Steve Dimick — Law 'n' Stuff

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Archive for July, 2009

Model City — Chapter 4

Jul 28

Posted by Steve in Chronological, Model City | 4 Comments

Mildred and Dwain

O, to be in England
Now that April’s there.

Robert Browning

1946 – 1956


“God-DAMNED, burr-headed son-of-a-bitch!” I remember Dwain screaming as a black motorist cut him off at an intersection, neatly distilling Dwain himself and race relations in Oklahoma into one profane sentence.

To Dwain, no slight was unintentional, no comment or action without ulterior motive and no setback not deserving of a royal cursing.  The words themselves were pretty mild by today’s standards, and I don’t remember him ever using any of the “Seven Dirty Words.”  Midwestern farm bringing-up, I suppose.  The only sexual reference I ever heard him make was describing a horse as “wild as a peach-orchard whore,” and even then it turned out I was wrong.  The phrase which I misheard turns out to be “wild as a peach-orchard boar,” and, boy, was I disappointed when I learned this.

I find myself using profanity much more than I should.  I really try to use it only deliberately and only for effect – much as I have tried to rid myself of my Oklahoma accent (but with much better results) – but it slips out constantly.  “I swear to Christ.”  “Christ on a crutch.”  “Jesus Christ, Lady, get off the fucking telephone and drive.”  I even use the “f-“ word, the long “c-“word and both short “c-“words in casual conversation, which Dwain never did.

Dwain only cursed when he was angry.  But then Dwain was nearly always angry.

*

I was 50-ish when I went through therapy for the second time, this time with an MFCC (Marriage, Family and Child Counselor) with a background quite similar to mine, and who specialized in “men’s issues.”  He liked me and thought I was worth saving.  I had had many mentors in my past who liked me, saw my potential, and tried to help me realize it.  Trouble was, I didn’t feel like I could really trust any of them.  Why would they like me?
Mark, the counselor, however, saw through all of that.

“What are you so angry at?” he asked.

“Remember the movie, ‘The Wild One,’ with Marlon Brando and Jean Simmons?” I asked, in return.  “She asks him what he’s rebelling against.  He says, ‘Whaddaya got?’”

Good answer for the Brando character, and good answer for Steve.  What it really means is, “I’m angry at everybody and everything but mostly at myself and I don’t know why and I can’t imagine why you’d even be interested and maybe someday I’ll let you in just a little but probably not and right now if I tell you to fuck off, then I’ll hurt you before you get a chance to hurt me.”

**

My dad could dig a ditch, drive a train, repair a transmission (hell, tear the whole car apart and put it back together better than when it came off the Detroit assembly line), lay concrete, build a barn, break a pony, shoe a horse, repair your television, drive a team of mules, fly an airplane and discuss pop philosophers – all without the benefit of a highschool diploma.

He could charm you out of your last dollar.  If you were a kid, he could charm you into believing you were the second most important person on earth.  If you were a woman – married or not – he could charm you out of your pants.  And did, on a regular basis.

Dwain3

Dwain (undated)

He had the good looks of a movie star from the days when stars were men, instead of boys: a lot of Clark Gable, a little Randolph Scott, a small bit of Alan Ladd.  With his hat on, there was a bit of Belmondo.  No Brad Pitt or Tom Cruise looks for Dwain.  No wonder Mildred fell for him immediately.

Unfortunately, my dad was also a violent, uncontrolled sadist and the biggest asshole in Central Oklahoma.

*

Dinners on 22d Street in Oklahoma City were an ordeal.  Dwain was angry because the groceries cost too much.  Dwain was angry because dinner was late or the meat was overdone.  Dwain was angry because the kids (meaning Steve and Rick, but sometimes our half-brother, Dwain Lee) were being kids.

“GODDAMNIT!  Can’t I at least Can’t you at least Why the hell won’t they How many Goddamned times have I told you Why the hell How in hell Where’s the Goddamned right I’m Goddamned sick and tired of this Goddamned take the Goddamned thing and throw it out the Goddamned window Burn the Goddamned thing down Jesus Christ this is more than I can put up with Why are you always giving me the Goddamned….”

Sometimes (sometimes?  Hell’s bells, most of the time), Dwain was just angry for no discernable reason.  But it was never his fault.  Nothing was ever Dwain’s fault.  When he had no other excuse for a tantrum, then you must be angry at him and he by-God wanted to know why.

“Just what the hell is eating at your craw?  You’re really down on me for some Goddamned reason.”  [Well, maybe because you came home from work mad and have been yelling and stomping around ever since?] This was a favorite tactic.

*

I must have been only six or seven.  It wasn’t an unusual meal.  Dwain was ranting and cursing and Mildred was crying and scratching at his soft spots.  Maybe it was something I saw on television that made me pipe up; I don’t know.  But I took a chance for the first and only time.

“Please,” I said.  “You’re spoiling the dinner.”

Well.  The wrath of God would have been preferable.  You’d have thought I’d announced I was turning Catholic, or gay, or wanted to go to an integrated school.

Children were made to worship and obey their father, and not to be heard.

*

I suppose he must have been happy with baby Stevie at first, if only because I never heard any stories to the contrary.  But he had been “trapped” into marriage the first time by a woman who got herself pregnant and when Mildred announced her second pregnancy just about the time of my second birthday, he accused her of doing it deliberately.

A part of me can’t quite put it past Mildred to have arranged a deliberate pregnancy.  People do, stupidly, tend to think that a child, or another child, will save a doomed marriage.  And Mildred always thought she wanted children to love and coo over and display with pride, not realizing until too late that they are  so…inconvenient…once they outgrow the cute stage.

But logically, I realize that contraception was the man’s responsibility in 1949, as it remained even into the ‘60s, when I was in school and birth-control pills were available but Oklahoma college girls were too shy and modest to ask for them.  Can’t we just do it once without this damned thing?

*

Dwain thought of himself as a family man, and well into his 40’s made the Sunday pilgrimage to Guthrie at least twice a month when the Dimick clan gathered at Daisy’s.  But he saw his brothers and sisters infrequently away from his mom’s.  Daisy was the bond Dwain had with the family, and when she died in 1966 he drifted away.  Other brothers and sisters saw each other, but Dwain seldom bothered.  They could come to his house…he supposed.  He had no interest in going to theirs.

I thought there might be some redemption available for him when his fourth wife came along with two young girls, whom he raised, and who began calling him “Daddy” not long after the marriage…and who seemed not to be afraid of him.  Thirty-or-so years later, I asked him how the girls were doing.

“How about the oldest one?  What’s her name?  Jerri Lee?  She probably has grandkids by now.”

“I don’t know.  She might.”

Oooookay, then, I thought.  “What about Thelma?  How is she doing?”

“Oh, she’s off somewhere.  I don’t rightly remember when was the last time I saw her.”

**

Dwain Lee Dimick, Jr., ten years older than I, was what we would call today a “troubled child.”  “Juvenile delinquent” was the nicest of the names used for him in his teens.  His mother couldn’t control him, so he would periodically be sent to live with his father, who would attempt to beat him into submission.

On one of his extended visits, I playfully shot him with a homemade slingshot, not meaning it to hurt, but it did.  He slapped me on the face in retaliation.  A bit later, Mildred saw the red mark on my cheek, and I had to confess.  Resenting his presence anyway, she made no attempt to talk to the two of us, to find out the whole story, to explain or lecture or scold.  She merely waited until Dwain, then working the swing shift, came home about midnight and reported the incident to him.

I woke up to Dwain Lee’s screams as Dwain pulled him out of a sound sleep and pounded him with a belt.

Dwain Lee was the same age as our uncle Lawrence Allen, Dwain’s youngest brother, who was also a rootless hooligan in his teen years.  They seemed to bring out the worst in each other and were constantly in trouble.  Among other exploits, they once stole a car and made it all the way to California before being caught.

Dwain Lee tried to turn himself around, but lacked the tools to do so.  He joined the Navy, got married, had a couple of kids and died at 55.  I heard rumors that his death involved drugs.

The poor mutt never had a chance.

**

What was Dwain so angry at that violence – verbal and physical – was his only answer?  Did he simply suffer from the sins of his father?  And if so, did Roy suffer from Albert’s sins as I have suffered from Dwain’s?  How many generations?  Why can’t a man say, “Enough, already.  I will define myself without your help, thank you very much”?

I’ve tried.  I can only hope that I’ve succeeded, but other people get to judge that.

*

When I was eleven or twelve, Dwain had two boxer dogs, a brother and sister.  What the male did to displease Dwain I probably didn’t even remember the next day, overshadowed as it was by my father’s response.  He kicked the dog several times and then beat it viciously with a heavy rope.  I was too big to cry, but I was crying when I went home, cried when Mildred pried the story out of me and cried when I went to bed that night.  I cried for the dog, cried because I couldn’t understand such primitive violence and cried because I had been too afraid for myself to even try to stop it.

And yet that anger boils up in me at times and if it frightens those around me, it frightens me even more.

*

I spanked my step-daughter once – and only once – during a large family fight over some serious misbehavior.  In the middle of all the yelling, she told her mother to “shut up.”  I pushed her onto her bed and whaled her behind with my hand before it dawned on me what I was doing.

I left the rest of the fight to Marianne, rushed out of the bedroom and out into the garage, no longer angry at my baby, but furious at myself and aghast at what I – for just a moment – had become:

My father.

*

Less than a year after their marriage, Mildred fled back to Iowa, a pattern she repeated for a minimum of twice yearly throughout the ten years of their marriage.

Mildred was unhappy in Oklahoma.  She had never been more than an hour away from her parents in her life and missed them terribly.  She couldn’t understand Oklahomans and didn’t much care for them.  In her mind, none of them liked her, and they tended to conspire against her by having fun without her.  And for this 30-year-old ex-spinster, married life was…different than she had dreamed.

Mildred and Dwain, 22d St., Oklahoma City

Mildred and Dwain, 22d St., Oklahoma City

Reading between the lines of the skimpy correspondence she saved, the first separation probably involved the house on 22d Street in Oklahoma City.  It was a three-bedroom brick house with two parlors, large lot and oversized, detached garage.  Dwain fell in love with it, but even with a VA loan it was more than they could afford.  They had to rent out part of it to another post-war couple for the first year or two in order to afford to make the payments – something Mildred never forgave.

Dwain wrote to Mildred in Iowa in August, 1946 (they had only been married eight months), that he missed her so much he couldn’t stay alone in their apartment but was staying with friends.  Also, “We got the deal closed or it will be closed tomorrow.  I gave him the contract and wrote a check for the closing costs, all but $39.  It was $172.62 so I gave a check on the saving acct. for $82.62 and a check on the checking acct. for $50.  that leaves a dollar and some cents in the savings and $22. in the checking, rough isn’t it??

“I also signed an I.O.U. for $250 to Finstermaucher due two years from now with no interest and no security.

“So – the deal is closed!  Happy??”

*

Mildred wrote him a love letter during this same separation and sent him a poem.  The letter shows more insight into another person’s problems than was usual for her, although the sentiments also could easily have been lifted from a romance story in a women’s magazine: “If I were to leave you…it would not mean I no longer loved you….If, by leaving you, I could make you happier, give you success and contentment, believe me, dear, then I would leave you.”

The poem is an embarrassment, but is the earliest record I have of her narcissism and growing paranoia.  Mildred wrote poetry all of her life, all of it dreadful.  But she grew up with poems in the tradition of the Chautauqua Circuit and was nurtured with the simplistic poems of “The Hoosier Poet” from Iowa’s next-door state, James Whitcomb Riley.

You can sing Oklahoma’s praises from early morn ‘till night
But I’ve tried to see ‘em fairly in every kind of light
If I didn’t love you, darling, ‘twould be less to bear
I’d just pack up and take myself way back up there
To Iowa

I’ve tried a thousand ways to make new friends down here
But guess I just don’t mix with those people that I’m near
I’ve tried to find someone else who was lonely too
But somehow it doesn’t work, that’s why I’m so blue
Ah, Iowa!

I’ve met a lot of people and know their faces well
I’ve tried being friendly and it works for just a spell
Then someone who was a pal of a pal of theirs, years gone
Appears to see that they have fun and that leaves me all alone.
Except for Iowa.

I get so lonely just for a friend who cares when I’m blue
Who will call me on the phone to say “Well, how are you?
I thought today you might need me.  Is there something I can do?”
Or “I’m going on a picnic now but it’s no fun without you.”
But that’s Iowa.

No matter if I try and try and do my level best
Each person that I chance to meet is exactly like the rest.
They have a friend who is a wow over in Indiantown
They’ll let me know when they get back or else they’ll have me down
From Iowa

**

Some people argue; some people fight.  The purpose of an argument is to establish a proposition or defend a position, with a vague attempt to arrive at the truth.  The purpose of a fight is to hurt.

Dwain was a fighter.

He told her he never loved her, even when they got married.  He told her he didn’t believe she had been a 30-year-old virgin and knew she had faked it.  When questioned why he wasn’t wearing his wedding ring (likely, he had removed it while working on a car), he told her he had thrown it away.

“Honey,” she wrote to him, “you say you didn’t love me when we were married, but if not, how could any power in the world have influenced you to marry me?  Why did you make that phone call?  I’ve asked myself that over and over again.”

*

Mildred returned to Oklahoma from Iowa, as she would again and again.  She received a letter dated July 8, 1947, from Agnes McCreery, Executive Secretary of the Family Society of Des Moines, apologizing for the belated reply, which indicates that Mildred must have written to the Family Society some weeks before.

She was pregnant with her first child: me.  She had been married less than two years.  She had also evidently sought advice from Dwain’s closest friend at the time.

“It looks to me, though,” wrote Ms. McCreery, “as if you had both been trying in your own way to make things work out….Probably what your husband told Roy about what he wants is nearer to the truth than some of the things he says to you.

“If you are still together could you, when he tells you something particularly upsetting, remember such an incident as his telling you he had thrown his wedding ring away.  Perhaps you would not feel too badly each time if you could remember those times when his hurting statements were not true.  Could you try to study what it is in both your own behavior and his that precipitate these difficulties.”

**

A letter from Daisy Collins (Dwain’s mother) to Mildred in Prairie City, Iowa, postmarked April 15, 1948, when I was less than seven months old:

Dearest Mildred

Got your card shure was glad.  Well I shure have been over worked this week.  The [ ? ] has come in all ready and they have been eating their with us.

Well Dwain came up and I asked him what was the trouble he didn’t want to talk.  Well I didn’t scold him any.  he all most cried he said Mom she made me strike her the things she cald me and then I was sorry after I did he said I know she gets home sick he said he hoped you didn’t stay long I know we have to give & take.  dwain may wait for you to make up your mind to come Back

So why don’t you just tell him to send you a pass and come back we cant do with out you and Steven

With Lots of Love

Mom

**

Steve, with "Joe"

Steve, with "Joe"

Like her mother, Mildred kept a diary for years.  Her writing was a bit more flowery and self-conscious than her mother’s simple notations.  Like the letters she saved for posterity, she carefully cut out and saved only 17 days from her 1949 diary.

Jan. 6, 1949 – Well, Dwain was very angry with me.  I buy too many groceries.  Poor Stevie got spanked several times for climbing up on the dining room table.

Jan. 13, 1949 – We have been married 37 months but Dwain talked awful to me because I didn’t have as much money left as he wanted.  He knows I only bought groceries but cussed & swore & said I’d kept some back.  I cried.  He took Mr. Dimick home & came back after we’d eaten supper.  I fixed his & he was in better humor.

Jan. 14, 1949 – Dwain went somewhere & didn’t come home until late for supper & was mad all evening.  He’s mad most of the time anymore.

Jan. 15, 1949 – We went to Guthrie tonight for a short while.  I got my watch.  It had been in the shop.  D. was peeved because Mom sent me the $5 to get it fixed – the only way I ever could have gotten it fixed.

Jan. 16, 1949 – Stevie & I went to S.S. this morning and spent some time over at the Dishman’s.  Dwain left mad again.  He’s like a bear with a sore behind.  I can’t even joke with him or baby him and keep him good-natured.  Another big fuss tonight over money.  I cried & cried.

Jan. 17, 1949 – I went down to pay bills.  Dwain gave me even money to do it – not even bus fare.  I charged a braziere (sic) for 89¢ & bought a $3 pair of shoes.  Will pay for these Thursday.  Mrs. Dishman kept Stevie & said he was awfully good.

The letters, a few odd poems, a couple of snapshots and the diary pages were kept in a well-worn fake leather glove box, separate from all of Mildred’s other collectibles.  Even her grandfather’s discharge papers from the Union Army and the deed to the Prairie City house (in her name) were kept elsewhere.  There was something special about this box, and I puzzle unsuccessfully over the items in it that don’t connect to its main story.  I’ll probably never have all the answers to the box, but I know two things: she hoped it portrayed her as a martyr and she hoped it would be found.

WillieWorld — Part II

Jul 26

Posted by Steve in Chronological, Rants | 8 Comments

(Lawyers and judges and clowns, oh my!)

(When last we left Willie Brown, former Speaker of the California Assembly, showman, wearer of $1,000 hats and $6,000 suits, friend to the rich, confidante of San Francisco kingmaker Herb Caen, collector of embarrassingly large amounts of campaign contributions and doler-out of political favors, he had just sponsored the most significant piece of legislation in his nearly 40 years as an elected official, AB3300, the “Trial Court Delay Reduction Act.”

(As we rejoin our hero, we learn of the evils that previously existed in the California judicial system and how his simple sleight-of-hand made those evils seem to disappear.)


California law has long had two time periods during which a judge can dismiss (i.e., kick out of court) a case because it seems to be going nowhere.

Two years after a suit is filed, the defendant can make a motion to have it tossed out because the plaintiff is just sitting on the case and not making any efforts to move it along to trial.  The ruling on this motion is up to the judge and, in the past, the statute was rarely – if ever – used.

But there is also a drop-dead date: If a case has not come to trial within five years of being filed, absent an agreement by both sides to extend this deadline, it is automatically dismissed.

This is not a particularly bad set of rules although, admittedly, some plaintiffs’ attorneys and some defendants’ attorneys sometimes – sometimes – took advantage of the system.

But let’s say you were in an automobile accident and suffered severe soft-tissue injury (usually to one or more of the cervical, thoracic or lumbar disks, but occasionally a severe muscle tear or sprain or strain.)  (A soft-tissue injury is, broadly, one that doesn’t show up on an X-ray.)  Studies show that approximately 90 percent of soft-tissue injuries are resolved (either heal completely or stabilize) within a year.  Approximately 90 percent of the rest are resolved within two years.  The remainder of them can take from three years to infinity.

You file suit against the driver who ran the stop light and hit you, but you’re not in a position to talk settlement or go to trial because you haven’t yet recovered from your injuries.  And once you accept that settlement check or the jury awards you damages, you can’t ever go back for more money.  If at all possible, you don’t want to resolve the case until you have finished treating with your doctors.

So you are in no great hurry.  And the defendant is certainly in no hurry to shell out money or go to trial. The longer you (and thousands just like you) stay out of court, the less crowded the courts will be.  Nobody is harmed by the delay.  So you’d think the two sides should be able to agree to take their time and not rush to judgment.

But you’d be wrong.

Or say there’s a business dispute between former partners A and B.  They’ve been negotiating for quite some time and the matter may eventually be settled, but because of the applicable statute of limitations, A has to file suit against B.  Enter C, who says he may buy the partnership assets for enough money that everybody will be happy and the lawsuit will just go away.  But lining up financing is going to take a while.

You’d think that A, having stopped the statute of limitations from running by filing his lawsuit, might choose not even to have B served with the summons and complaint unless negotiations break down.  Or maybe that A does have B served, but agrees that B will not have to file a formal answer to the complaint unless negotiations break down.  No public interests would be harmed and there would be absolutely no burden on the courts.

That’s the way things used to work and they worked pretty well, too.  So you might think so, but in Willie Brown’s world, you’d be wrong.

In Willie’s world, the trial courts are jammed to overflowing.  (True.)  Justice delayed is justice denied.  (True.)  It’s all the fault of those pesky lawyers, and people who desperately want to go to trial have to wait for years because of lawyers’ delaying tactics.  (False.)

It is true that the trial courts were (and are) overcrowded.  It’s a matter of funding.  There simply aren’t enough of them to handle the load and the legislature won’t provide enough money to build more courthouses and to hire more judges.  Every county in California needs at least 25 percent more judges and some of them need more than that.

Enter the Speedy Trial Act, which has as its underlying principle “that litigation, from commencement to resolution, should require only that time reasonably necessary for pleadings, discovery, preparation, and court events, and that any additional elapsed time is delay and should be eliminated.”

What’s that?  Where’s the time to negotiate?  Where’s the breathing space?  Where’s the time for the clients to find the money to pay the attorneys?  What about those lawsuits that we know will settle, but only had to be filed because the statute of limitations was about to run out?  What about the concept that it’s my case and I should decide how it proceeds?

Not important.  Someone else will make those decisions for you.  You, the litigant, are but a necessary evil and we wish you would just go away.  According to Brown & Co., 75% of all larger cases must go to trial within one year of being filed, 85% within eighteen months and 100% within two years.  For smaller cases, 90% must go to trial within one year, 98% within eighteen months and 100% within two years.

*

Ask yourself at this point:

If you had to pay your lawyer between $20,000 and $50,000 to go to trial (depending on the complexity of the case; the sky, of course, being the limit), could you come up with this money within one year?  Or would you, if possible, rather proceed a bit more slowly and only have to raise this amount within three or four years?

If you’re going to need another couple of surgeries, do you want to be forced to rely on some doctor’s best guess as to what the surgeries will cost next year or do you want the jury to know exactly what they did cost?  (The amount of money you hope to get from the defendant depends almost exclusively on the amount of your medical bills.)

If you are an attorney, how many (or, better still, how few) cases can you handle at any one time, knowing that every case that you file must be concluded within a single year?  If you’re forced to handle fewer cases at a time, what happens to all of those clients you have to turn away?  If you can only deal with so many clients at a time, how do you pay your overhead?  (Obviously, you raise your hourly rate.)

So if neither the little-guy litigant nor his attorney benefits from these new rules, who does?

Think insurance companies who will probably have to pay smaller judgments because the plaintiff’s attorney was rushed into trial.  Think rich folks, who can afford to pay thousands and thousands of dollars to their attorneys.  Think big developers, who are much freer now to run rough-shod over the little guys because the little guys can’t find an attorney who can afford to take their case.

Think Willie Brown, who gets the credit for “solving” a monetary problem without spending a single extra dollar.

Just don’t think you get any benefit out of it.

*

But how do we ensure that cases will be resolved so speedily?  Naturally, we set deadlines for every step in the litigation process.  Although – within limits – local courts are allowed to set their own timetables so long as they achieve the overall objective, the limits are fairly narrow and the following are typical:

– The plaintiff must serve the complaint on all defendants and file his proof of service with the court within 60 days of filing the complaint.

– The defendant has always had a minimum of 30 days to file an answer to the complaint, but the plaintiff may now agree to allow the defendant no more than an extra 15 days.  (So much for our litigants A, B and C, above.  Like it or not, they’re being pushed to trial like a Mack truck pushing a Volkswagen Beetle.)

– Approximately every 60 days after that, both attorneys must show up at a Case Management Conference after having prepared and filed a Case Management Conference Statement outlining all of the issues of the case and explaining that they’re hurrying just as fast as they can.  The time spent on this nonsense could more productively be spent actually working on the client’s case, rather than kowtowing to a judge so s/he can feel even more important.  And the time spent on this nonsense must, of course, be billed to the client.

Most courts now have one, two or even three judges who do nothing all day, every day, but conduct Case Management Conferences.  Now there’s a sure-fire way to unclog the courts: take a couple of judges away from conducting trials and put them to work pushing more cases to trial in a courthouse with fewer judges available to hear them.

It’s no wonder that most responsible attorneys emphasize compromise and settlement and advise their clients to exhaust every conceivable remedy to avoid getting snared in the judicial system.

*

But what if an attorney isn’t ready in time or doesn’t meet one of the many deadlines?  Ah, the judges come armed with remedies, called “sanctions,” ranging from kicking your case out altogether to preventing you from introducing certain evidence (a nice way to ensure a fair trial) to monetary fines.

As the law puts it, “Judges shall have all the powers to impose sanctions authorized by law, including the power to dismiss actions or strike pleadings….  Judges are encouraged to impose sanctions to achieve the purposes of” the Speedy Trial Act.

And in some counties, judges have clasped this legislative mandate fondly to their bosoms.  When Alameda County first put AB3300 into effect, it assigned the task of drafting the local rules to two of the most anal-retentive judges on the county bench.  As explained to attorneys in a series of informative presentations,

Any attorney not serving the summons and complaint within 60 days of filing will be sanctioned…Any attorney attempting to grant an extension of time for the defendant to file an answer will be sanctioned…Any attorney not filing a timely Case Management Conference Statement will be sanctioned…Any attorney not taking depositions when the judge says he should take depositions will be sanctioned…Any attorney who publicly expresses disdain for AB3300 shall be sanctioned [I made that one up]…Any attorney not…

And on and on and on.  It wasn’t at all funny, but I couldn’t help but smirk and quip that it reminded me of the scene in “Cool Hand Luke” when the warden was explaining the rules of conduct to the new inmates:

Any man loses his spoon spends a night in the box.  Any man playing grab-ass or fighting in the building spends a night in the box.  Any man not in his bunk at eight spends the night in the box.  Any man with dirty pants on sitting on the bunks spends a night in the box.  Any man loud talking spends a night in the box.

*

Now, really.  Wouldn’t it make a lot more sense to have this mechanism available to attorneys and litigants?  If one attorney is dragging his feet, the other could unilaterally opt in to the speedy trial system and the judge would put the other attorney’s feet to the fire.  On the other hand, if all parties agreed, they could opt out of the speedy trial system and go back to the old rules.  After all, it’s their case.  It’s not the judge’s case.  It’s not Willie Brown’s case.

Damn it.  I’m the one who lost his leg in the automobile accident.  What I want from you, judge, is a venue and a fair trial.  If I want to wait until next year to go to trial, and if I’m not taking up any of your time by doing so, get your nose out of my case!

But that ain’t gonna happen.  The insurance companies, the big developers and the rich folks have too much to lose.  I can just picture the television ad now: the grieving widow, a stand-in for all of California’s “little people” who are at the mercy of those rascally lawyers, sobs that her case would take years to go to trial if AB3300 were amended.  The ad would be paid for, of course, by Allstate, Prudential, State Farm et al.

But it’s not only the big boys who love the Speedy Trial Act.  Despite its self-defeating flaws and its disdain for the litigants, judges tend to love it also.  And it’s not only because of the extra power that it gives them.  A Court Commissioner (they’re hired by county courts to sit as judges without actually being judges) explained to me that he and his colleagues like it because “we [judges and commissioners, that is] were being blamed for all the delays in getting to trial.”

Okay, I think I understand now.  The legislature won’t provide money for enough courtrooms, so the special interests blame the judges for the slowness in getting to trial and the poor judges get their tender feelings hurt at this unfairness and if the blame is shifted to those pesky attorneys the judges can sleep easier at night, even though nothing has really been accomplished.

Welcome to WillieWorld.  As I said earlier, Willie Lewis Brown, Jr., was a masterful politician.

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Willie Brown and the Speedy Trial

Jul 25

Posted by Steve in Chronological, Rants | No Comments

(In which the consumate politician pulls off the consumate con.)
Given San Francisco’s colorful – and often lawless and corrupt – history, former mayor Willie Brown may not be the most powerful politician the city has ever known.  But on a state-wide basis, he was arguably the most powerful politician in California history. 

It wasn’t his longevity (eight years as mayor of San Francisco, 30 years in the California Assembly and – thanks to term limits – a never-to-be-broken record 15 years as Speaker) that gave him his power.  Rather, it was his innate grasp of deal making, his patient ruthlessness and his use of financial backers that made him a force to be feared and respected.

Nor is it the transformation of the San Francisco skyline and the Manhattanization of a hitherto lovely town that will mark his legacy, but rather one of the greatest public cons of them all, Assembly Bill 3300, formally known as the “Trial Court Delay Reduction Act,” but commonly referred to as the “Speedy Trial Act.”  It was a thank-you present, so to speak, to Willie Brown’s big boy playmates and a gut punch to a California public that still doesn’t know what hit it.  

*

Willie Lewis Brown, Jr., has made much of his humble roots in Mineola, Texas, where Jim Crow thrived and even the local cemetery was segregated.  According to his official on-line biography, his “only hope of rising in the world was to leave East Texas for San Francisco, California, where an admired uncle had made a home for himself.”

He evidently fancied Stanford University, but settled for San Francisco State, working his way through college and law school at a series of menial jobs.

But he ended up playing with the big boys.

After law school, Brown started an inner-city practice, ran unsuccessfully for the California Assembly in 1962 and was finally elected in 1964.  I wasn’t around these parts back then, but he allegedly ran afoul of then-Speaker Jesse “Big Daddy” Unruh, and spent the next couple of years of his Assembly career out in the cold, cementing friendships, demonstrating party loyalty and preparing for tomorrow.

After nearly ten years in the Assembly, he put his name in for Speaker when Unruh stepped down.  He was roundly defeated and would not be elected to that post for six more years.  But once again he spent those years productively: courting powerful development interests throughout the state and particularly in his home base of San Francisco, and building up a lucrative law practice devoted largely to using his legal skills and political contacts to smooth the way for multi-million-dollar development projects.

Brown’s efforts on behalf of the big boys paid off handsomely.  On a legislative salary equal to that of a corporate middle manager, he commuted between San Francisco and Sacramento in speedy Italian cars and wore $6,000 speedy Italian suits.  Even today, members of the California Assembly only earn about $116,000 per year plus a modest per diem and you’ll catch damned few of them wearing Brionis.

In 1980, backed by a formidable fund-raising capacity and his ability to spread the wealth around to the re-election committees of those who sided with him, he was finally elected Speaker.   For the next 15 years, until made ineligible by a new term-limits law, Willie ruled the California Assembly, doling out choice committee assignments and developers’ money to his friends and punishing his enemies the way he had been punished as a junior legislator (when he had challenged Unruh a few years before, he had been banished to an office the size of a broom closet.)

He referred to himself as “the Ayatollah of the Legislature,” and others referred to the California legislature as a “barely disguised swap meet,” where Brown would collect “campaign contributions” from business interests in exchange for shepherding or blocking bills, and capitol lobbyists were routinely referred to as the “third house” in the legislature.

But for all his power, that’s all it was: power.  Brown himself admits, in his semi-autobiography, “Basic Brown,” that "[s]ome have criticized my years as speaker as having been without an agenda."  This is unfair criticism, of course, as his agenda was very clear: power as its own end.

*

During his 30 years in the Assembly, he neither sponsored nor shepherded much in the way of legislation beneficial to anyone other than his rich friends.  So was it a conscious legacy he was after when he sponsored AB 3300, a solution in search of a problem?  Or was it, more probably, more payback to the monied interests?  Nobody knows but Willie, and he’s not telling.

(To be continued.)

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MODEL CITY – Chapter 3

Jul 16

Posted by Steve in Chronological, Model City | No Comments

Introduction to Midwest City

I’m free.
I’m free.
And freedom tastes of reality.

Pete Townshend

Summer, 1956


The first thing I did in Midwest City was to get lost.

It was summer in Oklahoma and, even better, it was Saturday morning.  A day to sleep late and a morning to spend on the living room floor in pajamas watching cartoons.

If we got up before 6 – and this did sometimes happen, given that bedtime was 8 o’clock or earlier – all we would see on the television screen was the test pattern.  Just in case we didn’t know what this dart-board-styled graphic was, the overlaid caption, in large white letters, told us it was the “Test Pattern.”

But this Saturday we hadn’t gotten up early.  Rick and I had to be shaken awake.

“Mo..o..om.  It’s Saturday.  Why do we have to get up so early?”

“We’re moving.”

“Huh?  Whaddaya mean, ‘we’re moving?’  Moving where?”

“Get up, Steve.”  She was impatient and I eventually discovered why.  “You know what’s happening.  We’ve talked about this for weeks.  We’re moving to Midwest City.  Now get up and get dressed.”

*

In truth, I had no idea what was happening.  And if we had talked about it for weeks, the we certainly didn’t include me, because they never actually talked to me.

And if we meant Mom and Dad, then I had probably tuned them out.  I was almost nine years old – ready to start fourth grade – and my invisible friend had left me before kindergarten.  But I didn’t live in their world.  I might stop by to say hello once in a while, but their world was not even a nice place to visit, let alone live.

*

But we were moving, although I remember none of the move itself.  I seem to blink and it is then Saturday afternoon – or more probably, Sunday afternoon – and we now lived in a 600-square-foot, asbestos-shingled house by the railroad tracks.  Four tiny rooms – five, if you count the bathroom – for the three of us.

Midwest City!  The entire town was newer than our house in Oklahoma City had been, even if our new neighborhood was already becoming a little frayed around the edges.  No trees, no fenced yards, no flowers in this poorest part of town; only the red dirt, the horned toads and the Johnson grass.  And the freight trains running not ten feet from our back yard (not from our back fence: there was no back fence) every three or four hours.  And the cargo planes flying directly over our house as they approached the landing strip at Tinker Air Force Base only half a mile away.

The planes were so low as they approached for landing that you could practically hit their bellies with a well-aimed rock.  Not that we ever tried: we were much too patriotic and in love with the military in 1956.

When a plane flew over, dishes and window panes rattled and the sub-bass growl of the jets was almost visible, almost palpable.  All conversation stopped, which wasn’t so terrible; but what was terrible was that all television reception was interrupted until the plane had passed.  We all knew that eventually one of these giant planes would come too close.  But it’s hard to turn down a thirty-dollar-a-month mortgage.

It was, however, ours – Mildred’s and mine and Rick’s.  We could do what we wanted and be what we wanted and have calm family dinners and maybe a dollar or two left over at the end of the week to giggle over and decide how to spend.  And if Dwain wanted to visit, that was OK, because he would go home at the end of the evening and we were free.

*

Midwest City, we never ceased being told by the school district and the city administration, was carefully planned as an entire city before ground was broken for the first building.  The finest architects, engineers and city planners were recruited from around the country to plan the world’s most perfect city.

Major arterials with strategically placed shopping?  We had them.  School sites and enough of them?  We had them.  Carefully planned street layouts to accommodate thousands of Baby Boom children?  We had them.  Centrally located civic center?  Long-range plans for the civic center expected to be needed in forty years?  Space for future golf courses and housing a bit more upscale?  We had them all.

I wouldn’t meet W.P. “Bill” Atkinson for several years yet, but his palm prints were all over the city he had molded from nothing, and he cast an even greater shadow across the city than the ubiquitous Oklahoma municipal water towers.

As every resident is expected to know, Midwest City, Oklahoma, was honored in 1951 as “America’s Model City.”  Except that you have to hunt like hell to discover exactly who bestowed this honor.  City Hall doesn’t know and the Chamber of Commerce has forgotten.

*

As I said, I proceeded to get lost immediately.

“This is sooo neat, Mom,” I said, dancing around.  “Look at that hill.”  The only hill we had had in Oklahoma City was our driveway, a good two-foot rise.  “Can Rick and I ride our bikes?”  We were no longer only one block away from busy Northeast 23d Street.

Mildred turned us loose and we rode for an hour along the twisty streets, not having any idea where we were.

The philosophy of the “Model City” was that there should be as few straight streets as possible.  Anticipating a payroll of some 40,000 people at nearby Tinker Air Force Base (about 20,000 military and about 20,000 civilians), each with 2.3 children, Atkinson figured the town would soon be knee-deep in kids.  Kids on foot.  Kids on bicycles.  Kids in strollers.  The curved streets were meant to slow down the auto traffic for the safety of the children.

The neighborhoods with the curlicue streets weren’t all that difficult to learn once you got the hang of them, but they were hell on newcomers.  (And they were hell on me when I returned to Midwest City after an absence of nearly twenty years and attempted to re-establish my bearings.)

It’s easy to get around in the Oklahoma City area, where all of the major streets are “section lines,” x-many miles east or west of Santa Fe Avenue and y-many miles north or south of Reno Street.  Inside these one-mile squares, most streets also run north-south or east-west, forming a neat grid, twelve blocks to the mile.

But still, a one-square-mile area is a lot of ground to cover for an eight-year-old and a six-year-old, and when no two streets are parallel and no two streets intersect at right angles, the uninitiated can become totally confused.

We did.

At some point I realized that not only was I lost, but I had lost my little brother.  I circled and backtracked in only a semi-panic.  Freedom, after all, was brand new to me.  I was high on it and, had I really stopped to think about it, knew that Rick could be no worse off than merely misplaced.  I passed the school for the third time, turned up Indian Drive (which hadn’t worked before), and suddenly found myself looking at Mildred standing in the front yard on Ferguson.  I must have passed the house several times and not recognized it.

“Where’s Ricky?”

“I don’t know, Mom.  I’m sorry.  We got lost and I got lost and the hills are so steep and I couldn’t find the house and….”

“Get out there and find your brother.”

Slow learner that I must have been, I forgot to pay attention to landmarks and shortly became lost for the second time.  Much later, exhausted and dejected, I re-re-discovered the house.  Rick and Mildred were in the living room watching television.

*

Mildred had taken the Civil Service exam and snared an entry-level job as a clerk-typist at Tinker Air Force Base a few months before.  Whether the divorce was a result of her realization that she could actually support herself or whether the job was in preparation for the divorce, I don’t know.  The three of us celebrated the receipt of her first paycheck by actually going out to eat at a Mexican restaurant.  Both Mexican food and restaurants being entirely new to me, I talked about it for weeks, to the obvious boredom of my more experienced friends.

Once settled in Midwest City, we made a pact: we would Eat Out every Friday night.  In the early years, Eating Out might mean the A&W drive-in or a greasy spoon café, but Rick and I, not knowing any better, considered it heaven.  The symbolism of dining out on Friday nights was so strong that it continued after Mildred’s second marriage and lasted until her second husband died, more than 40 years later.

We also divided up the chores.  Mildred cooked and the boys did the dishes, taking turns washing and drying.  This was uncharted territory for Rick and me, since Mildred had never worked before and we would put off our chores as long as possible because something “neat” (which may have been the catchword of the ‘50’s) was always on television.  But we didn’t argue about the concept because somehow Mildred made it a shared responsibility to go along with the shared freedom.

And we were, after all, finally free.

Mildred designated me the “man of the house,” a position which brought with it later consequences she couldn’t have imagined at the time.  I could do it, though; after all, I was almost nine.  The immediate consequence, unfortunately, was that I was in charge of mowing the lawn.

*
In most parts of Oklahoma City, the grass has been tamed.  Underground sprinkler systems with automatic timers may still be relatively rare compared to Northern California, but through generations of homeowners the nastier grasses have been beaten back.  Midwest City was too new to have made much headway in these turf wars and, curiously, didn’t seem to care all that much.  The school district was awash in federal, state and local funds, but couldn’t seem to find room in the budget to seed or sod or water the school grounds, which were bur-infested and dead in the summer and muddy swamps in the winter.  (The high school football field, of course, was a totally different matter.)

Johnson grass is a milky weed that can grow an inch in a day with the proper rain and can bring a push mower to a complete halt, when it doesn’t just roll right under the blades and pop back up again after the mower has passed.  The endemic sandburs must have been the inspiration for Velcro:  nasty little brown things about the size of a pea, produced by low-growing vines, covered with sharp spines and clinging to anything.

And then there were the goat-heads.

The goat-head is not even a native plant, hailing originally from the Mediterranean area where it was used in folk medicine for centuries.  But it has adapted like a trooper all across the plains.  About the same size as a sandbur, its spines are fewer but stronger, it’s tough as a nut and it has at least one spine not less than 3/8″ long that can puncture a bicycle tire like a nail.  Bare feet were out of the question in the countryside around Midwest City as well as on the playground of Glenwood Elementary School.  All the kids kept a supply of Camel bicycle tire patches handy.  Nobody thought of sniffing the glue, but I can still smell it in my memory.

Across the street on Ferguson from our row of two-bedroom houses were the duplexes, nearly all for married airmen, their 18- or 19-year-old wives and one or two babies, all trying to live on a $75 monthly salary.  The duplexes were the same size as our house, except they had two front doors and two families.  Here, Mildred usually found babysitters to watch over Rick and me before and after school.

Just behind our barren back yard were the railroad tracks leading directly to Tinker, bringing in supplies and taking out repaired airplane components.  Tinker was a major supply hub and major repair station for the Air Force and was Midwest City’s only reason for being.  If a plane could limp in and land, it could be completely refurbished and fly out again as if new.  If not, its component parts could be shipped to Oklahoma by rail or air, rebuilt and shipped or flown out again.

We played on the tracks and laid pennies on the rails to be flattened when the next train came along.  No one worried about safety.  In our “section” (meaning our square mile) and just a few blocks away, the tracks crossed a ravine and seasonal creek where we could catch the occasional crawdad.  Over the ravine, the tracks were supported by a trestle made of redwood 8×8’s on which boys could clamber far above the ground a hundred feet (or at least twelve or fifteen feet) below.  This was where I learned to smoke and where I scampered like a monkey until the day I discovered I had a fear of heights.

Because we were very shortly post-war and many of the Air Force non-commissioned officers had brought home war brides, the Midwest City schools had an eclectic mix of ethnic backgrounds: German, Dutch, French, English.  We also had one or two American Indian families in town and exactly two Jewish families.  There were no African-Americans.  The black airmen who lived off base all lived in Del City, the even-lower-scale bedroom community immediately next door, and their children all went to Del City schools.

Every square mile had an elementary school.  Every square mile represented a different and distinct rung on the class ladder.  The elementary schools funneled into two junior high schools which, themselves, represented the two sides of the socio-economic spectrum.  When the junior high students all merged into Midwest City High School, they looked down on the neighboring high schools of Del City, El Reno and Choctaw, and on almost all of the Oklahoma City high schools save one: the equally white, monied, far northwestern Oklahoma City enclave whose high school was Northwest Classen.

Because of federal funds, our school district had as much money as theirs, but our parents didn’t.  We called them “Silkies” for their imagined silk underwear, and they were our only real rivals in football, basketball, baseball and forensics.

It wasn’t the Oklahoma State Chamber of Commerce that awarded Midwest City the title of “America’s Model City,” but it easily could have been.  Midwest City was, after all, a microcosm of Oklahoma: the landed gentry and conservative churches called the shots, growth of any kind was good, building of any kind was good, the little folks were alternately courted and discarded and people of color were relegated to separate geographical areas.

Gertrude Stein once revisited her former Oakland, California, neighborhood only to discover that her childhood home had been torn down, which resulted in her famous lament that there was “no there there.”

Stein’s observation is frequently taken out of context and used as a slur against the city of Oakland – which was not at all the way she meant it.  But except for the high school – the sole unifying element in Midwest City – our town never had a “there.”  Even the memory of my first house, in a neighborhood which no longer exists, a fenced-off square mile of land full of overgrown weeds and overgrown trees, owned now by the United States Air Force, evokes no sense of a former there-ness.

Raindrops on Roses

Jul 14

Posted by Steve in Chronological, Ramblings & Stories | No Comments

These are among my favorite…

Jokes:

Rene Descartes walks into a bar and orders a beer.  When he finishes, the bartender asks if he’d like another.  “No, I think not,” he replies, whereupon he disappears and hasn’t been heard from since.

*

How many women with PMS does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
I don’t know.  How many?
Six.
Why six?
IT JUST DOES, THAT’S ALL!!!

Quotes:

I was walking down along the street and I heard this voice saying, “Good evening, Mr. Dowd.” Well, I turned around and here was this big six-foot rabbit leaning up against a lamp-post. Well, I thought nothing of that because when you’ve lived in a town as long as I’ve lived in this one, you get used to the fact that everybody knows your name. –   Mary Chase.  “Harvey”

*

Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men have mediocrity thrust upon them.   –  Joseph Heller, “Catch-22″

*

‘Please don’t talk,’ said the nun.  ‘That’s all right mother,’ I said, ‘they can’t hear me because of the noise of the traffic and because they aren’t listening.  And it wouldn’t make any difference if they did.  They’re too young to learn, and if they weren’t they wouldn’t want to.’  ‘It’s dangerous for you to talk, you’re very seriously ill.’  ‘Not so seriously as you’re well.  How don’t you enjoy life, mother.  I should laugh all round my neck at this minute if my shirt wasn’t a bit on the tight side.’  ‘It would be better for your to pray.’  ‘Same thing mother.’  –  Joyce Cary, “The Horse’s Mouth”

*

The benefactors of humanity deserve due honour and commemoration.  Let us build a Pantheon for professors.  It should be located among the ruins of one of the gutted cities of Europe or Japan, and over the entrance to the ossuary I would inscribe, in letters six or seven feet high, the simple words: SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF THE WORLD’S EDUCATORS.  SI MONUMENTUM REQUIRIS CIRCUMSPICE.  — Aldous Huxley

*

Drink no longer water, but use a little wine for thy stomach’s sake.  — 1 Timothy 5:23

*

[H]e which hath no stomach to this fight,
Let him depart; his passport shall be made,
And crowns for convoy put into his purse:
We would not die in that man’s company
That fears his fellowship to die with us.

Shakespeare, Henry V, Act IV, sc. iii

*

Exit, pursued by a bear.  — Shakespeare, A Winter’s Tale, Act III, sc. iii

*

For if once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think little of robbing; and from robbing he comes next to drinking and Sabbath-breaking, and from that to incivility and procrastination.  — Thomas de Quincey

*

If once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think little of more serious crimes, like eating his salad with the wrong fork.  — Uncle Dave

Movies:

Dalton Trumbo’s “Johnny Got His Gun.”  FINALLY released on DVD.

“It Happened One Night.”  Probably the second greatest movie ever filmed (after “Citizen Kane.”)

“We’re No Angels.”  No, not the trashy remake with Sean Penn, but the real McCoy.  Humphrey Bogart, Peter Ustinov and Aldo Ray star in the best Christmas movie ever.  Ustinov is in particularly fine fettle and gives the best legal summation since Clarence Darrow.

Beautiful women:

You can keep today’s entire crop.  For sheer classic beauty, give me Greta Garbo, Audrey Hepburn and the young Elizabeth Taylor, the three most beautiful women of the 20th Century.

Ran-dumb thoughts

Jul 11

Posted by Steve in Chronological, Ramblings & Stories | No Comments

(Thanks for the title, Herb Caen)

It’s the middle of July and raining in parts of the Bay Area.  This is NOT supposed to happen.  Back in the 50s and 60s, we blamed weird weather patterns on nuclear tests by the USSR.  Here in the oughties, we blame them on global warming.  What will we blame them on in the 30s and 40s?  I’m torn among investment bankers, rabid Oklahoma Republicans and folks who live in Los Angeles.

*

If Sarah Palin described herself as “not a quitter,” why did she quit?

*

Are Charleton Heston’s fingers cold and dead enough yet that we can finally pry that assault rifle from them?

*

If newspapers all go the way of the dinosaurs, what will we line birdcages with?

*

I was asked yesterday if I intended to go see a local production of “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.”  “I’m a firm believer in a comment I heard a few years ago,” I replied.  “Why do so many people take an instant dislike to Lloyd Weber’s music?  Because it saves time.”

*

Here in California, the Bankrupt…er…Golden State, we have pledged that all our residents are entitled to a free and first-class college education.  There is NO tuition at any California public university.  Of course, there are those pesky “fees,” which are fast approaching the cost to attend a top private university.

We bemoan this, because we really do believe that education is an investment in our future.  Why, we ask, should it cost $30 -$40,000 a year to attend a public university?

Of course, we also want the best infrastructure — and we used to have it, just like we used to have a top-notch educational system.  We want roads and bridges and levees and streets without potholes and playgrounds and bridges.  And we want the best social services and the best safety net for our least fortunate citizens.

How do we propose to pay for this?  I dunno, we shrug collectively.  Ain’t my problem.

Taxes?  Wash your mouth out with soap, boy.  We don’t need no steenking taxes.

Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die.

*

Clippings from my bulletin board:

“The case of ‘William Shakespear’s Romeo & Juliet’ goes to the larger issue of ‘accessibility.’  For my money, it’s clear that some works of art just have to be met halfway.  Either we meet them and experience their joys, or we hang back and watch Schwarzenegger movies.  But to make something accessible by making it lousy — by changing it into something else while claiming it’s the real thing — does nobody any favors.”  — San Francisco Chronicle review of a few years ago.  Author unknown.

*

“Elitism is the slur directed at merit by mediocrity.”  — Sydney J. Harris

*

“This, I think, is a great secret.  Just because you have an opinion doesn’t mean the other person has to know about it.  Just because you have a plan that is certain to make her life richer and fuller doesn’t mean you need to share it with her right this minute.”  — Jon Carroll

Jacksonmania

Jul 11

Posted by Steve in Chronological, Ramblings & Stories | 1 Comment

News flash: Kim Jong Il, in a fit of pique last week, launched a missile strike which destroyed the Hawaiian Islands.  You probably didn’t hear about it because the mainstream media and the blogosphere were too busy obsessing over Michael Jackson.  You don’t have to believe me, but when was the last time you got a postcard from Honolulu?

Remember, you read it here first.

Rueful, Faithless Defendants

Jul 11

Posted by Steve in Chronological, Law in General | No Comments

I found my citing of Alan M. Dershowitz’s 13 rules of the criminal procedure game quoted on another blog, Death Penalty, originating somewhere out of Quebec.  It was evidently translated into French and then back into English with hilarious results, as follows:

I haven’t done any faithless law in years, but I can quiet compliments Dershowitz’s views. in undetailed The Harvard Law prof and head of grandeur mannerly liberties attorney explains the faithless fairness combination in 13 extensible steps.

Rule I
Almost all faithless defendants are, in actually, rueful.

Rule II
All faithless defense lawyers, prosecutors and judges catch on to and avow next to Rule I.

Rule III
It is easier to captive rueful defendants next to violating the Constitution than next to complying with it, and in some cases it is unworkable to captive rueful defendants without violating the Constitution.

Rule V
All prosecutors, judges and defense attorneys are irritable of Rule IV.

Rule IV
Almost all boys in blue falsehood hither whether they violated the Constitution in command to captive rueful defendants.

Rule VI
Many prosecutors implicitly entrust a be in command in the arm boys in blue to falsehood hither whether they violated the Constitution in command to captive rueful defendants.

Rule VII
All judges are irritable of Rule VI.

Rule VIII
Most in a mess judges feign to avow next to boys in blue officers who they identify are mendaciousness.

Rule X
Most judges disbelieve defendants hither whether their constitutional rights imbibe been violated, unalterable if they are effective the accuracy.

Rule IX
All appellate judges are irritable of Rule VIII, moreover superabundant feign to avow next to the in a mess judges who feign to avow next to the mendaciousness boys in blue officers.

The Rules of the Criminal Justice Game

Jul 9

Posted by Steve in Chronological, Law in General | No Comments

(According to Alan M. Dershowitz)

I haven’t done any criminal law in years, but I can still appreciate Dershowitz’s views.  The Harvard Law prof and premier civil liberties attorney explains the criminal justice system in 13 easy steps.

Rule I

Almost all criminal defendants are, in fact, guilty.

Rule II

All criminal defense lawyers, prosecutors and judges understand and believe Rule I.

Rule III

It is easier to convict guilty defendants by violating the Constitution than by complying with it, and in some cases it is impossible to convict guilty defendants without violating the Constitution.

Rule IV

Almost all police lie about whether they violated the Constitution in order to convict guilty defendants.

Rule V

All prosecutors, judges and defense attorneys are aware of Rule IV.

Rule VI

Many prosecutors implicitly encourage police to lie about whether they violated the Constitution in order to convict guilty defendants.

Rule VII

All judges are aware of Rule VI.

Rule VIII

Most trial judges pretend to believe police officers who they know are lying.

Rule IX

All appellate judges are aware of Rule VIII, yet many pretend to believe the trial judges who pretend to believe the lying police officers.

Rule X

Most judges disbelieve defendants about whether their constitutional rights have been violated, even if they are telling the truth.

Rule XI

Most judges and prosecutors would not knowingly convict a defendant who they believe to be innocent of the crime charged (or a closely related crime.)

Rule XII

Rule XI does not apply to members of organized crime, drug dealers, career criminals or potential informers.

Rule XIII

Nobody really wants justice.

A Bitter Ethics Lesson

Jul 8

Posted by Steve in Chronological, Tales From the Crypt | No Comments

(The Senator, the Judge and the State Bar – Which one would you trust?)*

Can I see a show of hands?  How many of you know the following:

1.  What is the Statute of Limitations on a written agreement?
2.  Would you recognize a waiver of the statute if you saw one?
3.  Would you trust a document which your divorce attorney suggested you sign?
4.  Does the California State Bar Association represent the consumer?

If your hand went up for two or fewer of the above questions, you’re fairly typical.  Here are the short answers:

1.  Four years.
2.  Probably not.
3.  Sure.  Probably.  Unless, of course, my attorney was former State Senator and retired appellate court justice John W. Holmdahl.
4.  This is a trick question, right?

Here’s the story, which contains the long answers.

John W. Holmdahl was a California state senator from the East Bay who served in the legislature from 1973 to 1982.  Most California legislators in those days continued to maintain their day jobs and Holmdahl was no exception.  He was an attorney, practicing a little bit of this and a little bit of that.  To his credit, he didn’t always demand large retainer fees up front, but would accept IOUs or promissory notes from his clients, promising to pay his fees at so many dollars per month until fully paid.

Now hold onto that thought for a moment and allow me a brief tangent.  I’ll return to it shortly.

***

The California Code of Civil Procedure sets out various time limits in which a lawsuit must be filed, varying from ten years down to three months, depending on the type of suit.  These are called statutes of limitations and they generally begin to run either when there is a breach of an obligation (i.e., when a scheduled payment is not made) or when the victim discovers that he has a right to sue.  (Please don’t pick on me for trying to simplify the concept.  I’m after bigger game, here.)

Theoretically, according to appellate cases in California, big boys and girls are perfectly competent to enter into a contract which waives the applicable statute of limitations.  In other words, you loan me $10,000.00 and I agree to repay you at the rate of $75.00 per month, but if I stop paying, you can come back 15 or 20 years later and sue me.

Makes an awful lot of sense, right?  I agree with you, but the local judge didn’t.

***

Bernice had gone to The Honorable John W. Holmdahl in the mid 1970s and asked him to represent her in her divorce.  She had little money and a limited income.  No problem, said Sen. Holmdahl.  Just sign this promissory note saying you’ll pay my bill in full within a year.  No, no, don’t bother to read it.  You do trust me, don’t you?

Bernice signed the promissory note and waiver of the statute of limitations and Holmdahl took the case.  After he sat on it for several months, accomplishing nothing, she went to another attorney who finished up the divorce for her.  Six or seven years went by and she had totally forgotten about Holmdahl until she was served with a Summons and Complaint for the unpaid balance on the promissory note.

(Note: Today, there is mandatory fee arbitration before an attorney can sue his client for unpaid fees.  There were no such provisions back then.)

It seems that the Hon. John W. Holmdahl, Member of the California Senate, had been transformed overnight into the Hon. John W. Holmdahl, Justice of the First District Court of Appeal, bypassing the usual stint as a trial judge.

It certainly pays to have made friends in high places.

Holmdahl was required to close down his law practice, so he assigned all of his accounts receivable, including those six or eight or ten years old, to another local attorney, who proceeded to file suit on them.

That was when Bernice was referred to me, a brash kid in his early 30s, fairly fresh out of law school.  I wrote an extensive brief, arguing that it was (or, at least, should be, against public policy to ask anyone to waive the statute of limitations.  And further still, I argued, for an attorney, with his superior knowledge of the law, to ask a client to do so was the grossest overreaching and the attorney should be, if not horsewhipped (okay, I really didn’t say that, but I implied it), at least severely censured.

But you didn’t get elected to the California legislature or appointed to the bench in those days without being an integral part of the Old Boys’ Network.  The judge who heard the case had already made up his mind that his colleague and Old Boys’ lodge brother was as pure as the Tahoe snow.  Plaintiff’s attorney didn’t – knew he didn’t have to – say a word.  The judge leaned his chin on his fist and watched me with half-closed eyes.  Until, that is, I requested that the trial be continued to give me the chance to call a press conference.

I’ve never since seen a sleepy judge rise to his feet as quickly and as threateningly, and I hope I have never since beat such a hasty retreat or offered such an abject apology for “threatening” to exercise my First Amendment rights.  It reminds me today of the passage from “Catch-22:”

Morale was deteriorating and it was all Yossarian’s fault.  The country was in peril; he was jeopardizing his traditional rights of freedom and independence by daring to exercise them.

***

So Bernice lost and had to pay the money, and I slunk away with my tail between my legs, never to cause anybody any trouble again – for about a day and a half.

If I had been righteously indignant at the very idea of the lawsuit being filed in the first place, I was livid now.

My first port of call was the State Bar of California, to whom I both wrote and telephoned about the unethical practice of an attorney requiring a client to sign a promissory note containing a waiver of the statute of limitations.

Gee, we’re awfully sorry, said the nice young gentleman from the State Bar.  But Senator Holmdahl isn’t an attorney any more.  He’s a judge and we don’t have any jurisdiction over him.  You should really contact the Judicial Nominees Evaluation Commission or the Commission on Judicial Performance.

Gee, we’re awfully sorry, said the nice young lady from the Judicial Nominees Evaluation Commission.  We only evaluate people who are proposed for judicial appointments.  Once they’re on the bench, we don’t have any jurisdiction over them.  You should really contact the State Bar or the Commission on Judicial Performance.

Gee, we’re awfully sorry, said the nice young gentleman from the Commission on Judicial Performance.  We can only evaluate the conduct of judges sitting on the bench.  We don’t have any jurisdiction over what they did when they were attorneys.  You should really contact the State Bar or the Judicial Nominees Evaluation Commission.

I wrote again to the State Bar, expressing in the most gentle terms my great sorrow and disappointment in that esteemed body, indicating that I would pay my yearly dues and follow their rules as best I could…but that I considered their ethics to be several notches below mine and that I would remember the incident if I ever received an ethical complaint from them.  (Note: I never have.)

Funny thing.  I got a reply back from a staff member (must have been a new kid), asking me to send them my concerns in writing again.  Funny thing…I did.

Gee, we’re awfully sorry, read the second reply from the State Bar, but…

***

*Question (from above): The Senator, the Judge and the State Bar – Which one would you trust?

(a)  Are those my only choices?

(b)  The Brooklyn Dodgers.

(c)  42

(d)  None of the above.

(e)  All of the above.

(This is what’s known as a “gimme” question.   Full credit will be given for any answer; extra credit for a short essay.)