LEX FUGIT

HYATT LEGAL SERVICES

 

 

As part of the continuing preparation for the first installment of the Lex Fugit Podcast (it is coming, really), I asked all panel members to prepare a short summary of their career "stops".  At our last Zoom session I presented mine as an example.  In putting together my bio, I recalled a period I had largely forgot, my madcap 10 months as a lawyer for Hyatt Legal Services.

Like many young attorneys, I moved around a bit early in my career.  I have worked as an attorney at six firms in my career.  I had started at the fifth  before the ninth anniversary of my swearing in.

Joel Hyatt was the face of this national (I suppose) firm, founded in 1977.  Great pedigree, educated at Dartmouth and Yale Law School.  His father-in-law was then Ohio Senator Howard Metzenbaum.

Hyatt Legal Services was made up of multiple small  store front law offices in metro areas across the nation.  At one time there were 10 offices in southeast Michigan.  See the Detroit TV ad above.  The firm billed itself as a low-cost legal service, making legal services available to millions of "hitherto disenfranchised middle-and lower-class Americans"-from the Wikipedia entry.

An appealing concept.  Interestingly, every service was flat fee, paid in advance.  I won't speak here about attorney motivation under such an arrangement.  

Office hours were 9am-8pm, Mon.-Thurs, 9-6 on Friday, and 9-4 Saturday.  The attorneys, three to each office, were expected to work a "flexible 50" hours per week, which meant at least 2 nights until 8 and 1 1/2 out of 3 Saturdays.  Walk-ins were welcome, and the street-side entrance doors weren't locked.

PHONE A FRIEND

    When I started this site, I expected that a lot of the posts would be about the practice of law in Michigan, back in the "Olden Days".  That term never had a solid definition, but somewhere around the first decade of the new millennium and before seemed as good and vague a time to choose as any.  A time of paper files, no efiling and 3 public phones on every floor of the CCB.  

    Then came COVID 19, and there is now a line in the sand marking the "Olden Days" firmly at pre-March 23, 2020.  Now we are in the era of ZOOM, plexiglass, masks, remote everything, no trials and no personal anything.  Progress will be defined as how and when we return to the past.  

    Not that a reminder was needed, but this weekend, I was impressed again with how fast times change.  When I tuned in to NBC last night, Saturday Night Live showed up on prime time, 10pm.  There was a studio audience, no masks on any one and no social distancing.  The audience was sitting closer together than fans at U of M Stadium or in the jury assembly room at Frank Murphy Hall of Justice (pre-March 23, 2020, historical references).  

     I clicked the info button on the remote and learned that this was a rerun of a show from 2013.  A mere 7 years ago.  No pandemic, and Donald Trump was nearing the end of The Apprentice. The old normal was indeed different, even unrecognizable. 

   On November 23, 2020, 8 months to the day from Michigan's first shutdown order, more lawyers practice from home than from their pre-2020 offices. Few of us have been in a courtroom or case evaluation room since March-even once.  We have become disoriented as our internal time clocks are no longer set by Monday mornings in Macomb, Wednesdays in Oakland and Fridays in Wayne.

    Many like working from home.  For my son (not a lawyer), working from home eliminates 2 hours of commuting.  And even though he keeps formal hours of work in a devoted space, he can see his very young children through the day.

    However, I have recently learned from lawyer friends that working exclusively from home is not necessarily all "Beer and Skittles" (Skittles the game like bowling, not the candy, which shouldn't go well with beer, but worth a try?).

     Last Friday, I needed some help with an issue under our new Court Rules.  Since May of 2019: the first comprehensive revision of the No-Fault Act since 1972, the first comprehensive revision of the Michigan Court Rules since 1985, and the COVID 19 shut down of the courts.  It never rains, but it pours.

"THE" CARTOON FOR THE "LOOK AT ME, I'M SPECIAL" GENERATION

From Will McPhail at the New Yorker:  "OK, 'abirdtookmyson.com' is taken, I'll try '.biz'."   

Impressively accurate punctuation as well.

Great stuff at "willmcphail4" on Instagram.

LEX FUGIT-JUDGE DALTON ROBERSON

Retired Wayne County Circuit and Recorders Court Judge Dalton Roberson, age 83, died on Tuesday, November 10, 2020, after being diagnosed with COVID 19.

His Detroit Free Press obituary can be found here.

Though the state of Michigan does not allow judges to run for election after age 70, I believe Judge Roberson did still work as a visiting judge well after mandatory retirement age.

After Recorders and Wayne Circuit merged in the early 1990s, and the court was split into Criminal, Civil and Family Divisions, some judges transferred from one Division to another.  Judge Roberson was one of the first judges to transfer from Recorder's Court, the new Criminal Division, to the Civil Division at the City-County Building.

I was the plaintiff's lawyer in one of Judge Roberson's early civil trials.  Funny thing, I don't remember what the case was about, or if I won or lost.  I have a very very vague recollection that I  might possibly have won, but who knows.  Too bad we didn't have LinkedIn back then, to catalog all of our victories (only)--the big, the small, and the trivial.

Whatever the outcome, the thing I do remember, was that Judge Roberson, despite being an intelligent judge, with a very impressive and dignified demeanor, was not only a good judge, but a humble one.

While he was instructing the jury, counsel had to interrupt and ask to approach the bench.  I'll never forget his first words to us:  "What did I do wrong?"  He was a judge who probably tried more criminal jury cases than I've had hot dinners, but he knew he was new to the civil "game".  And he was very respectful to the the lawyers who would help him in this new phase of his judicial career.

When you forget the case, and forget the outcome, but remember the man...well that is impressive.  Maybe not LinkedIn impressive.  But genuinely impressive.

 

TIME FOR A LINKEDIN PROFILE UPDATE

 

 

TO SAY THE LEAST.

 

HOW STELLA GOT HER GROOVE, HER NICKEL-AND MORE, BACK: A NEIL FINK STORY

(As told by Attorney Rick Lewandowski)

In 1999, Dave McNeill, who I worked for, and I began sharing office space with Dave’s friend, Neil Fink, the legendary criminal defense lawyer. Shortly after, Dave and I started acting as co-counsel to Neil on his plaintiff civil rights cases with good results.

Neil Fink

One day Stella Romanski came in to tell us about her experience at the Motor City Casino. Stella was a 72 year old former Arthur Murray dance instructor who paid $9 for a round trip ride on the Motor City Casino’s senior bus from Sterling Heights to the casino. Included in the price, was a meal ticket for an all you can eat lunch at the casino’s buffet.

Stella and her two friends took the casino up on its offer and upon arriving at the casino one very hot July morning, the three ladies split up and agreed to meet for lunch at 11:30 AM. Stella, who liked to play the nickel slots, was looking for a machine she thought would give her “luck”, and in the process, noticed a nickel token that a successful gambler abandoned in the tray of one of the slot machines.

Stella, who was old enough to appreciate the value of a nickel, picked it up and was immediately approached by a Motor City licensed security officer who told Stella that she had just committed a misdemeanor by violating an unpublished Motor City Casino policy that abandoned tokens were the property of the casino and not the person who found it.

Three other Motor City Casino security officers arrived on the scene and the four of them marched Stella to a windowless room and told Stella she had stolen property from the casino. They held her for about an hour, demanded her driver’s license and social security card, which she produced and after a while, took her photograph, prepared a written report and told her she was banned or “86’d” from the casino for six months.

They also told her she had to immediately leave the casino. She told them she came on their bus and had no way to get home. She also became nauseous and asked to use the restroom. She was permitted to do so, but one of the guards stood outside of the stall while she both cried and relieved herself. She was then taken to the casino lobby and told to wait there for her bus. She was also told the bus would arrive at 3:00 PM and she had better be on. They also refused to let her eat at the buffet. All the while, her friends were frantically looking for her in the casino.

At 3:00 PM, she was about to board the bus that she was told was hers, only to find out that the bus was headed to Saginaw, Michigan. She then sat down on the side walk outside the casino and “just cried”. Her friends eventually found her sitting on the sidewalk in the 90 plus degree heat, sweating and about to pass out.

We filed a false arrest, false imprisonment and intentional infliction of emotional distress case against the security guard and the casino itself in Wayne County Circuit Court. Neil was hoping, through discovery, that we could somehow establish a nexus with the City of Detroit Police Department, as it maintained an office at the casino, so that we could show state action sufficient enough to establish a federal 1983 claim.

Neil correctly knew that exemplary damages under state law would be far less than punitive damages under federal law. Also, since punitive damages are designed to punish the defendant, the casino’s profits were relevant.

Rick Lewandowski

I did the research and could not establish a nexus with the casino and the City of Detroit police department, but I did find case law in other federal circuits that held security officers, with certification under state law to make an arrest - such as the licensed casino guards in question - were state actors.

We filed a motion to amend the complaint right before trial to add a federal 1983 claim. The trial judge, who was I believe the first female Wayne County Circuit judge, was very difficult to be in front of. For those attorneys who have been around long enough, her courtroom was up on the 17th floor at the CAYMC building for several years. She retired in 2014 and now serves as a neutral case evaluator.

At the motion hearing, she interrupted my argument, brought us up for an off the record discussion and told me “I don’t know what you guys are trying to get away with, but I’m not buying it”. My opposition happened to blurt out that it did not matter anyways because if she granted the motion, the casino was simply going to remove the case to federal court.

The judge is no fool and she knew if she granted the motion, she could get rid of one case without breaking a sweat, so she did. The case was removed to federal court and was assigned to Judge Lawrence Zatkoff. The casino filed its motion for summary judgment and Judge Zatkoff, denied the motion, and in a published opinion, also ruled as a matter of law that the licensed security officers were state actors and better yet, under Michigan law, the token was lost or abandoned property that belonged to Stella and not the casino.

The case proceeded to trial and since the casino refused to produce any financial statements to show its expenses, Judge Zatkoff ruled we could admit into evidence the fact that the casino took in $1 Million a day in gross revenues.

Each day at trial, a number of federal court judges would stop by to watch Neil and some would call me out into the hallway and ask me how Neil was doing in this, his only civil jury trial in his almost 50 year career. On one occasion, Judge John Feikens told me “the whole courthouse is rooting for you guys!”

APHORISMS FOR AGING ATTORNEYS-7

 

“There have been only two geniuses in the world — Willie Mays and Willie Shakespeare.”-Tallulah Bankhead.  Though Ms. Bankhead died in 1968, I think this remains true today. True genius is hard to find, stable, legal or otherwise-even if you pay for LinkedIn Premium.

“Youth may outrun the old, but not outwit.” Geoffrey Chaucer

"The gretest clerkes ben not the wisest men."  Geoffrey Chaucer.  My studies have indicated that "clerkes" is Middle English for "judges".

"Full wise is he that can himselven knowe.-Geoffrey Chaucer.

"One eare it heard, at the other out it went."-Geoffrey Chaucer, after losing a discovery motion on Friday morning at Ye Olde County Building.

"The lyfe so short, the craft so long to lerne,
 Th’ assay so hard, so sharpe the conquering." -Geoffrey Chaucer. 

That Jeff Chaucer was a smart guy indeed.  And his quotes sound the more impressive as they are in Middle English, forsooth. 

 

LEGAL GENIU$$$$

 

Back when I was a plaintiff PI attorney, I ran a blog, now dearly departed.

One of that blog's categories was "Tasteless Lawyer Advertising"-and remember I was a plaintiff PI lawyer at the time.  

Billboards were a bigger thing back about 10 years ago.  They're still around, but there doesn't appear to be as many.  Of course, I am not driving down  I96 to Wayne County Circuit Court so much these days.  

Presently, TV ads predominate, and I blame several local PI lawyers for turning me off to "Big Bang Theory" reruns, forever.

On my old blog, I took particular issue with the billboards of the local firm "Legal Genius".  I couldn't find pictures of the billboards online back in 2014, so nincompoop that I was (and still am), I pulled over on 96 and took the low quality photos shown in this post.

The first, a picture of an older woman, holding a great wad of cash, thumbs up, with the thinly veiled message:  "I'm Rich, B*t$h!"  Please note that the thumbs up and exclamation point continue to be used to convey emphasis, credibility and authority at the highest levels, even up to the present moment.

The second below:

"Legal Genius Lawyers with HUGE balls."  Again, the word "huge" with one pronunciation or other, is still used to convey emphasis, credibility and authority at the highest levels, even up to the present moment.

These ads were so tasteless that even I was shocked.  Pandering dreck, unworthy of a profession whose standards in this area could be set higher.  

Well, fast forward about 6 years, and we come to find out that Legal Genius had more than huge balls.  It also had a lot of accident reports it obtained, and used, illegally.

On October 15, 2020 the owner of Legal Genius, attorney (for now) Matthew Schwartz, of Birmingham, pleaded guilty to conspiring to defraud the IRS and stealing "unapproved" Detroit Police Department crash reports in order to target crash victims.  He faces a maximum sentence of five years in prison on each count, and a $250,000 fine for the conspiracy offenses.  

The reports were used  to solicit crash victims for personal injury lawyers, chiropractors, health care professionals, and other businesses.  And, on the state level, such activities "arguably" violated state criminal statutes and provisions of the Michigan No-Fault Act.

The scheme involved was fairly complex, with lots of money going to a lot of people and shell companies.  In fact, some payments were made in cash, with money deposited in, and retrieved from,  a barbecue grill in the backyard of Schwartz' personal residence.  Apparently, Legal Genius has lawyers with huge grills as well as huge balls.