Shelby Yastrow. Photo Credit: Susan Baker-Ory.

It's anything but par for the course: retired McDonald's Corp. general counsel Shelby Yastrow and former pro-golf champion Tony Jacklin have collaborated on a new courtroom suspense novel.

The book has a corporate villain replete with a battery of high-priced lawyers. Not Big Oil. Not tobacco … but a magazine.

The funny and folksy Yastrow, who can spin a tale in answer to any question, spoke with Corporate Counsel Tuesday as the new book went on sale. He said the novel, “Bad Lies,” tells the fictional story of successful pro golfer Eddie Bennison and his legal battle with a major golf magazine that shatters his life by accusing him of cheating and doping. It is the third novel for Yastrow, who now lives in Phoenix.

The interview with Yastrow has been edited for clarity and length.

Corporate Counsel: How did you come to meet Tony Jacklin and co-author a book with him?

Shelby Yastrow: I was on the board of a Minneapolis corporation that sponsored the Ryder Cup [golf tournament] in 2016, and the company invited Tony and his wife to its “chalet” overlooking one hole. We hit it off. He loves to joke and tell stories and so do I.

So we went out to dinner with our wives and became friendly enough that I told him about a book I was working on. I had it basically framed out but not completed. I invited him to help me with it and he was eager to do it. I flew down to Florida and we spent several days talking about it. Many of his amazing stories and anecdotes from his pro golfing days found their way into the book. Tony added this realism about golfers on tour and how they treat each other when things aren't going right, about how wives snubbed his [main character's] wife, and his caddie was banned from the Friday night poker game. He gave the book another dimension.

Tony and I did a speaking engagement together a couple weeks ago at a country club near Sarasota, [Florida]. We opened it up for questions, and people loved it. We're both funny. We would still be there talking [if they hadn't cut it off].

Courtesy photo.

Do you ever write crime novels?

I decided my genre was civil lawsuits. Let John Grisham and Scott Turow—who, by the way, is a friend [but that's another story that started with a real legal case]—write about rapes and murders. My first book ["Undue Influence," 1991] was about a court fight over an $8 million will, and my second ["Under Oath," 1994] was about a malpractice case. [Yastrow also wrote the nonfiction book "Vision to Legacy," about franchising and the history of Great Clips Inc., the world's largest franchisor of hair salons.]

How did you decide to start writing novels?

When I was general counsel of McDonald's, I had over 100 lawyers doing all the work. I mostly was traveling all over the country, and all over the world, for meetings and spending my time in airports and hotel rooms. I was bored. I decided to write a book to kill the time. People seemed to like it and told me to write another, so I did.

How did you become GC at McDonald's? What was your background?

I was about two weeks out of law school in 1959 and working at Sonnenschein Carlin Nath and Rosenthal [later absorbed by Dentons] in Chicago. I was walking down the hall with some books, when a lawyer called “Young man, come in here. We have a new client here, Ray Kroc [founder of the modern McDonald's franchise], and we want you to help work on his case.” I hadn't even passed the bar yet. It was a major case that eventually went to the Illinois Supreme Court, and set a precedent for the McDonald's franchise against a copycat.

Ray liked me. [Yastrow ended up playing a pivotal role after both sides chose him to mediate the case, which was bet-the-company litigation for both sides. In the settlement, both sides won more or less what they wanted without destroying the other.] He offered me a job, but I decided to stay with my law firm.

Eventually I opened a small law firm in 1978 with some partners in Waukegan, Illinois. I was doing a little bit of everything. One day I received a phone call, and it was Ray saying, “Do you regret turning me down 15 years ago?”

By this time McDonald's had grown into a pretty big deal, and I said, “Every day of my life, Ray.” He told me to come on down and go to work for him now, and I was there in a month, as his chief of litigation.

I mean, up till then a big merger for me was if a guy in Waukegan bought a barbershop. Then suddenly I'm at McDonald's as head of litigation and handling major cases all over the world, in courtrooms in Brussels and Frankfurt and Tel Aviv and Sydney.

 Do you like being a writer?

I started writing on a yellow legal pad. This whole world is complicated with its computers and Facebook. My son and grandson taught me about Facebook, and blogging and social media. It's been a great experience for me and my family.

 

In a recent blog post tied to the release of “Bad Lies,” Yastrow addressed the infamous 1994 Hot Coffee case, where McDonald's lost a nearly $3 million suit to Stella Liebeck, a customer who spilled the beverage and burned her leg. Here's what he had to say:

“But am I remembered for [my] successes? No! Wherever I go, whomever I meet, and to this very day, I'm faced with the same question: 'How did you lose the famous 'Hot Coffee' case?'”

“As evidence of how I'm forever haunted by that case, it even came up at the company event held for me on my retirement from McDonald's several years later [in 1998]. The emcee read a series of telegrams from invitees who could not attend, some serious and some fake, and among them was one from Stella Liebeck which read: 'Dear Shelby, enjoy your retirement. I will miss you, but I will always have a warm spot for you.'