Law And More

Bill Lerach aka King of Chutzpah in halfway house

All went silent for a while. 

Bill Lerach aka King of Chutzpah published not a mea culpa but a defense of his conduct in PORTFOLIO Magazine [when it existed].  It was long and spell-binding in its bravado for a guy on the way to the slammer. 

Then he tried to make a case to be placed in an alcohol-abuse treatment center in prison, which was denied.  The goodies are better in those centers than in non-treatment parts of the prison system. 

After that we didn't hear from this one-time high-profile plaintiff securities attorney for while.

Now, reports Brian Baxter in AMERICAN LAW DAILY, Lerach has been in a halfway house in California for a few months.  He is due to be released March 8, 2010.  Given his amazing boldness, we are all going to watch Lerach's What's Next.

Halloween: Most Popular Legal Costumes

Halloween is the new Christmas.  Here's a preview of the most popular legal costumes:

• Charlene Marshall - A headband will do it.
• Uncle Bernie in orange jumpsuit
• Ground Beef & E-Coli [for couples only]
• Botox Greta
• David Souter the Stud
• Mary Winkler in wig, platform shoes
• Mickey Pohl as Christmas Choir Boy [for Jones Day office parties]
• Aaron Hotchner smiling.
• Alicia and Peter.

Gays will pack a power wallop on Halloween

Halloween, known as Gay Christmas, will be outrageous performance art this year.  Feeling their power after several state-level wins on the marriage issue, gays will push the envelope on making their presence and legislative/court stances felt.  It will be palpable.  Elton John will look '50s stilted conformity.

Well-crafted performance art is almost everything in the persuasion game.  Fortunately, much of The Establishment is clueless about presenting their points of view as theatre.  Think Common Good's Philip Howard, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce [Monkey Business was not well-crafted], and too many of the Corporate 1000.  Only by totally ignoring them will they get the message: Stop being so boring.  Incidentally, some are getting the message.  Disney didn't cancel its commercials on "Letterman" post-Love Den scandal.  Often capitalism trumps risk-averse, bureaucratic and slow.

World, Forgive Me: Amend-Makers as Public Nuisance

In Scott Turow's most recent book "Limitations," the pompous old judge searches for and calls a female he views as having done wrong in his college days.  When the crusty babe answers the phone and hears his few few sentences she bluntly says, "Hey, are you one of those people in 12-step programs making an amend."  The judge gets that moment of clarity of how others might see him.

Since last night at my own little 12-step meeting in North Haven, Connecticut I have been obsessively giving this matter of amend-making my best thinking.  I have come up with the recommendation that amend-making should be treated legally as a public nuisance, right up there with the 12 barking dogs, the polluted stream, and the emissions from coal-fired plants.  Yes, the organizations which set loose these pests on the nation as well as those menacing others with their need to "make an amend" should be subjects of class-action suits. 

Why last night?  One earnest woman recounted an amend made several years ago.  Admittedly she was a newbie to the 12 steps and she conceded that act represented over-zealousness.  She had gotten into her head that she had sold a house at too high a price.  She gathered up her courage, drove to that house not knowing if the purchaser still resided there, and knocked.  Because the buyer had long ago sold the house and moved, she made the amend to that buyer.  For some reason, the man at the door listened. He even let her in, where she held him hostage with her tale of high crimes and misdemeanors.

Me?  Of course, I did my share of amends and received my share of them from others.  The whole process makes me blush at what I did and annoyed at the acts of contrition I endured.  Yes, still a person who revels in my sinfulness, which William Shakespeare called "cankered in the grain," there is every likelihood I will be at it again, that is, the amend-making.

We need to be stopped.  Litigation could do the trick.  Or, maybe given the peculiar relentlessness of those in 12-step programs, it will just go underground and flourish.

Game-changer in courtroom reporting: Dominick Dunne Dies

Dominick Dunne's approach to what went on in the courtroom actually changed the courtroom.  After he began his conversational, gossipy, cult of personality style of legal journalism, we saw criminal trials through his framing.  So did lawyers.  Could the O.J. trial have been the performance art it was had not Dunne taught us to enjoy the human underbelly of law.  He started that in his books, then let it rip when he was a regular columnist for VANITY FAIR.

It was from that print template on criminal courthouse drama that I derived my formula for blogging on the civil side.  To engineer a professional comeback [Dunne and I were alike in self-destructing than reinventing ourselves as legal writers] I live-blogged the Rhode Island lead paint public nuisance trial II, for four months.  You bet I took heat about covering sensible shoes and feathered hairdos.  That was back in 2004.  But readers, including the financial community, ate it up.  The rest is history Download Geezerguts.  Today, lawandmore.typepad.com is loved and feared.  No one makes fun of it, though - or of me. 

Today, Dominick Dunne died.  Unfortunately this enormous loss is overshadowed by the late Senator Ted Kennedy's death.  But there isn't a journalist, attorney, judge, plaintiff or defendant who hasn't been influenced by this incorrigible yenta.  Thank you, Mr. Dunne.  Over the years I did put the knock on you for what seemed uneven quality.  However, I always kept monitoring what you were covering and how.   

Acting [or being] Crazy: Standard Management Tool in Law Firms

In corporate life, acting [or being] crazy is an underused strategy for management.  But not in law firms.  Actually, it seems to be be the standard management tool - and an effective one.

See, craziness has the advantage of unpredictability.  That's why we from crazy families usually do so well in life:  We are prepared for the volatility and carry within us myriad coping strategies.  As we say: "You never knew what was behind that door."  Those who had the bad luck to grow up in normal households are thrown by partners's bizarre patterns, at least for several years.  Once they figure out the game, it's no fun for the partners to play and they will act sane around those who deconstructed this management tool.

Other advantages of craziness, real or feigned, in managing include the lengths others will go to avoid it.  They will do just about anything, such as complying with demands for serial all-nighters, to put distance between them and the nut or nuts.  Incidentally, the more nuts supervising, the greater the impact.  Conventional norms collapse and any rules can be made standard.  In fact, we come to internalize that way as, well, normal.

In addition, human beings become frightened by lunacy.  That's exactly the goal of nuttiness.  Victims of it will think three or four times before asking for a raise, a day off to bury their dad, or a candid evaluation of the odds they will not be cut from the team. 

Case study: My mother deterred her landlady from demanding her to move.  Among other grievances, the landlady was concerned about my mother's not getting rid of her trash.  Fearing that someone was going through it, mum waited until one of us three daughters came to visit and hand-carry the 10 or so hefty bags in our cars to the Jersey City dump.  Yeah, my mother kept her eyes peeled out the window to ensure we didn't pull a fast one and deposit the trash in the landlady's garbage cans.  A week after my mother died, having lived on Clerk Street for two decades, the landlady told us off about mum's high crimes.  At the time, I took that as a positive sign: I wasn't perceived as crazy.  Now, I know better.  Nuttiness is a most efficient and effective way to navigate life, professional and personal.

Astor Trial - Defense attorney John R. Cuti saying what most in RI lead paint trial thought

In the infamous Astor trial, now in its third month, defense attorney John R. Cuti articulated what many of us observing the Rhode Island lead paint public nuisance trial II thought: The prosecution was taking too long to make a point.  Cuti did that, of course, with the jury not there. 

In THE NEW YORK TIMES, which like the Manhattan tabloids is closely following the trial, A. G. Sulzberger and John Eligon report that the prosecution pushed back.  Joel J. Seidemann, assistant district attorney, told Cuti, "I didn't realize you were my time-management consultant."

Although the players might be tiring of the drawn-out testimony, the public isn't.  Otherwise the media wouldn't be giving this as much attention as the continuing Madoff saga.  In the September edition of VANITY FAIR, there were major articles on both.  The pull force is the peek into both a dysfunctional wealthy family and old-line WASP culture. 

In addition, there are the theatrics.  Defendant Anthony Marshall's wife Charlene has acquired the habit of sobbing in court.  There is also the backdrop of what seems to be their grand love affair.  We might not find the two attractive characters in any way but their support of one another is something we might envy. 

Unlike the tedious RI lead paint follies, which observers referred to as "watching lead paint dry," no one wants this one to end.  Fortunately, if Marshall lives long enough, a civil trial will follow this criminal one.

Note:  Yes, the Sulzberger covering the Astor courtroom drama is the heir to the newspaper dynasty.  During the RI lead paint trial II, he was working on THE PROVIDENCE JOURNAL as a reporter.

Dick Armey Resigns from DLA Piper: Mau-mauing still works

Cultural conservative satirist Tom Wolfe made a lot of fun of mau-mauing or theatrical activism.  But, it remains an effective tool in messaging.  So effective, in fact, that it seems to have driven Dick Armey from his job at law firm DLA Piper. 

This former House Majority leader resigned, reports Carrie Levine in THE NATIONAL LAW JOURNAL, because of the protests - in-person, in blogs, in mainstream journalism - against his ties to Freedomworks.  The activism is aimed at the alleged conservative stance of nonprofit Freedomworks toward healthcare reform. The attacks, concluded Armey, have "hurt" DLA Piper.

Welcome back the performance art of the 1960s, only expanded to cyberspace.

WASP Stings - The long-running Astor trial

Every high-profile trial got to be high-profile for a reason.  For the Rhode Island lead paint public nuisance trials I, II, it was primarily because of the attempt to reconfigure product liability.  After all, leveraging public nuisance theory onto conventional product liability law wiped out the statute of limitations and could make a product once legal and loved liable.

For the long-running Astor criminal trial and, if the key defendant Anthony Marshall doesn't die, the civil trial to follow, the pull force is, well, the WASP world.  Of particular interest are the ways in which WASPs manifest displeasure, make others feel less than, maintain their dominance at least back then before the world changed so much, and had fun at others's expense.  Those are often referred to as "WASP stings."  As Astor biographer Meryl Gordon chronicles in the September edition of VANITY FAIR, there have been many on display during "The People of the State of New York v. Anthony Marshall and Francis Morrissey Jr."

Here are some of them:

• Neither liking very much her son Anthony Marshall nor his wife Charlene, Brooke Astor tormented both in unique WASP ways.  She criticized Charlene's neck.  The sting was felt and Charlene wore a scarf the next time she visited Mum.  Despite her wealth, she only gave Anthony's two sons $10,000 a year, the max the IRS will allow as a gift without tax implications.

• Critical statements are understated but devastatingly vicious.  Brooke has been quoted as observing about her son Anthony, "He was so unfortunate, I decided not to have any more." Charlene was quoted as saying about her husband's son Alec that he is "slightly retarded."

• When the situation merits it, use vulgarity.  Charlene is reported to have referred to her mother-in-law by the "c" word.

The show is so riveting that we hope that Anthony Marshall attends to his health problems.  A nice side attraction is Charlene's increasing sobs.  Darling: Nancy Kissinger referred to herself as an average housewife.

"People of the State of New York v. Anthony Marshall and Francis Morissey Jr." - Caricature of "King Lear"

Who are the sinners and who are the more sinned against? 

That's the moral, if not legal, issue which permeates "The People of the State of New York v. Anthony Marshall and Francis Morrissey Jr."  Brooke Astor was not cut out to be a loving mother or, extend that, a matriarch who basked in the role.  On the other hand her son Anthony Marshall wasn't all that lovable.  His current wife Charlene seems to be a stand-in for a human being, with plenty of melodrama attached. The two grandchildren fraternal twins Alec and Philip come across, predictably, as having a piece missing.  

The legal questions will probably be more easily decided by the jury.  The evidence of forging a will and more seems to be the only unambiguous entity.  Everything else in this long-running trial is the play out of an ancient morality saga of not being able to love one's offspring and not being loved.  Who should pay the price for those human failings?