Atwood tapped his cigarette on the heavy crystal ashtray, leaned back in his partner’s chair, and demanded I give him the brief.

I wanted to proofread it again. “And anyway,” I said, “it’s not due till next week.”

“You represented that you would complete it sooner.” 

Represented? Was Atwood accusing me of fraud? Lawyers used “represented” to describe such conduct, as in “a representation of a material fact.” Atwood—a lateral hire and the law firm’s newest partner—never said, “you promised” or “you said.” Law school and five years of practice had scrubbed all traces of simplicity from his diction. “Provided, howevers” and other phrases from Black’s Law Dictionary had hijacked his vocabulary. 

Atwood’s hand shook as he reached for his massive coffee mug, and it continued to shake as he puffed on his cigarette—like so many people did in their offices in 1974. He hunched forward before saying, “Have you made certain to analyze every issue in this important matter?”

What issues? This was a collection case that had rolled downhill to me, the newest lawyer in the firm, barely six months in. The law couldn’t be more elementary. Someone had borrowed money from a bank we represented. The man signed a note. Now he’d defaulted. Nevertheless, for twenty minutes, Atwood stretched this lawsuit into a slog, invoking every aspect of contract law. Formation. Offer. Acceptance. Consideration. He took another hit of coffee. “There was good and valuable consideration for the subject note.”

I wanted to say something sarcastic but held off.

He pressed on. “Is the action barred by the statute of frauds?”

Huh? That doctrine didn’t apply to writings. “Atwood,” I said, “the defendant signed a promissory note. You just said so.”

He waved a hand, the hand with a cigarette between his fingers, before resuming his lesson.

“Are there constructive conditions of performance? What about when the defendant said he didn’t owe the money? Following that utterance, was there a novation? An accord and satisfaction?” 

Atwood curled his cherry-red lips around the cigarette before moving on. “Was there a discharge of obligation?” 

He must have memorized the table of contents of a textbook on contracts. This session was turning into the equivalent of an intern announcing the patient had a hangnail and the resident marching him through every disease that could attack the human body. I had no choice; breathing as little as possible because Atwood’s office reeked of smoke, I pretended to listen. By the time he stopped, I was sure his coffee had turned cold and I’d have a stroke.

***

Despite his black hair, Atwood reminded me of a stuffed goose. His voice was always set on boom, laced with a sanctimonious tone. It was 1970s Los Angeles, but the suit he wore screamed Middle America 1964. He may have become a lawyer five years before me; he may have been a foot taller than I; but I sensed a shriveled ego. 

He seemed too eager to please his superiors. For instance, the favorite adverb of our senior partner, Mr. Morris, was “totally,” and within a month of joining the firm, it became Atwood’s favorite too. Before the day was out, I heard him greet Mr. Morris near the kitchen, which was about thirty feet from my office. Atwood must have had his empty coffee mug in hand, en route to a refill. In a voice lacing sarcasm with docility, he said, “You know what those dummies at the bank did? They charged off a promissory note. Then they totally…”

Gently, Mr. Morris cut in. “How interesting,” he said before adding that he had to make a phone call.

The next morning, Atwood walked into my office and threw my brief on the desk. As he stomped out, he yelled, “I don’t even want to talk about it.” He’d attached a handwritten screed that branded my work “totally unsatisfactory.” 

The words stung. I thought I’d done a credible job. 

“Rewrite it at once,” he wrote on page three. “Do not bill for your time, because the client had a right to expect your work product to be performed in a correct and proper manner the first time.” 

He concluded with “Unless your work in this case shows a substantial improvement, I will have no alternative but to ask Mr. Morris to relieve you from this case.” 

It took ten minutes for me to stop hyperventilating. I cycled between feeling like a failure and wanting to barge into Atwood’s smoke-filled office and hit him. I swore if he ever appeared in my crosshairs, I’d fire.

I spent the entire day redoing the brief, inserting every legal detail Atwood wanted. He even demanded what we call parallel case cites, totally unnecessary. When Mr. Morris asked if I had time for a project and I told him what I was doing, he shook his head and poo-pooed Atwood’s “law review arrogance.” Then he shrugged his shoulders. “Oh, do what he wants. Let’s keep peace in the family.” 

I filed the brief and won. No big achievement. And it didn’t erase the certainty that I would not last in the law firm. Not with Atwood as a partner. Seven months later, when I left, I rejoiced at the prospect of never seeing him again.

***

But I did see him again.

It was a generation later. I was a Superior Court judge on the Los Angeles bench, hearing civil cases. In walked Atwood for a routine trial-setting conference. But for the day’s printed docket, which listed the attorneys, I would not have known who it was.      

Atwood’s hair had turned albino white. His posture resembled the curve of a question mark. His lips had lost their rouge. And his voice. What happened to that obnoxious blast? He’d left our law firm and, so said the docket, become a solo practitioner with an office in a humdrum area of town. With silent deference, he stood before me, his hands free from coffee and cigarettes. 

I knew enough not to act surprised. 

“Good morning, counsel,” I said. 

Atwood stuttered out a weak “Good morning, Your Honor.” 

“I have read your status conference brief,” I told Atwood, taking care to avoid a contraction. “It appears to be in order. Is your time estimate for the trial still accurate?”

“Yes, Your Honor,” Atwood said. 

“The same for your witness and exhibit list?” I asked.

“Yes, Your Honor.”

Sounding more confident than Atwood, his opposing counsel agreed.

I wonder if Atwood recalled dressing me down. Maybe he’d bullied so many new lawyers, he didn’t remember me at all. If he did, did he sense the turned table? Or did he write it off to happenstance? Did Atwood tell his opposing counsel we’d worked together in the same law firm, a remark meant to unnerve the man, make him think I’d play favorites? Or did Atwood draw his opponent aside, label me an incompetent lawyer, boast that he’d scolded me, and wonder how any governor could have put me on the bench? My guess is the former, only because that would have been a better litigation tactic. 

I rarely hold grudges, but when I do, I’m not afraid to strike hard. From 1974 until that morning in 2008, I wanted to get even with Atwood. Judicial ethics prohibited judges from, for example, dismissing a case out of spite. But there were ways I could harm him on the margin. A snippy phrase in a minute order. A comment dropped to colleagues in the lunchroom. A “no” vote if Atwood wanted to join a bench-bar committee. I had options, but the longer he stood before me, the more my vitriol evaporated. He made me feel like the hunter about to gun down a fawn before, struck by conscience, he let it live. I didn’t realize why until later that night. 

Waiting for sleep to come, I remembered an occasion when Atwood assigned another case to me. Its details escape memory, except that it required another trip to court.

I won that encounter too, against stronger odds, and I was excited enough to run to a pay phone and call Atwood. 

“Oh wow,” he said, genuine glee in his voice. “That’s wonderful. Congratulations, Tony. You got a good result.” I heard him breathe, probably between puffs on his cigarette. That phone call may have been the only occasion Atwood made me feel worthy.

Regardless of the past, like every lawyer in my courtroom, Atwood deserved my neutrality. And had I been aware of that second case during our trial-setting conference, I’m sure I still would have said nothing more than “Very well, counsel. I’ll mark this case as ready, and the trial date will stand.” 

While I don’t recall what else Atwood said during the hearing other than “Thank you, Your Honor,” I’m positive he never said “totally.”

About the Author:

Anthony J. Mohr’s work has appeared in, among other places, Commonweal, DIAGRAM, Hippocampus Magazine, Los Angeles Review, North Dakota Quarterly, Superstition Review, and ZYZZYVA. His debut memoir Every Other Weekend—Coming of Age With Two Different Dads (Koehler Books) was published in 2023 and placed first in nonfiction in the Firebird Awards and first in the autobiography/memoir category of the American Writing Awards. A six-time Pushcart Prize nominee, he is on the staff of Under the Sun. From 1994 to 2021, he sat as a judge on the Superior Court of California, County of Los Angeles. He still serves there on a part-time basis.

*Feature image by Kateryna Hliznitsova on Unsplash