Send the best
you’ve got,”
Herman says.
“I may not be
able to out-think
them, but I will
beat them to
death. I’m going
to out-prepare
and outwork
them.
strip. “And then we would listen to all
these radio shows in the kitchen: Green
Hornet, Superman, The Lone Ranger,”
Herman recalls. “All of these people
were fighting for good against bad. So
I wanted to be a knight of the Round
Table. Growing up, there was always this
idea that it was OK to do the things that
people say are impossible dreams. As
long as you are on the side of what you
believe is righteousness, then that’s a
powerful weapon.”
Herman graduated from Tulane University
Law School in 1966 and went to work for
his father’s law firm, where his starting
salary was $300 a month. One of his first
cases involved several historic properties
in the French Quarter that were damaged
during the construction of a new hotel.
“My dad and uncle told me I had to go
do it, that it was a great case and that
I’d learn a lot,” Herman says. “The best
lawyers in the city on construction law
defended the case for the contractors,
engineers and the owners. Lloyd’s of
London was the insurer. There were
great lawyers on my side. I ended up
being selected to try the case for nine
weeks by the other lawyers. I built a
model of the site and invented a form of
damage called ‘loss of antiquity.’ I said
these buildings could never be restored
as historical monuments because parts
of them would have to be replaced;
therefore, their antiquity value would
be diminished. It was successful, and
Lloyd’s came in and dumped a lot of
money on the table.”
Herman wasn’t daunted by his first taste
of the courtroom, and he still relishes
the battle.
“My view? Send the best you’ve got,” he
says. “I may not be able to out-think them,
but I will beat them to death. I’m going to
out-prepare and outwork them. I’m very
creative, but I play by the book. If you’re
motivated by success, doing what you think
is righteous, then you are unstoppable.”
“When you’re advocating against Russ,
you can be sure he will work at the highest
professional and ethical level,” says Irwin.
“If his opponents fail to rise to that level,
then they’re going to go down in flames.”
Part of being righteous is looking after
your employees. When Hurricane Katrina
hit New Orleans in 2005, Herman moved
every family affiliated with the firm out of
the city to offices in Atlanta, Houston and
Destin, Fla. “We moved everybody back
to New Orleans by December,” he says.
“They never lost a paycheck. They never
had to pay a moving expense. We lost one
employee because she fell in love with a
guy in Houston and married, but we were
happy for her.”
Herman stays busy, whether he’s teaching
communications skills to other attorneys,
writing articles, papers and books or
serving on various boards in the city.
Furthermore, his firm is special counsel to
the New Orleans City Council.
Herman is no stranger to taking on
giants. In 1993, he and his brother
Maury were tasked with battling tobacco
companies on behalf of Louisiana and
California. At the time their mother, a
longtime smoker, was dying.
“She was on a breathing machine and
her lungs were completely worn out,”
Herman says. “She was a brilliant
woman—a songwriter, composer and
teacher—and she could hardly talk. When
we told her that we were going after Big
Tobacco and no one had won and it was
a big expense, she said, ‘Go get those
bastards.’ I still think about my mother
and I still think about that day, and I
don’t think we could have won that case
if it hadn’t been for her.”
The case eventually resulted in a $268
billion settlement, and another class action
he pursued against Big Tobacco confirmed
a jury verdict in 2011 for $300 million,
including interest. Part of Herman’s
success in these cases, Irwin says, is his
ability to appeal to a jury’s humanity.
“I read his opening statement to the jury
in one of the tobacco cases,” Irwin says.
“In it, Russ tried to explain to the jury
how it would feel to have emphysema
after many years of smoking. He took a
thin coffee straw and breathed through
it, and then he passed more straws
around to the jury and asked them to
breathe through it too. Russ is the kind
of person who can manage to do that
