TheWriter
09-12-2005, 01:24 AM
Famed trial lawyer Maloney dies at 81
Web Posted: 09/11/2005 07:33 PM CDT
Carmina Danini
Express-News Staff Writer
Pat Maloney Sr., a firebrand plaintiffs lawyer known as the king of torts, whose clients included nuns, madams and Vietnamese fishermen in a landmark murder case, died late Saturday at age 81.
"I will die with the greatest of reluctance and the strongest of resistance, but I'd love to stay here because I'm having fun and I would love to try more lawsuits,'' Maloney said in a videotaped memoir made several years ago. "Having said that, I'm still trying very hard to die well.''
For more than a year, Maloney had been suffering from pulmonary fibrosis, a rare and terminal disease that leads to scarring of the lungs. As scar tissue builds up, the lungs are unable to provide oxygen to other parts of the body and the person needs supplemental oxygen to live.
He had rallied after undergoing treatment with an experimental drug but his condition deteriorated in recent months. In late July, Maloney stopped going to his office.
Father Virgil Elizondo, former rector of San Fernando Cathedral, had lunch with Maloney on Saturday and they watched the Notre Dame-Michigan game.
"He was in great spirits and happy that Notre Dame won and he was looking forward to watching the Longhorns play later,'' Elizondo said.
Though he'd stopped going to Mass, Maloney's illness didn't diminish his penchant for lambasting those who he felt did not play fair, as he did in a letter to the editor that appeared in the San Antonio Express-News on Feb. 22, 2005.
Maloney excoriated federal prosecutors in the "untrue and unfair'' tax fraud case against lawyer Alan Brown and praised Brown, his attorneys and his wife.
"I'm 80 and dying,'' Maloney wrote. "A little preaching and evangelizing is to be forgiven.''
In the videotaped memoir made with his son Pat Jr., Maloney touched on nearly every aspect of his life and more than a half century in the legal profession, from his drinking to some of his most memorable cases.
Maloney said that he was not reticent about talking with friends about his illness.
"Frankly, about the only thing I've got left to do is to be an example on how to die well, peacefully, joyfully, gratefully,'' he said. "And if I do that in tranquility, then I count my dying a total success.
A trial lawyer for half a century, Maloney specialized in personal injury and product liability cases. His clients were as varied as the Congregation of Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word, Duval County rancher Clinton Manges, famous San Antonio madam Theresa Brown, whom Maloney once referred to as "an intellectual giant,'' Vietnamese fishermen, and a dog named Wimpy.
During a career marked by controversy, he tallied more than 100 cases in which winning verdicts totaled more than $1 million.
He won the first million-dollar verdict in the history of San Antonio as well as the first three million-dollar verdicts.
Maloney, who made Forbes magazine's list of top money-making trial lawyers in the country several times, won several multimillion-dollar verdicts, including one for $55 million in an insurance fraud case.
He was a member of the Inner Circle of Advocates, an exclusive organization for plaintiffs' attorneys. Membership is limited to 100. To become a member, a lawyer must have argued at least 50 personal injury cases and won at least one verdict of $1 million.
He served as president of the organization from 1995 to 1997.
Born to an impoverished Irish Catholic family on Aug. 9, 1924, in San Antonio, Maloney didn't start out as an attorney.
With only $50, half provided by his father, he enrolled at the University of Texas at Austin in the fall of 1941 to study journalism.
Three months later, after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Maloney left UT and joined the Marine. He was wounded while serving in the Southwest Pacific.
Of the Marines, he said: "I abhorred and despised them for all reasons. The officers were dumb but they all had a college education.''
But, he added, "The Marine Corps gave me a burning, desperate desire to succeed.''
Maloney made himself a promise that if he survived the war, he would attend Mass every day.
He often arrived at San Fernando Cathedral a half hour before 6 a.m. Mass.
Unwilling to open earlier, Elizondo finally gave Maloney a key to the cathedral and showed him where to turn on the lights.
Maloney still had the key when he died.
"Most people know he was a great lawyer who stood up for social justice issues but they didn't know that he got his strength from God,'' Elizondo said.
After receiving a Purple Heart and an honorable discharge, Maloney returned to UT in 1945. Three years later, he received a degree in journalism.
"I was doing very happily as a sportswriter until I met someone who was in law school,'' he recalled in 1999.
That someone was Olive Patricia Boger, the woman who later became his wife and briefly, law partner. Called "Judge,'' Olive Maloney stayed home to raise their five children.
Still working as a sportswriter, he entered UT law school and got his degree in 1950.
"My ambitions still were limited by my background,'' said Maloney. "I knew I wouldn't get anywhere without help.''
Maloney said he thought he would join Lyndon B. Johnson's staff in Washington and write speeches. Instead, he joined the Bexar County District Attorney's office "because we had a difficult political race.
"Lyndon was very interested in the district attorney being elected,'' said Maloney. "If he was interested, I was interested.''
Maloney never got to Washington. He stayed at the DA's office three years, as chief trial attorney and first assistant DA.
In 1953, after he was defeated for Bexar County district attorney, Maloney opened his own firm, The Law Offices of Pat Maloney, P.C.
With his family growing, Maloney had to find steady legal work.
"Business was never a problem,'' he recalled. "Making a living was.''
The millions he netted in legal fees allowed the son of a poor, immigrant shoe salesman trappings of success: a private plane and his own downtown office building.
Maloney moved his law firm to a three-story, 19th century building on East Commerce Street that once housed banker and philanthropist George W. Brackenridge's San Antonio National Bank.
The late architect O'Neil Ford and architect Jack Peterson were hired by Maloney to renovate the limestone edifice listed on the National Register of Historic Buildings.
On the third floor is the "Longhorn Room,'' a shrine to Maloney's alma mater, UT, and where lawyers, clients, and others daily gather for lunch.
It wasn't always easy being a trial lawyer, Maloney told Texas Lawyer magazine, which named him a Legal Legend in 2000 and one of the 102 most influential attorneys of the 20th century in Texas.
At one point, his practice was in the worst of financial straits.
"To say that it was threadbare would be charitable,'' he said.
Maloney's fortune changed when he won his first multi-million dollar verdict in lawsuits against Southwestern Bell Telephone Co. in 1976 and 1977.
Another of Maloney's largest verdicts stemmed from a 1975 butane tank truck explosion near Eagle Pass.
The truck swerved to miss a car, jackknifed, overturned and exploded.
It sailed 500 yards into a roadside mobile home park, hit one home and bounced into another, setting it afire. Sixteen people, including the truck driver, were killed; 51 others were burned
At the end of the 12-week trial in Del Rio, a state court jury awarded the victims and survivors $50.1 million in damages.
Maloney's client, Jimmy Flores, was awarded $26.5 million, at that time the largest personal injury verdict in the United States.
The trial lawyer later would file hundreds of suits in Eagle Pass, where juries were friendly to plaintiffs.
In some cases, jury verdicts favorable to Maloney were overturned by the appeals court.
In another case, a $3 million verdict against Southwestern Bell was appealed and Maloney's clients lost when the Texas Supreme Court overturned the verdict.
Stung by the reversal, Maloney backed a candidate who trounced Bob Murray, a justice on the 4th Court of Appeals who had set aside the judgment.
During the late 1970s and the 1980s, Maloney, often in league with controversial South Texas rancher Clinton Manges, vfunneled money to judicial candidates.
Maloney was never bothered by the condemnation he received over his attempts at influencing the outcome of judicial races by supporting liberal Democrats.
"When you grow up poor and Irish and Catholic, that trilogy kind of mandates your philosophy,'' he told the Dallas Morning News in 1982. "And frankly, the way we make a living, representing poor folks, the helpless and the traumatized, you spend your entire professional life suing financial interests and vested interests.''
Maloney was as known for his flamboyant courtroom tactics as for the television commercials he filmed on different legal issues. He began the "Knowing the Law'' TV spots in 1983.
Saying "we're a family of lawyers protecting the families of San Antonio,'' Maloney continued appearing in commercials with Pat Jr. and daughter Janice even after he became ill.
An in-demand lecturer, Maloney also was an author.
He wrote the book "Winning the Million Dollar Lawsuit'' and was co-author of "Trials and Deliberations: Inside the Jury Room.''
His 1999 novel entitled "Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor,'' was based on the 1979 case of two young Vietnamese brothers accused of killing a fellow fisherman.
In the videotaped memoir, Maloney said he took the case for free at the behest of the Catholic Church.
Of the case, in which both clients were acquitted, despite overwhelming evidence against them, Maloney said: "That was our grandest endeavor, the greatest case in which we've ever been involved because of the social good we achieved, the fact that it was pro bono, the fact that you couldn't win it, the fact that it took all that courage, the fact that we stood up for a principle.''
A few years before his death, Maloney reflected that: "The practice of law is more socially rewarding because you can do things. You can see the results of helping someone. You have recourse as an attorney. You have a chance to change someone's life and champion a cause. There's no other career like that.''
The fact that all five children – and his late wife – became lawyers delighted him.
"It seems to me I had nothing to do with it,'' he said. "I don't know how it happened.''
He was equally proud of having quit a lifetime of drinking.
"To be honest with you, I'd enjoy a drink every day since I quit,'' Maloney said. "But what it meant was that I was able to give and to share a portion of me that I never could before and to give lots to my family, too.''
His wife Olive died in June 2004.
He is survived by three sons, Pat Maloney Jr.,v Michael Maloneyv and Tim Maloney; vtwo daughters, Janice Maloneyv and Patricia Maloney;v five grandchildren, Michelle, vErica,v Dennis,v Patrick vand Connor Maloney. v
A funeral Mass is set for 1:30 p.m. Wednesday at San Fernando Cathedral.
The burial will be private.
http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/obituaries/stories/MYSA091105.online.obit_maloney.en.4ae2f41a.html
Web Posted: 09/11/2005 07:33 PM CDT
Carmina Danini
Express-News Staff Writer
Pat Maloney Sr., a firebrand plaintiffs lawyer known as the king of torts, whose clients included nuns, madams and Vietnamese fishermen in a landmark murder case, died late Saturday at age 81.
"I will die with the greatest of reluctance and the strongest of resistance, but I'd love to stay here because I'm having fun and I would love to try more lawsuits,'' Maloney said in a videotaped memoir made several years ago. "Having said that, I'm still trying very hard to die well.''
For more than a year, Maloney had been suffering from pulmonary fibrosis, a rare and terminal disease that leads to scarring of the lungs. As scar tissue builds up, the lungs are unable to provide oxygen to other parts of the body and the person needs supplemental oxygen to live.
He had rallied after undergoing treatment with an experimental drug but his condition deteriorated in recent months. In late July, Maloney stopped going to his office.
Father Virgil Elizondo, former rector of San Fernando Cathedral, had lunch with Maloney on Saturday and they watched the Notre Dame-Michigan game.
"He was in great spirits and happy that Notre Dame won and he was looking forward to watching the Longhorns play later,'' Elizondo said.
Though he'd stopped going to Mass, Maloney's illness didn't diminish his penchant for lambasting those who he felt did not play fair, as he did in a letter to the editor that appeared in the San Antonio Express-News on Feb. 22, 2005.
Maloney excoriated federal prosecutors in the "untrue and unfair'' tax fraud case against lawyer Alan Brown and praised Brown, his attorneys and his wife.
"I'm 80 and dying,'' Maloney wrote. "A little preaching and evangelizing is to be forgiven.''
In the videotaped memoir made with his son Pat Jr., Maloney touched on nearly every aspect of his life and more than a half century in the legal profession, from his drinking to some of his most memorable cases.
Maloney said that he was not reticent about talking with friends about his illness.
"Frankly, about the only thing I've got left to do is to be an example on how to die well, peacefully, joyfully, gratefully,'' he said. "And if I do that in tranquility, then I count my dying a total success.
A trial lawyer for half a century, Maloney specialized in personal injury and product liability cases. His clients were as varied as the Congregation of Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word, Duval County rancher Clinton Manges, famous San Antonio madam Theresa Brown, whom Maloney once referred to as "an intellectual giant,'' Vietnamese fishermen, and a dog named Wimpy.
During a career marked by controversy, he tallied more than 100 cases in which winning verdicts totaled more than $1 million.
He won the first million-dollar verdict in the history of San Antonio as well as the first three million-dollar verdicts.
Maloney, who made Forbes magazine's list of top money-making trial lawyers in the country several times, won several multimillion-dollar verdicts, including one for $55 million in an insurance fraud case.
He was a member of the Inner Circle of Advocates, an exclusive organization for plaintiffs' attorneys. Membership is limited to 100. To become a member, a lawyer must have argued at least 50 personal injury cases and won at least one verdict of $1 million.
He served as president of the organization from 1995 to 1997.
Born to an impoverished Irish Catholic family on Aug. 9, 1924, in San Antonio, Maloney didn't start out as an attorney.
With only $50, half provided by his father, he enrolled at the University of Texas at Austin in the fall of 1941 to study journalism.
Three months later, after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Maloney left UT and joined the Marine. He was wounded while serving in the Southwest Pacific.
Of the Marines, he said: "I abhorred and despised them for all reasons. The officers were dumb but they all had a college education.''
But, he added, "The Marine Corps gave me a burning, desperate desire to succeed.''
Maloney made himself a promise that if he survived the war, he would attend Mass every day.
He often arrived at San Fernando Cathedral a half hour before 6 a.m. Mass.
Unwilling to open earlier, Elizondo finally gave Maloney a key to the cathedral and showed him where to turn on the lights.
Maloney still had the key when he died.
"Most people know he was a great lawyer who stood up for social justice issues but they didn't know that he got his strength from God,'' Elizondo said.
After receiving a Purple Heart and an honorable discharge, Maloney returned to UT in 1945. Three years later, he received a degree in journalism.
"I was doing very happily as a sportswriter until I met someone who was in law school,'' he recalled in 1999.
That someone was Olive Patricia Boger, the woman who later became his wife and briefly, law partner. Called "Judge,'' Olive Maloney stayed home to raise their five children.
Still working as a sportswriter, he entered UT law school and got his degree in 1950.
"My ambitions still were limited by my background,'' said Maloney. "I knew I wouldn't get anywhere without help.''
Maloney said he thought he would join Lyndon B. Johnson's staff in Washington and write speeches. Instead, he joined the Bexar County District Attorney's office "because we had a difficult political race.
"Lyndon was very interested in the district attorney being elected,'' said Maloney. "If he was interested, I was interested.''
Maloney never got to Washington. He stayed at the DA's office three years, as chief trial attorney and first assistant DA.
In 1953, after he was defeated for Bexar County district attorney, Maloney opened his own firm, The Law Offices of Pat Maloney, P.C.
With his family growing, Maloney had to find steady legal work.
"Business was never a problem,'' he recalled. "Making a living was.''
The millions he netted in legal fees allowed the son of a poor, immigrant shoe salesman trappings of success: a private plane and his own downtown office building.
Maloney moved his law firm to a three-story, 19th century building on East Commerce Street that once housed banker and philanthropist George W. Brackenridge's San Antonio National Bank.
The late architect O'Neil Ford and architect Jack Peterson were hired by Maloney to renovate the limestone edifice listed on the National Register of Historic Buildings.
On the third floor is the "Longhorn Room,'' a shrine to Maloney's alma mater, UT, and where lawyers, clients, and others daily gather for lunch.
It wasn't always easy being a trial lawyer, Maloney told Texas Lawyer magazine, which named him a Legal Legend in 2000 and one of the 102 most influential attorneys of the 20th century in Texas.
At one point, his practice was in the worst of financial straits.
"To say that it was threadbare would be charitable,'' he said.
Maloney's fortune changed when he won his first multi-million dollar verdict in lawsuits against Southwestern Bell Telephone Co. in 1976 and 1977.
Another of Maloney's largest verdicts stemmed from a 1975 butane tank truck explosion near Eagle Pass.
The truck swerved to miss a car, jackknifed, overturned and exploded.
It sailed 500 yards into a roadside mobile home park, hit one home and bounced into another, setting it afire. Sixteen people, including the truck driver, were killed; 51 others were burned
At the end of the 12-week trial in Del Rio, a state court jury awarded the victims and survivors $50.1 million in damages.
Maloney's client, Jimmy Flores, was awarded $26.5 million, at that time the largest personal injury verdict in the United States.
The trial lawyer later would file hundreds of suits in Eagle Pass, where juries were friendly to plaintiffs.
In some cases, jury verdicts favorable to Maloney were overturned by the appeals court.
In another case, a $3 million verdict against Southwestern Bell was appealed and Maloney's clients lost when the Texas Supreme Court overturned the verdict.
Stung by the reversal, Maloney backed a candidate who trounced Bob Murray, a justice on the 4th Court of Appeals who had set aside the judgment.
During the late 1970s and the 1980s, Maloney, often in league with controversial South Texas rancher Clinton Manges, vfunneled money to judicial candidates.
Maloney was never bothered by the condemnation he received over his attempts at influencing the outcome of judicial races by supporting liberal Democrats.
"When you grow up poor and Irish and Catholic, that trilogy kind of mandates your philosophy,'' he told the Dallas Morning News in 1982. "And frankly, the way we make a living, representing poor folks, the helpless and the traumatized, you spend your entire professional life suing financial interests and vested interests.''
Maloney was as known for his flamboyant courtroom tactics as for the television commercials he filmed on different legal issues. He began the "Knowing the Law'' TV spots in 1983.
Saying "we're a family of lawyers protecting the families of San Antonio,'' Maloney continued appearing in commercials with Pat Jr. and daughter Janice even after he became ill.
An in-demand lecturer, Maloney also was an author.
He wrote the book "Winning the Million Dollar Lawsuit'' and was co-author of "Trials and Deliberations: Inside the Jury Room.''
His 1999 novel entitled "Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor,'' was based on the 1979 case of two young Vietnamese brothers accused of killing a fellow fisherman.
In the videotaped memoir, Maloney said he took the case for free at the behest of the Catholic Church.
Of the case, in which both clients were acquitted, despite overwhelming evidence against them, Maloney said: "That was our grandest endeavor, the greatest case in which we've ever been involved because of the social good we achieved, the fact that it was pro bono, the fact that you couldn't win it, the fact that it took all that courage, the fact that we stood up for a principle.''
A few years before his death, Maloney reflected that: "The practice of law is more socially rewarding because you can do things. You can see the results of helping someone. You have recourse as an attorney. You have a chance to change someone's life and champion a cause. There's no other career like that.''
The fact that all five children – and his late wife – became lawyers delighted him.
"It seems to me I had nothing to do with it,'' he said. "I don't know how it happened.''
He was equally proud of having quit a lifetime of drinking.
"To be honest with you, I'd enjoy a drink every day since I quit,'' Maloney said. "But what it meant was that I was able to give and to share a portion of me that I never could before and to give lots to my family, too.''
His wife Olive died in June 2004.
He is survived by three sons, Pat Maloney Jr.,v Michael Maloneyv and Tim Maloney; vtwo daughters, Janice Maloneyv and Patricia Maloney;v five grandchildren, Michelle, vErica,v Dennis,v Patrick vand Connor Maloney. v
A funeral Mass is set for 1:30 p.m. Wednesday at San Fernando Cathedral.
The burial will be private.
http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/obituaries/stories/MYSA091105.online.obit_maloney.en.4ae2f41a.html