Boyce is one trial lawyer conservatives don't hate.

• Author: Betts, Jack
• Position: CAPITAL - Biography

Phil Haire still remembers that day 32 years ago when his roommate walked into their Alexandria, Va., apartment with an ashen look on his face. "You just won't believe what I just heard," Gene Boyce told him.

Both men were lawyers for the Senate Watergate Committee, but they were bound by secrecy. It wasn't until the following Monday that Haire--and a national television audience that hung on every word--found out what Boyce already knew: President Richard Nixon had secretly taped conversations in the Oval Office, the Executive Office Building and even at Camp David.

What impressed Haire, now a state representative from Sylva, was not just Alexander Butterfield's revelation of the tapes that would bring down the Nixon presidency. It was Boyce's ability to keep a secret.

Trust is a trait that still marks the career of Boyce, now a 72-year-old Raleigh trial lawyer who has won a series of lawsuits that have returned billions of dollars to North Carolina taxpayers. "There may be people who don't like Gene Boyce, but there aren't many who don't trust him," says Raleigh lawyer Stephanie Gibbs, who worked for him one summer before starting law school.

Trial lawyers who win big judgments are often blamed for running up costs of the legal system and pocketing most of the dough. What sets Boyce apart is that the cases he litigated against the state through the 1990s resulted in taxpayers getting back all their money, plus interest. In the Bailey and Patton cases, which challenged tax treatment of both state and federal retirees, Boyce and colleagues won a $799 million settlement from the legislature. In the Fulton and Smith cases, involving state taxation of intangible personal property, his team won a settlement worth $440 million.

He has a handful of other cases in the works: suing the Easley administration for withholding more than $300 million in tax funds that had gone to local governments, challenging the diversion of money from the Highway Fund to other uses and arguing that the proceeds from the $4.6 billion national tobacco settlement should go to the state treasury instead of into trust funds.

So far, according to his tally, the lawsuits he and his allies have won total $1.4 billion, saving taxpayers about $3.2 billion overall. The cases have made him rich. "I've made a bunch," he concedes. He still lives simply and works out of cramped, cluttered quarters furnished with discount furniture. "It didn't change my lifestyle one bit," he jokes...