Twen­ty years old, she’d worked as a sec­re­tary for Cam­bridge, Inc., a small mort­gage bro­ker­age firm, for only a month when she claimed the CEO sex­u­al­ly assault­ed her. He insist­ed he nev­er touched her.

“It’s a he-said-she-said sit­u­a­tion,” the office man­ag­er told her. “There’s noth­ing I can do.”

A few days lat­er, Cam­bridge fired her.

She filed suit, alleg­ing sex­u­al harass­ment, gen­der dis­crim­i­na­tion, and wrong­ful ter­mi­na­tion. My law firm rep­re­sent­ed Cam­bridge and I was assigned to defend the case.

Mar­garet, the office man­ag­er, in her for­ties, tall and thin with short coal-black hair, dressed in a dark blue skirt and match­ing jack­et, escort­ed me into the CEO’s office.

We sat down across the desk from Ted, in his mid-thir­ties, aver­age height with an ath­let­ic build, close-cropped brown hair, and a con­fi­dent demeanor. “I bare­ly remem­ber her,” he said. “We had no con­tact oth­er than the few times she brought me doc­u­ments to sign. I don’t even know when she claims I harassed her.”

“The morn­ing of July 12,” Mar­garet said.

“I under­stand she report­ed the inci­dent to you,” I said to Margaret.

“That’s cor­rect. She told me she was stand­ing beside Ted at his desk while he reviewed let­ters she’d typed when he grabbed her around the hips and shoved his hand up under her skirt.”

“Ridicu­lous,” Ted said.

“Any wit­ness­es?” I asked.

“They were alone. She said Ted told her to close his office door when she walked in.”

“That’s a lie,” Ted said. “She closed it on her own.”

Inter­est­ing, I thought. Ted doesn’t remem­ber when she claims the inci­dent took place, but he recalls she closed the door that morn­ing. “Did any­one see her when she came out of Ted’s office?”

“My office is across the hall,” Mar­garet said. “I saw her come out and run down the hall. She was sob­bing hys­ter­i­cal­ly. I found her in the women’s restroom. It took her a long time to calm down enough to tell me her ver­sion of what hap­pened. She was so upset I sent her home for the day.”

“The dis­charge let­ter says you fired her for insubordination.”

“Work­ing with Ted is a job require­ment. She refused.”

“Who made the deci­sion to fire her?”

Mar­garet looked at Ted.

“Mar­garet and I made the deci­sion togeth­er,” he said.

“What was the qual­i­ty of her work?”

“Excel­lent,” Mar­garet said. “She was fresh out of a good sec­re­tar­i­al school. Inex­pe­ri­enced, but high­ly skilled.”

I stud­ied Mar­garet. She returned my stare evenly.

“Give us a minute alone,” I said to her. She left the office.

“A pack of lies,” Ted said.

“She’s a good liar,” I said. “In the few sec­onds it took her to reach your office door, she burst into tears and kept it up until Mar­garet sent her home.”

“All part of an act designed to hit the law­suit lottery.”

“An Oscar-win­ning per­for­mance on the spur of the moment.”

“She prob­a­bly rehearsed it.”

“Twen­ty years old. First job after sec­re­tar­i­al school. Not the typ­i­cal pro­file of a con­niv­ing fraudster.”

Ted paused. “You don’t believe me?”

“I’m giv­ing you an objec­tive assess­ment of the facts. Margaret’s obser­va­tion of her behav­ior sup­ports her story.”

He gave me a blank stare.

“Tell me what real­ly hap­pened,” I said.

More of the blank stare. Then, “You can’t tell any­one what I say, right?”

“This is an attor­ney-client priv­i­leged con­ver­sa­tion. I can’t tell any­one with­out your permission.”

He smirked. “She’s got a killer body, and she knows it. When I walked by her desk in the sec­re­tar­i­al bay that morn­ing, she gave me a smile and a fetch­ing look. Ten min­utes lat­er, she showed up at my door wear­ing a short skirt and a tight blouse and stood right next to me while I reviewed her work. Her hip brushed against my shoul­der. It was an obvi­ous come-on, but when I tried to pull her down into my lap, she went crazy. Screamed and ran out of here like I’d tried to rape her or something.”

“Did you put your hand under her skirt?”

“I might have. I don’t recall. It was all over in a cou­ple of sec­onds. It was no big deal.”

“It seems to have been a big deal to her.”

“What did she expect? Dress­ing like that. Flaunt­ing it.”

I searched Ted’s face. Indif­fer­ence, with a hint of defi­ance. No shame. This is not going to be easy, I thought.

“She’s got a strong case,” I said. “We should set­tle it before her lawyer digs into the facts.”

Ted looked shocked. “She can’t prove any­thing. It’s her word against mine.”

“Your sto­ry isn’t cred­i­ble. Margaret’s putting up a good front, but she believes the plain­tiff. It took me less than ten min­utes of ques­tion­ing to see through your denial.”

“Okay. Let’s work on my sto­ry. Shore up the weak points.”

“That’s not an option. You’ll have to tes­ti­fy under oath.”

“So what? No one will know I’m lying.”

“You’ll know. I’ll know.”

“Well, I sure as hell won’t tell any­one and you can’t tell because you’re my lawyer.”

“If you get caught, you’ll face per­jury charges. It’s not worth the risk. Besides, the jury will like­ly believe her even if you lie. She’ll get back pay, com­pen­sa­tion for emo­tion­al dis­tress, puni­tive dam­ages. The judg­ment could reach six fig­ures, but if we don’t fight her claim and set­tle the case quick­ly, she’ll prob­a­bly walk away for a small pay­ment and a writ­ten recommendation.”

“How small?”

“Ten thou­sand. Maybe less.”

“Ten thou­sand dol­lars! For a two-sec­ond grab that went nowhere!”

“You’ll spend a lot more in court costs and legal fees defend­ing the case.”

“Fine. At least we’ll get some­thing for our mon­ey. I’m not pay­ing her a dime.”

I argued long and hard, but Ted wouldn’t budge, which put me in a tight spot. The canons of ethics pro­hib­it a lawyer from pre­sent­ing false evi­dence to the court, so I couldn’t know­ing­ly allow Ted to lie under oath. But the rules also pro­hib­it­ed my dis­clo­sure of his con­fes­sion to any­one, includ­ing the court. Under Cal­i­for­nia law, there was only one way to pro­tect both con­flict­ing inter­ests. I with­drew from the case with­out telling any­one what Ted had told me, and he hired a dif­fer­ent firm to defend the lawsuit.

I changed a few details and the names of the com­pa­ny and exec­u­tives, but oth­er­wise this nar­ra­tion tracks the fact-pat­tern of a case I worked on in the 1980’s.

I like this sto­ry. It makes me look good for doing the right thing, but the truth is it was an easy call. The fee to defend the case amount­ed to less than a drop in my firm’s buck­et of rev­enues; the client was a small com­pa­ny whose ongo­ing busi­ness was mean­ing­less to us; and Ted made my skin crawl. With­draw­ing required no real sac­ri­fice and no courage.

About the time I with­drew from rep­re­sent­ing Cam­bridge, a lawyer in my firm draft­ed opin­ion let­ters con­cern­ing the like­li­hood of lia­bil­i­ty and poten­tial dam­age awards in cas­es she was han­dling for one of our biggest clients. Finan­cial laws required the client to dis­close the attorney’s esti­mates to cred­i­tors and share­hold­ers. Its Gen­er­al Coun­sel dis­agreed with her opin­ions. He demand­ed that she change them to down­play the risk of loss and reduce the poten­tial damages.

Eth­i­cal canons and fed­er­al laws require an attor­ney to ren­der hon­est and accu­rate opin­ions about such mat­ters. She gave the Gen­er­al Coun­sel the back-up data sup­port­ing her esti­mates and told him she couldn’t change them. He became bel­liger­ent and threat­ened to fire the firm from all his company’s legal mat­ters. She was shak­en but stood her ground.

Soon after­wards, the com­pa­ny declared bank­rupt­cy. Its debts and poten­tial lia­bil­i­ties far out­stripped its assets. We learned then that the Gen­er­al Coun­sel had pres­sured all its out­side law firms to change their opin­ions so it could take on more debt in a des­per­ate attempt to sur­vive. Some lawyers had com­plied. Their firms faced poten­tial fraud charges. Mine did not.

In pub­lic opin­ion sur­veys, lawyers rou­tine­ly rank at the bot­tom in pub­lic trust. There are good rea­sons for this. Sleazy lawyers abound and they tend to gar­ner a lot of pub­lic­i­ty, but I worked with legions of attor­neys of the high­est eth­i­cal char­ac­ter whose courage and con­vic­tion went unno­ticed in the pub­lic eye. My for­mer part­ner was at the top of that list.

I’d like to believe I was in her league, but I’ll con­fess I’ve often won­dered what I would have done if the con­text of my with­draw­al had been dif­fer­ent. Sup­pose Cam­bridge had been a For­tune 500 cor­po­ra­tion and one of the firm’s largest clients. Sup­pose Ted had threat­ened to fire my firm from all legal mat­ters if I with­drew. I’d like to think I would have been as strong as my part­ner, but I don’t know for sure. I wasn’t put to the test. She was, and her per­for­mance under immense pres­sure earned my ever­last­ing admi­ra­tion and respect.

Post Script: A year after I with­drew from the case that inspired this post, the plaintiff’s attor­ney told me my suc­ces­sor set­tled it on the eve of tri­al. He said the terms were con­fi­den­tial, but the huge smile on his face leads me to believe the com­pa­ny paid big bucks to get out of that mess.
The real Cam­bridge even­tu­al­ly filed for bank­rupt­cy. The CEO was the major­i­ty own­er, so the real Ted may have gone down with the ship. I hope so.

The video­tape begins with a high-angle cam­era shot of a beefy mid­dle-aged man secur­ing a bike to the roof of a blue hatch­back parked on the curb of a sub­ur­ban street. He fin­ish­es up and walks around to the rear of the car. A teenage girl car­ry­ing a laun­dry bas­ket stuffed with clothes and a ten­nis rack­et meets him there, slides the bas­ket into the car, and clos­es its back door.

The cam­era shifts to eye-lev­el as they face each other.

“Wow. Col­lege already,” he says.

“Yeah,” she says. They look at each oth­er uncom­fort­ably. “We got­ta go,” she says.

She gets in the car. It pulls away, then stops abrupt­ly. She jumps out, runs back to him, and hugs him. While they hold each oth­er close, Celine Dion sings, “For all those times you stood by me/And all the truths you made me see.”

Because You Loved Me plays on as they sep­a­rate, and the girl walks slow­ly back to the car.

He calls out anx­ious­ly, “And remember—”

She turns, grin­ning and count­ing to three on her fin­gers, “Seat belt, dri­ve safe, call when I get there.”

They smile at each oth­er, both fight­ing back tears.

“Well, bye,” he chokes out. “I love you.”

She walks back to him, and they embrace again. “I love you too, dad­dy,” she says softly.

They step back and look at each oth­er for a long moment. She walks back to the car, hes­i­tates, then faces him. “And thanks for … every­thing.” She climbs in the car. As it pulls away, she waves to him from the window.

Wip­ing tears away, he waves back.

I’ve seen that tape fifty times. I cry every time.

I relate to the beefy guy.

My son’s last night at home, we sat up watch­ing tele­vi­sion for an hour after Cindy and the girls went to bed. We didn’t say any­thing. We didn’t need words. We knew the next day he would take a big step through the por­tal pass­ing from child to man. I want­ed it for him, but I mourned the loss of my lit­tle boy.

I kept him up as late as I could with­out spoil­ing his next day, then took a deep breath, and stood. “Good night, Josh.”

“Love you, dad.”

“Love you, too, Josh,”

I lay awake half the night, remem­ber­ing the good times.

The next morn­ing, we drove him to Pep­per­dine. The cam­pus sits on a moun­tain­side above Mal­ibu. His dor­mi­to­ry over­looked the base­ball sta­di­um, where he would play left field, and beyond that, the Pacif­ic Ocean, glis­ten­ing sil­ver in the morn­ing sun­light. We moved all his stuff into his room, stalled as long as we could, then hugged him, and left him sit­ting at his desk. When we walked across the court­yard, he called out from the win­dow, “Bye, dad.”

My heart broke.

It mend­ed, of course, as I watched him con­front chal­lenges, over­come set­backs, make life-long friends, and meet his future wife.

When the time came for our old­er daugh­ter to leave the nest, I thought I’d get through it eas­i­er. It was my sec­ond rodeo, after all.

I was wrong.

When Devon was a lit­tle girl, we had friends over for din­ner. We were talk­ing in the liv­ing room when she climbed up in my lap. Cindy had dolled her up in a frilly dress and put lit­tle red bows in her silky blonde hair. I was primp­ing her, mes­mer­ized by her, as always, when our friend smiled and said, “Looks like some­one has dad­dy wrapped around her lit­tle finger.”

And that was true.

The Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia at San­ta Cruz was tai­lor-made for Devon and she loved it when she toured the cam­pus, but when her last day at home final­ly arrived, she didn’t want to leave us. As we drove north toward the school, she cried.

I wracked my brain for some way to ease her pain about the sep­a­ra­tion. When we got there, she and I shared a qui­et moment alone. I told her there was an invis­i­ble string that ran from my heart to hers, like an elas­tic spi­der web that would stretch across any dis­tance. “It nev­er breaks. It lasts for­ev­er, and our feel­ings for each oth­er will always pulse through it.” I told her she had the same mag­i­cal con­nec­tion with Cindy, Chelsea, and Josh, and she would always be with us.

She said it was a beau­ti­ful thought, and it seemed to help her.

But when we left her there, my beau­ti­ful thought didn’t work as well for me as it did for her. I broke down in the UCSC park­ing lot and choked back tears all the way home.

That wound healed, too. UCSC was a car­ing, nur­tur­ing envi­ron­ment. Devon found her pas­sion for art there and start­ed down a path to a hap­py suc­cess­ful life.

I retired before the baby of the fam­i­ly grad­u­at­ed from high school. Spend­ing more time at home, I watched all Chelsea’s swim meets and water polo match­es. We worked out togeth­er. She couldn’t stop laugh­ing when I col­lid­ed with a stop sign on one of our long runs, and my excru­ci­at­ing­ly painful, ill-con­ceived attempt to leap-frog a tall cement trash can pro­voked anoth­er hys­ter­i­cal fit.

When the time came to take her to col­lege, I thought I was ready because I was a hard­ened vet­er­an of two bruis­ing treks down that rough road.

But I wasn’t ready.

Cindy and I kept our com­po­sure when we moved her into the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ari­zona, hugged her, and said good­bye, but lat­er in the car, we cried.

To avoid the lone­li­ness of our emp­ty nest, we start­ed trav­el­ing. Cindy and I had just checked into the Boar’s Head Inn in Char­lottesville, Vir­ginia, when the phone rang in our room. “Dad, this is Chelsea. The police are here. They read us our rights. They want our com­put­ers, but I won’t give them up. What do I do next?”

After Cindy picked me up off the floor, Chelsea filled me in on the details and I asked to speak to the offi­cer in charge. “I don’t even know why I’m talk­ing to you,” he said in an exas­per­at­ed, some­what intim­i­dat­ed voice. “Your daugh­ter has noth­ing to do with this.”

The police thought Chelsea’s room­mate was involved in a crim­i­nal con­spir­a­cy, but Chelsea didn’t believe it. She knew her roommate’s rights, and she was hold­ing the police at bay. In the end, it turned out Chelsea was right. The police had made a trag­ic mis­take, and her room­mate was innocent.

From there on, I knew I didn’t have to wor­ry about her. I was the proud father of a warrior-woman.

And the pain of my third and last heart-wound eased off.

Foun­da­tion for a Bet­ter Life, a non-prof­it for the pro­mo­tion of good val­ues, pro­duced the tape about the beefy guy and his teenage daugh­ter. At the end of it, after the girl thanks her dad, the narrator’s voice-over deliv­ers the tape’s mes­sage, “Grat­i­tude. Pass it on.”

I appre­ci­ate the mes­sage, but I’d revise the script slight­ly to show that grat­i­tude runs from the beefy guy to his lit­tle girl, too. I’d add these lines for him: “Thanks for all the good times, for your love, and for grow­ing up to become some­one I admire and respect. Thanks for … everything.”

Post Script: The lyrics of Because You Loved Me run both ways, too:

For all those times you stood by me
And all the truths you made me see
For all the joy you brought to my life
For every dream you made come true
For all the love I found in you
You’re the one who saw me through it all.

You were my strength when I was weak
You were my voice when I could­n’t speak
Because you loved me.

Cindy stood beside me clutch­ing my arm as I flipped the dead­bolt, opened the door, and point­ed my shot­gun at the chest of a black, angel-winged Led Zep­pelin tee shirt worn by a stranger. In his mid-twen­ties, tall, and thin with shoul­der-length blond hair and a hooked nose, he froze in the act of bring­ing a cig­a­rette to his mouth and stared at the busi­ness end of my twelve gauge as though he couldn’t quite fig­ure out what it was.

His look of bewil­der­ment slow­ly mor­phed into a scowl. He dropped the cig­a­rette and moved his hand toward his pants pocket.

“Don’t,” I said, lift­ing the shot­gun to aim it at his face.

He froze again and glared at me.

My fin­ger tensed on the trigger.

Nei­ther of us moved. Five sec­onds passed. Ten.

This stand­off occurred in 1976 in the mid­dle of the night at the back door of our apart­ment in Los Ange­les. When I signed on as an attor­ney with Lath­am and Watkins the pre­vi­ous sum­mer, we moved into a small apart­ment in San­ta Mon­i­ca. Six months lat­er, Cindy was preg­nant with our first child and we were search­ing for a big­ger place when a Lath­am lawyer offered us the oppor­tu­ni­ty to take over her lease on the down­stairs unit of a duplex in Han­cock Park.

Estab­lished in the 1920’s, Han­cock Park is a spec­tac­u­lar­ly attrac­tive neigh­bor­hood near down­town LA.  Howard Hugh­es, Nat King Cole, and Mae West built pala­tial estates in the heart of the com­mu­ni­ty in the 30’s and 40’s, and Muham­mad Ali, Anto­nio Ban­deras, and Melanie Grif­fith lived there in the 70’s and 80’s. Cov­er­ing a 1.56 square mile area, the neighborhood’s typ­i­cal home is a large Tudor or Ital­ian Renais­sance-style house set back from a qui­et tree-lined street.

Upscale duplex­es sit on its west­ern bor­der. The Lath­am lawyer’s two-bed­room unit had a big liv­ing room, din­ing room, and kitchen, and nice­ly land­scaped lit­tle front and back yards. It was locat­ed on South Orange Dri­ve, a half block from the Third Street bus line, which I could take to Latham’s offices on Flower Street, free­ing up our car for Cindy when I was at work. Best of all, the rent was low and locked-in for two years.

We moved in that win­ter; our son was born in Jan­u­ary; and we came to love the place in all respects. Except one. An island of afflu­ence sur­round­ed by eco­nom­i­cal­ly dis­tressed neigh­bor­hoods in LA’s urban cen­ter, Han­cock Park expe­ri­enced a high rate of break-ins and bur­glar­ies on a per capi­ta basis, and once in a great while we’d hear about a rob­bery that turned violent.

I didn’t wor­ry about this much at the time because the odds were still heav­i­ly against some­one break­ing into our apart­ment. Han­cock Park’s ten thou­sand res­i­dents stood only a one in six hun­dred chance of being bur­glar­ized. I men­tion it here because the neighborhood’s rep­u­ta­tion for break-ins crouched in the back of my mind like an ugly lit­tle gar­goyle the night the stranger appeared at our back door, and it was part of the rea­son I con­front­ed him with a shotgun.

My back­ground played a sig­nif­i­cant role, too. I grew up in rur­al Vir­ginia. Most every­one in Sug­ar Hol­low and Brown’s Cove owned guns for hunt­ing wild game. They kept them close and knew how to use them. Bur­glar­ies on a per capi­ta basis in those neigh­bor­hoods were zero. If you were stu­pid enough to break into a house there, you’d be lucky to get out alive.

At two a.m. the night the intrud­er approached our apart­ment, Cindy had just fed our baby and put him in his crib. It was a hot night, and we had the win­dows open. Our bed­room was at the rear of the duplex next to our dri­ve­way.  As we lay awake try­ing to go back to sleep, I heard foot­steps tread­ing soft­ly on con­crete and saw the shad­ow of a tall man pass by our window.

“Who’s that?” Cindy whis­pered, alarmed.

The dri­ve­way was a nar­row lane between our duplex and the one next door. It led to our garage and a small back­yard that was walled in and com­plete­ly closed off from the lots around us. There was no rea­son any­one would walk down our dri­ve­way except to gain access to the back of the house.

I got out of bed and looked out the back win­dow. It was a moon­less night. I could bare­ly see the dark form of a man dressed in black stand­ing at our garage. He seemed to be try­ing to open its locked door.

“What’s he doing?” Cindy said.

“Break­ing into the garage.”

I pulled on a pair of jeans. The sin­gle-shot twelve gauge I used for hunt­ing in Vir­ginia was propped in the cor­ner of our bed­room clos­et. I grabbed it, retrieved a shell from our dress­er draw­er, and slipped it into the chamber.

Bare­foot­ed and shirt­less, I head­ed into the kitchen where the back door was locat­ed. Through the door’s win­dow I saw the man stand­ing on our stoop. Cindy came up beside me and wrapped her trem­bling hands around my arm.

The door­knob turned, but the dead­bolt held in place. The man twist­ed the knob again and pushed against the door.

React­ing with­out think­ing, I flipped the bolt and opened the door. The shell in my shot­gun was a num­ber five shot, designed for small game. It would inflict seri­ous dam­age to a man only at close range, so I thrust the muz­zle with­in inch­es of his chest. When he moved his hand toward his pock­et, I gave him a warn­ing and shoved the gun in his face.

It seemed like we stared at each oth­er for an eter­ni­ty. Then he raised his hands slow­ly. “I must be at the wrong place,” he said.

He gave me a long hard look, stepped off the stoop, and walked away.

I kept the shot­gun trained on him until he round­ed the cor­ner of the house. Cindy and I rushed out to the liv­ing room. From the front win­dows, we watched him walk out to the street, turn right at the side­walk, pass under a street­lamp, and dis­ap­pear into the night.

I let out a long breath.

We con­sid­ered call­ing the police, but we didn’t have much to report. The man tres­passed but he didn’t break in, and I wasn’t sure how the police would react to my shot­gun. So, we put the ugli­ness of that night behind us and went on with our lives.

About a month lat­er, the LAPD bust­ed a drug deal­er oper­at­ing out of a down­stairs apart­ment at the end of our street. The duplex­es on South Orange Dri­ve are sim­i­lar in archi­tec­ture. Floor plans repeat about every ten struc­tures. The dealer’s duplex resem­bled ours. My guess is our intrud­er was a user who came to “the wrong place,” as he said.

The reac­tion of my acquain­tances to my behav­ior that night is mixed. My gun con­trol friends point out that the man prob­a­bly didn’t plan to harm us and bran­dish­ing a shot­gun could have pro­voked him to react vio­lent­ly. I could have shot him, inten­tion­al­ly in self-defense or acci­den­tal­ly because I was scared. Either way, he would have died by my hand and my life would have been changed for the worse forever.

My gun rights friends say it was rea­son­able to con­clude the man intend­ed to break in and do us harm, and the police couldn’t have respond­ed to a call in time to pro­tect us. They main­tain I had the right to defend my fam­i­ly with lethal force.

Both view­points make sense to me.

Frankly, I don’t know if I did the right thing that night. I didn’t have time to think about my actions back then but reflect­ing on that con­fronta­tion now as I write this post, I’d prob­a­bly do the same thing again under sim­i­lar cir­cum­stances. Right or wrong, with the safe­ty of Cindy and our baby on the line, I’d put my shot­gun on that guy’s chest and hope and pray it would be enough to make him walk away.

Post Script: Sev­er­al recent fol­low-home rob­beries that made nation­al news occurred in Han­cock Park. A home secu­ri­ty cam­era taped the most brazen inci­dent where two men fol­lowed a mom push­ing a baby stroller into her dri­ve­way and robbed her at gunpoint.