Melvin Mouron Belli

Melvin Mouron Belli ( ; July 29, 1907 – July 9, 1996) was an American lawyer and writer known as "The King of Torts" and by insurance companies as "Melvin Bellicose". He had many celebrity clients, including Zsa Zsa Gabor, Errol Flynn, Chuck Berry, Muhammad Ali, The Rolling Stones, Jim Bakker and Tammy Faye Bakker, Martha Mitchell, Maureen Connolly, Lana Turner, Tony Curtis, and Mae West. During his legal career, he won over $600 million in damages for his clients. His parents were of Italian ancestry from Switzerland. His grandmother, Anna Mouron, was the first female pharmacist in California.

Career Following his admission to the California bar, his first job was posing as a hobo for the Works Progress Administration and riding the rails to observe the Depression's impact on the country's vagrant population.

His first major legal victory came shortly after graduation, in a personal injury lawsuit representing an injured cable car gripman. Over insurance lawyers' objections, Belli brought a model of a cable car intersection, and the gear box and chain involved in the accident, to demonstrate to jurors exactly what had happened.

Besides his personal injury cases, which earned for him his byname "King of Torts,"

After winning a court case, Belli would raise a Jolly Roger flag over his office building in the Barbary Coast district of San Francisco (which Belli claimed had been a Gold Rush-era brothel) and fire a cannon, mounted on his office roof, to announce the victory and the impending party. This former law office was at the Belli Building in the Jackson Square neighborhood of San Francisco.

Among Belli's clientele was the mobster Mickey Cohen, the boss of the Cohen crime family, who was a friend of Belli's. He referred to Cohen as a "gentleman of great courtliness and charm". Cohen served as a babysitter for Belli's son Caesar, and at one point he loaned Cohen $3000. In 1958 Cohen was indicted for assaulting a federal officer, with Belli defending him. The result was a jury deadlock. In 1959 he represented Cohen's girlfriend, the stripper Candy Barr, after she was arrested on possession of marijuana. Against Belli's advice, Cohen decided to receive his money as "gifts" with the intention that he would not have to declare it as an income. He was convicted of tax evasion in 1962. While imprisoned in Atlanta, Cohen was attacked with a pipe. Belli filed a damage suit against the government and won. When Belli had a squabble with the American Bar Association (ABA), he decided to get them back by inviting Cohen, branded as Professor Julian O'Brien of Harvard, to deliver a seminar on tax law at the ABA's Miami convention at the same time as he was under indictment for tax evasion. Cohen's talk was unserious and concluded with "My parting advice to you guys is, 'Pay your taxes'". Belli told the press that "Ruby is an intense, emotional man. Talking to him, the hair rose on the hackles of my neck. I felt horror, revulsion, sadness". Ruby was uncomfortable with Belli's defense strategy, which included Ruby not testifying at all during the trial. Ruby said he would have liked to testify but that "Mr. Belli knows better, I guess". This defense failed and Ruby was convicted of "murder with malice", receiving a death sentence. When the verdict was read out Belli said to Ruby "Don't worry, Jack, we'll appeal this to a court outside Dallas". However Belli was fired by Ruby and his family before he could do so. In 1964 he published a memoir of the trial, co-written with Maurice C. Carroll, entitled Dallas Justice: The Real Story of Jack Ruby and His Trial. In October 1964 he debated Mark Lane, who disputed that Oswald alone killed Kennedy, at the Manhattan Center.

In 1969 a man called San Francisco police, identifying himself as the serial killer known only as The Zodiac, and agreed to call talk show host Jim Dunbar on Dunbar's morning television talk show A.M. San Francisco if either Belli or attorney F. Lee Bailey were present on air. The police contacted Belli and Dunbar to arrange this in the hopes of capturing the individual. As promised, the suspect called, spoke a few words, and then hung up, repeating this activity 54 times over the next two hours. Belli received a letter from the Zodiac that same year.

In 1971 he represented the infamous mob lawyer Frank Ragano in his libel suit against Time magazine; Belli lost the case. Time had published an article labelling Ragano as a "top Cosa Nostra hoodlum" after he attended a dinner in the wake of the La Stella Restaurant meeting in 1966.

Belli's firm filed for bankruptcy protection in December 1995. Belli was representing 800 women in a class action lawsuit against breast implant manufacturer Dow Corning. Belli won the lawsuit, but when Dow Corning declared bankruptcy, Belli had no way to recover the $5 million his firm had advanced to doctors and expert witnesses.

In media Belli was the executive producer of Tokyo File 212 (1951), Hollywood's first film to be shot entirely in Japan. It featured Florence Marly and Robert Peyton in key roles.

Belli enjoyed his frequent television and movie appearances; in 1965, he told Alex Haley, interviewing him for Playboy, that he "might have been an actor" if he had not become an attorney.

Belli appeared in "And the Children Shall Lead", a 1968 episode of the original Star Trek series. In it he appears as "Gorgan, the Friendly Angel", an evil being who corrupts a group of children, one of whom was played by his son Caesar. In April 1968 he appeared in a CBS news special, The Trial Lawyer, alongside his fellow lawyers Percy Foreman, F. Lee Bailey, and Edward Bennett Williams, where they discussed the merits and demerits of trial by jury.

He appeared in the Albert and David Maysles documentary Gimme Shelter (1970), which featured his representation and facilitation of The Rolling Stones' staging of the disastrous December 6, 1969, Altamont Free Concert.

Belli made an attempt to net the role of Vito Corleone in Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather (1972), with the part ultimately going to Marlon Brando. In October 1973 he made an appearance on The Dick Cavett Show with Jimmy Hoffa and Charles Ashman.

In 1986 he played a criminal defense lawyer in an episode of the TV series Hunter titled "True Confessions". He was interviewed for the 1988 Jack Anderson documentary American Expose: Who Killed JFK?.

Belli was played by Brian Cox in the 2007 film Zodiac in the scene that depicted Belli's conversation with the Zodiac suspect on A.M. San Francisco.

Personal life Belli was married six times and divorced five. His marriage to his fifth wife, the former Lia Georgia Triff, ended with a scandalous and acrimonious divorce proceeding in 1991. Belli accused his ex-wife of having an affair with archbishop Desmond Tutu and of throwing one of his dogs off the Golden Gate Bridge. He was fined $1,000 for repeatedly calling her "El Trampo". At one point, Belli was ejected from the courtroom after accusing the judge of sleeping with his former wife's lawyer. He was ultimately compelled to pay her an estimated $15 million. She later married Prince Paul of Romania. Belli married his sixth wife, Nancy Ho, on March 29, 1996.

Death Belli died of complications from pancreatic cancer at his home in San Francisco on July 9, 1996, aged 88. At the time of his death, he had three sons, three daughters, twelve grandchildren, and two dogs. He is buried in Odd Fellows Cemetery in Sonora, California, his birthplace. He is remembered as one of the "most famous lawyers in America."