Max Leuberg

Max Leuberg is a visiting law professor whose practical knowledge of insurance litigation gives Rudy Baylor a way to see the Black family’s dispute as more than a tangle of policy language and rejection letters. A vehement critic of corporate power, he helps Rudy recognize how repeated denials can serve an insurer’s financial interests and supplies both legal perspective and concrete material for pursuing the case.

Identity and Place in the Law School

Leuberg is a short, thin man of about sixty with unruly hair, restless hands, faded jeans, and old sneakers. His office at Memphis State Law School is crowded with books, files, newspapers, bottles, and loose papers; posters for political causes cover its door and walls. The clutter is part of the vivid contrast between him and the more conventionally dressed, formal professors around him. Leuberg does not simply lecture: his students experience him as a performer, a fast-moving presence whose intensity makes him memorable and whose willingness to listen makes him popular.

He is teaching at Memphis on loan from Wisconsin and expects to return there when the semester ends. Later, while packing, he tells Rudy that he has been away for two years and is going back to his tenured law professorship. His departure is a genuine loss to Rudy, who has come to value both his instruction and his direct, practical support. The change of location does not end their connection: Leuberg continues advising him from Madison, Wisconsin.

A Practical and Political Teacher

Leuberg’s teaching joins legal doctrine to the behavior of companies and the limits of litigation. He explains debit insurance as inexpensive coverage sold door to door to lower-income customers, with agents collecting weekly premiums and recording payments in the insureds’ books. In his account, companies routinely search for reasons to deny claims, while the people most affected may be afraid of lawyers or unable to pursue a case. He tells Rudy that only a small fraction of bad-faith denials reaches court, a low likelihood that insurers can take into account when deciding how claims are handled.

He also cautions against assuming that a strong claim will produce a large verdict. Even when an insurer refuses a clearly covered medical expense, juries may award the underlying bill but only a modest punitive amount, rather than impose a penalty large enough to change a wealthy company’s behavior. Leuberg attributes this difficulty partly to local economic and legal conditions: Tennessee juries are conservative, and jurors may resist awarding substantial sums to plaintiffs. His account gives Rudy a framework for distinguishing the merits of a case from its likely reception in court.

Leuberg’s opposition to corporate power is personal as well as intellectual. He is described as refusing to insure his life, health, or property and as boycotting companies whose conduct he objects to; the narrative reports, as a rumor, that his family’s wealth makes this stance possible. His activism appears in the causes advertised on his office door and in his outspoken criticism of insurers. This outlook helps explain his willingness to scrutinize Great Benefit, but he also tests Rudy’s confidence by warning that a client may not have supplied every relevant document.

Advising Rudy on the Black Claim

When Rudy brings him the Great Benefit policy and Dot Black’s file, Leuberg quickly focuses on the insurer’s shifting explanations for refusing coverage. The reasons include whether leukemia was covered, whether it was a preexisting condition, and whether Donny Ray Black was too old to remain covered as a dependent. Leuberg asks whether the premiums were paid and whether Rudy has reviewed the entire file, then studies the insulting eighth denial letter, known as the Stupid Letter. He regards the material as worth investigating, while preserving his caution about the completeness of the record.

Leuberg reads the full file overnight and identifies Great Benefit’s conduct as a typical debit-insurance pattern. He explains that repeated denials can be profitable because most policyholders do not consult counsel, while settlements and occasional court awards may cost less than paying every valid claim. When Rudy presses him on Donny Ray’s illness and the transplant coverage, Leuberg agrees that the claim appears strong if the family’s account is complete. He nevertheless warns that a good case is not automatically a great one in a jurisdiction where punitive awards are difficult to obtain.

His immediate advice is that the family should sue, but that Rudy, who is not yet licensed, should refer them to an experienced trial lawyer and prepare a report for Professor Howard L. Smoot. Leuberg gives Rudy a list of bad-faith cases to study. Later, as he packs to leave Memphis, he gives him a box of recent materials from insurance cases and presses him to file suit with a lawyer who has trial experience. He believes the Black case has strong appeal to a jury and could become a landmark case, and offers to remain available for help.

Continuing Counsel and the Evidence Behind the Case

After returning to Wisconsin, Leuberg remains a steady adviser. Rudy visits him in Madison during Christmas, bringing a substantial case file: pleadings, written discovery, depositions, and other relevant documents. Leuberg already knows that trial is six weeks away and asks about settlement offers. When Rudy says Great Benefit has offered $175,000 and the client has refused, Leuberg recognizes the decision as consistent with the strength of the case, while still warning that the trial venue may be unfavorable to punitive damages. Rudy explains that the office phone lines have been tapped; Leuberg has heard of similar conduct elsewhere and treats the discovery as a serious indication that the defense is monitoring the plaintiff’s side.

Leuberg then gives Rudy a lengthy working session on witnesses, documents, and trial strategy. He stresses the importance of Donny Ray’s recorded testimony as an image for the jury and recommends using Great Benefit’s own revised policy to confront the company with a pointed comparison: the new policy expressly excludes bone marrow transplants, whereas the Black policy did not. Leuberg suggests asking the chief executive why the language changed after the Blacks sued and why the claim was denied when the earlier policy lacked that exclusion. He also works through the company’s financial records with Rudy, explaining how reserves and undistributed surpluses complicate an insurer’s financial statements and why those resources matter when the jury considers punishment.

His advice informs the case Rudy presents at trial. Rudy uses the company’s figures to describe Great Benefit’s available cash, reserves, and surplus, arriving at a total of $475 million, alongside an admitted net worth of $450 million. In his closing argument, he makes the scale of the company’s resources relevant to the question of what financial penalty could actually deter it. Leuberg does not replace Rudy’s judgment or appear as the courtroom advocate; his contribution is the sustained preparation that helps Rudy connect the medical claim, the company’s conduct, and its capacity to pay.

Character and Narrative Significance

Leuberg’s importance lies in the bridge he provides between legal study and legal practice. He teaches Rudy to read the file not only for the reasons Great Benefit gives in individual letters but also for the incentives and procedures that may organize those reasons. His analysis moves from the low likelihood that a denied claimant will hire a lawyer, through the weakness of small punitive awards, to the practical need to explain a large corporation’s resources to a jury. Each step enlarges the case from a family’s desperate claim into an argument about corporate conduct and accountability.

At the same time, Leuberg’s role is grounded in concrete forms of mentorship: lending cases and research, reading the file, identifying questions for witnesses, and making himself available after his return to Wisconsin. His own political anger gives him a strong perspective, but his warnings about incomplete evidence and unfavorable juries keep that perspective from becoming a substitute for legal analysis. For Rudy, who is still learning how law works beyond the classroom, Leuberg embodies a demanding kind of instruction: skeptical about easy victories, alert to institutional power, and committed to making the details of a case intelligible to the people who must decide it.