'Lion of the trial bar' Joe Jamail dies at 90
This photo of Joe Jamail was from a 2009 ABA Journal profile story. Photo by Scott Pasfield.
Houston personal injury lawyer Joe Jamail, famous for his $10.5 billion judgment against Texaco in 1985, has died at the age of 90.
Jamail represented Pennzoil in the case against Texaco, which alleged Texaco interfered with Pennzoil’s deal to buy part of Getty Oil, the New York Times reports. The win “elevated him overnight from the lone star of Texas courtrooms to near-mythical status in American jurisprudence,” the story says.
Texaco filed for bankruptcy after the judgment and settled for $3.3 billion.
Jamail had a successful career, despite flunking his first class in torts in law school at the University of Texas, according to the Times. Over 50 years of practice, Jamail won more than $13 billion in settlements and judgments.
“Audacious, unpredictable, a theatrical courtroom rogue,” the New York Times says, Jamail “won the hearts and minds of juries with down-home straight talk in a barroom drawl that turned boring contracts and soporific legal jargon into simple, dramatic morality plays, with casts of victims (his clients) and villains (the other guys).”
In a 2009 interview with the ABA Journal as part of a feature called “Lions of the Trial Bar,” Jamail criticized the move to replace jury trials with mediation and arbitration. “I don’t think the trial practice is dead,” Jamail said. “But it is very ill. There are some days you could throw a hand grenade down the hall of the Harris County Courthouse and not hit anybody.”
Bloomberg News, the Houston Chronicle and the Austin American-Statesman also have obituaries.
Related article:
ABA Journal: “Joe Jamail”
