As a young boy, I sat with my father on Sundays and listened to him tell me wonderful stories about people who had faced adversity. Almost every person he talked about, I remember as a hero. I did not know until I was older that he was reciting his opening statement for his next trial.

In those days, every Monday he would go down to the courthouse and pick a new jury for that week’s trial. Sometimes there were two trials a week. The files were thin. There were no depositions. The first time a witness testified was on the stand. The race belonged to the quickest on his or her feet. When Dad was preparing for trial, others felt the tension in the air, both in the office and at home. Sometimes insurance companies tried to bully plaintiff lawyers and clients into inadequate settlements, but Dad was never intimidated. He would pick up his briefcase and go to trial. He took his responsibility to his clients extremely seriously. He loved trial work with a passion.

Since he passed away August 3, I’ve been reminded many times of those Sunday afternoons, and I’ve come to understand his immense professional and personal legacy.

Family tradition

Somehow, being a trial lawyer was in his blood. While Dad was growing up in St. Louis as one of eight children, his father had a law firm dating back to 1900. My grandfather, like my father, was a plaintiff lawyer, and when he won a case, there were good times for his family. Between the good times, however, were many others when the family struggled. Back then, it was always better to get a job working for the railroad, cab company, or bank. Representing injured people was a challenging way to make a living.

But as Dad grew up listening to his father, he was inspired by the excitement of the courtroom and vowed he would become a trial lawyer. He was admitted to practice law in 1937 in St. Louis and went to work with a lawyer named Mark Eagleton (whose son later became a U.S. senator).

Dad’s legal career was interrupted on December 7, 1941, when Pearl Harbor was bombed. Like so many of his generation, he left his wife and young daughter and enlisted the next day to fight in the Pacific.
When he returned, my family moved to California, and he was admitted to practice law in 1947. Nobody knew him in San Diego, but soon he was singled out as a scrapper who would take any case he accepted to trial.

He was always totally prepared. Recently, a Ninth Circuit judge told me that early in his career he went to my father’s office for advice on his first jury trial. The young lawyer then tried the case and lost. He was dejected afterward and complained to my father that his client had been a disaster on the stand. Expecting sympathy, he got none: Dad told him that it was his responsibility to prepare properly and that he should never blame his client for losing a case. It was a brutal meeting, but the judge told me decades later that it had a profound influence on him, and from then on he was better prepared for trial.

Another federal judge told me that he tried many cases against my father and never won. Dad always had one surprise witness or bit of evidence that made the difference. But when a verdict came in, my father would always shake hands with opposing counsel. He had enormous respect for the lawyers he faced at trial. Those were the days when trial lawyers would fight like hell in court and afterwards sit in the old press club, toast each other, and talk politics.

Dad believed lawyers should share ideas about trying cases. This philosophy was one of the reasons he was an early member of NACCA (the National Association of Claimants’ Compensation Attorneys, ATLA’s predecessor), a founder of the California Trial Lawyers Association, and the founding president of the San Diego Trial Lawyers Association.

To Dad, being a trial lawyer also meant being part of the political process. He ran for mayor of San Diego in 1963 and was narrowly defeated. Eventually, he was asked to run for president of the State Bar of California. Traditionally, presidents had been handpicked from large corporate and banking firms. But he never walked away from a political battle, and he became the first plaintiff lawyer ever to serve as state bar president.

Inspiring others

Perhaps most telling about my father’s character was the way he treated young people. After he died, many lawyers and judges told me about how he inspired them to enter the practice of law or encouraged them along the way. He always took the time to help and inspire others.

As we go forward in our work each day, we should keep in mind that the law is a wonderful profession, one to be cherished and fought for. As trial lawyers, we need to be engaged in the political process to keep our courtrooms open. And each of us needs to be planting the seeds for the next generation of lawyers. I thank my dad for the seeds he planted.

David S. Casey Jr.