The Man to Know if You’re in Big Trouble
from
July/August 2005
by Charlie Deitch
Dan Webb describes himself as an “action junkie.” Others describe him as defender of choice.
He is currently representing Philip Morris in the government’s $280 billion tobacco racketeering suit and defending former Illinois governor George Ryan against fraud charges. He was the head of General Electric’s successful defense team in the company’s 1994 trial on charges of fixing prices of industrial diamonds, and he represented Jack Welch, GE’s former chairman and CEO, in his divorce. Hired by the New York Stock Exchange and its chairman John Reed to investigate Richard Grasso’s compensation, Webb produced a 128-page report that blistered Grasso’s “excessive” pay and said it had “negatively affected” the exchange. That same report is now in the hands of Eliot Spitzer, who is seeking to recover some of the money Grasso collected.
When the going gets tough, the tough call Dan Webb. And he loves it.
“I like pressure. I work better under pressure,” says Webb, a partner at Chicago’s Winston & Strawn. “I got into law to be a litigator, to work in the courtroom; I don’t enjoy sitting around an office all day. The only thing in this world that scares me is boredom.”
There’s not much chance that Webb will get bored. He works as many as 3,000 hours a year, and has a talent for juggling cases without letting his preparation suffer. He’s always ready to go, says Susan Pipal, a Winston & Strawn litigation partner who worked with Webb in defending the drug combination fen-phen for Wyeth. That case was settled before a verdict for an undisclosed sum. “He can prepare and learn so much in a short amount of time that he can turn from one case that he’s been totally immersed in for months to a completely different matter without missing a step,” Pipal says. “There’s something really unique in that.”
His ferocious cross-examinations are one reason Webb has landed at the top of the short list of trial litigators that directors, corporate officials, and companies call when they find themselves in the hot seat. “Every time I’ve seen him cross a witness, he has pretty much killed them in the eyes of the judge, the jury, and anyone else in the room,” says Bruce R. Braun, another Winston & Strawn partner. Braun was co-counsel when Webb defended Microsoft against federal antitrust charges. Following direct testimony by Intel official Steve McGeady, a star witness for the plaintiffs, Webb went to work on cross-examination. The goal was to prove that McGeady had a personal grudge against Microsoft despite his denials.
According to media coverage of the trial, Webb didn’t let up until McGeady’s testimony was rendered useless. The highlight of the verbal joust came when Webb asked McGeady if he had ever compared Microsoft to the Donner Party, a group of 1800s settlers who turned to cannibalism when they were lost in the mountains. McGeady had. “Dan just destroyed the guy’s credibility,” Braun says.
Besides his trial work, Webb gets a lot of calls to head up internal investigations if, say, a corporate whistleblower alleges wrongdoing or a board fears that Enronesque shenanigans are going on. He hears from directors as well as chairmen like Reed. Says Webb: “There’s a lot more sensitivity at the director level not only to make sure that things are investigated properly, but to make sure they’re investigated by people who really know what they’re doing. The stakes today are too high.”
Webb, 59, grew up in rural central Illinois, the son of a mail carrier, and went to Western Illinois University. “One of my strengths as a trial lawyer is that I was raised in a small rural environment,” he has said. “Jurors seem to trust me; they don’t view me as a big-city sharpie lawyer.” The New York Times once described him as a man “who comes across far more like Ben Matlock than F. Lee Bailey. He includes on his résumé the fact that he graduated with honors from Bushnell-Prairies City High School in Bushnell, Illinois.”
But don’t confuse folksiness with weakness. As a member of the U.S. attorney’s office in the 1980s, Webb prosecuted national security adviser John M. Poindexter in the Iran-Contra scandal and interrogated President Reagan. “I’ve heard that although Dan treated Reagan with dignity, he pressed him very, very hard,” says Tyrone C. Fahner, chairman of the Chicago law firm Mayer Brown Rowe & Maw. “That’s the Dan I know.”
Adds Winston & Strawn’s Stephen Senderowitz, who has known Webb since they both worked in the U.S. attorney’s office: “Dan doesn’t have to tell someone he’s a great lawyer, because they learn quickly just how great he is.” Indeed, when the Washington, D.C., newsletter Corporate Crime Reporter did a 2003 poll of 600 defenders of alleged white-collar criminals to learn whom they ranked as the best people in their profession, the top pick was Dan Webb.
