BSCC- Obituary for Nader lawer

[C. Raia]

Today's Globe has an obituary for Stuart Speiser, who represented Ralph
Nader against GM over the car company's stalking and harassment of
Nader after "Unsafe at Any Speed" was published. It's an interesting account
of an embarrassing point in GM's history.

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/obituaries/articles/2010/10/30/stuart_m_speiser_lawyer_won_privacy_lawsuit_for_nader/

Stuart M. Speiser, lawyer; won privacy lawsuit for Nader

By T. Rees Shapiro, Washington Post  |  October 30, 2010

WASHINGTON — Stuart M. Speiser, a foremost authority on aviation law who
made headlines in the late 1960s as Ralph Nader’s attorney in a
groundbreaking invasion-of-privacy suit against General Motors, died Oct. 4
at his home in Scottsdale, Ariz. He was 87.

The cause of Mr. Speiser’s death was a self-inflicted gunshot wound, his
family said.

Nader said Mr. Speiser, who was based in New York for much of his career,
was a “pioneer in aviation and torts law’’ who, case after case, won record
settlements for his clients. He recalled his former attorney as deeply
persuasive, aided by “a voice like Humphrey Bogart, a G-man’s voice, as they
say.’’

Mr. Speiser was one of the first lawyers to use expert testimony from
engineers and forensics specialists to re-create a crash scene to prove
negligence and willful misconduct.

He successfully represented clients in many high-profile cases, including
people whose relatives had died in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103
over Lockerbie, Scotland, and relatives of those who had died aboard Korean
Airlines Flight 007, which was shot down in 1983 over the Soviet Union.

Mr. Speiser’s best-known case started with a call to Nader, the consumer
advocate and lawyer whose 1965 book “Unsafe at Any Speed’’ attacked the lack
of safety standards for car manufacturers and the fatal design flaws of the
Chevrolet Corvair.

Hoping to tar Nader, General Motors hired a private detective. Nader began
receiving dozens of annoying and threatening phone calls. He said that the
private detective tailed him and that, in what he considered an attempt to
entrap him, women repeatedly approached him on the streets to solicit sexual
favors.

In a televised Senate hearing on Capitol Hill in 1966, GM’s president, James
Roche, apologized to Nader for any harassment that the company’s
investigation into his personal life might have caused him. Once Mr. Speiser
heard the apology, he phoned Nader.

“I told Ralph I was sure GM expected to be sued and that they were probably
prepared to pay a large sum, larger than any previous award, to bury their
mistakes,’’ Mr. Speiser wrote in his 1980 book “Lawsuit.’’ He said that the
potential payout would be “large enough to keep Ralph’s crusades going for
years.’’

Mr. Speiser said that GM would be the perfect target, because the company’s
image suffered after the publication of “Unsafe at Any Speed.’’ Furthermore,
he wrote, Nader would serve as the “knight in shining armor, champion of the
consumer, the last honest man, even a sex symbol.’’

Nader and Mr. Speiser sued GM for compensatory and punitive damages.
Attorneys for GM tried several times to have the case thrown out of court by
saying that the carmaker was not responsible for any wrongdoing.

Mr. Speiser proved that the independent private detective, Vincent Gillen,
had acted directly on behalf of GM and used Gillen’s testimony to that
effect against his employer.

More than two years after the suit was filed, GM agreed to pay Nader
$425,000, the largest out-of-court settlement in the history of privacy law.

Nader said he used the settlement money to found several public interest
groups, including the Center for Auto Safety.

Mr. Speiser’s Nader-GM suit has been included in tort law texts across the
country.

“It furnished a winning model for David-Goliath confrontations,’’ Mr.
Speiser told the South China Morning Post in 1993, adding that his suit gave
“individuals the inspiration to criticize, to challenge, to sue if
necessary, to hold the establishment accountable.’’

In all of the settlements, judgments, and verdicts since 1965, Mr. Speiser’s
firm collected more than $300 million.
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