By Lawrence Landskroner

The Daily Citizen

Volume 1, Number 59

Friday, April 22, 1994

Today’s Interview: Lawrence Landskroner

Talk about secret clubs. Meet the Inner Circle of Advocates. This is an organization made up of the top 100 trial lawyers in the country. To be eligible, these lawyers must have secured at least one $1 million verdict in a case involving physical injury or death.

The Inner Circle of Advocates have a lot to talk about these days. They like bringing big lawsuits against big companies for injuring innocent victims. Some of them are upset by class action attorneys who bring big lawsuits against big companies, but then enter into multi-million dollar settlements that shortchange their clients, the victims of the wrongdoing.

One of the most outspoken members of the Inner Circle is Lawrence Landskroner. Landskroner has been a practicing trial lawyer in Cleveland for more than 40 years. He has brought a number of product liability and other tort cases that have settled in million dollar verdicts or settlements.

We interviewed Landskroner on April 21, 1994.

DC: What kind of cases are you handling?

Landskroner: We are representing the mother of a prisoner in the Franklin County jail. The prisoner was smothered to death by the guards. This was all recorded on videotape. The trial is coming up in the fall in federal court.

We represent the estate of a man who was painting the Perry nuclear reactor in Ashtabula, Ohio. He was sprayed with methylene chloride. That is a toxic compound. That man died later of pancreatic cancer. At that time, and even now, we don’t know what causes pancreatic cancer.

We are involved in a class action against the Toyota Corporation. We alleged the company falsified the delivery charges on their new automobiles. The Toyota Litigation Group (TLG), of which I am a member, filed the class action in the state of Minnesota and we will file in another state shortly.

In Cincinnati BASF Corporation built a chemical facility.

They were making toxic products. The plant blew up on July 19, 1990. The people had counsel who filed a class action on their behalf, but the court in that case decided that there was no basis for bringing an action for injuries to the people, only for damage to property. As a result of that judicial decree, which was totally inappropriate as far as I’m concerned, everyone who was injured by that blast which spewed toxic chemicals on only defense is an amalgamation of a group of lawyers to sue the wrongdoers to take on large corporations. In 1967, Attorney General Ramsey Clark charged IBM with antitrust violations. Eight years later, the government threw in the towel after they had spent in excess of $50 million to prosecute the case. Even that kind of commitment couldn’t match the resources of IBM, which hired the largest law firm in America. IBM used hundreds of lawyers, leased office space, which could have housed a small town, rented fleets of cars, used large mainframe computers. Seventeen million documents were coded for documentation.

One of the defense lawyers in this case worked on a plane, and because of the change in time zones charged his client 27 hours in one single day. IBM was billed at a rate of $15 million per year.

An auto company decided that it would be cheaper to let thousands of Americans be burned to death, injured or maimed because it was cost effective, rather than replacing a $4.80 part over the gas tank to prevent the gas from being punctured in a rear-end collision.

It was the only case that I can recall where there was a criminal prosecution of a big company in a products case. The company successfully defeated that prosecution. The executives were never criminally prosecuted.

DC: Why not?

Landskroner: Why not? Because the government in large measure, is controlled by the big corporations and big law firms.

DC: One of the problems is the problem of perception. The public perception is that trial lawyers who represent injured people are getting rich off of these cases. It is difficult for the average person to trust the word of a plaintiffs’ lawyer because of the amount of money that lawyer is making off of the victim.

Landskroner: That shouldn’t be the criteria. Class actions have their place. The problem arises when there is connivance between the lawyer representing the class and the defendants.

If there is a settlement in a class action, and those who don’t like the settlement can opt out and have a right to sue, there is absolutely nothing wrong with that settlement.

When it becomes deadly and where it encroaches upon the judicial system is when the court in its order says all other cases involving this subject cannot be brought.

DC: If I’m injured by a corporation, I can go to one of the best trial lawyers in the country. One of the Inner Circle, and they will gain for me just compensation for my injuries. So, in what sense is the system tipped in favor or corporate power?

Landskroner: The corporations have a right to go bankrupt. If the corporation engaged in a mass tort, they can limit their liability by going to bankruptcy court. You will just become another creditor waiting in line. They are not punished criminally, they are not punished personally, and the corporation folds and they start a new company.

A classic example is the case involving the December 3, 1984 gas leak in Bhopal, India. That leak killed more than 2,000 people. More than 200,000 have suffered injuries from exposure to the gas.

In India, people can’t hire a contingency lawyer or a lawyer who will take it on a percentage basis. They have to hire a lawyer by the hour (as in the legal English system). So, no victim has recovered anything of consequence from the Union Carbide Corp. The victims have no recourse. The people who were injured couldn’t bring the case in the United States.

DC: It is true that most people injured in the United States by corporate wrongdoing never get into the judicial system?

Landskroner: Absolutely. The people who pay the taxes and who are abused by the big corporations are generally the poor and the people who are unfamiliar with the system. Unfortunately, they often get locked out.

If you are well off, you know to go to a good lawyer and you can get representation within certain bounds. You have to remember, that most of thecase decisions handed down under the recent Republican administrations have run against the common person. Many rights have been eroded. Judicial decisions have been made by narrow-minded non-public judges who really don’t have that degree of impartiality that they should have.

How do we get good judges? They should be engaged in the active practice of law for five or ten years. They must have tried jury cases instead of just being elected from the bench by popular vote. Let judges periodically stand down and work and do some social work as well. Make then take some cases representing indigents. They can’t become part of contemporary problems by playing golf with certain lawyers or going to parties with political friends. Plato once said, "judges should be made to descent among the prisoners in the den and partake of their labors and honors".

DC: You worked as a union lawyer for a while.

Landskroner: I represented the United Auto Workers here for 11 years. In conversations with some of the regional representatives, most of who are now deceased, they related facts regarding the 1937 strike on Coyt Road in Cleveland against General Motors. They told of how our local Cleveland Police Department with hired armed thugs, set upon the strikers, arrested then and used force to intimidate them. It was touch and go for the union, but finally the union prevailed. That type of activity and vigorous representation of the worker by that union developed into a powerful political and representative body for the rights of the public. The union with its acquired political clout then became involved in the election process, spoke up for the indigent and poor, helped elect people’s judges and had some influence on the legislators and the Congress. With the erosion of the union movement during the past 10 or 15 years, this power is unfortunately diminished and now powerful corporations are getting more and more power with little restraint and no counter-balancing effect of the union movements as existed in the past, both economically and politically.

DC: Don’t the lawyers in the Inner Circle have a responsibility to weed out the plaintiffs’ lawyers who are ripping off victims by agreeing to these no-opt our settlements?

Landskroner: Unfortunately, we all have offices to run. We are not on the corporate dole. The Inner Circle members, if they are not successful in their lawsuits, they lose money. If they lose, they don’t take any money from the person they represent.

Here’s an example. We handled an All Terrain Vehicle (ATV) rollover case recently. This case was against Honda. Honda denied responsibility in this case. Gene Okey, another Inner Circle lawyer from Canton, Ohio, and I spent $96,000 in expert witness fees, testimony, depositions all across the country before the case was ready to be tried. We finally went to trial and received an adequate award.

DC: Ho much did you get in that case?

Landskroner: I can’t tell you. The company said that they were not going to settle this case, which involved a 17-year-old paraplegic, unless we agreed to keep the verdict confidential. We argued that this was not the kind of conduct that should be kept secret. People are being maimed all across the country. The new models have now been withdrawn from sale, but people are still selling used ATVs. We argued the information should be disseminated across the country. But the judge put a protective order on the information and the settlement amount.

DC: Should it be unethical for plaintiffs’ lawyers to agree not to disseminate information that is harming public?

Landskroner: What a philosophical question. Sure it should be unethical. But it should be unethical for the judge to do this, not the lawyer. Look at the quandary the lawyer is in. Our client is on the edge of poverty by the time the case comes up. He needs the money. Do we say to the young paraplegic plaintiff we are not going to get you your money because they want us to sign a confidentiality agreement not to disseminate the information?

DC: But if it was unethical for every plaintiff’s lawyer, then these cases would be forced to trial or the information would be released at settlement.

Landskroner: You don’t want to put the onus on the plaintiffs’ lawyer, because he is merely the agent of the client. If the client says "I want the money. I don’t care about this esoteric legal principal", then you have to get him the money.

There should be a law outlawing this. The way it is happening now is totally inappropriate.

DC: Are there more young lawyers who want to be victim attorneys, or is the field shrinking?

Landskroner: The field is shrinking.

DC: Given the amounts of money people like you make, why aren’t young lawyers attracted to it?

Landskroner: In order to do what we do, the young lawyer has to suffer, unfortunately, by apprenticing to a good trial lawyer for a good period of time. He has to work while interning at generally low wages. When young lawyers come out of law school, the big law firms offer them $70,000 to start, they wine them, dine them, take them on trips, provide social engagements for them. And when the young lawyer gets out of law school, he is generally without resources. Which job is he going to take? He will probably take the more money. So the corporate firms take the cream of the crop.

And who wants to be in a gambling business like we are? We are lucky, because we are successful.

DC: For every Landskroner who is successful, how many are unsuccessful?

Landskroner: Soon there will be one million lawyers in the United States, but there are only 100 in the Inner Circle. That gives you some idea.

In Cleveland, there are about 7,000 plaintiffs’ lawyers – maybe 50 or 60 are good trial lawyers, and the others do other types of law. To do this kind of thing, you have to be able to suffer, empirically, both by putting yourself in your clients’ shoes and to be able to explain to a jury how badly the wrong committed impacted your client.

Contact: Lawrence Landskroner

Lawrence Landskroner & Associates

55 Public Square, Suite 1040

Cleveland, Ohio 44113