TRIAL BY FIRE: The True Story of a Woman's Ordeal at the Hands of the Law

by Gerry Spence ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 16, 1986

More like the true confessions of Spence, one of the country's most controversial, and successful, trial lawyers. In 1981, Spence defended Kim Pring, a former Miss Wyoming who claimed she was libeled in a Penthouse story about a ""fictional"" Miss Wyoming. The book is a blow-by-blow account of the trial, which challenged not only Penthouse but also defense attorneys' traditional freedom to pry into the sexual life of female plaintiffs and writers' freedom to publish potentially damaging stories about real people thinly disguised. Ultimately, however, Pring is one of the least interesting characters in Spence's courtroom saga. The real battle is between the good guys and the bad guys: the degenerate East vs. the wholesome West, media moguls vs. the common man, legal sophistry vs. common sense--and, especially, Roy Grutman, Penthouse's Harvard-educated, highly articulate and impeccably tailored attorney, vs. Gerry Spence, self-proclaimed ""country lawyer"" who talks plain, shoots from the hip and comes to court in dusty cowboy boots and a ten-gallon hat. Spence takes on pornographers and ends up a feminist. Young trial lawyers and other students of courtroom dynamics can learn a lot from this attorney, who also fought the Karen Silkwood case against Kerr-McGee. Trial by Fire may be third-rate legal scholarship, but it is first-rate entertainment, in spite of Spence's tendency to go from gripping to gothic and gushy.

Pub Date: June 16, 1986

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Morrow

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1986

Categories: NONFICTION