Champion in the
Courtroom

		Geoffrey Fieger wanted to be an actor, not a lawyer, until, persuaded by his parents, he enrolled at the Detroit College of Law in the fall of 1976. Suddenly, he found law “was like a favorite food you never knew you liked.” Within 20 years he had become perhaps the nation’s best-known trial attorney. Now, with the most generous gift in the law college’s history, he’s trying to make it easier for others to follow in his footsteps.
BY JACK LESSENBERRY Years ago, while preparing to write about the nationally famous relationship between Geoffrey Fieger and his most notorious client, Jack Kevorkian, I slipped into the courtroom unannounced to see him prosecute an “ordinary” malpractice lawsuit. Noticing me, he crooked a finger and called me over. “Watch this,” he said just before cross-examining an obstetrician. His clients, a working class couple, claimed their child became a quadriplegic because of medical errors made during the delivery procedure. What I saw was uncanny. Within moments, everyone in the courtroom—including the judge—seemed to be hanging on his every word. It was like a scene from the TV courtroom drama Matlock. Pacing like a restless lion and alternately roaring or whispering, Fieger soon got the doctor to admit she could not remember if she had actually performed the C-section or not. Then he dramatically demonstrated that the patient was given the wrong medication. The judge seemed unusually rapt with the unfolding drama and brushed away the objections of the defense counsel. The opposing counsel could do little but stare glassy-eyed and helpless as his case slipped away. When a recess was called, Fieger strolled over to this writer. “Now THAT is how to do a cross-examination,” he crowed. Geoffrey Nels Fieger may just be the most controversial attorney in the nation. There are those who love him, those who hate him and those who say they can’t stand him—but also say they’d hire him in a minute if they needed a courtroom lawyer. “He’s a modern-day lawyer who directs and produces a real-life play,” Ralph Valitutti, ’76, another malpractice attorney, once said. He is by turns sensitive and outrageous, cunning and bombastic. But nobody would deny his courtroom brilliance. (Not surprisingly, he won a multimillion-dollar settlement in the birth-injury case mentioned above). But no matter how you feel about persona Fieger, there is little debate over the fact that he is the one attorney you want to represent you in the courtroom. He is recognized nationally as one of the most effective and successful trial lawyers of our generation. Geoffrey Fieger readily acknowledges his debt to MSU-DCL. “It was a tough school and it prepared me to practice law. DCL took me through the metamorphosis from layman to law student to lawyer.” Yet, in one sense, the school failed to prepare him for what he does best. “They trained me to think like a lawyer, but that is not the same as doing it in a courtroom in front of a jury. Many trial lawyers graduate and then, like it or not, have to spend years practicing on their real clients.” Now he’s moved to do something about that. “They asked me for some input on how to improve the curriculum and skills of their graduates, and I responded,” he says with uncharacteristic, low-key modesty. He responded, that is, with a $4 million donation—the largest donation in the law college’s history—to initiate and sustain America’s first trial practice institute designed specifically to train law students as effective trial lawyers. Through the institute, Fieger hopes future MSU-DCL graduates will be able “to start their careers light years ahead of the competition.” For the students in the program, this goal is already becoming a reality. “This program is the first thing that every interviewer has asked me about in the summer associate interviews I have had,” one student said. “They want to hire new lawyers with experience, but it’s the age-old conundrum: How do you get the job without experience, and how do you get experience without the job? “I know that the experience I gain in the Geoffrey Fieger Trial Practice Institute will make me stand out when decisions are made for job offers,” she said. “More important, I’ll be ready to advocate for my clients in a court of law.” “Mr. Fieger is arguably the most preeminent trial lawyer in the country, and he is an inspiration to our students,” said Terence L. Blackburn, dean and professor of law at MSU-DCL. “It is Mr. Fieger’s dedication to his clients, his thorough preparation for each case, and his skill in the courtroom that serve as models for this institute.” Even though the gift, like its benefactor, has been controversial, there’s no question that current MSU-DCL students are excited about what the institute will mean to them and future generations of students. “Geoff Fieger does his job well, and we should not be hearing any complaints on receiving a gift from an excellent lawyer,” said Jeff Gray, a second-year MSU-DCL student accepted to the Fieger institute last fall. “And I think that because he is nationally known, more students will be drawn to the school, especially those who understand the role of an advocate in our society.” MSU-DCL alumnus and board of trustees member Charlie Langton, ’87, agrees. “Whether you like Geoff Fieger or not, it’s hard to argue his record as a trial lawyer. He knows how to win cases, and if I’m a student who wants to win, I want to study under the best. Geoff Fieger will give young law students that education.” The institute’s educational component—a highly competitive two-year certificate program—is the most comprehensive of its kind in the nation. Students will practice in a high-tech courtroom, be mentored by practicing trial attorneys and take part in national and international competitions. The trial practice certificate program builds on the law college’s tradition of educating outstanding trial attorneys. “You know what I have noticed most about MSU-DCL grads during my two decades in the profession? They practice law,” Fieger observes. ‘“I seldom see a University of Michigan law grad in the courtroom. But MSU-DCL grads are in the trenches all over this state as Michigan’s trial lawyers and judges. They are the ones who are out there doing it.” When Fieger was in law school, there was little formal opportunity to practice what he learned, but that didn’t stop him from blazing his own trail. In his second year of law school, Fieger read an article in the New York Times about a condition called tardive dyskinesia, which is caused by the misuse of psychotropic drugs. The symptoms reminded him a great deal of the problems the mother of one of his closest boyhood friends had been having. Fieger’s father, a labor lawyer named Bernie Fieger, agreed to let Geoffrey do most the work on the case under Bernie’s name until Geoffrey passed the bar. When the case, Fagenbaum v. Oakland Medical Center, et al, finally was resolved in 1982, the young attorney had won the nation’s first million-dollar judgment involving the misuse of anti-psychotic drugs. That got national attention, and Geoffrey Fieger, then only 31, never looked back. “The only time you need me,” he once said, “is if you go to trial.” He loved being in the trial arena. His elevation to the international stage began seven years later—in August 1990—when, by chance, he was in his Southfield office on a Sunday afternoon and the phone rang. It was one Jack Kevorkian, who had been attempting to defend himself after his first assisted suicide, and was, to put it mildly, failing. That was the beginning of one of the most famous—or infamous—partnerships in modern legal history, depending on your point of view. For Geoffrey Fieger, the issue was never primarily one of assisted suicide, but of individual, Constitutional rights. He took over Kevorkian’s defense—pro bono—and got a first-degree murder charge dismissed. Other charges followed and were dismissed. The legislature passed laws against assisted suicide; the Michigan Supreme Court ruled that helping people kill themselves was, and always had been, a common-law felony. “My clients have the right to be heard, and I am proud to give them a voice.” Prosecutors never laid a glove on Fieger’s famous client. Regardless of your politics, the scorecard is impressive. Three full-length trials, involving five cases, followed. Every time, Jack Kevorkian more or less openly admitted helping the patients die. Every time, when the jury came back, the verdict was not guilty. The fourth and final trial ended in 1997 when a rural prosecutor in Ionia, Michigan, asked for a mistrial following Fieger’s powerful (and naturally controversial) opening argument. Badly beaten, the prosecutor never sought to try the case again. The cases made both attorney and client a household word and the subject of full-length documentaries and profiles everywhere from Vanity Fair to the New York Times to Frontline on PBS. Today, Fieger continues to win multimillion-dollar verdicts for his clients, many of whom have lost a beloved child or spouse through medical malpractice, gross negligence or outright criminal behavior. “My clients are average men and women who have had their lives devastatingly altered by a person or organization that invariably has lots of money and power at their disposal,” Fieger says. “My clients have the right to be heard, and I am proud to give them a voice.” Ironically, it is Fieger’s greatest strength—his fearless resolve to champion the rights of individuals no matter how unpopular his position may be—that ignites the fire of controversy that follows him wherever he goes. “Lawyers breathe life into our Constitution,” Fieger has said. “I am motivated by compassion for individuals—men, women and children—whose personal freedoms are threatened. To me, patriots are those who hold the principles upon which this nation was founded near and dear to their hearts. That may mean taking a position that is unpopular or speaking out when it would be more comfortable and politically advantageous to remain silent. I’m not afraid to speak out. I consider it my duty.” Fieger speaks with the passion of someone who has the power of his convictions, a love of words and a flair for the theatrical. At the University of Michigan, he earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in theater and speech. Fieger has a deep regard for the prose penned by William Shakespeare, and every year, he and wife Keenie make the trek to Stratford, Ontario, to enjoy a week at Canada’s Shakespeare Festival. Even now, he has been known to stop mid-sentence—occasionally in the courtroom—and quote one of Shakespeare’s sonnets from near-perfect memory: But be contented; when that fell arrest Without all bail shall carry me away, My life hath in this line some interest Which for memorial still with thee shall stay Does that mean he sees the Geoffrey Fieger Trial Practice Institute as a living tribute to his career? Fieger grins. “My courtroom opponents shouldn’t get their hopes up because I’m not going anywhere any time soon,” he laughs.