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Melvin Belli | |
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 Belli in 1967 | |
| Born | Melvin Mouron Belli (1907-07-29)July 29, 1907 Sonora, California, U.S. |
| Died | July 9, 1996(1996-07-09) (aged 88) San Francisco, California, U.S. |
| Occupation(s) | Lawyer, author |
| Spouses | |
| Children | 6 |
Melvin Mouron Belli (July 29, 1907 – July 9, 1996)[2] was a United States lawyer and writer known as "The King ofTorts"[3] and by insurance companies as "Melvin Bellicose". He had many celebrity clients, includingZsa Zsa Gabor,Errol Flynn,Chuck Berry,Muhammad Ali,The Rolling Stones,Jim Bakker andTammy Faye Bakker,Martha Mitchell,Maureen Connolly,Lana Turner,Tony Curtis, andMae West. During his legal career, he won over $600 million in damages for his clients.[4][better source needed] He was also the attorney forJack Ruby, who shotLee Harvey Oswald days after the assassination of PresidentJohn F. Kennedy.
Belli was born in theCalifornia Gold Rush town ofSonora, California, in theSierra Nevada foothills.[5] His parents were of Italian ancestry from Switzerland.[6] His grandmother, Anna Mouron, was the first female pharmacist in California. By the 1920s, the family had moved to theCentral Valley city ofStockton, California, where Belli attended the now-defunctStockton High School.
Belli graduated from theUniversity of California, Berkeley in 1929. After traveling around the world, he returned to theU.C. Berkeley School of Law from which he earned his law degree in 1933.[7][8]
Following his admission to the California bar, his first job was posing as a hobo for theWorks Progress Administration and riding the rails to observe theDepression's impact on the country's vagrant population.
His first major legal victory came shortly after graduation, in a personal injury lawsuit representing an injuredcable car gripman. Over insurance lawyers' objections, Belli brought a model of a cable car intersection, and the gear box and chain involved in the accident, to demonstrate to jurors exactly what had happened.[9]
Besides his personal injury cases, which earned for him his byname "King of Torts,"[5][3] Belli was instrumental in setting up some of the foundations of modernconsumer rights law, arguing several cases in the 1940s and 1950s that formed the basis for later lawsuits and landmark litigation byRalph Nader.
InEscola v. Coca-Cola Bottling Co. (1944),, where a restaurant waitress from Merced, California, was injured by an exploding Coca-Cola bottle, Belli argued that all products have animplied warranty, that it is to be foreseen that products will be used by a long chain of people and not just the direct recipient of the manufactured product, and that negligence by a defendant need not be proven if the defendant's product is defective. Thus was born the doctrine ofstrict liability in product defect causes of action.
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In his bookReady for the Plaintiff, Belli notes legal cases of negligence cited by personal-injury attorneys, like himself, to win in court. Examples include a colleague in Florida, who showed how a builder violated a building code in Miami Beach concerning the use of wooden shims in construction of outside walls, forbidden by the municipal code because of the effect of the ocean salt and air. The facing was a slab ofvitreous marble, whose adhesion was weakened by the climate; it fell off the side of the building and injured a passerby, who sued the builder.
After winning a court case, Belli would raise aJolly Roger flag over his office building in the Barbary Coast district of San Francisco (which Belli claimed had been a Gold Rush-era brothel) and fire a cannon, mounted on his office roof, to announce the victory and the impending party.[10]
In his best-known case, Belli representedJack Ruby, pro bono, after Ruby shot and killedLee Harvey Oswald. Belli attempted to prove that Ruby was legally insane and had a history of mental illness in his family. On Saturday, March 14, 1964, Ruby was convicted of "murder with malice," and received a death sentence.
Immediately thereafter, Ruby and his siblings fired Belli as they had hired and fired several other attorneys during the case. In late 1966, Ruby's conviction was overturned on the grounds that he did not receive a fair trial. A retrial was scheduled outside of Dallas, but Ruby died of cancer before it could take place. Belli became very critical of FBI DirectorJ. Edgar Hoover.[11]
In 1969 a man called San Francisco police, identifying himself as the serial killer known only asThe Zodiac, and agreed to call talk show hostJim Dunbar on Dunbar's morning television talk showA.M. San Francisco if either Belli or attorneyF. Lee Bailey were present on air. The police contacted Belli and Dunbar to arrange this in the hopes of capturing the individual. As promised, the suspect called, spoke a few words, and then hung up, repeating this activity 54 times over the next two hours.[12] Belli received a letter from the Zodiac that same year.[13]
Belli's firm filed for bankruptcy protection in December 1995. Belli was representing 800 women in aclass action lawsuit against breast implant manufacturerDow Corning. Belli won the lawsuit, but when Dow Corning declared bankruptcy, Belli had no way to recover the $5 million his firm had advanced to doctors and expert witnesses.[citation needed]
In the 1960s, Belli was among the leading members of the California plaintiffs bar who helped establish the California Trial Lawyers Association, which in the mid-1990s was renamed theConsumer Attorneys of California. The organization was established to help set standards and foment on-going legal education to help consumers have a better chance in court against the powerful legal teams amassed by the insurance companies and big corporations that typically were the defendants in accident, personal injury and other consumer lawsuits.[14]
Belli was the executive producer ofTokyo File 212 (1951), Hollywood's first film to be shot entirely in Japan.[15] It featuredFlorence Marly and Robert Peyton in key roles.[16]
Belli enjoyed his frequent television and movie appearances; in 1965, he toldAlex Haley, interviewing him forPlayboy, that he "might have been an actor" if he had not become an attorney.[citation needed]
Belli appeared in "And the Children Shall Lead", a 1968 episode of the originalStar Trek series. In it he appears as "Gorgan, the Friendly Angel", an evil being who corrupts a group of children, one of whom was played by his son Caesar.[17]
He appeared in theAlbert and David Maysles documentaryGimme Shelter (1970), which featured his representation and facilitation of The Rolling Stones' staging of the disastrous December 6, 1969,Altamont Free Concert.
In 1986 he played a criminal defense lawyer in an episode of the TV seriesHunter titled "True Confessions".[4][better source needed]
In 1996 Belli recited the oratory toDavid Woodard's brass fanfare setting ofMark Twain's "The War Prayer" at Old First Church in San Francisco.[18]
Belli was played byBrian Cox in the 2007 filmZodiac in the scene that depicted Belli's conversation with the Zodiac suspect onA.M. San Francisco.[13]
Big Black guitaristSantiago Durango used Belli's name as a pseudonym in the credits of the last Big Black studio album,Songs About Fucking, as a nod to the fact that Durango was going to attend law school after Big Black disbanded.
Belli was the author of several books, including the six-volumeModern Trials (written between 1954 and 1960) which has become a classic textbook on the demonstrative method of presenting evidence. Belli's unprecedented — and some thought undignified [who?] — use of graphic evidence and expert witnesses later became common courtroom practice. His autobiographyMy Life on Trial is an account of his life and the noteworthy events he was involved in during his career. He also wrote the introduction to847.0 The Whiplash Injury by L. Ted Frigard, D.C. published in 1970. Dr. Frigard had helped Belli with his pain through chiropractic care. With John Carlova, Belli also wrote the book "Belli For Your Malpractice Defense" to advise doctors how to avoid legal problems.[19]
Belli was married six times and divorced five.[5] His marriage to his fifth wife, the former Lia Georgia Triff, ended with a scandalous and acrimonious divorce proceeding in 1991. Belli accused his ex-wife of having an affair with archbishopDesmond Tutu and of throwing one of his dogs off the Golden Gate Bridge. He was fined $1,000 for repeatedly calling her "El Trampo". At one point, Belli was ejected from the courtroom after accusing the judge of sleeping with his former wife's lawyer.[20] He was ultimately compelled to pay her an estimated $15 million. She later married Romanian princePrince Paul of Romania. Belli married his sixth wife, Nancy Ho, on March 29, 1996.[5] His youngest child, Melia, from fifth wife Lia, became an art history scholar, and is currently an assistant professor of Asian art history at the University of Texas at Arlington.[21]
Belli died of complications frompancreatic cancer at his home in San Francisco on July 9, 1996, aged 88.[5] His death came suddenly, and in the presence of his wife Nancy.[3]The New York Times' quoted his publicistEdward Lozzi: "He was sitting; he just stopped breathing".[22] At the time of his death, he had three sons, three daughters, twelve grandchildren, and two dogs.[5] He was remembered as, "an impresario of a lawyer who pioneered new techniques and huge settlements in personal injury cases and who defended Jack Ruby, the man who killed Lee Harvey Oswald."[23][24] He is buried in Odd Fellows Cemetery in Sonora, California, his birthplace.[3] He is remembered as one of the "most famous lawyers in America."[3]
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