(2 of 2)
The jury award caught the attention of obstetricians everywhere. It and similar cases have contributed to the increased use of caesareans when a fetal-heart monitor indicates even minor signs of trouble. Today more than one-quarter of U.S. births are by C-section (up from 5% in 1970), though fear of malpractice suits is just one factor in the trend. Meanwhile, medical research has been challenging the conventional wisdom that birth trauma was the principal culprit in cerebral palsy. "There seems to be no scientific question that most of that injury [cerebral palsy] occurs prenatally and is not related to the delivery," says Dr. H. David Bruton, whose partner was a defendant in a lawsuit argued by Edwards and who later served as North Carolina's secretary of health and human services.
As a Senator, Edwards has voted against most tort-reform legislation, bills that would put limits on the right to sue or impose caps on jury awards. And--no surprise--lawyers provided the lion's share of Edwards' presidential-primary-campaign funds. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, of the $14.5 million he raised, $9.3 million came from lawyers or law firms. That is something Bush might have turned into a campaign issue--if the President hadn't got slightly more from them himself ($9.4 million).
Even lawyers who have faced off against Edwards tend to speak of him in warm terms. "With Johnny, he was never not good to his word. I wish I could say that about all the lawyers I've faced," says Raleigh attorney Alan Duncan.
In light of Edwards' success as a lawyer, some of the people most bitterly opposed to his legal career are wishing him well in politics. "The best thing about him running," says Robert Seligson, head of the North Carolina Medical Society, "is it keeps him out of the courtroom."
--By Richard Lacayo. Reported by Paul Cuadros/Chapel Hill, Mitch Frank/Raleigh and Viveca Novak and Elaine Shannon/Washington