The Regular Guy

 

Beck operated under similarly hectic circumstances in another high-profile case, Haltom v. Bayer Corp. Hollis Haltom, a retired oil company engineer from Texas, claimed he became seriously ill from taking Bayer’s cholesterol-lowering drug Baycol, and he sued the company for $560 million in actual and punitive damages. Haltom v. Bayer Corp. generated national media attention because it was the first of thousands of lawsuits involving Baycol to go to trial; the outcome of this case would set the tone for the others.

 

Bartlit Beck Herman Palenchar & Scott represented Bayer, but Beck himself was committed to a different trial in Boston. When the Boston trial was postponed, however, Beck headed straight for Corpus Christi, Texas, to try the Baycol case. There was only one catch: It was scheduled to begin in 10 days. As it turned out, that was enough time for Beck to get ready. A jury wound up clearing Bayer of any liability.

 

“It was a difficult case in many respects,” says Bayer’s Lykos, “but especially because it was the first [Baycol] case. There was a great deal of media attention and scrutiny being applied. That was an additional pressure, but Phil obviously understood that and dealt with it quite nicely.”

 

To help ensure victory, Beck slipped into his regular-guy persona. “The challenge was to make the fairly complicated scientific story comprehensible and to neutralize the play for sympathy,” Beck says. “Part of that was to present Bayer witnesses and have the jury understand that what [Bayer] cares about is developing medicines that save lives, and that [Bayer’s employees have] devoted their careers to doing that. They’re not money-grubbing ogres. They’re good people who care about people. Otherwise they wouldn’t be in that line of work.”

 

Considering Beck’s success in Haltom v. Bayer Corp., it’s not surprising Merck hired his firm for Irvin v. Merck. The case was similar to Haltom v. Bayer Corp. in that it centered on a pharmaceutical company’s product, Merck’s painkilling drug Vioxx, and was being followed closely by the national media. But there was a notable difference: The precedent-setting first trial took place before Beck came aboard. In that Texas-based suit, Merck suffered a crushing defeat, as the family of Robert Ernst, a 59-yearold marathon runner and aerobics instructor who had been taking Vioxx for fewer than seven months before dying of a heart attack, was awarded $253 million in damages.

 

That verdict forced Merck to fight on at the federal level rather than try to settle the thousands of other Vioxx-related suits. And who better to have at its side in the initial federal trial than the battle-tested Beck? Irvin v. Merck, which was scheduled to take place in New Orleans starting November 29 but was moved to Houston because of Hurricane Katrina, involved a 53-year-old named Richard Irvin who had been taking Vioxx for about a month when he died of a heart attack. Beck applied the same basic principles to this case that had worked for him in many of his others, particularly Haltom v. Bayer Corp. “You need to put a face on the corporation,” Beck says. “It’s about humanizing a corporate defendant.”

 

As driven as Beck is to win the big cases, his most personally satisfying achievement may be the formation of his firm. The setting of the practice is steeped in tradition — historic Courthouse Place, where Clarence Darrow defended Leopold and Loeb — but everything else about it is progressive. For one, the firm has fully embraced technology, which Beck believes gives him and his colleagues an edge over the competition.

 

“Everyone in our firm, from the senior partners down to the junior people, are all very good at using computers to help us prepare our cases,” he says. “The other side will often have a computer specialist who can run graphics, but while they’re doing that, I’m often able to search all the deposition transcripts and the database of documents myself. I don’t have to pass on a request through three levels of people and then get an answer 10 minutes too late.”

 

Beck and his fellow founding partners deliberately have kept the firm relatively small (around 55 lawyers) in order to do away with a traditional hierarchy and foster an all-for-one, one-for-all environment. Every day seems to be Casual Friday at Bartlit Beck, where coats and ties have been replaced by more comfortable attire.

 

“Phil’s office is right off of what we call ‘the forum,’” says Herman. “It’s not off in a corner with a guard dog by the door. It’s an open atmosphere. People will wander into his office, swing a golf club and give their opinions on anything that happens to be going on. The hierarchy is gone. We think of it more as a hub and spokes, where Phil works with everybody and not just the next-most senior person.”

 

Beck’s little social experiment has enabled him to act on another of his passions: teaching, which he might have done for a living if he hadn’t been bitten by the trial-lawyer bug. Mentoring the firm’s young lawyers brings him as much gratification as arguing a case in a courtroom. And those young lawyers are lining up to learn from the master.

 

“One of my jobs as managing partner is to staff cases,” Herman says. “Everybody says, ‘Well, I’d really like to go to trial with Phil.’ Even if it means being away from home for two to 10 weeks, they want to get that training and experience from a world-class lawyer.”

 

Beck’s firm is what keeps the fire burning within him. It’s his legacy.

 

“We’re still a young firm,” he says. “Those of us who are the senior people are doing two things at once: We’re practicing law and doing the best we can for our clients, and we’re trying to build a firm that will be healthy and stable when we ride off into the sunset. I thought I would get more opportunities in a small-firm structure. It ended up being correct for me.”

 

That small-firm structure has worked out pretty well for a lot of other people, too — from presidents of major corporations to the president of the United States.