BY THIS LAWYER’S LIGHT

This is the third and final week of guest columnists.  Batting today is a return visit  by Harry K.

 

Representation of a divorce client: $20,000

Representation of a large company in a contractual dispute: $200,000

Representation of a poor person accused of a crime: Priceless.

 

I’m  often  asked, “How can you represent someone you know is guilty?” and “Why do it when it doesn’t even make you rich?”  For the record, I am very rich, rich in the incalculable rewards that come from representing the very poor.

There have been times that I haven’t had enough change in my pocket to buy coffee.  But I always knew there was going to be more money coming.  Those of us who always had a roof over our heads cannot imagine the skills, the resourcefulness, the tenacity, the sheer will that it takes to survive POOR.  When medical, mental health, or addiction problems are added to the picture, some of us might become judgmental.  But when you meet a real human being, when you touch, smell, hear, listen and talk to them, it’s impossible not to want to translate your brief moments together into an opportunity for them to make a life better than the one they are living.

It’s really all about power.  Maybe you’ve felt the powerlessness of being unable to relieve a loved one’s pain, or not being believed when telling the truth.  Now imagine that you had the power to relieve that pain or to persuade that doubter.  That’s what it feels like to represent a poor person.

Take my Haitian immigrant client in the lockup last week.  The mother of his two kids claimed that he’d pushed and choked her after having too much to drink.  He got arrested and she got a restraining order, so he had to scramble for another place to live. When he sent her a text to see if he could visit the kids, she called the police and he was arrested again for violating the restraining order.  Time passed, the kids clamored to see their dad, so she invited him over.  They argued again, she called the police again, and he got arrested again.  I’m seeing him in the lockup because his bail has been revoked.

He’s been brought to court for trial about the pushing and choking that started it all.  He is in the U.S. legally, but could suffer any number of immigration consequences if found guilty.

Some might think: he shouldn’t have put his hands on her, or what an idiot he was to have texted her and gone over there.  Some people think, send him back to Haiti.

But I think about him in jail.  He can’t see or call his kids.  The only pictures he has of them are on the phone that was confiscated.  He can make only collect calls, and only to those people whose numbers he actually remembers–a job his phone used to do.  If his cellmate is a screamer, there’s no spare room.  He has lost the hourly rate paying job that took him months to find.  He is powerless.  I am the only force in the world that can help him change his situation.

So I do.  Will he stop drinking too much?  Will he be able to spend more time with his kids?  Will he control his anger?  Will he get another job?  These questions are his to answer, but at least I can help him to regain the possibility of power over his future.

Are some of my clients guilty?  Of course.  And some are not.  John Adams once said: “It is more important that innocence be protected than it is that guilt be punished, for guilt and crimes are so frequent in this world that they cannot all be punished.  But if innocence itself is brought to the bar and condemned, perhaps to die, then the citizen will say, ‘whether I do good or whether I do evil is immaterial, for innocence itself is no protection,’ and if such an idea as that were to take hold in the mind of the citizen that would be the end of security whatsoever.”

Guilty or innocent, my clients are people with problems on a scale that most of us cannot understand.  Imagine wondering how you’re going to find a place to sleep for the night.  Every night.  Imagine being branded a sex offender for the rest of your life for having sex with a fifteen year old girl when you were eighteen and her parents involved the police.  Imagine seeing the look in people’s eyes who believe you to be a criminal because of your skin color.  Imagine being presumed to be guilty.

There are injustices to right, and power to be kept balanced.  That’s why I look forward to seeing my clients every day.

“Power must never be trusted without a check.” John Adams

I.M. WITH MOM

Next up during my recovery month (which is going well) is Harry K.  Enjoy!

 

K.: I just met with a career prostitute.

M: Oh my goodness!

K.: She talked to me for three hours about her experiences.

M: Another chapter for your “chick lawyer” book?

K.: Probably. I’ve been thinking about chapter headings. Maybe one could be, “Harry, what should I wear to Court?”

M: I remember thinking it needed more chapters.

K.: Or another, “Harry, will you buy me some cigarettes?”

M: Good…! Keep thinking!

K.: “Harry, am I going to jail?”

M: Yes!

K.: These are the common questions and many anecdotes flow from these.

M: I can only imagine.

K.: The prostitute’s stories were amazing.

M: Yes, I’ll bet, and think of the ones she did NOT tell you.

K.: She was arrested for indecent exposure once because she was wearing a very tight cat suit. She represented herself.

M: Did she win?

K.: She stood up at her arraignment and said to the judge,…

M: Male or female judge?

K.: Male. So she said…

M: Suspense is killing me!

K.: “Your honor, you see anything indecent about me?”

M: Lol.

K.: She also told the judge, “I’m from New York, and this is how we dress, and when I drove over the border, I saw a sign about not having any guns, but I didn’t see nuthin ’bout no dress code!!”

M: ROFL!

K.: Yea, I liked that one a lot. She won, too. Case dismissed at arraignment.

M: Good for her.

K.: She stabbed a guy once, too.

M: Such talent…wasted on johns.

K.: Apparently the cops knew her well enough to know that she was justified.

M: Self defense?

K.:  Yea.

M: What else have you been up to?

K.: Well, I went to the jail to visit a couple of my guys recently.

M: I bet they’re not as interesting.

K.: They have some amazing stories too, but that prostitute was pretty remarkable.

M: Yes, I can tell.

K.: One of my guys has a tendency to use a lot of malapropisms. He said he had a “pleflora” of papers.

M: Not a malapropism exactly.

K.: No, but cute. Another time he said something about “racial epitaphs.” And he said that the cab of his truck vibrated and “cogitated like a washer/dryer.”

M: I see that for all intensive porpoises he was still able to get his point across…

K.: Despite the flaw in his ointment…

M: Did you insure him that you would profligate him through the lecherous waters of the system?

K.: Yes, yes! He’s been hanging around in libido for so long that any progress will make him extantic! The prosecutor is venomously opposed to a dismal of the case!

M: Stop stop!! Lol!

K.: By the way, he injured his onus.

M: ROFL!

K.: Anyway, back to the jail. I was surprised by the number of unsupervised children playing just outside the doors. It was dark out.

M: How old were they?

K.: Well, I’m no good with that, not having had any myself….

M: Yes. Big disappointment.

K.: Sigh. I’d say they were maybe eight or nine years old.

M: Were the guards watching them?

K.: No, not even the guards seemed to notice them. It was downright Dickensian.

M: Did the kids notice you?

K.: Yes, they immediately stopped sliding down the rails and running in circles to rush up to me to say hello!

M: Cute!

K.: Yes, but weird. Anyway, I had some serious trouble with the metal detector.

K.: Yes, but weird. Anyway, I had some serious trouble with the metal detector.

K.: I did get in finally – I’ve gotten pretty good at navigating the process – getting the right clipboard of forms – lining up the grooves in the locker tokens with the nubs in the locks – -figuring out how to switch off between walking shoes and high heeled shoes and such.

M: So what happened with the metal detector?

K.: The underwire bra phenomenon!

M: Oh dear.

K.: Yea, no visible metal on me anywhere – rings, off; glasses off; watch, off. Annoying buzz nevertheless.

M: How did you figure out it was your bra?

K.: The dreaded WAND detector! Silent over the legs, silent down the arms, silent over the back, BEEP BEEP BEEP over the breasts!  Cripes.

M: Well, you know, you don’t really need to wear a bra…

K.: Yes, Mother.

M: We’ll have to figure a way to work it into the chick lawyer book.

K.: That should be easy. If I ever get around to writing it…

M: How is music going? Are you going to start your own band some time?

K.: Nah.

M: Even go on the road?

K.: Nah.

M: You could get preggers!

K.: Sigh.

M: Well, Em, I really don’t know how you do it all [admire, admire]. I’m glad to know it’s my daughter who is being one of the GOOD ones, giving lawyers a GOOD name for a change.

K.: Awww, thanks, Mom. I love you!

M: I love you, too.

K.: Later.

M: Later.

Memory Flashes Of A Goodbye

(Although the Hinterland trial is finished and I’m back home, I’ve been asked by our lead attorneys to not write publicly about what occurred.  If anyone has questions about what took place, please send them to me at zacharykleinonline@gmail.com.  I will make a good faith effort to answer every one of them as openly as possible.

As I mentioned in my post of 9/4/11, (LABOR DAY IN THE HINTERLAND–09/04/2011), my work with the law has pretty much ended with this last trial.  As I begin to move on though, thoughts about the early years working with Ron dance through my mind.

My very first case, for example, where an elderly widow sued a uranium enrichment plant for withholding medical information about her husband who died from liver cancer caused by the particularly toxic chemical the plant used on a regular basis.

I’ll never forget the widow on the stand, telling about how she and her husband learned the news of his impending death. Weeks earlier the plant offhandedly suggested he check in with his regular doctor (even though the plant’s hospital and doctors had been his regular doctors throughout the 40 years he’d worked there).  He went to a local doctor that he knew, who sent him to another town to see a liver specialist.  The couple decided to celebrate their wedding anniversary dinner by having dinner in the liver specialist’s town so they could pick up the results.

The widow drove home alone that night.  The moment the specialist saw them, he immediately admitted her husband into the hospital.  They never had that year’s anniversary dinner and damn few others.

When she finished testifying there was complete silence; the depth of emotion echoed silently in the courtroom.  The judge adjourned the case for the day.  My heart was heavy as we walked to our car and then I overhead a defense lawyer burst out laughing about her testimony.  Luckily Ron noticed, grabbed me from behind, and pulled me away.  Though I know it made sense given the trial, I’m sorry I didn’t have the chance to slam his fat, laughing face.  Well, we lost that case but rather than face a long, drawn out appeal, the defense offered her an extremely generous settlement.  I still have a thank you letter from that widow pinned to my office wall.

Then there was our campaign get the D.C. Metro to pay for houses and apartments they damaged while building three underground subway stations in a poor, Black neighborhood the city wanted to gentrify.  A lot of footwork tracking down people who lived in the community.  Trudging through a drug house to check on individual apartments that might have been damaged.  Then, after going door-to-door sitting on their stoop while they were getting high trying to elicit names and addresses.  Pretty damn crazy.  But we were able to negotiate fixes for all those we did find, and forced the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority to create a pool of money for those we didn’t.  The aftermath has been the continuing friendships we’ve maintained with many of the people we met on that mission.

Early on in my connection to the firm, an F.B.I. agent hired us to pursue a wrongful death lawsuit against DC’s government.  His wife, also an F.B.I. agent, was assigned to work with the D.C. Cold Case Squad.  Just like the TV show, this unit tries to solve old murders the police are no longer investigating.  Their headquarters were situated in a multi-purpose government building that also housed, for example, their Department of Motor Vehicles, so the building had people traipsing in and out all day long.  One day a man (wanted for murder) strolled into the building with a rifle, took the elevator up to the seventh floor and walked down the hall looking for the Homicide offices.  He mistakenly ended up in Cold Case, where he proceeded to shoot everyone in sight.  Our client’s wife was able to wound the assailant, but died in the conflict.

Now there’s this thing in the law called Sovereign Immunity, which basically means you can’t sue the government because of governmental policies.  So, for example, if you’re mugged on the street corner, you can’t sue the city for not having a cop on that corner.  Their response would simply be: our policies don’t include having police in that particular location.  However, you can overcome Sovereign Immunity if you can prove the city violated its own policies.  So, in the example above, if it had been the city’s policy to have a policeman on that particular corner at that particular time and the policeman somehow failed to do his duty, i.e. protect you from the mugging, or simply wasn’t there, then a lawsuit against the city is permissible.  (Lawyers out there, feel free to correct me if my explanation is either inadequate or inaccurate.)

The judge refused to hear the case claiming the city was protected by Sovereign Immunity.  After a long arduous appeals process, we finally got the green light.  Turns out that the City had a written policy in place that everyone walking in and out of that building was to be machine-screened or hand-wanded.  A policy that had long been neglected (this was pre-9/1/1) and the day our client’s wife was killed was no different.

And so the trial ensued.  I spent time developing juror profiles—a composite of the type person we most wanted on the jury and also of those who we didn’t want.  I wrote a series of questions (voir dire) designed to elicit information to identify people we were interested in and prepped the plaintiff and other witnesses for their testimony about that day in the Squad.  The trial began and then, from my spectator seat, I noticed a bulge in our client’s suitcoat.  During the next break I asked him about it and was shown the gun that the F.B.I. issues to all their agents.  The last thing in the world I wanted this jury to see was our client was packing—legal or not.  We had an intense argument in the bathroom about his carrying it from the next day on.  He accused me of being an anti-gun phobic, but then finally conceded that the jury probably wouldn’t like it either.  He stopped wearing it to court.

We won the case going away; and although money is never, ever a real compensation for a beloved wife, our client was awarded a substantial amount.  That night in the hotel “war room,” I finally put on my earrings that I’d taken off for the trial.  Our client came over and said, “Never in a million years could I have imagined liking, even being a friend with someone like you.”  My response was just as direct: “Never in a million years could I have imagined liking, even being a friend with someone likeyou.”  And we both broke out laughing.

Years later he sent Sue and me airplane tickets to Chicago, so we could attend his remarriage.  It was a lovely affair attended by lots of men with bulges in their suitcoats.

These have been just a few of the early memories that I have about my time working with Ron.  I have no doubt there will be more posts to come with other memories about different times and cases.  Feeling like you’ve done some good in the world stays with you.  Sixteen years is a long time and saying goodbye is difficult.

The doors we open and close each day decide the lives we live~Flora Whittemore

Addendum From Hinterland

Life sometimes throws curves.  People sometime throw curves.  Tonight it’s my turn.

As those of you who follow my posts know, I had planned to write regularly about the trial I’m working on from the front line.  That is, while it was happening.

Well, for a variety of reasons I’m not.  Instead, I plan to take copious notes since the trial began today, (no settlement) and when I return home will decide whether to write a day-to-day account or a detailed summary of the trial and my time out here.

In fact, given the amount of work, I’m not even sure I’ll publish my regular Monday post–though I’ll give it my best shot. (Can a writer publish a rerun?)

Anyway, I apologize for not following through on what I promised, but right now my priority has changed.

Hang in with me friends.  There will be many more interesting posts in the coming months and years.  And thank you for your understanding.

Labor Day In The Hinterland

Means another long work day for the trial team.  I won’t bore you with the details of traveling out here other than to say that waiting an hour for your luggage to pop up on the carousel causes heart palpations when your final destination is two hours away.  I couldn’t even figure out a fix.  Thankfully, after that hour any fix was unneeded.  The conveyor belt had broken.

A little background.  After this trial my career in civil law will be basically finished.  I’ll continue to do focus groups when asked, will do jury selections, and will work with my friend, a court appointed criminal defense attorney in Boston, but I’m pretty done with the nuts and bolts of trial consultation on civil cases—though I’ll always be proud of my soul brother lawyer, Ron, who I’ve worked for and his unending commitment to those who have been screwed by major corporations and institutions who don’t have a second thought about buggering people in the pursuit of profit.

But I’m a writer.  Despite my heartfelt political values which are dear and clear, once I discovered it was possible to publish my work without dealing with traditional publishing houses, the invitation to return to that which who I am became a temptation too sweet to ignore at my age–despite the long, long odds of going viral.  Sometimes you just got to push all the chips into the middle of the table.

Will I succeed in actually earning a living by going this route?  Honestly, I don’t know.  Am I able to write as well as I did when my first book was a “New York Times Notable”—I don’t know that either.  It’s been 16, 17 years and those years have created a different me.  But that’s part of the challenge and temptation.  And why I’m continuing the Matt Jacob series because I want to discover the differences in who I am.

But I’m not there yet.  Right now I’m eyeball deep in our court case which is about a 30 year old woman who worked at a hospital as a nurse and every one of her heart attack symptoms she presented on a particular day was blown off by the admitting doctor (who was a friend and colleague so you can imagine how difficult it was for her to even contemplate a lawsuit) and the hospital for which she worked.  This was a woman to whom they turned a blind eye to classic heart attack symptoms (shoulder pain, back pain, jaw pain, vomiting, and the overwhelming feeling that she was dying) because she was “too young” and had, in the recent past, G.I. issues.  Rather than checking for a heart attack, an easy do, the doctor, despite his own notes which suggested potential cardiac issues, let her lay in the hospital for nine and a half hours before they eventested for an attack.  This, despite their inability to find any GI issues for which they tested.

I’ve come to learn the term “differential diagnosis” means when a doctor sees a patient and listens to their symptoms they are bound to check first for anything that might be, in any way, life threatening.  The admitting nurse documented “shoulder pain, back pain, jaw pain.  Classic heart attack signs and symptoms that were obviously ignored.

Now this is bad enough.  But the truth is, the actual reality is even worse.  This is a woman who has had liver disease since she was ten years old and the doctor and hospital knew it.  Also, a woman who had a significant history of familial heart problems which the admitting doctor knew, noted, and simply ignored.

Negligence seems pretty cut and dry?  (Even the judge in a meeting with our lawyers said, “hell, even a gynecologist would have recognized her symptoms.”)

Settle and be done, right?.  Not here.  The defense has decided to play the “rape card.”  You got raped?  Well, you must have invited it.  Here it’s not much less subtle.  Here it’s “you were a nurse, why didn’t you tell the doctor you were having a heart attack when you called him?  (She called him when she was vomiting out of her car in a parking lot on the way to work and he told her to bypass the E.R. and he’d admit her directly to the hospital though he says he told her to go to the E.R. but he never took her to the E.R. when she arrived at the hospital nor did he ever record that he told her that in his notes.  Both of which heshould have done if he’d actually told her to go there.)  “you’re a nurse, why didn’t you know you were having a heart attack?” “Why didn’t you diagnose what you had and tell the doctor you were having a heart attack as opposed to just the symptoms?”

This shit makes me crazy.  I understand and accept human errors.  We all make ’em.  But this really is a medical rape defense.  The woman was upchucking out the window of her car, had explosive diarrhea that drove her into a department store, pain that  was the worst she’d ever felt in her life, thought she was dying, and their defense says she should have done her own diagnosis.

What the fuck am I missing here?

That kind of bullshit just doesn’t pass the sniff test.  It was precisely because she was going through that extreme trauma that she called her “friend” the doctor that she knew was the hospitalist on duty at that time.

I’m angry enough to keep on venting for pages but what’s truly painful is the knowledgethat the defense is safely betting a trial will go in their favor because of our geographic location.  The hospital is one of the largest employers in the area.  They have their hands in virtually every pie in the county, and are secure in the knowledge that the largest award ever given in a lawsuit was a million dollars and that award was given to a corporation.

Today I met with our client who is on five days a week dialysis (we are not asking for any money for her kidney condition, only the damage that the heart attack created and added to her compromised body.  Not insignificant, since the delay in treatment of her heart blockage resulted in multiple transfusions which raised her antibodies which now has made a kidney transplantunlikely.)

Enough background.  It’s late, I’m exhausted, and if my writing is less than the quality you have come to expect I apologize. This has become an emotional experience for me and I’m caring more about my client and justice—hell, decency, than wordsmithing.

The judge has demanded that all party’s show up at the courtroom on Tuesday to try, once again, to reach a settlement.  I’m not optimistic but will let you know what happens.  And again, please excuse the quality of my prose.  After spending the day and night with our client then her mother and stepfather I’m tired and terribly sad.

More to come.

“Defeat is not the worst of failures. Not to have tried is the true failure.” – George Woodbury