Cases Where Principle Outweighs Principal

It was April 1996 when Darrell Cabey became a multimillionaire--in theory.

Cabey, paralyzed by a bullet from Bernhard Goetz, received a $43-million payday from a Bronx jury that found the subway gunman liable for the headline-making December 1984 shooting. But Cabey has yet to collect a penny, and his lawyer doesn’t expect to see one soon.

His civil case--like a rash of others recently--was more about the message than the money. Don’t be dazzled by the huge dollar amounts; lawyers involved said they were fighting for principle, not principal.

“We knew we would never collect,” Cabey’s lawyer, Ronald Kuby, acknowledged recently. “But we wanted to send two messages: public punishment for Bernhard Goetz, and the deterrence of other racist maniacs with a gun.”

Cabey is one of the new breed of ‘90s litigants, a cross-cultural collection of complainants ranging from an aging Notre Dame football coach to the descendants of Holocaust victims to alleged presidential victim Paula Jones.

Their mantra: “It’s not about the money.”

“I’m sure some people say that to cover up their real motives,” said Dan Ortiz, a University of Virginia law professor. “But there is a long line of cases where people sue not to get money, but for public vindication.”

Fred Goldman, whose son Ronald was killed with Nicole Brown Simpson, wanted O.J. Simpson held accountable for their murders after a criminal trial acquittal. His civil suit won $33 million, but the staggering figure was not Goldman’s chief concern.

“Simpson was branded as a killer,” said Goldman’s lawyer, Daniel Petrocelli. “That was the purpose of the civil trial.”

Goldman even offered to forgo the money if the former Heisman Trophy winner would confess to the slayings. Simpson, of course, didn’t confess to anything. And his appeal of the verdict has prevented Goldman, like Cabey, from collecting the jury award.

Goldman still has a chance of collecting something. Former prosecutor Steven Pagones knew before his defamation case went to trial last year that, win or lose, he would likely never collect anything from Tawana Brawley or her three advisors.

The advisors, without any evidence, repeatedly said that Pagones had kidnapped and sexually assaulted the teenager--a 1987 story that was ultimately declared a hoax.

But Pagones wanted more. He wanted the men held accountable. He pressed on even as the case stretched over a decade, as his legal bills climbed above $300,000.

Though the jury awarded him only a break-even $345,000, Pagones proclaimed victory. Public vindication was paramount when he won his judgment against the Rev. Al Sharpton, C. Vernon Mason and Alton Maddox.

“It was never about the money,” Pagones said. “I wanted to get to the truth, to show these three men that they need to prove what they’ve been saying for years.”

That same spirit, altruistic or not, has surfaced in an assortment of other suits:

* Paula Jones said she would drop her sexual harassment charge against Bill Clinton if he would utter two words: “I’m sorry.” The president declined, and now has more pressing problems.

* Notre Dame football coach Joe Moore, 66, successfully sued the university for age discrimination over his December 1996 firing. His attorney, Richard Lieberman, said the trial earlier this year was never about money, but taking a stand for senior citizens and proving that Notre Dame was not “above the law.” Moore won $86,000.

* Richard Jewell filed a variety of suits after media reports identified him as the likely perpetrator of the Atlanta Olympic bombing in 1996. “This isn’t about money,” said his lawyer, Lin Wood. “Justice demands that the media and the federal government be held accountable for their actions.” (Jewell, formally cleared of suspicion by investigators, has settled with Time magazine, NBC and CNN.)

So is it ever about the money? Certainly it is for attorneys working on a contingency basis, earning a percentage of the award. And certainly, a big money judgment gets people’s attention.

“Sometimes the money figure is important for punishment,” said attorney Kuby. “And sometimes it’s important for deterrence, or to send a message.”

Morris Dees, attorney for the Southern Poverty Law Center, has made an industry of sending messages to the Ku Klux Klan and other hate groups with his lawsuits.

In Dees’ best-known case, a klan group in Alabama was forced to deed its property to the mother of a lynching victim.

“In no case have we ever collected the amount of money that a jury has awarded,” said center spokesman Mark Potok. “What we want is for juries to say if people get hurt in any way, you will be held liable in every way that the law allows.”