And So to Court

San Francisco Attorney Melvin Belli is no admirer of the American Bar Association to which he belongs, or of its president, Walter E. Craig. Self-styled defender of unpopular causes, Belli has voluble and repetitive contempt for lawyers who prefer corporate problems to trial work, and as he sees it, Craig exemplifies the prosperous defenders of vested interests.

Belli has finally taken his case against Craig and his colleagues to court. What brought things to a head was his verbal exchange with the A.B.A. president after Jack Ruby's trial in Dallas last March. After the jury found Belli's client guilty of the murder of Lee Harvey Oswald, the King of Torts exploded in a torrent of comment on the judge, the jury and the city of Dallas. He charged that Ruby had been convicted by "the biggest kangaroo-court disgrace in the history of American law"; he called the verdict "a victory for bigotry and injustice." Craig complained publicly that Belli "should so flagrantly disregard the code of professional ethics and his oath as an attorney." He also suggested that Belli's membership in the A.B.A. might be revoked. Such statements, Belli decided, were defamatory and prejudicial to his professional standing. They would cut into his income. Last week he filed suit against Craig and 25 co-defendants and asked for $5,000,000 in damages.

The defendants, said Belli in his complaint, belong to "a small coterie of individuals devoted to perpetuating ancient and customary injustices and Dickensian practices in law against individuals, seamen, railroad workers, union members, pedestrians, motorists, and those belonging to minority groups and unpopular causes." Craig himself had acted "willfully and wantonly and maliciously and viciously and with ill will and in spite and in an attempt to obstruct justice and deter the orderly administration of law."

Not content merely to sue Craig and the co-defendants (to be named later) for slander and defamation of character, Belli also offered his opinion as to their effect on American law. If the leaders of the American Bar Association have their way, he argued, they will "make of the magnificent American trial lawyer a suckling Bugs Bunny or a John Birch athletic supporter for certain insurance companies and economic interests."

"Melvin M. Belli," concluded the complaint, "is practicing law and intends to continue to practice his profession and against Defendant Walter E. Craig and other defendants and their clients and insurance companies, for individuals and unpopular causes into the far future, God, not the American Bar Association, willing."

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