Mark Levison, The Levison Group
Trial work is tough and real. We deal with the hopes, emotions and sometimes fortunes (or lack thereof) of our clients. The other side almost invariably is fighting for the same types of things, but headed in the opposite direction. My litigation schedule has been intense lately, so I did what I often do in times like this. I drove to New Orleans. There is no place better to escape from reality. After all, in New Orleans you can never really be sure if the females you are talking to are females; you can smoke cigars in restaurants; you can take your drink out onto the street, and you can even buy a pina colada at a drive-thru window. If that is not an escape from the reality of grinding trial work, I don’t know what is.
In fact, one of the New Orleans tour companies is called “Machu Picchu Tours”. You might expect such companies to have names like “Alligator Bayou” or “Cajun Sallie’s Tours,” but you wouldn’t expect a tour company to be called Machu Picchu! I guess after downing enough Hurricanes tourists might be convinced they actually visited Machu Picchu. It’s just part of the altered universe that exists at the mouth of the Mississippi.
Cheryl and I drove to New Orleans with our son Andrew and his girlfriend Brianna to celebrate his 25th birthday. We surprised Andrew by having his older brother Patrick — now a first year lawyer — fly in with his wife from Madison, Wisc. It’s a little different being in New Orleans with a younger generation. After all, the French Quarter is a place where one can easily make mistakes. Those of us who have been around a while may be a little less susceptible to your typical New Orleans blunder.
Andrew’s friend Brad (not his real name) happened to be in New Orleans making a presentation at a medical conference. We all went out for dinner and drinks. Cheryl and I returned to the hotel long before the younger members of our party were ready to call it a night. Unfortunately, after a number of drinks at the Lafitte’s Blacksmith Shop Bar, purportedly the oldest structure used as a bar in the entire United States, the youngsters decided it was Hurricane time.
Senior lawyers may not be aware of the internet hookup service known as Tinder. On Tinder you post pictures, and information about yourself, and when you visit a new town you look for other Tinder users in that town, and if they give you a “wink” you may immediately meet. It’s a more, let’s say, instantaneous service than something like E-Harmony. Apparently, on the way back to his hotel, Brad decided to subscribe to Tinder Prime, a pay site. Unfortunately, his phone and internet were connected with his girlfriend back home, who through the wonders of technology, quickly learned her boyfriend was trolling for something other than shrimp in New Orleans. During a withering e-mail cross-examination, he “admitted” he really wasn’t looking for women to meet, rather, he was just trying to determine which local women were on Tinder so he could tease and make fun of them. Yes, that was his sworn defense! Even his excuse made him look bad.
The night’s adventure put Brad in a somber mood for a cemetery tour the next day. New Orleans is one of the only places in the world that makes money off of cemeteries. On the tour we visited the above-ground resting site of Homer Plessy. You may remember Homer as a party in the landmark Plessy v. Ferguson Supreme Court decision determining that separate but equal was good enough. (Eventually a later Supreme Court saw things differently in Brown v. Board of Education). Plessy was a New Orleans octoroon; in other words, one-eighth Black; in other words, in 1890s New Orleans: Black. Plessy’s adversary, trial Judge John Howard Ferguson, is also buried in New Orleans. He, however, is in a separate cemetery — presumably of equal beauty.
Unlike most vacation hideaways, in New Orleans one can visit the Museum of Death. That museum holds particular interests to lawyers because it houses Jack Kevorkian’s original suicide machine as well as letters from what is touted as “infamous serial murderers”. Other quaint aspects of the museum are its antique mortician apparatuses, it’s graphic car accident photos (a favorite among PI lawyers), cannibalism and the always popular “Manson family photos.” The flyer my wife showed me had a disclaimer, which was probably written by a lawyer. It warned that visiting the Museum of Death might not be the best way to spend an afternoon with your kids while in New Orleans.
Since the theme in the French Quarter is “let the good times roll,” there was never a day when we didn’t observe somebody on the street sitting down in an attempt to rally, or in some cases, lying flat on their backs after having given up on any concept of a rally. One night, waiting outside our hotel, I noticed a 60-year-old Caucasian with his legs in the street, and his upper torso on the sidewalk. He was a big man, maybe 6-3?, 240 pounds, with a square face and short graying hair. He looked like an ex-Marine. There were two Black New Orleans policemen on either side of the drunk, trying to help him. Eventually, a couple of policewomen showed up, and then two policemen driving beautiful Harleys, which they displayed as if in a Mardi Gras parade and then drove away. Meanwhile, the drunk fellow kept trying to get on his feet but wasn’t quite able. He couldn’t be left alone, so eventually an ambulance inched its way through the tourists on Bourbon Street. The all Black officer team tried to talk this strong and inebriated white guy into climbing a couple of steps into the ambulance. He refused, and started cursing at them. Assessing the situation, officer C. Banks, who appeared to be in charge, determined it would be very difficult to get the fellow to walk up the steps, into the side door of the ambulance, since he didn’t want to and Banks didn’t want to force him. The option was to arrest the drunk, or somehow get him laying down on the ambulance’s stretcher, which could then be loaded into the back of the ambulance. Eventually the police/paramedic team lowered the fellow onto the stretcher and strapped him in. He was spewing profanities.
Given the spate of recent controversies over police handling the likes of Eric Garner and Michael Brown, it was refreshing to watch seasoned, New Orleans police officers deal with an irate drunk in such a professional manner. When Officer Banks had him safely in the ambulance, the crowd on Bourbon Street started to clap. Banks and the others had done their jobs, probably the way they handled similar incidents many, many times before. Maybe the scene I witnessed plays out five times a night on Bourbon Street — maybe a hundred times a night across the country. These incidents don’t get any press. But the fact is, every minute of the day, all across the country, police officers are doing good things and protecting us — sometimes from ourselves. Like any group of lawyers, doctors or plumbers, there are going to be policemen that aren’t as good as the rest. Recently we heard plain-clothes New York police detective Cherry screaming at an immigrant in what appears to be a road rage incident. We all have good and bad days.
Overall, the escape to New Orleans reminded me that most of us would rather just have fun. We try to be good to each other, and most of us are. It is easy to write about negative behavior, but positive things happen every day.
In the meantime, Brad convinced his girlfriend to take him back contingent on the irrevocable promise that he would never, ever set foot in the French Quarter again.
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© 2015 Under Analysis, LLC. Under Analysis is a nationally syndicated column of the Levison Group. Mark Levison is a member of the law firm of Lashly & Baer. Contact Under Analysis by e-mail at comments@levisongroup.com.
