Being Oscar (27 page)

I would think back and remember better times, like a day back in the early 1990s when a young woman showed up at my law office. My secretary said she had come in without an appointment, but really needed to see a lawyer. She wanted to talk about a civil suit. I said that’s not the kind of case I handle, but my secretary said, “You’d better see this lady.”

Her name was Jo Ann Allison. She came with her son Tommy, who was about five years old. He was in a wheelchair. He was blind, spastic, deaf, and mentally retarded. It’s sad to say, but he was a vegetable. Yet I could see how his mother loved him and how she was caring for him. It broke my heart.

She told me her son had contracted encephalitis when he was 17 months old, after being given the compulsory vaccination for measles, mumps, and rubella. The drug, MMRII, was manufactured
by Merck. She wanted to sue—she told me that a lawyer down the street thought he could probably get her $5,000. I said I didn’t do that kind of work.

I looked at that little boy and thought that $5,000 wasn’t going to do him or his mother any good. She was on welfare and didn’t know what else to do. My heart went out to her. I knew, and I knew she knew, that her son was never going to get any better. But she loved him. To me, she was like an angel. It was remarkable to see someone who can care for and love a child in that condition.

So I said, “Let me do some research.” I ended up filing a lawsuit against Merck under the product liability law, arguing that Merck had not given the parent adequate warning about the potential dangers, and that the parent’s decision to have her child vaccinated was made without full knowledge of the risks.

Merck had a team of high-priced lawyers, and they were ready to fight the case. At a pre-trial conference, the judge put a zero value on my claim. There was no way Merck could be liable, the judge said, since the vaccine was recommended by the health department. Children had to be vaccinated. The judge issued a summary judgment in Merck’s favor, throwing out our claim.

I appealed and ended up taking the case all the way to the Nevada Supreme Court. And in the end, we won. Here’s part of what the high court said in a decision, Allison versus Merck, that has become one of the standards in product liability law:

We conclude that Merck may be liable to Thomas Allison by reason of its strict liability as manufacturer if Thomas can prove that the vaccine in question is the cause of his disabilities. In addition, we conclude that Merck may be liable to Thomas and Ms. Allison for failing to provide a proper warning regarding the vaccine. Accordingly, we reverse the summary judgment in favor of
Merck and remand to the trial court for a trial on Thomas’ strict liability claim and on Thomas’ and Ms. Allison’s failure-to-warn claims.

The lawyers for Merck knew they could be in real trouble if we went in front of a jury with Tommy propped up in his wheelchair. He was a special little fellow, and they knew there was nothing they could say or do in court that would be as powerful as the image of that little boy. After that, we worked out a multi-million dollar settlement.

Under the terms of the settlement agreement, I’m prohibited from saying how much, but Jo Ann Allison was able to care for her son for the rest of his life without any worries. Tommy eventually passed away, and I spoke at his funeral. That case was one of the most satisfying in my career. It’s what the law is really all about.

The settlement gave me a lot of satisfaction. It wasn’t the kind of case where you went out and partied in celebration, but it was the kind of case where I knew I had done something good. Justice had been served, and to me, that was what being a lawyer was all about. I smile even now when I think about it, and I shake my head when I remember how Jo Ann Allison told me another lawyer said he “might” be able to get her $5,000.

Those were the kind of people and circumstances I was thinking about when I decided to run for mayor. I could probably have continued practicing law and made even more money, but I wasn’t enjoying it anymore. I needed a new challenge. I needed to look in the mirror and like who I saw.

It wasn’t about the type of clients I had or the criminal law I was practicing. I had just reached a point where I had done everything a criminal defense attorney could do. I’d had a rich and rewarding career as a lawyer, but I wasn’t getting the same satisfaction out of what I was doing. And I didn’t want to be the
kind of lawyer who evaluated every case based on how big a fee he could charge. That wasn’t what I was about when I started practicing law, and it wasn’t what I wanted to become.

Toward the end of 1998, I took the family on a cruise and told them I was thinking of running for mayor. The kids all voted against it. I think they were worried about the things that would be said about me, since they knew how the media treated me. They had grown up hearing and reading about their father, “the mob mouthpiece,” and had heard the snide remarks about how my law office was the “house that crime built.” In addition, they thought there was no way I was going to win.

“Dad, you’ve got more baggage than a skycap at the airport,” they said.

But it was something I wanted to try. I had never even been to City Hall; I had no idea what a mayor did. But I loved the city, and I needed a new challenge. I had accomplished everything possible as a defense attorney, and I was tired of a lot of it. So I appreciated my kids’ concern, but I was convinced, from the very beginning, that I would win. Again, it was one of those things where I thought I could “will” it to happen. You know, like the Chagra case. I shouldn’t have won that, or the Spilotro cases. No way could I keep him out of jail all those years—but I did.

In March of 1999, on the last day of the filing period, I announced that I was running for mayor. I had a press conference on a Friday in the lobby of my law office. I was holding a copy of the Constitution. I said that I wanted to lead the city into the next millennium, that I loved the city, and would be honored to work to improve it. That weekend, the
Las Vegas Review Journal’s
editorial headline blared, “Anybody but Oscar for Mayor.”

My platform was straightforward. I told people that the greatest thing I had going for me was my intellect. I said if you want someone who is smart and who will keep the interests of the city in the forefront and keep the city moving forward, I’m your man.

When I walked around the city as a candidate, I saw things differently and noticed things that I never saw before. Downtown was a mess, which became a key issue for me. Something had to be done, and that became part of my platform.

“The whole downtown area stinks,” I would say as I campaigned. “You’ve got a Neanderthal type of operation there. People have to realize that Las Vegas is the entertainment capital of the world. Unless we maintain and improve the downtown, it’s going to be like the core of an apple rotting from within.” I said we had to do something about it or we would lose the apple, and then maybe the whole barrel.

Part of my pitch was also to sell myself, who I was, and how I conducted myself. I’ve always had an ego, I’ve always been good at what I do, and I’ve always thought I was the best. I would joke and say, “I realize nobody’s right all the time . . . I just can’t remember when I’ve been wrong.”

“When people come to Las Vegas, they come to see glamour and glitz,” I said during my campaign speeches. “I’m the man for that. I’m not going to be one of those boring politicians. If that’s who you want, don’t vote for me.” I was bringing some of the same attitude to the campaign that I brought to the courtroom. And I think it worked.

Elections in Las Vegas are set up in two rounds. The first round is an open field; as many candidates as file are on the ballot. I think we had nearly a dozen candidates. Jay Bingham, a former county commissioner who was very prominent in the Mormon Church, was the favorite. Shortly after I filed, he dropped out. The story was that he had a heart problem, but the rumor was that he feared mob retaliation if he ran against me.

What can I tell you? People are funny. The ironic thing was many of my former clients and guys I had gotten to know while representing mobsters shied away from me after I announced
that I was running. In fact, there were guys who stopped talking to me for the next twelve years. I couldn’t understand it; it was as though an iron door had been pulled shut. After I left office, one of them explained it to me.

“We didn’t want to cause you any embarrassment,” he said. “We knew you were taking heat, and we didn’t want to add to that fire. We had too much respect for you.”

Mob guys understood better than the public. They knew I was going to be fair and honest, the same as I had been when I represented them, and they had a tacit agreement amongst themselves not to put me in a sensitive spot.

With Bingham out of the race, Arnie Adamson, a sitting councilman, became the favorite. The odds makers made a “line” with me being a 17-to-1 underdog.

I went up to San Francisco shortly after I announced my candidacy to visit my daughter Cara, who had gone to Stanford and was working as a consultatnt in San Francisco. While I was there, the
San Francisco Chronicle
had an editorial urging Las Vegas voters to reject me, calling me “the barrister to butchers.” It was nuts! San Francisco was in the midst of a big financial crisis at the time, and they had a major problem with the homeless that was getting national attention. Yet its paper was worried about who was running for mayor in Las Vegas.

As you can imagine, I was the outlaw candidate, but I didn’t mind. I raised about $900,000 for my campaign. I got no help from the casinos—zero. I had no idea how to run a campaign, and even less of an idea how City Hall worked. But I was convinced I was going to win.

Carolyn was unbelievable. She was out there every day, knocking on doors. We went from neighborhood to neighborhood, talking to people. One day we were up in the Summerlin section, which was populated with wealthy, older, mostly retired
residents. You couldn’t go up there in the morning because they were all out playing tennis or golf or walking their dog. And you couldn’t go too late at night because they’d be in bed.

I knocked on one door, and this nice elderly lady smiled and invited me in. She called out to her husband, “It’s the mob lawyer.”

I sat in her kitchen and she served me chocolate chip cookies and milk. I don’t think I’d had a glass of milk in forty years. Now that was campaigning.

We eventually put a staff together, and they came up with an absolutely awesome idea. They decided to “humanize” me in order to counteract the negative stuff some of my opponents were putting out. Nobody said it directly, but the buzz was that if Oscar got elected, the mob would take over City Hall.

Our campaign emphasized “the five best things in Oscar Goodman’s life.” It offered snapshot descriptions of my wife and our children, and said I never missed a soccer game. I didn’t do any formal polling, but every Saturday and Sunday I went down to the Costco store and talked to people. I kept on doing that after I was elected. You got a real sense of what people thought, and I knew I was going to do well.

In order to win in the first round, you have to get 50 percent of the vote, plus one. On election night, I was close. At one point I had 51 percent, but the final count gave me 49 percent, so there was a runoff. Arnie Adamson was the second highest vote-getter, so he and I squared off in the runoff.

Now there were going to be some debates. I knew I was good on my feet, but I also had a temper. What might work in court wasn’t necessarily good in a political debate. Adamson had started to run a negative campaign with ads sprinkled with allusions to what I supposedly represented—hypodermic needles, money bags, guns. I was livid. Carolyn knew that I wanted to
strangle Adamson; that I wanted to put my hand down his throat and pull out his innards. She tried to calm me.

“Say something nice about him,” she said.

“Nice?” I said.

“Yes,” she said. “Say he has a nice wife.”

As the first debate was approaching, I got word that the Police Protective Association, the police union, was going to send someone in to bait me. They saw me as the anti-Christ; it was like I had 6-6-6 tattooed on my forehead.

The night before the debate, my son Ross, who was a captain in the Marines, called. He said he was just checking in and wanted to say “hi,” but I knew he was concerned. I told him about the debate and what was planned, and he came up with a strategy.

“You’ve got to use a pre-emptive strike,” he said.

I had no idea what he was talking about.

“Whadda ya mean?” I said.

“Come out of the box first. Take the initiative. Don’t let them raise the issues. You raise them before they can.”

This made a lot of sense. If it was good enough for the Marines, it was good enough for me. At the debate, one of the first people to ask a question was a former reporter who I had thought was a friend. He came up to the podium, and very smugly he asked me, “When’s the last time you were in City Hall?”

And then he started to walk away.

“Hey, wait a second, buddy,” I said. “Don’t you walk away. Come back here. I’ll answer your question.”

Then I delivered my pre-emptive strike.

“I’ve never been to City Hall, okay. The first time will be when I’m elected. And I know there have been questions about my drinking. Let me tell all of you, I drink in excess, sometimes a bottle of gin a night. And something else: I’m a degenerate gambler.
If there’s a cockroach running around out there, I’ll bet on whether he goes right or left. I’ve represented bad guys, but the last time I checked, they were entitled to representation under our Constitution . . .”