveness and a taste for goth.

“We think the world of John Edwards,” said Valerie’s mother, Sandy. “We think
he’s extremely intelligent and articulate and would be an awesome president.”

Edwards’ final cases marked a turning point, said Kirby. “He was even better
at representing these people, more connected to his clients, after the death
of his son. He felt it. He could communicate to others what it is like to have
this loss. But I think it was too painful from an emotional standpoint.

“We’re in the misery business,” added Kirby. “We deal with loss and injury
here, in particular we represent a lot of children who are killed, brain-damaged,
horribly burned. Having lost his own child, it became a very difficult, emotional
struggle for John.”

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But Edwards the president?

Retired editor Frank Daniels fielded the question over breakfast at Big Ed’s
in Raleigh. “I thought Edwards was running for president too soon,” said Daniels.
“On the other hand, when is it not too soon? I don’t know the answer to that,
and I haven’t met anybody yet who does. I think Edwards combines judgment and
common sense. And let’s face it, 98 percent of being president is picking good
people and having the judgment to know what is going on. George Bush showed
poor judgment.

“And I think Edwards understands that if you want to do anything for this
country, you’ve got to represent somebody other than those folks who have money.
I have some money. I believe in people trying to get some, but I also believe
people have an opportunity to give as much as they can get, achieve whatever
they can achieve. I think John Edwards advocates that far, far better than anybody
who’s been running in recent times.”

But the peerless attorney also will be pressed to demonstrate, over time,
that he’s doing more than arguing a case to get a win. And that the pursuit
of this goal won’t gradually turn him into just another politician weaving together
the right words to get elected. And that his clients truly are the voiceless
and dispossessed.