cover image Lawyers and American Dream

Lawyers and American Dream

Stuart M. Speiser. M. Evans and Company, $16.95 (430pp) ISBN 978-0-87131-724-7

This is a self-indulgent personal history masquerading as a popular history of tort (or injury) law. Speiser ( Lawsuit ) begins with discursive analyses of the ``American Dream'' and the television show L.A. Law , concluding, a bit contortedly, that by representing injured plaintiffs in potentially profitable tort cases, the fictional lawyers pursue the American Dream of personal success and societal betterment. What follows is a highly arbitrary and partial account of tort law and its development, with one-third of the book devoted to a relatively unimportant case regarding the 1943 crash of Pan Am's Yankee Clipper , which the author helped litigate. His accounts of some other cases he handled, including Ralph Nader's invasion of privacy suit against General Motors, are more interesting. However, Speiser's story of the rise of tort lawyers ignores many key figures. In his final chapter, Speiser defends tort lawyers against their many critics with a sketchy, fictionalized ``debate'' between Humphrey Bogart, representing the ``Equalizers'' (tort lawyers), and Sydney Greenstreet representing corporate interests, with John Huston moderating. (Apr.)