LEX FUGIT

LEX FUGIT?

 Some time ago I joined the ranks of what people might politely call, "seasoned attorneys".  While I enjoy working now more than I have in 20 years, I find that a number of attorneys and judges of my vintage, have left the racket, I mean practice. Some are happily retired; some not so much. Others have left for health reasons and others, sadly, have passed away.  I miss them all; admittedly, some more than others.

 

Lex Fugit is a made up Latin phrase--Lex for law, and Fugit as in Tempus (time) Fugit (flies). The site is intended to be a place to preserve memories of the  legal scene in Michigan, with the emphasis on the Wayne, Oakland, Macomb and Genesee County Courts, where I have had the most experience.

 

After a generation in the practice, I find that I  have  war stories for almost every occasion. I'd like to share my stories of the practice and the people who have made it so memorable. And, I hope that readers will share their stories  as well. The lawyers and the practice deserves to be remembered.

 

Lawyer's stories, tales, anecdotes, and reminiscences, are welcome and encouraged.  Please submit to me at mbutler@lmdlaw.com.  I may withhold names of characters involved, if I think it necessary.  I have done so with a few of my own stories that appear here.

 

And, finally what blog/website would be complete without a plug for the author's facilitation/mediation business?

 

As readers of this blog will learn, I am not real big on the self-promotion industry, with its various awards and LinkedIn posts.  But, I am also aware that when considering the appointment of a mediator, there is a certain "default" list of names that comes immediately to mind.  I have the same list for my litigation cases.  People tend to forget other mediators. 

 

So, as I attempt to get on that "default" list, I would like to point out that I have extensive litigation experience representing parties on both sides of the "v".  And, as we enter the "Brave New World" of a new No-Fault Act and a new set of Court Rules, I have both written and made presentations concerning both.  I don't think those on the "default" list can say that.  End of self-promotion.

 

 My CV and mediation procedures can be found here.

 

To steal the closing line of one of my heroes, the late Judge Kaye Tertzag:  "Be well."

 

Mike Butler (734-776-0231)

HON. ROLAND OLZARK

I didn't title this post with a "Lex Fugit" as Judge Olzark is still with us.  He became a licensed attorney in Michigan in 1954, and enjoyed a long career as a Wayne County Circuit Judge and, additionally as a visiting judge in many Michigan courts.

In addition to this website, I am admin of a Facebook group called "I Went to Catholic School in Metro Detroit", where our members post about Detroit area Catholic schools past and present.

So, this post is something of a "crossover" piece, kind of like when the Jetsons visited the Flintstones, Green Acres met Petticoat Junction, or something.

While doing some research for that group, I was looking through the 1944 and 1945 editions of the Detroit Catholic Central Shamrock yearbook.  Roland Olzark graduated from CC in 1945.

In the 1944 yearbook, I came across an article and pictures about a student musical production called, "At the Stage Door Canteen".  And, who do I see doing a solo, but Seaman First Class (and Junior class member), Roland Olzark!  The picture is cropped from a page that had another picture above, with both captions below.

Also, that same year, Mr. Olzark was Featherweight boxing champion, pictured at the top of the post.

During his Senior year, he played on the football team that played Boystown in the first Boys Bowl at Briggs Stadium before a crowd of a crowd of 43,539-for a high school football game, yet. Roland is fifth from the right in the middle row.

Judge Olzark has remained involved as a CC alum.  Here he is pictured at a 2009 meeting of the CC Shamrock Bar Association, with Catholic Central's legendary Fr. Richard Elmer.  At one of our later meetings, it was my honor, as chairman of the Shamrock Bar, to present Judge Olzark with the Judge Richard Hathaway Distinguished Lawyer Award.

 

MICHIGAN LEGAL LANDMARKS 2-JACOB BERNSTEIN’S LAW SCHOOL DIPLOMA

 

For many years I worked for the law firm of Bernstein & Bernstein (not Sam). The firm started business in 1923, I believe in the Majestic Building in downtown Detroit.

When I started there, some time after 1923, the firm’s main office was on the 16th floor of the 3000 Building what was then the Prudential Town Center in Southfield.  

In 2009, the firm moved to its present office on 12 Mile Road in Lathrup Village.  

The item shown above is the 1923 Detroit College of Law diploma of Jacob Bernstein, one of the original Bernsteins.  By the way, Sam Bernstein was Jacob’s nephew. There are several unconfirmed stories as to why Sam never worked for B&B.  I won’t relate them here.

Jacob was born in 1900 and died much too young in 1945.  His son, Newton, ran the firm when I started with the firm, and still came in to the office after his 2005 retirement.  He died in 2009, before the move to Lathrup Village.

I never saw Jacob’s diploma while I worked at the Town Center.  It apparently had been stashed behind a file cabinet, and forgotten about, for decades.  It was discovered during the move.

It is now hanging in the firm’s main conference room.  A great piece of firm history, lost for many years, but fortunately not forever.

 

LEX FUGIT-JUDGE JACK DILLON ’44-BELMONT BOY

(Note: This post first appeared in a former blog of mine in April of 2010.  That blog is no longer on the web, but this post certainly belongs here. This profile of  17th District Judge John "Jack" Dillon was originally written for the Detroit Catholic Central Alumni Magazine.  Judge Dillon passed on September 18, 2013. Belmont is the location of the CC campus at the time Jack Dillon attended the school. MB)

Catholic Central’s Novi camus is grand by every measure. From the beautiful, wooded grounds and carefully tended stadium and athletic fields outside, to the state of the art classrooms and labs inside, everything about CC impresses. The chapel’s stained glass window and the many “halls of fame” remind students of the past, and the School Seal in the floor of the entry hall has started one of the new traditions of Detroit Catholic Central-Novi.

While the halls of CC celebrate the school’s rich tradition, every current Catholic Central student’s experience is defined by the Novi campus. Novi is Catholic Central’s fifth home, and the life of a Shamrock was very different back at Breakfast Drive, Outer Drive, Belmont and Harper. In the age of IPhones, IPods, laptops, Facebook , and acronyms like WiFi, HDTV, and LOL, it may be good to reflect on what it was like to be a CC student in the days of the DSR, LSMFT (in the stairways and lavs) and World War II (acronym WWII).

I had the honor to sit down recently with John “Jack” Dillon of the CC graduating class of 1944, who went to CC during the Belmont years. A breakfast interview that wife Jan and daughter Marybeth thought should have taken about sixty minutes, turned out to be much too short at three and a half hours. The talk came easy, as I thought it would. Jan and John Dillon had started raising their family on the next block from where I grew up, and John Dillon was the first judge before whom I had appeared (as a lawyer).

While one of my primary interests was his high school experience, the discussion often turned to those matters most important him: his family, his faith and his service to the community as a District Court Judge in Redford.

Jack Dillon and his brother Bill ’42, both went to CC after attending grade school at Visitation. Jack, the youngest of five children, was the son of James Dillon, an Irish immigrant, and Ford worker who had left school after fifth grade. His mother, Irene, also worked as a seamstress to support the family.

Visitation Parish had its own High School back in those days, but the family thought it was important for Bill and Jack to go to CC. Jack remembers that none of the boys in his grade school class that stayed at Visitation High School ever went on to college.

It was not easy for the Dillon boys to get to CC in those days. The family home was near Davison and West Grand Boulevard, and Catholic Central was located behind Blessed Sacrament Cathedral. No car pools, no kids with cars back then. That was all right, as there was no parking lot at CC for anyone to park in, anyway. The Dillon boys came to CC by DSR bus—two buses and one hour travel time each way to get the four miles to school. Bus fare was six cents, which included the one cent transfer-- amounts of money that will buy exactly nothing these days.

Enrollment was between four and five hundred at the time, and virtually all classes were taught by priests. Those that weren’t were taught by Basilian Scholastics. All students took two years of Latin, the only foreign language offered, with the really smart students taking four years. “Electives” were virtually non-existent. Most students took all the same classes. Jack was an honor roll student and a member of the Science Club, but could only remember a single science lab in the building.

Jack Dillon was a basketball player during all four years at CC but while the gym was brand new it was not attached to the school. While most of the CC community remember that Catholic Central never had a home field on campus before Novi, during the Belmont years, the campus was landlocked, and football players had to take a bus to get to practice.

LEX FUGIT PODCAST'S NOT SO DRY RUN

Today, the panel for the upcoming Lex Fugit podcast met for its first "rehearsal" at Jacoby's, on Brush St, across from what legal veterans still call the Old County Building.

The regular members are, from left to right:  Ron Steinberg, Mike Butler, Paula Cole and John Cothorn.  Before our wonderful server, Rachel, took the picture, she cleared our table of empty glasses and bottles of mineral water, fresh fruit and vegetable juices.

We plan on starting broadcasts in April.  Our "studio" will be the Detroit Bar Association's Lawyers Lounge in the Coleman A. Young Municipal Center, fka the City-County Building, aka the CCB.  Thanks to the Detroit Bar Association for its invaluable assistance, and sponsorship.

The program's format will include a guest panelist for each episode.  We will talk about the practice of law, past and present, in Michigan's Courts.  The stuff you can't make up.

One thing we did not settle on was a musical intro for the show. "Lawyers, Guns and Money" is not in the running.  Too cliché.  This is going to be a high class operation.  My nomination is "Cocktails for Two", by Spike Jones and his City Slickers.

Way back, when the Wayne County Mediation Tribunal was right up the street in the Millender Center, serving as a mediator/case evaluator included a free lunch at Jacoby's.  Those were the days.  So, if we ever do a "remote", the second floor at Jacoby's is the place.

We will be on the air shortly.  Until then:  "Good night and good luck."

 

LEX FUGIT-and TEMPUS FUGIT

One man's trash is indeed another man's treasure.  

Today I was at a house that was being set up for an "estate sale".  Stuff had been brought in from various places, and I saw this item, which was apparently headed for the dumpster.

I am a sucker for historical knick-knacks of almost every description.  So, I see this plaster bust of FDR, and I had to have it.  Historical, and legal(sort of).

The inscriptions are most interesting.  The Pledge of Allegiance goes like this: "I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all".  The words "under God" were not added until 1954.

In addition "Remember Pearl Harbor" is included under the Pledge.

Back when I was a little kid, my sainted Grandparents, Mike and Catherine Butler, had a small plaster bust of John F. Kennedy, painted gold, on the sideboard of their small dining room.  He was President, after all, but more importantly, he was Irish and he was Catholic.

I don't know what happened to that item.  It is lost, I'm sure.  Shame.

This is going into my office tomorrow.  I may be the first Michigan attorney with an image of FDR in his office since Mike DePolo retired from Garan Lucow.

GUEST POSTER-IDENTITY WITHHELD

Ed. A good friend of mine submitted this story, and asked that his name and the names of all concerned be withheld.

After reading it, I understand why.

Not all the lexfugit.com "you can't make this stuff up" stories are funny.

"In the late 80's I was a staff attorney with the AGC, doing a reinstatement case of a black attorney in Lansing. The petitioner was represented by counsel, who also happened to be black. The three hearing panel members were white. During a recess the hearing panel chairperson says to me {outside of the hearing of the petitioner or his counsel} that he "did not understand why those people were allowed to practice law in the first place". I immediately advised the attorney for the petitioner what had been said, and I pledged my support if his client wanted to ask for a new panel. Sort of a recusal after the fact. I then got on the phone and advised the Executive Director of the ADB(Attorney Discipline Board), about what was said.

Petitioner elected to proceed [why not as it was a free play since the panel was offside before the snap], and reinstatement was granted by a vote of 2 to 1. I understand that the Executive Director spoke with the other two panel members, and I believe that they confirmed the events as I had described them. The ADB disbanded the hearing panel, and the chairperson never sat on any hearing panel ever again."

I will buy my friend a beer or whatever his poison of preference may be, at the time and place of his choosing.  

Well done, young man.

LAWYER CARTOON OF THE WEEK-POST HIATUS

It has been a while.

"I was only famous for 14 and a half minutes.  The universe owes me 30 seconds of fame!"

"Open a LinkedIn account.  Problem solved.  That will be $3000.00."

DETROIT BENCH AND BAR COLLAGES

Finally.  Thanks to the Detroit Bar Association , Darlene Trudell, Director(my classmate at Our Lady of Loretto Grade School-Go Lancers!), historical composite pictures of the Detroit Bar Association have been hung on the first floor of the Coleman A. Young Municipal Center, fka the City-County Building, aka the CCB.  The most current comes from 2016-2017.  Understandably the older versions have not been so digitized so they could be sent to me by email.  So, I took pictures of 2 of the older pictures, from 1935 and 1947 with my phone.  

So, next time you are waiting "patiently" for an elevator on motion day, take a look at your contemporaries and those who have come before.

 

 

APHORISMS FOR AGING ATTORNEYS-6

 

"If things get too much for you and you feel the whole world's against you, go stand on your head. If you can think of anything crazier to do, do it." -Harpo Marx.  This explains why the top of my head is flat.  And it also shows that I don't have much of an imagination.

"What do you call a lawyer with an IQ of 41?" 

"Your Honor."-Judge David Allen, Wayne County Circuit Judge.  As perceptive a judge as you are ever likely to encounter.

"I think that lawyers are terrible at admitting that they're wrong. And not just admitting it - also realizing it."-Alan Dershowitz.  You said a mouthful, Toots.

LAWYERS LEAGUE SOFTBALL-BELLE ISLE

Thanks to Mary Catherine Rentz for providing this picture of Sheldon Miller and Joe Lujan, circa—-sometime before last summer, when they played for their respective firms in the Belle Isle Lawyer Softball League.  Shel for Lopatin Miller, and Joe for Plunkett & Cooney (in the days before they got rid of the &).

According to LexFugit.com correspondent Tom Calcatera (Bernstein & Bernstein alum, currently of the Mike Morse law firm) the Belle Isle branch of the Lawyers League no longer exists, though there is still a current version of the old Softball City Lawyers League, which plays in Mt. Clemens, and is run by Judge Mark Switalski and Judge Boedeker.

It would be nice to revive the league on Belle Isle. Mike Morse v Hewson van Hellemont would draw big crowds, especially if the firm’s principals played.