Leaning on the Line by Lawyers and Others

By Arthur Brantman

About the Book
This book brings you an inside view of criminal trials, civil litigation cases, administration hearings and parts of a general law practice. It illustrates by examples the common thread in all these seemingly different factual situations.
The theme is that unless there is integrity on the conduct of lawyers, judges, clients and others to recognize the line between right and wrong our legal system is flawed. Lawyers want to achieve the results their clients want to accomplish. Achieving these results in an adversary system puts getting to truth or justice in a secondary position.
To help focus on the problem the cases and factual situations set forth illustrate factual settings where pressures arise that causes either consciously or unconsciously the leaning on or crossing the line. It is the intent that encouraging the consideration of these problems and detecting where they occur will be entertaining and lead to recognizing the need to stay away from leaning on the line.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jun 24, 2013
• ISBN: 9781483655185

Arthur Brantman

About the Author Arthur Brantman is a retired attorney and real estate developer. He has been an entrepreneur and has owned and operated construction, sales and management companies. He also participated in the formation of a fiber optic telephone company. He has used his more than sixty years of experience to bring up for discussion some of the structural problems in our legal system to improve the system and to entertain us.

Book preview

Copyright © 2013 by Arthur Brantman.

Library of Congress Control Number:          2013910900

ISBN:          Hardcover          978-1-4836-5517-8

Softcover          978-1-4836-5516-1

Ebook          978-1-4836-5518-5

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted

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without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the

product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance

to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Rev. date: 06/12/2013

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CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

CHAPTER 18

CHAPTER 19

CHAPTER 20

CHAPTER 21

CHAPTER 22

WALDOS

INTRODUCTION

We act in what we perceive is in our individual best interest. When we feed the hungry, it is not entirely altruistic because, in addition to the good it does, it also makes us feel good. The problem is that when we are acting or not acting, that line of right or wrong pops up, and we are not always restrained from doing the wrong thing. We rationalize our acts. Rationalization is like a caustic acid that dissolves the line. These are mostly unimportant stories. When a choice arises, I have called them Waldos. Sometimes they are hidden from our view. At the end of these stories, I have listed Waldos. I am sure my own rationalizations have blinded me to some Waldos. Others I have left hidden. This is a work of fiction. It is drawn from the experiences of over fifty years of practicing law. When I started out, I was sure of the notion that right was right and wrong was wrong. I was sure that I would always know the difference and act accordingly. But then morals, ethics, and legality began to overlap with many of my clients’ goals, and it was hard to find the line between the right course of action and the wrong course of action. Legal standards were not always moral standards. The age-old problem of whether the ends justified the means came into play to stretch legal and moral lines. The risk-reward equation tempted wrong action if the reward was great enough.

These considerations come into play in all walks of life. I believe they occur more often in the life of a lawyer. I believe this to be true no matter what specialty field of law is involved.

The study of law is not the study of rules and regulations. It is more often the reading of case decisions, which revolved around a set of facts, causing a conflict that needed a resolution or decision and the reasoning that resulted in the decision. The cases are precedents that became what is referred to as the common law. The cases must be read before the classroom discussion. The classes are usually a Socratic inquisition by the professor of the students about what the cases actually meant. Woe to the students who have read the cases and memorized them but did not understand the theories involved. The professor’s inquisition is devastating. But once you had read a case and understood the theory and reasoning behind the decision, there was no need to memorize anything. You just knew what the legal rule and principle behind it was and went on to the next case.

The stories in this book are really just a series of cases or sets of facts that raise questions. I hope that thinking about some of the moral, ethical, and legal issues described will be entertaining and perhaps be helpful the next time you are leaning to the line between right and wrong. At the end, I have listed some places or Waldos where leaning on the line has occurred. See if you agree and what I have missed.

CHAPTER 1

Imagine yourself nineteen years old and a sergeant in charge of most of the paperwork for an air force military base. You were there by default. The war had ended, and you were one of the few on the base that could type or that the military thought could type. That’s where I was in 1946.

Being a typist was innocuous in itself; the trouble was that it was on that particular military base. Most everyone there was waiting to be discharged. Everyone on the base was wheeling and dealing. You do me a favor, and I’ll do you a favor should have been the motto for that base. If the men in the motor pool did not want to take their medical inoculations, they traded with the medical corps personnel to get their shot records falsified, indicating that they had had their shots. In exchange, a jeep was lent to the medical personnel. If the clothing supply personnel were faced with kitchen duty and wanted to avoid it, or if they wanted anything else, they could trade extra clothing to have their name put on the bottom of the list by the kitchen people; the kitchen people could trade passes to the dining or mess hall for what they wanted. The mess hall was open twenty-four hours a day to serve the personnel who were working twenty-four hours a day on various shifts and therefore was serving meals at all times. Rather than sticking to the schedule of meals that was provided to you, it was convenient to be able to eat whenever it suited you. The base movie theater had limited capacity, so those in charge could trade passes to the movies for what they wanted. Everyone wanted three-day passes off the base, and I was able to type them and forge the duty officer’s name and get what I wanted. It was almost out of control. All kinds of papers and passes and receipts had to be typed, and I was the center of all of it. I felt uneasy. How far was going too far? I began to think that maybe I ought to become a lawyer just to keep myself out of jail.

Then one day an order came through on the Teletype machine in our office indicating that if anyone had served at least one year in the service and had been admitted to a college, he could be immediately discharged. I was stationed outside of Chicago, and it was October. My main goal before that order came out was to get discharged and get into school. I had originally volunteered and enlisted in the air force, but now that the war was over, it seemed to me that being in the service was a waste of time. I immediately typed a three-day pass for myself and left for Chicago on Friday morning. All of the college semesters had already started with the exception of a branch of the state college that had started late and was only one week into the semester. I went to the admissions office to try to get admitted. I was told that I would have to get my high school transcripts and make a formal application to the college. They also told me that it was too late for the current semester.

My military experience and training took over. Anything was possible if you worked it out. I managed to get a few blank pieces of college stationery from someone I knew from high school who happened to be working in the college office. I took the blank stationery with me. I then went to my old high school to see the school principal. I was in uniform, and he remembered me and wanted to help me. I told him that I needed a copy of my high school transcripts in order to get admitted to the college. He agreed to have it for me Monday morning. I returned to the base. At the base, I typed and signed the college dean’s name on a letter on the college stationery, certifying that I was accepted for admission for the fall semester. I then typed my own discharge papers and brought it all to my commanding officer for signature. Major Harlan Jackson was thirty-two and a veteran bomber pilot who knew nothing about administration and cared less. That qualified him to be the commanding officer. Since I had been doing all of the paperwork in the office and he did not have to do it or think about it, we got along fine. He congratulated me on being admitted and signed the discharge. I left for Chicago again.

Monday afternoon I was in the dean’s office. I gave him my high school transcript that I had scored in the morning and told him I was discharged from the army on condition that he would admit me to the college. He agreed to give me a late admission. He also informed me that I would have to enroll in the courses where there was room for me. I agreed to that and was admitted. It was right about then that I began to really examine the thought that perhaps I should become a lawyer before I went too far and faced consequences I would not like. As a veteran, the university gave us what they called general achievement tests. I took these tests and was able to receive more than one year’s worth of college credits. Two semesters later, I applied for and was accepted for enrollment in the law school. At that time the law school had two programs. One was a two-year prelaw school program and a four-year law school. The other was a three-year prelaw program and a three-year law school. I was anxious to get started in law and elected to go to the four-year law school, with only the two semesters, I had actually completed, and the one year of credit I had received as a veteran.

Before I entered law school, I had not been challenged much by the prelaw courses, which fortunately could be in any subject area at that time. The conglomeration of subjects that I had taken to get admitted to the undergraduate college was considered fine for law school. I now realize that there are no courses that really prepare you for law school. You needed to know how to read and write, and after that, anything could possibly help you. I had no idea what the study of law would entail. I envisioned some sort of series of memory courses where you memorize the law. To me, the study of law turned out to be what it might be for a blind person to suddenly be able to see and a deaf person to suddenly be able to hear. The majesty of the common law developing from decisions based on old Hebraic, Greek, and Roman statutes captured me. The whole fabric of the different elements of law interacting with one another completely fascinated me. The laws of contracts, torts, and criminal law were basic. Then procedural law had to be developed and integrated into a workable system. Under procedure, the laws of evidence came into being. Since we were operating under a written constitution, the provisions of the constitution had to be taken into account. The fact that the law was constantly evolving and changing made new challenges. You not only had to understand what the law was and how it got that way but also had to be alert and ready to challenge that law if it did not or should not apply to your client under a particular set of circumstances and fact. The challenge of law was not only to know what it was and how it got that way but also to know what it should be when you came along in its evolution. I was completely immersed in studying and for the first time not for grades but to understand. The years flew by. The law faculty was experienced and could take you as far as you wanted to go. The shallow motivation of wanting to keep myself out of trouble that had brought me to the study of law quickly faded into the background. The pleasure and mental challenges of those years of study will never be repeated for me. The practice of law later turned out to be something completely different. As I look back, I can think of no occupation other than practicing law, except possibly teaching law, that I would rather have pursued, but for me the study of law was infinitely better than the practice. The practice, ironically, brought me back to wheeling and dealing.

CHAPTER 2

Years later, in the early 1970s, I was in my law office trying to clear off my desk. It was a dull day. I was restless and did not like doing what I considered unproductive busywork. The desk was in disarray. I had allowed papers to accumulate into piles. There is a time management theory that says you should handle each piece of paper that comes to you just once and then dispose of it. This will save time and keep you from having to handle the same paper or letter or bill twice; the desk will be clean, and you will be more efficient.

It was easier said than done. For example, I could not or did not want to pay each bill immediately at the time I received it. Sometimes it was because I didn’t have the money; other times it was because I wanted my money to draw interest longer. The longer I delayed paying the bill, the more interest I earned. The amount of interest was so small that I still don’t understand why I did it. But in any case, bills were put in one corner of the desk until they were ripe enough to pay. In order to dispose of some letters, I had to reply and include documents that had not yet been prepared, or I had to secure some information that was not available at the time. I put those letters in a differed part of the desk to wait until I had the appropriate documents or information. Sure, I could have created an account payable file for the bills and then scheduled them for payment in my appointment and schedule book. I could file letters in an appropriate file to be retrieved at an appropriate time. But if I did this, I would have had to make a note in the calendar to remind me or maintain a tickler file for the bills. The neat way just seemed to be too much work and a waste of time. It seemed easier to keep the papers on the top of the desk where they would serve as an automatic reminder. The trouble was that the bigger the desktop was, the more papers seemed to grow there. If my desk is an example of the rest of the world, the world is going to drown in paper. Eventually I had to clear off the desk. It was a boring job, and I was doing it.

My secretary buzzed the intercom and informed me that a Mr. Leo Zachary was in the waiting room asking to see me. Leo had called for an appointment. Leo was my stepfather’s friend and also his partner in a rooming house. My mother was divorced and married to Sam Portman. I liked Sam Portman. He was a kind and hardworking man. He was an immigrant in this country and had no chance at any real education. He admired education and treated lawyers as some sort of aristocracy. He made you want to live up to his expectations. If Sam had sent Leo to see me, I wanted to help Leo for Sam’s sake. Also, if he needed help and I was successful in providing it, this would please my mother and she would take pride in my achievements. I guess we all still want to please our mothers long after we are children. I asked my secretary to send Leo in.

If opposites attract, it had happened to Leo and Sam. They had come over from Europe on the same boat in steerage from a small town in Hungary and during that long journey had become friends. They were the same age and spoke the same language, but there is where their similarity ended. Leo then was about sixty-five years old. He was thin, wiry, and very active. He had thinning gray hair, which he never combed. His face always looked grizzled and in need of a shave. Where Sam was ingenuous, Leo was a genuine dray kup, a man who was always furtively scheming and plotting. I don’t think he could act in a straightforward manner if his life depended on it. He would have to devise a scheme that was deceptive. He sacrificed the peace of mind of an honest man for the thrill of getting some undeserved gain or advantage. When Leo walked into my office, he very carefully shut the door behind him. I grew a little uneasy. The way he shut the door made it apparent to me that he had something very confidential to tell me. I was familiar with that as a lawyer, but the little that I knew about Leo told me that he reposed his confidences in very few people, including lawyers.

How are you, Leo? I haven’t seen you since Sam’s birthday last month.

"I have some real tsouris."

Tsouris is a Yiddish word, which roughly translated means problems. But with the correct inflection of the voice, it means serious problems. Leo had correctly inflected his voice, almost into a whine; he was truly under stress.

Well, tell me about it, and I’ll see if I can help you. Most of the time things seem worse than they really are.

I had said the comforting words. I could see that Leo needed to be calmed down. I also noticed that his face appeared to be bruised, and he was shaky. The fact that Leo had passed up all small talk and gone right to his problem led me to believe that in actuality helping him might not be that easy. Things might not just seem to be bad; they might be bad. I had seen people in trouble many times but nevertheless personally experienced some of each client’s anxieties. Law is not a science. There is no legal penicillin you can administer to cure a problem. Much of what you had to do involved deciding what to do among various alternatives. The trouble was you were never sure you had considered all the alternatives and were choosing the right one. I always felt responsible for clients, and my conscience caused self-doubt in the decisions I made, and that caused personal anxiety.

You know that I own this rooming house with Sam.

I know.

I had heard that the rooming house they owned was a real mess, but I was very glad to hear him mention the rooming house. Maybe all he had were building code violation problems. That would not be too hard to handle. Leo had taken a six-flat building in a poor changing neighborhood in Chicago and had converted it into about eighteen separate rentable living spaces. Converted into separate spaces is not really the right phrase. He had merely declared that now six apartments were eighteen living spaces, rather than actually physically changing the property. He now collected eighteen rents instead of six. Everyone there shared toilets and kitchens, and I am not sure whether any of them knew where one living space ended and another one started. Leo probably had a working arrangement with the building inspectors and local police in which he paid them to look the other way. The building and zoning codes were being completely ignored. Inside these premises, there were few lockable doors. Tenants could not assure themselves of any privacy. Since all the furniture and appliances were also furnished by Leo, the separate ownership of furniture by any one tenant could not be used by that tenant as a means of establishing or delineating the exclusive use of any space. The neighborhood was crowded with transients in need of instant furnished accommodations, and the rooming house was always fully rented. The whole place as it was described to me reminded me of the pictures of the early immigrant sections of New York at the turn of the twentieth century, but even worse.

There was, however, a difference. The people in this neighborhood were displaced persons, but not from another country. They were multigeneration native-born Americans. They were from the southern part of the country and had come north to seek their fortunes or to escape their hometown misfortunes. Leo had arrived in Chicago twenty years earlier than they had, and his familiarity with the turf put him ahead of them and made it possible for him to be able to exploit them. They silently resented foreigners like Leo who were somehow better off than they were. Leo took advantage of all of them when he could. He made no exceptions, even with Sam. He had taken Sam in as an investor. Sam had never received any return on his investment, since according to Leo, the rooming house always lost money. Sam did not live on the premises and never had. He would never ask for a formal accounting, and Leo never gave one. His only statements to Sam were that we are paying off the mortgage, and when the mortgage is paid off, we will have money coming out of the building. Leo, however, lived there with his family. With the tenants poor, crowded, and resentful, it was an explosive situation. There was too much proximity between the tenants and their natural enemy, the landlord. They were being subjected to unfamiliar urban pressure with which they had not yet learned to cope. Leo gave form to their heretofore formless anger. Leo continued.

Well, I came home from work yesterday and went to my bedroom. When I got into my room, Sarah was standing by the closet mirror combing her hair. She always came in.

Who is Sarah?

Sarah is a fifteen-year-old girl who lives with her family, who rents by me in the building.

Go on.

When I walked in, she turned around. She was wearing a pink kimono, and when she turned around, it was open in the front. There was no belt or nothing to hold it closed. She was standing there in her brassiere and panties. I got nervous and turned around and closed the bedroom door. I told her she should not go around like that since there were a lot of boys and men in the building. Then right in front of me, she took off her brassiere and panties, and she was standing there naked and with the kimono open, and her two tits were looking at me. She is just a young girl, but she has big tits. I told her to get dressed. Then she said, ‘Wouldn’t you like to eat some nice pussy, Pop?’ Before I could do anything, her father and Sam Johnson jumped out of the bedroom closet. They knocked me down and started to punch and kick me. I started to holler for help, and people came into the room. My nose was bleeding, and I was dizzy. Then Sam Johnson tells everyone they had caught me with Sarah and they should call the police.

Go on.

"Pretty soon the police came. They didn’t talk to me. They talked to Sam Johnson. They asked me if I needed a doctor. I said no. Then one of the cops who I know takes me into a different room. I pay his police sergeant every week, and this cop knows it. He says to me, ‘Leo, that girl is only fifteen years old. I know she’s a little slut, but when she is fifteen, you can’t fool with her.’ I tried but I can’t get her father to drop the charges that easy. He wants five thousand dollars. That will cover us too.

I told the cop that I didn’t do anything and I am not going to pay nothing. He says forget what he said and we had better go to the station.

Did he tell you that you were under arrest?

No.

Then what happened?

We went to the station in the squad car. When we got there, he told me to wait in a room. I waited about two hours. Then another cop came in and told me I had to put $1,000 for bail. He said I was under arrest. He said that the bond was really $10,000 but I could put up 10 percent in cash. He said I was lucky they had found a judge to set the bail or else I would have to wait overnight in jail.

Did they ask you to make a statement or tell them what happened?

No, they just said I should get the bail money and go see a lawyer. They let me use the telephone. My daughter was home when I called there, and then my son-in-law came with the money. He got mad at the cops when he saw how beat-up I was. I told him that the cops were my friends and they were not the ones who had beat me up, and my son-in-law took me home.

Let’s see your bail bond receipt. He then showed it to me. They’ve charged you with contributing to the delinquency of a minor and with taking indecent liberties with a minor. The court date is three weeks from now. I don’t like that. They usually will bring you up for a preliminary hearing quicker. It sounds like the state’s attorney is going to bypass the preliminary hearing and go directly to the grand jury and seek an indictment. These types of acts can be treated as either a misdemeanor or a felony. The police must have talked to the state’s attorney’s office while you were waiting in the police station. They were afraid to talk with you since they did not want to hurt the case. There has been a lot of publicity about child molestation, and I think that you are going to get caught in the middle. They haven’t had a high-profile conviction lately, and they may try to make you an example. Don’t be surprised if there is a lot of publicity about how they caught a child molester.

How could this happen to me? I didn’t do anything. I’m innocent.

"Leo, listen carefully. I don’t mean to give you a lecture, but you must understand. It really doesn’t matter whether you are innocent or not. You’re in trouble the same way a person is in trouble when he suddenly gets hit by a car or contracts a disease. You are now off society’s straight and narrow path. It’s now the State of Illinois versus Leo Zachary. Fairness only means a