The Observer Newspapers | Our Town: The Power of a Great Judge

July 17, 2009

The Power of a Great Judge

By Tom Grein

Former Observer Editor and Publisher

The confirmation hearings on the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor for U.S. Supreme Court justice, which are presently underway, remind me of how powerful and important judges are, no matter at what level they serve.

I have been involved in a few court cases, all of which revolved around the newspapers at which I served at the time. They ranged from circuit courts in Fairfax County, Va., and Dodge County, Neb., to the State Supreme Court of Nebraska. In each case I, or the newspaper, was the plaintiff.

The most important case in which I was involved was a dispute over a closed-door meeting of the Board of Education in Fremont, Neb. The board voted to let a contract for a new heating system for the high school, skirting the bidding process.

The newspaper only wanted the board to nullify the contract and do it legally, in public. They refused and we sued. As the editor, my name was on the suit. We won the case at the district level and then again on appeal.

Then, for some reason, the board's attorney appealed the decision to the state Supreme Court. We were ecstatic, as this could make case law and strengthen the closed meeting laws.

Six months later the Supreme Court overwhelmingly ruled in our favor, making case law that would last forever. The judges issued a unanimous decision which ended in a document that went far beyond our hopes.

The new law, titled "Grein vs. the Board of Education," is still quoted in many court proceedings in the state. In this case, the judges strengthened the law by interpreting the law as it was written. That was in the early 1980s.

Every once in a while, I Google it and find recent cases where it is used. I still get a kick out of it.

But a case in which I had only a peripheral interest was my most satisfying.

It involved a case in which a person was killed in a pickup truck when it accidentally burned up. The family sued Ford Motor Co., and in due process I received a phone call from a legal firm in New York requesting photographs we had taken of the accident.

I had not been with the newspaper, the Fremont (Neb.) Tribune, at the time of the accident so it took some research to find the photographs. As was our policy, I told the attorney that he could have a copy of only the photo that appeared in the newspaper, and he would need a subpoena to obtain it.

The attorney flew to Fremont, presented me with the subpoena, and demanded an eight by 10 inch print of every photo we took of the accident, whether we published it or not. I said we would not do that. He was miffed.

He flew back to New York and three days later a new subpoena arrived in my mail for all the unpublished photos. After checking with our attorney we decided to do it and to charge the law firm our normal rate for prints.

The judge of the District Court, a person I had dealt with on several occasions, instructed me to bring the prints to the courthouse, with an invoice, and the court would handle the rest.

When we checked the files for the negatives, we found that the photographer took three rolls, each with 36 exposures. We printed them allÑa total of 102 prints. Most of them were nearly the same.

A week later the same attorney returned from New York and we all appeared in court. The judge asked me if I had all of the prints. "Yes," I answered. "And the invoice?" he asked. "Yes, sir," I said.

The attorney asked how much. Our published rate for photos was $20 per print, for a total of $2,040. "Send me the bill," the attorney asked. "No way," said the judge. "Pay the court first."

He pulled out his credit card which the judge denied. "Cash or check," he said. The attorney paid for them with his personal check, and left an angry and defeated man.

The court sent us a check a week later. I paid the photographer for his time printing the photos and we threw a party for the entire newspaper staff with the remainder.

ItÕs great to get the last word in on an attorney. Thanks to the judge, that was a real victory.

But back to Sonia Sotomayor. She, as well as all other Supreme Court justices, should do what these Nebraska judges did: Apply the law as it is written.

Is that such a tough job?

And that's Our Town this week.

(You can reach me at baycity61@yahoo.com. Please write. Your emails will have a great chance of finding their way into the comment section of this column, like the following.)