Extreme weather events across the country and around the world make it clear that we are facing a climate crisis, and that we all are in it together. But what can we as individuals do to combat this? That’s our topic today with an expert who will share with us existing solutions and technologies that can have a significant impact on climate change, and what the average person can do to help reduce our carbon footprint. So stay with us.

Beth McDaniel is co-founder and President of the paint and coatings company, Reactive Surfaces, where she also serves as legal counsel. Beth also is a partner in McDaniel and Associates, a law firm specializing in patent and trade secret law.

As a serial entrepreneur, she has guided this bleeding-edge innovation company, operating in the paint and coatings and specialty chemicals industries, for the past 15 years. She has served in leadership roles for numerous organizations, including as a Pathways to Peace Fellow, a premier social justice organization.

Beth is also the co-founder of the leading XPRIZE team for carbon reduction. Their technology can remove massive amounts of carbon from the atmosphere and convert it into hydrogen, biochar, and other environmentally friendly solutions that have already begun to transform the carbon reduction and energy security space.

Here are some questions we cover with Beth:

Q. What’s your take on the climate crisis facing the world today? What happens if we continue on our current track?

Q. You’re involved with the Embassy Row Project, a philanthropic initiative that offers various services to organizations to promote environmental sustainability. Please tell us about that.

Q. As a female c-suite executive in the science and technology arena, a successful entrepreneur, an accomplished attorney, and an advisor on climate technology, what is your perspective on women’s leadership in the entrepreneurial, technology, and science space?

Q. What's being done right now in the international government space that's truly having an impact on climate change?

Q. You recently addressed UN, World Bank, and European embassy officials on new technology your firm has developed. Can you please share with us that experience and talk about the technology that’s involved?

Q. What's it like to brief senior diplomats and government officials who are seeking solutions in climate and environmental technology? Any special challenges simply because of your sex?

Q. What are carbon capture coatings and how is this scientific breakthrough transforming the environmental science space?

Q. How can the average person have a real impact on climate change and carbon reduction?

Q. As a female entrepreneur, what prompted you to get into the paint and coatings industry and start your own company?

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Show Notes

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Show Transcript

James Brosnahan: Justice at Trial

[00:00:00]

[00:00:00] Bob Gatty: James j Brosnahan has more than 50 years of experience in both civil and criminal trial work. He regularly undertook complex cases that were about to go to trial. He's tried to conclusion 150 cases that have ranged from antitrust to wire fraud, and from patent litigation to white collar crime and murder.

[00:00:28] Mr. Brosnahan is named among the top 30 trial lawyers in the United States. According to the Legal 500 US. A lion of the trial bar, Mr. Brosnahan is one of the most respected and recognized trial lawyers in the United States of America. Recently, Mr. Brosnahan completed a book on notable trials from his career, which will be published this spring. Jim, welcome to our podcast. I really appreciate you joining Mark Bello and me. 

[00:01:02] James Brosnahan: Thanks to both of you for having me. I really appreciate it. 

[00:01:06] Mark Bello: Welcome, Jim. It's an honor to have you on the podcast. Before we talk about your writing, though I'd like to talk about Professor Chemerinski's forward, high praise for your memoir from the famous law professor.

[00:01:23] There's a lot packed into his just two page forward. But I was struck by a couple of his comments and I'd like your reaction to them. The first one I think you can, you and I would both agree that practicing law requires hard work and attention to detail. Many lawyers work hard, but it also requires creativity and Chemerinski considers you and your team very clever. Clever is the term he uses. How much of your success is related to hard work and how much to creativity, and for young lawyers out there after learning what they need to know to pass the bar, how do they develop these creative skills that the professor talks about?

[00:02:11] James Brosnahan: I think that's a great question because a lot of it comes immediately to you and you don't know where it comes from. Where does creativity come from? And there are wonderful books, I'm sure are written by scholars on creativity and all of that. It's instincts, it's judgment, and it's certainly experience.

[00:02:31] In other words, if an agent is testifying to X, that probably means Y because you had something like that before. And as you keep going, your instincts are refined. The preparation though is really important . And to know all of the details so that you can imply that particular item on that moment with the agent, for example, on cross-examination or with the jury that's hostile.

[00:03:02] Why are they hostile? What's going on in the United States right now? I read about three papers a day. I always did that. I'm trying to understand our society, which is not an easy thing. So creativity comes out of work, I think and that, that would be my thought. 

[00:03:26] Mark Bello: The, professor also talks about a topic that's near and dear to my heart, and that's essentially the bad rap lawyer gets.

[00:03:35] Everybody's got a lawyer joke. He points to you as an example of how an ethical lawyer and a decent guy can also be highly successful, which is, to me the ultimate compliment. But the idea that being a successful lawyer requires bad behavior. The professor calls patently false.

[00:03:55] We all can shoot gum and walk at the same time. Can you talk about being successful and ethical at the same time? 

[00:04:03] James Brosnahan: Yes I've certainly tried . The whole point is I tried cases for so many years. 60, about 60 years. And when I started there was a lot more camaraderie among those who tried cases, because you would see each other many times. And I think that's the key. If you are gonna be with someone ,strangers yell at lawyers in strange lawyers yell at lawyers in deposition. I don't I've never understood that. I don't understand. I would just tell them nobody's ever gonna read this, what you just said.

[00:04:45] Can we go on now? 

[00:04:48] Mark Bello: We're not impressed. 

[00:04:50] James Brosnahan: And really what I found in two cases was they were scared to death because they had never tried a case. And this one sounded like it was gonna go to trial. Oh my. It almost feel bad for them. But I, my classic, I think there was a prosecutor, it was a very domineering personality and so forth. And he gave me a really hard time. And so I put my face up to his, I'm Irish by the way, so my temper has limits. And I put my face up there and I said, you will either talk to me politely or we, you and I will never talk again. And that seemed to be unusual for him, and he talked to me.

[00:05:42] You have to do what you have to do. 

[00:05:44] Bob Gatty: That story cracks me up. I wanna take you back to when you were a kid. Your book reveals that you were diagnosed with rheumatic fever. And a possible heart problem when you were only three years old. And Mark's showing your book, I'm, yeah, on the screen right now. 

[00:06:07] For you guys that don't see this, it's too bad for you.

[00:06:11] Anyway your connection to the outside world Jim was a radio with Jack Benny, and a window that looked out a driveway, huh? Yeah. And you, where you can see kids playing now, I'm sure you remember those days. My question is, did they play a role in shaping the adult that you became? 

[00:06:32] James Brosnahan: And that's why I put it in.

[00:06:35] And we all have our starting points on cases and all of that. I, did identify with the underdog easily. I identified with people who have been excluded for some reason from society or some part of it. And I, probably can't articulate exactly, but that has something to do with sitting on a board that ran from my bed to the windowsill and sitting out, looking outside.

[00:07:09] As I look back on it, I didn't know what I was missing. I had no way of knowing what that was like out there. And it was about almost three years. Which was malpractice by the doctor. 

[00:07:24] Bob Gatty: Yeah, I would say so. When I read that, I thought to myself, how, in the name of common sense, did they ever do this to this young boy make him stay in effect in bed all this time?

[00:07:39] James Brosnahan: I, one of the chapters is me cross-examining three doctors and, I presented a lot of doctor I, don't have a thing against doctors, but when I'm gonna cross-examine a doctor I, know more about that medicine than that doctor does. I, not bragging, but I'm just saying that's what I do and I go at it with a intensity, let's say.

[00:08:06] That's from the old days. But more than that, I think I have always been able to identify with people that have serious problems of one kind or another, may be mental problems. It may be social problems, it may be unfairness. And I know Mark has a book at least one book with the word justice in it.

[00:08:33] And I think and, nobody quite knows what justice is. That's what's so interesting. People talk about it all the time. They write books about it. But what it is, a fair result in a specific case. That's what it is. And the lawyers, trial lawyers, not just me, are out there trying to do that every day.

[00:08:55] And that's the story I wanted them to tell. 

[00:08:59] Mark Bello: As horrid as it was almost to the point of child abuse. It seems to have worked. You became quite the adult. Yes.

[00:09:09] James Brosnahan: Some people wouldn't question that, I think, but even now. But yeah, I but I, started very slowly in school.

[00:09:19] It was a blur and I, couldn't read and and all that, but I worked on that as I went along. But it was sports, and I'll keep this short. I just started playing everything in high school and I got to college on, I was invited to Boston College to play three sports, and I picked basketball and baseball, and that gave me confidence, which is what I did not have.

[00:09:45] How could I have with this background? And I got that confidence and I started to study. And my mind started work and I got some good grades and studied philosophy at Boston College and all that, and then got to the Harvard Law School. And so it's a it's, that kind of a, story, yeah.

[00:10:11] Bob Gatty: Jim if you were stuck in, bed all this time as a young child, it must have ticked you off. No end, absolutely. Did, that form a determination in your brain that you were just not gonna allow this kind of thing to happen? Not only to you, but to anybody else?

[00:10:39] Did, that just make you determined to succeed and, succeed as a, as an attorney? 

[00:10:46] James Brosnahan: Yes, but I don't think it was all good. And there was intensity there that I would fixate on a case. Yeah. And I would get more deeply into the case and, all that. But there were times when it did seem to me that I had left over sometime, occasionally anger from, that early time. But I worked very hard to get past that. And I think by and large I did most of my life .

[00:11:20] Mark Bello: proverbial chip on your shoulder. 

[00:11:22] James Brosnahan: Yeah. If I was confronted by another lawyer, for example, I would let him confront once and I would let him confront twice. And then the third time oh my.

[00:11:34] You should have been there. Really, Bob 

[00:11:38] Bob Gatty: I, wish you could give us an example of some kind, some of this stuff. Oh, my, with via kick to here 

[00:11:46] Mark Bello: The, professor indicates that his favorite legal quote is Justice, justice shalt thou pursue, which is one of mine as well. But yeah, having read your book alongside that might be, sometimes doing your best is your only reward.

[00:12:03] Yes. I love that lesson and I think young lawyers ought to take it to heart.. What do you think?

[00:12:09] James Brosnahan: I, think so. Who are we lawyers? What, are we doing? We're doing our best and we're given a client, we're given a case. There are facts. There may be a reason to contest it for, certain reasons, but no guarantees.

[00:12:28] Recently I was asked to comment on a shooting on a set of a movie as to what was gonna happen in that criminal case. And I, didn't answer the question because when I'm in a case and the jury's been instructed and they're out in the room somewhere, I don't know what's going to happen. I really don't.

[00:12:52] And so opining about somebody else's cases didn't seem to me like that was appropriate, but all you can do is your best. And that's, an important feeling. when, the jury walks into the jury room for the first time and you think I did my best. That's, your reward.

[00:13:15] That's what's good about the work. 

[00:13:18] Bob Gatty: Now, when you were 18 months as an attorney, you were given this major murder trial involving the Native American community. I'm sure that was a tough case especially for someone with little experience, but you, did very well with that.

[00:13:39] Can you talk about that? 

[00:13:41] James Brosnahan: I decided to be a trial lawyer when I was a junior in college and, went to law school. I'm, just waiting to be a trial lawyer. Yeah. And so I started off in a personal injury firm and learned a lot, but I didn't go to trial. Then I got a job as a federal prosecutor in Phoenix, Arizona.

[00:14:05] I walked in on a Monday. And on a Tuesday, the boss came in and said, there's a capital murder case to be tried on the following Monday. It was a very short staffed firm. At that moment, there were only five of us, will you try the case? And I said, sure. And so he left my office and I thought, how the hell am I going to do that?

[00:14:31] What is I've seen murder movies, but so I that was the trial. And it lasted one week. A young man of the Pima tribe had chased and, caught a young man who was a member of the Apache tribe or nation and had stabbed him to death. And that was my first case. And Came instinctively, what to argue, what to do.

[00:15:12] It was a story, and all trials are, and convicted of first degree murder. The first tactical decision I had to make was whether to ask for the death penalty, and I'd always been opposed to it. I wrote my paper at Harvard on Clarence Darrow and I said, no, we're not gonna, we're not gonna ask for the death penalty.

[00:15:39] But the jury could have still returned it because it was in the pleadings, but they didn't, fortunately. Yeah, I 

[00:15:47] Bob Gatty: think I recall reading that you were relieved that they didn't do that. 

[00:15:52] James Brosnahan: Yeah I, was they were, by the way, they were juveniles. And of course, the Supreme Court has since ruled out the death penalty for, juveniles in many cases anyway. 

[00:16:07] Mark Bello: From a lawyer's perspective. As a side note, what I found interesting when I read about that case was your, paragraph or two about the voir dire in the case. And I, want to, I want to hear more. The discussion was, if I'm recalling it correctly, getting a potential juror to admit bias.

[00:16:33] And I'm, wondering if you could tell a young trial lawyer out there, or a budding trial lawyer, out there, how one gets a potential juror to admit bias on voir dire. And before you answer, I want people to know that in the book Jim takes you through the entire voir dire. It's really a cool part of the book.

[00:16:55] I, I thought anyway.

[00:16:57] James Brosnahan: Thank you. Yeah it was exciting to be there. I'll tell you that. I'm sure it was the first year he was seat, he was seated in, seat number three in the back row. He had a, sports shirt on and the defendants were from a very, at that time, a very small town called Arizona, south of Phoenix.

[00:17:20] There were six houses there. Cause I had gone to that community to do a kind of inspection for the trial. There were only six houses there. I, I said to him sir, where do you live? And he said, I live on the reservation. And I said what reservation? He said, the Pima Reservation. I said, oh what, town are you in?

[00:17:46] He said, I'm in Batesville and that's where the defendants live. And I said, do you know the defendants? And he said, no. I thought the Marshall's gonna arrest him. The man has just lied. He is under oath. Oh my God. This is my beginning of understanding what happens in courtrooms. And, but I had enough background to turn to the judge and say we excuse and thank him very much.

[00:18:11] Because he obviously knew and was desperate to get on there. But the bigger point that you raise is the one of bias. And when you go into a courtroom, you've gotta understand bias. And all the political talk about that was the old days that we are not biased anymore and all that stuff. I never bought any of it.

[00:18:36] Because it's malpractice to select a jury and not understand people's bias. And recently we've seen a whole outburst of public bias, but even when it's not that public, You've gotta understand how people feel and it's, interesting to try to keep track of it. 

[00:19:01] Bob Gatty: Jim, you said that we see it, we've seen an outbreak of that.

[00:19:06] What are you referring to? 

[00:19:08] James Brosnahan: I'm referring to the open antisemitism, the open racism, the attacks on Asian Americans. The the emergence of radical white supremacy. All of these things can land in a jury box. It doesn't matter where you live. If you think that's limited to certain southern states or something, you need to pick a jury in San Francisco, you'd be surprised what you find, if you really understand the prejudices and the biases and, now the gender issues, all of it. How do they feel about a woman who's a doctor? Just make up any hypothetical and they have attitudes about it.

[00:20:09] Mark Bello: Bob, I would also suggest, in addition to what Jim just said, and maybe Jim can comment on this too. The, news cycle, the everyday reporting, the wild stuff on the internet someone, has been accused of a crime, like for instance, the Idaho murders and the news creates this narrative that convicts him before he ever enters a courtroom, and I don't know whether this guy is innocent or guilty, but the idea of innocence until proven guilty is a cornerstone of justice in America. And it seems to me that in a lot of cases the press decides a person's guilt or innocent before he ever hits a courtroom, and that's a part of this bias issue also.

[00:21:03] James Brosnahan: They do. And if it's televised, as recently there was a lawyer who was accused and then convicted of killing his wife and his son. And you couldn't avoid conversations around wherever you were about what they thought about his examination what they thought about his testimony. And, all of that.

[00:21:30] I, did it later in my career. I had cases. Where the publicity was intense, and we had, as I write in the book, we we had death threats and bodyguards. We had bodyguards and we'd drive to the courthouse different ways each day and all of that. And, but there's a bigger point there. Lawyers one way or the other, do that kind of work all the time.

[00:22:01] The question I've tried to deal with in the book is suddenly there's a despised person who was taking government secrets and broadcasting them all around to some little sect group of his. And he's arrested and the next day he's standing next to him is a public defender. And my question is, why does he do that?

[00:22:26] Why does the lawyer do that? What's that about? And if you understand that, then you can have a better view of lawyers including trial, lawyers because, some of the civil lawyers are happy to represent despised corporate executives and people of that kind. How, could you manufacture that pill and it killed all those people?

[00:22:52] What, whatever it is, what is it about lawyers that would make us do that when we could be writing wills or something we could be doing 

[00:23:03] Mark Bello: or, books.

[00:23:04] Bob Gatty: Yeah. Yeah. I always wondered, that if. This this fellow who jacked up the price of prescription drugs for Yeah Hundreds of percentage points and without giving a rat's ass as to the impact on, on, on the patients, especially the patients without a lot of means. Everybody's entitled to a, to representation by an attorney. So there must be attorneys that are willing to represent people like that.

[00:23:40] But I don't understand if, I was an attorney, I don't know if I could do that. 

[00:23:47] James Brosnahan: There's nothing wrong with that. Bob I, gave a talk one time to some lawyers in Washington about representing the despised person. Oh yeah I'm, going on and I'm, all excited about myself. And, the next following Monday, I get home and I get a call from one of the people in the audience, and he says, my brother has just been indicted out there in San Francisco for obscene material.

[00:24:17] And I said, no I, don't do obscene material and I don't do guns. And there's very few that I don't do though. And I think trial lawyers particularly are not like other people because as I write in a book, A big case might be viewed from outside is the worst possible case in the world.

[00:24:43] And yet there's some kind of gravity that pulls us to doing that kind of case. And I think that's an interesting question. 

[00:24:53] Mark Bello: In Michigan, it was Feiger representing Kavorkian. Yeah. Everybody, couldn't, no one could figure out why he would do that, but 

[00:25:01] James Brosnahan: That human nature my wife ask Trialer, wait for 64 years and she, she will look at something like this horrible, terrible, and she'll say, it's not human.

[00:25:15] And I say, we have these things, these same conversation, we go back and forth over all years. And I said, it, it's human because the human did it. And how many times have each of us said, how could anybody Yeah. Do that? Yeah. And yet it's like Dostoevsky is complex about human nature and what people are capable of.

[00:25:43] Mark Bello: That's for sure. 

[00:25:45] James Brosnahan: You are sharing that though, you sit in a jail cell and interview your client. You're learning about something. It may be awful, but you're learning about it. 

[00:25:56] Bob Gatty: Now, in the book you indicate that you were influenced by Cecil Poole, Melvin Belli, and other prominent trial lawyers.

[00:26:04] You worked under Poole, who was the first African American US attorney in the United States. Obviously, mentoring was important in your career, is it still?

[00:26:17] James Brosnahan: Mentoring? As, for me personally, I mentor a lot of people now. This morning it was a young lawyer about two years into the practice who was a student of mine and he wants to talk to me and I said Sure.

[00:26:34] So I I've always done that cuz I, in the early days I was out there, I knocked on a few doors trying to get a job or trying to get started, sure. But but as to Poole, it, it's noteworthy that he got a brought up in the south under certain circumstances. He had enormous courage and, but what he taught me was the use of power.

[00:27:06] And it isn't just prosecutors, which he was, it's lawyers have, but we have the power of advice. If we say, sit in our office and we say you ought to go to trial, here's why. Blah, blah, blah. And that's, a certain, power that you have with regard to clients, whether they be the government or individuals.

[00:27:31] And he knew how to use power and I, decided I would watch him as much as possible as I could. And I benefited from that tremendously. In how to use the power that you do have. In some cases you may have very little power, but you use what you have. 

[00:27:57] Bob Gatty: Yeah. Now in 1966, you switched sides after being a prosecutor.

[00:28:06] How long were you a prosecutor by the way? 

[00:28:09] James Brosnahan: Five years. Five years Phoenix and San Francisco. 

[00:28:13] Bob Gatty: Okay. So you switched to become a criminal defense and civil plaintiff attorney. First of all, why did you do that? And secondly, can you tell us a little bit about the transition? What was it like? What did you have to do and, what did that mean for your career going forward?

[00:28:37] James Brosnahan: I always wanted to be a defense lawyer. And the moment that I found that trial for me was more important than being a defense lawyer, a plaintiff's lawyer, or anything else, was the moment when I was offered a job as a prosecutor and I said, yes, do it. And so that may reflect on my moral compass or something.

[00:29:01] I don't know. People get pretty intense about their specialties. Trial was the thing for me. So that was, that's part of the answer. The transition. I went from prosecuting a very big bank failure case, which is in the book Yeah. And to a private law firm. And I was assigned a case of a man who was standing outside the Berlingame Country Club.

[00:29:33] He was a social person and he was relieving himself in the bushes and the Cadillac hit him in the back. So the transition was rough. And other words what have I done? What am I, what, why am I doing this kind of case? And, but almost immediately I started doing other cases and especially criminal cases, I explain to the wonderful lawyers at that first firm that I was gonna do criminal cases. And they said, okay, but you should do 'em not in the name of the firm, but in your own name. I said, okay, 

[00:30:08] Bob Gatty: yeah. Why did they do that? I didn't understand that. I saw that. 

[00:30:12] James Brosnahan: You, had to be there in the sixties where business came from and it came from country clubs.

[00:30:20] You went you went to the country club on Saturday night and your uncles, who was c e o of some company or something, sent you a case. And that's where business came from, a lot of it. And so they were very, and by the way, criminal lawyers were not in civil cases. The view of criminal lawyers was that they had food on their tie.

[00:30:45] And must have gone to a law firm that nobody's ever heard of. And I'm not kidding. 

[00:30:56] Mark Bello: I know you're not. I know you're not 

[00:30:58] Bob Gatty: who. 

[00:30:59] James Brosnahan: Yeah, but I was gonna do it. That's what I was gonna do. And and I, and they allowed me to do it. And after a while, this is very interesting to me. After a while, they understood the way you build a trial firm.

[00:31:18] One of the ways is to have a lawyer, two lawyers, three lawyers, four lawyers that do criminal cases, and some of the best firms in the country. There were, at one point, early on in the seventies, there were only three big firms that did criminal cases. There's one in New York, one in Chicago, general block.

[00:31:43] And and Morrison Forrester, we were the only ones that did criminal cases cuz it wasn't respectable. But it very quickly became when a client would not be represented by their regular firm, but had to go to somebody else that was seen as a market. And so firms began to add at least one criminal lawyer.

[00:32:10] And the whole attitudes changed. CEOs were smarter than all that because I found they liked the idea of a criminal lawyer in the firm, that somebody who's not afraid to go to criminal courts, it sounds like maybe we need that for the civil case. 

[00:32:28] Mark Bello: And that guy gets some publicity and, the firm benefits from it.

[00:32:31] You, led me right into my next question. One of those cases involved representing two young Black activists in the sixties who were involved in the Oakland California Poverty movement.

[00:32:44] Tell us about the case. What were they accused of? Why were they prosecuted and what was the outcome? 

[00:32:51] James Brosnahan: The background was in Washington DC in the mahogany foxholes back there. They decided it was Republican administration, Nixon administration, and they were gonna make an example of the poverty programs that don't work.

[00:33:07] And so they indicted two poverty workers in Oakland, California. And they had been given money, the purpose of which was to find jobs for people. And they had done that, by the way, but they had also taken some of the money. And used it for another subject. The, government surrounded the building and whatever and accused them of absconding.

[00:33:40] They, thought they had taken the money. They had taken the money. What they had done is created a food bank in Oakland, which by the way, as we're speaking, is still a problem in Oakland food. 

[00:33:52] Mark Bello: That's for sure. That's for sure. 

[00:33:54] James Brosnahan: So we put on 28 people who had gotten food from the defendant and we did it in a, great hurry.

[00:34:04] And one of them was prepared by my assistant in the witness room and he came in, he got up on the stand and I just asked him the same routine questions, what is your occupation? He said, I'm a drug dealer. And Oh my God. But he had been, wasn't a very good cause they had to feed him. 28 people. There's moments in the court when truth is out there .

[00:34:33] What is the truth about people needing to be fed food in Oakland when people drive down the freeway and unaware of it? What's happening to those people out there? And it was a story. We got a hung jury 10-2. one of the holdouts for conviction was a banker. And he said you always have to give the government the benefit of the doubt.

[00:35:05] And I said, no, it's actually the defendant who gets the benefit of the doubt, but they then dismissed the case. So I counted that as a win. 

[00:35:16] Mark Bello: I do too. 

[00:35:18] James Brosnahan: Notice, what's happening to me. I'm in a storefront. Little chapel place meeting a lot of people I would never meet otherwise. And that to me, and maybe that goes back to being in bed when I was a kid, but I get so excited about what you are learning. Sometimes some cases, there's a few that are dealt narcotic cases are very dull, but most cases have that learning for the lawyer aspect to it 

[00:35:51] Bob Gatty: There's an net on TV that cracks me up and it's TV dad TV dad?

[00:35:57] James Brosnahan: Yeah. Yeah. 

[00:35:59] Bob Gatty: And he's sitting there reading the paper while the family is talking about some issue or other, the issue is not important. What's important is that he's sitting there reading the paper. Something that when I see that it, makes me sad. I started my career as a journalist. Matter of fact, I was the first white reporter, ever hired by the black Pittsburgh Courier in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

[00:36:29] James Brosnahan: I remember the paper. 

[00:36:30] Bob Gatty: And, so I was struck by the passage in the section in your book that talks about the first amendment case that, you handled when you were, what, ? It was in 1968. You were 34 years old. It, it involved a couple of San Francisco papers that were setting up a kinda a joint operating agreement. What, was that all about? And, why was that a a, problem and why was that an important case? 

[00:37:04] James Brosnahan: The book tells the story of the demise of newspapers. When we first arrived in San Francisco in 64, there were four papers.

[00:37:15] That means four editorial policies. That means competition about specific cases, points of view, right? A a flooding of ideas. If you would, if you read all the papers, you'd get the idea. But they were going out of business. It had to do with advertising. But mostly it had to do with television became the advertising center of the world, and papers were losing that money and they were losing circulation.

[00:37:47] And the examiner was a a troubled company at that time. And so they went into a joint agreement. And you're not allowed to do that under the antitrust laws. So the question was, could the government close a troubled newspaper because they violated the antitrust laws and we took the position.

[00:38:15] You can't do that. It's First Amendment. I mentioned in the book, I was handling a lot of First Amendment cases at time, and I love them cuz it's ideas. It's freedom of thought actually. And so I argued the first case in front of Judge Carter, and I tell that story in the book. And they were able to do it because Congress passed a statute, the papers were still powerful, nationwide enough to get a statute passed.

[00:38:51] And they did. And the statute that they passed was held by Judge Carter to be constitutional. And so for a while, probably about 10, maybe 15 years among a lot of other things, I was defending the First Amendment cases, defamation cases, and so forth, which I loved. I loved that. 

[00:39:17] Mark Bello: There was a j o A in Detroit where I'm from the, is it the statute that, that made that possible or was it the case?

[00:39:25] Was it the case that made that possible? 

[00:39:27] James Brosnahan: Yeah. It was a statute that made it possible if one of the companies was a quote, a failing company. Got it. And that had been defined over the years in antitrust terms. It had, it got complex, it had to do with liquidity and ability to pay debts and all this Right stuff.

[00:39:49] But, basically the examiner qualified as a failing company. And so to keep them alive, that was the big point. This joint operating agreement was necessary where they decided together what the prices should be and they decided what their markets should be. The examiner was going to appear on Sundays.

[00:40:14] And the Chronicle was as I recall, was the gonna be the morning paper, which was the, in San Francisco, the more desirable market, and you're not allowed to do any of that under the antitrust laws. And that was the issue 

[00:40:30] Mark Bello: that, that was the same in Detroit, the morning paper versus the afternoon paper.

[00:40:34] And it was a conservative paper versus a liberal paper. And they maintained their editorial staffs and it was simply a joint business operation agreement. Yeah. Rather than an editorial issue. So they maintain, they maintained. And still today, do they maintained their editorial content as exactly.

[00:40:57] For, lack of a better way to say it, conservative and liberal. But 

[00:41:01] James Brosnahan: there, there was for, the people listening there, there was no agreement about content of what they were writing. They didn't agree on any of that. They had different editorial policies. 

[00:41:13] Mark Bello: In 78, you take another First Amendment case.

[00:41:18] And I found this interesting. It it wasn't something that that, in your in your topic suggestions that you, suggest we talk about, but I wanna talk about it anyway. It's centered around the movie Born Innocent, starring Linda Blair, who people will remember was the the girl that threw up all over the place in The Exorcist.

[00:41:44] But the interesting issue in that case was the plaintiff attorney argued that people who see movies are inspired to act out what they see and argued for censorship. There was a lot of publicity in that one as I under, as I recall from the book. And he had a rather novel argument called Negligent Imitation.

[00:42:08] Yep. And I'm I'd like you to talk to the people about. That case and the movie and the outcome of the case. 

[00:42:17] James Brosnahan: Marvin, Lewis knew him well and had other cases against him, and we, became good friends, which is the point I would like to mention that does happen. You kind of bond over these really difficult cases, but Marvin's theory was that if you put together a movie that has violence in it, and then people imitate that violence, in this case, the violence was a sexual assault by young women on another woman, first time that had ever been suggested.

[00:43:00] The scene actually shows quite a bit of that, but not, the worst part of it. And it was shown on tele, on television during the week. And Marvin's theory was that the assault on a real young girl that occurred three days later on Baker Beach in San Francisco was an imitation of what they saw in the movie three nights before, and that they should be held libel for the real assault because they played the, movie that was the, that was his theory.

[00:43:43] And so we actually tried the case and I remember. Walking into chambers, invited into chambers by the judge. And I said judge, he said, what's the, what's happening? And I said judge, you've got about 75 news people in there, and you got one from France and one from England. And he didn't blink.

[00:44:07] He was a, great young judge at that time. And so he tried the case. So the, issue became is this a violation of the First Amendment? And we had very capable who actually endorsed this book, my book. And he argued that it was a violation and the judge agreed and threw the case out.

[00:44:39] And so it, at the time, when you think about it, supposed the law had gone the other way. It would be like half of Shakespeare would be banned. There would be liability for imitation of, you name it. And so we, we did, I for about about 20 days I was a big Hollywood person, went down to Hollywood and talking to all these people and famous, people.

[00:45:16] And it was quite quite something. And but that was a very important case in the sense of we can't have, you just can't have that as a precedent. And 

[00:45:36] Mark Bello: that's why I wanted to ask the 

[00:45:37] James Brosnahan: question. Yeah. Yeah. It's and After all these years I count on the judges right now in our society.

[00:45:50] There'll be a lot of judges that will just tell people, no you can't discriminate, you can't do this, you can't do that. And I, think that's happening and I think it should happen. Okay. In the 

[00:46:05] Bob Gatty: book, another thing you talked about is power. You mentioned that the pro, that a prosecutor has the power to ruin lives.

[00:46:15] What I'd like to know is how you dealt with that power and what do you recommend to young prosecutors just starting out 

[00:46:23] James Brosnahan: that they do. I am very candid in the book about it because the first time I stood next to a person who was being sentenced to life imprisonment, I was deeply shaken. And about three months later when someone was sentenced only 15 years for bank robbery instead of 20 in Arizona, I felt like he got a break.

[00:46:56] He, got off easy. What was that? That was, you have to get used to what the work you're doing. That's what happened to me. But I did try to imitate Cecil, pull on judgment and The answer on an awful lot of things is your judgment is this really where you wanna unload on the defendant or other mitigating circumstances?

[00:47:27] At least listen to the defense lawyer, what are they talking about? But I got used to the power that was involved in, say, what I used to do. I hold up my thumb and say, book 'em. And I did that with a gambling group in San Francisco and they brought in 17 defendants. And one of them was an older woman who, had a, was her front was covered by flower and she'd come from this little store and she was making a little bit of money on the side to try to get by.

[00:48:08] And Cecil said, who's that? And I told him and he said, let her go. And we did. And that's, that goes on in prosecutor's offices every day. I hope it does. 

[00:48:22] Mark Bello: Bob you, talk about abuse of power and, this next case it, it's a great case to discuss following the questions you just asked. And I've often been of the opinion that if the government really wants to go after someone and get them, they can and they will.

[00:48:43] And one of the, in most interesting cases in the book for me was the Steve Sakkas case, I think is how he pronou his name. Yeah, that's right. Ronald Reagan is often cited as an example of a good Republican president. And while he may have been an effective orator, he was far from a good guy. My favorite quote in the chapter was, Ronald President Reagan wanted a conviction of a US citizen as a favor to a corrupt foreign dictator, the years 1986, I believe.

[00:49:21] Tell our listeners the story, 

[00:49:23] James Brosnahan: please, Jim. Steve was leading a, magic life. He went, he was an engineer. He went to the Philippines and he met miss Lopez and they became married and the Lopez interest financial were huge in the Philippines. And then they, lost all that and into the situation came the dictator.

[00:49:54] And he took everybody's money, including all the Lopez money, and Steve became an opponent. But his job was to meet with US representatives and try to argue that Marcos was a corrupt person. I have in the book the estimated number of deaths ordered by Marcos, a huge number. There's about 3000 or maybe even 5,000 deaths.

[00:50:27] The complete dictator took, everybody's money for himself and all that, and Steve became in really engaged in opposition. We had then, and we have now airfields in the Philippines is a very important situationally for range to go out in the Pacific if needed. And for that reason, I think Reagan and, for other reasons became a very good friend of the Marco.

[00:51:03] At the time, the number of shoes that Mrs. Marcos had was everybody was discussing it. They, like America, had a shoe fetish and she would they were visiting the White House frequently and all this kind of stuff. And so the suggestion is that Reagan was asked by Marcos to indict my client. And the Justice Department certainly picked up that idea and went after him.

[00:51:36] And we got into a trial. And preparation is important as we've already said. And one Saturday afternoon, about four o'clock when I should have been home with the kids and my wife, I kept looking at these photographs and they had rigged. The photographs and they had rigged them in such ways to make it look like Bobs.

[00:52:05] So they arrested Steve for making bombs in his house in the Ingleside in San Francisco. And the neighbors all said, what neighbors always say, they said, they seem touched nice people. And, they they're beside themselves that a, an insane bomber is making bombs in this beautiful neighborhood where you some houses can see the Pacific.

[00:52:34] We tried the case and we brought by that time there was a, new president in the Philippines. Marcos had to leave. And we tried the case and It was not guilty verdict. And Steve was saved, if you will. There's nothing I know of nothing in the law that has quite the feeling of hearing the words from the jury box not guilty.

[00:53:13] I, have done a lot of different things. I've done very interesting patent cases, as and which had a lot involved, but I know of nothing like the words not guilty in a criminal case because that, client's walking with you out the building and not going through the other door with the Marshall.

[00:53:39] And so that was a, good one. Then I put it in there. Jim 

[00:53:45] Mark Bello: but the opposite. The opposite of that though, Jim is, the pres, the president of the United States is out to get you. Talk about ups and downs. 

[00:53:56] James Brosnahan: Yeah. Yes. And when the president orders something like a Rand Contra, for example it tends to happen.

[00:54:07] And so yeah, he Marcos had that going for him. And it, it worked in the sense that there was the indictment and the trial. It was a close thing. Go ahead, Bob. You 

[00:54:27] Mark Bello: had something that you said you had something you wanted to say? 

[00:54:29] James Brosnahan: Yeah, I 

[00:54:29] Bob Gatty: forget what it was now. 

[00:54:31] Mark Bello: I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

[00:54:33] I'm sorry. That's all right. there there are a lot of quotes in the book and I can't seem to get away from them. One of them is specialization. So prevalent today can limit a lawyer unnecessarily. That's, a quote from you. Yeah. But isn't that in conflict with, Jack of all trades, master of none.

[00:54:54] What do you tell a young lawyer today about specializing or not specializing? 

[00:54:59] James Brosnahan: I had a wonderful talk with a partner of mine in this firm one night about that we were both on a social occasion and I said it seems to me specialization can be too narrow. And he said he couldn't agree more.

[00:55:17] He's a corporate lawyer and he said, you gotta know taxation. You do transactions, but you gotta know taxation. You gotta deal with the, with people in the bureau, whatever that is. And, you have to know about government regulations and all that kind of thing. I think that you pick a subject and let me define what you have to know.

[00:55:46] To do that. And I see that with doctors actually as you go through the years you meet doctors and you say my, my neck is in horrible pain. And the answer is no. I, only handle legs. It's like my can't you gimme an aspirin or something? No, I'm not allowed. That was an answer I got not too long ago.

[00:56:13] I'm, not allowed to really, to help you. 

[00:56:16] Mark Bello: My mother would've said you were a pain in a neck.

[00:56:18] James Brosnahan: I think it, there's a little history there worth mentioning, and that is when I started, there was an attitude, if you tried one kind of case, you could try any kind of case. These were seasoned people who went to trial a lot. And there were specializations, there were a few patent lawyers, not. Not as many as there are now, for example.

[00:56:46] But I think the see, I, if you name a type of case, I will tell you honestly. Yeah, I tried two of those. I tried a child custody case, sometimes ask, what's the toughest case you ever tried? I, say child custody was right there cause it's about the kid, and the parents. And is that helpful in a way?

[00:57:20] Yeah, it is cuz you learn your evidence in a better way. You learn a lot about people and you learn a lot about different kind of lawyers who are very different. But the, clients have insisted on specialization. And I've been asked did you ever try this kind of wacko limited something or other case nobody's ever tried one of them.

[00:57:53] And I, say no, but I tried whatever the number was at the moment. I tried out of 35 cases so far, and I can probably figure it out if you help me, but they will sometimes hire people that are absolute experts in the kaza who has never tried a case. And some of us used to get a lot of those cases about two weeks before trial because they finally said, have you ever tried a case?

[00:58:24] Not really. 

[00:58:26] Bob Gatty: That's, how in the hell do you adequately try a case that you're only given two weeks 

[00:58:35] James Brosnahan: before the trial? You have to work harder. You go on emergency schedule, you figure out your own capacity, which changes over the years, but yeah. You, start early in the morning.

[00:58:53] I once interviewed 28 witnesses in one day. What, my mind was at the end of that day. I don't know. But and, big thing you do is set priorities. Yeah. You, don't get lost in the minutia. Yeah. Okay. Where's the client? I gotta talk Hyatt. Who's the main opposing witness?

[00:59:22] We've got there's about 75 people have been interviewed. That's, great. Who are the three most important? We, don't know. Let's figure that out. Yeah. And who are those people? And You also, if you're gonna do that kind of work, it's a skill, like any other skill.

[00:59:43] But if you're gonna do that kind of hurry up and you have no time thing, then you are gonna have to really bear down and work a lot harder. Then the expert on the other side, and I've, tried four or five, maybe more that I'm not even remembering, where the lawyer on the other side is an absolute specialist and knows the footnotes in the key cases.

[01:00:15] And here you are coming in to do it and modesty is appropriate at that moment. And you just have to work a lot harder. But to, be candid about it we have teams in our firm and. Cases have gotten bigger and not, just three day trials. But it might be a two month trial.

[01:00:47] We have I had one case with 47 lawyers on the team and I went down one day to introduce myself to them. And it gets interesting 

[01:01:03] Bob Gatty: You 

[01:01:04] Mark Bello: Bob, 

[01:01:04] Hey Bob. Yeah. In the small, case arena, cuz I did not have a practice like Jim's. But in the small case arena, when you work for others and the judge is the, is God.

[01:01:18] Sometimes you go to court, your boss says, oh, I'm negotiated an adjournment on this case. You show up at court and the judge says, ready for trial. Yeah. And that happens all the time in, in, in the small case civil practice. And you just. Try the case. That's what you do. Yeah, that's 

[01:01:38] James Brosnahan: right.

[01:01:39] And it's, your instincts by that time are probably pretty good. And your sense of what's really important if it's a jury trial, how is, how are people feeling about this kind of thing these days? And so you do you do get a sense that helps you in those situations. You 

[01:02:07] Bob Gatty: made a comment a little while ago that you would know more about a certain case than the other experts on the other side.

[01:02:18] I can't remember exactly how you phrased it, but it brought to mind another comment that you made and that was that I think it was in the case involving the Native American murders. The amount of preparation that you did you, went out to the community to see that there were only five houses in that community, or whatever the number was.

[01:02:47] Yeah. And that surprised me. I, think I was surprised to learn that a lawyer would do that kind of spade work. 

[01:03:00] James Brosnahan: I was and this became an issue as the years went by and the, firm became larger and the cases became larger and so forth. The economics of it, the client has gotta pay all that, and that's not all good.

[01:03:16] But yeah I was on a panel with a man from Ohio, plaintiff's lawyer. And Craig Spangenberg, his name was, and he was detailing everything he did. I could go to the scene, you gotta go to the scene, you gotta go to the scene. In every case, I would interview all these witness and I would do all that.

[01:03:39] And then the experts, and he was talking about how he worked with the experts and all that. And one of the other panelists said, Craig you do that in your big cases, but you don't do that in every case. And he said something I never forgot. He said, when I'm in it, it's a big case. And it was not ego talking, it was not I'm the greatest.

[01:04:06] No. He's saying, I'm gonna do everything I need to do in every case that I have. Now, the pressure of all that on the client, Is not good. And so you make judgements about your charge for some, but not all those kind of, judgements. But if you're gonna stand up and cross-examine the key witness, you are going to do 75% of what you need to do because you can't charge.

[01:04:40] That, those are very real economic issues today that lawyers at all levels face. It's the same thing. If you have a small, firm and you have small clients they, sometimes can't pay. 

[01:04:59] Mark Bello: Another one of my favorite quotes in the book is trial lawyers are essential to enrich democratic reforms and social progress.

[01:05:08] James Brosnahan: Broad statement, complimentary to myself, I must say. 

[01:05:11] Mark Bello: Why? Why do you believe that? First of all, why do you believe that? Many people would say, get over yourself. But, I wanna know 

[01:05:20] James Brosnahan: what you say. It's too late. Let me, lemme try to shift away from my ego to this point. I've seen it, I have seen it over and over again.

[01:05:35] I saw lawyers in San Francisco in the 1960s fight for housing for people of color. I see lawyers who spend all their time on one area of specialization, like the rights of juvenile. I see lawyers who spend all their time on the rights of people who are limited in what they can do in the world. Who is it in our society that's gonna deal with that?

[01:06:10] There are lawyers out there, thousands of them who I have seen, and it may be like when you join the Bar Association of San Francisco you're gonna meet the best people. Really the, most selfless, they take their time to go to meetings to worry about all these important issues. But but I got around, I saw a lot of lawyers and I know what lawyers do.

[01:06:43] I've seen it, and that's one of the reasons I, tried to work that into the book because I don't think people, yeah, quite understand it. The biggest one is how could you represent that guilty guy that I read in the paper as guilty? He must be guilty. How could you do that? We're back to that seminal question.

[01:07:08] Because that's what I do. That's, my job. If you would've 

[01:07:14] Bob Gatty: been in practicing law here in South Carolina where I live, and this case involving this very famous person, locally famous person who was convicted of killing his wife and his son. 

[01:07:29] James Brosnahan: Yeah. 

[01:07:32] Bob Gatty: Were you chomping at the bit, would you have liked to have had that case?

[01:07:36] No. 

[01:07:37] James Brosnahan: Why? I I, think you have to know when you should quit. Okay. And not that I was failing. I, don't think I was failing. Cause I wrote a book. Yeah. But it, it was and, I hadn't soured on it at all. Yeah. It was just time. And I didn't wanna do a Giuliani. Sure. 

[01:08:05] Bob Gatty: Oh yeah, I understand that.

[01:08:07] But take it back though, say it was, say you were In your prime, 10 years younger. 

[01:08:16] James Brosnahan: I don't think you're allowed to say in your prime anymore since. No, I'm 

[01:08:21] Bob Gatty: not. You're not. But I know what's true. Ok. Alright. 

[01:08:24] James Brosnahan: I apologize. Put that to one side. Yeah. Yes. Sure.

[01:08:33] I probably would've done it. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I, don't know why not. Okay. Lawyer, why wouldn't you do it? Yeah. 

[01:08:43] Bob Gatty: Okay. It was a, certainly a big case and it had, it commanded all the headlines here locally for weeks and, nationally too. It had some 

[01:08:55] James Brosnahan: There was a there was a great lawyer, Edward Bennett Williams, who used to say, and I, knew him.

[01:09:02] I talked to him in his office and so forth, great lawyer. And he said, you should never be in a case unless you can control it. And I don't know if that's out of date anymore, but it's certainly good advice that could be a reason to turn the case down if you are being hired sometimes now, you know that they'll hire four law firms and that's a mess.

[01:09:30] That's an awful mess. Everybody's competing with everybody else and so on. 

[01:09:34] Bob Gatty: I just would like to know what you think about the Supreme Court today. You 

[01:09:43] James Brosnahan: say, I'm mindful, that I have partners in the Washington office who will argue there. I will nonetheless. Say no, no revelation that I think the court at the moment is in a lot of trouble. I lecture I'm going to go down to Fresno and lecture on the cases for the last year. It's not a partisan remark.

[01:10:11] It's a remark by me of sadness that several things are happening. The, question, the fascinating question is how out of tune can a court be? And still, and I'm not answering that question, it's just a major question and still be appropriate for the society which they govern. And that's a constant issue.

[01:10:50] And I think this court is having a problem with that. Part of it may be they're relatively newest justices. They may mature, they may become concerned. There's a few signs right now that they may be concerned about the people who are troubled by what's going on. Justice Thomas has gotten himself into what I think most people would say is real, difficulty at the moment, and the lack of an ethics code.

[01:11:32] Whereas all the other judges, all the lawyers, everybody is governed by an ethics code and they don't have one and they want to. Govern themselves so far. So I'm, it really bother. I argued two cases there. They're in the book and it, was it was a different court, I think. Yeah, Jim the 

[01:12:00] Mark Bello: quote in the book is, I have always thought of this, the US United States Supreme Court as the legal conscience of our society.

[01:12:08] Yes. Do you feel, that's true of today's court? I, sure don't. Some 

[01:12:14] James Brosnahan: days it is. That's the other thing, and I, try to cover this in Fresno. It, isn't one thing, the court is not one thing. They, issued a stay on Friday of a death penalty execution. Were they the conscience of America?

[01:12:33] But I, would say they probably are. They got the votes for that. But however To, I just finished a 50 page article, and the issue in the article is, when is a judge responsible for the consequences of a ruling? The simple answer is sometimes there are, sometimes they're not. But for example, when the abortion rights were repealed by the court, to what extent were they responsible for the consequences that would flow from the removal of that constitutional protection?

[01:13:24] And they would make arguments that they're not responsible because the constitution doesn't cover it, and so forth and so on. But that is a very interesting question. To what extent is the judge responsible if they put gun rights at a certain level? And there are consequences there. There's a philosopher, and I'll stop talking now, but there's a philosopher named Dewey, John Dewey, who thought consequences were very important in judgment.

[01:14:03] Okay. 

[01:14:04] Mark Bello: One of the big cases in the book during your career as a private practice lawyer, not a prosecutor, was you were telephoned by Lawrence Walsh, who was the special prosecutor investigating the Iran Contra affair, and you agreed to handle the prosecution of Casper Winegar Weinberger, who was the.

[01:14:32] Secretary of State under secretary of Defense rather under Reagan and Bush One before you could try the case, which you mocked, trialed as, I understand. Yeah. President Bush pardoned, weinberger, which caused you what you call post calm down post. Pardon? Depression. How do you really feel about that?

[01:15:00] James Brosnahan: Has the man no dignity at all? Pardon? Pardon? On Christmas Eve. Nice timing too. Nobody's gonna read it. Nobody gotta know. And the heart of that on the personal side was being in the middle of a coverup, and that is scary as hell. But the defense lawyer is very good defense lawyer had done what he should do for his client.

[01:15:38] He had been negotiating a, pardon, and on the 16th of December of that year, he told judge Hogan in Washington, DC in Chambers that he was gonna call President Bush as a witness. And that's in the book. To my knowledge, that's never been revealed before. I never write it, but I was sitting there when he did it.

[01:16:04] He was gonna wait until Bush was out of office on the 21st of January to not have complications about executive privilege and stuff. And then Bush pardoned six people in, which Weinberger was one. The simple fact was Weinberger lied to Congress and he lied to the fbi. And here is, I don't think this is a bias I've been in courts for a long time.

[01:16:41] How many people have I seen indicted for lying to government officials? How many people have I seen? Would that be 50? Probably not. Would it be a hundred? Would it be 150? How many would it be? A few of which I have represented, it's a crime, period. End of story. And they did what they had to do in Washington, which is some days a very odd place.

[01:17:16] Mark Bello: You won the, 

[01:17:16] mock trial though, right? 

[01:17:18] James Brosnahan: Yeah, one of the mock trial. But we, always set it up to do that. We tell the client that we hope the client remembers, and then they watched the deliberations. We had 36 jurors and three juries of 12, and they deliberated back and forth.

[01:17:39] Maybe this, maybe that. We watched them, they all came to unanimous verdicts that Weinberger was guilty. And we put on a strong defense for him in that mock trial, but they weren't buying it recently. I was listening to where if, Trump was indicted for insurrection, where would the case be?

[01:18:04] Would it be in Washington, DC Anybody check the, voting patterns in Washington, DC I think you might wanna check that because I think Trump would have a very, difficult time there. What side of that case would you wanna be on? I have standards no matter how it appears.

[01:18:28] I would never represent, not that he asked, given the contents of my book. I, don't think the phone's gonna ring. But I could not represent a person who has the intentions that he has. I couldn't do that. I don't need to list them for you. You have your own thoughts about that? I couldn't I, wouldn't do it.

[01:19:00] Okay. 

[01:19:01] Bob Gatty: You know what, we're running really long here. I just, I wanted to ask you if you could travel back in time, Jim, and give your 25 year old self some advice about career and life, what would it be? 

[01:19:17] James Brosnahan: Do you have any regrets? Yes. The big one was that I did make some time for our three children. I, did that.

[01:19:30] We went to all of their plays and performances at Berkeley High School and later, and so we did that. But I think the life balance, which this generation has, not only adopted, but they're actually working at home today. Yeah that's, a good balance. Is, very important. And I think I would try to, do that.

[01:20:03] We're, very close to our three children. They're, much older now, of course. And I just put it on LinkedIn this morning or I've got it down to put it on next week. A picture of my wife and a couple of our kids and stuff. And but I would, I think they're onto an important thing about life, professional balance.

[01:20:31] I, do think that's important. It's important for the parents as much as, anybody else. So. are you still in I have credit, yeah. 

[01:20:40] Bob Gatty: Yeah. Are you saying that if you could, you would've done more of that more family 

[01:20:46] James Brosnahan: stuff? Yes. Yeah. Yes. And there were days when I was in Pittsburgh, When would've been nice to be home.

[01:20:58] Yeah. With them. Okay. 

[01:21:01] Mark Bello: Jim last, semi political question. We've got the u, the United States Patriot Act that was passed shortly after nine 11, and there's a part of me that understands the intentions behind the act, but as a lawyer and an American who cares about civil liberties, do you think the changes that the Patriot Act have brought about do you think the enhanced security is, triumphs over civil liberties or, the other way 

[01:21:40] James Brosnahan: around?

[01:21:40] What it does sometimes, for sure. And the expansion of government. Detective work and intrusion into people. I'll give you one example. There are a lot of people who are Muslims in the California Valley, and they regularly have, someone knocking on their door wanting information about the old country.

[01:22:13] I gave a talk one night to the Muslim attorneys in San Francisco and they were telling me all these stories about it, and it, changes the quality of life when I started. As far as I know it, after, certainly after the Second World War, there was no domestic intelligence gathering. There would be investigations about specific crimes, but there would not be a vast network of intelligence gatherings.

[01:22:49] They, would argue, the government would argue, you've got violence all over the place. We've gotta keep track of it and we've gotta do that. There's a balance there that isn't always honored and that's why you are putting it as maybe yes and maybe no. And with the guns and the shootings and all this you have to wonder what's the right balance of it.

[01:23:22] The fact that America's a different country, I try not to let that be a problem with me. I try to keep, I try to keep track of changes. And we were much more a military. I got a I'll, stop with this point. I, got an email the other day. From the White House and it, shows you the security that my firm has.

[01:23:53] And it, invited me to sit in on something. No big deal. But they have a lot of these things. And but over the top of it was, no one in this firm has ever received and noticed from this source. This is highly suspicious. Check this out. Okay, now somewhere in the basement is somebody security minded checking.

[01:24:23] But two-thirds of my emails are, get that notice and I go on trying to live my life no matter what. 

[01:24:31] Bob Gatty: Me too. What a fascinating 

[01:24:33] Mark Bello: career you've had. 

[01:24:34] Bob Gatty: Absolutely. 

[01:24:36] James Brosnahan: I be, I, so I was very, lucky. You know what my 

[01:24:41] Bob Gatty: prediction is? That this memoir of yours is gonna be a big time bestseller. And if it's, it needs to be, it 

[01:24:49] Mark Bello: needs to be required, it needs to be required reading in law school.

[01:24:53] Bob Gatty: You know what? I hope just it's, a great Sure. It's a great book for that. But regular people like me No, I hear you. Really like this book. It's easy to read. It's an inside story. It takes you inside the courtroom. It takes you inside the practice of law.

[01:25:17] It is if you care at all about what's going on in this country it's really an important book and, I thoroughly en, en enjoyed it. 

[01:25:28] James Brosnahan: Thank you. Where can 

[01:25:30] Bob Gatty: people find it Jim? 

[01:25:32] James Brosnahan: It's on Amazon. Okay. It's on Barnes and Noble, and it's on a couple of other of the sources. It, you can register to buy a July on July 15th.

[01:25:48] It has in one category that you mentioned of professionalism and student interest. It, has been a on the bestseller list. For most of the day since we started out. Wow. Which is it goes up, that goes up and down. But we can hope and it isn't it's, I just want a lot of people to read it and understand what, and what an aspect of what happens in courts.

[01:26:25] Yeah. Okay. What's next for you? I'm doing a lot of writing. I'm, doing some writing for the Irish Echo in New York. We did an article on. One of the Kennedys who's a special envoy to Northern Ireland, which is a big subject in my book. And I love the writing. I was like, what? I understand you both have done a lot of and I did get to the point where I just like the writing and if someone publishes it, that's fine.

[01:27:01] If they don't I'm enjoying myself. So I write four hours a day, five days a week. And I've got a second book I'm working on called The Good Judge, which answered your question about the Supreme Court. Oh, okay. 

[01:27:21] Mark Bello: I look forward to reading 

[01:27:22] Bob Gatty: that. We will look forward to that.

[01:27:24] That's for sure. Hey, you guys, thank you so much for listening. If you haven't done so already, Please check out Mark Bellow's ripped from the headlines, legal thrillers. They're all available online at Amazon and other major online booksellers. Now Mark has quite the hero in attorney Zachary Blake, who fights for justice on all fronts.

[01:27:49] His books are Betrayal of Faith, betrayal of Justice, betrayal in Blue, betrayal in Black Betrayal, high Supreme Betrayal, betrayal. At the Border you have the right to remain silent and his latest, the final steps, a Harbor Springs cozy legal mystery. Also, he's written a wonderful children's book. It's about bullying.

[01:28:13] It's called Happy Jack, sad Jack. For more information, just check mark ello.com. Now, until next time, this is Bob Gatti for Mark Bellow signing off from Justice 

[01:28:25] Mark Bello: Counts. Thanks, Bob. Thanks, Jim. Thank you so much. Great, interview. I 

[01:28:30] James Brosnahan: appreciate it. Thanks. 

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