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)

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.

GUEST POSTER-HENRY MAHER

Ed.  I don't know if I have told Henry this, but he is near the top of my list of favorite people of all time.  He worked in the US Attorney's office, as he relates here, as a defense lawyer at Plunkett Cooney, where we had a case or two together (when I was a plaintiff lawyer), and he was one of the first facilitators, back before every lawyer (present company included)fancied himself/herself as a facilitator.  He was one of the select group of "go to" facilitators for the big cases.  I never saw a facilitator who could connect with the litigants as well as Henry--a rare talent.

Henry has been "retired" retired since 2015, during which time he has read, by his count, 250 novels.  I am trying to turn him on to the Nero Wolfe series by Rex Stout.

I hope to get some more of Henry's stories when we meet for lunch in the next few weeks.

Dear Mike: 

Here are two stories from my time as an assistant US Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan when I served under then US Attorney James Brickley from 1969 until June of 1970. 

I handled several different criminal cases but most often they were bank Robberies in violation of Title 18 section 2113. Some were quite complicated such as the one against Levi Washington, who had previously escaped from the Cook County jail in Chicago, and subsequently robbed a bank in Jackson Michigan. That case had several issues including challenges of unlawful search and seizures and an attempted escape in the middle of our trial to the shock of the jury and me too. He was apprehended by the Marshalls a block away from Federal Court when he ran into a blind alley. 

However, the two cases I think you might want to share for a chuckle due to the complete incompetence of the would-be bank robbers are the following. 

First one gentleman attempted to rob The Detroit Bank and Trust (Now Comerica Bank) located on the comer of Gratiot and Mack in the City of Detroit not realizing that the seventh precinct of the Detroit Police Department was located just around the comer less than a block away. The would-be robber handed the teller a note announcing the stickup at which time the teller pushed the silent alarm and after the idiot received the funds and turned around to leave, he was face to face with six Detroit policemen with their guns drawn. The jury was out for a total of fifteen minutes before returning a verdict of guilty. 

The other case was even more bizarre in that the bank robber, after he received the money from the teller at a branch of the National Bank of Detroit whom he had threatened with a gun, fired the gun into the ceiling and yelled in a loud voice "Tell them Jesse Malone was here" Being a known criminal with a long rap sheet, the police arrived at his apartment while he was sitting there counting his loot. Not too smart to say the least.

Feel free to use or not use these two incidents from my brief tenure at Federal Court 

before I joined Plunkett and Cooney in June of 1970 and stayed until June of 1999 when I so called retired before becoming a mediator until 2015 when I retired for good. 

Looking forward to our lunch when the weather is more suitable for travel.

DEPOSITION AT SECREST WARDLE, GRAND RAPIDS--GREY HAWK DOWN!! THRICE!!

When you have been doing deps as long as I have, you thing there isn't much that can happen at a deposition that can surprise you.  I have had:

deps starting at 6am;

deps ending at 10:30pm;

dep notice faxed at 3pm Friday for a trial dep at 10am Sunday for a trial starting that Monday (I showed up);

deps where the doc was locked out of his own office, twice;

dep where the witness put a gypsy curse on me;

dep taken in the laundry room of a Korean nail salon;

dep taken while sitting on an upturned milk crate behind a 7/11 Slurpee machine;

deps in county jails, state prisons, state prison camps, and federal prisons(got a tour of the inmate shiv museum that time);

dep where the witness was asked if he had a gun under his trench coat (he didn't, we think);

deps where the judge is called mid-testimony to referee;

dep where the reporter thumbs through People magazine during testimony;

and on and on.  No violence---yet.

But today was a first.  I was taking a dep at the posh Secrest Wardle office located on E. Beltline in Grand Rapids, pictured below.

The dep was taken in the 6th floor conference room, a two story affair featuring floor to arched ceiling windows.  Oddly the room, among other amenities, included a spiral staircase leading to a small platform (that led to nothing else). Still trying to figure that out.  Maybe unruly Secrest Wardle employees are sent up there for a "time out", when necessary.

Anyway, during the deposition, on three separate occasions over several hours, very large grey hawks, in full flight, collided with the plate glass windows, certainly interrupting the flow of eloquence of the questioning attorney each time.  The creatures survived each time as no carcass was seen on the ground--we all looked.  The hawks were immense.

In a previous blog, I had occasion to comment on the black tin dog installed on the lawn of the Secrest Wardle office in the highly developed center of Troy Michigan.  Presumably it was installed to scare off, coyotes?  plaintiff lawyers?

I think the firm needs to do something similar, and quick, to discourage the indigenous hawk population from doing themselves serious injury.  However, as the hawk has no natural predators, what to do?  Install a sign for a taxidermy company on the window?  Or a huge decal, similar to the one below?

 

 

 

LEX FUGIT-OTHER VOICES

Thomas E. Brennan(1929-2018) served as justice and then chief justice of the Michigan Supreme Court.  He founded the Thomas M. Cooley Law School.  He graduated from Detroit Catholic Central High School in 1947, and received the Shamrock Bar Association's Richard Hathaway Distinguished Lawyer Award, posthumously, in 2019. (You don't have to be a CC alum to be featured on this blog, but it doesn't hurt).

In 2008, Justice Brennan started his blog, oldjudgesays.

The blog has over 440 posts and covers a wide range of topics, personal, professional and political.

Someone has shown the good sense to continue to pay the Blogger platform to keep the blog on the web.  It is worth looking at.

The November 15, 2017 post, Puzzling, is very relevant to Lex Fugiteers:

"On a shelf in the hallway upstairs there is a random collection of diaries Polly and I have started, kept and abandoned through the years. Many of those pages are filled with the minutia of daily living; going to the office, driving kids to school, visiting and/or entertaining neighbors, friends and relatives; household chores and on and on.

They bring back the hectic days of midlife; the ice rink in the vacant lot next door; the Baptisms, First Communions, Proms, Graduations, Birthdays and countless crises encountered by a big and busy family.

Whatever challenges we faced in those days, boredom wasn’t among them."

 

 

MY "CV"

As readers (if any) of this blog may understand, I am not a huge fan of the kind blatant self promotion.  In fact, a new feature, "Self Promotion Apocalypse" will soon grace this site.

I think the perfect response to those who try to impress with their credentials and accomplishments was delivered in 1989 by Rowan Atkinson (center in the picture above), in his role as Capt. Edmund Blackadder, in the BBC One series, Blackadder Goes Forth.

With a little editing by yours truly, here it is:

"I, on the other hand, am a fully rounded human being, with a degree from the University of Life*, a diploma from the School of Hard Knocks**, and three gold stars from the Kindergarten of Getting the Shit Kicked Out of Me***."

*Cum laude

**Bigly cum laude

***Board certified