1. Michael D. Shear, For Obama, “Executive action on Immigration Would be a Turnabout,” The New York Times, November 17, 2014

David S. Bloomfi eldBloomfi eld & Kempf

dbloo@msn.comOrsolya Hamar-Hilt

Offi ce of Disciplinary CounselOrsolya.Hamar-Hilt@sc.ohio.gov

Spring 2015 Columbus Bar Lawyers Quarterly 7

“Hello, dear, this is your Auntie Melba. I just cleaned out the root cellar before we move to Palm Desert, and I found boxes of old family photos and stuff I thought you might want to keep.” In Melba-speak “you might want to” translates to “you bloody well better,” so, you borrow a minivan and steel yourself for the olfactory pleasures of damp rot awaiting you.

The CBA recently got such call from a far more gracious version of Melba in the form of Angela Baldree, MLS, the Director of the Franklin County Law Library. The library had shuffl ed off to interim quarters whilst remodeling ocurreth. Space was at a premium. Faced with deciding whether to house Corpus Juris Secundum or sundry bricbrac that had accreted over the years in their version of the root cellar, they chose – being librarians after all – tomes (however useless) over other detritus of the decades. They decided to put out a call to the CBA rather than the Salvation Army, believing, I suppose, that the Army would be more chary about what they would/would not take. Thus bidden, we fi red up the CBA’s 1948 Dodge pickup and rolled on down to the seat of justice. As it turned out, the library’s dross was a trove of local lawyer history crammed with revealing tidbits of the way we were.

Amid the gifted items are a couple pictorial collectives of the Franklin County bar and bench. One is from 1897 and features exactly 0 women and 119 men, only 26 of which were without discernable facial hair. A 1955 en masse selfi e of the bar depicts 574 men (1 beard and a thin scattering of mustaches), 4 women, 2 drag queens, and a mime (just kidding about the mime). Assuming we could assemble the current crop of CBA members in a single frame, today’s picture would have 71% males and 29% females – better but not still good enough.

As interesting as the pictures are, more fascinating still is a large scrapbook (actually, a repurposed docket book) in which unknown curators pasted various items on top of offi cial court journals of the day-to-day goings on in divorce court circa 1919. Maddeningly, the assemblers were less than assiduous about dating inserted items and did not follow any discernible chronology. Amid the pages, however, is an amazing assemblage of fragile clippings (somewhat redolent of the bouquet of Melba’s root cellar) about the lives and deaths of members of the Franklin County legal community. Only a teaser sampling is possible here.

Perhaps the place to start is a drawing of what is now the old, old, old courthouse that burned to the ground in January 1879.

Continued on Page 8

LARGESS FROM THE LAW LIBRARYBy Bruce Campbell

Continued from Page 7

It and its successor, stood on the ground that is now the small park on the South East corner of Mound and South High. That building in turn was replaced by the soulless, midcentury-modern building across High Street called the “Hall of Justice” which has recently been transformed into a much more attractive and functional facility connected by tunnel to the new, new, new Courthouse. As a bonus, the new design allowed Ben Franklin to come inside out of the weather.

Evoking the goings on in one of those courthouses (likely the second) is a cartoon satirizing the political tensions regarding the judiciary of an earlier era.

Things just never change except for who is in and who is out.

A few pages later is a clip datable to 1926 only by peeling it back to reveal a story on the other side. It tells the tale of lawyer Charles S. Druggan who “for some unaccountable reason grew a set of mutton whiskers six months ago [and] for some unaccountable reason shaved them off late yesterday.” It seems Druggan was summoned to appear before the Grand Jury as a witness that day. Wags suggested that the two events were related. Durggan adamantly contended that there was no such connection and that he had parted with the chops because “the weather is moderating.” He said “I

have not been forced into anything. It’s a free country isn’t it? Or was.”

Guess there were slow news days back then too.

Scattered about the pages are more engaging vignettes about local lawyers and judges. One article noted, without a hint of sarcasm, that Judge Dana F. Reynolds somehow “convinced” nearly 100% of court employees to sign up

for memberships in the Columbus Zoo (of which he was Chairman) and that a “mopping up of strays” was in progress. As an aside, I would note that much later, I practiced (in the full sense of the word) before Judge Reynolds in his infamous crack of dawn, Saturday morning broom sweeps of the entire uncontested divorce docket (notwithstanding that he was a General Division not a Domestic Judge). Lawyers were given about a minute and a half to have both parties and two character witnesses say all the magic words necessary to support the divorce decree. Woe be unto counsel who had not meticulously rehearsed the four or failed to kick them in the shins if they went on too long. Speedy justice at its fi nest.

Those who may be nostalgic about the days when judicial races were more civil may have that delusion punctured by some campaign materials in the book concerning the 1938 election. For example, Municipal Judge August W. Weber, running against incumbent Common Pleas Judge John R. King (“endorsed by the Columbus Bar”), ran an ad attacking his opponent on the grounds that in recent years, Weber, he contends, had become “unable to see to read or observe the color and facial expressions of a witness” and had to have others read documents to him. The pamphlet rails on about how a judge should be at least as fi t as the average juror. Shall we count the folks and organizations that would fi nd that offensive today?

An article with a hand stamp of Jan. 8, 1914, entitled “Report of Secretary, Franklin County Bar Association” indicates that the Association held twelve events in the previous year (Wow). It had 345 members, three quarters which paid their dues, for a total income of $758 (which works out to about $3 per paying member). At end of the year, the Association had $125 in the bank. The Report of the Entertainment Committee was more – well – entertaining. It said that the Committee had been somewhat encouraged by the response to its “feeble efforts to revive the long extinct spirit of good fellowship of lawyers.” Nonetheless, the Committee observed that “while the average lawyer is liberal in his views, congenial and social among his fellows, recognized in polite society as a hail-fellow-well-met . . . yet, as a contributor to the social and fi nancial demands of the bar association, he is a dismal disappointment and a testy tightwad.”

An attention-grabbing headline of another pasting reads “Columbus’ Perennial Presidential Dark Horse Moves Into New – And Neat – Offi ce.” The article starts with this comment: “Nov. 8, 1939, will probably be remembered by historians of the future as the day on which unknown parties did a wretched job of trying to rub out Hitler in a Munich beer garden and also the day when their American cousins in Chicago did a much better job on a race track man named O’Hare. Lost in the morass of momentous events may be an equally signifi cant happening that occurred in Columbus, O., for [that] was the day that Olin J. Ross moved his offi ce. . . . The septuagenarian barrister, pamphleteer and statesman packed up his belongings [which apparently were scattered foot deep on the fl oor] and walked into his new offi ce at 180 N. High which, for him, bordered on nakedness.” The piece goes on to say that “this notable dark horse who has never gotten that fi rst call in the presidential race sees a faint spark of hope because there were a lot of poor people out there, and “they’ll vote for me quicker than they would a millionaire like Taft.” As it turned out another dark horse,

8 Spring 2015 Columbus Bar Lawyers Quarterly

Spring 2015 Columbus Bar Lawyers Quarterly 9

Bruce A. CampbellBar Counsel

Columbus Bar Associationbruce@cbalaw.org

Wendell Willkie, got the Republication nomination over Taft and was subsequently defeated by F.D.R. running for a third term. Olin J. Ross is remembered by the Ultimate Adjudicator of Historical Signifi cance – Google – only as author of a novel and a pamphlet titled America’s Debt to Thomas Paine. Wikipedia seems not to have heard of him.

On the same theme, is an article about the 1944 Presidential election in which, law fi rm founder, and then Governor of Ohio John Bricker, was said to be “the most likely dark horse candidate” in the race for Republican Presidential or Vice Presidential nomination. With coy reticence he told the press he was “not actively a candidate” and that he was turning down “speechifying invitations” so he could “stay in Columbus to do his job.” Sound familiar? Despite his professed priority of vouchsafi ng the state of the State, he did, of course, wind up as the Vice Presidential candidate with Thomas E. Dewey and did a whole bunch of “speechifying” (173 in 38 states) around the country. Apparently his eloquence had an insuffi cient effect on the electorate. Again, F.D.R. won handily.

My personal favorite amid this jumble of snippets is this one (dated on the reverse side Aug. 29, 1941):

Today, Lawyer Lewis would likely be a NFL fullback earning seven fi gures and hiring lawyers rather than being one.

Flipping to the back side of the Lewis clip, however, puts the times in more realistic perspective. There appears the by-line (but alas not the article) of Ernie Pyle whose dispatches from the front lines of WWII made the sacrifi ces of that war as vivid to those on the home front as did Life Magazine’s pictures and Bill Mauldin’s editorial cartoons of Willie and Joe. Those terrible times certainly needed some frivolity like Fusco’s fat lawyer story to buoy public spirits a bit.

The Columbus Bar is most thankful that the Law Library favored it with these gifts. If any reader has a passion to peruse these pages, please phone. There is a lot more history oozing out of them.

Source of pictured articles:Franklin County Law Library