Larsen sued Kerr in January 1992. At first Kerr tried to fight the suit, claiming that the kind of action Larsen filed required expert testimony from other lawyers. Larsen and Hancock took that battle all the way to the Colorado Supreme Court and won. A judge ruled in June 1995 that a layperson could decide whether Kerr should have told Larsen about the jury foreman's comments.
The case went to trial in Boulder in August 1996. That suit revealed some details of Larsen's original suit against the dentist. Kerr brought out several lawyers to say that everything he did--and didn't do--was kosher. Kerr himself testified that Larsen's mental state played a role in why he didn't tell her about the big number.
"They were able to bring in all this stuff about her mental state," Hancock says. "It was disgusting the way they attacked her."
For instance, Larsen was labeled as being obsessive. "Every client is obsessive when it comes to their own case," Hancock says. Kerr himself testified about conversations he had had with Larsen's therapist in preparation for her case against the dentist, saying that Larsen's therapist described her as "flaky" and as having "socialization difficulties." Speaking of Larsen's therapist, Kerr testified: "He said the best thing in the world for Paula would be regular therapy and to stop thinking about litigation." Kerr also testified that the dentist's lawyer "was going to try to show that Paula was what we call a vexatious litigator, someone who files a number of lawsuits and is obsessed with the idea of litigation."
As to the supposed sympathy of the jury, Kerr argued that the figure of a half-million dollars was unreasonable, would never have been agreed on by an entire jury and would have been thrown out by a judge even if a jury did agree to it. Kerr had mentioned the large sum in a letter to the dentist's lawyer but didn't tell Larsen about it. He explained during his own trial that bringing up the large number was just a negotiating tactic to get the dentist to settle for something more than the $1,500 he had originally offered.
"From the time I first took the case on," Kerr said during his trial, "it was--the details were novel and interesting. I put my heart into this case, and I did everything I could, under sometimes difficult circumstances, to communicate as well as possible with her and to assist her decision-making."
The jury agreed with Kerr, even issuing a statement saying that "the evidence shows conclusively that [Kerr] discharged his professional responsibility with the highest care and acted with the utmost good faith and loyalty for the benefit of his client. We therefore regret that [Larsen] would not or could not reach the same conclusion."
"As far as I'm concerned," says Kerr's lawyer, Steve Hopkins, "that's a slam dunk. Paula needs to get a life."
This is life, though, for Larsen, who has taken the jury's decision to the Colorado Court of Appeals. "The way they're acting, I think they are worried about it," Larsen says of Kerr and his lawyers, although she knows the chance that the verdict will be overturned is slim. "All I've got is hope."
In the Pulitzer Prize-winning book Gideon's Trumpet, author Anthony Lewis offered this insight about Clarence Gideon:
"As prisoners often do, Gideon complained of so many raw deals that it was hard to separate fact from feelings of persecution. He spoke of harsh sentences some of his fellow inmates had been given and of inequities in Florida law. At times his wanderings into legalism grew incoherent, and he had to be steered back to the point."
Sometimes, Paula Larsen, while not incoherent, also strays from her original points. She's good at connecting the dots--whether the dots mean anything or not.
Here's an example: "I just think this is really interesting," she says, "that William Gray--who was the one who they paid to be the expert witness to say that Baine Kerr was such a great guy and did such a good job representing me--is now working for John and Patsy Ramsey and was on the Web page for them and is doing all this other work for them."
Interesting? Maybe. But when steered back to the fundamentals of her current case, Larsen says she knows exactly what she wants. "I think lawyers should be sent a message," Larsen says, "that they should always have to tell the truth to their clients."
And looking back over all her legal battles, she says it is probably true that she is a bit ornery. "If you keep closing doors in my face," she says, "I'm just going to push that much harder to open them up.
