JR

THE RAINMAKER
3/18/2016

Introduction
A rainmaker is someone who makes money rain down from the sky. It is also what Deck Shifflet tells Rudy
Baylor they will soon be. This is hard to believe with Rudy being an inexperienced lawyer and Deck being a
paralegal who has failed the bar exam 6 times, but they somehow make a miracle happen with the case of
Dot and Buddy Black. The Rainmaker is a story about money, ethics, law, and a little romance too.

Type of Case
For Rudy and Decks first case, they file a bad faith lawsuit for Dot and Buddy Black, whose son is dying
from leukemia and could have been saved with a bone marrow transplant had their insurance company not
repeatedly denied their insurance claim. A bad faith lawsuit is a civil court case involving an insurance
company which has violated their duty to have good faith and fair dealings with their insured.

Parties
The Black familys insurance company, Great Benefit, was being represented as the defendant by a
powerhouse law firm headed by the effective but unscrupulous man Leo F. Drummond. The Black family
was being represented as the plaintiff by Rudy, who had never before argued a case in front a judge or jury.

Damages
Rudy is looking to get several millions dollars out of Great Benefit, the Blacks insurance company. He
believes that if they had rightfully paid for Donny Ray Blacks bone marrow transplant he could have been
saved from the leukemia.

Trial Proceedings
The first step in any civil trial is the selection of the jury. In The Rainmaker, the trial was selected
completely by the standards of the American Bar Association. Even though this was the case, it was not
what Leo Drummond believed because he was listening in on Rudys phone calls and Rudy made it seem
like he had tampered with the jury. The opening statement in the trial was about what the case was, the
Black family vs. Great Benefit because of their denial of the Black familys insurance claim. Next were the
witnesses, these included Dot Black and the CEO of Great Benefit. The closing argument was a video from
Donny Ray Black on his deathbed saying he would have been saved by a bone marrow transplant.
Instructions to the jury were to find their verdict based on what they thought was right. The verdict was
$150,000 in compensatory damages and $50 million in punitive damages.

Ethical and Legal Issues

Ethical issues in the film were the things Rudy Baylor and Leo Drummond did under the law to try and help
win the case. Leo Drummond was tapping Rudy Baylors phone calls and Rudy Baylor was taking
advantage of it by making it seem as if he tampered with the jury. Legal issues in the case were if Great
Benefit owed the Black family money because of the insurance claim they denied. Besides the main case of
the film, there was also ethical and legal issues with Kelly Riker and her abusive husband. Rudy Baylor and
Kellys husband got into a fight and Rudy incapacitated her husband. Kelly then kills her husband and gets
off on self-defense. An ethical issue was whether it was right to kill him and a legal issue was if it was selfdefense.

Precedent?
The case of Black v. Great Benefit probably will set a precedent for future bad faith lawsuits involving
insurance companies. The case was one of the first of its kind. After the Black v. Great Benefit case, many
other people who felt they had been cheated by the insurance company also filed lawsuits. These cases will
probably be looked at and compared to Black v. Great Benefit.

Conclusion
Rudy Baylors first, largest, and last case had the odds against him with him being up against much more
experienced lawyers. Even with that fact, he managed to win a verdict of more than 50 million in damages
and bankrupt Great Benefit. This verdict seems completely fair when you think about how it was standard
procedure at Great Benefit to deny insurance claims until the insured gave up. The punitive damages were
so that other insurance companies could look at the case and be discouraged from doing the same thing and
losing the same amount of money. Even though Rudy Baylor, Deck Shifflet, and the Black family did not
gain any money from the lawsuit, they still got the fair verdict of Great Benefit being bankrupted and never
being able to cheat other people out of their money again.

Bibliography
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"The Rainmaker (1997 Film)." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, n.d. Web. 17 Mar. 2016.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rainmaker_(1997_film)

Adamson, John E. "Civil Procedure." Law for Business and Personal Use. Mason, OH:
Thomson/South-Western, 2006. 94-95. Print.