WSJ: Trial Lawyer's Tactics Are As Unusual As His Past
By Richard B. Schmitt
Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal
September 22, 1998
BINGHAMTON, N.Y. -- The personal-injury bar is full of aggressive lawyers
with a knack for finding novel ways to recover damages. But even in this
colorful group, Ronald R. Benjamin stands out.
Mr. Benjamin once launched a suit on behalf of the family of a drunk who
drowned during a charity rafting event on a local river. The suit was thrown
out but made for a splash of publicity.
He is representing people who took diet drugs and claim harm - not
necessarily from the pills themselves but from the anxiety of knowing the pills
harmed others.
Mr. Benjamin has even sued another trial lawyer. Taking some of that lawyer's
ex-clients as his own, he accused the lawyer of settling their personal-injury
cases too cheaply.
But what is most remarkable about Mr. Benjamin, 52 years old, is that he is a
lawyer at all. He was admitted to the bar 20 years ago after serving 32 months
in prison following a state felony conviction for grand larceny, plus a
misdemeanor conviction. Among other things, Mr. Benjamin says, he sold someone
two racehorses that didn't exist.
Mr. Benjamin operates out of the small upstate New York city of Binghamton,
but he is shooting for the big leagues of mass-injury law. Several years ago,
he scored a major victory in a case involving DES, the antimiscarriage drug.
With more-recent cases filed on behalf of AIDS patients and now diet-pill
users, he has begun playing on a broader stage.
This summer it got broader still, as Mr. Benjamin filed lawsuits against
Pfizer Inc. based on alleged harm from the blockbuster impotence drug Viagra,
the first suits of which Pfizer says it is aware. One of his legal theories:
Viagra made his client, who was driving home from a date, run into a tree.
Last fall, Mr. Benjamin took his act on the road, opening an office on Park
Avenue in New York City and soliciting clients in daily newspapers. He whips up
cases by advertising for plaintiffs, and at least once held a news conference
at the Waldorf-Astoria hotel to promote his cause.
Over the years, his record has given adversaries further ammunition. A decade
ago, Mr. Benjamin was suspended from the practice of law in New York state for
six months for using unusually aggressive tactics to collect a fee from a
client. More recently, he was formally censured.
"I think most lay persons would look at it and say, 'Why is this guy still
operating?'" says Robert Fischer, a retired New York state judge, who handled
several of Mr. Benjamin's cases and later launched the disciplinary proceeding
that resulted in the censure. Mr. Benjamin, he says, "was disturbing as hell to
me."
Ensconced in a stately old mansion in Binghamton stocked with a
museum-quality collection of Asian art, Mr. Benjamin is unapologetic, saying
that the hits he took from disciplinary authorities were excessive. As for
going to prison, it was "probably the best thing that ever happened to me," he
says.
Not that his background bothers clients. One client, Lou Anne O'Malley of
Milford, Conn., says she and some other "DES Daughters" were aware of some of
Mr. Benjamin's past troubles, but "nobody cared." He was "a very, very devoted
lawyer," she says.
Mr. Benjamin concedes that some of his highest-profile cases of late may be
nonstarters: In the HIV cases, which allege that hospitals and pharmaceutical
companies inadequately tested for the virus during the early years of the AIDS
epidemic, he is suing under a state law that was intended to give relief to
hemophiliacs. But most of the 100 or so people he represents were infected in
other ways.
In suing other plaintiffs' counsel, Mr. Benjamin targeted Paul Rheingold, a
prominent New York personal-injury specialist, four times, alleging a pattern
of malpractice in settling suits. They involved L-tryptophan, the amino-acid
diet supplement pulled from the market in the 1980s after more than two dozen
people died from contaminated batches.
Mr. Rheingold countersued, alleging a conspiracy to "mulct, extort, defame,
libel and disparage" his firm, according to court documents in the cases, filed
in New York state court in Manhattan. Three of the four suits have been
settled.
Mr. Rheingold later wrote to a New York judge handling state litigation
involving the diet drugs Redux and fenfluramine, part of the "fen-phen"
cocktail. Mr. Rheingold described Mr. Benjamin's past legal and ethics problems
to the judge, fearing she might appoint him to lead an influential steering
committee in the cases. She didn't. Mr. Benjamin says he wasn't interested in
working with the likes of Mr. Rheingold anyway.
Today, the Law Offices of Ronald R. Benjamin are a melting pot. He practices
with his ex-wife, Ms. Young, a former public-interest lawyer. A recent addition
is attorney Wayne Chariff, who, himself, in 1996 finished a six-month
suspension of his right to practice law for mishandling client escrow accounts.
Mr. Chariff is the point man for cases the firm has on alleged allergies to
latex gloves.
Brochures on the front counter say that "Your Best Interest is Our Best
Interest," and the formula seems to work for Mr. Benjamin. A short,
broad-shouldered man, he drives a red Mercedes convertible, still plays the
horses and, when in Manhattan, stays at his new luxury apartment at Trump
Tower.
With his latest flurry of suits, on Viagra, he faces some of his biggest
tests yet. Pfizer's warnings about Viagra's potential hazards were "the most
comprehensive things imaginable," says Aaron Levine, a product-liability
specialist in Washington who has handled DES cases and clashed with Mr.
Benjamin in the past.
One well-known possible side effect of Viagra is a brief bluish tinge to the
vision. One Benjamin client, Joseph Moran, a used-car dealer from Rahway, N.J.,
claims he crashed his Thunderbird while driving home from a date because he
began seeing blue streaks up his arm while changing a cassette tape.
Mr. Benjamin, who also has Viagra suits that claim heart problems from the
pill, says, "The science on this is solid."
The litigation over diet pills that are linked to heart-valve damage is more
conventional, although some of Mr. Benjamin's cases turn on novel theories.
Some of his clients, for example, seek money from marketer American Home
Products Corp. for the anxiety associated with taking the pills. Another, a
mother, claims her baby's heart problems were caused by her use of diet pills.
Mr. Benjamin already claims some satisfied clients in the diet-pill affair.
Last year, he engineered a suit against the Food and Drug Administration,
contacting obesity groups to see if they wanted to serve as plaintiff. He
contends that his suit led to last year's recall of the diet drugs, and he
intends to petition a federal court to award him attorneys' fees. The
government is opposing him, saying, among other things, that officials had
already encouraged the voluntary recall by the time Mr. Benjamin properly
informed them of his litigation.
Lynn McAfee, director of medical advocacy for the Council on Size and Weight
Discrimination, says she was delighted that Mr. Benjamin called, because her
group had no money. She doubts its suit had influence with the FDA, but likes
the fact that Mr. Benjamin was willing to front the costs of a news conference
to announce the suit.
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