John Edwards Bio
Early life and education
Edwards was born on June 10, 1953, to Wallace R. Edwards and Kathryn Juanita Wade in Seneca, South Carolina. The family moved soon after Edwards’ birth to Robbins, North Carolina, where his father worked in a textile mill and his mother was a postal employee. Edwards was the first person in his family to attend college. He first attended Clemson University and later transferred to North Carolina State University when his family moved to North Carolina.
Edwards graduated with a bachelor’s degree in textile technology in 1974, and later earned his law degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, both with honors. While at UNC, he met fellow law student Elizabeth Anania. They married in 1977.
Legal career
Both Edwards and his wife began private practice with law firms in Nashville, Tennessee. Edwards became an associate at the prominent law firm of Dearborn & Ewing in 1978, doing primarily trial work, defending a major Nashville bank and other corporate clients. He was widely recognized by the senior partners at Dearborn & Ewing as a future legal star, based on the exceptional quality of his work, both in and out of the courtroom. The Edwards family (John, Elizabeth, and son Wade) returned to North Carolina in 1981, settling in the capital of Raleigh.
Edwards and his wife Elizabeth have had four children. Their first two, Wade and Cate, were born soon after John and Elizabeth’s marriage. In 1996, their 16-year-old son, Wade, was killed in a freak car accident; in remembrance of his son, Edwards donated a large computer lab to his son’s school, Broughton High School in Raleigh, NC, which provides technology access to Broughton students, particularly those who otherwise wouldn’t be able to afford it. He also wears Wade’s Outward Bound pin on his suit jacket. Following Wade’s death, Edwards and his wife chose to have children again: Emma Claire, born in 1998, and Jack, born in 2000. The Edwards family now lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
Before entering politics, Edwards was a successful personal injury trial attorney. He represented families and children that had allegedly been wrongly injured by negligent corporations and government entities, or by medical malpractice. Edwards made his personal fortune through his trial successes and his 2003 financial disclosure forms showed a total net worth between $12.8 and $60 million. Edwards was criticized for paying himself mostly through subchapter S corporate dividends, rather than a salary, to take advantage of a tax-law loophole that allowed him to avoid paying $591,000 in Medicare taxes; Edwards claimed that he chose the subchapter S structure to protect his assets from liability.
Edwards’s first important case was a 1984 medical malpractice lawsuit. In that case, Edwards won a $3.7 million verdict on behalf of his client who suffered permanent brain and nerve damage after a doctor prescribed a drug overdose of anti-alcoholism drug Antabuse. In 1985, Edwards obtained a $5.75 million settlement in a cerebral palsy case for medical malpractice during childbirth. This established the North Carolina precedent of physician and hospital liability for failing to determine if patient understood risks of particular procedure.
The biggest case of his legal career was a 1997 product liability lawsuit against Sta-Rite, the manufacturer of a defective pool drain cover. The case involved a Cary, North Carolina girl, Valerie Lakey, who was disemboweled by the suction power of the pool drain pump when she sat on an open pool drain whose protective cover other children at the pool had removed, after the municipality had failed to install the cover properly. Despite 12 prior suits with similar claims, Sta-Rite continued to make and sell drain covers lacking warnings. The jury awarded $25 million, the largest personal injury award in North Carolina history. Fellow lawyers and law students crowded the courtroom to hear Edwards’ closing arguments. He spoke to the jury for two straight hours without referring to notes. It was an emotional appeal that made reference to his son, Wade, who had been killed shortly before testimony began in the trial. The company settled for the $25 million while the jury was deliberating punitive damages, rather than risk appeal. For their part in this case, Edwards and (law partner David Kirby) earned the Association of Trial Lawyers of America’s national award for public service.
Senate term
Both the success of the Lakey case and his son’s death (Edwards had hoped his son would eventually join him in private law practice) prompted Edwards to leave the legal profession and seek public office. A Democrat, Edwards won election to the U.S. Senate in 1998 against the favored incumbent Republican, Lauch Faircloth.
During President Bill Clinton’s 1999 impeachment trial in the Senate. Edwards was responsible for the deposition of witnesses Monica Lewinsky and fellow Democrat Vernon Jordan; Clinton was acquitted.
During the 2000 presidential campaign, Edwards was reported to be on Democratic nominee Al Gore’s vice presidential nominee “short list” (along with Kerry and Joe Lieberman, Gore’s eventual pick). In November 2000, People magazine named Edwards as its choice for the “sexiest politician alive.” Edwards served on the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and U.S. Senate Committee on Judiciary.
During his Senate term, John Edwards co-sponsored 203 bills. Notably, he co-sponsored Senator Joe Lieberman’s S.J.RES.46, the Iraq War Resolution, and also later voted for it in the full Senate to authorize the use of military force against Iraq, a vote he would later say was an error.
Before the 2004 Senate election, Edwards announced his retirement from the Senate and supported Erskine Bowles, former White House Chief of Staff, as the successor to his seat; Bowles, however, was defeated by Republican Richard Burr in the election. Political pundit Larry Sabato opined at the time that Edwards chose not to run for reelection because of the substantial risk of losing his seat in a state where he was polling somewhat poorly. A Fox News poll on the day of the election, however, showed that Edwards would have defeated Burr by a 53 percent — 47 percent margin.
