GoKawiilThe trial lasted three weeks, but when the case went to the jury, on March 20th, deliberations took less than six hours. The jurors found Motta guilty of fraud, obstruction of justice, and witness tampering. According to someone who knows her, she had remained stubbornly, irrationally overconfident about her prospects, even as damning evidence against her accumulated by the day.
When Judge Vitter read the verdict, Motta started to shake and cry. The courtroom erupted. Motta’s mother shrieked and appeared to faint, collapsing on the ground. Motta hunched over and vomited into a trash can. “I have no reason whatsoever to believe that she is naïve, or under the influence of anyone else,” Vitter said, adding that, though Motta might not be charged in relation to Garrison’s murder, she had unquestionably “acquiesced in the death of a witness.” Vitter announced that Motta would be taken into custody immediately, rather than permitted to remain free until her sentencing. She could get up to twenty years in prison.
A car crash, the novelist J. G. Ballard once suggested, is “probably the most dramatic event in our lives apart from our own deaths.” After the murder of Garrison, his sister, Andrea Garrison-Robertson, reflected glumly, “When people love money, they do things.” It is tempting to wonder whether Motta’s conviction, and the murder trial this summer, might give rise to any sustained policy reform. For all the resources that the U.S. government devoted to Operation Sideswipe, the case is notable for the many implicated parties who have not been indicted. No doctors appear to be facing consequences. As Peter Strasser, the former U.S. Attorney, explained to me, it can be difficult to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that a clinician knew a procedure was medically unnecessary, even if the same surgeons repeatedly worked with the same nefarious lawyers, conducting gratuitous surgical procedures again and again. Jason Giles, the bent lawyer at the King Firm who worked with Garrison and with Damian Labeaud, was tried in the same proceeding as Motta, and was also convicted. The two other partners who founded the King Firm with Giles were implicated in trial testimony, suggesting that they were either aware of or active participants in fraudulent accident cases. But they have not been charged and are still licensed to practice law in Louisiana. (Neither responded to requests for comment.)
The prospect of serious tort reform in the state seems unlikely. Jeff Landry, Louisiana’s governor, has claimed that he wants to “rein in” the ubiquitous advertising of trial lawyers, but the state legislature, which is generously subsidized by the plaintiffs’ bar, has a history of stymieing such correctives, and more than one local attorney suggested to me that Landry’s comments are no more than lip service. By many measures, Louisiana now has the second-highest auto-insurance rates in the country, trailing only Florida. And the business of litigating accidents has become so lucrative that, earlier this year, one Baton Rouge personal-injury firm announced a novel partnership with a private-equity fund. It’s a queasy indication of what may lie ahead.
Not long ago, I drove out to Clay Street, in Kenner, which runs through a light-industrial stretch between the Mississippi River and a drainage canal. The sky was gray and the grass along the railroad track was overgrown. Alfortish sold the building at 525 Clay around the time the Feds started investigating him, and Motta Law has vacated the premises. But, when I approached the building, I saw that it was still home to law offices. Out front was a parked Jeep that had been decorated in garish camouflage and emblazoned with the grinning face of a man who went by Lawyer Don. It was a billboard on wheels. I wondered if Lawyer Don used the Jeep for his commute to work or if he kept something more sensible out back. “Personal Injury Response Vehicle,” a sign on the Jeep announced. “Don’t Take Any Bull from the Insurance Company!” ♦