My First Court Appearance

The client was a liq­uid bulk stor­age ter­mi­nal in San Pedro, Cal­i­for­nia. A faulty pipe cou­pling spilled twen­ty-two gal­lons of an acetate chem­i­cal com­pound at the foot of a huge tank. Tech­ni­cians cleaned it up quick­ly but not before the wind blew nox­ious fumes into a near­by trail­er park. The res­i­dents filed com­plaints with the county’s air pol­lu­tion agency about the hor­rif­ic stench, and the agency charged the ter­mi­nal with a crim­i­nal mis­de­meanor for caus­ing a pub­lic nuisance.

I was a fresh­ly mint­ed mem­ber of the bar when the case fell on my desk. My job was to appear at the arraign­ment and plead it out. “This’ll be an easy first court appear­ance for you,” my Lath­am super­vis­ing attor­ney said. “Meet with the pros­e­cu­tor before the hear­ing. Tell him you’ll plead nolo con­tendere (no con­test). Try to nego­ti­ate a fine under a thou­sand bucks, but any­thing up to two grand is okay. The judge will rub­ber stamp what­ev­er the pros­e­cu­tor agrees to.”

“What if the pros­e­cu­tor won’t agree?”

“He’ll agree. Pros­e­cu­tors hate these piss-ant cas­es. So do the judges.”

I arrived at San Pedro Munic­i­pal Court ear­ly and found the pros­e­cu­tor in the hall­way out­side the court­room. A short guy with black hair that fell to his shoulders,

he was as inex­pe­ri­enced as I was. He sneered when I offered to plead nolo and pay 500 dol­lars. Fash­ion­ing him­self as a young Ralph Nad­er on a cru­sade to destroy cor­po­rate Amer­i­ca, he refused to agree to anything.

I was in a state of semi-pan­ic when the judge took the bench. In his six­ties, port­ly with dark bags under his eyes and a reced­ing hair­line, he asked me to enter a plea.

“Nolo con­tendere, your hon­or,” I said, my stom­ach bathed in acid.

Young Ralph Nad­er object­ed, stat­ing he want­ed to try the case to a guilty verdict.

The judge looked at him like he was crazy. “I’ll accept the defendant’s plea. What fine have you agreed to?”

“We have no agree­ment,” Ralph snapped, obvi­ous­ly miffed that the judge wouldn’t go to tri­al. “The dis­trict demands a fine of twen­ty-two thou­sand dol­lars, a thou­sand dol­lars per gal­lon spilled.”

I almost fainted.

Twen­ty-two thou­sand smack­ers would con­sti­tute a world record fine for a pub­lic nui­sance mis­de­meanor. I’d nev­er live it down. “But this was an acci­dent,” I said, my voice crack­ing. “The com­pa­ny cleaned up the spill imme­di­ate­ly. Any­thing over five hun­dred dol­lars would be a travesty.”

The judge threw up his hands. “You’re miles apart. How am I sup­posed to decide this?” Frown­ing, he paged through the case file. “I have no idea what this chem­i­cal smells like.  One of these cit­i­zen com­plaints says vom­it. Anoth­er says ran­cid milk. Some cre­ative soul describes it as burned ass.” He held up one of the forms to us. “This one says human feces, using the four-let­ter word.” He slapped it down on the bench and glared at Ralph and me. “I can’t rule until I’ve smelled this chem­i­cal for myself. Col­lect a sam­ple from your client, Mr. Oder. We’ll recon­vene tomor­row morning.”

Stunned, I limped back to my office. “I didn’t think it was pos­si­ble to screw up a mis­de­meanor arraign­ment,” my Lath­am men­tor said. “You’ve proved me wrong.”

The client’s in-house coun­sel was equal­ly impressed. “When the judge gets a whiff of this stuff, he’ll give us the death penalty.”

He brought a four ounce vial of the chem­i­cal to my office. When I was a teenag­er, I went rab­bit hunt­ing with a friend. His bea­gles caught a skunk. The dogs retched. My friend and I did, too. The four ounce sam­ple of the acetate com­pound smelled worse than skunk juice. I agreed with in-house coun­sel. Death by asphyx­i­a­tion in California’s gas cham­ber seemed like a fit­ting penal­ty for spilling twen­ty-two gal­lons of this stuff.

I placed the vial inside a card­board box and jammed pack­ing mate­r­i­al around it in a vain attempt to con­tain the fumes. The next morn­ing, unsus­pect­ing vic­tims I passed as I walked down the hall to the court­room made sour faces and stopped to look at the heels of their shoes.

The judge want­ed to inspect the sam­ple in cham­bers. Ralph and I sat down across the desk from him. I unpacked the vial, pulled the stop­per, and held it out to the judge. “Be care­ful, your hon­or. It’s powerful.”

He stalled out two feet from the lip of the vial, clamped both hands over his nose and mouth, fell back in his chair, and fran­ti­cal­ly cranked open the win­dow behind him.

“Twen­ty-two thou­sand dol­lars!” Ralph crowed triumphantly.

So this is what I gave up a reward­ing career in teach­ing for, I thought, oppos­ing this jerk in a futile effort to per­suade a judge twen­ty-two gal­lons of human feces doesn’t stink to high heav­en. Wel­come to the prac­tice of law.

I put the vial back inside the card­board box and braced myself to face the judge’s wrath.

It didn’t come. Instead, he gazed out the win­dow somber­ly. A full minute passed. He didn’t move. He didn’t say any­thing. His behav­ior seemed strange, but he was the judge so I kept qui­et. Ralph did the same.

The judge final­ly turned to me. “I can’t believe your name is Oder,” he said.

That was close to the last thing I expect­ed him to say, but with a name like mine you learn to roll with the punch­es. “Yes, well, it’s a safe bet I won’t name my first child Acetate,” I said.

The judge chuck­led, then stared at me pen­sive­ly. “How long have you been with Lath­am?” he asked.

“Since June.”

“Where are you from?”

“Vir­ginia.”

He perked up. “Beau­ti­ful coun­try. I was sta­tioned at Quan­ti­co in the Marines.”

“I grew up south of there, near Charlottesville.”

“I dat­ed a girl at Mary Wash­ing­ton from Char­lottesville. She showed me around Mon­ti­cel­lo, the Uni­ver­si­ty of Virginia.”

“I went to UVA. Under­grad­u­ate and law school.”

“Spec­tac­u­lar cam­pus. The colo­nial archi­tec­ture, the man­i­cured grounds, the moun­tains in the back­ground. You must have loved it there.”

“I did.”

“Why the hell did you move out here?”

“To join Latham.”

He nod­ded, a wist­ful look on his face. “I see.”

“Shouldn’t we be dis­cussing the amount of the fine?” Ralph said.

The judge looked at Ralph like he was the one who smelled bad. “The fine,” he said. “Yes, of course.” He gave me a sad look and sighed. “I’ll rule from the bench,” he said.

We went into the court­room. The judge took the bench and the clerk called our case. “The defen­dant will pay a fine of one hun­dred fifty dol­lars,” the judge said. He rapped the gav­el, stepped down, and exit­ed the court­room through a back door.

Ralph looked like he’d been hit in the face with a base­ball bat.

I was sur­prised, too, but on reflec­tion, I under­stood. The judge presided over noth­ing but small claims. A thought­ful man, he was bored out of his mind. Our con­ver­sa­tion took him back to his youth and Vir­ginia, a time and place he much pre­ferred over the present. I went there with him. Young Ralph resent­ed the diver­sion and dragged us back to the court­room, there­by deft­ly snatch­ing defeat from the jaws of victory.

Back at Lath­am, the reac­tion was mixed. The fine was spec­tac­u­lar­ly low, espe­cial­ly con­sid­er­ing the judge got a snoot full of skunk juice, but it took me two court appear­ances to get there so the legal fees were dou­ble. A mediocre result in a “piss-ant” case.

My first court appear­ance was noth­ing to brag about, but its lessons stayed with me for forty years: When the mer­its are com­plete­ly against you, the best argu­ment may be no argu­ment; and in every case there’s more at play than the merits.