What’s the appeal?
For pondering our appeals of all sorts.
Appellate Jurisdiction
by
Marianne Moore
Fragments of sin are a part of me.
New brooms shall sweep clean the heart of me.
Shall they? Shall they?When this light life shall have passed away,
God shall redeem me, a castaway.
Shall He? Shall He?
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Skeptical of the role of lawyers.
Post-recession, we are living through an era of regulators’ grimaces and prosecutors’ giddiness. Editorialists and bloggers want business scalps, especially scalps of individuals (as opposed to simple monetary fines for corporations), and most especially scalps of those in banking and finance. In the wake of the GM report and other stories about lawyers, the role of business lawyers is as suspect in the public mind as it has been for decades. It’s as though everybody smells a rat.
Better get around to writing up that internal-investigation report.
On the other hand, faced with ever-increasing and increasingly complex regulation, companies’ need to conduct self-reviews and internal investigations is unavoidable. Indeed, in many industries, the governing set of rules require companies to self-investigate and, under certain conditions, reveal those investigatory results to the Government. This is especially the case if the company wishes to be seen as a good citizen and a cooperator. (We have discussed the ups and downs of cooperation here and here).
And what will we discover at the other end of the investigation?
Business people (and internal business-lawyers) wear many hats. Some of the hats don’t fit neatly (or comfortably). Many activities undertaken by corporations have multiple purposes: business, political, legal and otherwise. If this view of internal-investigations law had been allowed to stand, it would be virtually impossible for a company subject to even the most rudimentary level of regulatory oversight to maintain its attorney-client privilege.
KBR’s assertion of the privilege in this case is materially indistinguishable from Upjohn’s assertion of the privilege in that case. As in Upjohn, KBR initiated an internal investigation to gather facts and ensure compliance with the law after being informed of potential misconduct. And as in Upjohn, KBR’s investigation was conducted under the auspices of KBR’s in-house legal department, acting in its legal capacity. The same considerations that led the Court in Upjohn to uphold the corporation’s privilege claims apply here.The District Court in this case initially distinguished Upjohn on a variety of grounds. But none of those purported distinctions takes this case out from under Upjohn’s umbrella.First, the District Court stated that in Upjohn the internal investigation began after in-house counsel conferred with outside counsel, whereas here the investigation was conducted in-house without consultation with outside lawyers. But Upjohn does not hold or imply that the involvement of outside counsel is a necessary predicate for the privilege to apply. On the contrary, the general rule, which this Court has adopted, is that a lawyer’s status as in-house counsel “does not dilute the privilege.” In re Sealed Case, 737 F.2d at 99. As the Restatement’s commentary points out, “Inside legal counsel to a corporation or similar organization . . . is fully empowered to engage in privileged communications.” 1 RESTATEMENT § 72, cmt. c, at 551.Second, the District Court noted that in Upjohn the interviews were conducted by attorneys, whereas here many of the interviews in KBR’s investigation were conducted by non-attorneys. But the investigation here was conducted at the direction of the attorneys in KBR’s Law Department. And communications made by and to non-attorneys serving as agents of attorneys in internal investigations are routinely protected by the attorney-client privilege. See FTC v. TRW, Inc., 628 F.2d 207, 212 (D.C. Cir. 1980); see also 1 PAUL R. RICE, ATTORNEY-CLIENT PRIVILEGE IN THE UNITED STATES § 7:18, at 1230-31 (2013) (“If internal investigations are conducted by agents of the client at the behest of the attorney, they are protected by the attorney-client privilege to the same extent as they would be had they been conducted by the attorney who was consulted.”). So that fact, too, is not a basis on which to distinguish Upjohn.Third, the District Court pointed out that in Upjohn the interviewed employees were expressly informed that the purpose of the interview was to assist the company in obtaining legal advice, whereas here they were not. The District Court further stated that the confidentiality agreements signed by KBR employees did not mention that the purpose of KBR’s investigation was to obtain legal advice. Yet nothing in Upjohn requires a company to use magic words to its employees in order to gain the benefit of the privilege for an internal investigation. And in any event, here as in Upjohn employees knew that the company’s legal department was conducting an investigation of a sensitive nature and that the information they disclosed would be protected. Cf. Upjohn, 449 U.S. at 387 (Upjohn’s managers were “instructed to treat the investigation as ‘highly confidential’”). KBR employees were also told not to discuss their interviews “without the specific advance authorization of KBR General Counsel.” United States ex rel. Barko v. Halliburton Co., No. 05-cv-1276, 2014 WL 1016784, at *3 n.33 (D.D.C. Mar. 6, 2014).In short, none of those three distinctions of Upjohn holds water as a basis for denying KBR’s privilege claim.More broadly and more importantly, the District Court also distinguished Upjohn on the ground that KBR’s internal investigation was undertaken to comply with Department of Defense regulations that require defense contractors such as KBR to maintain compliance programs and conduct internal investigations into allegations of potential wrongdoing. The District Court therefore concluded that the purpose of KBR’s internal investigation was to comply with those regulatory requirements rather than to obtain or provide legal advice. In our view, the District Court’s analysis rested on a false dichotomy. So long as obtaining or providing legal advice was one of the significant purposes of the internal investigation, the attorney-client privilege applies, even if there were also other purposes for the investigation and even if the investigation was mandated by regulation rather than simply an exercise of company discretion.In the context of an organization’s internal investigation, if one of the significant purposes of the internal investigation was to obtain or provide legal advice, the privilege will apply. That is true regardless of whether an internal investigation was conducted pursuant to a company compliance program required by statute or regulation, or was otherwise conducted pursuant to company policy.
Tough going, at first.
This is an often overlooked point. Frequently, clients do not tell lawyers the whole truth, at least the first time a discussion arises. This is particularly the case in criminal representations, but it is not uncommon in the civil arena. Sometimes, this reticence arises from a client’s knowledge of his, her or its wrongdoing, and a concomitant desire to hide or destroy evidence.
Oh, say, Can you still see plea-bargaining reform?
We all like the Fourth of July; most of us want it to mean something beyond cookouts and fireworks. When my children were little, I would read aloud to them the entire Declaration of Independence, an oration they found both alarming and distracting. The nation’s Independence Day celebration has changed over time, as has its people (alarmed or distracted) and their culture.
We have an Independence Day in film and in song, works of art that speak to a patriotism grounded in a corporate concept (national independence) and in a citizen concept (individual independence).
Here in the early portion of the 21st-century, it is the domestic liberty of individuals, rather than the specter of foreign domination from across the seas, that is the most fruitful subject for reflection this Independence Day. At the end, you can decide which is more apt: alarm or distraction.
In the Declaration of Independence, the list of grievances against King George III and his agents is lengthy and detailed, a fact that my young children frequently brought to my attention as I declaimed in our den.
Need to read the fine print.
In general, however, the revolution that followed the Declaration was a “conservative” revolution, at least compared to successor-revolutions such as the French and the Bolshevik. In terms of its genesis, the complaints in the Declaration were the complaints of Englishmen who had been denied English rights.
Further, many of the concepts underpinning those rights – for example, the nature of the sovereign and his subservience to God, the more powerful King – arose out of the Protestant Reformation in Europe. There were many flavors and strains of what we call “Protestant,” but one of several unifying factors was an emphasis on the individual’s direct access to the divine, rather than a requirement that the individual proceed through a priest or a bureaucratic episcopate that could grant or withhold dispensation, including that ultimate dispensation of liberty and property rights — the freedom and freehold of the kingdom of God. The individual believer could now read a sacred text (the Bible) for himself or herself. Priest, prince, pope: all potentates were sidelined.
In our pluralistic, post–Christendom culture, what bearing (if any) does this historical, cultural and religious context have this Independence Day?
On this Independence Day, the concept of “independence” is informed by two consistent drumbeats.
First, the national-security state that has grown ever since September 11 shows no sign of abating.
Still got the briefcase, though.
Second, the editorial, social-media and congressional criticism of prosecutorial handling of post-recession financial institutions and white-collar defendants feeds an apparently deep-seated need to assign particular blame for generalized ills.
For a white-collar defense lawyer, he confluence of these two drumbeats is deafening. For business people – indeed, for all citizens – the scales have been tipped further in favor of the state and its investigatory and prosecutorial apparatus. Substantively, there continues an arguable over- criminalization of undesirable but not, at heart, criminal conduct, a legislative spasm driven by an unseemly result–orientation.
The grand jury has long been unmoored from its original function as a buffer between the sovereign and subject. Reform of the grand jury and the plea-bargaining system is overdue but unlikely to happen in the near-term. (On the other hand, Martin Luther thought he was merely trying to reform the church and did not intend, as Winston Churchill said in another context, to set Europe ablaze).
Maybe I needed the microphones.
In addition, the “presumption of innocence” about which we all learned (or, at least, used to learn) in civics class has been translated into a presumption of guilt. Most citizens, most of the time, believe that when a person or company is charged with a criminal offense, they are guilty (or perhaps guilty of something pretty close to the charged offense). (We have discussed presumption problems here and here).
Such impulses and shifts in presumptions do damage due process and, ultimately, the status of a free people. Citizens in white-collar professions are often the first to clamor for more national security externally and more law-enforcement domestically. In many circumstances, of course, that clarion call is entirely appropriate, even vital, to our survival as a nation. On the other hand, the call can only be answered by the raw exercise of sovereign power. One need not be a Protestant Reformer or a Declaration subscriber to wonder if another call, this one for reflection and vigilance, is not perhaps overdue if we are to maintain those liberties — that “independence” — that we all treasure.
Happy Independence Day.
A general malaise?
The GM internal-investigation report about ignition-switch problems raises a host of issues, one of which is its unusually sharp criticism of GM internal lawyers. Criticism of lawyers is nothing new, of course. Lawyer-jokes always blame lawyers; lawyers’ spouses frequently blame lawyers; clients sometimes blame lawyers.
But public reports drafted by lawyers infrequently blame lawyers, so this one merits attention, most especially by internal lawyers in large organizations; by the outside counsel who serve them; and by the businesspeople who are the true clients.
What are the key takeaways?
The Normal, Uneasy. Skim the report. (Just skim it — it’s too long to read cover to cover without heroin. If you have heroin, you have other issues besides ignition recalls and attorney ethics). On a practical, professional level, what’s your reaction?
One reaction is, Not much. It is remarkable how normal the actions of GM’s outside counsel and internal lawyers seem, and how characteristic of the operation of large organizations that are at once diffuse, sprawling and “siloed” (to use the term du jour). Anybody who works in or serves a large organization will recognize the course of events, the mis-allocation (or absence) of resources, the personal dynamics and the outcomes described the GM report. Despite expressions of editorial shock and Congressional indignation, the lawyer-narrative laid out in the GM report is, in many important ways, more normal than aberrant.
Advising on this quarter’s numbers.
The Uneasy Normal, Uneasier. Prepare for a change in the public perception — and, perhaps, in regulation — of commonplace concepts of attorney-client privilege and the general confidentiality of lawyers’ work. Prepare also for a coordinate change in internal-lawyers’ reporting obligations within the corporation. Perceptions of lawyers are mixed, and we should generalize with caution, but jury consultants regularly note the suspicion and distrust with which lawyers are viewed – especially lawyers for big companies. Elsewhere, we have explained how laypeople see corporate counsel as mob lawyers.
Preparing for summer hearings.
Summertime, and the Congressional Livin’ Is Easy. Congress is composed of laypersons who are political animals and who are no great respecters of privilege and confidentiality. As a former oversight-and-investigations lawyer for a House committee, I can testify: summer is the high season for O&I hearings. Nothing is going on legislatively, O&I hearings don’t require lobbyists or constituents, it is hot as hell but most House and Senate hearing rooms have good air-conditioning these days and, if you get some hearings under your belt in June and July, you’ll have plenty as a Member to talk about in your district or state.
It is by no means inconceivable that bills will be introduced seeking to impose, in GM-like situations, a Sarbanes-Oxley style “reporting” requirement on internal lawyers (or outside counsel, or both), coupled with a “private attorney general” concept and whistleblower bounties. As in the SOX, internal-investigation world, if the matter is sufficiently serious, you may need two law firms: one firm that does an investigation and prepares a report that we all know will end up in the hands of the Government, and one firm that provides advice to the company (or the board, or a committee of the board) and over whose work we hope to maintain privilege. We have addressed internal investigations and related problems before.
[Full disclosure moment: My law firm does a lot of products-liability work, all of it on the defense side (that is, on behalf of the people who make the products that allegedly cause the complained-of injury). We are not involved in the matters described in the report, but we have in the past represented and continue today to represent automotive manufacturers. I do little products work; the primary way I judge a car is by its air-conditioning. Nevertheless, consider my biases as you read].
Doubts about who the client is?
A change in the way we view lawyers and their roles. We may be faced with an evolving re-definition of that law school chestnut: Who is the client? Is the client now the Government? This is a critical threshold question. In the narrative laid out in the GM report, the “client” of the internal lawyers and of the outside counsel is not the government, or a government agency or a regulator. The client is not the buyer of a GM car or the passenger in a GM car. The client is not a Member of Congress, an editorial writer or a blogger. The lawyer — at least while she or he is acting as counsel — owes a duty only to the client, a client which, in this situation, is a non-natural person called a “corporation.”
Professor Peter Henning is generally right on the money with regard to white-collar matters, but he jumps the gun when he so quickly blames lawyers in this kind of situation:
In the aftermath of the savings and loan scandal, Judge Stanley Sporkin asked how a once-prominent financial institution could engage in a pattern of misconduct. “Where were the professionals when these clearly improper transactions were being consummated?” he asked.
For General Motors, the negligence and incompetence that resulted in at least 13 deaths and multiple injuries from a faulty ignition switch is equally troubling. Numerous lawyers were on the scene, but none took responsibility for making sure their client did not continue to keep defective cars on the road.
Most people, when they pay for a lawyer, want that lawyer to be their lawyer and not someone else’s. Indeed, that concept of loyalty is a foundation of the conflict-of-interest rules (rules, by the way, far more demanding than what is considered normal in the marketplace). Under current law and rules, and with few exceptions, lawyers internal and external have neither a duty nor a warrant to serve multiple masters simultaneously. The most relevant provision is Rule 1.13 (“Organization As Client”) of the ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct, which are restrictive about what a lawyer representing an organization may and may not reveal.
Even the “reporting up” obligations, which are limited, are focused on the client:
If a lawyer for an organization knows that an officer, employee or other person associated with the organization is engaged in action, intends to act or refuses to act in a matter related to the representation that is a violation of a legal obligation to the organization, or a violation of law that reasonably might be imputed to the organization, and that is likely to result in substantial injury to the organization, then the lawyer shall proceed as is reasonably necessary in the best interest of the organization. Unless the lawyer reasonably believes that it is not necessary in the best interest of the organization to do so, the lawyer shall refer the matter to higher authority in the organization, including, if warranted by the circumstances to the highest authority that can act on behalf of the organization as determined by applicable law.
This question is distinct, of course, from what is wise, merciful or sane from a business or spiritual standpoint, and one could make an argument that losing track of the ignition problem was “likely to result in substantial injury to the organization.” But if the question is, Where were the lawyers?, the answer is, They were right there.
A file too far.
A Forest-and-Trees Cliche. In future litigation, if wholesale problems still get lost in the retail landscape, they will imperil your job. If the GM report is accurate, there was never a genuine “visibility” problem about the ignition switch. “Visibility” was not the problem. “Irritability” was the problem. Lawyers tend to deal with the irritant at hand; they put out the fire first that is closest and hottest. They are trained to do so — first in law school, by “spotting issues” instead of looking at a scenario as a whole, and then in private practice, with the demarcation of work into mostly fenced-off fields (called “cases”) and of compensation into fractions of time (called “tenths of an hour”). In addition, for internal lawyers, a combination of too many demands, insufficient resources and a corporate focus on the monthly or the quarterly has the same grinding effect. An in-house friend, a accomplished lawyer at a large corporation with a good reputation, says that her only criticism of her job is that she never — ever — has time to actually think.
So what, as a practical matter, can we do — internal lawyers, outside counsel and businesspeople?
Grow Real Ethics. There is no substitute for actual ethics, opposed to consultant-thick compliance programs and ever-muddied regulation. We have written on the compliance versus ethics problem before.
Senior Citizens Unite. Older lawyers – internally and externally — have to speak up. Young lawyers lack professional and financial traction, as noted in at least one instance in the GM report.
Team A v. Team B
Be A Spook. When faced with “serial” litigation, try the CIA Team B approach of pitting two teams — one internal, one external – against each other on the same topic or issue. (Outside law firms are useful for this exercise, if there is money in the budget). As a way of addressing the Soviet strategic threat, Team B has had many critics, but alternative, competitive thought is always worth considering (and is always more expensive).
Misery Loves Company. Outside lawyers are proficient at CYA. Consider ways to put your outside law firms more firmly on the ethical hook.
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Without the right budget and the right approach, none of this may matter, but give it some thought. By itself, the fact that we all believe that we are serving our clients won’t keep us from getting “GM’ed.”
As is customary on Friday, a few White Collar Wire notes on cocktails and crime fiction.
National Martini Day (courtesy Bar Louie)
June 19 was “World Martini Day.” Seriously. The London Telegraph posted a martini quiz. How deep is your see-through knowledge? Here is the first question:
Q.1The martini, a mix of gin and vermouth with a lemon twist or olive, is one of our most famous cocktails, but its history is cloudy. Which one of these is not a legend about its origin?
Two by two.
From the CBS ManCave, a detailed discussion of the gin/vermouth ratio:
You stir dry vermouth and gin with ice then poured into a chilled cocktail glass. The amount of vermouth has gone through two distinct stages of reduction. The first was the increasing quality of the ingredients, so you didn’t need to bury the bathtub aspects of the gin. The second is the decreasing quality of some drinkers, who think that forgetting one ingredient of a two ingredient cocktail is somehow sophisticated. There are people right now with “Left” and “Right” written on their shoes, and even when they get that wrong they’re still doing better than the people who call a glass of gin a martini because they’ve at least remembered both of the relevant items.
As it should be.
The very reliable Emily Arden Wells at Gastronomista (@xxGastronomista) sets out the gins you should be drinking:
There’s a lot of really exciting stuff happening in the gin world right now, and I love that gins are becoming more expressive and flavorful. Companies are playing with flavors such as peaches, lemongrass, sage, and douglas fir, and the results are amazing. The new diverse range of flavors in these different gins welcome new flavor combinations and innovative cocktails! All of these gins are so gorgeous, they don’t need much dressing up, a simple martini with a complimentary garnish will do the trick!
From our friends at crime-fiction blog The Rap Sheet, two posts.
Judge Richard Posner
First, writing for the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, Judge Richard Posner finds that Sherlock Holmes no longer enjoys copyright protection. In his trademark style, Judge Posner notes:
The estate asks us to distinguish between “flat” and
“round” fictional characters, potentially a sharper distinction
than the other one it urges (as we noted at the beginning of
this opinion), which is between simple and complex. Repeatedly
at the oral argument the estate’s lawyer dramatized
the concept of a “round” character by describing large circles
with his arms. And the additional details about Holmes and
Watson in the ten late stories do indeed make for a more
“rounded,” in the sense of a fuller, portrayal of these characters.
In much the same way we learn things about Sir John
Falstaff in Henry IV, Part 2, in Henry V (though he doesn’t actually
appear in that play but is merely discussed in it), and
in The Merry Wives of Windsor, that were not remarked in his
first appearance, in Henry IV, Part 1. Notice also that Henry
V, in which Falstaff is reported as dying, precedes The Merry
Wives, in which he is very much alive. Likewise the ten last
Sherlock Holmes stories all are set before 1914, which was
the last year in which the other stories were set. One of the
ten, The Adventure of the Veiled Lodger (published in 1927), is
set in 1896. See 2 William S. Baring-Gould, The Annotated
Sherlock Holmes 453 (1967). Thus a more rounded Holmes or
Watson (or Falstaff) is found in a later work depicting a
younger person. We don’t see how that can justify extending
the expired copyright on the flatter character. A contemporary
example is the six Star Wars movies: Episodes IV, V, and
VI were produced before I, II, and III. The Doyle estate
would presumably argue that the copyrights on the characters as portrayed in IV, V, and VI will not expire until the
copyrights on I, II, and III expire.
The estate defines “flat” characters oddly, as ones completely
and finally described in the first works in which they
appear. Flat characters thus don’t evolve. Round characters
do; Holmes and Watson, the estate argues, were not fully
rounded off until the last story written by Doyle. What this
has to do with copyright law eludes us. There are the early
Holmes and Watson stories, and the late ones, and features
of Holmes and Watson are depicted in the late stories that
are not found in the early ones (though as we noted in the
preceding paragraph some of those features are retrofitted to
the earlier depictions). Only in the late stories for example
do we learn that Holmes’s attitude toward dogs has
changed—he has grown to like them—and that Watson has
been married twice. These additional features, being (we
may assume) “original” in the generous sense that the word
bears in copyright law, are protected by the unexpired copyrights
on the late stories. But Klinger wants just to copy the
Holmes and the Watson of the early stores, the stories no
longer under copyright. The Doyle estate tells us that “no
workable standard exists to protect the Ten Stories’ incremental
character development apart from protecting the
completed characters.” But that would be true only if the
early and the late Holmes, and the early and the late Watson,
were indistinguishable—and in that case there would be no
incremental originality to justify copyright protection of the
“rounded” characters (more precisely the features that
makes them “rounder,” as distinct from the features they
share with their earlier embodiments) in the later works.
Must re-read that opinion.
One doesn’t normally get Holmes, Watson, Star Wars and Falstaff in federal courts of appeals opinions (especially within five hundred words of one another).
Second, again from The Rap Sheet, here are insights about this year’s annual Bouchercon crime fiction convention, to be held in November in Long Beach.
My father.
At age 53, I am now one year older than my father was when he died.
For many years, I rarely thought of Daddy. Primarily, I thought about him every January 6, the anniversary of the day he died. Annually, this is a day upon which my mother and I have the same conversation, rehearsed and hushed. I loved him, and one might expect me to have thought of him more often, to have honored him, but I did not, at least not until recently. Before you draw too many conclusions, though, bear in mind that I could not see him clearly.
Have you ever looked through the wrong end of a telescope? The object at which you gaze looks tiny, and slightly blurred at the edges. The object – a tree, a person – is as impossibly distant as the moon is impossibly close when you turn the telescope right way around. When my father died, I had just turned twelve. Although precocious in some ways, I saw him with a child’s eyes, and never after that did my eyes change, at least the eyes with which I saw him. Time passed; I aged, and everything around me changed and aged; but not the eyes with which I struggled to see him. Time passed, but my eyes for my father remained unchanged, a child’s eyes in man’s body. I went further and further down the wrong end of the telescope.
It was only when I became a father, and then approached his death-age and surpassed it, did I understand a little better who he was, and that I could quicken with memory that tiny figure moving in sepia grace at the wrong end of the telescope.
Memory is a treacherous thing, and no less so than between father and son. The danger is in adopting someone else’s memories – my mother’s, for example, who is aged but singular in her devotion to Daddy. My own memories, though, I need to sift and poke through.
Baskin-Robbins
He was a CPA, but he and his brother also owned an ice-cream store, a Baskin-Robbins at a mall (which, in Tuscaloosa, Alabama in 1970 was as fancy as some Ben and Jerry’s superpremium exotic would be today). At times, we would skip church on Sunday morning so that he could go to the store and take inventory. The mall was empty and silent, and the walk-in commercial freezer blew out white cold air like some massive Antarctic creature.
One night, he and I went out to the mall on a store-errand. I was probably ten. A conservative man, both politically and financially, my father drove a Volkswagen Beetle. The evening was warm, and I cracked my window to let in a breeze. We got out, went to the store, came back to the parking place and discovered the car gone. Although I had dutifully locked the car door, I had failed to roll the window back up completely. At the time, in the twilight of the hippies, “dune buggies” were in great demand. (Admit it – When was the last time you heard of a dune buggy?) Volkswagen Beetles were ideal to be stripped-down and turned into dune buggies, the police told us. They theorized that the thieves had been able to slip a twisted metal coat-hanger into the gap in the window I had left open; pull up the lock; and gain access.
A dune buggy
I was embarrassed, devastated and fearful at the prospect of forcing my father to pay for a new car, even if insurance was available. (He had taken a staff job at the University of Alabama which, I figured out later, paid less than his previous, private-company job). He never got mad about the Beetle, never blamed me and never considered it anything other than an unfortunate event. I was grateful and did not know how to express my gratitude.
Gratitude is not my strongest quality, and there were other things for which to be grateful. There was a trip to Acapulco: we played tennis, and the breakfast pancakes had Mexican chocolate in them. My tennis career was budding, and he hired a contractor to build a cinder-block backboard on one side of the driveway, painted dark green the way I imagined the high walls at Wimbledon might be. There was a beach trip to Destin, Florida. The motel where we stayed had a bar and, one afternoon when I went to get some ice from the sweating ice machine, I passed the bar. The band was rehearsing: “Jeremiah Was A Bullfrog,” by Three Dog Night. Also, Daddy had been a high school basketball player, and he encouraged my (undistinguished) play in the downtown YMCA youth league.
That was the day he died, the Saturday of a Y basketball game. The day was cold and clear. He watched my game and brought me home (in yet another Beetle, this one green). After my shower, I built a fire in the coal grate. (An oddity, coal fires, but the house was old and the fireplace built for coal. Some people do not like coal fires. As a child, I loved them. Pockets of gas would escape and explode in blues and purples around the black coals, demons escaping from rock).
Daddy had complained of nausea and went to lie down in my parents’ bedroom. I got the fire into a good, colorful roar. The demons were looking good. My mother must have known how impressed I was with my fire-making skills, and she helped my father up to the living room to see my handiwork. Something was amiss. Even I knew something was amiss when all he could do – he who was usually so effusive in praise for me – was to nod and murmur something I do not remember.
He went back to the bedroom, I went back to watching the purple and blue demons crack and jump from coal to coal. There was a commotion, my mother cried out and I ran down the hall towards their bedroom. No Daddy. My mother was saying something about He fell, and she was on the phone. My words and hers all run together now.
Whereishe?
Inthebathroom.
I stood there, rooted, terrified. I did not know what had happened, but I did not want to look at him. I was afraid to look at him. I didn’t care: I was afraid. I was also a failed Boy Scout, so I asked some inane question to cover up my cowardice.
Isithishead? Headinjury?
But my mother was talking into the phone. I took a breath, stepped around her and looked into their bathroom.
My father was in his bathrobe, sitting in the empty tub, his legs hooked over the edge of the tub, feet dangling. (Later, it was surmised he had gone into the bathroom, thinking he would throw up; had sat on the edge of the tub; and had tumbled backwards into the empty tub when the heart attack hit). His eyes were shut, but he was making a chuck-chuck noise through his nose, a violent snuffling. His right arm rose in the air, as though one of the little coal-demons were yanking it upwards with thread.
Perhaps he was dying at the moment; perhaps it was a body in some sort of death throes. (I do not know and never asked. The doctors gave us the obligatory He-never-felt-a-thing, which I doubted even then).
My mother had called the ambulance. Perhaps she knew full well and did not want me to see. She told me to go out the front door and look for the ambulance. Which, to my relief and shame, I ran and did.
Neighbors, food, flowers, funeral. My parents had many friends, and the house was filled with flowers. To this day, I cannot abide the smell of flowers.
That was forty-one years ago. What to make of it this Father’s Day, for your benefit or mine?
Perhaps we only understand aspects of ourselves when we understand aspects of our fathers, and the latter understanding comes only with time. My time was ambered – that backwards-telescope problem – but now, with my own children, I can see my face in theirs and, more than ever before, Daddy’s face in mine. I appreciate, perhaps, what he might have been thinking about a job, a child, the future.
And perhaps we only look into a father’s face when enough time has passed to get us to the same age as he, so to speak: the same age as when something happened to you as a child, something critical or weird or shameful. I was afraid at his death, fearful watching it, impotent. No Boy Scout, me. Guilt at not doing something Boy Scout-like. Mouth-to-mouth? Some kind of pounding on his chest? Getting in the tub and holding him until he died?
Whatever it was I should have done, I failed to do it.
I believe the Gospel, and so I believe that he and I will meet again. Sometimes, over the years, I have been terrified that he will judge me for my failure, there in a dying man’s bathroom in 1973. What a judgment upon me that would be, would it not?
Yet now I am older than he was on that day, and the telescope seems to distort his memory less now than it did before. Peculiar, isn’t it? Now, when I fear his judgment, memory replays how my failure to close that window caused that Beetle to get stolen, and how he acted towards his child.
True, someone got their dune buggy out of it. All I got was love.
Happy Father’s Day.
Flying over corruption?
According to the FCPA Blog, Alabama is supposedly the 6th most-corrupt state in the Union. Mississippi takes top honors. Oregon claims to be the least corrupt. (Perhaps the Ducks’ hurry-up offense leaves no time for kickbacks). Here is the full study.
By “corruption,” the authors focus on public corruption as prosecuted by DOJ’s Public Integrity Section.
Gatekeepers.
Public Integrity’s track record in Alabama has been mixed, though, most recently in the “bingo” acquittals. For some white-collar defendants, it may be Sweet Home, Alabama after all, but there can be immense pain, expense and destruction along the way.
Tyrone Power, Jr. in Witness for The Prosecution (1957)
From Lawrence S. Goldman and our friends at White Collar Crime Prof blog, a summary of a Second Circuit decision addressing (1) the extent to which prosecutors can “bolster” cooperating witnesses’ testimony by relying on their cooperation agreements and (2) whether or not the tardy production of Brady and Jencks material matters. (Answer: it doesn’t). In particular:
The opinion also excuses, but does not condone, the improper failure of the government to turn over handwritten notes by a testifying agent which were discovered in the later examination of another agent and belatedly revealed to the defense. The notes should have been revealed earlier, says the Court, not only since they included evidence favorable to the defense, but also pursuant to Fed. R. Crim. Pro. 16(a)(1)(B)(ii), a discovery rule, and 18 U.S.C. 3500, the Jencks Act. However, since the notes were, however belatedly, turned over and the defense had an opportunity to review them, examine the later-testifying agent about their content, and recall the earlier witness if it chose, and since their timely disclosure would not have changed the verdict, in any case there was no Brady violation. The opinion thus demonstrates that late provision of Brady (or Rule 16 or Jencks) by the government during trial will virtually never be grounds for reversal, at least not in the Second Circuit.
The well-dressed Government witness.
We have written before about cooperation agreements before here and here, and Brady non-disclosure abuse here. And here is the trailer for Billy Wilder’s 1957 film Witness For The Prosecution (starring Tyrone Power, Jr. and Charles Laughton).
Well, close.
No one has ever asked me the lawyer-related questions I would like to be asked. At age fifty-three, time is passing. So, inspired by novelist Walker Percy, who wrote an essay entitled Questions They Never Asked Me, I decided to do a self-interview.
If you’re unwilling or unable to click through the link, here is the gist of it:
You have a social-media presence. Can someone hire a lawyer off the Internet?
No. Hiring a lawyer is an impossible judgment to make from a blog or webpage. There are a lot of good lawyers. They may be able to help you, but you can’t tell because their websites and bios look and sound the same. (Ask yourself: “The last guy I looked at who talked about ‘innovation in client service,’ was the background of his webpage goldenrod, or was he the guy with the blue stripe and tiny print down the side?”)
First one lawyer, then another.
So how does someone with a legal problem tell one lawyer from another?
All lawyers want to stand out from the crowd, but everybody uses the same buzzwords. “Dedicated, innovative and collaborative.”
A very 1980s approach.
It’s like we all picked up the same management-guru’s paperback one night changing planes at DFW.
That doesn’t answer the question.
Well, it does.
First, I’m not going to tell you how smart, creative, proactive, problem-solving, practical-minded, cost-effective, sophisticated, responsive, savvy, innovative, disruptive, global and social I think I am. Clients and colleagues get to draw conclusions like that.
Second, I’m going to admit at least some ignorance. A lawyer learns about a client by listening. Not by talking. If I don’t listen to you, I can’t claim an understanding of your business, your problem or your life.
If we skip adjectives and admit ignorance, what’s left?
A promise. I promise I’ll pay attention to you, your business and your life. If I’m not the smartest guy in the room (which is entirely possible), I promise that I will work harder―a lot harder―than anyone else in the room. I promise that I respect the courtroom but I don’t fear trial. I promise that I will tell you (a) the truth about your problem and (b) about whether I’m the right person to help. I promise to be ethical. I promise to be loyal, because too many lawyers and businesspeople aren’t.
That’s it?
That’s it.
Best wishes for a happy Memorial Day weekend from White Collar Wire.
Mow what grass?
From the New York Times, this set of interactive videos about summer cocktails is a great start to the weekend.
The Thin Man movies starring Nick and Nora Charles (William Powell and Myrna Loy) combine two elements of our mission (cocktails and crime fiction). This montage from several “Thin Man” films has some of their best martini-hits.
A suspect.
We support gin here at White Collar Wire. See this article about the renewal of gin in London. And, on the subject of gin, from Liquor.com is this video on the Corpse Reviver Number 2.
Tiki drinks are a hot-weather favorite. From Saveur.com, here’s a story about Dragon 88′s mai tai.
Nothing causes good-natured arguments better than the correct preparation of the Sazerac. From our friends at Gastronomista.com, an article that reminds you: Trust Me, You’re Drinking Your Sazerac Wrong.
Finally, I am no great fan of commencement addresses, but this one by Navy Admiral William H. McRaven, Commander of U.S. Special Operations Command, seems especially appropriate on Memorial Day weekend.
A Polynesian extravaganza.
