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Who Is the Prominent Plaintiffs Lawyer Helping Sarah Palin?
The American Lawyer
July 07, 2009
Sarah Palin has delivered plenty of surprises to the American people over the past 10 months. She topped them all this past holiday weekend with her resignation announcement, giving every journalist, blogger, pundit and average Joe (plumbers and otherwise) material and cause for wild speculation about her reasons for stepping down from the Alaska governorship.
Palin was on our mind earlier in the week after we read a feature story in the August issue of Vanity Fair. Within Todd Purdum's story we learn that John Coale, a name partner at Washington, D.C., plaintiffs firm Coale Cooley Lietz, helped Palin set up her own political action committee (SarahPAC), as well as the Alaska Fund Trust, meant to help Palin pay her legal expenses. (The WSJ Law Blog cited the estimated $500,000 in legal fees Palin owes to Alaskan firm Clapp, Peterson, Van Flein, Tiemessen & Thorsness as one possible reason for the governor's decision to step down effective July 27.)
Purdum writes that Coale, a noted trial lawyer and fundraiser who last year donated $85,300 to mostly Democratic causes, met Palin through his wife, Fox News' Greta Van Susteren.
Coale told Purdum that he believes Palin has been unfairly maligned by both liberals and conservatives, and that while he doesn't consider himself to be Palin's political adviser, he still exchanges e-mails with the soon-to-be-former governor from time to time.
So, who is John Coale?
Coale's reputation as a plaintiffs lawyer was forged in the '80s when he flew to Bhopal, India in the aftermath of an explosion at a Union Carbide pesticide plant on Dec. 3, 1984. The ensuing disaster killed thousands of people within 72 hours and exposed tens of thousands more to lethal toxic gases. Coale earned the nickname "Bhopal Coale" for recruiting nearly 50,000 clients to press claims against Union Carbide. Within six years, the company agreed to a $470 million settlement.
Here are a few more tidbits on Coale, gleaned from the archives of The American Lawyer:
-- Coale and his former custom tailor, C.S. Sastry, traded barbs in a civil suit filed by Sastry after the plaintiff traveled to Bhopal with Coale to serve as a translator. Sastry claimed Coale promised him a payout from any Bhopal settlement. Coale said Sastry was a stooge of the Indian government and countersued his former tailor for allegedly making shirts that were too small for him, causing him emotional distress. (We're not making this up.) The suit later led Coale to admit that he traveled to Bhopal expressly to solicit clients to sue Union Carbide.
-- Coale was among several plaintiffs lawyers who were unhappy with the way that South Carolina firm Ness Motley handled the $206 billion Big Tobacco settlement in 1998. (Squabbling over fees later led the firm to break up into smaller parts.)
-- The fight over billions in Big Tobacco fees continued over several years, with Coale quarreling with other plaintiffs lawyers over final disbursements in the litigation.
-- Like many plaintiffs lawyers, Coale enjoyed a cozy relationship with the Clintons, particularly Hillary, whose presidential campaign he supported last year. Politico.com reported in May that Coale urged Palin to use some of the $400,000 in SarahPAC to retire Clinton's campaign debt. Palin declined.
This article first appeared on the Am Law Daily blog on AmericanLawyer.com.
