{"id":8164,"date":"2012-04-17T12:55:15","date_gmt":"2012-04-17T16:55:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sidebarforplaintiffs.naomifein.net\/?p=8164"},"modified":"2012-04-17T13:04:34","modified_gmt":"2012-04-17T17:04:34","slug":"the-david-lawyer-who-went-to-battle-with-murdoch-goliath","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sidebarforplaintiffs.naomifein.net\/?p=8164","title":{"rendered":"The David lawyer who went to battle with Murdoch Goliath"},"content":{"rendered":"

His name is Mark Lewis and until I read yesterday’s New York Times<\/em> story, by Amy Chozick, I knew only that he represented people who were victimized by Rupert Murdoch in the huge phone hacking scandal.<\/p>\n

I didn’t think much more about him than that. But since Lewis is in New York right now, pursuing aspects of his case, the Times<\/em> thought to cover him. And he himself is a really interesting person.<\/p>\n

The headline for the story is “NewsCorp.’s Pursuer Had Modest Start.”<\/a> But Lewis had more than just a “modest start.” He’s had multiple sclerosis, unemployment, near-penury and a divorce. In some ways, he reminds me of Jan Schlichtmann, the lawyer who pursued A Civil Action<\/em>, although\u00a0\u2014 at least in one short article\u00a0\u2014 he’s more conventionally sympathetic. (Maybe you saw the film in which John Travolta played Schlichtmann.)<\/p>\n

Lewis himself says that his story “sounds ‘like a John Grisham novel'”…<\/p>\n

The section that struck me strongly concerns what I’ll call the pre-discovery stage of a lawsuit, and it illustrates how and why a lawyer must read every single word of every single piece of paper that emerges from the enemy’s stronghold.<\/p>\n

In Lewis’s case, one odd line in one letter from Murdoch’s minions, became the beginning of what he calls his “light-bulb moment.”<\/p>\n

It’s a terrific story, even better than Grisham.<\/p>\n

Oh, and p.s. “Mr. Lewis said he planned to meet with Norman Siegel,<\/a> a prominent civil liberties lawyer in New York, to discuss how to proceed with filing suits” [in the U.S.]. A sub-head in this article is “With a lawyer’s help, a scandal may jump across the Atlantic.”<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

His name is Mark Lewis and until I read yesterday’s New York Times story, by Amy Chozick, I knew only that he represented people who were victimized by Rupert Murdoch in the huge phone hacking scandal. I didn’t think much … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[337],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8164","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-legal-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t