March 21, 2013

12 of 65

CREATING CHANGE THROUGH THE LEGAL PROCESS

As much as I may enjoy writing about sports and recreation and dogs, a lot of life revolves around one’s occupation.  Most of us have to go to work.

After I graduated from the University of Colorado, I spent a year away from school to decide if I wanted to attend law school or get an advanced degree in psychology.  I chose law school believing that as an attorney I could change some of the things that are wrong with the world.  If you want to know whether I was able to create change, the answer is affirmative.  The legal process can be tedious and cumbersome, but it often produces change.  Here is a story to illustrate what can be accomplished.

When I was a young lawyer and just started my own practice, I shared office space with several other attorneys.  One small firm there consisted of a lawyer named Al Zinn and his young associate, Lee Schiller.  Theirs was a practice that revolved around the defense of traffic tickets.  Lee was scheduled to be in Jefferson County Court for an appeal of a traffic matter on the Monday following his weekend wedding.  For obvious reasons, he asked if I could appear for him at the hearing.

The case did not seem complex on the surface.  The defendant had been given a ticket for making a right turn while the light was red at the corner of Allendale Drive and Ralston Road in Arvada, despite a sign which said “no right turn on red.”  The driver decided to contest the ticket (he could not afford additional points against his driver’s license) and hired Al Zinn to represent him in Arvada Municipal Court.  Al would probably have lost a trial to the court, so he demanded a jury trial.  After all the evidence was presented, the jury found the defendant guilty and Al appealed the conviction to Jefferson County Court.

The Municipal Court in Arvada was not a court of record – meaning that there was no transcript of the trial – so the appeal was a new trial before the county judge.  At the conclusion of the evidence, Al argued that the sign simply said “no right turn on red”; it did not say red what.  Was it red shirt, red chili, Red Riding Hood?  The judge agreed with that reasoning and dismissed the charges.  Really.

The Arvada City Attorney was not happy with that result, so he appealed to the next higher level.  The appeal from County Court was heard by a judge in the Jefferson County District Court.  Since the County Court was a court of record, the City had to pay for a transcript of the trial and that transcript was reviewed by the district judge.  Strangely (or perhaps not so strangely), the district judge disagreed with the decision of the county judge, which meant the case went back to County Court for yet another trial.

It was at that third trial that I represented the defendant.  Through my questioning of the arresting officer, I established that the alleged offense occurred after dark; that the “no right turn on red” sign was above the traffic signal; and that, like almost all traffic signals, this one had a hood above each colored light so the light would be directed toward the traffic in the street.  I argued that it was clearly impossible for a driver to see the sign at night.  The county judge agreed and he dismissed the charges once again.  This time, no appeal was taken.

A few weeks later, I happened to be driving through the intersection of Allendale Drive and Ralston Road and observed that a new street light had been installed to directly illuminate the “no right turn on red” sign.  I was gratified:  My legal argument had caused real and substantial change in the world.

There were other changes I helped bring about.  For instance, as a result of products liability cases in which I represented an injured plaintiff, manufacturers changed the design of a power saw, a rock crushing machine and even a military helicopter.  Each of those cases is another long story.  No change is simple in the legal system.  It is an adversary system, the nature of which is to cause each side to become intransigent and resist change.  Nevertheless, change can result.

Most of the changes that happen through the legal system, though, are of a different nature.  They are changes not in the world or the society, but in the lives of those who go through the system.  Here, I am not talking about companies whose business requires litigation or administrative proceedings or contract review on a regular basis.  I am talking about individuals who would much prefer to lead their lives without ever talking to a lawyer of seeing the inside of a courtroom.

These are the people who are thrust into the legal system because a problem has arisen in their lives.  Perhaps they have been injured and must sue to obtain compensation.  Perhaps they have lost a job or accrued substantial medical bills and must consider bankruptcy.  Perhaps they have been arrested and are facing a jail term.  Perhaps they are going through a nasty – or even an amicable – divorce.  No matter. The system is designed to somehow resolve those problems.  It is true that the resolution that comes through the legal system is often unsatisfactory to all parties involved.  The result, though, is change.  The participants usually come away from the system acting or feeling or living differently than before.

A good lawyer can help people understand and adapt to all of those kinds of changes.  And some of the changes do leave the world a better place, which is what I was hoping to accomplish.