Sidebar. My First Big Case

• Author: Kenneth P. Nolan
• Pages: 62-63

Sidebar

Published in Litigation, Volume 47, Number 1, Fall 2020. © 2020 by the American Bar Association. Reproduced with permission. All rights reserved. This information or any portion thereof may not be

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KENNETH P. NOLAN

The author, a senior editor of Litigation and the author of A Streetwise Guide to Litigation (ABA 2013),

is counsel to Speiser Krause, Rye Brook, New York.

It was on Facebook that I learned Murph

had died. Even though he was not doing

great—lousy circulation cost a leg—it was

that rotten coronavirus that ended Jimmy

Murphy’s wonderful life. In his mid-70s,

he had some of those “underlying issues,”

which is the polite way to say: Don’t be

surprised he died.

Yet, I was sad and angry when I read

the post. Sad because I hate to see good

people die even though I was taught

heaven is just a fabulous, glorious place.

Angry because I had intended for months

to drive down to Jersey to sit with Jimmy

and Mary to talk about family, friends, and

growing up in Holy Name parish. But I

never did. I never sat on their couch and

lamented how gentrifiers ruined our

neighborhood, how you don’t know any-

one when you once knew everyone, and

wasn’t it so much better when we didn’t

have a nickel and slept three, four, five to

a room. Before they eagerly moved to the

suburbs after I settled Jimmy’s case for $1

million in the early 1980s.

I also wanted to thank them for what

they taught me those many years ago—

integrity, humility, commitment. They

wouldn’t hear of it, of course, and

wouldn’t have believed a word, but I

wanted to tell them anyway for it took

years, a lot of them actually, before I real-

ized that this case made me a much better

lawyer and person.

It’s impossible for you to understand

or appreciate the magical Brooklyn neigh-

borhood where we grew up—shooting

hoops in the crowded schoolyard, dodging

cars while we played stickball or slapball,

the freedom in being outside unsuper-

vised all day from age eight. My wife calls

it a cult, the obsession that my childhood

buddies and I share, as we recall, in voices

of joy and reverence, those times 40, 50,

or more years ago when life was such a

struggle but filled with love and laughter.

As evidence, I point to the recent eu-

logy of my Aunt Anne by her son, who

asked in bewilderment: “Isn’t it strange

that the happiest moments of her life

were when she lived in Brooklyn during

the Depression and the war when she

had nothing?” This about a woman who

epitomized the American dream—home

in suburban Bethesda, happily mar-

ried for more than 50 years, 5 success-

ful children, 14 beautiful grandchildren,

and 2 great-grandsons. It was into this

Windsor Terrace area squeezed between

Green-Wood Cemetery and Prospect Park

where Jimmy Murphy and Mary Trapp

were born, raised, and married.

The Pro Bono Case

One summer during law school, I vol-

unteered for the civil division of Legal

Services, assisting the many poor, unso-

phisticated tenants being tossed into the

gutter by often heartless landlords. That I

persevered in my studies after viewing the

zoo that is Housing Court in downtown

Brooklyn speaks either to my lack of in-

telligence or my indifference to gracious,

civilized behavior.

Each day, hundreds crowded the cav-

ernous, dilapidated courtroom, overseen

by judges, court officers, and clerks with

harsh demeanors and angry voices. “Sit

down, stop talking, remove your hats,

put away the newspapers,” was the cho-

rus. One judge pointed: “You. Yeah, you.

That’s right. Stop picking your nose.”

When a case was called, the bewildered

or old would shuffle to the bench and

speak of sickness or tragedy in halting,

sincere words. Often without looking up,

the question would interrupt: “You got a

lawyer?” If the tenant hesitated, the judge

would snap: “Get a lawyer. Come back in

two weeks. Next.”

Shortly after I was admitted, I was

approached by Mary with an eviction

notice from her apartment on Sherman

Street, where my family had lived since

the two-family houses were built around

MY FIRST BIG CASE