Flacks

FlacksEarly in 1985, a stocky public-relations man in his middle years named John Scanlon, a vice-president of the firm of Daniel J. Edelman, began what he came to call his Believe It or Not file. From newspapers across the country, he clipped every story he could find of outrageous claims in personal-injury cases. There was the bishop in Florida who injured his knee while playing on a U.S. Navy tennis court and sued the Government on the grounds that he had trouble genuflecting. There was the w...