by Mark M Bello
“What do you mean?” Jennifer wondered. Is he serious or trying to be funny?
“Many personal injury lawyers have doctors they do business with regularly. These doctors treat clients and do what they can to support their cases. Defense lawyers do the same thing, and judges get tired of seeing the same guys on every case. If a case involves these docs, the case has less credibility. In this case, we won’t need these doctors. You have me.” Rothenberg smiled.
“In other words, I should tell Mr. Blake we already have a ‘whore’ and won’t need one of his?” Jennifer laughed.
Father Jon smiled and wagged his index finger at Jennifer. Rothenberg laughed. “It’s great to see you laugh, Jenny.”
“It’s nice to laugh,” Jennifer admitted. “I hope the last laugh is ours.”
The food arrived. The appetizer was terrific, especially the tzatziki sauce. The Coney’s were, as most Detroiters knew, a guilty pleasure, and the Tommy’s was indeed the best. Jennifer even enjoyed the company. At long last, there was a reason for optimism.
Chapter Thirteen
There comes a time in the life of every attorney when he or she has two fundamental questions: Why do I need this shit? Is this why I went to law school? Zachary Blake was half asleep in a district courtroom, a victim of ‘hurry up and wait’ syndrome. A judge might order thirty or so lawyers and clients to appear in court at 9:00 a.m. and begins to call their cases, one by one. If you’re called first, great, but what if you’re thirtieth? You’re in court all day, hence ‘hurry up and wait’ and ‘why do I need this shit?’ Zack awoke with a snort when he heard his name called.
“Are we interrupting your late-morning nap, Mr. Blake?” District Court Judge Emma Pearl inquired, with a harsh tone and an insistent expression. “Your client and I are waiting.”
“Sorry, Your Honor. I was going over the file. I just received the assignment,” Blake stammered.
“You’re wasting the court’s time, Mr. Blake. How does your client plead?” Judge Pearl demanded.
Blake charged through the swinging door, leading from the gallery to the litigants’ tables and the judge’s bench. He stumbled as he crossed the threshold, dressed in wrinkled, stained tan dress pants and a faux suede jacket. His shirt was coming out of his pants. The top button was undone, and his tie was pulled up into what could only be called a chokehold in a failed attempt to hide the fact that the top button was missing. He stomped up to the podium. “What . . . what’s the charge, Your Honor?”
“You don’t know, Mr. Blake?” She was incredulous.
“I just got the file, Your Honor. I haven’t really had the chance to acquaint myself with the details.” Blake frantically flipped through pages in a file.
“When exactly did you receive the file, Mr. Blake? Arraignment call was at nine, it is now close to eleven. You’ve had the file for two hours.” Judge Pearl was about to explode.
Exactly, bitch, hurry up and wait for two fucking hours! Blake opened his mouth to speak, but the judge usurped him and turned to his client, an accused drunk driver who spent the night in the city jail. He awaited arraignment and a bail hearing.
Suddenly polite and cherubic, Judge Pearl addressed the defendant, a voting citizen. “ Mr. Jordan, have you had a chance to meet with your attorney?”
“No, Your Honor. Is this the guy?” Jordan sneered at the disheveled Blake.
“Yes, Mr. Jordan—this is your assigned attorney. You’ve indicated you can’t afford an attorney. Is that correct?” Judge Pearl inquired.
“Yes, that is correct, Your Honor . . . but . . .”
“But what, Mr. Jordan?” Judge Pearl growled.
“Can’t I choose a lawyer, like from a list or something?”
“No, sir, you can’t. How long have you been here in the courthouse this morning, sir?” She bristled.
“Almost two hours, Your Honor,” Jordan estimated.
Judge Pearl turned to her court clerk, the person in charge of doling out the morning court assignments. “Mr. Roman, what time was the file provided to Mr. Blake?”
Roman flipped through his assignments ledger and responded, without looking up, “Eight-thirty, Your Honor.”
Judge Pearl turned to Blake and fumed, “Mr. Blake, you have had this file for two and a half hours. You’ve not met with the client, nor have you not familiarized yourself with the charges. While the city pays fixed fees for these court assignments, they are important, and there is a long list of attorneys who are happy to remain in the court’s good graces and pleased to receive their assignments. Apparently, you are not one of them.”
Judge Pearl again turned to her clerk. “Mr. Roman, you are hereby instructed to remove Mr. Blake’s name from my roster of assigned counsel,” she ordered.
Turning to the voting citizen, Zachary’s soon-to-be-former client, she instantly adopted a pleasant demeanor. “Mr. Jordan, please accept the court’s profound apologies. We will get you new counsel. Have a seat in the gallery for a few minutes, and Mr. Roman will get you reassigned.
“Mr. Blake, you are relieved of this assignment and dismissed from this proceeding. Your name is hereby removed from my assignment list. We’ll hold this case in abeyance to allow newly assigned counsel to get up to snuff and then we will recall it. That’s it for now. Mr. Roman, please call the next case.”
“But, Your Honor, I waited two hours—” Judge Pearl abruptly interrupted Zachary Blake. “Mr. Blake!” she shouted. “One more word from you and I will find you in contempt.” She shook her finger at him like a mother scolding a child.
Blake turned meekly from the bench. The gallery, made up primarily of other attorneys, whispered, muttered, and snickered. They pointed at him and whispered to each other, hand over mouth. Zachary waded through them, enduring their snickers and taunts in utter humiliation.
He exited the courtroom and walked dejectedly to his car. He started it up, drove to the nearest tavern, and proceeded to get very drunk. How has it come to this?
Three years earlier, Zachary Blake was managing partner of Blake, Geiringer, and Schwartz, a law firm that specialized exclusively in personal injury litigation. At its peak, the firm handled over three thousand files. There were four associates—non-partner attorneys—two paralegals, six secretaries, an investigator, and a receptionist.
The main office was on the seventeenth floor of the prestigious Town Center office complex in Southfield, Michigan, a quartet of gold and black glass and steel high-rises that existed primarily for tenants to boast they paid the highest rent in the tri-county area. Each partner had a southern view office on the seventeenth floor of the complex’s tallest building.
Since the building sat on the John C. Lodge Freeway, the main thoroughfare from Detroit’s northwest suburbs to downtown Detroit, tenants clamored to pay a premium for office space facing southeast, high enough to see the downtown Detroit skyline, approximately twenty miles away. Zachary Blake occupied the firm’s largest office, which, naturally, faced southeast. He had a key to the executive lounge and health club and an executive parking space in the underground garage. He wore fifteen-hundred-dollar suits and dined in the city’s finest restaurants. Life was good.
Unfortunately, while Blake earned his success in the early days, with multiple trials and high six and seven-figure verdicts, his partners began to ask, first quietly, and then rather loudly, “What have you done for me lately?”
Zack was at the country club more than he was at the office. He pawned more and better cases off on his partners and associates. This would have been acceptable if Zack was still bringing in high-dollar cases, but he wasn’t. His referral sources were evaporating—lawyers and former clients were annoyed Zack wasn’t personally handling those cases. He missed appointments, ignored business contacts, and became detached and arrogant. In short, he became a liability.
On that fateful day three years ago, Blake arrived at the office at 7:30 a.m., as was his habit. He was greeted by an Oakland County sheriff’s deputy, who serv
ed him with a lawsuit filed by his partners, alleging violations of the Michigan Partnership Act. He was also served with an injunction, ordering him to remove himself from the premises and preventing him from removing any personal property, including his own office files. The deputy escorted him from the building while obscenities and choice expletives were shouted from all corners of the office.
His now ex-partners planned their coup well. They had signed letters from firm clients, transferring their files to the new law firm of Geiringer & Schwartz. The court ordered Blake to cease and desist from working on their cases. Since the three men were once longtime friends, there was no written partnership agreement—leave it to lawyers to have nothing in writing.
When the dust settled, Zachary retained fifty files and quantum meruit in those that remained with the firm.
“You’ll land on your feet, Zack,” David Schwartz assured when Zack arrived to pick up his fifty files.
“Fuck you!” Zack roared. “I made this firm. I taught you guys everything you know. I gave both of you your first jobs out of law school and taught you how to handle PI files, how to treat clients, and how to deal with opposing attorneys. I demonstrated how to handle judges and clerks and how to try cases. This traitorous palace coup is how you thank me? Fuck the both of you!”
“Look in the mirror, asshole. You brought this on yourself!” cried Schwartz, with the umbrage of a mistreated child addressing his abusive parent. “Yes, you taught us everything, and we appreciate it. We’ve always appreciated you. But you haven’t been that Zack Blake in almost a decade. How long are we supposed to carry your dead weight? Five years? Ten? We can’t do it anymore, financially, or emotionally. You’re a shit example for the associates and the support staff. It’s time for the inmates to run the asylum. Seriously, Zack, we are grateful for everything, but it is time for you to go. If you didn’t see this coming, you must be totally blind, and I’m really sorry,” he bewailed.
Blake was having none of it. “Fuck you, fuck Geiringer, fuck the associates, fuck the staff, and fuck the horses all of you rode in on. You’ll never make it without me.” He spat all over Schwartz.
“Well, then, that will be our mistake and our misfortune. We wish you nothing but the best.” Schwartz folded his arms across his chest, signaling the ‘meeting’ and conversation were over.
Blake exploded. “Bullshit!” He screamed, again expelling saliva into Schwartz’s face. “You hope I fall on my face. Admit it, you ungrateful prick. Well, I won’t give you the fucking satisfaction! Have a nice death.”
Zachary Blake gathered up his small box of files and stormed out of the offices where he once reigned supreme. As Blake walked away, Swartz pulled a handkerchief from his pocket, wiped spittle from his face, shook his head, turned and returned to his office. It was time to move on. His decision to part company with his former hero and mentor was appropriate. Still, Zack taught him everything he knew in this business. David was ambivalent about how this decision would affect Zack. He fervently hoped Blake would land on his feet.
From time to time, Blake received a small check from the new law firm of Geiringer and Schwartz. He couldn’t blame himself. In Zack’s mind, his former partners were fucking him, big-time. But he lacked the inertia to pursue what he was owed. “Let them keep the fucking money,” he grumbled. “At least I’m rid of them.”
That final surrender was his first of many. Shortly after the palace coup, Blake made some bad stock investments and lost what little money he had left. His ‘retirement’ land deal investment turned sour. He couldn’t pay the mortgage payments on his huge Bloomfield Hills home, and it fell into foreclosure. Blake and his wife put the home up for sale and sold it for less than full value. When the moving van showed up, so did a process server, with the divorce complaint from Zack’s wife. She didn’t want much, only the proceeds from the sale of the house, the three kids, all the furniture, and what was left of the bank account. A temporary support order demanded child support of $1,000 per week. She got it all.
Zack slept through most of the ride from the bar to his office. It was a short trip north on the John C. Lodge Freeway from Downtown Detroit to Zack’s office on Eight Mile Road, the highway that separated Detroit from its suburbs and made famous by Eminem. Upon becoming Detroit’s first black mayor in the 1970s, Coleman Young told all the pimps, pushers, and prostitutes to “hit Eight Mile Road.” That warning was one of the few things Young ever did to combat crime.
On the trip up the Lodge, Zack’s Uber passed through old, poverty-stricken, predominately black neighborhoods. Many homes were abandoned; some were falling down from decay or abuse, some were boarded up, and many featured iron bars on their windows. The driver passed through pockets of stately homes and well-kept neighborhoods where residents were proud of and attentive to their homes and gardens. The new mayor announced projects to light every streetlight, reduce criminal activity, tear down abandoned houses, rebuild neighborhoods, and solve the problems of a failing public school system. He was certainly trying, and the residents were responding positively.
Southfield, which bordered Eight Mile Road, and other northern suburban communities were now integrated. The line between the city and its suburbs was blurring. Blake and his fifty files—his wife didn’t ask for a cut of the fees—had relocated to a small, one-room office in the low-rent district. A client would push open the door, and there would be Blake—no receptionist, no secretary, no copier, just Blake, an old desk, and a couple of worn side chairs for clients to whine in.
Blake had a secondhand computer on his desk with antiquated word-processing software. His caseload dwindled, and he always took the first dime offered to settle those cases he had left, donating all dollars generated to his ex-wife for child support. He was now hustling traffic cases and two hundred dollar juvenile assignments from Oakland and Wayne County Juvenile Courts. But, as Judge Emma Pearl noted earlier that morning, Blake was no longer capable of providing quality representation for cases usually reserved for rookies.
When he wasn’t at the office, he could be found at the local pool halls, taverns, or strip clubs that lined Eight Mile on the Detroit side. He would pick up an occasional criminal case from those who frequented the various establishments, but rarely represented them with the skill he once had and rarely for a fee of any consequence. After an afternoon or evening of drinking, playing, or carousing, Blake went home to his one-bedroom, scarcely furnished apartment at the Lodge Freeway and Nine Mile Road and watched TV, bottle in hand.
Zachary Blake lost his practice, his wife and kids, his home, and his money. He was at rock bottom in only three short years. He also lost the most valuable possession of any successful trial lawyer. Zachary Blake lost his will to fight. His luck, however, was about to change.
Chapter Fourteen
“Boys . . . we’d like to talk to you about Father Gerry. We want him punished so he can never do to others what he did to you . . .” Rothenberg commenced a meeting between himself and the Tracey family. The meeting was held in the Beacon East Office Building conference room. Rothenberg was still suspicious his office was being monitored.
“Do you know what a lawsuit is, boys?” Jennifer wondered.
“Like the TV commercials when someone gets into a car accident or gets bit by a dog?” Jake volunteered.
“Yes, something like that,” Jennifer smiled.
“People sue for ‘combination,’” Jake remarked. Apparently, he watched some lawyer advertisements.
The three adults laughed. Jake looked confused and somewhat embarrassed.
“People sue for compensation, Jake, honey,” Jennifer corrected. “But you have the right idea.”
“Compensation means a person who has done something wrong to someone else must pay money to the person he hurt. In very serious cases, a judge or a jury will give the hurt person more money to punish a wrongdoer. The amount of money depends on how serious the injuries are. Sometimes one person is hurt; sometimes, many people are hurt. In
some cases, one person causes harm. In other cases, many people are responsible. The point is to hold those wrongdoers responsible for the harm they caused. Get it? What do you think?” Rothenberg explained. He turned his head from boy to boy.
“Sounds right to me,” Kenny determined.
“The problem is that some lawsuits, like rear-end car crashes, are rather common. Nobody cares a whole lot, and you don’t see anything on the news or TV. Others are very shocking, and you will see them on the news and TV,” Rothenberg continued. He looked at Jennifer for support. She nodded in return.
“We want you to consider a lawsuit against Father Gerry for what he did, and against Lakes and the church for bringing him here and letting him do what he did.”
“Sounds right to me,” Jake mimicked Kenny.
“But this would be one of those lawsuits that get on the news and TV,” Jennifer warned.
“That’s right, boys. And the thing is your names and your mother’s name and what happened to you would be on the news, and everybody will know what happened to you on the trip,” Rothenberg explained.
“So?” Kenny wondered.
“So . . . we’re concerned about how you feel about everybody knowing. We’re concerned about how things will go at school. Will you be okay? Will you be teased? Bullied? You’ll become known as the two boys who got hurt by the priest. It might be embarrassing or make you uncomfortable. How will you handle all this attention?” Rothenberg cautioned. Do they understand the issues? Am I getting through to them?
Jennifer noticed the grim look on his face and chimed in. “I don’t want to cause you any more pain than you’ve already endured. I don’t want you to be bullied or teased at school. You’ve been through a lot. Maybe this is more than you can handle. Gerry should be punished for what he did. No other kid should ever have to go through one more minute of what you guys went through. The church must be punished for letting him get away with this. The public must know about Gerry’s behavior, so it can’t continue, and so the church can’t keep covering it up. But, if you don’t want to pursue this, it stops here. We won’t go forward.” Jennifer studied her boys, gauging their reactions.