EP 703- Trial Wisdom From a Texas Legend

Episode Notes

Transcript

Announcer:

Welcome to The Jury Is Out, a podcast for trial attorneys who want to sharpen their skills and better serve their clients. Your co-hosts are John Simon, founder of the Simon Law Firm, Tim Cronin, personal injury trial attorney at the Simon Law Firm, and St. Louis attorney Erich Vith.

Tim Cronin:

Welcome to another episode of The Jury is Out. I’m Tim Cronin. I’m John Simon. And we are here today with our esteemed guest, Thomas Connor, author of the book from Cotton Fields to Courtrooms at Texas Lawyers Memoir. Tom, welcome.

Tom Connor:

Thank you. Glad to be here.

Tim Cronin:

And Tom, why don’t you just tell our listeners a little bit about yourself?

Tom Connor:

Well, thank you. I grew up in a small farming community in West Texas, south of Lubbock, and that was my formative years. I went to University of Texas at Austin for my undergraduate degree and then the University of Houston for law school. And I practiced trial law in Houston for 45 years and retired a few years back and I started writing some stories about my life and career. And I started out primarily doing it for my children. And a friend of mine from high school is a published author and has been successful. And I sent her some of my writings and she said, “You have a tremendous writer’s voice and you need to write a book.” And so that was a five-year project and the result of that was my book from Cotton Fields to Courtrooms. And I’ve described things about that I think some people might find interesting in my life and some of the cases that I had, that some even made national news and it was a thrill to write about it.

And so it culminated in my book and I’m pleased to say it’s gotten very good reviews.

Tim Cronin:

I started reading a little bit of it this morning and I planned to finish it. John and I are both first generation lawyers in our family. John’s kids are now second generation and work with him. You’re a fourth generation Texan. Are you a first generation lawyer?

Tom Connor:

I am a first generation lawyer. My dad wanted to go to law school and in fact enrolled at SMU, and it was during the depression and he could not afford to continue. And so he wanted me to be a lawyer and I’m glad he did because he certainly instilled that in me.

Tim Cronin:

My dad also, he didn’t have the opportunity to go to college or be a lawyer, but he always was convinced he’d be a phenomenal one. So he pressed me from a young age, from a young age that I should be a lawyer. And I know John has often said he thinks his dad would’ve been the best lawyer he’s ever met.

John Simon:

I’m telling you.

Tim Cronin:

Before we get into your book, 45 years practicing trying cases, what are some of you think the most important habits and personal values that sustained you through all your years of high stakes trial work?

Tom Connor:

Well, I will tell you the first thing is be honest and be honest with your other lawyers, colleagues and judges. A reputation is a hard thing to build and it’s an easy thing to destroy. And most of the lawyers I dealt with, I could deal with them with a handshake over the phone and we had a deal. And if a lawyer ever welched on that deal, I would never trust that lawyer again. And I’m happy to say that happened on very few occasions in my 45 years.

Tim Cronin:

How many cases have you tried?

Tom Connor:

Oh gosh, I don’t know. I mean, 45 years, but the judge and jury cases be hundreds. I mean- Hundreds.

Tim Cronin:

We have a lot of young listeners. Can you give us kind of some practical trial preparation lessons you’ve learned across over four decades of practice, what to do, not do, how to think about your case as you prep for it?

Tom Connor:

Well, the first thing that I would tell any lawyer is trials are not one at the trial itself. Trials are one in preparation. And a habit that I got into is that I prepared not only witness outlines and then prepared my witnesses, meeting with them. And then the other thing I did for trial itself, I would have exhibit notebooks for all of my exhibits, which I prepared in advance, and I had a copy for the opposing counsel, a copy for the judge, and a copy that I would put in front of the witnesses. And most judges, especially later in my career, as they got more efficient, we would have a pretrial conference and get all our exhibits admitted beforehand and figure out what we’d have an argument about and get that resolved. So when we started trial, it would go very smoothly. When I first started trying cases, it was not that efficient.

I mean, it was really trial by ambush most of the time. The lawyers would have their exhibits and they’d hand them to you as they started to introduce them into evidence.

Tim Cronin:

And you’ve never seen them before.

Tom Connor:

Never seen them before.

Tim Cronin:

There’s so much more. I started practicing 16 years ago, so less than John, there’s so much more work that goes into the litigation process before you get to trial now that most people’s cards are on the table and the courts kind of expect it so there isn’t surprise.

Tom Connor:

Yeah, it’s a lot different. When I was first trying cases, like my friends who were insurance defense lawyers, I mean, they’d put down file and go back to their office and pick up another one and go back to the courthouse to start another trial.

Tim Cronin:

I mean,

Tom Connor:

It was just bizarre, but they were kind of cookie cutter cases. And so I recall one insurance defense lawyer, he used the same arguments in every case and you’d anticipate what he was going to say. And you’d tell the jury, “He’s about to get up and say this. ” And sure enough, that didn’t stop him. He’d get up and do the same arguments. Some of those guys got in kind of a rut.

Tim Cronin:

I think you can’t necessarily win your case with preparation, but you can lose it by not preparing. By the mantra I state over and over again, John and I both teach trial ad at St. Louis University, our alma maters, as I try to tell students and young lawyers I work with, always be the most prepared person in the room. Absolutely. John does an issues digest that’s like a Bible before every case. He identifies every issue in the case and then goes through all the evidence and categorizes and organizes it. I don’t quite do that. But what we both do is we keep a redwell with us at all times throughout trial with our key exhibits highlighted and tabbed that we think are going to come up over and over again. And then for every single witness, I have a binder with my outline, including stuff I may only ask if I feel the need, but multiple copies of every exhibit I think I’ll use.

Even though by and large nowadays we have a trial tech that’s pulling things up, but I want to be able to give a copy to the witness, the judge, the opposing counsel, like you said, because you may have to pull it down and have everybody see

Tom Connor:

It. Let me say, I had a secret weapon.

I had probably the best paralegal in Texas, if not the world. And I mean, we’d be in trial and I’d just breathe something about an exhibit and she could put her hands on it immediately. And it really kind of got embarrassing in one case because the other lawyer was so ill-prepared and we had a copy of her exhibits and she was rustled around trying to find her exhibits. And Angie, my paralegal, would hand me her exhibit and I would hand the other lawyer her exhibit and I said, “This is what you need to do. This is what you want.

John Simon:

” We have a Caitlin who does the same thing. Yeah. Isn’t that something? It is. I think there’s nothing better. There’s nothing better than having a really good paralegal that knows where everything’s at and there’s nothing worse than that. You can’t function. If you don’t have somebody-

Tom Connor:

I told Angie, I said, “If you ever quit, I quit.” And actually when I decided to retire, I decided two years before that I would, and she came into my office. She said, “I’m burned out. ” And I said, “You have two more years in you. ” And she said, “Yes.”

John Simon:

So Tom, did you do all plaintiff stuff in your career or did

Tom Connor:

You do some defense stuff? No, I did all kind of trial work. I mean, I’ve tried will contest. I’ve tried commercial cases. I represented hospitals in malpractice defense cases, family law cases. In fact, as a very young lawyer, I represented, and this is in the book, a lady in Fort Worth called Priscilla Davis, and her husband, Cullen Davis, was the richest man ever tried for murder. And he was a wealthy oil heir and he and Priscilla were separated and he came to the house where her 12 year old daughter was, his stepdaughter. They were separated. She had the use of the house and she came in with her boyfriend at the time and they came into the house and she looked at the basement door was open and blood was smeared down the side of the wall. And she knew that whoever was in the house wanted her to go down in that basement, so she didn’t.

And she came around out of the kitchen and her soon to be ex- husband shot her and she fell to the floor and he thought she was dead. Her boyfriend came running down the stairs and he murdered him. And as a result, and he ended up being charged with capital murder and we finally got the divorce case resolved after the murder trial. And if he was found not guilty, he was represented by a very famous criminal defense lawyer in Texas named Richard Racehorse Haynes. And they moved the trial from Fort Worth to Amarillo for the murder trial and Racehorse was … I knew him and I watched him try cases and he was a great cross-examiner and he said, “I’m going to try Priscilla.” And Priscilla had led a pretty raunchy life after separating from Cullen and he had her on the witness stand, I think for four or five days on cross examination.

And the jury found not guilty because the jury instruction was they had to find to a moral certainty that he was guilty. And the jury afterwards said, “We thought he was guilty, but we couldn’t get past the moral certainty question.” Anyway, when we resolved the divorce case, this was in the late 70s, early 80s, Priscilla ended up with $7 million, which is about $26 million in today’s dollars. And she was quite a character. And I did everything I could to get her, invest the money wisely. And she went with some scam artist and she died in a one bedroom apartment at age 59 of breast cancer. So that got me … And I was a fairly young lawyer. That case, Bricella had been on the front page of People Magazine, the cover. And so that brought me a lot of notoriety. And as a result, I built a substantial divorce practice as well.

I mean, I’ve tried all kind of cases. I represented a judge who was disbarred and he was on the bench for 23 years. He was president of the Texas Probate Judge’s Association and he took a $5,000 contribution and he had a son who was in criminal trouble and he used that to hire a criminal defense lawyer. It was so awful that because he was such a great judge. And I represented him, tried to get his law license, and I lost the case. It was not a jury trial to get the law license with the state bar of Texas. It’s all judge tried to court to the judge. And I thought we put on a pretty good case because I had all kind of other judges and lawyers with very great distinction come in and testify for him. But I think it was a very young judge at the time.

And we’ve used judges here in Texas, at least used to, run by party. And this was a young Republican judge and my client was a lifelong Democrat. And I think he could have ruled either way for us, but I think it was his decision. He couldn’t … He told me at the conclusion of the trial, he said, “Well, I’ll fax my decision to you in the morning.” And I had been in my office 15 minutes later and the facts came in that he had denied our request for reinstatement. Seems to have made up his mind quickly. He made up his mind and he didn’t have the courage to look my client in the eye and say it. So anyway, those are just a wide variety of cases that I had.

Tim Cronin:

So Tom, I grew up in a small farming community in Southern Illinois. You grew up in small West Texas farming community. How did your early life experiences prepare you for the pressures of the courtroom?

Tom Connor:

Probably the best thing I can say is I grew up around a bunch of very good people. My hometown was LaMesa, Texas. It should be pronounced La Mesa for Spanish for the table because it’s very flat land, but they were just rock solid people I grew up with and they all had good values that they imparted. And I was fortunate in that regard that folks, people of my parents’ generation, we were all very close and I think that probably had more to do with my background and character building than anything.

Tim Cronin:

Was there any, and maybe you already talked about like turning point in your career as a Texas trial lawyer, something you would identify that where you kind of turned a corner and felt like you got a lot better or decided you wanted to do one thing as opposed to another?

Tom Connor:

Well, of course, as a young lawyer, when you start trying cases, you learn a lot by your mistakes.

Tim Cronin:

Yeah. Even as an older lawyer.

Tom Connor:

Yeah. And as an older lawyer too. And so if I don’t know that there was any one turning point, I would say that as a young lawyer in representing Priscilla Davis, that case made national news. And so I gained notoriety with that and notoriety at a young stage in my career. And so that had quite a bit to do with it.

Tim Cronin:

And you talked about Racehorse Haines. I think you also worked with like celebrity attorneys like the famous Joe Jamil, right?

Tom Connor:

Joe and I were good friends.

Tim Cronin:

What do you think distinguishes like a phenomenal trial lawyer from just a good competent trial lawyer? Have you noticed a quality or a set of qualities that really makes a difference?

Tom Connor:

Well, I think a lot of it has to do with personality and Jamel had personality out the kazoo. Charisma. And Jameil would do outrageous things that none of the rest of us could probably get by with.

Tim Cronin:

He had some YouTube

Tom Connor:

Videos.

Yeah. Yeah. If you’ve seen him in some of his depositions, but I recall this is a case we had against each other that I lost. The case that we lost, and Jamel was on the other side, and it was a significant case. It involved the estate of the oil man, Huroy Cullen, who he was a famous, one of the original Texas Wildcatters, Wildcatters being the folks that go drill oil wells. And he at a fairly young age struck oil in a field called the Tom O’Connor field south of Houston, and he struck oil there in 1934, and it’s still pumping oil today. And this involved his estate and a grandson who held himself out to be an Italian count that we were involved with. Anyway, most of the banks in town were parties because there were so many trusts and they brought Jamel in because he was Jamel because on the other side, the grandson was represented by the famous Roy Cone from New York.

It was a circus. Cone loved to hold news conferences. And so Jamel just thrived on that. And in one news conference, Cohen was holding all the TV cameras were there and Jamel is there and he comes up in front of all the TV cameras and he says to Cone, he says, “I heard you haven’t tried a case in over 10 years and I’ll need all the cowboys and barbed wire in Texas to get you into that courtroom.” And the press just ate it up. And then another Jamel story that the same case, it went up on appeal and this New York lawyer, appellate lawyer comes in to the appellate courtroom and Jamel and I are sitting there just to watch the appellate lawyers argue. And this guy from New York has a backpack on and he says, “Who’s Jamel? Where’s Joe Jamel?” And Jamel says, “I’m Jamel.” And the guy walks up and Jamel says, “Why are you wearing that backpack?” And the guy says, “Well, I just came in from the airport.” And Jamel says, “Well, if you know what part of your anatomy I’m going after, you’re going to law it.

” And Jamel did that stuff all the time. And as a result, he and I became good friends and I was representing a doctor in a malpractice case one time and Jamel’s partner, a fellow named Gus Colius, who’s a very good lawyer, very talented, was taking this doctor’s deposition. And Jamel walks in and sits down right in the middle of the deposition. And he said, “Doctor, my name’s Joe Jamel. Do you mind if I ask you some questions?” And I didn’t make up, I could have probably stopped it and I didn’t, but because he was not … Gus had already started the deposition, but my witness was, my doctor was so intimidated by Jamel that he could barely form words. I mean, he didn’t do anything to hurt his case, but I mean, you could just tell the mere presence of Joe Jamel because at that time he was already a very, very famous lawyer.

So anyway, he was quite a character.

Tim Cronin:

And I mean, these are the kinds of stories that you lay out in your book from your long legal- Yes.What inspired you to write from Cotton Fields to courtrooms and how do you think it can help contribute to conversations about law and justice today?

Tom Connor:

Well, I decided to write it. I may have mentioned earlier, I started to write it for my children and then found out that it was being well received and it was fun writing the book because I would decide, “Well, I’m going to write for an hour today because I was just going on and enjoying it. ” And candidly, I had to go back and do some research because some of these cases were a while back and I had to go back and find, thankfully for the internet, it was made things very easy. There was one case that I represented a lady who was married to a person from Syria and this husband threatened to kidnap their children and take them to Syria, which if you’re in a Muslim country, they don’t recognize … I mean, the man figure runs everything. And if a mother goes to Syria to try to get her children back, she would get no help from the Syrian government.

And if she goes to the US embassy, they say, “Sorry, we’re in their country. It’s their laws.” And so she had this fellow on tape saying, “I’m going to kidnap the children and take them to Syria.” So it was serious. And when I tried the case, the judge granted our request that he have no visitation and all his visitation would occur at what is called the safe program where it’s a very friendly atmosphere, but there is a fellow there in a suit and tie that happens to be a sheriff’s deputy. And in this case, the judge ruled she didn’t have to ever tell him where she was living and things like that. And at the time, the girls were like four and three. And I knew at the time we won the case that those girls at some point would grow up and probably resent their mother for keeping them apart from their father.

And sure enough, that’s exactly what happened. And so there’s some of those cases that are just unfortunate no matter what.

Tim Cronin:

You said if you’re not losing cases, you’re not trying cases and you’re not trying enough cases. And for me personally, the losses seem to stick with you more prominently and longer than the wins do. And there’s an emotional toll we carry with us. I think you discuss in your book what you call the worst day of your legal career.

Tom Connor:

I will tell you what it is.

We had a law clerk for two years and we liked him and we gave him a job as an associate. And I had a case at the time I was representing a man and he and his daughter were in a conflict over an Exxon stock certificate worth about half a million dollars. And we put that stock certificate on our safety deposit box and only my office manager and I had access to that box and we resolved the case so I needed to get the stock certificate to give to my client. And I walked into the office manager’s office and said, “Barbara, I need you to go to the bank and get this stock certificate.” And she just blanched. And she said, “Well, Clement told me that you told him to get the certificate and I gave that to him six months ago.” Oh no. And the guy somehow found some stockbroker who signed off and he sold the stock and he bought a little beach house in Galveston.

And so I had to call that client and tell him his stock certificate was gone. Thankfully, we had our employees bonded and we were able to get him paid back within about a month, but then the case got even more interesting because we wanted to get him disbarred and charged.

And so- At least. Yeah. We got him charged and the sheriff’s deputies went out to pick him up and his mother had put him in a mental hospital thinking that would save him. And the sheriff’s deputies were reluctant to go into the hospital and the doctor saying, “We can’t release him.” And so thankfully we were friends with the district attorney, Johnny Holmes, and we called Johnny and told him the problem. And he called the sheriff’s office and said, “You’ve got a warrant signed by a judge. Go pick him up. I don’t care what a hospital says.” And so during all this Melstrom going on, I happened to run into a lady that I knew from previous litigation. I said, “What are you doing that? ” And she said, “I run the county jail.” And so I told her the story about Clement and what he had done.

And she said, “Well, I’m going to put his name down because when he comes in, I’m going to put him in general population.” Well, general population in the Harris County jail is the last place you probably want to be. And he was overweight, rather effeminate young man. And we saw him about six months later when he appeared in court to plead out, and he had lost a lot of weight, had bags under his eyes, and you could tell that … I mean, it was alarming what he looked like. And you could tell that the general population in the Harris County jail had not been good for him.

Tim Cronin:

Gen Pop in the St. Louis City Jail is not an ideal place to be either.

Tom Connor:

He pleaded out for the time done and disbarred. And interestingly enough, about 25 years later, I’m reading the Houston Chronicle and it said, “Hospital purchaser charged with theft.” Well, this same guy somehow got into St. Luke’s Episcopal Hospital and approved expenditures and formed dummy corporations. And then he paid himself through these dummy corporations from the hospital approving the bill. And he ended up doing, I think he got five years in the federal penitentiary, which is, if you get federal time, you’re going to do the time. Yeah.

John Simon:

So Tom, you answered my next question I was going to ask, and it’s hard for me to understand how any rational person would do what he did and not think he was going to get caught. I mean, he goes to your office manager, gets the stock certificate. How does he think he’s going to get by with it? What was

Tim Cronin:

He thinking? And he didn’t disappear to Switzerland or anything.

Tom Connor:

No, it’s amazing. I can’t figure that out either. I mean, because he certainly threw away his career as a lawyer. And to me, to become a lawyer, as you both know, takes a little effort. And I do recount this. I remember when I took the bar exam that I took it at the University of Houston and we had this big auditorium that was set up like a appellate court. So the first, there was these nice, easy chairs for three judges, and then you looked out over the auditorium. Well, I thought that’s a great place to sit to take the bar exam. So I got there early and grabbed one of those judges chairs and I started looking at the … The proctor was walking back and forth at the top of the auditorium looking down and finally he goes and pulls this guy out. Turns out this guy had written all kind of cheat sheet stuff on his arms and hands.

And it was amazing because I thought, that guy went through three years of law school and he’ll never practice law because he tried to cheat on the bar exam. And that’s a long answer to your question. What do people who are rational would do something so stupid?

John Simon:

Yeah, you never know. I mean, it’s- What a way to start and end your career.

Tim Cronin:

Yeah, quickly.

John Simon:

Yeah.

Tim Cronin:

Yeah. The majority of the population aren’t trial lawyers, obviously. Think our battles and wins and losses and things we struggle with are just in the courtroom, but that’s not the case. John has a phrase he reminds everybody in our office, nothing good happens between settling or winning a case and getting the money. That’s often when we deal with the most

John Simon:

BS. Clients get a little bit restless.

Tim Cronin:

Yeah. And there’s always one more problem from the other side that needs to delay things, but yours is a perfect example of how like the most awful things sometimes we struggle to deal with isn’t like when we hear a verdict that doesn’t go in our favor. It’s all the other stuff that we’re dealing with at the same time.

Tom Connor:

Well, there’s plenty of drama. And I finally got the point I would have clients that would decide I was their problem and not their case. And I would have to remind them that when they walked through my front door the first time, they had all those problems and I wasn’t one of them. I had a former divorce client who I really like and he got a copy of my book and he sent me an email and he said, “I’ve told you a story of what you told me one time and I’ve probably told this story a hundred times.” And he said, “I’ve got one of my invoices and I was chafing at the amount of money that you charged and I called you and you said, Jim, do you know why divorces are so expensive?” And he said, “No, why?” And I said, “Because they’re worth it.

Tim Cronin:

“

Tom Connor:

And he said, “I’ve repeated that story many, many times.”

Tim Cronin:

I had a case years and years ago, and I was able to get it settled pretty early on. We got it filed. Not much had to be done. We didn’t have to get close to trial. The other side realized that they probably needed to pay their limits. And I had a new lawyer that was working with me and he came into the meeting with the client, the referral lawyer, and we’re going through having them sign off on the settlement allocation sheet where they know how much the expenses are, the fees are before we release the funds. And they said, “Well, you didn’t have to do very much. I think you should reduce your fee.” And I gave him a second and I was just going to explain, “Well, it’s a contingency fee and it’s about the result.” And the younger lawyer working with me just went, “If we’d taken it to trial, could we have gotten more than our contingency fee percentage?” And I went, “Hold on.

Hold on. ” But it kind of highlights the point, at some point in some cases, we end up having client management issues that are more difficult than the opposing counsel we’re working against throughout the whole case.

Tom Connor:

Well, I mean, I had clients. I just fired them. Thankfully, it didn’t happen too often, but if they were giving me too hard a time or not paying my bill, I just said, “See you, you’re gone.” I had one guy that, he was a very arrogant guy and what was in contention was the value of a business. And I said, “We need to hire an expert witness who can go in and value your business.” And he said, “No, no.” He said, “I can do that. I can testify.” I had sent letters to him and my file was papered with telling him to get an expert. And he came in one day and he hadn’t paid his bill and I fired him and he went to another lawyer. And so I told the other lawyer, I said, “The expert wishes designations are in 20 days and it was in a letter to the guy.

You need to get an expert.” Well, I forgot all about the case and about three years later, I got a letter from a lawyer saying that he’s going to sue me for malpractice. The lawyer, he was representing my old client as a plaintiffs and evidently this guy was not overly bright. I gave it to my lawyer and he called the guy up and he said, “Look, I’ve got all this. What are you suing him for? ” And he said, “Well, he failed to designate an expert witness.”

Tim Cronin:

There’s 50 letters where he said, “We need to

Tom Connor:

Testify.” And so we thought, well, they’ll dismiss the case. Well, this idiot on the other side, he kept the case and tried to prosecute it. And my contract with my clients had automatically built in that the It went to arbitration if they ever had a claim. So it went to arbitration and as soon as we filed our motion for summary judgment and the response came into the arbitrator, he ruled for me. But it was an unpleasant experience. But this lawyer that filed the case, I thought, what kind of idiot can you be? I mean, the case was a loser.

Tim Cronin:

Well, he probably thought you’re a successful lawyer and the idea of it, you’ll just turn around and settle it for something, which was a mistake. No,

Tom Connor:

No. That was not going to happen. No. And plus, anyway, what was funny in divorce contracts, I had a thing that said if it went to arbitration, it had to go to a board certified family lawyer who’d been board certified in Harris County for at least 20 years.

Tim Cronin:

So

Tom Connor:

My lawyer went to court to have it ordered to arbitration. The plaintiff’s lawyer says, “Judge, this isn’t fair. Mr. Connor’s got one of the best reputations of family lawyers in town. We’re not going to throw it to another family lawyer.”

Tim Cronin:

Yeah. So Tom, what has kept you with all the frustrations we deal with and heartaches sometimes, what kept you motivated through decades of this demanding profession?

Tom Connor:

Well, I think if you do trial work and it’s probably true of both of you, you’re kind of a type A personality and you like to succeed. And that’s what keeps you going. And when you get a good reputation and you get good cases, it feels good. I represented some people in town that were in Houston, pretty well known folks. And I had some cases that were interesting. And I also had cases that got publicity. I mean, it’s kind of a rush to run into people, say, “Oh, I saw you on TV the other night.” In fact, I had one case that we handled, it was on the tube so much that even if several years later, I’d run into people and they say, “Hey, I saw you on television the other night.” Hell, I hadn’t been on TV for three or four years. So it’s interesting the power of the tube.

Tim Cronin:

Throughout your memoir, Tom, you revisit moments where being a lawyer required not just skill, but courage at various … In my opinion, one of the most important qualities, if not the most important quality for a good trial lawyer is tenacity. What personal qualities do you think matter most in a long legal career, especially in litigation?

Tom Connor:

Well, I don’t mean to be repetitive, but the thing that I keep coming back to is your reputation and your honesty. If I went in front of a judge, I was confident if I told that judge something, they could go put it in the bank. If you don’t take your career with that kind of creed, you’re not going to have much of a success in life.

Tim Cronin:

Once you’ve lost your credibility … Well, and yeah, it applies in life too. Once you’ve lost your credibility in the legal community as an attorney, you can’t really adequately represent anybody.

Tom Connor:

I had one case, and he’s one of the few lawyers that I wouldn’t trust if he told me the son came up in the east. After the case was over, he was charged with tax evasion. Ended up spending three years in federal prison and got disbarred. Oh, wow.

Tim Cronin:

So Tom, before we kind of wrap up, can you hit us with one more of your favorite stories from your book or not from your book?

Tom Connor:

Well, one that comes to mind was I represented a young lady and her father passed away and he was a widower. Her mother passed away and left her estate to her and she hired another sleazeball lawyer and he was a handsome beguiling guy. It didn’t take him long to probate the father’s will and it didn’t take him very long to get her in his bed. And so at the conclusion of the case, he has says, “I need you to sign some documents to finish your case out. ” Well, the document she signed was to deed over about a half a million dollars of land to him and then a release for anything he may have done. And we had to try that case to a jury. That can’t

Tim Cronin:

Be legal.

Tom Connor:

No, it’s not.

Tim Cronin:

That could possibly be. That’s some release,

John Simon:

Huh?

Tim Cronin:

Specific prohibitions against

John Simon:

That. We should start adding language like that. Yeah.

Tom Connor:

I sued him for malpractice fraud, everything I could think of. And we prevailed and as we should have. And he appealed the case and as part of the judgment, we got $100,000 of punitive damages.

Tim Cronin:

Yeah.

Tom Connor:

And he posted a supersedious bond. And for the listeners who don’t know what that is, when he posted that bond, that meant if he lost the appeal, we got our $100,000 because he didn’t want us coming after his bank accounts and his cars and boats and stuff. And so several years later, I got a call from a fellow and he said, “Do you know anything about this lawyer, Joe Jones?” And I said, “Yeah, I know a lot about him.” He starts telling the story about his mother, elderly mother had hired him and had turned over about a couple of hundred thousand dollars to him. And that’s where I figured out, I looked at the timeline and that’s where that $100,000 came from, from the supersedeas bond.

Tim Cronin:

Oh my God.

Tom Connor:

And I told this guy, I said, “I wish I could be of some help to you, but this fella is … I don’t know where he is now and he’s been disbarred, but it was an interesting case to try.” I do remember one part of it, his lawyer was making final argument in front of the jury and the trash can by the court reporter was full of old coffee cups and brimming over the trash and everything. And his lawyer kept backing up into this trash can and the trash can kept tipping over and tipping over and tipping over and the jury was mesmerized by it. They were watching that trash can the whole time. And sure enough, he finally knocked it over and coffee went all on the floor and everywhere else. So anyway, it’s all kind of fun stories happen.

Tim Cronin:

Well, Tom, you’ve had a fascinating and long legal career. We encourage our listeners to purchase your book, which is again from Cotton Fields to Courtrooms by Thomas Connor. How can you get the book? Tom, is it available on Amazon or-

Tom Connor:

It’s available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and I have a website called tomconerbooks.com, C-O-N-N-E-R, Tomconorbooks.com. And if you go to that website, it give you a lot of information about the book and the reviews and how to get copies. And I appreciate you folks having me on today.

Tim Cronin:

Oh, thank you for coming. It’s been a pleasure.

Tom Connor:

Tom,

John Simon:

It has been a pleasure and it’s been wonderful chatting with you and getting to know you.

Tom Connor:

Okay. Well, thank you very much.

Tim Cronin:

This has been another episode of The Jury is Out. I’m Tim Cronin.

John Simon:

I’m John Simon. We’ll see you next time.

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