Putnam's Son New York, copyright Pages: A behind-the-scenes look at America's big money lawyers and how they operate. According to this bar officer, even judges rarely acted when they learned of lawyer misconduct.

They ordinarily do not involve things that we consider breach of duty to a client. We have been put on notice repeatedly. We will compound our own cure or someone will mix up a dose which will curl our hair. And the moving forces, notably in California, are lawyers who are willing to take other attorneys to court in malpractice cases, and judges who no longer permit the legal profession to hide behind self-constructed shields.

The most important malpractice attorney in the country, in terms of persuading the courts to write ground rules that give the layman a chance of winning a case against a lawyer, is Edward Freidberg. Freidberg first gained national note for his pursuit of Dr.

Nork, a Sacramento surgeon with a somewhat shaky scalpel who cowed and sometimes charmed his patients into unnecessary high-risk back surgery. Nork worked with all the finesse of a palsied butcher, and he maimed dozens of persons during the s. Behind Nork's confident facade, however, was a harried man who gulped amphetamines before donning his surgical jacket as much as eight times the prescribed daily dosage and who did the unnecessary cutting because he was strapped for money.

The first time Freidberg tried to sue Nork for malpractice, in , a reviewing physician looked at the records and said,. He was not as careless again. When other Nork cases surfaced, Freidberg searched until he found more than three dozen persons maimed by the surgeon.

Freidberg's massive evidence so appalled the trial judge, B. Nork's performance spoke for itself. So, too, did that of physicians who saw his mistakes and said nothing.

But Freidberg is no hypocrite: And these are just the ones I know. I'm constantly amazed at the shoddy practices. Socially prominent, if somewhat stuffy, Lewis handled most of the upper-crust divorces in Sacramento and had a thriving general practice. He was popular with other lawyers as well. But in a woman sat in Freidberg's office and told him an incredible story about Lewis' conduct. In January Clarence D. Smith retired from the California National Guard with the rank of general, after twenty-one years.

A month later his wife of twenty-four years decided to sue for divorce, and she hired Lewis to represent her. The couple had few assets: During the discussion, however, Mrs. Smith raised a question with Lewis. Could not these benefits be considered community property, and could she not share in them?

No, no, counseled Lewis, those belonged to the general alone. A preliminary decree listed only the physical assets as community property, and the court awarded Mrs.

The decree became final in February Women talk about divorce settlements, and the clucking tongues in Mrs. Now my ex-husband draws such and such dollars in retirement, and when I got my divorce, the judge said it was community property, and therefore I get,. Smith steaming back to Lewis. But evidence in the case other than Lewis' admission supported a malpractice finding, the court held. Smith began making the rounds of Sacramento law offices, trying to find someone to sue Lewis for his negligence.

Several attorneys seemed sympathetic and suggested she indeed had a case. Take the president of the bar association to court? Smith finally found her way to Freidberg's office. Whether I accept a case is not determined by the profession of the defendant. If he happens to be a lawyer, this makes no difference to me.

Although Freidberg does little domestic relations work, a few minutes' research in the major legal reference works convinced him that Lewis had goofed. The California courts had consistently held that state retirement benefits, when partially financed by an employee contribution, were community property.

But could Freidberg find concrete proof that Lewis knew the law? He dispatched a research clerk to files of the local legal newspaper, which publishes a listing of all cases filed and the names of the lawyers involved. The clerk picked out Lewis' divorce cases over the past ten years, and then went through court records.

The results warranted the work, for the clerk found numerous cases in which Lewis had listed military retirement benefits as community property.

Lewis had done so in for a National Guard reservist's wife. He had done so in for the husband in a divorce action. And he had done so for an Army colonel. But Freidberg found an astounding anomaly amidst these cases. In a divorce action Lewis had apparently.

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She had argued to the contrary and finally written the state retirement system, posing the question directly, and brought Lewis letters stating that she indeed had an interest in the pension benefits. Nonetheless Lewis had continued to insist the benefits were not community property and the woman had finally acquiesced.

The raw material is there if you want to spend the time and the money to dig it out. According to Freidberg, Lewis took the suit lightly.

He never really prepared a defense at the trial level. I devastated him during deposition. He seemed to have no idea of what the law was concerning community property, even though he specialized in family law.

He made wrong statements. The fact is, he never believed he could lose the case, because he was a lawyer, and he was prominent. He never talked settlement, and he never prepared. Freidberg prepared his case not once, but twice. Originally, several Sacramento lawyers had agreed to testify that Lewis had committed malpractice. Just before the trial, however, they called Freidberg with varying, embarrassed excuses as to why it would be impossible for them to appear. So Freidberg hurriedly recruited lawyer witnesses from San Francisco.

The trial lasted twelve days, and the jury deliberated only thirty minutes before sending word to the judge it had reached a verdict. As the jurors filed into the courtroom one of Lewis' lawyers beamed at Freidberg: And Freidberg wasn't surprised at all.

Jurors do not identify with lawyers. To prepare for the key malpractice case against Dr. On appeal Lewis argued that the community property laws are so tangled that even well-informed lawyers can differ on their interpretation.

The California Supreme Court roundly disagreed, in a five-to-one decision written by Justice Stanley Mosk. The court cited many of its own opinions to this effect, as well as standard legal reference works. And the court listed four specific criteria by which a lawyer's professional performance should be judged:.

Justice Mosk's opinion asserted that Lewis flunked all four points. Bullen; and attorneys Robert A. Seligson of San Francisco and Stephen J. All of which, of course, serves solely to whet Freidberg's appetite for battle. In fact, if I was too popular, I wouldn't be doing my job properly.

The first such case, appropriately, came against his old adversary Jerome Lewis. Lili Kromidellis, who was the chief beneficiary of her uncle's estate. She hired Lewis as her lawyer. Somehow Lewis also ended up representing the executors of the estate, and a special administrator.

The dual representation did not come to Mrs.

Kromidellis' attention until Lewis had persuaded her to settle the estate on terms which she decided were grossly unfavorable. In essence this is complicated she lost 45 percent of the estate to the uncle's disinherited son and to a woman who once lived with the uncle and cared for him.

She fired Lewis, and when he threatened to sue for payment of his bill, another lawyer referred her to Freidberg, who after reading the file gleefully took the case. Brother Lewis was not happy. As a private attorney Ed Freidberg does not come equipped with white horse and lance. Unless he is granted membership on a bar ethics committee or is a firsthand witness to legal chicanery, an individual lawyer cannot pin on a policeman's badge and patrol the behavior of his colleagues.

But malpractice suits, when they bring recompense for punitive as well as actual damages, bear the sting of punishment. In another case, this one outside Sacramento, a lawyer kept a client's money after a divorce settlement.

The amount involved was relatively small and when Freidberg wrote the lawyer a stiff letter on the woman's behalf he paid it over promptly. Lawyers shouldn't do such things. The case wasn't easy, even after Freidberg got it to court. Further, the judge's wife, under her maiden name, had a role in the case, another relationship of which Freidberg was unaware.

The judge was doing some odd things for the defense without giving me any say.

For instance, he would set a hearing, and then cancel it the night before, without giving me any notice or reasons. I demanded that he get out of the case. They don't have the time nor the money to get into more sophisticated things. But Freidberg does have a long-range confidence. Tort litigation eventually had a salutary effect on manufacturers and physicians, if only to kick their insurance rates to a level where they either took greater care or lost coverage.

Then Freidberg surprised me.

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There have been situations where I missed filing pleadings on time or let a statutory period lapse. The only way to handle it, in my opinion, is to admit error to the client and to your insurance carrier. But I sent the client to another lawyer, so she would be fully advised of her rights, and I paid her out of my own pocket. The way I see it, any lawyer can make an honest mistake.

What's worst is the lawyer who makes a mistake, and hides it, and lies to the client. This sort of lawyer, my friend, does not command any sympathy from Edward Freidberg. But the evasive lawyer, for years, did command the sympathy of the courts, which gave him privileges not afforded other professionals.

But the special protections are falling, lawyer anger notwithstanding. In another of its landmark decisions, this one handed down in , the California Supreme Court drastically revised the statute of limitations as it pertains to legal malpractice.

Page of service as full-time administrator and staff officer. In a divorce action Lewis had apparently Page insisted to a wife that she had no community interest in a pension. Page On appeal Lewis argued that the community property laws are so tangled that even well-informed lawyers can differ on their interpretation.

And the court listed four specific criteria by which a lawyer's professional performance should be judged: Page remarks to press interviewers who came around after his landmark case.