Lawyer: My Trials and Jubilations by Joe Jamail; Mickey HerskowitzReview by: James E. CousarThe Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Vol. 108, No. 1 (Jul., 2004), pp. 131-132Published by: Texas State Historical AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/30239521 .

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2004 Book Reviews 131

Lawyer: My Trials and Jubilations. By Joe Jamail with Mickey Herskowitz. (Austin: Eakin Press, 2003. Pp. x+276. Preface, acknowledgments, appendices, post- script, index. 1-57168-809-9. $24.95, cloth.)

Why does a highly successful seventy-something trial attorney write a mem- oir? Joe Jamail's book Lawyer, a patchwork of anecdotes, homilies, transcripts, photos, testimonials, and newspaper coverage, leaves the reader wondering whether the author really intended to publish an autobiography. Jamail clearly is not writing to make money, and a book lacking in prose style and coherent

organization is not likely to gain him a reputation as a writer. Perhaps the

author, like sports heroes and entertainers, simply wanted to keep his name before the public.

Lawyer's lack of substance is disappointing, because Jamail's fifty-year career

spans a significant part of Texas legal history. Starting in the 1950s, Jamail won his reputation and a substantial personal fortune in the courts of Houston by hard work, bravado, combativeness, a quick intelligence, and a willingness to

gamble that he understood juries better than his adversaries did. His verdicts in several "products liability" cases resulted in national recalls and made life safer for thousands of people. Lawyer tells unapologetically of days in trial followed by raucous nights in the company of country singers, football coaches, movie stars, and CEOs.

Jamail had achieved fame within Texas long before 1986, when he won a record setting $10.5 billion verdict in Pennzoil v. Texaco, but Pennzoil secured his national reputation-or notoriety. When Texaco was unable to post a multibil- lion-dollar appeal bond, the corporation resorted to a Chapter I1 bankruptcy filing and eventually settled with Pennzoil for around $3 billion. Jamail is so

proud of the case that he pads out Lawyerwith a thirty-page transcript of his clos-

ing argument and an adulatory 986 news article. However, his own recollec- tions add little to the extensive historical and legal record already published on the case.

Given his courtroom success and impact on Texas legal history, Jamail's life

might be a fascinating subject for a biographer. Famous trial lawyers of the first half of the twentieth century, such as Clarence Darrow and Louis Nizer, wrote

autobiographies that are still read today. As a memoir, Jamail's story is far less

compelling. As a pivotal figure in the growth and decline of high-dollar tort liti-

gation in Texas, Jamail justifiably celebrates the good years, but the book evi- dences little sense of history. He generally ignores what followed-and his role in bringing about the reaction called "tort reform."

The Pennzoil case was followed by unprecedented national scrutiny of the Texas court system, with a focus on the state's wide open judicial fundraising. In 1987 Jamail filmed an ill-considered and boastful interview with the televi- sion show "Sixty Minutes" at a fundraiser for a Texas Supreme Court justice-a judge who subsequently declined to grant appellate review to the billion-dollar Pennzoil verdict. The interview was a key part of the story captioned "Is Justice for Sale in Texas?" and it became a set piece for conservative judicial candidates and the "tort reform" movement. Within fifteen years all nine Texas Supreme

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132 Southwestern Historical Quarterly July

Court justices were Republicans, as were virtually all the district and appellate judges in Harris County--once a stronghold of the plaintiffs' bar. Pennzoil, Jamail, and "Sixty Minutes" helped set off the backlash that changed Texas to a defense-oriented jurisdiction.

In Lawyer, Jamail never mentions this aftermath of Pennzoil, although it is as much a part of his legacy as large verdicts, product recalls, and the family name on sports facilities at the University of Texas. While every memoirist is entitled to be selective about his subject matter, Jamail's omissions diminish the value of his book as a historical record and as a memoir.

Austin JAMES E. COUSAR

The Bootlegger's Other Daughter. By Mary Cimarolli. (College Station: Texas A&M

University Press, 2003. Pp. xiv+ 17o. Series foreword, acknowledgments, pro- logue, epilogue, index. ISBN 1-5844-260-7. $24-95, cloth.)

Retired Richland College English professor Mary Cimarolli calls this slender tome of childhood reminisces as a "labor of love" that gave her "a better under-

standing of the conflicts within my own heart, a deeper awareness of the legacy my East Texas farm family left me, and an even deeper appreciation for the gift of life itself' (p. 168).

Her book, The Bootlegger's Other Daughter, is part of the Sam Rayburn Series on Rural Life inaugurated by Texas A&M University Press. The fourth in the series, Cimarolli's work is a personal tale of growing up in a hardscrabble existence. Her

story begins with her earliest memories on her paternal grandparents' front porch in Arbala, deep in Hopkins County. Cimarolli, born in 1931, describes her family's struggles during the Depression and through World War II.

Hers is no romantic saga of the good old days. Her father, parlaying his charm and good looks, frequently moves the family to and fro as he seeks work. The author describes how her family suffered from and survived typhoid from bad well water and how her father's reckless forays with gambling and bootlegging kept everyone on tenterhooks. She dreads a school field trip to the local jail, fear-

ing her classmates would recognize her father behind bars. In another incident, when her father's closest buddy kills his wife, Cimarolli as a young schoolgirl won- ders whether he was involved.

Eventually, her father teams up with a fellow gambler to pick cotton in

Arizona, although the reader gets the impression that he was really fleecing the workers. Her long-suffering mother juggles the farm, selling eggs, butter, and

milk, while rearing her rambunctious brood with a firm hand.

Despite their poverty, the family experiences delights. School and books become the young girl's revel and her escape hatch. The advent of electricity in their rural homestead was a godsend. "How wonderful to be able to read by elec- tric light" (p. 114), she said. Nevertheless, the bigger delight was radio and its endless stream beamed from places far beyond East Texas. "How long did it take the sounds of war to reach an isolated East Texas farm community in 1941?" she writes. "Not so long if you owned a radio. We still were not receiving a daily

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