David T. Pearlman
There are many ways to measure a man.
You can measure a man as a friend.
I first met David Pearlman when we were both undergraduates attending different colleges in Washington, DC in 1971 and have counted him as a friend ever since. It was the summer after he’d journeyed to India and Nepal where he told me stories of how they smeared sacrificial animal blood on taxi cabs to ward off evil spirits. As strange and wonderful as his journey sounded, it would be nothing compared to the journey our friendship would take over the next 53 years.
Making friends is a trait David undoubtedly inherited from his father, Judge Gus Pearlman, who ran unopposed for what has to be the most contentious judicial office there is, Probate Judge. A lawyer friend once called to tell David he’d really hit it off with his father who’d gone out of his way to help resolve a particularly nasty probate dispute. David didn’t want to quash this lawyer’s belief he’d made a new judicial friend, but explained his father treated everybody who appeared before him like a friend. And David didn’t fall far from that tree. Treating everyone like a friend is why so many opposing lawyers would be among the first to join me in calling David a friend.
Injured Worker’s Advocates never had a better friend than David Pearlman who served as its chair and co-chair of the Legislative Affairs Committee through the organizations darkest days.
You can measure a man as a business partner. David recruited me to work at the Steinberg Law Firm in 1980. The firm’s founder, Irving Steinberg, helped draft South Carolina’ s very first Workers’ Compensation Act and already had an unrivaled tradition of protecting the rights of injured workers, but David would take that tradition to a whole new level.
I can’t tell you how many nights, after a long day working at the office, David would get into his car and drive to some far-flung corner of South Carolina to attend a political reception. Those of you who have been lucky enough to attend such receptions know doing so in and of itself constitutes service above and beyond the call of duty. But, while others begrudgingly wrote checks, often as a result of David’s pervasive arm twisting, David hand delivered those checks so he could become personal friends with the legislators. It was that personal touch making friends that would make all the difference in the world later the chips were down. And, the chips were down more often than I care to remember. Down so far injured workers were being counted OUT. But each time, David would rally the troops as our Legislative Chairperson to save the day.
It’s why David became a lawyer. He grew up in the 60’s, a time when our country was every bit as divided as it is today, through the worst of segregation, the assassinations of JFK, MLK, and RFK, the protests of the Vietnam War, but it was also the time of the birth of the civil rights movement, the environmental movement, equal rights for women, and men landing on the moon. David became a lawyer because he wanted to be an instrument for change. And he was.
He was what I describe as the Tom Sawyer of thwarting the so-called workers compensation reform movement. David gave those of us who joined with him the opportunity to do something important and worthwhile protecting and expanding the rights of injured workers and to have fun doing it. Like, the time when NCCI proposed an outrageous 34% workers’ comp insurance rate increase, to rile up employer’s as a precursor for yet another legislative push to gut the Worker’s Compensation Act. David cajoled Bill Smith and me into challenging the rate increase in the Administrative Law Court. Now I wouldn’t try and suggest a week long hearing before an ALJ is anybody’s idea of fun but it had its moments.
Not satisfied with simply asking for a 34% rate hike, the insurance companies wanted to cut claimant’s lawyers out of the system by regulating contingency fees. One day, after Bill finished forcing the double-talking actuarial experts to admit injured workers paying their own lawyers’ did not effect insurance rates one iota on cross examination, Bill and I were walking down the hall leading to the elevators when we overheard the silk stocking insurance lawyers fussing in loud voices that next time they should just leave the claimant’s lawyers out of it so they wouldn’t have to deal with riff-raft claimants’ lawyers like Bill and me. Let me say, thank you, David, for giving rift raft like us a good laugh while doing something good for injured workers at the same time.
And, that’s nothing. If you really want to have some fun, learn how to draft legislation because, when the insurance company lobbyists conjured up one draconian law after another to gut the system, Daivd came up with the brilliant strategy to turn that effort around on them by drafting our own wish list of amendments to present to the legislature. It felt like Christmas drafting amendments to give injured workers the right to choose their own doctors, expand coverage for mental-mental injuries for police officers, fireman, and first responders, and give injured workers the right to choose between a scheduled award or wage loss. While none of David’s amendments ever made it to the floor for a vote that was because the insurance lobby pulled their proposed bills rather than face votes on his amendments by those very same legislators David spent so much time befriending and supporting. David found that even the most conservative politicians can agree on the importance of giving injured workers a fair shake.
One of the most important fights David took on occurred after the legislative efforts failed and Governor Mark Sanford decided to gut the comp system by Executive Order. The unanimous rejection of the Governor’s executive order seeking to limit compensation awards to the stingy rating of the AMA Guide was David’s crowning achievement. Had David’s relentless efforts failed, I have no doubt the comp act as we know it would have been executive ordered right out of existence.
David’s modesty won’t allow, and I would be remiss, if I didn’t acknowledge it took the hard work of many members of this organization to defeat the repeated attacks on the workers’ compensation system. But, I can say all of us who volunteered to join with him in the struggle, all of us friends, lawyers, and members of this organization, would acknowledge it was David Pearlman who motivated, guided, and coordinated our efforts. It was his vision that saw us and the workers of South Carolina through those troubled times.
We can all thank David it has been years since the insurance lobby has come after worker’s compensation but we must be vigilant that the lull doesn’t turn into complacency. I promise you there’s an insurance company actuary right now calculating how many more millions of dollars can be made taking away the rights of working men and women.
It is perhaps hardest of all to measure a man as a lawyer. Monetary success is surely one measure by which David excelled. He wasn’t so much a rainmaker as he was one of those atmospheric rivers we hear about nowadays. But success would be the last measure David would want to be measured by. He is as proud of the fights he lost as those he won. When an unrepresented claimant whose skull was literally crushed by a bulldozer had his case for lifetime benefits and medical care closed on a grossly unfair clincher agreement, David wouldn’t let it stand unchallenged. It was a fight he wouldn’t win but David is proud to this day the Commission won’t approve clincher settlements in brain injury cases without a hearing to protect unrepresented claimants. When a police officer’s mental-mental injury was denied because a police officer seeing the two year old daughter run over and smashed like a watermelon by a police cruiser driven by her friend and fellow officer wasn’t unusual or extraordinary enough to be compensable, David wouldn’t let it stand unchallenged. When two trips to the Supreme Court failed to reverse the injustice, David didn’t give up and made progress seeking a legislative change restoring compensability to first responders for mental-mental injuries. But his work remains unfinished and more still needs to be done.
As a lawyer, David Pearlman, was what I call a lawyer’s lawyer. A lawyer other lawyers came to for help with their most difficult cases. David didn’t shy away from hard cases; he fought the hard cases to make it easier for all injured workers to receive just and fair compensation. There are no cases more difficult than toxic exposure cases. The latency period between the exposure and the injury and the expense of proving causation caused other lawyers to shy away. But not David. He took on the injured workers of the Lockheed plant in Charleston that made helicopter parts during the Vietnam War. The plant no longer existed requiring David to reconstruct the processes and exposures from records and employee testimony. He had all the surviving employees medically surveyed to document clusters of medical ilnesses. He put together a blue ribbon team of medical doctors, epidemiologists, and industrial hygienists to correlate the clusters to the employee’s exposures. And devised a bifurcated hearing procedure to deal first with liability on a global basis and then compensation on an individual basis.
The workers’ compensation act that was drafted by Irving Steinberg in 1936 did a good job of compensating broken bones and severed limbs, but David dedicated his legal career to making it easier for workers injured by repetitive trauma, toxic exposures, and PTSD in today’s modern workplace to receive just and fair compensation. Ordinary lawyers look backwards and apply precedent to decide cases. Great lawyers look forward and use the spirit of the law to address new challenges.
By any measure,
as a friend,
as a partner,
as a lawyer’s lawyer,
as a tireless crusader for the rights of injured workers,
David Pearlman earned the Lifetime Achievement Award presented to him. He would only ask that the giving of the award not just as a recognition of his achievements but also as encouragement to the future recipients to take David’s baton and run with it. To find satisfaction working with friends and fellow lawyers protecting and expanding the rights of injured workers. The fight David Pearlman fought for all the years it has been my privilege to call him
my friend,
my partner, and
my fellow lawyer.
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