Thanks for the memories.

• Author: Olson, Walter

How lawyers get the testimony they want.

Read out loud, Zippergate's famous "talking points" memo might be mistaken for a stage hypnotist's spiel. "You did not see [Kathleen Willey] go in or see her come out" of the Oval Office, the script declares with serene suggestiveness. "You now find it completely plausible that she herself smeared her lipstick, untucked her blouse, etc." You are relaxed, Ms. Tripp, calm and drowsy...and now some bad old memories can slip away, while other better ones emerge to take their place....

Many observers have been startled by just how breezy our legal culture can be about the suborning of perjury. Sure, as Vernon Jordan is alleged to have helpfully assured Monica Lewinsky, perjury seldom gets prosecuted in civil cases. But you'd still think there'd be some surviving taboo on coordinating others' false stories, with its extra element of planning and forethought. If you wonder what passes for acceptable witness preparation in our litigation system today, though, it's worth catching up on the latest developments in a case that came to light last year in Texas.

The deposition of Willie Roy Reathy on August 27, 1997, in Corpus Christi looked to be another routine skirmish in the asbestos wars. In recent decades tens of thousands of industrial workers have sued hundreds of companies that sold products containing asbestos. In the strongest such cases, a worker has unquestionably been exposed to high levels of asbestos dust and later develops a lethal disease clearly linked to asbestos (such as mesothelioma, a fatal cancer). He sues not his employer - that would bring him under worker's compensation law, with its limited awards - but instead the manufacturers.

Only a small minority of today's suits actually fit this profile. When entrepreneurial law firms came to realize the potential in this line of work they also got a lot less choosy about recruitment. Some now park vans in front of union halls and herd workers through for quickie x-rays which nearly always, in the view of the lawyers' hired medics, indicate lung dysfunction - even if no subpar functioning at all is detectable to defendants' doctors. The process started with occupations that worked closely with loose asbestos, such as ship insulators and pipefitters, but has since spread ever-wider in concentric rings, to the point where you may hop on the claimant gravy train if you spent one summer in college helping to renovate a library. Meanwhile, most of the major asbestos makers of yesteryear having gone bankrupt, the game is increasingly one of chasing down...