OE JAMAIL SETTLED INTO HIS
chair at home to map out his clos-
ing argument for the next morn-
ing. The case was a highly com-
plicated business dispute between
two of the largest corporations in
the world—a multibillion-dollar
merger gone awry. Just as Jamail
picked up his pen, he heard a car horn blowing
outside. ¶Jamail’s buddies—singer Willie Nelson
and former University of Texas football coach
There are some days you could throw
a hand grenade down the hall of the
Harris County Courthouse and not
hit anybody.”
Jamail says young lawyers at big
firms today don’t have the opportunity to cut their teeth on small cases,
which would help develop their trial
techniques.
“By not trying the small cases, the
lawyers don’t get the courtroom experience,” he says. “So when the
huge, bet-the-company cases come
along, there are only a handful of trial lawyers who can handle it. That’s
why these big corporations still call
us old-timers every day.”
Darrell Royal—were in a white limo, begging him
to go out for a drink or two.
“I tried telling them that this was
the biggest damn case of my life—
hell, of anybody’s life—and that I
needed to prepare,” says Jamail.
“But they weren’t having any part
of it. They kept me up all fucking
night drinking. I could barely see
straight the next morning.”
Jamail did just fine. He kept his
closing argument simple. The case
was about people keeping their word
and being honest—or, in the case of
the defendants, about not keeping
their word.
The result: On Nov. 20, 1985, a
Texas jury returned a $10.53 billion
verdict for Jamail’s client, Pennzoil
Co., against Texaco Inc. It remains
the largest verdict upheld on appeal
in legal history. The case later settled
for $3.3 billion. Jamail’s personal take
topped $400 million, according to
reports.
“We celebrated that night at my
house by eating hamburgers and
drinking beer,” he says. “I’ve still
got the $3 billion deposit slip on
my wall.”
83 AND COUNTING
THE SON OF A GROCER, JOSEPH D.
Jamail Jr. is one of the most successful lawyers in history. He has tried
more than 500 jury and bench trials,
which resulted in more than $13 billion in judgments for his clients—
not too shabby for a guy who failed
torts in law school. Forbes magazine
estimates Jamail is worth $1.5 billion, making him the 321st-richest
person in the U.S.
Despite having more money
than he ever dreamed of and being
83 years old, Jamail says he plans
to continue trying cases for another
decade or so, and then slow down
a bit. He’s been hired by three
Fortune 200 companies in the past
six months that are involved in bet-the-farm lawsuits.
“The corporate boardroom mentality and structure encourages companies and their executives to fuck
each other,” he says. “So, there’s
always going to be a need for good
lawyers.”
Jamail pauses to clarify. “By good
lawyers, I mean good trial lawyers,”
he says. “They’ve invented this new
term, litigator. What the fuck is a litigator? I’m a trial lawyer. I try cases.
There are some lawyers who do
nothing but this mediation bullshit.
Do you know what the root of mediation is? Mediocrity!”
The move to replace jury trials
with mediation and arbitration, he
says, is actually an effort by elitists
in our society to control how disputes
are decided.
“I don’t think the trial practice is
dead,” says Jamail. “But it is very ill.
A $100 WAGER
IN A TELEVISION DEBATE OVER TORT
reform with a physician, the medical
doctor was slamming lawyers as a
drain on society. “I would like to remind the doctor that while his professional ancestors were putting
leeches on George Washington to
bleed him, my ancestors were writing the Declaration of Independence
and the United States Constitution,”
Jamail responded.
“I never heard any more shit from
him.”
Jamail didn’t always want to be a
lawyer. In fact, he initially enrolled
at the University of Texas as a premed student. But the first semester
in 1942 didn’t go so well. He failed
to show up for his final exams and
received five F’s. So he forged his
father’s name on enlistment documents and joined the Marines.
Jamail returned home after the
war and received his liberal arts degree from UT. Then he decided to
go to law school, sort of.
“I was so damn naive that I didn’t
know that there was a test you had
to take before you got into law
school, so I just started showing up
for classes without even enrolling,”
he says.
No one at the UT School of Law
noticed Jamail wasn’t officially enrolled either, until the time came
three years later for the law dean
to sign his diploma.
