01:34 PM CST on Friday, November 28, 2003
By STEVE QUINN / The Dallas Morning News

Joe Jamail loves getting in the last word.

After all, he is a lawyer, and at 77, he's as chatty as ever.

Whether it's cross-examinations in a courtroom, discourse at a reception – interrupted only when a glass of scotch is reaching the depletion stage – or text in his new book, Lawyer, Mr. Jamail's got something to say.

And no matter what, this Houston lawyer will have a captive audience: a jury seated for trial; people wondering what brings him back to the courtroom; or folks simply wanting to know what's on his mind.

Practicing law is no longer about the big payday because, as of Nov. 20, 1985, he had one of the biggest: On that day, he successfully convinced a Houston jury that Texaco Inc. derailed his client's efforts to buy Getty Oil Co. and won a $10.53 billion judgment for Pennzoil Co.

A settlement later reduced the payout to $3.3 billion, which still meant a $400-million-plus payout for Mr. Jamail. So, with all the money he could use and 50 years of trials under his belt, why does he keep coming back to the courthouse?

"Ego," he says. "I need the light on me, but you know, I still think I'm doing some good.

"It gives me a real sense of power that I'm not going to let you run over somebody. I don't care how big you are."

A tight family

A grocer's son and of Lebanese descent, Mr. Jamail grew up in Houston in the "Jamail Compound," where aunts, uncles, and cousins also lived.

As a neighborhood runt and facing pressure of being as good as his older brother, George, he quickly grew to resent authority.

But the chip on his shoulder "the size of a manhole cover" taught him to fight back, long before he started taking on big corporations.

Once, sick of being a bully's punching bag, young Joe kept a sock loaded with marbles handy.

"I just got tired of it, so when he got close, I nailed him," Mr. Jamail recalls. "It taught me something. If you don't stand up for something, then what are you going to do?"

That same chip, however, produced a slow start at the University of Texas in Austin, so the young man joined the Marines during World War II and returned home in 1946.

A chance barroom encounter with Louisiana lawyer Kaliste Saloom proved fortuitous. Mr. Jamail later visited him and watched him assure clients he could help.

The meeting had Mr. Jamail thinking, "I can get paid for this?" and drove him to harness his energy and resume school.

He earned a liberal arts degree in 1949 at UT, then earned his law degree in January 1953, six months after passing the bar.

Thanks to a bet – driven by plenty of hubris – Mr. Jamail took the exam before his final semester. Tired of hearing law grads bellyache about the upcoming exam, he wagered $100 that he could pass it.

He won by exceeding the cutoff by one point. And today his connection with UT remains strong. The Jamail name is on its football field, the law school library and a natatorium, as well as several endowed chairs.

The court as a stage

If the legal world were a theater, the courtroom would be Mr. Jamail's stage. Although his workload has been scaled back after nearly 50 years of practicing law, the courtroom still energizes him.

He enters a room walking with a slight hunch and speaking with hoarse voice, punctuated with a country drawl and smile.

Other lawyers will come to the courtroom to watch just because he'll be trying a case. Sometimes, it'll be a case other lawyers wouldn't touch.

"He still has suppleness and agility he had as a young man," says Houston colleague Harry Reasoner, 64, who worked with Mr. Jamail during the Pennzoil-Texaco appeal.

"A trial is theater, but in a classic sense like Greek theater, where you get catharsis and truth from the exercise.

"It's his ability to capture your attention, keep it interesting and engaging and then allow you to learn from it that makes it classic theater. That's Joe in the courtroom."

Even foes acknowledge Mr. Jamail's courtroom presence.

"He's a shrewd person about weaknesses of people," says Richard Miller, who represented Texaco during the suit. "He understands human frailty, and that's a big part of his success; nobody can deny that."

But Mr. Miller adds success can breed contempt.

"Some consider him a friend, others don't; I don't consider myself either one," Mr. Miller says. "But he is not a loved person. People who say they are his friends are afraid of him because of his money." Nevertheless, Mr. Jamail is still winning in the courtroom, colleagues say, because he keeps law simple while mincing no words.

He breaks down cases to their essence rather than relying on a sleight-of-hand shell game. It's basic execution that is held up as an example in classrooms, especially in UT law classes.

"He almost always uses very traditional theories of liability," says Bill Powers, who is the dean for UT's School of Law and still teaches tort-law classes.

"His forte has always been his technique. He takes the core legal principles and tells a great story to the jury under those traditional principles: If they are violated, then someone ought to pay."

Mr. Jamail will stun juries with blunt deliveries, just as he did one afternoon when admitting that his client, paralyzed in an accident, registered a .31 blood alcohol content – more than three times the legal limit.

He went on to convince the jury that his client, despite being drunk, was not weaving or causing his own peril but was forced off the road by a commercial truck. The jury returned with a $6 million award.

"Any attorney who goes into court thinking he's going to flim-flam a jury is nuts," he says.

"That's why I told the jury during voir dire: 'I want you to know right off my client was drunk. I don't care what you've seen, you've never seen anybody as drunk as he was the night this happened, so if anyone who feels it's open season on drunks and they are not entitled to protections of the law, I need to know.' Half wouldn't give a drunk a fair trial."

"A recreational process"

For all the talking Mr. Jamail does, conversations with Gus Kolius are an absolute must for him.

First a formidable opponent then an employee who one day found his name on the same letterhead as Mr. Jamail without explanation, Mr. Kolius still looks forward to his friend's calls.

Sometimes it's to talk about current cases, other times to reflect on old ones.

Mr. Kolius, now 84, worked 20 years with Mr. Jamail. Mr. Kolius "called in rich" and retired in his 70s, but his longtime friend keeps working.

"Practicing law is really the only thing Joe really enjoys," Mr. Kolius says. "It's a recreational process for him. I think he just gets a kick out of it. I don't think he'll ever quit or run out of cases."

Mr. Jamail believes he and other lawyers are losing ground outside the courtroom.

A steadfast believer in the jury system, he believes the court's role is being slowly removed from conflict resolution.

Even in defeat, Mr. Jamail still supports jury trials, as he did in 1993 during a losing effort on behalf of Northwest Airlines, which lost an antitrust suit to American Airlines.

Corporations and legislators, he says, are making inroads at lessening their accountability for their products, actions and policies.

He argues in Lawyer that it's the court system – and not legislators – that has produced the most telling societal changes: desegregation; products liability; free press; compensation for bereaved; the rights of illegitimate children.

If more legislators had their way, he says, disputes would progressively be worked outside the courtroom. This thought sends Mr. Jamail into a closing-argument-like diatribe.

"What is justice? It isn't some magical thing that needs to be decoded. No, it's an opportunity to have whatever dispute you've got heard," he says

"Who is the guardian of human rights? Do you think it's the legislators? No, my friend. It's the courthouse. It's the juries. "

"Even the ones I lost, based on what the jury had, I'd have to agree they were right. They may make mistakes from time to time, but we have courts who can rectify those mistakes. "

"And if we don't continue to have an independent judicial system, they will settle disputes in the streets. Is that what we want?"

"I'll tell you this. I'm proud to be a lawyer. It's the last place to fight for people legitimately without swords, knives and machine guns and tell the corporate world they are not going to get away with this."

E-mail squinn@dallasnews.com