Patriots Versus Bureaucrats

by Thomas Temple

  Sunday, October 27, 2013

  Mountain and Meadow Ranch

  Arriving home at 11:45 pm, Peter Wallis was totally drained. The weekend had been very intense and exhausting, though it was also very productive. Pete was able to accomplish what he had planned during the visit to the Mole Works. Harry Snyder had arrived early Sunday evening, carrying only a large briefcase. To anyone observing it was not apparent that the briefcase was empty upon his arrival and considerably heavier when he departed at 8:20 pm. His visit lasted less than one hour and was conducted on level eight inside the former missile silo that served as the main facility of the Mole Works. The meeting was attended only by Harry and Pete Wallis for the stated purpose of evaluating the security contract between Wallis Technologies and Snyder Security Services. At least that’s what all the documentation would reflect should anyone be asked.

  Wednesday, October 30, 2013

  Chicago

  Jake Wasserman, as planned, ducked another call from the chief legal counsel for OSHA. The OSHA lawyer had called three times since Monday morning and was politely told by Jake’s secretary that Mr. Wasserman was in conference and unavailable.

  Knowing the working hours of government bureaucrats, Jake had returned the first call at 7:30 am on Tuesday morning. That would have made it 8:30 in Washington, probably at least an hour before the self-important gasbag would honor his staff with his presence. Being on the taxpayer’s dime made these work habits nothing out of the ordinary. Wasserman decided to let the OSHA man stew a bit longer. The calls made last week by Nelson Pike were causing OSHA bigger and more immediate problems than the legal filings. Since the Occupational Safety and Health Administration was an agency of the Department of Labor, it was the Secretary of Labor who was feeling the most heat. Congressmen and Senators were not shy about calling the person at the top of the food chain. The Secretary of the Department of Agriculture was also getting his share of less than friendly calls asking why OSHA was meddling with his department and why he was not sticking up for the small farmers. The biggest problem that OSHA had was that their memo of 2011 that decreed small farms had to comply with the same grain storage requirements of bigger operations was a blatant violation of Congressional intent as reflected in the 1976 Occupational Safety and Health Act. Virtually every farm, large or small, had some type of grain storage on the premises. Many small farmers protested this treatment and were ignored, harassed, and intimidated with threats of large administrative fines. OSHA knew very well that most farmers did not have the resources to fight them in court. The ponderous weight of the United States Government’s resources was being used to force compliance, notwithstanding the legality or fairness of the issue.

  Nelson Pike was in his office around 10:00 am and laughing with the party at the other end of the line. The senior partner of Pike and Wasserman was being apprised by a lobbyist for agricultural interests of the status of the hornets’ nest that had been stirred up with Nelson’s phone calls of last week.

  “Nelson, I wished that you had been here in person to hear the chief legal counsel for the Agriculture Department pissing in the ear of the chief legal counsel for the Labor Department. Everybody at Agriculture is up in arms over OSHA’s bullshit and they are furious for taking the heat for something they had no part of. Rumor has it that they nearly came to blows during a meeting over how to limit the publicity damage,” chortled the lobbyist.

  “Sounds like all the bigwigs have their panties in a twist, and they fucking well deserve it,” replied Pike. “Just wait until Jake starts squeezing their balls in the courts, then the bastards will look for any path out of the shithole they made for themselves. Soon they’ll all be asking us to come and reason together. These guys never reason until you keep kicking them in the nuts.”

  Nelson bade goodbye to the lobbyist and thought to himself, “Damn, this sure is starting to be fun.”

  Thursday, November 7, 2013

  Washington, DC

  The two men had been ushered into a secluded leather booth at Fyodor’s, a tony and very expensive eatery in Georgetown.” Your usual Mr. Coyne?” asked the waiter after the two men had been seated. “That will be fine, Herbert,” returned the man in the five thousand dollar Versace suit. The other man ordered a Beefeater martini, extra dry. Mr. Coyne was Allison Coyne of the eight hundred lawyer law firm of Derbach, Bozeman, Stein, and Coyne. The other man was Jonas Penders, the special executive assistant to the Secretary, Department of Labor. Jonas Penders had asked for the meeting to get Allison Coyne’s perspective on the recent controversy involving the farmers and OSHA.

  “This damn thing just will not get out of the news Allison, any thoughts on putting this behind us? The Secretary is under tremendous pressure and he’s got enough on his plate already” whined Penders.

  Staring thoughtfully into his vintage single malt Scotch, served neat, Coyne asked “do you have any idea how much it is costing somebody to retain Pike and Wasserman on this matter?”

  “Probably millions,’ was the quick reply.

  “That’s my point Jonas, those aggrieved sodbusters out in Bumfuck, Iowa, have somebody extremely wealthy bankrolling their cause, and extremely wealthy means extremely dangerous as far as public opinion goes. The Secretary is in a good position to just make this whole thing go away. All he has to do is sacrifice a couple of worker bees at a low level and announce that the 2011 memo was before his tenure and that after due consideration has decided that in the best interest of country etc., that he is rescinding the policy.

  A couple of nobodies take the blame and he comes off looking like a concerned and compassionate man of the people. Just concede on a small battle and move on to bigger things.”

  Penders knew that Coyne was on the money. His task was to appeal to the political self-preservation instincts of the Secretary while not offending his ego.

  “What if we go the other direction and just crush these bugs,” Penders contemplated out loud.

  “First, it is no guarantee that you will prevail in court given the quality of the representation that the sodbusters have retained, and secondly and most importantly, even if you prevail in court you will lose big time in the court of public opinion and you can be assured that Nelson Pike will see that you do.” came the seasoned and politically astute rejoinder from Allison Coyne.

  “Is this Pike that formidable of an adversary, Allison?”

  “You have no idea Jonah, Pike hasn’t even begun to go on offense yet, believe me, I know from some very unpleasant experiences.”

  Penders had learned what he needed to know and would pass on the advice this afternoon when he met privately with the Secretary. For the next two hours spent at Fyodor's the two men availed themselves of some of the finest culinary selections offered to the town’s rich and powerful. Coyne would bill the Department of Labor, or more correctly, the taxpayers, his usual five thousand dollars an hour fee plus the six hundred dollar lunch tab.

  Tuesday, November 19, 2013

  Chicago

  Jake Wasserman finished reviewing the documents prepared by his legal team, made several corrections, and looked at the calendar on his desk. He circled November 22, which was this coming Friday and smiled. The civil code in the State of Iowa mandated that requests for production, known as discovery, and interrogatories be answered within thirty days. Therefore, the Government would have to respond by December 23, only two days before Christmas. Between then and now was also Thanksgiving on November 28.

  The polite thing to do was to delay serving his adversaries until after the holiday season but Jake had no intention of cutting any slack to the opposition. He would present them on late Friday afternoon with a one hundred and thirty-eight page request for production of documents and sixty-three pages of interrogatories. The under manned legal staff at OSHA would be swamped and overwhelmed by their task and its’ thirty day deadline. No doubt Jake would receive a call from them asking for an extension, which, of course, he would refuse.

  Wasse
rman had several opportunities to size up the OSHA lawyers over the last several weeks and he was less than impressed. For one thing, they still couldn’t quite grasp the fact that the lawsuits were filed in the state court system of Iowa, not the Federal court system. Their responses to motions were pretty much predictable boilerplate asserting general denial, lack of standing, no private cause of action, waiver/ratification/estoppels, and other defenses worthy of a third year law student. Jake fully expected that OSHA would be bringing in some heavy guns from the Department of Justice or some outside legal counsel. Jake and Hal Conners had been very diligent in assigning only their attorneys who were members of the Iowa bar to file motions at the Plymouth County courthouse. These attorneys were also instructed to be cheerful, prompt, and above all else, respectful to the clerk of courts and Judge George Kimball, in whose court the matters had been assigned. The individuals named in the lawsuits, Albert Jones and William Masten, had not retained their own attorneys and were relying on the OSHA legal team to represent them, apparently unaware that if it was determined that they were not acting within the scope of their employment they could be held accountable as individuals. Their own counsel would have advised them of this fact and also the issue that OSHA’s interests and their own might not be compatible. Perhaps if they had overheard the conversation at Fyodor’s on November 7 they would not have been so naive as to think that their superiors would stand beside them in all cases.

  Wednesday, January 15, 2014

  Chicago

  Jake Wasserman reviewed the settlement documents for Betty Ross and her sons versus OSHA, Jones, and Masten and felt very satisfied with the events of the last several months. The Government had decided to back off its harassment of small farmers and rescind the OSHA memo of 2011. Tomorrow he would travel to Iowa and meet with Betty, Peter, and William Ross to obtain their signatures on the settlement papers. Jake could easily have assigned this task to one of his associates, but he wanted to be there to personally congratulate the Ross’s. Jake had made four trips to Iowa and the small town folks had begun to grow on him. These were good and decent people and had made him feel at home on his visits. He looked forward to seeing the look of victory on the faces of the Ross family and some of the other townspeople.

  Jake reflected upon the events of the last several months and was somewhat saddened to reach the end of the litigation. The document requests and interrogatories had driven OSHA up the wall. As he had planned, Jake kept stalling settlement talks until he had received most of the requested documents and interrogatory responses. OSHA no doubt spent thousands of hours complying with the blizzard of motions and requests for dispositions that Pike and Wasserman had presented to them. You can cause a lot of mischief when you’re given a three million dollar retainer. Finally, pressure from the Department of Labor had forced OSHA to ask for terms. Wasserman smiled as he recalled the first meeting with the opposition lawyers and their arrogant false bravado. That meeting lasted less than ten minutes as Jake walked out, announcing that he was too busy to play games and that when the Government was serious they should call him. This occurred in Chicago at the Federal Building on December 5, 2013. The opposing attorneys called Jake a week later and said that they were ready to start serious discussions. These several discussions took place at the law offices of Pike and Wasserman LLC and were concluded on January 9, 2014. The terms were:

  The Ross’s would withdraw the two lawsuits in Plymouth County, Iowa, in exchange for a sum of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.

  All pending administrative actions by OSHA involving the Ross family would be terminated.

  All pending administrative actions against any citizen of Iowa involving OSHA’s 2011 memo would be terminated. This was at the insistence of Betty Ross.

  OSHA would withdraw the 2011 memo and any and all actions pertaining to it no later than February 28, 2014.

  Jake buzzed his secretary and told her to make arrangement for his trip to Iowa tomorrow. He would be travelling alone and would return in the evening.

  Thursday, January 16, 2014

  Sioux City, Iowa

  Exiting the corporate jet at 8:36 am, Jake Wasserman went straight to his rental car and was on his way to LeMars by 8:55. He was grateful for the heavy coat, gloves, scarf, and his usual fedora as he braced against the cold Iowa winter day. Chicago was very cold at this time of year also, but out here in the plains it was really, really, cold. Jake couldn’t help but wonder how the natives dealt with it. As he drove through LeMars on his way to the Ross farm, he passed by Tiny’s Barbeque and smiled at the memory of his first visit there November. Jake had accompanied two of his associates who were filing some motions at the Plymouth County courthouse and Jake had tagged along to visit with the Ross’s. After meeting briefly with Betty, Peter, and William, Jake took his leave and drove to Tiny’s, where he had arranged to meet his associates for lunch. Jake arrived first and took a seat at a table for four near the back of the restaurant. He then became aware of a shadow that was blocking the light. Turning around, Jake looked up at what appeared to be an enormous man, being unsure if it was a man or if a grizzly had escaped from the zoo. The man was at least six foot nine inches tall, over 300 pounds in weight, a neck that reminded one of a fifty gallon oil drum, forearms the size of tree trunks, hands as big as hams, and fingers that could have been used as baseball bats. Attached to this was a face that could launch a thousand threats. When the man asked: “Are you that big time Chicago lawyer?” Jake could only barely respond with a weak, “Yes, I am Jacob Wasserman from Chicago.”

  The man broke into a huge grin and held out his hand, “I’m Tiny Johannson and this is my place. John Ross was a good friend of mine and it is an honor to make your acquaintance sir.” Jake was taken aback by the warmth of the man’s smile and the surprisingly gentle handshake. The fear to relief emotional trip that Jake had just taken was not unlike the swimmer in the ocean whose is frozen by the sight of a big fin in close proximity and then realizes the fin is attached just aft of the blowhole on a dolphin. Tiny continued, “Mr. Wasserman, the folks around here greatly appreciate what you’re doing for the Ross’s and you are always welcome here.” Just then Jake’s two associates entered and Jake introduced them to the walking mountain that he had just met. When it was discovered that people from Pike and Wasserman would be making several trips to Plymouth County, Tiny issued a decree: “Mr. Wasserman, you and your people’s money is no good here. You eat free any time here. Also, if you run into any problems with anybody in the county, you just tell them that you’re a friend of mine. Oh, and by the way, my twin brother Ed, is the county sheriff.” Jake started to protest that he and his associates couldn’t impose that much on Tiny’s hospitality, but the face that held so much threat in it returned and settled the issue: “you and your people eat free at Tiny’s Barbeque and that’s that.” And, that was that.

  It was a happy reunion at the Ross farm. Jake briefed them on the terms and let them know that the check would come directly to Pike and Wasserman LLC and would be wired from the law firm directly into the Betty Ross’s bank account as early as next Monday. In attendance at this meeting was Pearl Smyth, who in addition to being a waitress at Tiny’s was also a notary public. As all the signatures were affixed and duly notarized, Pearl announced that everyone was expected for lunch at her place of employment and that she had been instructed by the owner not to take no for an answer. With that directive imposed, everyone loaded up and headed into town. A wonderful lunch was consumed and Jake regrettably said good bye to some of the people of whom he had grown quite fond. In addition to his briefcase containing the settlement documents, Jake was returning to Chicago with a huge container of brisket and ribs, courtesy of Tiny Johannson.

  Jake had gone only about three miles out of town when he noticed the flashing lights in his rearview mirror. Pulling over to the side of the road he fumbled for his driver’s license and began searching the glove box in the rental car for proof of insurance. Just then the
huge figure of Sheriff Ed Johansson showed up smiling outside the driver’s side window.

  “Oh don’t worry about that Mr. Wasserman, I didn’t stop you for any traffic violation,” smiled the lawman. Before Jake could ask, the sheriff replied that if Mr. Wasserman wasn’t on a strict timetable and had twenty or thirty minutes, the county prosecutor,

  Steven Stoddart, would like a word with him.

  “Sure, Sheriff Johannson, I would be happy to meet with Mr. Stoddart, just lead the way,” Jake’s curiosity fully aroused.

  “Just follow me and we’ll be there in about five minutes,” replied the sheriff.

  Five minutes later Jake was shaking hands with Steven Stoddart, the county prosecutor for Plymouth County. Iowa. Stoddart was a sincere looking young man in his early thirties who moved with the ease of someone who kept in good physical shape.

  “Please come in and have a seat, and if you’ve have the time Ed, I’d like you here also.” The sheriff shrugged and entered the county prosecutor’s office with Jake Wasserman.

  Stoddart apologized for interrupting Jake’s travel plans, offered coffee, and thanked him for making the time to see him. Wasserman was always charmed by the unfailing politeness of these small town people.

  “I’m sure that by now Mr. Wasserman, you’ve probably learned more about the laws of the great State of Iowa than you ever wanted to know and that you no doubt want to get back to Chicago and return to some sense of a normal life in the big city,” began the prosecutor. “I can’t tell you how grateful I and every citizen of this county is for the help that Pike and Wasserman provided to the Ross family and the others,” he continued. The sheriff was nodding agreement. At this point the prosecutor handed Jake several documents and asked for his opinion.