They gathered on the 23rd floor of the Windsor Court Hotel last Thursday — dozens of them — posing for the instant camera that snapped their pictures for identification cards, then filing into a large banquet room filled with rows of tables and chairs. They were lawyers mostly, top litigators from across the country, and the meeting schedules in their hands read "Castano Class Action Tobacco Litigation."
A little after 5:30 p.m., Wendell Gauthier stepped to the lectern, apologized for the late start and moved briskly into the reports on case-management status and document depositories, on public affairs and public relations, on finance and science and other details of a huge lawsuit that seeks to represent the 50 million smokers in America.
At 51, Gauthier has a striking record of courtroom victories behind him, winning big judgments for victims of the Continental Grain elevator explosion in Westwego, the crash of Pan Am Flight 759 in Kenner, the hotel fires at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas and the DuPont Plaza in Puerto Rico, and, most recently, for women claiming injuries from silicone-gel breast implants.