“I NEVER LOOK AT MY FELLOW LAWYERS AS ENEMIES,”
SAYS ATCHISON. “THEY REPRESENT THEIR CLIENT;
I REPRESENT MINE. BUT WE’RE NOT THE ISSUE.”
Thanks to his wife Sheila’s employment
and his weekend job at UPI, in the
mid-1960s the young man was able to
attend Cumberland School of Law at the
Baptist-affiliated Samford University in
Birmingham. “I never had any interest in
criminal law,” Atchison says. “I really liked
the civil part of it best. Going to visit people
in jails and penitentiaries never really held
an interest for me.” He also gravitated
toward defense work, preferring “the
reaction rather than the action part.”
To earn extra money, Atchison clerked
for Abe Berkowitz, the “larger-than-life”
but short-statured founder of Berkowitz,
Lefkovits, Vann, Patrick & Smith, which
later merged with Baker Donelson. It
was there that Atchison learned the
importance of treating all clients and
attorneys with equal respect. “Mr. B
had a philosophy of never putting his
adversary in a position where he or she
couldn’t escape without keeping their
dignity,” Atchison recalls. “He always
made certain that everybody left the
room thinking that they had done a good
job for their client.”
By the time Atchison passed the bar
in 1968, legal jobs in Birmingham had
become incredibly scarce. The big firms,
Atchison asserts, turned their noses up at
Cumberland graduates, and the smaller
ones didn’t have enough work. To help his
protégé, Berkowitz secured for Atchison
an 18-month stint clerking for U.S. District
Judge Clarence Allgood.
Two years later, Atchison left the federal
building for the “loud, profane and chaotic”
offices of McDaniel, Hall & Parsons, which
he describes as “a combination of Animal
House and MAD magazine.”
“They had more cases to try than
anybody in the city,” he says. “You had
immediate work. You didn’t have to sit
writing briefs or doing motions to dismiss
for five years before you got in a courtroom.
You were immediately taking depositions,
attending trials and trying cases.”
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McDaniel attorney Ed Conerly started
mentoring Atchison, often picking him up
for a 4 a.m. work session and breakfast.
One day, when Conerly was sick and
unable to appear in court, Atchison filled
in. The plaintiff, an older woman who
sustained severe injuries when her former
son-in-law wrecked the car in which she’d
been riding, had sued for gross negligence.
“It was kind of a delicate thing for me to
cross-examine this nice, elderly lady,”
recalls Atchison. “I was scared to death.” At
the end of the four-day trial, however, he
snared his first defense verdict.
But there are always lessons for a
young attorney. Early in his career,
Atchison went head-to-head with a
disheveled-looking attorney in a small
nonjury case. “He looked like a hobo
disguised as a bum,” says Atchison. “He
was the worst-looking guy you’ve ever
seen. His socks were literally rolled down
on top of his shoes. And I thought, ‘Man,
I’m gonna go up there and just beat the
stew out of this hick lawyer.’ Well, he ate
my lunch. … I’ve never looked down my
nose at another lawyer since.”
Over the years, Atchison tackled more
personal injury cases, then branched into
products liability and medical malpractice.
In 1979 he joined the father-son firm of
Starnes & Starnes, which later became
Starnes & Atchison.
On July 10, 1991, Atchison was sitting at
his kitchen table, compiling the next day’s
closing argument, when he looked out
the window and saw an enormous black
cloud rolling in from the west. Flipping
on the television to check the weather
forecast, he spotted the news at the
bottom of the screen: L’Express Airlines
Flight 508 had crashed while attempting
to land at Birmingham Municipal Airport.
Only two of the 15 people on board—the
pilot and a lawyer—survived, and four
residents were injured when the plane
struck their Ensley neighborhood. It
was the deadliest commercial aviation
accident in Alabama history.
Atchison defended the airline and the
pilot, a retired Yonkers police officer, in
the subsequent litigation. After settling
the suits filed on behalf of the deceased
passengers, those involving the people
on the ground went to trial. “The jury
ruled against the airline but not the pilot,
and rendered a very, very reasonable
verdict—something that I’m sure the
insurance company would have paid long
before that if it had had the chance,”
Atchison says.
Atchison has certainly had his share of
several “bet-the-company” cases. In the
mid-1990s, when Ed Hardin was general
counsel at what is now CVS Caremark,
he called on Atchison’s expertise in a
securities case that was, says Hardin,
“very, very important to the future of the
company.” With Atchison’s help, the matter
was resolved. “If that case had not been
handled efficiently and timely, then the
company would not have been able to
meet its obligations in connection with
a large note that was coming due,” says
Hardin. “I’ve watched him work on a very
complex matter under time pressures. And
he passed every test with flying colors.”
After more than 30 years with Starnes
& Atchison, one of the original partners
left, and the job, says Atchison, “just
wasn’t the same for me.” In 2010 he joined
Burr & Forman.
Despite his legal victories, Atchison
stays down to earth. “I still get sick before
I have to try a case,” he admits. “You
don’t want to lose it, don’t want to let
your clients down, or your partners, or do
anything that would bring dishonor upon
anybody. I think when a lawyer quits being
nervous about what he’s doing, then it’s
time to hang it up.”
