Q&A with Author

“Cipriano’s vivid writing and attention to detail makes for a damn fascinating read.”

Pennsylvania Law WeeklyThe Master of Facts

By William P. Murphy

As one graduate of the “Beasley School of Law” who never attended Temple University at all, I have my own clear recollections of my onetime employer, the late James E. Beasley Sr. When I began reading “Courtroom Cowboy,” Ralph Cipriano’s new biography of the late personal injury lawyer icon, I naturally brought my own perspective on the subject.

Although Beasley spent much of his off-time flying vintage war planes, he probably tried more railroad than aviation cases. Maybe that’s why I picture him more in railroad terms, say, maybe as a silver diesel Super Chief hurtling along a straight-away. The point is, you didn’t want to be staring down the business end of his train if you could avoid it, but it was sure something to see when it got rolling.

When I was a law clerk to the late Judge Edward R. Becker in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, I remember that, practically out of the blue, he once praised a lawyer by the name of Beasley. That was the first I heard of him. Later a national icon in his own right, Becker volunteered that he had never seen any lawyer do a better job of mastering the facts of a case than Beasley. That early foreshadowing stuck in my mind. Becker was as savvy and learned a jurist as there ever was and he was not impressed easily. I had no idea then that the law teaching career I had mapped out for myself would eventually intersect with that master of facts and then make a sharp turn.

I learned early after I began to work for the Beasley firm that he was not a one-dimensional skills lawyer, but had a profound respect for the serious study of law. Facts may seem almighty in the courtroom, but it is the law that makes them work and he knew it. Some of the associates in his firm (there were no partners) brought solid academic credentials. Beasley was not explained by any simple reference to his trial skills or to the big-figure verdicts he regularly won. I could tell that the force that drove was something separate.

I did not have to look far in “Courtroom Cowboy” to find documentation of the deeper workings beneath the glare of the headlines. Ralph Cipriano did his homework and provides a penetrating view of his subject. He captures Beasley’s determination to push and change the law for the sake of the people he represented. He conveys the different brand of advocacy that Beasley pioneered and that actually helped to terra-form the tort law environment to make justice possible for everyone, including those like him who grew up without advantage. Cipriano exposes, too, a sometimes bristly interplay between Beasley and his family, some jurists and even some of his own employees. That, plus revelations about those early years that wound their way to a rather late-starting law career, held many surprises for me, but yet connected with the dots of what I personally knew.

Cipriano makes early reference to the inspired and legendary closing speech Beasley gave in his famous 1984 Cessna case, in which he used a telephone imaginatively and hauntingly as a visual aid in a death case against an airplane manufacturer.

In chapter after chapter of selected cases and courtroom dramas, “Courtroom Cowboy” weaves together the case, the lawyer and the man.

The chapter devoted to the second trial of the nationally noted libel case, Sprague v. Philadelphia Inquirer, for instance, epitomizes Beasley’s uncanny ability on cross-examination. Sifting through Beasley’s 17-day cross-examination of a newspaper editor, the author distills the Beasley gift for harvesting a uniquely critical fact that he, but not the witness, knows will inevitably prove the case. In that instance, it was an assertion by the witness on day two that an investigation involving attorneys for the newspaper had supposedly been finished before the presses rolled. The next 15 days must have been gravy. As the book remarkably reports, the presiding trial judge, Charles P. Mirarchi Jr., himself acknowledged that Beasley “squeezed the juice out of every paragraph” of the newspaper stories in suit and “didn’t repeat himself.” Try that yourself sometime.

Showing his own consistent good grasp of legal strategy, Cipriano cross-references that devastating crossexamination with a lesson Beasley learned from a prior unsuccessful libel case: Call the defendant newspaper’s top honcho as on cross during plaintiff’s own case-in-chief.

That Sprague retrial in 1990, of course, produced a $34 million jury verdict. It was eventually reduced to $24 million by the Superior Court. The case thereafter settled for an undisclosed amount. What a price to pay for the Inquirer’s successful appeal from a $4.5 million verdict in 1983.

The series of cases that Cipriano holds up to close view range from notable medical malpractice and products cases, which were Beasley’s mainstay, to his firm’s creative pursuit through legal process of the ultra-notorious Osama Bin Ladin. With an eclectic span of court dramas and an easy style, “Courtroom Cowboy” develops all sides of the Beasley persona and, in my opinion, outdoes even Louis Nizer’s classic, “My Life in Court.”

Although one reviewer has complained that Cipriano might not have been completely objective because he himself had been a client of Beasley, I disagree with the criticism. I believe that circumstance, which is addressed in the book, widened the writer’s insight and gave him a stronger voice. Most people who encountered Beasley professionally would acknowledge his charisma, anyway. It doesn’t trouble me that the author had a dose of it. It’s a part of the story.

Moreover, you’ll see when you read the book that Cipriano did not spare harsh judgments or embarrassing and uncomfortable circumstances when they arose. Don’t get me wrong: “Courtroom Cowboy” is no James Boswell on Dr. Sam Johnson. It’s much more interesting.

Although we still ride commuter rails and spot a Conrail diesel now and then, the day of the railroad has mostly passed. So has the day of Beasley. Before there were railroads there were canals. Before canals there were wagon trails and passes and gaps. Things are always moving. From the stories told in the “Courtroom Cowboy” and reading between the lines, I surmise that he might have had an inkling of this, too, before his death in 2004 at the age of 78. No one can be sure.

Instead of being a model anymore, his firm’s pyramidal structure is not so suited to the circumstances of today. And the partnership model will never be completely suitable either, because it tends to weed out those personalities whose sheer independence seems part of the DNA of the best personal injury advocates.The customary huge verdicts that Beasley introduced to our legal culture were virtually unheard of when he first embarked on his professional journey. The present economy might not even be able to sustain the continued growth of that model now, especially because it depends upon the insurance industry. That bubble might burst as so many others have recently.

The central struggle for justice now may also have shifted somewhat to other areas, more political and economic, such as preserving the power of a strong judiciary, keeping those courtroom doors open and avoiding the contraction of labor rights. Others will have to find new ways to defend the hard-won gains of that master of facts whose story is so ably told in “Courtroom Cowboy.” Maybe the book will serve as an inspiration.

William P. Murphy is a civil trial and appeals lawyer in Philadelphia. He formerly served as editor-in-chief of the Law Weekly, as a full-time law teacher of constitutional law and federal practice, and as law clerk to Judges Edward R. Becker, A. Leon Higginbotham Jr. and Chief Justice Samuel J. Roberts.

 Legal Inquiry

A “pit-bull Inquirer reporter” teams up with a “courtroom brawler” who’s a “Hemingway-like character” to write a book about the brawler’s most famous cases

In 1998 Ralph Cipriano, then on staff at The Philadelphia Inquirer, made journalistic history by being the first reporter ever to sue his editor for libel. That editor, Robert Rosenthal, had told The Washington Post that Cipriano falsified a story about excessive spending by Philadelphia’s Catholic archbishop. The story was the kind Cipriano had been writing for the Inky as a crusader against the corruption that marred the Archdiocese—much to the chagrin of Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua’s craven PR man, Brian Tierney (yes, that Brian Tierney). When Cipriano and the Inquirer settled the case out of court, the reporter and his high-profile lawyer, Jim Beasely, appeared together on the cover of Editor & Publisher—fighters of the good fight. Now Cipriano has written a biography of the late, great Beasely, who, like Tierney, Bevilacqua and even, to a certain extent, Cipriano himself, was a fascinating mix of charm and impatience, passion and peevishness. For Phiadelphia readers, Courtroom Cowboy is a rich, rewarding read. Aside from the now-entertaining details of Cipriano’s legendary libel case—with plenty of dirt on Tierney and the Cardinal—the book features some of Beasely’s highest-profile cases, including that of Ira Einhorn, the so-called hippie murderer who stuffed his pretty girlfriend into a trunk; Donald Lee McCabe, the self-professed psychoanalyst who drugged and had sex with a patient; and a 23-year libel suit against Philly writer Greg Walter brought by the high-powered lawyer Dick Sprague (guess who won that one?). Countless other familiar names pop up; Beasely was larger than life, and so were his clients. Along with the court cases, Cipriano introduces us to Beasely the man, a remarkable, evangelical trial lawyer who flew fighter jets, hunted big game and was so committed to work, he was unable to vacation, despite a love of fishing and owning a huge boat. But unlike many big personalities, Beasely wasn’t warm and cuddly, and Cipriano doesn’t hide his more challenging out-of-court personality. Cipriano’s prose is brisk and entertaining, and the book, published by Lawrence Teacher (ex of Running Press), is a sumptuous affair with plenty of illustrations and photographs. In the end, Jim Beasely is probably best summed up by Don King, who said he was “one fightin’ mother f–ker.”

“If I had big trouble, who would I choose to represent me? Jim Beasley would have made the list of every Titan of the Trial Court who knew of him. He was top shelf, always.”

F. Lee Bailey on Courtroom Cowboy:

“Ralph Cipriano has brought Jim Beasley back to life, jumping off the pages through chapter after chapter. . . . Don’t start this one if you have something important to do early the next day. It’s damned good, just like its subject.”

Don King, boxing promoter, on Jim Beasley:

“One fightin’ motherf—er.”

Larry Kane, broadcast journalist, on Courtroom Cowboy:

“Jim Beasley’s life was the stuff of legends. Ralph Cipriano provides a journalist’s hard edge along with extraordinary writing. . . . This book is really one for the ages.”

Sal Paolantonio, ESPN correspondent, on Courtroom Cowboy:

“This book will make you like a lawyer and what lawyers do. What book does that?”

Michael Smerconish, radio talk show host, on Courtroom Cowboy:

“I love this book. . . . It is a fabulous read. . . . I see a movie in this.”

“If you are a lawyer or if you have a son or daughter who wants to be a lawyer . . . this is the book.”

Angelo Cataldi, anchor, WIP Morning Show, on Courtroom Cowboy:

“I have done nothing but read this incredible book since I opened it. Wow! Congratulations on the best read I’ve had in a long time . . . . A true tour de force. You accomplished what only the very top tier of writers are able to — a work that will provide immortality to the subject and its author. ”

William P. Murphy Esq., Pensylvania Law Weekly, on Courtroom Cowboy:

Ralph Cipriano did his homework and provides a penetrating view of his subject. . . . In short order, Cipriano gives the reader a palpable sense of Beasley’s power of persuasion . . . . . With an eclectic span of court dramas and an easy style, “Courtroom Cowboy” develops all sides of the Beasley persona and, in my opinion, oudoes even Louis Nizer’s classic, “My Life in Court.” . . . . Maybe the book will serve as an inspiration.”

Courtroom Cowboy also now available at:

– Joseph Fox bookshop, 1724 Sansom St., Philadelphia, PA 19103

– Barnes & Noble College Booksellers at Temple University Beasley School of Law, 1700 N. Broad St., Philadelphia, PA 19121

– Borders Books & Music, 1 S. Broad St., Philadelphia, PA 19107

AT THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER, WHERE I WORKED AS A REPORTER, JIM BEASLEY WAS so feared and despised that my editors called him the antichrist. Beasley was the king of libel suits who had made a career out of suing the Inquirer; he was notorious for assaulting journalists on the witness stand and for scoring multimilliondollar libel verdicts. So when I secretly went to see him in the summer of 1998, I felt like a traitor. But I was in trouble and needed his advice.

“The Beasley Building,” at the corner of 12th and Walnut Streets, was a Gothic stone castle, the former headquarters of the Episcopal Diocese of Pennsylvania., Behind heavy wrought iron gates, the place still had the feel of a 19thcentury church, with its leaded stainedglass windows, marble fireplaces, and glowing Victorian candle chandeliers.

The receptionist at the front desk told me to go right up, Mr. Beasley was expecting me. His executive office was a cavernous secondfloor suite featuring 15-foot ceilings that once belonged to the bishop.

At first glance, I thought Beasley, in his early 70s, was the image of a distinguished trial lawyer, with his flowing silver mane, craggy face, and intimidating browneyed stare. But then I saw some rough edges: slightly crooked teeth, a gaudy brass belt buckle emblazoned with a famous World War II fighter plane — the P51 Mustang — and, under faded jeans, a pair of cowboy boots.

I was in a jam; my boss, the editor of the Inquirer, had just called me a liar on the front page of the Washing Post’s Style section. My boss was upset because a story I wrote about lavish spending by the Catholic archbishop of Philadelphia.

— a story the Inquirer had declined to print for political reasons — had just been published by another newspaper. When Howard Kurtz of the Post called my boss to ask why he hadn’t run the story, my boss defended himself by trashing me, saying I wrote things that weren’t true. He also refused to apologize, even though he had been urged to do so at a staff meeting attended by 45 colleagues.

So I was a reporter with a credibility problem, trying to decide whether the only way to restore my reputation was to sue my editor and my own newspaper for libel. And who knew more about suing the “Inky” than the antichrist?

Like many clients before me who sat in Beasley’s office, I was overcome with anxiety. Did I have a case? If I did sue, would it be the end of my career? And if I didn’t sue and got fired, and nobody else would hire me, how would I pay the bills and put the kids through college?

Beasley took charge, calmly asking questions, and listening intently to the answers. “I think you’ve got a good case,” he said finally, in a voice with a hint of a Southern accent, but he warned that libel suits were never easy.

I didn’t know much about the subject, so Beasley leaned back in his upholstered leather chair and rattled off an impressive synopsis of a couple hundred years of American libel law. While Beasley filled me in on the meaning of public figures and actual malice, I glanced around his cherrypaneled walls, at all the legal awards and plaques commending outstanding generosity to charities and to Temple University, Beasley’s alma mater.

It was hard not to be impressed with Beasley, but I couldn’t make up my mind whether I had the guts to hire him.“Thanks for your time,” I said as I was leaving, “but I’ve got a lot to think about. Maybe my boss and I can work things out.”

Beasley didn’t think so, but he didn’t want to talk me into anything. “Good luck,” he said, sticking out his hand. “You’ve got a decision to make, buddy, and I can’t make it for you.”

Not many people shared my favorable impression of Jim Beasley. Besides being hated by journalists, he was also unpopular with doctors and lawyers, because of his work in malpractice law. This guy had a talent for making enemies all over town.

A lawyer friend of mine said he wouldn’t hire Beasley if his neck was on the line. “Beasley’s a gambler,” my friend said. “Do you want to put your life in the hands of a gambler?” My friend advised me to go see another top city lawyer who had a reputation for being cool under fire, someone less reckless and unpredictable.

Friends in the newsroom also stopped by my desk to offer unsolicited advice about hiring a lawyer. The unanimous recommendation: “anybody but Beasley.” Go ahead and sue us, they said, just pick another lawyer. So to mollify all the Beasley haters I knew, I went to see this other lawyer.

He was a slick Baby Boomer in a suit and tie who said I might have an interesting case, because my boss had certainly acted rashly. But he said I sounded like a hothead too, and he was worried that I might come off to a jury as some kind of nut. He also wanted to know if I had any skeletons in my closet, and then he referred to some big shots at the Inquirer by their first names, as if I was supposed to be impressed. But I left his office wondering whose side he would be on.

Sorry, guys. Why go to war with a waffler like John Kerry, when I could hire General Patton? Beasley, a member of the Greatest Generation, didn’t see the moral universe in endless shades of gray ;to him it was all black and white. “You’re right,” he told me; “they’re wrong. It’s as simple as that. And we’re gonna win the case.” That’s the kind of talk I wanted to hear from my lawyer.

Beasley drafted a complaint charging that I was the victim of a “malicious defamation,” and after many revisions, it was time to sign. It wasn’t easy, I told Beasley as I scrawled my signature, to sue the paper I’d written more than 1,000 stories for. When I looked up, my lawyer was smiling. The case was a winner, he said. He picked up the complaint, rolled it up and waved it in my face.“This one,” he said, “has my byline on it.”

After I filed suit, my newspaper suspended me from work, even though the newsroom labor contract had no provision for suspensions. The first person I called was Beasley. Don’t worry, he said; they don’t know what to do with you.

They figured it out. Two weeks later, two editors showed up at my doorstep to fire me. Once again, I picked up the phone and called Beasley, who was as upbeat as ever. Don’t worry, he said, they just made a big mistake. Beasley promptly filed an amended complaint charging that the Inquirer had fired me in retaliation for exercising my constitutional right to file a lawsuit, which Beasley claimed was further proof of malice.

With plenty of time on my hands, I started showing up at Beasley’s office for early morning strategy sessions. His phone was always ringing. A judge called with a new lawyer joke that made Beasley laugh. U.S. Senator Arlen Specter was on the line, seeking support for his reelection campaign.“All right, Arlen,”Beasley sighed, lowering his head. “I’ll do whatever I can to help.”

An airplane mechanic called to talk about one of Beasley’s beloved P51 Mustangs. Beasley’s hobby was flying vintage warbirds on weekends; performing daredevil maneuvers in formation with other expert pilots, like his son, Jim Jr. “It veers to the right,”Beasley complained to his mechanic.“How much is this costing me now?”

When we talked about my case, the main thing Beasley wanted to know was, what had I done to my boss, Robert J. Rosenthal, editor of the Inquirer, to make him angry enough to call me a liar in the Washington Post? Did I make a pass at his wife? I’m not that dumb, I said. “He drove through so many stop signs and caution lights,” Beasley marveled.

One morning, Beasley told me he was going on vacation; a group of lawyers from his office was flying to Tibet, to climb Mount Everest. I looked at Beasley to see if he was kidding. Here he was twice the age of these young guys, yet he too felt he had to climb the mountain. I was worried he might take a tumble and break his neck beforehecouldtrymy case,but Beasley shruggedit off.“Youonlyliveonce,”hesaid.

When you’re a newspaper reporter, it’s hard to break old habits. Even an unemployed hack could see that Jim Beasley was a great story. He was a warrior out on the battlefield every day of his life; a maverick misunderstood by the wimps in the press. On his desk, he kept a small metal sculpture of a Sisyphuslike figure pushing a big boulder up a hill. His motto, handpainted on the walls of his extravagant Sistine Chapel of a law library, was a quote from George Bernard Shaw’s “Maxims for Revolutionists”:

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.

So it was Beasley’s mission statement to be a pain in the ass. And he was so good at it. I told Beasley if he hadn’t pissed off so many journalists, they’d have already written several books about him. He laughed, and then we argued about freedom of the press. I told Beasley if guys like me got our facts straight, guys like him would starve to death. “You’re absolutely right,” he said, laughing again.

We also got into debates about religion and God. Beasley knew I was a skeptic who converted while reading the Bible and working the religion beat at the Inquirer. But Beasley didn’t buy organized religion, and he advised me to read a Bertrand Russell saying he admired, “Why I Am Not a Christian.” He also declared with characteristic bluntness that the only reason people believed in religion or God was that they were afraid to die. I told him religion might be nonsense, but God was for real.

Beasley didn’t buy that either. “What did God ever do for you?” he snapped. I looked at him and smiled. “He gave me a great lawyer.” For once, Beasley had no reply. It may have been the only argument I ever won in that office.

Through every stage of the legal war, Beasley was resolute, keeping the case tightly focused on the remarks my boss made to the Washington Post, remarks that Beasley knew we would disprove. Whenever I brought up an issue that was off target, Beasley would put us right back on course by yelling, “What the hell does that have to do with what Bob Rosenthal said to the Washington Post?” When the case dragged on, Beasley reassured me by saying,“Relax, all they can do is postpone the inevitable.”

He was right. After 21/2 years of litigation, the bosses at the Inquirer decided to settle the case and avoid an embarrassing trial by printing a public apology and paying a confidential sum. The settlement, however, still received plenty of attention in the press. Beasley, who loved free advertising, posed with me in his law library for a photo to illustrate a cover story in Editor & Publisher.

By then, I was so fond of my lawyer I didn’t want to say goodbye. When he asked if I was interested in collaborating with him on a book about his favorite cases, I eagerly agreed. Beasley began pulling court files and judges’ rulings. He talked about some of the characters he had met during his 48 years as a trial lawyer, and the many legal precedents he had set.

As he prepared to write his book, Beasley ruminated on a yellow legal pad about a lifetime of courtroom battles: “There are cases that I should have won, that I lost,” he wrote. “There are cases that I should have lost, that I won. That, simply stated, is the practice of law. Conflict makes the law, it is true; the heart of the law is conflict.”

When I leafed through Beasley’s case files, and saw the amazing variety of lost causes that he had embraced over the years, I realized that my lawyer was a bigger story than I had imagined. This guy wasn’t afraid to take on anybody, whether it was wily boxing promoter Don King, fugitive killer Ira Einhorn, or terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden. Beasley would take a case simply because it was the right thing to do, and he didn’t mind tilting at windmills.

My relationship with Beasley began to change.“I’m not your lawyer anymore,” he said wistfully one night in a restaurant over a few glasses of wine. Now talking to his ghostwriter, Beasley began to loosen up.

He was a mystery to most of the judges and lawyers in town because he never talked about himself or his humble beginnings; even the lawyers who worked for him wondered what drove him to keep working so hard. Beasley gave me some insight when he said that before he went to college on the GI bill, he was a high school dropout driving a Greyhound bus.

His success, Beasley confided, was probably equal to how neurotic he was, and how deep his insecurities ran. Then he changed the subject, preferring to talk about his cases again. Beasley wanted each chapter of the book to tell a standalone story about one of his favorite cases, but I told Beasley that the book should also tell his story. When I tried to steer the conversation back to personal matters, however, hoping for further revelations,Beasley cracked, “Who cares about that shit?”

Beasley and I met one afternoon in his office with Michael Smerconish, to come up with a title for Beasley’s book. Smerconish was a lawyer who had worked for Beasley before becoming a radio talk show host. He was also the one who had originally talked Beasley into writing a book. Beasley listened with a poker face as Smerconish rattled off such dignified titles as“The Philadelphia Lawyer” and “The Lawyer’s Lawyer,” which was appropriate because Beasley was the guy judges and lawyers turned to when they were in trouble.

When Smerconish was through, Beasley glared at me and silently slid a copy of Philadelphia magazine across the desk. It was open to a fullpage color portrait of Beasley standing on his desk in cowboy boots, under the caption “Courtroom Cowboy.” I looked at Beasley, and he had a grin on his face. “Is that what you want?” Smerconish lowered his head and covered his face with his hands.

So that’s what we had to call it, because I owe a debt to the man, even if he didn’t hang around long enough to help me write the book. Because, if you were ever in trouble, you dreamed of having an advocate like Jim Beasley. As he told the young lawyers who worked for him, “Never take any shit from anybody,and that includes a judge.”

In an age of tort reform and lawyer jokes, Jim Beasley was a throwback: proud to be a trial lawyer, because he saw it as a way to help people, right wrongs, and improve society. And he knew only one way to practice the law — go all out.

What follows is a biography of a great American trial lawyer. Rest in peace, Jim.

THE LAWYERS IN THE HOTEL BALLROOM WERE YAWNING AND NODDING OFF AS THE seminar speaker, S. Gerald Litvin, droned on with his lecture about how to construct a closing argument. When Litvin was finally through, moderator got up to say a few words about the next speaker, who had pointedly asked for no introduction.

“He doesn’t need an introduction,” said Raynes, who proceeded to give him one anyway.

“When I was a second year law student at Temple Law School, and clerking at Richter,Lord & Levy, we all knew he was gonna be great then,”Raynes said. “And he became greater than we all thought he was gonna be.”

“Here’s a man who has a national reputation and still comes out to lecture to lawyers in Philadelphia, where he started,” Raynes said of the man who had also been identified in the local press as having won more million dollar verdicts than any other trial lawyer in the country.

“He has been recognized by his peers,” Raynes said before ticking off a list of accolades: “Who’s Who in American Law, Who’s Who in the World, Who’s Who in America, Who’s Who, Men of Achievement.”

“The only thing you haven’t made, Jim,” cracked Raynes, who was Jewish, “is Who’s Who in Yeshiva.”

When Jim Beasley came to the podium,however,he wasn’t smiling at Raynes’ joke, he was frowning,looking down at the ground,and carrying a white rotary telephone.

The seminar, sponsored by the Pennsylvania Trial Lawyers Association, was billed as “Masters in Trial Advocacy.” Beasley’s scheduled topic was the same as

Litvin’s, the closing argument.

It was June 1984. Beasley, who had a silver moustache, was just a few days shy of his 58th birthday. He was dressed in a blue three piece suit, white shirt and striped tie; a silver pocket watch dangled on his vest. He put his phone down on a nearby table and stood in front of his fellow trial lawyers. His hands were plunged in his pockets; his face looked grim.

“It’s June 2, 1980,” Beasley began. “It had been a warm, sunny day. It’s 8:30 in the evening. You’re in the living room in the home of Mr. and Mrs. Guanere. Joe Guanere and his wife are sitting out on the front stoop. The phone rings. We hear Joe say to Mrs.Guanere, ‘I’ll get it dear.’”

“We see Joe come in and he picks up the phone,” Beasley said, grabbing the phone he brought to the podium. “‘Yes,my name’s Joe Guanere,’”Beasley said.

For the benefit of his audience, Beasley also provided the stern voice of the caller on the other end of the line:

“Are you the father of Joseph N. Guanere?”

“Yes, yes I am. Who’s calling?”

“Is your son at home?”

“No — no, he’s not, but tell me who’s calling,” Beasley said, as he imitated the father’s nervous tone.

“This is the Lower Makefield Township Police. I’m sorry to tell you, Mr. Guanere, your son is dead. Your son was killed this evening about an hour ago in an airplane crash.”

“Joe puts down the phone, unbelieving,” Beasley said, lowering his phone. “His legs are rubbery; his heart is beating fast. And he denies it. ‘There must be a mistake. Not my son. Not my oldest son.’

“And we step back and we watch him slowly walk to the front stoop and bring Mrs. Guanere in,”Beasley said, staring at the audience.“It is the beginning, it is the end —”

It was also vintage Jim Beasley. Instead of giving a lecture on how to make a closing argument, Beasley decided to just give a closing argument instead. And not just any closing, but a recreation of the one regarded by colleagues as the greatest of his career.

Just two weeks before his scheduled lecture to the trial lawyers, Beasley had tried the case of Guanere et al v. Cessna over at the federal courthouse in Camden, N.J.

Beasley was the lawyer for the lead plaintiff in the case, and after he gave his closing, the jury hammered the airplane manufacturer with a record verdict. And so Beasley decided to reprise that closing for the benefit of the lawyers on the other side of the river. And although the court files in the Cessna case have long since been destroyed, Beasley’s reenactment remains on videotape. It’s been an inspiration to many trial lawyers.

“BEFORE WE GO FURTHER, WE MUST GO BACK,” BEASLEY SAID. “BACK TO 1966. AND WE have to go 2,000 miles away to Wichita, Kansas. And we’re standing out on the ramp of Cessna’s production line and we see a hangar door open,”he said, sweeping his hand across the horizon toward an imaginary factory. “And we see an airplane, a brand new airplane, 3847 Lima, roll off the production line and out into the sun of a Kansas afternoon.”

Beasley stared straight ahead at his audience, fidgeting with one hand. His presence was commanding, his voice slow and deliberate.

“It certainly is a pretty airplane,” Beasley said, as if reciting a poem. “And it smells fresh,and it smells new, ”he said, pausing for effect.“And it smells of death.”

While the new Cessna sat on the ramp in Kansas, Beasley said, 4yearold Joe Guanere played on the street in South Philadelphia. Beasley asked the audience to recall where they were back in 1966. And then he talked about how the plane on the ramp would control “the destiny of the Guanere family,”and also bring members of the jury, as well as Beasley himself, to “this very moment in time.”

“And here we are,” Beasley said. “There is another telephone call that will be made,” he said, referring to the white phone that he had carried to the podium.

“Before we get to that, let’s go to June 2, 1980, and the Cape May County Airport,” Beasley said. “And let me shepherd you through what happened that day.”

Beasley described a Cessna tied down on the ramp.“Look over there,”he said, as he pointed off in the distance as if he could see Keith Harper driving into the airport. Harper, the 55yearold superintendent of schools in Wildwood, N.J., was the pilot of the Cessna that day. He was taking his 20 year old son, Brian, out for a ride, along with Brian’s two 18 year old friends, Joe Guanere and Thomas Cannuli.

Beasley described “some young happy men” spilling out of the car, and how proud Harper was that his son was going to fly with him that day. Harper was a conscientious pilot who “very carefully and methodically” went through a check list to make sure the plane was fit to fly, Beasley said. “What about you, Joe?” Beasley said, channeling the pilot.“You all buckled in back there?” Beasley wanted the jury to know that before he took off, Harper had checked everybody’s seat belt and made sure the door was locked.

Beasley also wanted his listeners to feel the story as he told it. “You better get back a little because he’s gonna turn,” he said about the pilot of the Cessna. “And we don’t want a lot of dust and dirt blown over us.” Beasley described the plane taxiing down the runway and gently lifting into the air.

Imagine, Beasley told the audience, that they had hopped into an airplane “real quick” and were flying formation on Harper’s plane, watching from above as the Cessna flew “over the marshes and towards Wildwood Beach.”

“You can almost see the young men laughing and joking and waving and pointing to the things that they’re seeing below,” Beasley said. The plane hugged the shoreline before it banked inward toward land.

“Look very carefully down there,” Beasley said, his voice rising, and one forefinger pointing toward the ground. “Do you see it there on top of that house? There’s a little shed and there’s somebody waving, waving a white towel,” he said, pantomiming the wave. “You can almost hear Mr.Harper say, ‘Brian,there’s your mother. See Mom down there?’”

Beasley described how the pilot gently wagged the plane’s wings at Mrs. Harper, and then he banked towards the airport. A pleasant joy ride on a sunny day was coming to an end, and for the men in the plane, Beasley warned, “Time is slowly running out.”

At the Cape May Airport, Keith Harper said over the radio that he was coming straigh tin. “Let’s follow him,”Beasley said. The camera videotaping Beasley’s lecture panned the audience, showing wannabe trial lawyers leaning forward in their seats, chins on hands; some looked enthralled; others scribbled furiously in their notebooks.

Beasley described how the plane began a gentle descent as the pilot put on 10 degrees of flaps, reducing the power, and slowing the plane in preparation for landing.

“His descent is perfect,” Beasley said. “He’s about a hundred feet from touching down on the runway… .You can see him put the throttle forward, and then the airplane takes a precipitous nose up.”

Beasley rocked back on his heels; his hands were spread apart. His voice rose in volume as he described what was going on inside the cabin.“Without any warning, the seat that Mr. Harper was sitting in came violently back with such force that it broke Mr. Cannuli’s left leg, ”Beasleys aid. And the pilot lost control of the plane.

“The nose goes up and the airplane goes to the right,” Beasley said. As for the cockpit, “We can hear the people in there screaming.” The plane crashed in a wooded section off the runway. Over in the control tower, the controller called the police.Moments later,Beasley said,“we can hear the wail of a siren approaching the airport.”

In the dense woods, a police officer needed the help of a helicopter pilot to spot the plane wreckage. Beasley described the sights and sounds in the aftermath of the crash: the helicopter hanging overhead in the sky; the “flipping of those blades in the air”; the copter pilot leaning out and pointing down at the wreckage.

Beasley described a panting police officer running through the woods, carrying a first aid kit, as branches tore at his clothes and face. The officer reached the felled plane. “It’s mangled and it’s upside down,” Beasley said. “We can smell gasoline. My God, what’s going to happen?”

The police officer knelt beside the pilot, Keith Harper, lying beside a strut, and it was obvious that Harper was dead. So was Harper’s son, Brian. The police officer administered CPR to a moaning Joe Guanere. The officer worked on Joe for several moments until his pulse was steady. The officer then turned his attention to Thomas Cannuli, whose face was “so distorted by the injuries,” Beasley said, that it was impossible to perform CPR.

Joe Guanere moaned again, and his pulse faded. The police officer tried to bring him back, but it was too late. Eighteen year old “Joe Guanere died at that instant” in the officer’s arms, Beasley told his listeners. The officer helped Cannuli, the only survivor, out of the plane, which Beasley described as a “distorted wreckage of metal and humans.” Rescue workers showed up to remove the bodies.

And the police officer who had tried to save Joe Guanere’s life picked up the phone to call Mr. and Mrs. Guanere and give them the bad news.

“I WAS SERVING SUBPOENAS,” ARTHUR RAYNES SAID OF HIS DAYS AS A LAW CLERK AT Richter,Lord & Levy, “and Jim Beasley took me under his wing.

“It was unusual because Jim was like the angry young man of his office,”Raynes said. “He didn’t talk to everybody. He had his own mission that he wanted to go do. He had a little chip on his shoulder. But for some reason, he took to me.”

As a young law clerk, Raynes was so shy and intimidated that “I was afraid to speak.” But he was also eager to learn how to become a trial lawyer, so he latched onto Jim Beasley as a mentor. Even after Beasley left the Richter firm, Raynes would pay a visit to Beasley’s home whenever he was preparing for a tough case.

“I wanted him to go over it with me,”Raynes said. Beasley would review the files and then, “He started ripping me a new one,” Raynes said. “You know, ‘Why didn’t you do this. Why didn’t you do that?’ That’s the way he taught the things that had to be done.”

Beasley also gave the young lawyer some personal advice. Raynes was the son of Russian immigrants whose given name was Arthur Rodensky, but Beasley thought it sounded too ethnic.“Why don’tyou change your name?,”Beasley suggested. “You sound like my grandmother,” Raynes said, but he took Beasley’s advice. And so Arthur G. Raynes joined the ranks of Philadelphia lawyers.

In those days, the personal injury lawyers from the Philadelphia bar were “pretty rough and tumble guys,” Raynes said. “Lots of Irish, Jews, Italians.” And they didn’t think much of the idea of sharing information with competitors.

Raynes recalled one oldtimer’s reaction to the idea of holding legal seminars.

“You’re gonna give lectures to lawyers who refer us cases, ’cause they don’t know how to handle them, and you’re gonna teach them how to handle cases? What, are you crazy?”

But the idea slowly caught on. Local lawyers gathered at a restaurant in the same building on South Broad Street where Richter, Lord & Levy was located. “They would meet in the basement and talk about cases and the law,” Raynes said. “It was the beginning of continuing education.

“They started giving lectures,” Raynes said of the Philadelphia Trial Lawyers Association, founded in 1959. The Pennsylvania Trial Lawyers Association was founded a decade later, in 1968.

“The philosophy was, a pigeon on the shoulders of a giant sees farther than a giant,”Raynes said. “Everybody should train everybody else.”

Few trial lawyers were as generous with their knowledge as Jim Beasley. His only drawback asa speaker,Raynes said,was a lackof humor.“He didn’t have the timing. I told him, ‘Jim, stick to trying cases. You can’t tell jokes.’”

JIM BEASLEY TOLD HIS FELLOW LAWYERS THAT CESSNA HAD MANUFACTURED MORE THAN 175,000 airplanes with the same defective pilot’s seat that killed Keith Harper, his son, Brian, and Joe Guanere. An extensive paper trail documented the fatal defect, Beasley said, but Cessna chose to ignore it.

“I will not trespass on your time,”Beasley said, to detail the 10 National Transportation Safety Board reports about pilots killed as a result of similar accidents, where seats came off track, causing the pilots to lose control of their planes.

“Nor will I trespass on your time,” Beasley said, to go over all of the “airworthiness alerts” that repeatedly called to Cessna’s attention “the inherent danger” of the defective pilot seats.

Beasley said it was his burden of proof to establish “a fair preponderance of the evidence” for compensatory damages. “What is a fair preponderance of the evidence?” Beasley took his audience back to the days when there used to be general stores on every street corner in Philadelphia.

Customers would walk into the store and ask for “five pounds of beans or sugar,” Beasley said. The grocer would place a fivepound weight on one side of the scale, Beasley said. And then he pantomimed a low scooping motion, as he described how the grocer would fill a sack on the other side of the scale with beans or sugar. Beasley held up two level hands to show how the grocer kept scooping until the two scales were balanced.

If the grocer dipped his fingers into the bin and added an “imperceptible few grains” to the sack on the scale, Beasley said, wiggling his fingers for emphasis, it would cause the preponderance of weight to shift to that side of the scale. Beasley went through the evidence in his case, and said the testimony he presented to the jury showed that he had added “more than just a pinch of sugar.”

Beasley described how he brought a more durable pilot’s seat into the courtroom, one available to Cessna for 14 years, and he demonstrated “the absolute safety of the seat.” He also brought into the courthouse the mangled wreck of the Cessna that Joe Guanere died in, so that jurors could inspect it

“Come, members of the jury,” Beasley said, his voice booming, his hands beckoning. “I want you to come out of the jury box. Because I have this airplane here and I’m gonna point out things and I don’t want anybody standing up looking over somebody else’s shoulder. I want you to see it firsthand… Now you see why this airplane crashed on this day.”

Beasley reminded the audience that at trial Cessna did not refute the testimony of any of his expert witnesses. He also spoke about how Cessna did not produce any of its own engineers to testify, but instead had relied on “hired guns,” two outside experts from Florida “who neither investigated any of these accidents . . . and who only recently took the time to view this wreckage.

“Indeed,”Beasley said, his voice rising in indignation, the jury “spent more time looking at this wreckage” than Cessna’s “$80 an hour experts.”

When it came time to assess punitive damages, Beasley talked about the “clear and convincing evidence that this company requires immediate and severe punishment now for conduct that has existed for 16 years . . . conduct that has brought these young men to an early grave.”

His eyes were blazing, and he repeatedly jabbed one finger toward the ground, pistol style, for emphasis.

It was time to talk money. Beasley said if he was worth $10, and the jury brought back a punitive verdict of $1, “that would hurt a lot.” But if he had $100,000 and the punitive verdict was only $1,“I’d laugh at you,”he said. It would be cheaper to pay the punitive verdict than fix the problem.

Beasley mentioned Cessna’s net worth — $327 million — and said there were “327 million reasons why they should be punished.” And then he instructed the jury on exactly how to punish the defendant: “You’re going to do it by bringing in a substantial — and when I say substantial, I mean a substantial award of punitive damages,” he commanded.

“It should be so substantial,” he said, jabbing one hand in the air, “that when your verdict is announced, as it will be tomorrow, this lawyer sitting over there representing Cessna,” he said, gesturing behind him toward Raynes, “is going to make that other telephone call that I told you about.

“He’s going to walk out to the telephone in the corridor, and he’s going to pick it up,” Beasley said, grabbing his prop phone and walking across the stage. “And he’s going to say, ‘Operator,get me Mr.Cessna in Wichita,Kansas.”

People in the audience chuckled, but Beasley didn’t even crack a smile.

“Mr. Cessna, the folks from South Jersey have arrived at their verdict,” Beasley said, as he paced the ballroom floor. Suddenly he stopped, and brandished the phone at the audience, waving it for emphasis.

“Now you talk to Mr. Cessna,” he yelled at the trial lawyers. “You give him a message that makes his knees rubbery, that causes his heart to beat fast.”

Beasley hung up the phone. “And you do it in a clear,precise way sothat when your verdict is recorded, and you walk out into the street and you look up into the clear skies of New Jersey, ”Beasley said, pointing upward,“and you see an airplane go over, you can say I may have saved your life.”

Beasley reminded the jury about the fate of 18yearold Joe Guanere. “This young boy cries out from eternal darkness for justice,” he said. “Thank you.”

The audience erupted in applause. Beasley turned his back to the crowd and fiddled with the microphone around his neck. “I can’t get this thing off,” he said. A smiling Raynes, shaking his head in admiration, removed Beasley’s mike.

“That’s it,” Raynes said from the podium. “I’m sure you enjoyed it as much as we did. Thank you.”

ON JUNE 8, 1984, IN CAMDEN, N.J., THE FEDERAL JURY IN THE CESSNA CASE RETURNED a $29million verdict against the airplane manufacturer, $25 million of which was punitive damages. At the time, it was the highest ever verdict against an aviation company. The case subsequently settled for $13 million.

JAMES F. MUNDY USED TO HAVE HIS OWN VIDEOTAPE OF THE BEASLEY CLOSING IN THE Cessna case before he lent it to somebody who never gave it back. Mundy still drives around in his car listening to Beasley’s audiotaped lectures. “This was my idol,”Mundy explained. “Everything I am,I am because of Beasley.”

Mundy, a partner at Raynes McCarty, was a former president of the Pennsylvania State Bar Association, a former president of both the Philadelphia and the Pennsylvania Trial Lawyers Associations, and a past winner of the Justice Michael A. Musmanno Memorial Award from the Philadelphia Trial Lawyers Association. But in 1970, Mundy was just a 26yearold law clerk at the Richter firm when he first saw Jim Beasley in a courtroom. It was a lasting impression.

Beasley was picking a jury for a case that involved the family of a brain damaged infant that was suing a team of doctors.“In those days at Ninth Street,there was one big jury room,” Mundy said. “All the juries got picked out of the same room, and ahead of us were Frank Shields [the top defense lawyer of the day] and Jim Beasley.

“And from the voir dire alone, I knew this case could not possibly be won by the plaintiff,” Mundy said. “There was not a prayer.”

Back at the office, the young law clerk excitedly told his boss, B. Nathaniel “Nate” Richter, about his day in court, and the long odds Beasley faced. Richter told Mundy to go back to the courthouse and watch the rest of the trial. “You’ll be of more value to me if you go down and watch that case than anything you’re doing around here,” Richter told Mundy.

“For 10 days, I was paid to watch Jim Beasley,” Mundy recalled. “I remember seeing things that amazed me.”

The mother of the brain damaged baby was about eight months pregnant when she was brought into the infectious disease ward of Albert Einstein Hospital with infectious colitis, Mundy said. The mother began a spontaneous delivery. A nurse crossed the mother’s legs in a crude attempt to prevent the birth, until the mother could be wheeled to the obstetrics ward. The result: a brain damaged infant.

“It was a very different world in those days,” Mundy said. Beasley didn’t have a claim against the hospital, because hospitals at the time were considered charitable institutions, immune from liability. So Beasley sued the woman’s regular doctors, who had been called while she was in the hospital, and didn’t bother to go see her.

Beasley didn’t have much of a case, Mundy said, but he was incredibly well prepared and quick on his feet. After a court recess, Beasley put one of the defense’s expert witnesses on the stand and asked him,“Isn’t it true when you were out in the hall, you went up to Mr. Shields during this recess and said, ‘I’ve got some more goodies for you.’ Is that true?”

The doctor began to hem and haw,saying he didn’t recall using those exact words. Beasley, Mundy said, seized the moment:“Doctor, could you tell this court what are goodies in a case involving a 6year old brain damaged boy? What’s a goodie?”

Mundy scanned the jury’s faces and saw looks of anger and disgust.

Beasley had a bookshelf in the courtroom covered by a big red blanket. He stood in front of it and challenged a defense expert to cite the medical textbooks that backed his testimony. The witness named five or six books. Beasley whipped off the red blanket, and all the books that the doctor had named, and many he hadn’t, were right there on the bookshelf. “Now, you said Agnes on Obstetrics?” Beasley said, yanking out the text. Every volume on the shelf was bookmarked.

“Now, open to the bookmark, doctor, and read it out loud to the jury,” Beasley said. The book, Mundy recalled, said “the opposite of what the doctor said.”

Thirtyfive years after the trial, Mundy could still see Beasley in that courtroom. “I still remember the suits that had a split on the side and the square shoulders,”Mundysaid. “He was inabsolute command of that courtroom….He was very handsome,”Mundy said. And fit.“He was looking like he could go 15 rounds if he had to.”

When the defense witnesses gave testimony damaging to Beasley’s case, Mundy looked over at Beasley,sitting by himself at the plaintiff’s table.

“He had a box of pencils” spilled out on the table, Mundy recalled. “He licked the erasers and he stood up the erasers one at a time until they [the pencils] all stood up and when he got to about 10, they would collapse and he would make no noise and grab them,” Mundy said. “He’d put them down and start the process again. And the jury is looking at him and the pencils, and they’re not even looking at this expert.”

The jury of six men and six women told the judge several times that they were deadlocked, but the judge kept sending them back to deliberate. “In those days, everybody wore shirts and ties on juries, not like today,” Mundy said. The jury came back to the courtroom to talk to the judge one last time. And the jury foreman had a huge brown stain covering the front and back of his shirt.

“The jury was deadlocked six six,” Mundy said. “The six women were for the plaintiff, the six men were for the defendants. And one of the women had gotten so angry,” Mundy said, that she grabbed a pot of coffee — fortunately, it was cold— “and poured it over this jury foreman.

“And the jury foreman said, ‘Your Honor, we are deadlocked,’ and they were dismissed,” Mundy said. In spite of the deadlocked jury, “Beasley told me years later when I talked to him that the case settled for a million dollars, and I believe him,” Mundy said.

Mundy had no idea before the trial what he was going to do with his life. But after he saw Jim Beasley in a courtroom, Mundy decided he had to become a trial lawyer. He also found a mentor.

“I will tell you from that day on, whenever Jim Beasley’s name would appear in a seminar, I was there,” Mundy said. “I didn’t care what the seminar was about,” Mundy said. “If his name was there,I went.”

Mundy showed up at so many events, he eventually became friends with Beasley. And that led to a plane ride.

About a year after Beasley’s speech to the trial lawyers, Beasley, a veteran pilot, offered to fly Mundy and another lawyer back to Philadelphia from a conference they had all attended in Pittsburgh. On the ride over to the airport where Beasley kept his private plane, Mundy told the other lawyer about Beasley’s recreation of

his closing in the Cessna case, and how great it was. The three lawyers arrived at the airport, and Mundy saw Beasley’s plane. “Jim, that’s funny, you’re in a Cessna,”Mundy said.“Isn’t that the same kind that

was in the —” Beasley cut him off. “Exactly the same kind,” he said. Mundy looked at Beasley. “So you modified it so the seat doesn’t come back?” “Nope,” Beasley said. “You son of a bitch,” Mundy said. Mundy climbed into the back seat of the plane, directly behind the pilot, and

jammed both his knees into Beasley’s back. “Get used to the knees,pal, ”Mundy told Beasley, “’cause they’re not moving.”

The book could not have been written without the cooperation of the many Philadelphia judges and lawyers who generously shared their vivid memories of Jim Beasley, including: Richard A. Sprague, District Attorney Lynne Abraham, Superior Court Judge Stephen J. McEwen Jr., Chief U.S. Magistrate Judge James R. Melinson, Judge Mark I. Bernstein, Judge Sandra Mazer Moss, Judge Charles P. Mirarchi Jr., Judge Isador Kranzel, Temple University Beasley School of Law Dean Robert J. Reinstein, Thomas R. Kline, Shanin Specter, James E. Colleran, Arthur G. Raynes, James F. Mundy, David Cohen, M. Mark Mendel, Sheldon L. Albert, James J. Binns, James L. Griffith, Slade H. McLaughlin, Benedict A. Casey, Paul A. Lauricella, Michael A. Smerconish, James J. McHugh Jr., Dolores Rocco, Judge Thomas B. Rutter, Helene Christian, Elaine M. Ross, George L. Young Jr., Gerald F. Kaplan, Bernard Snyder, Daniel L. Thistle, Thomas W. Smith, Marsha F. Santangelo, David A Yanoff, William P. Murphy, Scott A. Bennett, Meyer A. Bushman, Kathleen L. DaerrBannon, James E. Foerstner, William Lytton, Gregory M. Harvey, Richard D. Hailey, Warren Ballard, Edward B. Joseph, Michael Mather and James C. Stroud.

Former expert witnesses R. James Woolsey Jr., Laurie Mylroie and Wolfram Rieger gave me valuable insights on what it was like to collaborate with Jim Beasley in a courtroom, as did former clients Richards A. Sprague, Mark F. MacDonald, Joseph McGovern, Gale Greenberg, Eddie Scarborough, Patricia Scarborough, Scott Woodworth, Justice John Doe, Jane Doe, John Maddux, Elisabeth “Buffy” Maddux Hall, Margaret “Meg” Wakeman and Mary Maddux.

I am indebted to several journalists, including Eugene L. Roberts Jr., James M. Naughton and Kent Pollock, for explaining what it was like to go up against Jim Beasley in the epic libel case known as Sprague v. Walter. Zack Stalberg and L. Stuart Ditzen were also helpful in detailing the challenges of covering Jim Beasley as a news subject. Mike Mallowe, Jim Nicholson and Dan Lynch provided valuable background for understanding the Sprague v. Walter case, as well as insight into what it was like to be a reporter working in Philadelphia during the Frank Rizzo years.

F. Lee Bailey also gave me perspective on the Sprague case.

Architects S. Neil Schlosser and Karl Krumholz, contractor Joe Brassell Sr., artist Michael Webb and Beasley business associate Michael DiPaolo were essential in explaining Beasley’s grand conversion of the former Epsicopal Church House into a law office.

Villanova Law Professor Catherine Lanctot tutored me on the history of the Philadelphia lawyer.

I would like to thank Jim Beasley Jr., the originator of this project, who also functioned as editor, and steadfastly insisted that Courtroom Cowboy be an honest and unvarnished portrait of his father.

I am indebted to the women in the Beasley family — Helen, Pam, Kim and Liz

— for showing me the softer side of the courtroom warrior. Nancy Beasley, Lynn Hayes and Gloria Fletcher were also candid in discussing Jim Beasley’s early life. For further insights, I would like to thank Nicole Chabat and Heidi Peditto.

Beasley’s first cousin, Walter Woodworth, was invaluable in recalling Beasley’s childhood and teenage years. Beasley’s fellow warbird pilots — Dan — showed me another side of the Beasley persona, that of the barnstorming and thrillseeking daredevil of the air shows. I also appreciated the comments of Dr. Bernard L. Segal and Dr. John Glick.

I would like to thank editor Yolanda Fuller for helping me plan and carry out this project, and also for doing some valuable trouble shooting along the way. I would also like to thank other careful readers who caught numerous mistakes in the manuscript and made some telling suggestions on how to improve it, including Jim Beasley Jr., , David A.Yanoff, Robert Zausner, Julia Bibb, Rosemarie D’Alba and Bob Fowler. I am also indebted to Joel Tuckman, Susan Holbrook, Valerie Ross and Chuck Lee, for digging up countless court files and other documents at The Beasley Firm, and I would also like to thank Sue and Val for straightening out every computer problem that came along.

Lastly, I would like to thank Sal Paolant , who, when I needed a lawyer, told me to call Michael A. Smerconish, who introduced me to Jim Beasley.

http://www.philly.com/inquirer/entertainment/books/36744679.html

Here’s what Frank Wilson, former Inky books editor, had to say about the review on his blog:I think I might take issue with one detail of the Beasley review: “By the time his case settled, Cipriano writes, ‘I was so fond of my lawyer I didn’t want to say goodbye’ - not exactly the critical detachment of a biographer.” I see no reason why you could not write a perfectly serviceable biography of somebody you were fond of. Moreover, in this case, the fight with The Inquirer would seem altogether pertinent. “I grew fond of my lawyer as he helped me kick my former employer’s ass.” Sounds reasonable to me.

And here’s a letter to the editor from Inky alum Angelo Cataldi:

Dear Editor,

As someone who takes great pride in my years working at The Inquirer, I was shocked both by the fact that you reviewed the terrific new book, Courtroom Cowboy by Ralph Cipriano, and by what David Marston wrote in that review.

If ever there was a blatant conflict of interest, this was it. As he explains in the book, Cipriano left the Inquirer under historically bad circumstances, having been the first reporter ever to sue his own editor for libel. He won a settlement and an apology, but apparently Cipriano didn’t win the right to an unbiased book review. It should also be noted that Cipriano skewers the current owner of the newspaper, a fact that normally would further discourage the publication from reviewing the work.

Among Marston’s arguments is that Cipriano wrote the book to even the score for his ugly parting from The Inquirer. Marston said the book leaves the reader questioning the author’s agenda.

Not me. I read and loved the book. I have no vested interest here. I still enjoy The Inquirer. I have no personal relationship with Ralph Cipriano.

And after reading that review, the only agenda I am questioning is The Inquirer’s.

Angelo Cataldi

Maxwell S. Kennerly of The Beasley Firm, who writes a trial and litigation blog, also dealt with the topic:

Litigation and Trial - Max Kennerly

Breaking! Newspaper Doesn’t Like Biography of Trial Lawyer Who Beat Them

In the courtroom, Beasley was a scrapper, standing up for the underdog and winning more million-dollar verdicts than any other trial lawyer in the country. In tribute, the Temple University Law School now bears his name.

Outside the courtroom, Beasley fed his appetite for adventure, hunting big game in Africa and barnstorming as an air-show pilot, flying World War II fighter planes. In a page-turning narrative, veteran reporter Ralph Cipriano tells the story of the consumate Philadelphia lawyer.