By Jim Hannah
The Cincinnati Enquirer

CRESTVIEW HILLS - Mark Modlin recently walked into a court hearing on the nation's first class-action lawsuit against abusive priests with an awkward gait that threatened to topple his 5-foot-10 frame.

His body swayed dangerously as he grappled to sit down in a chair near Cincinnati attorney Stan Chesley. The plaintiffs hired Modlin to consult them in the emotionally charged case.

A golf-cart wreck that nearly decapitated Modlin in 1987 is the reason for Modlin's lack of balance, but it has not kept the 49-year-old Ludlow native from becoming one of the area's top trial consultants.

Honored in December by the Northern Kentucky Bar Association for helping improve the local justice system, he has been involved in more than $1.5 billion in verdicts and settlements and worked on 3,700 cases the past 20 years.

The cases include getting clear titles for homeowners caught in the middle of the collapse of one of the area's largest homebuilders, helping negotiate a $100 million settlement with one of four defendants in a class action by a Cincinnati physicians' group alleging health maintenance organization price-fixing, and one of the largest jury verdicts ever handed down in Bowling Green, Ky., for a girl who crashed into a garbage truck.

"If you mention the name Mark Modlin to a trial attorney in Greater Cincinnati, they will know him," said attorney Paul Schachter of Fort Mitchell. "Eight out of 10 will say positive things. The people who don't were on the other side of the table from Mark during negotiations."

Lawyers like Schachter, who uses Modlin's services in jury selection or mediation, will go to his Crestview Hills wheelchair-accessible town home in the morning, help dress Modlin and drive him to the courthouse. The golf-cart wreck, and a subsequent car crash in 1999, has left Modlin with a serious spine injury that makes it difficult for him to do daily tasks.

Before a series of seven surgeries stabilized Modlin's spine, about 100 people, mostly lawyers, took care of him. They had a formal schedule where someone stayed with Modlin every night for about three years. Many slept on the living room floor near a couch where Modlin prefers to sleep.

Senior Judge Stan Billingsley of Carrollton recalled spending such a night in a letter nominating Modlin to be an Olympic torch bearer in 2002.

"I have on occasion seen Mark muttering a phrase over and over again during times when his pain was not controlled by medication," Billingsley wrote to Olympic committee members. "I once leaned close to hear what he was repeating over and over again. He was repeating as his mantra, the phrase that Jim Valvano popularized, 'Never give up, never give up!'

"That is Mark's mantra and he lives up to it every day of his life."

Modlin carried the Olympic torch that year on Fountain Square. A publisher used a picture of Modlin running with the torch for the back cover of a book written on the flame's journey across the United States.

Attorney Bob Sanders of Covington said Modlin is good at consulting and mediating personal injury and medical malpractice suits because he can identify with the injured. He knows what resources they need to live as productively as possible, Sanders said, and he can explain it to lawyers.

"Mark is a walking encyclopedia of what people need to put their lives back together after an accident," Sanders said. "Literally hundreds of seriously injured people have the resources they need to maximize their remaining time as human beings because of settlements Mark has helped negotiate."

Sanders and Schachter agree that they believe Modlin's love for his son, Bryson, has kept him alive. Modlin said he placed a small, holographic bust of his 17-year-old son next to his couch to motivate him to get up when he awakes and can't feel his legs.

The bust was a gift from his son.

During a recent interview, Modlin, dressed in sweatpants and a blue UK turtleneck, grimaced as he reached down and pulled off one of his tennis shoes.

"My son designed these shoes for me on the Internet," said a smiling Modlin, who is divorced. "Bryson knew I was having trouble finding shoes I could walk in, much less put on myself, so he designed these. It's pretty neat."

The shoes have extra tread on the soles to help prevent slipping. There are no shoestrings to tie. There is a strap on the back Modlin can pull to give him the leverage to slip on the shoes. And Modlin's name is stitched right into the canvas.

"I got the idea when some of my friends started designing their own shoes on the Internet," said Bryson, a junior at Highlands High School. "I thought it would be a neat Christmas gift for my dad since I knew he was having trouble finding a pair of shoes he could wear."

Sanders, a friend of the Modlin family, said Bryson is a high achiever just like his father.

Bryson wants to be a lawyer.

Although Modlin isn't an attorney, he has been an adjunct professor of law at the Salmon P. Chase College of Law since 1996. Modlin, a graduate of Northern Kentucky University and Xavier University, became the youngest faculty member at Northern in 1981 when he was appointed as an instructor of social sciences. He was also the first NKU graduate to be appointed to the faculty.

Modlin credits his work ethic to his upbringing in Ludlow.

"It was a good place to grow up," said Modlin, who, despite his financial successes, fashions himself as the working class's man. "It wasn't rich in terms of financial things but it was rich in terms of love, friends and relationships. My mom and dad were both born and raised there. The values that I learned as a kid help me be successful as an adult."

Modlin said he doesn't like to talk about the $1.2 million he collected after the golf-cart wreck because he believes some people are jealous. He said those people think he got all his money from suing the golf course when, in reality, it came from working hard.

Modlin was clothes-lined by a cord stretched across a fairway as he drove a golf cart while playing a round with Billingsley at The Golf Courses at Kenton County. The injuries continue to haunt him.

"A lot of people don't know that things are as grave as they are because I hide it pretty well," he said. "They just see me with a limp or notice my balance is a little off."

Modlin said much of his focus now is deciding whether to have another spinal cord surgery. He has gone across the county for consultations with the nation's best surgeons.

"My condition is deteriorating again," he said. "I can tell I'm getting worse again. But they tell me there is a 10 to 20 percent chance the next surgery won't go well, and I'll end up on a ventilator. But if I do nothing my spine will continue to deteriorate."

---

E-mail jhannah@enquirer.com