Leo V. Boyle

Boston

Born: May 5, 1946, Providence, R.I.

Education: Boston College Law School, 1971; Harvard College, 1968

Massachusetts bar admission: 1971

Legal experience:Meehan, Boyle & Cohen, principal (1985-present); Parker, Coulter, Daley & White, associate and partner, (1971-1984)

Bar affiliations: Massachusetts, Boston, American and New England bar associations; Catholic Lawyers Guild; Massachusetts Academy of Trial Attorneys; Association of Trial Lawyers of America (president-elect)

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As a former president of the Massachusetts Bar Association and a name partner in one of the state's better-known litigation firms, Leo V. Boyle is no stranger to lawyers in the commonwealth. And he's certainly racked up his share of million-dollar verdicts and settlements over the years.

But Boyle, who is poised to take over as the next president of the American Trial Lawyers Association, earned some of the biggest headlines of his career in 2000 when he helped to negotiate a very public multi-million-dollar settlement with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology over the 1997 death of freshman Scott Krueger, who died of alcohol poisoning after a night of drinking at a fraternity pledge initiation.

MIT's agreement to pay $4.75 million to Boyle's clients, Krueger's parents, and to set aside another $1.25 million to establish a scholarship in the decedent's name was both large and unique. It even included a rare apology from the defendant, as MIT acknowledged lapses in its campus alcohol and housing policies.

The September settlement came about even though Boyle and his Meehan, Boyle & Cohen associate Bradley M. Henry never even filed a formal suit against MIT. And the big payout was all the more surprising because MIT's liability was arguably limited by the state's charitable immunity cap.

But Boyle says monetary damages were never a major concern.

"The amount of money never really seemed to be an issue," he says. "From my clients' standpoint, the amount of money was extremely secondary to getting an apology and an acknowledgment of fault by MIT."

Boyle notes that, from the time he first met the Kruegers when they came to Boston to take their son's body back to Buffalo, N.Y., they made it clear that they wanted to keep others from having to go through the same ordeal and to change the way MIT and other universities deal with alcohol on campus.

With the settlement against MIT in hand, the Kruegers are now pursuing the fraternities themselves. Boyle and co-counsel Henry recently filed suit on behalf of the Kruegers against the national and local chapters of Phi Gamma Delta, the fraternity in which the decedent was a pledge.

Given his role in representing the Kruegers and numerous other plaintiffs in a career that has lasted nearly three decades, it's no surprise that Boyle sees defending the tort system which he views as under attack from corporate and insurance interests as his primary challenge as the next ATLA president.

"The tort system allowed the Kruegers to be on an even playing field with MIT and the amount of the settlement will be seen by most universities as a reason to review their alcohol policies," Boyle says.

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Q. The charitable immunity cap, which limits a non-profit entity's tort liability to $20,000, would arguably have applied to MIT in this case. In light of that, why do you think MIT chose to settle the case for $6 million?

A. I think [MIT] chose to settle it because they understood that they had structural flaws within the institute that contributed in a significant way to Scott Krueger's death. I think they looked beyond the legalities and they assessed the case on the question of what was the right thing to do.

Q. What arguments did you have that the charitable immunity cap did not apply to MIT?

A. We had some fairly strong arguments that it wouldn't have applied to the [Chapter] 93A claims and we had the better argument that the cap would not apply to individual officers and administrative personnel of MIT. There's actually some fairly good caselaw right on point and it is pretty clear that there would be no limitation on damages, including punitive damages, against individuals at MIT.

Q. How important was it to your clients to get a personal apology from MIT President Charles M. Vest and his acknowledgment that MIT "failed" the Krueger family?

A. It was everything. If they didn't get that, the case couldn't have been settled no matter how much money was offered. Mrs. Krueger was quoted in the newspaper as saying that if MIT had offered $60 million with no apology, she and her family would not have taken it. For those of us who try cases day-in and day-out, it is easy to lose sight of the fact that the human factor is of immense importance in these cases. Having someone else say, "We recognize that we are partially at fault and we're sorry," that is a huge piece. It certainly was in this case.

Q. Do you think the settlement will cause other colleges and universities to examine their own alcohol policies more closely?

A. There's no question. In the news reports immediately after this settlement there was a story about a local university that was reevaluating its alcohol policies in light of what happened in the Krueger case. The great thing about the tort system is that it can encourage people to change not only for moral reasons, but economic reasons as well.

Q. You never actually filed a lawsuit in this case. Why?

A. Feelings right from the beginning were very raw, I suspect on both sides, so it didn't seem wise to rush to court and start entrenching people in positions on this particular case. I just intuitively felt that we should try to let things settle down a little bit and see who was going to come in to represent MIT and then make our claims in a deliberate way, which we did by way of a very detailed letter.

When counsel appeared for MIT, I sensed that we might have a chance of talking about the case. The defense lawyers were extremely impressive because they never engaged in a lot of the litigation rhetoric that sometimes accompanies lawsuits. They wanted to know if President Vest could talk to the Kruegers and what kind of relief the Kruegers were looking for. It turned out to be a good fit to talk about unusual remedies.

Q. Why is it so important that universities be held responsible for alcohol-related deaths of students?

A. Well, they are not held solely responsible. ... [But] MIT and the deans and administrators of MIT had some responsibility. It's important to understand that this was a boy who two months before this was living in his home with his parents and was sleeping under their roof every night. He had very little experience with alcohol and he went from this very protected setting to an extremely unprotected setting at MIT. It's illegal for underage people to get drunk and abuse alcohol and it can't be condoned.

Q. Doesn't Scott Krueger himself bear some responsibility for his own death? After all, there is no evidence that he didn't participate voluntarily, is there?

A. I would have said to a jury if this case had been tried that he did have responsibility. I am not against individual responsibility. I am just against responsibility only being applied to the person who died. The administrators had responsibility, the pledge trainer had responsibility, the officers of the fraternity had responsibility, and Scott had it as well. All we wanted is for all of the responsibility to be put out on the table and to let a jury sort out where the majority of the fault lies.

The fact of the matter is that if Scott refused to pledge the fraternity, he [would have been] on the street with no place to live. It's not like he is living in a dorm and if he doesn't get into the fraternity he can't go there for parties and meals. This is his bed.

Q. Why is that?

A. [Because of MIT's housing shortage at the time,] 60 percent of freshmen boys had to live in fraternities. That was the core of the case because almost no other school in the country relies on the fraternity system for its freshmen housing. The "musical chairs" game directs these young men a mile off campus, across the river, beyond the jurisdiction of the MIT police to fraternities where there is no resident adviser or dorm proctor. The Kruegers had no idea that's how the university was configured when Scott accepted.

Q. You plan to file a lawsuit against the local and national chapters of the fraternity where Scott Krueger was a pledge. What responsibilities did the fraternity have?

A. The local chapter of the fraternity was the first in the history of the United States to be indicted for homicide. That's an extraordinary fact. The Kruegers feel that the case against MIT is going to reverberate for a long time around the country and help change things and we want to do the same thing with the fraternity system. We want to make it cost ineffective to continue to run "Animal House" night in the future.

Q. With underage drinking so prevalent on college campuses, what can a university realistically do to stop it?

A. Well they can do what MIT has done. They can have adequate housing. MIT is building a dormitory that should be ready by September 2002. That means freshmen, who are the most vulnerable students, will be living together in proximity to a resident adviser or dormitory proctor. They can also educate their police force and extend the jurisdiction of the campus police to include fraternities. MIT now has a permit system so that if you want to have a party that involves alcohol, you have to go before an administrative body to get a specific permit to have the party.

You can't eliminate drinking on campus, but you can create disincentives. I have had two children graduate from college and one is in college now so I have seen alcohol policies at other schools and there are ways to do it. Some universities have penalties where if you get caught with alcohol in your dormitory room, you have to go to an education course, and if you get caught a second time you can be suspended. So if a university wants to do it, they can do it. The only issue is do you have the will to change it.

Q. You said at a press conference that MIT promised the Kruegers that "campus life at MIT would be forever changed." How do you think MIT will accomplish that?

A. There are resident assistants in fraternities now and MIT has applied to the City of Boston to extend the MIT police jurisdiction into Suffolk County. A lot of the changes have already been made and in many ways it is a cultural change. I'm not sure if Scott Krueger hadn't died if these changes would have come about.

Q. There was no confidentiality agreement as part of the settlement. Were you surprised that MIT didn't require one?

A. That was one of our prerequisites for going to mediation. We told MIT that there could not be a confidentiality agreement and they accepted that readily. It's important to understand the character and integrity of the Kruegers. With the money from the settlement, their lives will not change one iota. ... Their focus was [always] on changing campus life.

On the other side was MIT President Charles Vest. He was extraordinary in the way he openly and directly, without qualification, went to the Kruegers and accepted responsibility with no caveats. That's what the Kruegers needed. Once the apology occurred on the morning of the mediation, I knew the case was going to settle.

Q. You're in line to be the next president of ATLA. What do you think are the major challenges facing trial lawyers today?

A. The major challenge is that there is a huge amount of money being put into the political system by corporate and insurance interests in an effort to get federal legislation passed to curtail the tort system. But if you take away the ability to go to court or severely cap recoveries or limit the ability of people to get lawyers by tampering with the contingent fee system, you take away the ability of the ordinary citizen to keep the playing field even.

Q. ATLA has been a major opponent of "tort reform" efforts to limit punitive damages. But Massachusetts has no punitive damages and the world hasn't come to an end. Isn't ATLA's position somewhat disingenuous?

A. I don't think so. We do actually have punitive damages in Massachusetts in death cases. But even though we don't have punitive damages in other types of cases, they are of great importance to Massachusetts' residents. For example, in the tobacco cases, if you get a punitive damage verdict it makes it uneconomical for the tobacco industry to continue to market cigarettes to children. That's good for Massachusetts' citizens even though the tobacco industry is not located here because consumers are located here.

Because other jurisdictions have punitive damages, companies like Firestone and Ford can be brought before the court and penalized for hiding their knowledge. If you don't have punitive damages to levy a sanction against the Firestones of the world, it becomes very cost effective to make unsafe products. The reason the world hasn't come to an end in Massachusetts is because other states are doing our work.

Q. Why are trial lawyers viewed so poorly by the general public?