‘The Appeal’ (John Grisham)

It’s been quite some time since I’ve read a courtroom law novel by John Grisham. He got me hooked on the genre with his first mass-published novel, “The Firm,” which also was the first of his work to become a film (starring Tom Cruise).

Although I’ve read all his law and courtroom dramas, I must confess that I haven’t read everything he’s written. Grisham did a good job with “A Painted House,” but I wouldn’t know how the others are because I haven’t read them. For me, it’s law/courtroom Grisham or nothing.

“The Appeal” is interesting in that it begins with the end of a trial with a huge verdict against big business. In between it winds its way toward the Mississippi Supreme Court, which arrives at its own ultimate verdict on the appeal. Along the way, nefariously manipulative people become involved in promoting their own personal gain.

Grisham gives good insight into the world of product liability judgments and the resultant consequences – disruption of lives, class action suits, unethical lawyers, defense tactics (ESPECIALLY defense tactics), and how research is so important to the plaintiffs’ cases.

The story reminds me of the John Travolta film, “A Civil Action.” Like Travolta’s lawyer character, the protagonists in “The Appeal” risk their own personal assets to continue representing a poor small-town resident whose family has died because of tainted water caused by illegal chemical dumping by a huge corporation.

She does win the initial verdict and an enormous settlement, but the verdict is appealed and her lawyers have to contend with an election of a new state supreme court justice, an election that is being manipulated by one who has lots to gain by an overturned verdict.

The lawyers’ story runs parallel to that of candidate who has been handpicked to unseat a vulnerable justice currently occupying the seat. Events that would seem to alter the new justice’s stand on punitive awards loom over the appeal. Will the lower court verdict be overturned, or will the higher court let the verdict stand? So much rests in the hands of the new justice.

I never fail to learn something from a Grisham courtroom drama novel.