Kevorkian's choice

In August 1990, 62-year-old Jack Kevorkian stood in Oakland County Circuit Court, representing himself in a legal battle with Thompson, who was seeking a court order to stop Kevorkian from assisting in more suicides.

Friends -- and the judge -- told Kevorkian to get a lawyer.

So on a Sunday, he called the offices of Fieger, Fieger & Schwartz.

"Jack doesn't realize that most people don't work on Sundays," Fieger says, laughing.

But on this hot Sunday, Fieger happened to be in. He had stopped by his office to cool off after attending a polo match with Keenie.

Kevorkian had seen Fieger on TV, supervising the removal of furniture from William Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak because the hospital had balked at paying a malpractice judgment won by Fieger.

Kevorkian liked that.

Fieger immediately invited Kevorkian and his sister, Margo Janus, to come by the office. The two men were -- and still are -- cosmic opposites.

Kevorkian, a small man built like a well-fed scarecrow, has short white hair and dark, sharp eyes. A lifelong bachelor, he lived at the time in a small, windowless and sparsely furnished apartment in Royal Oak.

"He was practicing for solitary confinement," Fieger jokes.

An odd but sincere man, Kevorkian shops at the Salvation Army and eats like a refugee. He was born in 1928 in Pontiac after his parents immigrated to the United States to escape Turkey's extermination of the Armenians.

Kevorkian is a 1952 graduate of the University of Michigan School of Medicine and a well-read, learned man who loves philosophy, history and art. He is an atheist and is afraid to fly. He isn't crazy about fame, but lets Fieger drag him to public appearances. He has resisted movie and book deals and the lecture circuit, where, Fieger says, he could make a fortune.

Kevorkian does not smoke, drink alcohol and rarely curses. He is a loner by nature, a man with an interest in death that many consider macabre.

And, when he met Fieger, Kevorkian considered himself a failure. His ideas for death-related experiments had crippled his career as a pathologist; assisted suicide was not a public issue; he was alone and regretted never marrying.

Fieger, 39 at the time, was already a successful trial lawyer specializing in personal injury and medical malpractice cases. His resume boasted of winning in 1982, just three years out of law school, the first million-dollar judgment in the United States based on misuse of antipsychotic drugs.

At 6-feet-2 and 225 pounds, Fieger fusses over his appearance and favors blue pin-striped suits. He reads mostly magazines and newspapers, flies all over the world, covets publicity, cusses by second nature and loves vodka. He will be dead before he ever considers himself a failure.

Kevorkian recalls that after they met, he was not inclined to hire Fieger.

"I wasn't ready to pick anyone then, really," Kevorkian says. "I was being forced into it and I was still reluctant. My sister talked me into it."

But, Kevorkian says, "I got the idea early on that he felt deep down that this is the right kind of issue. I don't know if he was convinced or not, but I felt he felt it was right. And . . . he believed in it enough to help me for my benefit."

Some in the legal community considered Fieger an unlikely choice to defend Kevorkian. His track record was in civil, not criminal, law. Given events of the past six years, it seems fair to say they were wrong, although many still refuse to concede that, Fieger says.

"The implication is that I win in spite of myself," he says.

Fieger has never been a shrinking violet. Long before Kevorkian, he was a pit bull, as evidenced by the furniture-moving scene at Beaumont. Fieger also spent years fighting a drunken-driving charge in Washtenaw County, costing taxpayers thousands of dollars as he appealed all the way to the Michigan Supreme Court.

Fieger argued he was innocent. But the verdict stood.

Kevorkian has put Fieger's less likable characteristics into near constant practice. He has earned more enemies than his mother ever dreamed of. And he has made himself a target.

But if it bothers him, it rarely shows. He never backs down or apologizes. He approaches adversaries like opposing linemen in football games -- head-on.

Allow me to disparage you mildly, reads a sign on his office door, for soon I shall excoriate the entire family.

Continues: Trickery and bluster

Behind the mouth | His father's son | Kevorkian's choice | Trickery and bluster | 'The play is the thing' | Price of fame