Around the time Don C. Keenan was learning to walk, his father was killed when a malfunctioning boiler he was working near exploded.  About 17 years later, Keenan's grandfather, who raised him like his own son, died after doctors misdiagnosed a heart attack. 

Today, as a champion of children's legal rights in Atlanta, Keenan is still trying to heal the wounds those losses left on his young psyche.  He's still trying to relieve the pain that frustrates him because those deaths came at a time when the law didn't give a plaintiffs' attorney much to work with, he says. 

For the past 20 years, Keenan has represented the young and the voiceless -- from the mothers of black youths murdered in Atlanta during the late 70's and early 80's, to a three-year old rural girl who fell into a coma while in foster care. 

It was those high-visibility cases and others like them -- which he handled pro bono -- that gave him a national reputation and attracted high-paying med-mal and product liability cases to Keenan's firm. 

Last year, Keenan's firm had eight settlements totaling $19 million in cases around the country.  The firm boasts a record of over 117 verdicts and settlements over $1,000,000 including five over $10,000,000 and one over $100,000,000, the majority on behalf of children. 

"I can't say that I suffered like a burned child or a brain-injured child, but I know what effect other people's negligence can have on a kid, and I guess it ultimately dictated what I did with the rest of my life," says Keenan, 45. 

Visit the Keenan Law Firm and you can't miss the wall of 42 photos of children that Keenan has successfully represented. Nor can current and potential clients miss them, and anyone who works there can't get a cup of coffee without passing by them. 

"That provides great motivation," Keenan reasons.  "They've become the kids of the firm." 

Keenan has no children of his own but regularly refers to those he represents as "my kids." 

"When I think of children, I don't think of normal healthy children, I think of my children," he says.  Working for their causes "burdens me more than if I had my own children because. . . they would provide some respite from what I am doing." 

THE ATLANTA MURDERS 
 After Keenan's grandfather died, he moved with his mother and grandmother from his native New Bern, NC, to Atlanta, where he attended Atlanta Law School at night and worked to support the family doing the day. 

After graduating, he hung out his own shingle.  "None of the big firms would look at me because I went to night school," he recalls.  He began doing criminal defense work, won a lot of cases and appeals, and acquired a reputation for being aggressive and successful. 

The Committee to Stop Children's Murders, a group formed by some of the mothers of 29 black youths slain in Atlanta between 1979 and 1981, heard of Keenan's work and asked him to represent them. The group was being investigated for alleged irregularities in the contributions it accepted. 

No charges were ever filed, and Keenan maintains authorities were acting to divert attention away from an inept murder investigation. 

"The authorities were like ostriches with their heads in the sand," he says.  "They were contending there was no connection [between the killings] whatsoever, and actually one FBI guy callously suggested a mother was involved in her son's death." 

Through civil disobedience, press conferences and speaking engagements throughout the country, the group kept the investigation in the media spotlight.  But Keenan remains frustrated that many of the cases are unsolved, particularly those involving two boys who were only five and six years old when they died. 

Authorities "tried to close the book but there are voices inside that book that are still crying out to get some answers," he says. 

LIVING WITH CLIENTS 

It is his emotional involvement and utter devotion to cases that has earned Keenan his reputation -- and big bucks. 

"I have never had an opponent who has out-worked  me in terms of preparation, the will to win, the gut-burning desire to get the win for my little kids", he says. 

Keenan takes preparation to unusual lengths: just before trial, he lives with his clients in order to connect with them emotionally. 

"Where I get my passion is when I leave my office, and live a day or two with my clients before trial," he says.  It's something he's done for the past 12 years, and he believes it gives him a tremendous advantage in his cases. 

"With cancer cases I will go down to the hospital and watch the cancer treatments being given.  With wrongful death suits, I will visit the gravesites of [the decedents] so I can sit and understand the whole meaning and senselessness of their death." 
 Keenan requires the attorneys who work for him to do the same. 

"You absolutely cannot understand what the case is about until you've walked a mile in your client's moccasins," he says. 

Another Keenan Law Firm mandate is a post-win visit to the client's house. 

"Just the idea of sitting there with the people in the new house with the rehab room, with the van with the chair-lift in the garage, and you remember what they had when you met them living in the projects", Keenan says.  "There is not a dry eye when we go back to the hotel." 

Charles Allen, who joined Keenan's firm 10 years ago as a courier while in law school and now practices with him, is a self-described devotee of the Keenan way. 

"You need an understanding of what your client goes through, to communicate that with jurors," he says.  "I can't imagine working anywhere else and doing anything else at another law firm." 

During depositions and trials, Keenan carries around pictures of clients, particularly when they are young children.  Before closing arguments, Keenan tries to conjure up mental pictures of the previous clients for whom he has been victorious, as a way of inspiring yet another win. 

"I see all my little kids and think about the rehab and therapies and college educations," he says.  “And I just know if we do our job correctly, we can get the same outcome.  Wow, if that doesn't motivate you or put the fear of God in you that you won't be successful!" 

THE FIGHT FOR KATHY JO 

Keenan says some colleagues consider his methods unsophisticated. But don't tell that to the family of Kathy Jo Taylor.  Three-year old Kathy Jo lapsed into an irreversible coma after being abused in a foster home in 1982.  Case workers had not regularly visited her before she was hurt, and they had no idea whether she was safe. 

In a suit against the State of Georgia, Keenan represented members of her family, who felt they should've been allowed to take her in instead of sending her to strangers. 

His 10 year pro bono battle went to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1989.  Keenan, who had argued before the high court once before in a criminal case, was raring to go. His position was that children like Kathy Jo who are placed in state custody should at least have the same constitutional rights that prisoners have:  adequate health care and a safe environment. 

"I was literally screaming at the top of my voice, 'If we afford kids less rights than a convicted rapist and a murderer, then God help us all,'" he recounts of his mock argument in preparation. "I wasn't basing it on any case law, just the rightness and wrongness of it." 

 Ultimately, Keenan didn't get the chance to argue before the high court because the famous DeShaney case addressed some of the issues Keenan raised. As a result, Keenan's case resulted in the Kathy Jo Taylor Consent Decree, which applies in Georgia and has been used as a model in other states.  It requires that when a child is removed from a primary parent, other family members be given the right to take care of the child as long as they provide a safe environment.  The decree bans corporal punishment of children, and requires case workers to visit foster children each month and schedule regular checkups with dentists and doctors. 

Despite this victory, the case remains a sad memory for Keenan.  Kathy Jo died of pneumonia on April 14, 1997, at age 17.  And last February, just like every February since Keenan took on the case, Kathy Jo's family sent him a plant with one flower on her birthday. 

"It always comes at a time when I lease expect it," he says.  "And it always knocks me over." 

CHILDREN CRUSADES 

Keenan's work for children doesn't end in the courtroom.  Keenan's Kids Foundation, which he founded in 1993, collects thousands of clothing items each winter for Atlanta's homeless children. It also gives annual awards to people in the public school system, media and state government who work for children's causes, and it funds an advocacy program for law students and a children's rights seminar for lawyers. 

Keenan's firm funds the foundation with $250,000 to $500,000 each year, he says. 

"We do make good money at what we do. This allows me to push it back in to help the Kathy Jos of the world, and by doing right by the homeless kids," he says.  "I'd like to think of it as recycling money. 

The foundation's most recent effort is its airbag awareness project.  Keenan is litigating a case against GM, claiming that improper release of an airbag in a truck led to the death of a 16 year old Texas girl. The foundation is producing a brochure about the dangers of placing children in front of seats where airbags are located.  He plans to distribute them to the more than 10,000 Atlanta-area lawyers who helped collect the winter clothes for homeless children, to keep in their lobbies for clients. 

Keenan has been recognized by numerous lawyer organizations for his work. In the fall, he became the youngest President in the history of the Inner Circle of Advocates, for which membership is limited to 100 attorneys who have received more than eight $1 million verdicts. 

In 1992, he became the youngest President of the American Board of Trial Advocates.  In that post, he led a delegation to the Czech Republic and later to Russia to conduct the first jury trial held in those countries. 

 "The one thing I really noticed in these emerging nations was, I wondered how do these people get up every day with such a positive attitude to go to a job they're not sure is going to be there," he says. 

"More so than Americans, these people were looking at a future for not what they could get out of it, but what their children could look forward to.  That constantly reminded me of my great- grandfather getting on a boat and going to a strange country.  He wasn't doing it for himself, because his life wasn't very good.  But here I am, a third generation Irishman at the top of my profession.  I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for him.”

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