James R. Moriarty (born September 10, 1946) is an American lawyer noted for mass torts against major corporations, including Tenet Healthcare Corporation, Shell Chemicals, DuPont, and Prudential Securities. His legal cases have been described in the books Serpent on the Rock by Kurt Eichenwald, Money-Driven Medicine: The Real Reason Health Care Costs So Much by Maggie Mahar, and Coronary by Stephen Klaidman. Moriarty is a former Marine and Gold Star father.
Early life
Moriarty was born on September 10, 1946, in Schenectady, New York, shortly after his twin brother Robert James Moriarty, who was born the previous day. He dropped out of high school in January 1965 to enlist in the United States Marine Corps.
Military experience Vietnam combat Marine Moriarty completed Marine Corps Recruit Depot (MCRD) San Diego with Platoon 212 in May 1965, received meritorious promotion to private first class. He then attended multiple "A" schools at Naval Air Technical Training Command Memphis, receiving meritorious promotion to lance corporal.
He was offered his choice of assignment and served three tours in the Vietnam War. He was awarded two single-mission Air Medals for heroic achievement while serving as a door gunner in a Marine Observation Squadron 2 helicopter gunship squadron located at Marble Mountain in South Vietnam. He was released from active duty as a sergeant in January 1969.
Advocate for veterans
Operation Tailwind On June 7, 1998, CNN broadcast a story titled "Valley of Death" that purported to offer new, alarming information about a Vietnam War mission called Operation Tailwind. According to the story, U.S. Special Forces advanced into Laos to kill American defectors, dropping sarin nerve gas and killing women and children. A print version of the story appeared in Time magazine, CNN's news partner in the program, called NewsStand.
The story was proven to be false, and on July 2, 1998, the network retracted it in full, issuing a 54-page retraction.
An investigation into how the report was allowed to be broadcast concluded that reporters relied too much on information that supported their thesis, failing to properly weigh contrary information.The CNN broadcast was not fair. Information that was inconsistent with the underlying conclusions reached by CNN was ignored or minimized. ...
Statements of sources that were vague, ambiguous or qualified were relied upon as if they were clear, focused and unambiguous.Moriarty represented three of the veterans who had been defamed, underwriting a documentary to tell the story of Tailwind from their point of view and shine a light on the irresponsible actions of the CNN journalists.
One veteran recounted turning on the TV with interest after CNN promoted a new program called NewsStand, then realizing the story was about him and his fellow soldiers.
"The more I watched it, the worse it got. There was nothing in that entire broadcast that was true," Army veteran Keith Plancich said.
As the veterans explain, they were sent into Laos to cause a diversion and draw the North Vietnamese away from a group of CIA mercenaries.
The team "escaped with the largest cache of enemy intelligence documents ever recovered in the war, and only three of their 156 soldiers killed," according to a summary of the documentary.
Medal of Honor recipient Gary M. Rose
Moriarty advocated for retired Army Capt. Gary M. Rose to receive the Medal of Honor decades after his name had originally been submitted. Capt. Rose was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross in 1971 for saving lives over four days despite being wounded himself during a Vietnam War mission called Operation Tailwind.
As recounted in the New York Times:By the fourth day, when helicopters came to extract the team, enemy troops were so close that American planes dropped tear gas on their own men to drive the enemy back. Sergeant Rose was one of the last on the last helicopter, firing as he hobbled aboard.
When they lifted clear of the trees, he slumped to the floor of the helicopter, his marathon mission complete. Then a bullet pierced the neck of a door gunner, and the medic was up again. Out of bandages, he stopped the bleeding with a spare piece of cloth. As he worked, enemy fire hit the engines. The crippled aircraft crashed on a riverbank, spitting out men as it rolled.
Sergeant Rose, bleeding from his head, crawled into the wreckage.Moriarty for years advocated for Capt. Rose's Medal of Honor packet to be reconsidered. Special legislation was required due to the amount of time that had passed since Rose's service. Rose received the nation's highest combat award in 2017.
U.S. Army Col. Paris D. Davis Moriarty and other volunteers joined U.S. Army Col. Paris D. Davis as he was awarded the Medal of Honor by President Joe Biden at the White House on March 3, 2023. The recognition capped a years-long campaign by the volunteer team in support of Davis's nomination, which had languished since 1969.
"This year, we celebrate the 75th anniversary of our first fully integrated armed forces," President Biden told ceremony guests. "And the name 'Paris Davis' will still stand alongside the nation's pioneering heroes."
Col. Davis was one of the first African-Americans to serve as an officer in the Special Forces. Davis retired from the Special Forces in 1985.
"Everybody I've talked to that served under him says that he's the best officer they've ever served under," Neil Thorne, a volunteer advocate on the team with Moriarty, told CBS News in April 2021.
Then-Capt. Davis distinguished himself 17–18 June 1965 in action against the Viet Cong around Bong Son, Binh Dinh Province, Republic of Vietnam. Davis was left "the last American standing with a ragtag company of 90 South Vietnamese volunteers," according to a New York Times report on the renewed interest in Davis' nomination:Certain that he was as good as dead, [Davis] began fighting without fear of consequence, pulling his M-16 trigger with his pinkie, sprinting repeatedly into open ground to rescue teammates, and refusing to leave the fight, ever after being shot several times.Davis' team "clobbered the Viet Cong," according to Maj. Billy Cole, who submitted the original nomination packet in July 1965. Inexplicably, the packet was lost by the Army. "You just don't see a Medal of Honor packet get lost … it's a big deal. It got trashed," Thorne told Task and Purpose in February 2023.An official Army inquiry in 1969 deemed that the nomination had indeed been lost or destroyed and that a new one was needed. However, Thorne found no evidence that a new one was submitted.
Purple Hearts for soldiers at Al Asad Moriarty and partners pressed the government to award soldiers injured in a 2020 ballistic missile attack on an Iraqi air base with Purple Hearts. The U.S. government initially failed to recognize all the soldiers with traumatic brain injuries, applying instead a standard that one had to be medically evacuated to qualify, soldiers who survived the attack told CBS News.
The attack by Iran on the Al Asad Airbase was in retaliation for a U.S. strike that killed the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Quds Force, which the U.S. government designates a terrorist organization. Following the attack, the U.S. government took a posture of downplaying the significance of the attack as well as the soldiers' injuries. The soldiers suffered headaches, vision and hearing problems, sleep loss, cognitive problems, balance issues and post-traumatic stress disorder. Many of them were deemed unfit for duty because of their injuries.
A CBS News investigation more than a year after the attack found "dozens of soldiers injured in the attack who have not been recognized with the Purple Heart and who have been denied the medical benefits that come with it, despite appearing to qualify."
The media and advocacy push led to an additional 50 soldiers from the D/82nd Aviation Regiment being recognized with Purple Hearts, which are not only an acknowledgement of the men and women's sacrifice but also help on a practical level, to facilitate necessary medical care for their service-connected injuries and access higher priority for other benefits like home loans and college tuition assistance.
Volunteer service Moriarty served on the board of directors of the United States Marine Corps Combat Helicopter Association from 1998 to 2008 and published that organization's quarterly magazine, Popasmoke. (This is a reference to the phrase "pop a smoke," used by Marines who served in the Vietnam War. Helicopter crews asked ground crews to pop a smoke grenade so they could locate them and find a landing zone.)
Moriarty received the association's Arnold W. Barden Award for advancing the reputation of the association for his air show work as well as his contribution as publisher of Popasmoke.
He served on the board of directors of the Marine Corps Heritage Foundation, the group that founded the National Museum of the Marine Corps in Virginia.
He was the president of the Skyhawk Association from 1998 to 2000.
Education
He earned Bachelor of Business Administration and Juris Doctor degrees from the University of Houston. He was admitted to the State Bar of Texas in 1976 and the Colorado Bar Association in 2006.
Career
Moriarty founded Moriarty & Associates in 1986.
Moriarty and partners have obtained billions of dollars in awards for clients over a career spanning four decades. Moriarty is an expert in mass torts, a type of case in which many similar cases are grouped together but each case is weighed on its own merits. (This is not to be confused with class actions, which also involve many claimants but typically result in smaller awards for the plaintiffs.)
Moriarty's work has targeted makers of faulty medical devices, peddlers of shoddy investments, and medical providers that exploit Medicaid patients.
Moriarty served as special assistant to the former mayor of Houston, Bill White, throughout White's term in office. Among other duties, Moriarty assisted the city's attorneys on a pro bono basis, on one occasion helping the city enforce billboard laws designed to avoid "visual blight" in the city of Houston. White and Moriarty met while raising money for Bill Clinton's 1992 presidential campaign.
Son's death
Moriarty's son, U.S. Army Staff Sgt. James F. Moriarty, was killed on November 4, 2016, while on a CIA training mission in Jordan for the 5th Special Forces Group at Fort Campbell, Ky. Moriarty and three other Green Berets were entering the King Faisal Air Base when they came under fire from a Jordanian soldier at the gate to the base. Killed in the ambush were Moriarty, 27; Sgt. 1st Class Matthew C. Lewellen, 27, of Kirksville, Mo., and Staff Sgt. Kevin J. McEnroe, 30, of Tucson, Ariz.
Initially, the Jordanian government blamed the Green Berets for the incident, saying that an American soldier driving one of the vehicles ignored demands to stop, prompting "an exchange of gunfire." The Jordanian government called the shooting a "chain of unfortunate events." Further details on the incident were scant.
Moriarty publicly criticized that explanation and said government officials had failed to tell the truth to the grieving families and the U.S. government. Moriarty told CBS News: "The Jordanian government lied to our government… They know what happened, they know who this guy is. … They owe us an explanation. Who was it that murdered my son and why?"
By late November, an investigation and surveillance video showed that the Americans "were shot without provocation" and had not violated security procedures at the gate, as Jordanian officials had suggested.
Investigators said they were unsure what had prompted the guard to attack the Americans, having found no links to jihad or terrorist groups.