Blood-and-Guts Courtroom Showman : PTL Attorney Grutman Leaves an Impression

The Falstaffian presence was angry as he sat amid the leather-bound books and overstuffed chairs in the library of his $3-million-plus estate here. His enemies are legion, and they were the subject of waves of abuse, articulated in a booming baritone.

One adversary--or more precisely, one person on the other side of the PTL issue that is the obsession of Norman Roy Grutman on this gray spring day--is a “lunatic. He’s incoherent, illogical. . . .”

A recent ABC “Nightline” show that opened with a segment not friendly to the Rev. Jerry Falwell and then turned to Grutman to respond is deemed “so loaded, so slanted, so pro-Bakker, it was an execution, an invitation to a lynching.”

In his Georgian mansion, which he and his wife and law partner Jewel Bjork have named “Courtly Manor,” it was clear why Grutman’s clients love him and why his opponents spit and hiss at the mention of his name.

The man who was hired by Jim Bakker’s PTL ministry and who has stayed on to battle Bakker and other foes under the Falwell regime is no gentleman lawyer. In fact, in 1981, when he opposed Falwell in a lawsuit against one of his most enduring clients, Penthouse magazine, he regularly referred to the founder of the Moral Majority as “Foulwell.”

An educated loner who quotes the Bible and Shakespeare and can argue in English, Italian, Spanish and French, Grutman is not one of those who speak softly but wield a large brief put together by a committee of young Ivy League associates.

Court Showmanship

Grutman is one of the last of the courtroom showmen, a blood-and-guts advocate who plays tough and loud and mean. With his round face and familiar tinted glasses, it was Grutman who called the Bakker management of PTL a “Ponzi scheme” as he appeared with PTL executives to explain why the ministry had filed for reorganization under Chapter 11 of the federal bankruptcy law.

And it was Grutman who hinted that church builder Roe Messner, who claims he is owed more than $14 million by PTL, might be lucky to walk away with a 2-by-4.

Such hardball tactics have established him among the most interesting, successful and controversial lawyers of the era.

“I can imagine that there may be lawyers who are technically better, but I don’t think anybody can give a better show,” said attorney Ron Goldfarb, Grutman’s longtime friend. “As my grandmother would say, he’s got a mouth.”

It is a mode of lawyering that has made him lots of enemies and a good deal of money. He has been chastised by judges and has been refused entry--twice--into the American College of Trial Lawyers. As Grutman sees it, he was “blackballed” by renowned trial lawyer Louis Nizer after bitter legal fights when Nizer represented owners of California spa Rancho la Costa in a libel action against Penthouse. Nizer denied it, and refused further comment “because I don’t want to abuse any other lawyer.”

But if the legal establishment considers him an outsider who belongs outside, others who have competed with him in the legal process are not so infuriated.

“Roy Grutman is a unique lawyer. The second best attorney in the country,” said Gerald Spence, who became Grutman’s friend after a case in which Spence represented a former Miss Wyoming who filed a libel suit against Penthouse.

Norman Roy Grutman, 56, was born in the Bronx. “I was the elder child of a very successful real estate family and I had the advantages of the best education that money could buy--Horace Mann School for boys, Yale, Columbia Law School. French lessons, piano lessons, trips abroad.”

His friends from that era tend to say he was then, the way he is now--a loner who liked to entertain more than converse, a showy student who enjoyed theatrics.

After Yale and several efforts to find his legal niche, Grutman in 1970 joined the firm of Finley, Kumble, Wagner. After six years there, Grutman left, charging that he was deprived of his share of the partnership. The issue went to arbitration, Grutman’s winnings went to lawyers’ fees, and he went from being a man who believed he was a millionaire to a lawyer who owned an apartment in New York.

The Grutman legal team of Roy and Jewel, which began after the departure from Finley, Kumble, Wagner, is a compelling one. As he puts it, she is responsible for structure, organization strategy and theorizing.

He describes himself as an ardent suitor of the English language, but for his adversaries, Grutman does to English what (Penthouse publisher Bob) Guccione does to sex. There is no calibration on the Grutman rhetoric. Like water from an open faucet, his vocabulary gets hotter as it rushes along.

One Ohio judge, for example, chastised Grutman for, among other things, describing Hustler publisher Larry Flynt as “the Son of Sam among publishers.”

“He is irascible, no question about it,” Spence said. “No question that he can set another lawyer’s hair on edge about as quick as anybody I have ever seen . . . but these little debutantes of the legal profession who think that lawyers ought to do the minuet with each other have a great deal to learn from Mr. Grutman and me.”

In fact, after Grutman puts on his show, the participants either come away irritated or fascinated.

After one trial his antics so angered a member of the legal support staff that one clerk printed bumper stickers that said, “Will Rogers Never Met Norman Roy Grutman.”

Similarly, Boston Globe reporter Walter Robinson, who was the target of Grutman’s courtroom manners when Robinson and the Globe were sued by former gubernatorial candidate John Lakian, recalls Grutman this way:

“He has reached the zenith for lawyers and the nadir for humans, which may be the same thing,” said Robinson, who moved to Washington shortly before the jury rendered a verdict against Lakian. “You can quote me as long as you get across the point that I think he’s the lowest form of human life.”

In 1981, Falwell sued Penthouse to prevent the magazine from publishing an interview that Falwell had given without realizing that it would appear in a magazine that advocates much of what Falwell condemns.

At the trial, where Grutman competed chapter-and-verse in a biblical sparring match, the minister took note of his adversary. The next time he needed a trial lawyer, he called Grutman.

Grutman said that although he and Falwell talk about religion, there has been no conversion. Grutman said he had made his religious search 17 years ago and found Mary Baker Eddy.

“I was raised in the Jewish tradition but I was never satisfied by it,” Grutman said. “I found my way into Christian Science in 1970 and I found it was a logical extension of the spiritual values that I was seeking and which seemed dead in American Jewish practice. But Christian Science is rooted in the Old Testament, and there is no real difference except its acceptance of Jesus and the whole idea of Christian love, whereas Judaism is so full of fear.”