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500Lawdragon Q & A with:ed mossAlthough Ed Moss admits he misses representingplaintiffs (he was good at it), a whole slew ofcorporations are happy he made the switch to defensesidework permanent. He stands as a titan in the areaof products liability and other complex commercialcases nationally, and is easily one of the most admiredlitigators in the state of Florida, where he has practicedhis entire career.The Shook Hardy & Bacon partner has emerged as apopular figure while representing some pretty unpopularclients. Perhaps most famously, Moss has defendedBrown & Williamson in major tobacco litigation, includingthe class action brought by flight attendants oversecond-hand smoke, which went through months oftrial before ending in a landmark settlement. Other clientshave included Texaco, Hartford Insurance, Boeing,Westinghouse, Home Depot and American HomeProducts, among many others.LAWDRAGon: You did well with plaintiffs’-side work.How did you come to move to defending cases?ED MOSS: We were quite successful [at the plaintiffs’firm], we had a very vigorous practice with some veryimpressive results. When I decided to leave and startwhat became Anderson & Moss, our goal was to fill aniche. We knew that, at that time, there were not anabundance of lawyers in South Florida who had realtrial experience and who really tried complex commercialcases. Senior partners at large firms were responsiblefor those types of cases and clients, and Miami-Dade County was not heavy on that type of trial lawyer.We thought that this could be a void we could fill, andit worked. Anderson & Moss began with a fair numberof plaintiffs’ cases and it continued that way for awhile, but the plaintiffs’ cases kind of dropped off.More and more clients called on us to defend casesand other personal injury and complex commercialmatters. By the time we merged into Shook Hardy, weweren’t doing any plaintiffs’ work to speak of.LD: Do you miss the plaintiffs’ practice?EM: To this day, there are some things about plaintiffs’work that, if you’ve done it and done it reasonably well,there has to be something wrong with you if you don’tmiss it. A lot of the practice involves getting good resultsor verdicts for some very nice people – that part of it,sure, I miss. But I’ve become known as a defense lawyer,and there’s nothing wrong with that. I enjoy what I do.LD: What’s different about trial work now? What haveyou noticed changing over the years?By john rYanEM: Jurors are much better informed than when Ibegan. The amount of publicly available informationand the manner and means by which people arebecoming informed are much different. When you walkinto a courtroom and represent a chemical or oil company,or a tobacco company, jurors unquestionablyarrive with some pretty strong opinions. Hopefullythose opinions are not fixed, but sometimes they are.Over time that’s become a much more difficult situation.You must deal with it upfront, in voir dire. Youcan’t go in there with your head in the sand; you haveto face it head on. Except for some pure commercialcases, most of the cases that I now handle involveserious claims of personal injury, or are class actionsor mass torts.LD: What is a key ingredient to defending clients thatmay be unpopular, when the plaintiffs’ experience willalmost surely be grounds for some sympathy?EM: Well, first of all, you need the ability to talk andreason with people. With jurors, your task as a lawyeris for them to at least be impressed that you are someonewho will give us a straight story. You’re talkingabout a feeling of trust. That is an essential elementthat some lawyers can engender, and others do not. Ifyou can’t command that type of reaction from jurors,then this is not the profession you ought to be in; atleast, you shouldn’t be trying cases.LD: What do you think is the toughest or most challengingcase of your career?EM: My very toughest case I can’t talk about, becausethe client would not appreciate it. But another memorableone was years ago, when I was hired to becomeone of the lead counsel in defending the 1986 SanJuan Dupont Plaza fire. There were 108 deaths andhundreds of horrible injuries. The case was tried infederal court in San Juan, Puerto Rico. The trial wenton pretty much for a year and was interrupted by ahuge hurricane – Hugo. For those of us who stayedthe course in San Juan, the amazing thing was thatthe jurors never missed a day. When they were supposedto come back after the hurricane, they cameback. That is a monumental case in my memory,spending two-and-a-half years in San Juan – a yearand a half in San Juan preparing and another year tryingthe case. To say that the hotel was grossly underinsureddoesn’t capture it – it had only a million dollarsin coverage.See the full Q&A at www.lawdragon.com/lawyer-limelights/ed-moss.L A W D R A G O N 120 I s s u e 13 Photo by: Josh Ritchie