As Atlanta trial lawyer Tommy Malone begins his 36th chemotherapy treatment Monday for the stomach cancer he has battled for nearly two years, he said he is taking a dose of encouragement from a biography of him just published by Mercer University Press.

The title is “Tommy Malone, Trial Lawyer: And the Light Shone Through… The Guiding Hand Shaping One of America's Greatest Trial Lawyers.” The author is Vincent Coppola, a former Newsweek reporter who has written five nonfiction books. His work has been featured in Atlanta Magazine, Esquire, Rolling Stone and other publications.

The cost of publishing the book has been underwritten by friends of Malone, according to a foreword penned by John Bell Jr. of Bell & Brigham in Augusta.

“There are some of us in life who are blessed with many friends, but we never know who will be there when we really, really need them,” Bell wrote. “I have never doubted that Tommy Malone is such a friend. The interviews by Vincent Coppola reveal how many others there are who feel the same way. Tommy has centered his life on what he can do for others, be they clients, friends, passing acquaintances, or worthwhile causes such as the Shepherd Center and Mercer University.”

Malone is the chairman of the Mercer board of trustees and a longtime donor to the Shepherd Center, which treats people with spinal cord and brain injuries.

The book opens with four chapters on a relatively recent case in Malone's 53-year career: a medical malpractice lawsuit on behalf of the family of Tucker Sutton, who was severely brain damaged in a difficult birth. Malone, and his son and law partner Adam Malone, tried the case twice in Cobb County Superior Court, in 2011 and 2014. Both times the jury deadlocked.

After the first trial, in which he asked for a $50 million verdict, Malone went home with a mistrial and the disclosure by jurors that they weren't convinced a doctor and hospital were responsible for the baby's birth injuries. Malone called it an expensive focus group and said he'd retry it. The book quotes the Daily Report's coverage of that trial.

The second time, the jury deadlocked again. But Malone refused to accept it. Moving between his clients and his opposing counsel on a cold January Saturday, he forged a deal to accept the jury's majority vote to trigger a previously negotiated high-low agreement. He said it was a creative solution he'd learned to use in California. Once Judge Kathryn Tanksley agreed and brought the jury in, they all learned that the 10-2 vote was in the Sutton family's favor. Malone and his wife, Debby, walked out of the courthouse with the baby in his stroller with his parents knowing they'd receive $2 million from the doctor's insurance company. They'd already received a settlement from the hospital.

Malone said last week that he has stayed in touch with Tucker Sutton's family and that his mother had produced a book herself about the case, which she titled, “Even Heroes Need a Hero.”

He said he's pleased that Coppola chose to start with Tucker Sutton and then move back to Malone's beginnings in his hometown of Albany. There, Malone worked with civil rights attorney and future Georgia Court of Appeals Judge Herbert Phipps representing people whom other white lawyers wouldn't help. He lost at first, learning hometown juries were unwilling to find fault with their own doctors. But when he teamed up with famed San Francisco plaintiffs lawyer Melvin Belli against a pharmaceutical company that made a drug that caused a young girl brain damage, everything changed.

The book's jacket says its core question is, “how a great lawyer who comes to represent important causes emerges out of the racist, paternalistic, and self-perpetuating establishment of rural Georgia in the 1950s.”

Coppola described Malone as “a lawyer whose jury awards read like Mega-Millions lottery jackpots and whose lifestyle a handbook for the rich and famous.”

Since his cancer diagnosis, Malone, now 75, has lived in his Palm Beach, Florida, home. “They couldn't do anything for me except chemo,” he said last week. “So I decided not to deal with the cold weather and the traffic in Atlanta.”

Malone said he has gained weight during treatment, thanks to his wife's care and protein shakes. “She's my Florence Nightingale,” he said. He said he has extreme fatigue, although he still goes out to dinner and has a drink, and looks forward to it. He added, “I'm still here, and they said I wouldn't be.”