The Law and Justice

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.