Legal News

Fred Baron, the Man Who Moved John Edwards?s Mistress

By Ashby Jones

As most of you know, John Edwards is a lawyer. But that fact alone probably wouldn’t give us subject-matter jurisdiction over the bizarro story involving him and video producer Rielle Hunter (pictured, left). Fortunately, however, Fred Baron (pictured, below right) gives us the in we need.

The dealio: In the midst of the weekend’s news that Edwards had had an affair with Hunter, news also broke that someone had paid not only for Hunter to move from Chapel Hill, N.C., to Santa Barbara, Calif., but for the man who claims to be the father of her child, Andrew Young, to move as well. Who would be so good, so noble, so, well, rich to pull a stunt like that off? None other than Fred Baron, as it turns out, the founder of the Baron & Budd law firm.

“I made a decision on my own, without talking to Edwards or anybody, to try to help them move to a community to try to get away from those folks,” Baron told the Dallas Morning News over the weekend. Baron was the Edwards campaign’s finance chair in 2004 and 2008 and said he paid for Hunter’s move out of his own pocket, not with Edwards’s money.

Added Baron: “John Edwards is an extraordinary human being who made an egregious error. . . . I feel sad because I know John Edwards so well. In life we all make mistakes. . . . It breaks my heart if this is going to disqualify him from being a public servant, because he would be a great one.”

Baron, the former president of the American Trial Lawyers’ Association, made his name as a plaintiffs’ lawyer, largely representing victims of asbestos exposure and other alleged toxins. He left Baron & Budd in 2002. Budd took a ton of heat for a memorandum that in 1997 was mistakenly handed over to opposing counsel. According to this story from 2001 in the Dallas Observer, “the 20-page memo instructed these mostly elderly workers never to testify that they saw warning labels on asbestos packages or knew it was dangerous and gave firm directions on how to testify about their exposure to asbestos products in ways to make their cases better.” Budd claimed the memo was the handiwork of a rogue paralegal.

Hunter Photo: AP

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on August 11, 2008 (boomark / email).