SOUTHFIELD, MI – Thirty years ago, Geoffrey Fieger burst on the scene as the flamboyant attorney for physician-assisted suicide crusader Jack Kevorkian, aka “Dr. Death.”
Fieger, who had been an extremely successful medical malpractice attorney from the time he finished law school in 1979, got jury after jury to acquit Kevorkian, even though assisting in a suicide was illegal and this client openly admitted what he had done. Following that, he took on a number of other high-profile cases, including suing talk show host Jenny Jones.
“There’s no doubt whatsoever that he is the best-known lawyer in Michigan,” said Jules Olsman, another lawyer who specializes in malpractice cases. Robert Riley, an attorney who often mediates such cases to try to reach settlements, agrees. “Geoffrey is without question the most talented trial lawyer we have had in civil cases in Michigan.”
He’s certainly been visible. For years, he has been a frequent star on local TV news. Even today, it’s hard to watch television anywhere in Michigan without seeing Fieger Law Firm commercials. Looking confident and dominant, with hair resembling a male lion’s mane, the veteran attorney tells viewers, “who will fight for you? I will!” He tells viewers that he is a fearless “army of one.”
But there is now unease throughout Detroit’s legal community. On March 1, while undergoing what was described as a routine procedure for cardiac arrhythmia in North Carolina, Fieger, a youthful-appearing 72, suffered what seems to have been a serious stroke. Shortly thereafter, he was taken to a top in-patient rehabilitation facility in Chicago, where he remains.
While his wife Keenie, told me his intelligence was not affected, his speech was. Since then, the attorney, who has dominated the airwaves for decades, has not been seen or heard from.
His ads are still omnipresent, and his firm, which includes 18 other lawyers, lots of support staff, and occupies almost an entire city block in suburban Southfield, is still bustling. “If you know Geoffrey, you know he wishes he was back, like, yesterday,” his wife said, adding that he is working hard on his rehabilitation.
But it’s not clear when, or frankly, whether he will be able to return to practice, or if he will ever be able to bring his unique dominance to a courtroom again. One story in a Detroit newspaper said Fieger had been warned by a cardiologist in 2020 that his heart was dangerously enlarged.
According to the story, Fieger then filed a claim with the insurance company Lloyd’s of London claiming that he could no longer appear in court. But he apparently continued his high-intensity practice even after that, arguing cases in several states.
Whether he ever was paid by the insurer, or did anything wrong isn’t clear. What is clear is that we’ve never seen a lawyer quite like Fieger, who is famous for his bellowing rants, ripping his opponents and critics to shreds — and then often winning monumental verdicts. “Fieger? I hate him. He’s a jerk,” one guy told me outside the courthouse years ago. “But if I ever get arrested, he’s the son-of-a-bitch I want, because he’s the best there is.”
Indeed, it is hard not to be in awe of an attorney who represented a client who cheerfully admitted helping people die — and was acquitted over and over until he fired Fieger, after which he ended up in prison.
Though the Kevorkian cases made him nationally famous, Fieger began work on what would become his first million-dollar plus verdict while he was still in law school, with the aid of his late father, Bernard Fieger, a civil rights lawyer.
Though the two men were very close, the elder Fieger had little interest in money, and lived in a small ranch house. His son has two palatial homes in Michigan and others in Arizona, Florida, and the Caribbean island of Anguilla, where he also built a luxury hotel.
Fieger is known for being outrageous. Once, he asked a judge to disqualify a prosecutor because “he’s proven he has no backbone, and in the state of Michigan only a vertebrate can practice law.” When former Gov. John Engler became the father of triplets, Fieger said he wouldn’t believe he was the real father “unless their diapers are taken off and they have corkscrew tails.”
That was during his quixotic 1998 campaign for governor, in which he lost nearly two to one to “that fat nincompoop.” Though he often talked of running for office again, he never did.
What the public seldom saw, however, was the private Geoffrey Fieger. When his firm’s janitor became terminally ill, Fieger not only visited him in the hospital, but helped bathe and shave him. In their 50s, the Fiegers, who were childless, adopted three infants, who are now star students and devoted to their parents.
His behind-the-scenes legal reputation is different from the bombast, as well. Riley has presided as a mediator at several settlement cases involving Fieger Law.
“He’s been very good to work with. He’s demanding and has very high standards for his clients, but he has the good sense to know what’s doable in a particular situation.” What is not yet known is what will be doable for Geoffrey Fieger, and his firm, now. “He has a lot of good lawyers, but that’s not what brings people to Fieger Law — Geoffrey does,” Olsman said.
But when it comes to the future, the jury is still out.
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(A version of this column appeared in the Toledo Blade)
