Flush Times for Lawyer Vanguard in Church Suits

New York Times, April 27, 2002

By ADAM LIPTAK

ST. PAUL, April 25 â€" Jeffrey R. Anderson has made a lot of money suing the Roman Catholic Church, and he has the hate mail to prove it. A wall of his office here is devoted to the best of the negative letters, which he has mounted and framed.

One correspondent wrote, "My God, lawyers have a horrible reputation for getting rich on human misery, but you carry the profession from the swamp to the cesspool."

The letters amuse Mr. Anderson, who is small, wiry, intense and a little mysterious. He keeps the blinds drawn, and the atmosphere in his office is shadowy and confessional. It is crammed with dark and spooky neo-Gothic art, most of it with religious overtones.

He pointed out a painting to a visitor. "That's a sinister thing called 'The Priest's Cape,' " he said. "What I deal with is sort of sinister, too."

Mr. Anderson and half a dozen other lawyers around the country have been working since the early 1980's in a marginal backwater of the law. They have been suing Catholic dioceses and officials in sexual abuse cases involving priests and children. They would, once in a while, hit a litigation jackpot, and they were not shy about enjoying the notice and money it brought. But they despaired of ever focusing sustained attention on the problem of pedophile priests.

That has changed, and the old litigation hands now face the difficulties of too much attention, too many cases and competition on the horizon. In Boston, Roderick MacLeish Jr., a partner in a national firm, is being assisted by two dozen lawyers in preparing sexual abuse lawsuits around the country. He admitted to fatigue. "We can only work 18 hours a day," Mr. MacLeish said, "and then we run out of steam."

Smaller firms like Mr. Anderson's, which employs 13 lawyers, are deluged. "I'm getting and trying to field between 100 and 200 calls a day from survivors,"

Mr. Anderson said, "about half of whom are breaking their silence for the first time."

Mr. Anderson welcomed the onslaught, saying, "I am a man in frenzy in search of chaos."

That frenzy has been focused for almost 20 years now on battling the Catholic Church. He has represented more than 400 people who say they were abused by priests, and he estimated that he had won more than $60 million in settlements from Catholic dioceses. He would not discuss his financial arrangements with his clients, but plaintiffs' lawyers typically take a third and sometimes as much as 40 percent of settlements and judgments.

Mr. Anderson says he is driven not by money but by anger. He traced his fury at the church to the social movements of his college days.

"I got agitated in the late 60's and became a rabid antiwar activist," he said.

"I went to law school because I felt powerless as a hippie. I went on to become an underground activist on the inside of the power structure."

His anger increased when he learned in 1993 that his daughter Amy, now 28, had been molested as a girl by a therapist who had formerly been a Catholic priest.

"Every time I make an effort, it's for every survivor and for Amy, too," he said.

Mr. Anderson continues to raise the stakes. He recently sued Catholic Church officials under a racketeering law originally intended for organized crime, saying that their conduct in covering up accusations against priests amounted to a pattern of criminal conduct. More audaciously yet, he also sued the Vatican.

Even Mr. Anderson's colleagues sometimes question his more creative tactics. "I don't believe in filing racketeering cases," said Mr. MacLeish, whose firm has represented more than 300 people who say they were abused by priests. "I'm not that conspiratorial."

The controversy does not surprise Mr. Anderson, who said: "You sue the Vatican, you can expect some heat, man. You sue every bishop in America as a racketeer, you get some heat."

If Mr. Anderson is a product of the counterculture, Mr. MacLeish is his establishment counterpart. He is the son of the journalist Roderick MacLeish and the grand-nephew of the poet Archibald MacLeish. His firm has 820 lawyers in 17 offices.

But like Mr. Anderson, Mr. MacLeish's private life has been touched by sexual abuse.

"I have some very personal reasons for getting into this," he said. "I went to an English boarding school when I was 7 or 8. Nothing happened to me, but only because I literally fought them off."

Mr. MacLeish's firm represents 180 people in sexual abuse cases. "We have 30 people on this," he said, including six paralegals, one of whom is a social worker. "If we can't help them, we're giving them a reference to a rape crisis center. We've become, in essence, a social service agency."

His firm, Greenberg Traurig, is not the sort that typically handles personal injury cases, much less sex abuse cases against a powerful institution. The firm's president, Cesar L. Alvarez, noted that another partner, Barry Richard, had represented George W. Bush in the litigations arising from the 2000 presidential election.

Mr. Alvarez said the sexual abuse litigation would not offend the firm's corporate clients.

"This is not taking an adversarial position with the church," he said. "From a human perspective I think the church will come out better as a result of these cases."

It was not long ago that very few lawyers would accept cases involving accusations of sexual abuse against clergymen.

"These cases were generally referred to lawyers who were practicing on the fringes of their local practices, people who didn't have a lot to lose," said Prof. Patrick J. Schiltz, dean of the University of St. Thomas School of Law in Minneapolis.

Joyce Seelen, a Colorado lawyer who has represented 30 to 40 plaintiffs in sexual abuse cases involving clergymen of various denominations, remembered accepting an abuse case in the early days for want of anything better.

"Females just didn't get referred a lot of good personal injury cases," Ms.

Seelen said.

Lawyers representing people who say they have been victims of sexual abuse by clergymen have for the most part not developed into anything like the cohesive plaintiff's bar that dominates tobacco, asbestos and other giant claims.

"It is an unusual bar, but it has some elements in common with specialized parts of the plaintiffs' bar," said Professor Schiltz, who represented churches of many denominations in sexual abuse cases while in private practice.

He says plaintiffs' lawyers share information, cultivate the same expert witnesses and lobby legislatures, mostly to extend statutes of limitations.

"They aren't necessarily the best lawyers in the world in their ability to brief cases and make arguments to judges," Professor Schiltz said. "But they're great storytellers, and they're very savvy with the media."

Sylvia Demarest, a Texas lawyer who won a $120 million jury verdict in a sexual abuse case against the Roman Catholic Diocese of Dallas, said closer ties among plaintiffs' lawyers were inevitable. "As time goes by," Ms. Demarest said, "you will see more and more cooperation as lawyers realize they can have a social impact and earn a fee."

The established plaintiffs' lawyers are fearful, though, that the scandals will attract new lawyers who will fail to give victims needed attention. "I'm concerned this will turn into a fast food area of the law," said Mitchell Garabedian, who has represented more than 100 victims of John J. Geoghan, the former priest in the Boston Archdiocese who was convicted of molestation.

Mr. Anderson noted another concern. "I live in fear that someone will bring a case that should not be brought, like the Bernardin fiasco," he said, referring to the abuse charges made against the late Cardinal Joseph L. Bernardin of Chicago and then recanted. "I worry about a public relations setback."

In general, though, Mr. Anderson said he would welcome the company of other plaintiffs' lawyers in what is fast becoming a lucrative specialty.

"There is money to be made," he said. "That's fine. I encourage everyone to come in."

He has a new project in mind, also involving sexual abuse by religious officials, and it has captured his imagination.

"We're launching a major assault on the Mormon Church," he said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/27/national/27LAWY.html?todaysheadlines

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