Chapter 42
Houston, Texas, Spring 2019
As the opioid case moved closer to the first trial set for the fall of 2019 in Cleveland, Paul Hanly and his law partner, Jayne Conroy, knew they needed to deploy their secret weapon: a colorful fifty-eight-year-old Texas lawyer who was one of the most successful trial attorneys in America. They hoped to persuade Mark Lanier to be their top litigator in the Cleveland courtroom and convince their partners in the MDL of the wisdom of a move that would instantly demote many of them. Hanly and Conroy, who had worked with Lanier on five previous trials, knew it would be a tough sell on both sides of the maneuver.
Lanier had lots of business, was enormously wealthy, and didn’t need to take on a complex case full of competing egos. The Texan lived large on a thirty-five-acre estate about twenty-five miles north of Houston, where he raised chickens, sheep, goats, monkeys, geese, potbellied pigs, and llamas on manicured grounds framed by orchards of apples, plums, and peaches. The founder of the Christian Trial Lawyers Association, Lanier was also an ordained minister who taught a TED Talk–style Sunday school class on biblical literacy for hundreds of people at the Champion Forest Baptist Church in Houston—a background that informed his penchant for references to scripture in argument. He collected ancient Hebrew manuscripts and fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls and had created the Lanier Theological Library on his estate. The seventeen-thousand-square-foot building with soaring windows held one of the country’s largest private collections of rare theological documents. Lanier, whose fortune underwrote his eclectic interests, had also built a stone chapel resembling a Byzantine church, along with a replica of an English village with a cobblestone street and a dining hall, where he baked bread and hot cross buns. Running through the property was a narrow-gauge railroad, a tribute to his father, who had worked for the Texas and Pacific Railway.
Lanier liked to indulge himself and those around him. He spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on Christmas galas, inviting lawyers, politicians, judges, church friends, and their families to his estate. The entertainment was always solid gold: Diana Ross, Sting, Bon Jovi, Miley Cyrus, Johnny Cash, and Crosby, Stills & Nash.
The oversized persona aside, Lanier was, in the judgment of his peers, a hell of a lawyer.
“He’s a magician,” Hanly said. “His mind works as quickly as a computer, and he has a photographic memory. He is the greatest trial strategist.”
In preparation for trials, Lanier perfected the art of the deposition. In lieu of the normally staid affairs with a single camera trained on the subject of the deposition, Lanier would set up multiple cameras in the deposition conference room. He would focus one camera on the subject, another on himself, and a third on the screen of an overhead projector. If the deposition was shown in court, the footage could be edited to show different angles, making the screening less monotonous for jurors. He also used an array of Paper Mate colored pens to draw pictures and take notes during important moments and flash them on the screen. At first, the subjects of the depositions and his colleagues were bemused. Before long, they were impressed by the simplicity and brilliance of Lanier’s style.
In front of a jury, Lanier played the role of a country lawyer—telling folksy stories, using props and verses from the Bible. His methods sounded gimmicky, but they were wildly successful with those in the box who were the ultimate arbiters. Over the course of his thirty-seven-year career, Lanier, who founded the Lanier Law Firm in 1990, had tried more than two hundred personal injury and product liability lawsuits. He won nearly $20 billion in verdicts against corporations in cases involving asbestos, drugs, and metal hip implants.
Lanier’s law firm had joined the litigation as a member of the plaintiffs’ executive committee. But after attending a couple of leadership meetings and witnessing the clashing egos, Lanier retreated. Hanly and Conroy—who first met Lanier as courtroom opponents, but later became friends—refused to let him slip away. At a meeting to convince him to come back, Lanier told them that if he signed on, he wanted to be in charge of everything: trial strategy, depositions, opening statements, witness examinations, and closing arguments. He was happy to listen to the other attorneys, but the final decisions would be his.
“I’m just going to ruffle feathers and make people mad because I do things my way,” he told Hanly and Conroy. “I don’t do things by committee. If I’m getting involved, I’m going to do 90 percent of the case.”
Hanly and Conroy already had the co-lead of the MDL, Joe Rice, on board. They needed to convince the other lawyers to yield to Lanier’s authority. Many of them had already invested huge amounts of time and money in the case. Some of them felt they were just as good as the interloper from Texas. But with many of the lawyers in favor of signing up Lanier, Hanly and Conroy thought they could persuade the holdouts.
“Trial lawyers are like undisciplined thoroughbreds,” Hanly said. “They take a lot of grooming and coaxing and whispering to get them to settle down. They want to do things their way and the MDL has a bunch of experienced trial lawyers. And there were people who didn’t know Mark well or hadn’t seen him try a case.”
One of them was Paul Farrell. That spring, Paul met with Hanly, Conroy, and Rice in the Manhattan offices of Motley Rice. They told Paul they wanted Lanier to try the case.
“He’s the Michael Jordan of trial lawyers,” Hanly said.
“I can try the case,” Paul insisted.
“No offense, my young friend,” Hanly said. “But you’re no Mark Lanier.” Hanly had two decades on Paul in both age and trial experience. Hanly knew Lanier was a once-in-a-generation talent.
Paul’s respect and affection for Hanly, Conroy, and Rice had only grown over the course of the case. He didn’t like what they were recommending; he was skeptical that Lanier was the superstar being depicted. But after a pause to suppress his momentary indignation, he said he could accept Lanier.
“Look, there has not been a single decision that any of us have dissented on. I trust you. I’ll do what’s best for the case,” Paul told them. “But you’re going to have a big sell job to get the other lawyers to agree.”
One of the biggest obstacles was Hunter Shkolnik, the New York lawyer who had been working on the opioid litigation. He was set to be the lead lawyer for the Cleveland trial. Cuyahoga County was his client, and he dug in. Hanly, Conroy, and several of the other lawyers in the MDL spent hours trying to convince him that Lanier was a guarantee of success.
On April 23, 2019, with the trial six months away, Hanly and Conroy gathered the lawyers to listen to Lanier in a makeshift war room the litigation team had set up in Cleveland. Lanier cast the case in biblical terms, a modern-day David versus Goliath. He reminded the lawyers that David was first offered armor and spears and swords to fight Goliath. But David said he would only go into battle with the weapon he trusted, his slingshot.
“One of the lessons I draw out of that story is, I don’t want to go into battle with armor and weapons I haven’t tested,” Lanier told the lawyers. “I know what works for me. I know which trial scientists to use, which jury consultant to use. I know what type of an opening works. I know how to put on the witnesses. I know the order of witnesses that I put on and why I put them on in that order. I’ve got rules for all of this, that I’ve honed over hundreds of cases that I’ve tried. And I know what works for me. I’m not saying some things don’t work for other people. I’m not saying it’s good that my way is the only way that works. I’m saying I know my way works.”
Lanier was charming and persuasive as he described how he would tackle the case, and his hard-nosed confidence was evident to the group of seasoned litigators.
“If I’m coming in, I’m not going to risk something of this magnitude, experimenting with other weapons and other approaches,” Lanier continued. “So, y’all can say, ‘Great, let’s do it.’ Or y’all can say, ‘No.’ And I’m fine, whichever one you choose, but y’all make that choice, y’all fight about it, y’all politicize it, y’all do what y’all need to do. And then let me know. And if it’s mine, great. If it’s not, I’ll do anything I can to help whoever’s doing it. But I’m not going to do it unless I do it with weapons that I know.”
“I’m only agreeable with certain terms,” Shkolnik said.
Shkolnik wanted to put on all of his witnesses. He wanted to deliver part of the opening statement and part of the closing argument.
“Hunter, if things work out well, then I’ll give you a little bit of the opening,” Lanier said. “And if things work out well, I’ll give you one or two of your witnesses, but not all of them. And I just don’t know until I see who the jury is, until I see how the trial’s setting up. And I will make that decision and you will have to abide by my decision.”
“No,” Shkolnik said.
Lanier looked around the war room.
Hanly and Conroy had convinced just about everyone else in the room that Lanier was the right choice.
“Mark, it’s yes,” Hanly said. “Hunter’s just not realizing it’s yes.”