It's the early 1970s in San Francisco, and an emergency, life-saving brain operation is performed on 10-year-old Kathy Miller. Because she had been discharged from the ER after a head injury earlier in the day, and the delay in diagnosis may have resulted in brain damage, prominent plaintiff's attorney Paul Butler is filing a medical malpractice lawsuit against the physician and hospital responsible. California at this time had already seen a dramatic increase in medical malpractice lawsuits as juries awarded progressively higher sums for "pain and suffering", a category that had no concrete limits and caused physician's malpractice insurance premiums to skyrocket.

Butler is a womanizer, with no scruples about how he wins cases or conducts his private life. This case is assigned to the court of a female judge, with whom Butler had a short, secret love affair while both were in law school. She should recuse herself from the case, but does not, believing that no one knows of the affair. Later, a witness lies under oath and is exposed, resulting in the jury awarding a huge sum to the plaintiff. He celebrates by bedding his beautiful young associate....

Interwoven with the trial chapters are explicit descriptions of the sexual activities of the three main characters as an integral part of their complete life stories.