Cleaning Up: The Story Behind the Biggest Legal Bonanza of Our Time by David Lebedoff

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Cleaning Up, by lawyer and master storyteller David Lebedoff, is the action-packed tale of the biggest, most emotionally charged and morally complex civil action suit in history. When the fishermen of coastal Alaska took on the Exxon Corporation in federal court, it proved to be one of the most spectacular trials of all time.

They succeeded thanks to Brian O'Neill, the brilliant, young, charismatic, fiercely ambitious litigator who was born to make his mark on legal history. Dressed in cowboy boots, jeans, and a flannel shirt, O'Neill had made a name for himself in pro bono environmental law while running circles around his gray-suited colleagues. When he heard about the Valdez spill in Prince William Sound, O'Neill pounced, knowing this was the opportunity of a lifetime. Within weeks he and a hand-picked team of zealous associates had set up shop in Alaska, hot on the trail of one of corporate America's most daunting leviathans.

Cleaning Up takes us behind the scenes to recount what was whispered in the hallways of O'Neill's blue-chip Minnesota law firm, and what was said behind the closed doors of the jury deliberations, where stubbornness and extreme emotional distress almost caused a mistrial, and where the verdict in the world's biggest drunk-driving case was reached without finding that the driver was actually drunk. The case became a supreme battleground for its lawyers, and a supreme test of the character, sophistication, and sense of civic duty of its jurors, one of whom was driven close to suicide by the pressure. Now for the first time, you will know what all of these people knew, when they knew it, and how they reacted to it in the three-ring circus of American litigation. Cleaning Up is a riveting, incisive parable of our times.