Karen D. McCarthy
member
Admitted: 1984, Louisiana; 1985, U.S. District Court, Middle District of Louisiana; 1986, U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Louisiana and U.S. Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit
Law School: Loyola University of the South, J.D., magna cum laude, 1984
College: Loyola University of the South, B.B.A., in Accounting, summa cum laude, 1981
Member: Louisiana State and Federal Bar Associations.
Biography: Member, Loyola Law Review, 1983-1984.
Born: New Orleans, Louisiana
One of my most memorable cases involved a libel suit against a book publisher and the author of that book. Our client had been accused in the book of conspiring with James Earl Ray to assassinate Martin Luther King. One day I went to Lanny and told him that whenever I discussed the facts of the case with anyone, they wanted to know what James Earl Ray had to say about our client. We then decided to depose James Earl Ray. Lanny called the Warden's office of the Brush Creek Prison and was put on hold by the Warden's secretary. The next voice on the phone was James Earl Ray. We explained that we wanted to depose him in a limited fashion to ask him if he knew our client and to show him photographs of our client. After he consulted with his attorney, we were given permission to take his video deposition. Mr. Ray had never given a deposition before and it was an experience to go to the prison. When we played his deposition, the judge in the case actually left the bench and watched the video with the jury. The jury returned a verdict in favor of our client and against the author and publisher in an amount that was forty times larger than the largest award for libel of a private person in the State of Louisiana.