ENTERPRISE
From the May 27, 2005 print edition
Pacific Business News
William Copulos has won a million-dollar verdict for a client, survived a Marine Corps boot camp and even stepped into a boxing ring with New York City's toughest fighters.
For the past few years, the founder of the Copulos Law Firm, LLLC has taken on a different but no less daunting task: battling the perception that too many entrepreneurial personal-injury attorneys are finding illegitimate ways to earn money.
"My challenge is the perception that personal-injury lawyers are ambulance-chasing shysters," Copulos said. "That seems to be the growing mind-set. But I help people who have been injured -- or to one degree or another had something bad happen to them -- and need a champion."
That means he demands big dollars for them from the get-go, refuses to back down and prepares aggressively for trial.
His next big target: the Tripler Army Medical Center, against which he filed a medical malpractice lawsuit in federal court on May 9.
Copulos is seeking $70 million in damages for client Vincent A. Adams, who in an 11-page complaint blames the military hospital for his 20-year-old wife's death after the birth of their first child in December 2002.
That comes as hospitals and business lobbyists have attracted national attention to such lawsuits in calling for tort reform -- revision of the laws governing personal injuries.
They are pushing for new federal laws that would cap medical malpractice damages at $250,000 for pain-and-suffering recoveries. Business lobbyists say reforms would help to lower the price of cars and keep obstetricians from abandoning their practices, among other effects.
Trial lawyers counter that this would shortchange the most severely injured malpractice victims.
The threat to personal injury lawsuits of tort reform has made it an important battleground for plaintiff attorneys like Copulos. Their challenge lies in trying to achieve good results for clients while dealing with the perception that an unacceptably high percentage of others in their line of work are stretching the rules.
"Trial lawyers are the scapegoats in society for all that's wrong," Copulos said. "People fail to realize that we're small-business people who give to charity and coach Little League baseball. But right now, there is a concerted effort to make us the bad guys."
How is he fighting back?
His strategy reflects two cardinal points of his long-held management philosophy. First, be a "straight-shooting, honorable guy" who returns phone calls and gives clients all the time they need. Then be honest with judges and his opponents.
The son of Greek immigrants, the 47-year-old Copulos grew up in the streets of New York City, where he was one of the last 16 boxers standing in a citywide Golden Gloves competition that started with 156 fighters.
After he graduated from the City University of New York, he became an infantry officer in the U.S. Marine Corps. He then went on to graduate from the University of Oregon School of Law in 1986. In Hawaii, Copulos worked for two law firms as a personal-injury attorney until 1998, when he started his own practice.
In seven years, the practice has grown from 25 clients to more than 100 today.
But as he tries to move his practice beyond its best year in 2004, it seems there is no escape from the misperception that his battles on behalf of aggrieved clients have everything to do with money.
"The stress from that perception is a couple of notches down from climbing into a ring, getting ready for a trial or preparing for combat in the Marines," Copulos said. "It is an ongoing fight that makes it different and more sustained. But my interest in representing people who have suffered significant personal injuries as a result of another person's negligence springs from a childhood experience. My personal experience grew into an interest in helping other accident victims obtain just compensation."
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