Melvin Mouron Belli (July 29, 1907 – July 9, 1996)
[1] was a prominent
American lawyer known as "The King of Torts" and by insurance companies as "Melvin Bellicose". He had many celebrity clients, including
Zsa Zsa Gabor,
Errol Flynn,
Chuck Berry,
Muhammad Ali,
The Rolling Stones,
Jim Bakker and
Tammy Faye Bakker,
Martha Mitchell,
Lana Turner,
Tony Curtis, and
Mae West. He won over $600,000,000 (U.S.) in judgments during his legal career.
[1] He was also the attorney of
Jack Ruby, who shot
Lee Harvey Oswald for the assassination of President
John F. Kennedy.
Early life[edit]
After graduation, his first job was posing as a hobo for the
Works Progress Administration and riding the rails to observe the
Depression's impact on the country's
vagrantpopulation. His first major legal victory came shortly after graduation, in a personal injury lawsuit representing an injured
cable 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.
[4]
Besides his personal injury cases, which earned for him his byname "King of Torts,"
[2] Belli was instrumental in setting up some of the foundations of modern
consumer rights law, arguing several cases in the 1940s and 1950s that formed the basis for later lawsuits and landmark litigation by such figures as
Ralph Nader. Belli argued (in cases such as
Escola v. Coca-Cola Bottling Co., in 1944, which arose from an incident in which a restaurant manager from
Merced, California was injured by an exploding
Coca-Cola bottle) that all products have an
implied warranty, that it is to be foreseen that products will be used by a long chain of people, 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.
In his book
Ready for the Plaintiff, Belli noted examples of negligence cited by himself and other personal-injury lawyers to win in court—for example, 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 of
Vitreous marble, whose adhesion was eventually 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 a
Jolly Roger flag over his
Montgomery Street 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.
[5]
In his best-known case, Belli represented
Jack Ruby, for free, after Ruby shot and killed
Lee 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 also hired and fired several other lawyers during the case. In late 1966, Ruby's conviction was overturned with help from other defense lawyers on the grounds that he did not receive a fair trial and a retrial was scheduled outside of
Dallas, but Ruby died of cancer before the retrial could take place. Belli became very critical of FBI Director
J. Edgar Hoover.
[citation needed]
In 1969 a man called San Francisco police, identifying himself as the serial killer known as the
Zodiac killer, and agreed to call talk show host
Jim Dunbar on Dunbar's morning television talk show,
A.M. San Francisco if either Belli or attorney
F. 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.
[6] Belli received a letter from the
Zodiac Killer that same year.
[7]
Belli's firm filed for bankruptcy protection in December 1995. Belli was representing 800 women in a
class action lawsuit against breast implant manufacturer
Dow Corning. Belli won the lawsuit, but when Dow Corning declared bankruptcy, Belli had no way to recover the US$5,000,000 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 the
Consumer 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.
[8]
In media[edit]
Belli executive produced
Tokyo File 212 (1951), Hollywood's first film to be shot entirely in Japan.
[9] It featured
Florence Marly and Robert Peyton in key roles.
Belli appeared in "
And the Children Shall Lead", a 1968 episode of the original
Star Trek series. In it he appears as Gorgan, an evil being who corrupts a group of children, one of whom was played by his son Caesar.
[11]
As a performer, Belli was played by
Brian Cox in the 2007 film
Zodiac, for the scene that depicted Belli's conversation with the Zodiac suspect on
A.M. San Francisco.
[7]
Belli was the author of several books, including the six-volume Modern 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 — use of graphic evidence and expert witnesses later became common courtroom practice. His autobiography, My 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 to "847.0 The Whiplash Injury" by L. Ted Frigard, D.C. published in 1970. Dr. Frigard had helped Belli with his pain through chiropractic care.
Personal life[edit]
Belli was married six times and divorced five.
[2] 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 archbishop
Desmond 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.
[13] He was ultimately compelled to pay her an estimated $15 million. She later married a self-styled Romanian prince,
Paul Lambrino. Belli married his sixth wife, Nancy Ho, on March 29, 1996.
[2] 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.
[14]
Belli died of complications from
pancreatic cancer, at his home in
San Francisco, on July 9, 1996, aged 88.
[2] His death came suddenly, and in the presence of his wife Nancy.
The New York Times' quoted his publicist
Edward Lozzi saying "He was sitting; he just stopped breathing".
[15] As of his death he had three sons, three daughters, twelve grandchildren, and two dogs.
[2] He is buried in Odd Fellows Cemetery in Sonora, California, his birthplace.
[citation needed]
Bibliography[edit]
- 1950, The Voice of Modern Trials
- 1951, The Adequate Award
- 1952, The More Adequate Award
- 1952, The More Adequate Award and the Flying Saucers
- 1954, Modern Trials (6 volumes)
- 1955, The Use of Demonstrative Evidence in Achieving the More Adequate Award
- 1955, Medical Malpractice
- 1956, Blood Money Ready for the Plaintiff
- 1956, Ready for the Plaintiff: A Story of Personal Injury Law
- 1959, Modern Damages (6 volumes)
- 1960, Belli Looks at Life and Law in Japan
- 1963, Belli Looks at Life and Law in Russia
- 1964, Dallas Justice: The Real Story of Jack Ruby And His Trial
- 1967, Trial Tactics
- 1968, Criminal Law
- 1968, The Law Revolt: A Summary of Trends in Modern Criminal and Civil Law
- 1968, The Law Revolution
- 1971, Angela: A Revealing Close-Up of the Woman And the Trial
- 1976, My Life on Trial: An Autobiography
- 1983, The Belli Files
- 1986, Everybody's Guide to the Law (co-author Allen P. Wilkinson)
Filmography (as actor)[edit]
- 1968, Star Trek (as Gorgan in the episode "And the Children Shall Lead")
- 1968, Wild in the Streets (as himself)
- 1970, Gimme Shelter (as himself)
- 1972, Arnie (TV Series, as Jonathan Berrenger, lawyer)
- 1973, Ground Zero (a.k.a. The Golden Gate Is Ground Zero)
- 1978, Lady of the House (TV, as Mayor Jim of San Francisco)
- 1979, Whodunnit? (TV series, as himself)
- 1984, Guilty or Innocent (TV series, as himself)
- 1991, Murder, She Wrote (TV series, as Judge Harley in the episode "From the Horse's Mouth")
- 2000, American Justice, "Divorce Wars" (TV series)
