May 5--WASHINGTON--At the American Tort Reform Association, Sen. John Edwards is called the candidate of "Learjet lawyers," a reference to his habit this year of borrowing law firms' planes to campaign. The association, which wants to cap jury awards in medical and product liability cases, is so aghast at the prospect of a President Edwards that it plans to launch an anti-Edwards Web site this month: www.edwardswatch.com.

But over at the Association of Trial Lawyers of America, former malpractice lawyer Edwards is a source of pride. Some of the association's 60,000 members contributed, with their families, $1.8 million to Edwards' presidential campaign in the first quarter of this year.

Edwards' candidacy has helped make trial lawyers -- their image, their battles, their money -- an early issue in the 2004 presidential campaign. Tort reform supporters from President Bush on down are gearing up their offensive, while trial lawyers are giving millions in campaign contributions and defending their profession.

N.C. Democrat Edwards, 49, is at the middle of it all.

The American Tort Reform Association, co-founded by the American Medical Association and partly funded by corporate contributions, is trying to make Edwards' ties to trial lawyers -- the source of one-fourth of his campaign funds -- a major issue.

Mike Hotra, who will help feed the association's anti-Edwards Web site, says trial lawyers want something in return for their money: "They want a president who will not just oppose any litigation reform dropped on his desk, but will take this whole issue off the table."

But Linda Lipsen, lobbyist for the Association of Trial Lawyers, says corporate interests -- heavy contributors to Bush -- try to make sure they don't have to pay much even when they're at fault.

"There are a lot of forces trying to make sure that individuals who are fighting back do not get a fair shake," she says. "One of the few groups out there as a watchdog on this behavior (is) lawyers."

She says insurance reform, not tort reform, will lower premiums. And she points to "shoddy products" that have vanished from the U.S. landscape -- Ford Pintos, flammable pajamas, the Dalkon Shield IUD -- "due to lawsuits."

Last summer, Bush traveled to Edwards' back yard to call for a cap on medical malpractice awards to help end frivolous lawsuits and lower health costs.

"What we want is reasonable health care, not rich trial lawyers," Bush said at High Point University. "Higher and higher insurance premiums make it nearly impossible for a lot of doctors to practice medicine."

The day Edwards announced his candidacy, the Republican National Committee attacked Edwards on its Web site, primarily for "his work to protect the interests of personal injury trial lawyers." The RNC didn't have any similar posting against any other candidate at the time.

Edwards responds with the kind of populist pitch he once used with juries.

"I am proud of the cases I won," Edwards told the California State Democratic Convention in March. "So, Mr. President, if you want to talk about the insiders you've fought for versus the kids and families I've fought for, then all I have to say is: Mr. President, bring it on!"

As recently as 1996, Lawyers Weekly USA named Edwards, of Raleigh, one of eight national Lawyers of the Year. Elected to the Senate in 1998, Edwards still has close ties to trial lawyers -- also called plaintiffs' attorneys and personal-injury lawyers. The most successful ones make a lot of money by suing companies with deep pockets on behalf of clients who have been injured on the job, in the hospital, or while using consumer products.

A winning lawyer can take up to 40 percent of the money awarded by the jury; if he loses, he usually gets nothing.

Critics of trial lawyers consider them greedy ambulance chasers -- think Jackie Chiles, the fast-talking parody of Johnnie Cochrane on TV's "Seinfeld." Trial lawyers object to the stereotype, saying they are sometimes the only people willing to seek justice for the powerless -- picture Atticus Finch, the conscientious Southern lawyer in "To Kill A Mockingbird."

Edwards -- in his speeches and in a book to be published this year by Simon & Schuster -- will try to shift the focus from the size of some trial lawyers' bank accounts to the clients they represent.

In California, he talked about Ethan Bedrick, a 9-year-old with cerebral palsy whose doctors' prescription of daily physical therapy was rejected by "some insurance company bureaucrat, sitting behind a desk somewhere."

"Mr. President," Edwards said, "We'll let you take the side you've always taken ...the insurance companies' side. I'll take the side I've always taken ... Ethan's side."

That approach worked for Edwards in 1998, when incumbent Republican Sen. Lauch Faircloth spent much of his campaign bashing Edwards for being a trial lawyer, to no avail.

But Bush and his tort reform allies -- businesses, doctors, conservatives -- also have sad stories about real people.

Addressing the American Medical Association in March, the president mentioned Debbie DeAngelo, who had to shut down her pain management clinic in Scranton, Pa., which employed 10 and served 2,000, because her liability insurance got too expensive -- even though she had "a great safety record."

"We have a problem in America," Bush said. "There are too many frivolous lawsuits against good doctors, and the patients are paying the price."

In the Gallup Poll's latest measure of how Americans rate the honesty and ethics of different professions, lawyers finished 14th out of 21.

Only 18 percent of the respondents ranked lawyers high or very high in those areas.

Other polls say Americans believe the country has become too litigious. And many pin some of the blame for higher prices and insurance premiums on jumbo verdicts.

Hoping to tap these public anxieties, Bush and GOP congressional leaders have been pushing bills that would, among other things, cap awards in medical malpractice cases and shield gun manufacturers from lawsuits.

Edwards opposes both of those bills and has fought for a Patients' Bill of Rights that would permit people to sue their HMOs.

But he has also said he could support some reforms that would reduce frivolous lawsuits.

Edwards denies he'd be a captive to any interest group. He says he won't take a penny from political action committees, including the Trial Lawyers PAC, which gives out about $4 million.

"I stand up for the same people I've always stood up for: kids and families," he says. "I am just as independent now as I was when I was elected to the Senate -- and I'll continue to be independent."

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