THIS
BLOG WAS WRITTEN IN JANUARY, 2015.
I was
reading John Grisham’s latest legal thriller and it got me thinking about my
own law career. Back in the ‘80s – was it really that long ago? – I tried
cases; big cases, small cases it didn’t matter. I loved court. I loved the
energy and the jousting, the intellectual combat. I loved having jurors smile
and nod in agreement; I loved winning and often, too often really, winning came
easily and mattered more than justice.
Grisham’s
novel, Gray Mountain, is set in the far southwestern corner of Virginia.
It involves coal companies and poor Appalachian mountain folk, and little
hamlets nestled in hollers. It portrays the enigma that is the law. It is more
than good versus evil. And, it reminded me of the days so long ago when I
thought winning mattered above all else.
I was
bright, outgoing and idealistic. I wanted to argue and write about cases that
would change the world. But marriage and a house payment and dozens of other
compromises led me to a mid-size firm. I cut my teeth, so to speak, driving
from Knoxville to Harlon, Kentucky. Our firm represented a number of coal
companies. I’d drive into the coal fields and see men, working men with nails
black from the mines and arms and hands scarred and gnarled from real labor, and
I’d “discuss” their black lung claims – me in my pressed white Oxford shirt and
three piece wool blend, gray pin-striped suit. I’d fight them over a few
thousand dollars in benefits before returning to my office and my cute, perky
secretary. Then, I’d drive to Chattanooga and help a developer who’d figured
out how to manipulate Federal urban development block grants into hotels with
attached city-rented parking garages. It was all legal and it was so far from
where I dreamt I’d be.
My
first jury trial: Two weeks after admittance to the bar I’m in the Knox County
Circuit Court. My client, an obnoxious, arrogant VT grad student. One Friday
night after returning home from a date with the daughter of one of our firm’s
biggest estate clients, ol’ James decides to drink a couple of tall boys with a
joint or two. Later, he climbs in bed not realizing he’d left a smoldering butt
between couch cushions. A neighbor saw the smoke and crawled across the fire
escape to beat on the bedroom window. James made it out. The apartment was a
mess.
So,
the estate client calls the senior partner who calls me at home with a new
assignment. “It’s an insurance claim,” he tells me. “They’ll negotiate. Help
the kid out for Mr. F.” As I said, my client was a real piece of work. “I’m not
paying for the damage,” he tells me. “I don’t have any money.” The insurance
company hires a lawyer, a lovely, proper woman who was a year ahead of me in
law school. Her father, coincidentally, was a Federal Judge.
“Larry,
we are willing to reduce the demand from $21,000 to 12,000, all payable in
monthly installments over five years.” The apartment building owner didn’t want
problems with VT renters. But my client turned the offer down. “Fuck em,” he
told me. “What do I care if they go to court?” Like I said, a real charmer.
I
started preparing for trial. I had no business even putting on a defense, but I
did … I discovered something in the scene photos – no smoke detectors. I
learned from the fire marshal they’d been taken down a week before the fire so
the unit could be painted.
Trial
comes and I get to pick a jury: mostly older women like my grandmother. And I’m
polite and ask nothing as all the evidence comes in about the fire damage. The
owner testifies about the building repairs. My turn.
I show
him the scene photos of the wall without the smoke detector and he admits they
were taken down. I move in for the kill. I read into the record the code
sections requiring smoke detectors.
“This
young man could have died because you didn’t think the detector needed to be
rehung … You violated the law and this young student has lost everything!”
I
sound like a Baptist preacher. My questions are rhythmic, my voice raising and
lowering in a cadence. The owner is stammering and red faced.
Then,
my client takes the stand and he becomes “Eddie Haskell” –
“Yes
sir. I coughed and wheezed and thought I was going to die.”
The
women in the jury box looked on with eyes of sympathy and concern. “I lost
everything.” The jury took less than an hour to reach a verdict: nothing for
the apartment owner. My client, James, was awarded $3500 (his lost property)
and another $3000 in punitive damages. And me? “The law provides legal fees for
housing law violations.” $10,000 in fees came my way.
Law.
Justice. It was right in the law, but it wasn’t justice. The apartment owner
was a decent man and I made him look like a money-grubbing, heartless bastard.
And my client? He was so busy getting high and drunk that he almost burned an
entire building down.
“Great
result Larry. Mr. F is pleased.” Me? I wondered if that’s why I went to law
school. I handled dozens of cases like that. I watched families disintegrate as
I argued about assets in divorce cases. I defended bank directors who ignored
the recklessness of management and destroyed investor value. I could argue
either side of a case … and I could win. The law was just that: an arena where
winners and losers were determined.
“A
man’s respect for law and order exists in precise relationship to the size of
his paycheck.” The Reverend Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., of Harlem’s Abyssinian
Baptist Church said that. I think of those words often in here. Reverend Powell
was on to something. We tend to espouse a lot of flowery words about the law
when we’re on top. Get caught up in its gristmill, however, and our respect
for, our love for, the law decreases.
I
wasn’t yet in high school the first time I saw “To Kill a Mockingbird.” Harper
Lee’s novel, perhaps the best American novel ever written, was required reading
in my upper income, all white middle school. We read about Scout, Jem, and Dill
and Boo Radley. We read about Atticus Finch, southern lawyer, father, decent
human being. And then the movie. I sat spell-bound as Gregory Peck portrayed
Atticus. “You never really understand a person until you consider things from
his point of view – until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.”
I
watched Atticus’s impassioned defense of Tom Robinson, a defense which exposed
the shame of the Jim Crow South. Atticus believed in justice and the power of
the law. No scene stayed with me as much as at the conclusion of the trial a
weary Atticus Finch turned to leave the courtroom. In the balcony, in the
“colored” seating area everyone rose. “Stand up Scout, your father is passing
by,” the black reverend told Atticus’s daughter. It was a scene of respect that
my generation of law students etched in our minds. The law mattered; being a
lawyer was noble.
Atticus
was the last true lawyer hero. Today, it isn’t justice we see, its law. Too
often the law becomes a tool to incarcerate, to violate, to humiliate. Justice is
like a waterfall spraying; law has become like a stagnant pool. I see the bad
side of the law every day in here. And, I wonder how often those in power –
prosecutors, judges, corrections employees – think about Atticus Finch’s
admonition, “until you climb into his skin and walk around it in.”
The
smartest lawyer I ever met was a young woman from the hills of east Tennessee.
She was brilliant and gifted; she clerked for both the DC Circuit and the U.S.
Supreme Court then returned to Knoxville and practiced with me. One day she and
I were at lunch and she announced she was leaving law practice to pursue a
doctorate in Elizabethan English.
“Why?”
I asked. “You’re great at the law.” She looked at me with sad eyes and said,
“There is no beauty in the law; there is no truth in it; there’s just heartache
and money.”
You
know what? She was right. We spend way too much time idolizing “the law” and
its ability to enable society. Instead we should focus on justice which is
merciful, rehabilitative and restorative.
What
would Atticus say about our love affair with legalism, litigation, and
retribution? I think I know.
