Legal News

Want to Live Like Tort King Melvin Belli?

By Jennifer Forsyth

Don’t worry, LB Nation. We’re not going to start peppering you with real estate ads. After all, does anyone really buy a house anymore? That was so 2005.

But we couldn’t really resist pointing out that the Mansion that Tort Built could be yours for a mere $39.5 million. LB’s Journal colleague Sara Lin reports that Melvin Belli’s former home in the Pacific Heights neighborhood of San Francisco has gone on the block. OK, Belli didn’t actually build it. He bought it in 1992–four years before his death–for about $6.5 million. In case you’re interested, it has six bedrooms, five baths and two powder rooms. (Maybe those were for his client, Zsa Zsa Gabor, who always looks like she uses copious amounts of powder.)

Of course, this listing is merely an excuse to recount our favorite tales of Belli, named “The King of Torts” by Time Magazine. Whether this was compliment or insult is yours to decide. According to this superb obituary upon his death at age 88 in the San Francisco Examiner, Belli believed he had to make a jury picture his client’s suffering. He once hoisted an injured, 680-pound man through the courthouse window. And he boasted of shocking a courtroom in the 1940s by having a client bare her chest to show scars from an injury. She then shed tears that landed right on the scars.

F. Lee Bailey told the Examiner: “Because of him, the price of a leg went up 300%.”

His divorces–there were many–were nearly as legendary. The court once fined him $1,000 for referring to his soon-to-be ex as “El Trampo.”

Photos: Vince Valdez; AP

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on July 11, 2009 (boomark / email).