Embed Size (px)
Citation preview
The Scarlet LettersAuthor(s): Louis AuchinclossSource: Litigation, Vol. 34, No. 4, TRIALS, TACTICS, TOOLS (Summer 2008), p. 76Published by: American Bar AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/29760683 .
Accessed: 16/06/2014 00:32
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].
.
American Bar Association is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Litigation.
http://www.jstor.org
This content downloaded from 188.72.126.88 on Mon, 16 Jun 2014 00:32:39 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Literary
Trials
The Scarlet
Letters
by Louis Auchincloss
^^^^^
Editor's Note: During his long life, Louis Auchincloss has been a practicing law?
yer and a prolific novelist, documenting a privileged Manhattan lifestyle redo? lent of Edith Wharton and Henry James.
Beginning in the 1940s and continuing at the age of 90, Auchincloss has been
documenting that society. He has been called a "white-shoe lawyer, white-glove writer," but his popularity points to a sto?
ryteller whose insight into human emo? tions endures. His novel The Rector of Justin was a Pulitzer Prize candidate. This excerpt from The Scarlet Letters is
typical of the Auchincloss style.
One day, when Harry was uptown in her
neighborhood for the will-signing of a rich invalid client, he asked Jane to lunch with him at the Plaza, and she decided it would be the perfect occasion to quiz him about Rod and his law practice. She was well aware that Harry would delight in making things sound even worse than
they were, but she thought she would know how to interpret this.
"I know people used to frown on these
corporate raids, if that's what they're called," she began when they had finished their cocktails and were about to order. "But if everyone's doing them now, they
^ can't be all that bad, can they?"
"Oh yes, they can!" Harry exclaimed
cheerfully. "Face it, my dear, your husband and I are running a firm of
shysters."
"Shysters! But Rod assures me that
everything he does is strictly legal." "Well, I should certainly hope so!
That's what the clients pay him for. And
through the nose, too. When I say we're
shysters, I mean that's what we would have been called a generation back. Now the term has been cleaned up. In fact, it's
rarely used anymore." "What has changed it?"
"Prepare your pretty head for a little lecture. In the past, legal ethics required that an attorney should invoke the aid of a court only to recover a sum due, or for
damages suffered by his client, or to pre? vent an anticipated wrong, or to enforce the performance of a legal duty. To sue in a court of law simply to harass a cli? ent's opponent into doing something he
Literary Trials is edited by Robert Aitken, an Associate Editor of Litigation, who is a lawyer in Pahs Verdes Estates, California.
Excerpted from The Scarlet Letters by Louis Auchincloss. Copyright ? 2003 by Louis Auchincloss.
Reprinted by permission of Houghton Miffiin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
was not legally obliged to do would have been shysterism, pure and simple."
"And that is no longer the case?" "Can you ask? Don't you read the
newspapers? Nowadays, when one wishes to acquire a company that doesn't wish to be acquired, one's counsel bring all kinds of nuisance suits to induce it to
change its mind. We sue for mismanage? ment by the directors, for unpaid divi?
dends, for violations of the bylaws, for
improper issuance of stock. We allege criminal misconduct; we shout about antitrust; we sue for ancient and dubious liabilities. And our opponent's counsel
will answer with inordinate demands for all our files and seek endless interroga? tories in order to enmesh our client in a
hopeless tangle of red tape. But my point is that in no case is either party in the least interested in obtaining the objective for which it is ostensibly suing. It is sim?
ply war, and you know the quality that
applies to that in love." "And that's no longer being a
shyster?" "Only in the sense that everyone is.
Oh yes, even the grandest of the grand old downtown firms. As they've moved to midtown, they've adjusted their stan? dards. Even the 'most potent, grave and revered signiors,' as Othello called them.
Why not? It was the price of survival." "And that's what Rod is so heroic
about," she murmured. "Harassment."
"Well, there are all kinds of killers in the jungle, you know. There are some that
play with their prey, like cats with mice, and some that start to eat them before
they are dead, like hyenas, and some that kill for fun, like lions with cheetah cubs. But I'll say this for Rod. He's like the African wild dog, the swiftest and least
painful killer who takes only just what he needs for his pack. Rod is the greatest artist at the game."
"But what does it all lead to?" Jane demanded with something like a wail. "Will companies keep swallowing com?
panies until there are none left?" "Or until only one is left!" Harry
exclaimed with a delighted laugh. "One
megacorporation making all the trash the world thinks it needs! And what will rise to put an end to this monster? What new Caligula, whose wish that humanity had but a single throat for him to cut has come true!"
"Oh, Harry, to you everything is a
joke." "I take you seriously enough, Jane
dear." Q
Litigation Summer 2008 Volume 34 Number 4
This content downloaded from 188.72.126.88 on Mon, 16 Jun 2014 00:32:39 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
