Lawyer Who Won Case Against GM Carries Old Grudge : Litigation: Attorney still limps from injuries suffered in a Corvair crash 25 years ago.
With General Motors Corp. portrayed as the villain and a teen-ager as the victim, the negligence suit against General Motors Corp. had a familiar ring to attorney James E. Butler Jr.
He still carries a walking stick and vivid memories from his injuries as a teen-ager in a 1968 crash of a Chevrolet Corvair, a car at the center of another generation’s auto safety battle.
Butler denies a vendetta against GM for the wreck 25 years ago. But the 41-year-old attorney, one of the most successful personal injury litigators in the South, makes no secret of his contempt for the managers of the world’s largest industrial corporation.
“I’ve seen in my own life the effect of General Motors’ disinformation, manipulation and refusal to take responsibility, so it makes me sensitive,” Butler said in an interview.
Butler said GM has denied responsibility for defects since the 1960s, when it fought charges that the Corvair was unsafe. He and others continued driving the car, which eventually was taken off the market.
“But for General Motors’ disinformation campaign against (consumer activist) Ralph Nader . . . , I don’t think I’d have been in that defective Corvair and I would not have spent the last 25 years crippled,” Butler said.
Butler leaped into national prominence by representing Thomas and Elaine Moseley of Snellville, Ga., who charged in a lawsuit that their 17-year-old son Shannon died in a wreck of a 1985 GMC pickup because of the fuel tank’s location.
Consumer advocates have charged that design makes the pickup more susceptible to fires. After hearing Butler’s pleas that GM be punished, a state court jury in Fulton County decided in favor of the couple’s claim.
Earlier this month, in the trial that received extraordinary attention, the jury awarded the Moseleys $105.2 million in damages, one of the biggest judgments ever in an automotive liability case.
GM maintains the design, used in about 4.7 million pickups from 1973-1987, is safe and has vowed to appeal.
But the publicity over the trial and its outcome has come at an awkward time for the auto maker, struggling to overcome an image of arrogance, inefficiency and shoddy workmanship despite striking improvements in recent years.
During the course of the trial, Butler’s courtroom demeanor shifted from Southern folksiness to outright anger. His passion for the case was evident, though it ran the risk of backfiring.
John Dale, one of the Moseley jurors, said: “He was emotionally and personally involved with the case much more than I expected to see . . . , sometimes to the detriment of his cause. He would come up for rebuttal with his face red, teeth clenched, morally outraged. I tend to be a non-confrontational person.”
Butler said he was nudged toward automobile cases more by the death of Jeff Willis, the cousin of law partner Robert Cheeley, than by his own car accident.
Willis, a 27-year-old law student, was killed in a wreck as he drove from Atlanta to Columbus in 1986 to watch Butler argue a case.
Butler and Cheeley represented the Willis family in a suit charging Nissan Motor Co Ltd. with designing a faulty roof.
A federal court jury last year ruled against Nissan, but a confidential settlement was reached before the verdict was read.
“It’s incredible what the auto makers will do,” Butler said.
Butler and his partner agreed to represent the Moseleys in a referral from another lawyer. The pair routinely turn down large numbers of prospective clients, but Cheeley said they thought the Moseleys had a strong case.
For one thing, the evidence suggested that their son had burned to death in the truck crash, with no sign of other injury. They also found a former GM engineer as a star witness, who delivered what the lawyers thought was devastating testimony against the car maker.
