Book Review Case Closed: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Assassination of Jfk, by Gerald Posner. Random House: New York, 1993. 607pp.; $25.00
| Pages | 502 |
| Publication year | 2021 |
67 CBJ 502. BOOK REVIEW CASE CLOSED: LEE HARvEy OSWALD AND THE ASSASSINATION OF JFK, by Gerald Posner. Random House: New York, 1993. 607pp.; $25.00
An attorney has, among his roles, the responsibility of predicting for a client the likely outcome of a case or negotiation. This may at times prove difficult. As Jerome Frank has pointed out in his book, Courts On Trial.
Until there has been an enforceable court-order in a specific lawsuit, there can beo nly guesses about any legal rights or duties. And those guesses - even if they are lawyers' guesses - are not always too good, especially before a law-suit arises .... Guessing legal rights, before litigation occurs, is, then, guessing what judges or juries will guess were the facts and that is by no means easy. Legal rights and duties are, then, often guessy, iffy. (fn1)
An attorney's projections are based upon the facts presented by the client and his witnesses, as well as his understanding of the applicable case law. Indeed recent developments in the law of professional responsibility have mandated that a plaintiff's attorney: "[h]ave [the] client's facts verified by affidavit. Review the underlying documentation on which [the] client's case depends before the summons and complaint are served. Before filing the lawsuit, enlist the preliminary opinion of an expert witness regarding the proper standard of care and the defendant's alleged departure from that standard.(fn2)
Nowhere should this legal skill of good faith predictions and reasonable investigations apply more fully than to the events in Dallas thirty years ago. There have been over 2000 books published to date on the Kennedy assassination. A great legion of so-called "buffs" is presently combing the world for clues, while over eighty percent of the public clings to one conspiracy theory or another. The leading culprits are, in no particular order, the CIA, the KGB and the "Mob," but there are numerous others. The second generation of theorists apparently consists of those arguing amongst themselves over which conspiracy occurred, not whether one did at all. As Thomas Powers wrote some years ago, the assassination skeptics live "in a desert .... There is no water or life there, just the odd 'fact' surrounded by thorns.(fn3)
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