Bestseller Revisited

MY LIFE IN COURT (524 pp.)--Louis Nizer--Doubleday ($5.95).

Nudist. War profiteer. Absentee war correspondent. Liar. Fourflusher. Sycophant. Coat holder.

On Dec. 12, 1949 terrible-tempered Columnist Westbrook Pegler fired off these charges against his onetime friend Author-Journalist Quentin Reynolds, in a tirade printed in 186 newspapers read by 12 million people. Reynolds retained Manhattan Attorney Louis Nizer to press charges for libel. Five years later, the case finally came to trial. Nizer forced Pegler to admit that he had once written that "it was all right to create fiction about a real person, because if you do it several years after it happens, nobody will know the difference anyhow." During the pretrial examinations, he read Pegler passages from unnamed authors. "Communist line!" roared Pegler. Nizer revealed at the trial that the excerpts were vintage Pegler. After a twelve-hour deliberation, the jury finally awarded Reynolds a settlement of $175,001.

How to Discomfort. The Reynolds verdict is only one of the legal triumphs savored by Author Nizer in My Life in Court. A sort of East Coast version of the late Jerry Giesler (TIME, Jan. 12), Nizer won a whopping settlement for Eleanor Holm in her divorce action against Billy Rose, represented Bobo Rockefeller when she divorced Winthrop Rockefeller, proved that Charlie Chaplin had plagiarized the idea for The Great Dictator from Author Konrad Bercovici, masterminded Loew's, Incorporated's battle to prevent its takeover by deposed M-G-M Boss Louis B. Mayer.

Nizer has filled his book with courtroom strategy and insight. In a divorce case, a wife's plea for low alimony and a large property settlement generally means that she intends to remarry as soon as she gets her loot. Conversely, a demand for high alimony suggests that she has no immediate marriage prospects. Like the late Senator Joseph McCarthy, Nizer also favors waving a manila envelope full of "documents" to discomfort witnesses during crossexamination; the envelope is often empty. During direct examination of his client, he says, a good lawyer will stand at the far end of the jury box so that the jurymen can focus their attention on the witness without having their attention distracted or their view obstructed by counsel. But in cross-examination of a hostile witness, the lawyer will move close to the witness stand so the jury can closely watch every reaction in the duel between two adversaries. During crossexamination, the witness should be held under tight rein and not be given an opportunity to tender more than yes or no answers. It is the sign of a bad cross-examiner, says Nizer, if he must ask "Why?" or "Will you explain that?"

Side of Angels. For all the book's courtroom lore and legal pyrotechnics, it also has one theme that is something of a bore: Louis Nizer. Often he seems only an ego with a law degree. He reduces cases to a contest between good guys and bad guys --with Nizer invariably on the side of the angels.

Nizer's celebration of his own triumphs (his defeats go unrecorded) has been high on the bestseller lists for weeks running. Apparently, not even a colossal ego can make courtroom drama uninteresting. Though Nizer very nearly pulls off the trick, the material triumphs over the author.

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