Litigation
Jun. 21, 2002
Year So Far Yields a Healthy Crop of Corrupt Persuaders
Column by Garry Abrams - It's only June, but 2002 already is a vintage year for scandal-drenched lawyers, who have been driving the reputation of the legal profession to all-time lows for public scorn and derision.
It's only June, but 2002 already is a vintage year for scandal-drenched lawyers, who have been driving the reputation of the legal profession to all-time lows for public scorn and derision.
The new legal depths are illustrated by a cartoon in the June 10 issue of The New Yorker magazine. It shows a couple looking through a window at a lawn bird feeder in which the body of a briefcase-carrying man has been trapped. The man looking through the window says, "Damn thing's supposed to be attorney-proof."
You know things are bad when a profession is widely believed to contain members who would gleefully steal from innocent little birdies. The cartoon seems to presume that all available widows and orphans have been plucked clean by unscrupulous legal eagles.
And, indeed, both the Enron-Arthur Andersen and Tyco scandals feature lawyers who, no doubt, would loot not only bird feeders but bird's nests.
When a jury convicted accounting firm Arthur Andersen of obstruction of justice on Saturday, it based its verdict on Arthur Andersen in-house attorney Nancy Temple's effort to stymie a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation into Enron that also snared Arthur Andersen. According to press reports, jurors identified Temple as the "corrupt persuader" who sought to cover up Arthur Andersen's misleading auditing of Enron.
Perhaps Temple should have that phrase embossed on her business cards. It has a certain ring to it.
Remember, too, that other lawyers wrote memos that, to put it charitably, appeared to condone Enron's schemes for jacking up the price of electricity during California's energy crisis.
Meanwhile, Tyco International has sued its former general counsel, Mark Belnick, alleging that Belnick received almost $35 million in what news accounts delicately describe as "unauthorized compensation." The irregular perks included a $14 million, no-interest loan.
Tyco, predictably, is in the midst of a book-cooking, inflated-stock scandal that mirrors the Enron-Arthur Andersen debacle.
The Tyco civil suit also accuses Belnick of conniving with ousted Tyco chief executive Dennis Kozlowski to misuse company funds. I assume this means the two committed a theft so big it defies the use of such words as "stole" and "robbed."
I find it amusing that New York prosecutors recently had Kozlowski indicted for sales-tax evasion in connection with Kozlowski's purchases of expensive paintings. Now that's art for art's sake.
And that's not the end of the attorneys-as-pond-scum trend.
In California, the fun couple whose savage dogs killed Diane Whipple in San Francisco are both lawyers and creepy weirdos who lavished their love on vicious canines and imprisoned felons. Robert Noel and Marjorie Knoller are so loathed in the Bay Area that their trial was held in Los Angeles earlier this year. A jury convicted both of manslaughter and also found Knoller guilty of murder because she was with the dogs when they killed Whipple.
However, on Monday, San Francisco Superior Court Judge James Warren tossed out Knoller's murder conviction, shocking many and prompting the San Francisco Chronicle to question Warren's decision in an editorial Wednesday.
During a sentencing hearing Monday on the manslaughter charges, Sharon Smith, Whipple's domestic partner, said that Noel and Knoller "were too busy being lawyers to be human." Smith also said that Noel and Knoller had viewed their arrest and trial as "one big legal game."
The Golden State can also boast Beverly Hills attorney Rex K. DeGeorge, sentenced Monday in Los Angeles federal court to 90 months in prison for trying to sink his yacht in the Mediterranean so that he could collect $3.6 million in insurance. (DeGeorge should get credit for proving that sharks are closely related to rats.)
Scoffers might say that these cases are not linked and that felonious misbehavior by attorneys actually proves that lawyers are human, too.
But it seems more likely to me that many among the public will link the above examples - and others - and add them to the abundant national folklore that portrays attorneys as scoundrels.
As for me, I'm putting razor wire around the bird feeder.
Garry Abrams
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