By Catherine Macrae Hockmuth

Richard Gerry’s phone rang sometime between 2 a.m. and 3 a.m. March 24, 1989. It was his law partner in Kenai, Alaska, calling to say the Exxon Valdez oil tanker had run aground on a well-charted reef just after midnight, spilling 11 million gallons of oil into Prince William Sound.

“I said, ‘Bob, you’ve been drinking again,’ and I hung up on him.”

A founding partner at San Diego’s Casey Gerry Reed & Schenk LLP, Gerry has been representing more than 1,000 fishermen affected by the spill ever since. It is the only local firm involved in the case.

The incident has been widely considered the most environmentally damaging tanker spill in history.

The company spent $2.1 billion cleaning up oil and more than $1 billion on fines. In January, a federal judge ordered ExxonMobil Corp. (NYSE: XOM) to pay $4.5 billion plus interest in punitive damages to commercial fishermen and others whose livelihoods were impaired.

The case has been back and forth between the court of Judge H. Russel Holland and the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals since a jury first ordered the company to pay $5 billion in damages in 1994. Exxon has said it will appeal Holland’s latest decision.

While most of the country saw news images of oil-soaked birds on Alaska’s coast, Gerry saw them with his own eyes. And he tells the events of the Valdez’s crew and captain leading up to the crash so well it sounds as though he were there. “I’ve lived through it a lot over the years,” he said.

Gerry said extensive documentation and lengthy depositions common cases like the Exxon spill amount to a “tremendous amount of waste” of money and time in the law today.

Trial law has changed considerably since San Francisco attorney Melvin Belli first hired Gerry for $300 per month in 1956. At the time, Belli’s firm was one of the few focusing on product liability, an area of law that technically didn’t exist beyond food safety.

Progress has its downsides, though. In the 1950s, Gerry said a case taken to trial on Monday could be wrapped up by Tuesday. “Now you’re lucky if you get to trial three or four times a year,” he said.

Gerry has represented victims of aviation disasters, asbestos exposure, groundwater contamination and atomic testing by the United States in the Marshall Islands. Gerry said defendants are the common link between all these cases.

“The defendants are arrogant. They don’t believe they should have to follow these laws.”

Gerry has lived the type of life that most young professionals would never consider today. Public schools start testing for professional aptitudes early. But Gerry probably would never have told his shipmates during a four-stint with the Merchant Marines that he was “pre-law” the way aspiring high school students do.

Born in Minnesota and raised in Montana, Gerry was itching to leave town as soon as he could. He spent a year building “flying fortresses” for Boeing (NYSE: BA) in Seattle and then set out to sea. It was during this time that Gerry first met Alaska. He was shipwrecked during winter. And he vowed never to return.

Many years later a good friend lured Gerry and his wife Charlotte north with promises of excellent fishing on the Kenai River. Charlotte hooked an 84-pound king salmon and Gerry agreed to start trying cases there until he caught an 85-pound king salmon.

“The closest I ever came was 74 pounds,” he said. “I taught her everything she knows.”

Charlotte’s salmon still hangs on their kitchen wall. And that’s how Gerry became a trial lawyer in Alaska. “If she hadn’t caught that fish, I’d have never been there,” he said.

Years earlier, in 1951, Gerry enrolled in Columbia University and graduated with a law degree in 1956.

But after 12 years Gerry decided life was too short to work lawyers’ hours. “I never saw my kids because I was practicing law,” he said. “I thought, “This isn’t the way to live.”

And so in 1968, Gerry, Charlotte and the kids — aged 2, 3 and 6 — moved to a 90-acre ranch on the Amazon River in Brazil to raise 19 Zebu bulls.

He took along a little book-learning on cattle, a little experience on a ranch in Montana, ad two young Texans. The children picked up Portuguese quickly and Gerry thought they would retire there.

Unfortunately, the local Caboclo people were “morose” and “downtrodden” and did not partake in cultural celebrations like music and dancing, according to Gerry.

“Everyplace in the world where people get paid on Friday night, the workmen go out and get drunk, and they dance and they fight and they find girls,” Gerry said. “We didn’t like the people that much.”

Gerry and Charlotte looked for land elsewhere in the country but were unsuccessful and moved to San Diego in 1969. “I was disappointed,” Gerry said.

In the 1980s, he tried to retire and succeeded only partially, continuing to try cases involving damages for Casey Gerry. In 1989 a fatigued skipper, who was a relapsed alcoholic, took the helm of Exxon Valdez and Gerry’s life in the court continued. He is chairman of the punitive damages and allocation committees in the Exxon case.

“I’m going to keep working until I get my money from Exxon, then I’m going to finally and fully retire and Charlotte will probably drag me around the world a few times,” Gerry said.

After 14 years, Gerry said the Exxon Valdez spill still amazes him.

His clients have suffered stress, bankruptcy, divorce, loss of property and income. Some 600 have died.

“I still can’t believe it,” Gerry said. “I still want to hang up on my partner and say, ‘You’re wrong.’”