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In This Issue

Victoria Cook

Drew Hansen

Bill Merrill

David Orozco

Brooke Taylor

Five -- count 'em, five -- new partners. A handsome group, but can they keep their humility?

Did You Know?

Monarchs, as founts of honor, make nobles. We at Susman Godfrey invite associates to become partners. In 2006, the partner-ship rolled out the purple welcome mat to five highly deserving young lawyers.

Victoria Cook (Houston), Drew Hansen (Seattle), Bill Merrill (Houston), David Orozco (Los Angeles), and Brooke Taylor (Seattle) joined the firm's partnership effective January 1, 2007.

We expect great things from all of them.

Each distinguished himself or herself in pre-kindergarten (especially Cook), high school (except Orozco), college (even Hansen), and law school (particularly Merrill and Taylor); and every one of them has done terrific work at Susman Godfrey.

We proudly announce their admission to the partnership.

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Woody Allen as Russian patriot Boris Grushenko in Love and Death (1975). "Every man has to go sometime . . . but I'm different. I have to go at 6 a.m. It was 5 a.m., but I have a good lawyer."

Trouble for Martindale-Hubbell?

The venerable Martindale Hubbell Law Directory uses "peer review" to rate lawyers. The first letter of the two-letter rating -- an "A", "B", or "C" -- reflects the lawyer's "legal ability". The second letter -- a "V" for "very high" -- "denotes adherence to professional standards of conduct and ethics, reliability, diligence and other criteria relevant to the discharge of professional responsibilities." If a lawyer doesn't receive a "V", Martindale Hubbell won't publish any rating for him or her.

A growing number of other for-profit outfits also rank lawyers and law firms -- The Best Lawyers in America, Super Lawyers, Vault, Lawdragon, and Chambers and Partners, to name a few. But none gives much insight into how well, or boorishly, a particular lawyer behaves as an adversary.

Perhaps we could capture that sort of information from the reports that Your Editor proposes in Doveryai, No ProveryaiI above. A not-for-profit entity -- such as a bar association -- could average each lawyer's ratings and publish the averages for all.

This kernel of an idea needs tweaking. We can't have abuse or bad data. Volunteers?

Comment here.

Hot Lunch

A trial lawyer once told Your Editor a story about selling encyclopedias door-to-door. I don't remember exactly which book-of-all-knowledge. Encyclopaedia Britannica? Definitely not. Columbia Encyclopedia. Doubt it. World Book? Perhaps. The one you could buy volume by volume at the grocery store? Hmm.

What the hey -- Blawgletter

Doverayai, No Proveryai.

Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev visit at the Reagan ranch near Santa Barbara, California, in 1992. Earlier in the day, Reagan presented the Reagan Freedom Medal to the former General Secretary, Communist Party of the Soviet Union, as a reward for good behavior, including glasnost and perestroika.

The Gipper did more than anyone else to bring down the Soviet Union -- that evil empire, as he famously did not call it.

President Reagan spoke with a warmth and clarity that earned him another nickname, the great communicator. But he disclaimed the sobriquet, insisting that the greatness of the ideas themselves accounted for his appearance of skill. We should all aspire to such modesty.

Mikhail Gorbachev liked Dutch Reagan, who liked him back. Once, during a press meeting, Reagan talked about the duo's progress in negotiating limits on nuclear missles. He directed towards Gorbachev an old Russian proverb, from which this item takes its title -- "doveryai, no proveryai" -- and translated it as meaning "trust, but verify." The General Secretary replied, "you repeat that at every meeting. " He chuckled; Dutch smiled.

The trust-but-verify formula occurred to Your Editor the other day as he contemplated the trust that, he has heard, once defined our profession. Those collegial feelings persist to this day in some legal communities, usually small ones in which lawyers and judges know each other. But few would suggest that mutual esteem has grown commoner as the law has lurched towards the customs of commerce.

You ask, what to do? Says I, what would the Gipper do? Doveryai, no proveryai.

Seriously. Let me float an idea past you. I've already discussed it with my secretary, and she says that it sounds no nuttier than most of Your Editor's notions. So here we go.

Our age of electronic wonders allows instant communication. Lawyers on opposite sides of a case fuss at each other all the time by email, for example. Can we use that on-all-the-time capability to simulate the great communicator's trust-but-verify relationship with the Soviet General Secretary?

But of course. At the outset of a litigation matter, the principal lawyers can agree to report promptly to each other instances of questionable behavior, whether by them, their helpers, or their clients. A private, off-the-record web page could keep the tally of all such reports in the case. (Click here for an example.) The worst bad behavior would warrant a one on the one to 10 scale. A mild infraction could justify a nine. And a middling discourtesy ought to earn something around a five.

The confidential, case-specific web page would keep a historical record, but more importantly it would timely inform the senior lawyers about the other side's perceptions of how they and their trial team have behaved. And it would facilitate mid-course corrections that may prevent trust-destroying misunderstandings. (See also Trouble for Martindale-Hubbell? at below left.)

Your Editor doesn't imagine that such a system would restore the accountability that still prevails in small legal communities. People can abuse any system. But this one could postpone, or even avoid, that moment when your gut tells you not to trust your adversary any more. Why not give it a shot? Za vas!

Barry Barnett, Editor

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Mass Torts Shmorts -- Eat My Shorts.

Bart Simpson receiving the spark of life. The image parodies Michelangelo's Creation of Adam on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in Florence, Italy.

Your Editor doesn't know from Yiddish. He does realize that he just used a Yiddish idiom. And Yiddish supplied the "shm" prefix to disparage "torts" in the title of this item.

What does Your Editor have against torts? You have to ask?

Your Editor actually adores torts. Fraud, trespass, tortious interference, prima facie tort, statutory tort, torts with shrimp, tort gumbo -- you name it. But he cares bubkes for mass torts. At least most of them.

My kvetching results from dreck I received in the guise of an email . The spam spiels its purpose in the subject line: "Drug Coated Stents -- A New Mass Tort Opportunity". Oy! But wait. It also says that "a giant pool of potential litigants" exists and goes on to offer a "turnkey solution for mass tort advertising". Services include ad placement and provision of "24 x 7 call center intake specialists". You can even get help with financing your campaign and in "referring clients" to a "vast network of law firms if you have too many cases to handle." Oy vey! Nerrishkeit!

Macher author John Grisham potches mass tort lawyers in The King of Torts (2003). Grisham ridicules them for their chutzpah in revving up mass tort litigation for gelt -- lots and lots of gelt. But Grisham's contempt for accuracy makes him a nebbish -- possibly even a schmendrik -- of legal writing. He equates mass tort litigation with class actions, an error so meshuga that it turns the entire book into little more than schlock. What a schmuck.

Still, Grisham captures the venality that characterizes some players of the mass tort game. A real mitzvah by the author.

Which brings us to Bart Simpson. The zaftig boychik of Homer and Marge, Bart says "eat my shorts" in defiance of conventionality. Your Editor boldly says ongapatchka about mass torts. At least most of them. L'chaim!

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The Michael J. Experience.

A John Deere cotton-picker. Michael J., like his daddy, loved farming -- until a creditor tried to crush him.

Your Editor sprang from the dirt clods of the Blackland Prairie, which runs from just above San Antonio north by northeast almost to the Red River. His Grandaddy sharecropped for a while there. And his Daddy worked derrick at the time of his birth near the Prairie's heart.

Which helps explain how he came to represent Michael J., a Blackland Prairie cotton-and-milo farmer, pro bono, in a collection dispute. See below the text of a letter that helped resolve the case.

Dear Counsel:

I am responding to your recent emails about settlement. My short answer is it doesn't look good. I'll tell you why.

This case started as a suit to collect on account for seed and chemicals Michael J. used on the land he farms in Navarro County. Like me, Michael was born in Navarro County. He's lived there his whole life, and like his father he feeds and provides for his family by farming. Michael isn't perfect, but he is a solid and honest man who takes care of his family and contributes to his community.

Unlike every other of his creditors, your client chose to sue Michael. Also unlike his other creditors, your client refused to accept that a man who had just made a poor crop couldn't pay what your client had billed him for. Your client has also so far denied any responsibility for the part it played in hurting the crop that Michael depended on for the money to pay your client with. And your client seems insensible of the financial and human disaster its lawsuit threatened to Michael and his wife and children.

I suppose a big corporation like your client can be forgiven for not noticing the hurt it was causing a man like Michael. You have to wonder though why it would have its representatives be hateful, callous, and disrespectful towards him during efforts to reach a settlement about a year ago. You also have to wonder why your client would insist on a settlement that Michael could not under any realistic circumstances afford.

That's where I came into this story. Your client was on the verge of putting Michael out of business and his family in the poor house. Your client through you asked me what Michael could pay. I told you it would be a struggle, but I thought he might be able to scrape together $X. You said you'd check with your client and get back with me. Your eventual response was to say your client wanted to try to mandamus the trial judge. We now know the result of that in the court of appeals.

Now you want to know if Michael will still pay $Y. As I said immediately in response to your first email, the amount I mentioned early this year was $X. That hasn't changed. And given your client's behavior there's no reason a sane person would even try to get the $Y suggested months ago.

So I'm not optimistic about settlement. The only thing that could make me optimistic about it would be an offer from your client that's close to the $X I think Michael could probably put together.

Maybe the thing to do is for your client to see whether the Supreme Court likes its mandamus petition any better than the court of appeals did. Then we can talk either about how many pennies on the dollar your client's likely to net in the bankruptcy proceedings or about how much money your client is going to pay Michael for the damage it has inflicted on him.

Very truly yours,

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Closing Argument.

Copyright © 2001 Shannon Burns. Used with permission.

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