Friday, December 12, 2014

Skadden, Arps and The Street Lawyer


File thief cuffed.

Skadden must be trying to figure out what I mean by my previous post about The Street Lawyer.
How interesting! Dear Messrs. Skadden, some of this sounds so familiar, I laugh out loud when reading it. Then I think about the SUA victims and I stop laughing.

Here's more, from Chapter 26
[the story so far: The protagonist Michael Brock, a young fast-track associate, went through a near-death experience that awoke his sleeping conscience. He then stole an incriminating legal file from his employer Drake & Sweeney, a white-stocking DC law firm. The file was {inadmissible but otherwise corroborate-able} proof that the firm's legal misconduct directly led to the deaths of a homeless mother and her several children. After Brock quit the firm to go practice public interest law for the homeless, the law firm had him charged with grand larceny and then arrested .]

"'I'm his lawyer,' Mordecai said. 'Let me see that.' He took the arrest warrant from [officer] Gasko and examined it as I was getting cuffed, hands behind my back, wrists pinched by cold steel. The cuffs were too tight, or at least tighter than they had to be, but I could bear it...
"Gasko sat in the rear [of the police car] with me...
"'What a waste of time,' Gasko said as he relaxed by placing a cowboy boot on a knee. 'We got a hundred and forty unsolved murders in this city, dope on every corner, drug dealers selling in middle schools, and we gotta waste time on you.'
'Are you tryng to interrogate me, Gasko?' I asked.
'No.'
'Good.' He hadn't bothered with the Miranda warning, and he didn't have to until he started asking questions.
Goon One was flying south on Fourteenth, no lights or sirens, and certainly no respect for traffic signals and pedestrians.
'Then let me go,' I said.
'If it's up to me, I would. But you really pissed some folks off. The prosecutor tells me he's under pressure to get you.'
'Pressure from who?' I asked. But I knew the answer. Drake & Sweeeney wouldn't waste time with the cops; they would rather talk legalspeak with the chief prosecutor.
'The victims,' Gasko said with heavy sarcasm. I agreed with his assessment; it was difficult to picture a bunch of wealthy lawyers as victims of a crime."

Later, when Drake & Sweeney realized the extent of the firm's exposure, the managing partner called Brock's lawyer Mordecai to urgently propose a settlement of the wrongful death lawsuit that he had filed on behalf of the dead mother and children.

I have not read past this point. To be continued. Perhaps.