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Lloyd and Frank
May. 22nd, 2021 07:57 pmMay 21, 1986 was my sister's 40th birthday. I wasn't there for it, but that day would go on to change my life for totally unrelated reasons. To understand why, you have to go back a couple of years before that to me in my just-graduated-still-unemployed state of lawyerhood. I spent my summer between second and third year in London, a time when many law students were doing their first "summer camp" experiences at their future sweatshops. So while I got some decent interviews early in my third and final year, nothing clicked- not those (I wouldn't have lasted a week), not smaller local firms, not the DOJ or chances to clerk with judges. About 70 to 80 percent of our class was in the same boat at that time, so I didn't feel left out. Our best prospects were with Buffalo-based firms, but their economics required that we be admitted to the Bar before they could hire, and that, even after finishing taking the test in July 1984, was still seven months away.
Then the law school placement office put up a notice, first seen only in those pre-Internet days by the few of us still sticking around Buffalo because we really had no place else to go. Small Rochester firm, debtor-creditor work, Box 123. I don't remember if the "box" thing was blind or not, but it wouldn't have mattered, anyway, since I wouldn't have known Relin & Goldstein from Hole & Wall. I should have, though, for I took and enjoyed a bankruptcy course in my third year and we'd studied the just-released Supreme Court decision in U.S. v. Whiting Pools, 462 U.S. 198 if you're keeping score at home. A unanimous Court ruled in favor of a Chapter 11 debtor's right to regain possession of its assets from a prior seizure by the Internal Revenue Service. Whiting Pools was a Rochester area business, and Lloyd Relin, all of 44 at the time, was the one who argued it. Seasoned SCOTUS practitioners in the courtroom told us how impressed they were with his presentation. I would much later be a part of a strange addendum to the story of that case, though.
August plodded on, my downtown lease was running out of days, but one day a letter came from Lloyd: please call Betty, my secretary, to arrange an interview. Long distance be damned, I did, and I was on the 11th floor of my future legal home within a week. I was not alone, though: through a then-girlfriend, I knew that a mutual friend of ours had also interviewed, and I later heard through her that he'd been offered the job. By then, I'd cold-storaged some of my stuff, sold some off, and hauled the rest in that stupid Mustang 400 miles to my other sister's basement on Long Island to begin my exile.
Tom turned them down- he went into academia where he remains almost 40 years later- and by the beginning of that September, Lloyd's partner Paul, in charge of managing the staff, called me at Sandy's and made me my first and then only offer. I jumped at it, hauled all the shit 350 of the 400 miles back, found an apartment that led to a church that led to a marriage, and began my apprenticeship on October 1, 1984.
Lloyd continued his prominent rise. He and Paul had received many offers to merge into larger shops; they turned them all down, having done it once and been miserable in it before breaking off on their own in 1976. I was their second associate hire, my task mainly helping Lloyd with BK work but getting feet wet in collections, civil defense work, real estate and one and only one workers comp case. My fellow associate Howard gave me most of the on-the-job training except for bankruptcy; that I learned from the master. As I was beginning my second year as a Real Boy Lawyer, he'd been taking on big referrals as sole or co-counsel from much bigger shops, and he agreed to take sole responsibility for a new Buffalo Chapter 11 case that was so complex and toxic, nobody in Erie County would touch it.
I spent a lot of time on that case with Lloyd, since I knew my way around town better. He could never say no to a challenge, also doing bankruptcy trustee work, taking on bar association and non-profit committee assignments, and raising three kids. He was in his study at home on the night of May 21, 1986 when his heart gave out. Rochester's premiere bankruptcy practitioner, gone at 47. We found out this morning that year because, again, no Internet and too much shock.
Things proceeded quickly. In the Jewish tradition, funerals and burials come fast, and Lloyd and Margie hadn't pre-planned. He wound up in a short-term rental from his partner Paul's family. Then the regrouping began. Since we had a ton of BK cases and I was the only one with any expertise, I was kept on. Howard continued his own specialties, accelerated his own partnership track with Paul (I'd eventually get it a year or two ahead of schedule), and became a close friend of mine including ushering at our wedding. A third associate, just graduated from Syracuse, was almost let go before beginning but they found a way to work him in and I still remain friends with him after we both left the firm after Paul's direction veered too far from what we each wanted and what Lloyd probably envisioned.
I got an incredible amount of support after his passing. Referring and co-counsels, judges, even opponents offered not only sympathy but assistance as much as they ethically could. I learned more in those next two to four years than I would have in 20 if I'd just been Lloyd's "second." Some clients left, but most stayed. One that did neither was the owner of that pool company; as with many SCOTUS precedents, the decision didn't resolve the case, and that Chapter 11 went on for years after, with the firm being owed a lot of money for the costs of briefing and travel to DC. Eventually, Paul started trying to clean up some old bankruptcy receivables, and when the owner was sued for fees, years after all the work and success, he filed a counterclaim against Lloyd for malpractice.
Now THAT's chutzpah. It's also time-barred; you only have three years to sue a lawyer for malpractice, but by trying to use it as a shield, he at least had an argument. Other than, you know, the argument Lloyd FUCKING WON in the highest court in the country. I don't remember how it played out; I just remember being mad as hell that someone would disrespect his memory that obnoxiously.
I left that firm in 1994. I saw Paul in his office a handful of times when I was representing clients sued by his firm; our chats were civil but we're not exchanging holiday cards. Howard, I have either never seen once since leaving 27 years ago this month (my recollection) or I met for lunch once (Eleanor's). Steven and I crossed paths in court pre-COVID and we still chat regularly.
Lloyd was a serious, studious man, but his humor could slay you. Walking back to our cars once on one of those Buffalo case appearances, probably months before his death, we passed a ground-floored office that we could see a guy through a floor-to-ceiling clear window. Just to make conversation, I said, Boy, I wouldn't want to work that close to passersby on a street. He didn't miss a beat: Yeah, it'd be really hard if you had to scratch your nuts.
That wasn't Lloyd. Yet it was.
----
I wish I could share a picture of the man, but we had no firm parties or such back then, and the Internet has his obituary, his wedding announcement from 1961, but no pics.
Except I do have one, sort of:
That's Lloyd's son, David, and in that photo he is a dead ringer for his dad. It is included, in black and white form, in a book he co-authored in 2006 called Three Cups of Tea. This was the tale of the effort by his co-author Greg Mortenson to bring schools to the forever-troubled lands of Afghanistan and Pakistan; here, David is with Ibrahim, an elder of one of the towns they brought their message of peace to.
I became quite a believer in Mortenson's message; when I saw that picture in my copy of the book, I proudly brought it to court with me to show the by then senior judge, who was clerk of the court when Lloyd and I walked in with our weird filing back in early 1986. Mortenson was a Distinguished Speaker at UB and I tried to meet him after his arena-filled talk to pass my regards to David through him.
That copy of the picture, though, comes from a much sadder tale. In 2011, 60 Minutes did a piece questioning some of the factual underpinnings of the book- of fabrications by Mortenson of events and connections of his group to the schools that were built. As the accusations began to question David's own credibility as a journalist, he could take no more and took his own life in November of 2012.
He was 49, outliving his dad by two years and reaching the same age our oldest sister did, who was born the same year Lloyd was. I never met him other than for two seconds at his father's shiva, but I was deeply saddened by the turn his life took.
As for Lloyd's 1961 bride? She moved to an urban home, eventually remarried, lived a full and creative life, and died a year ago today at 81, a day after the Erev Shabbat service at which Lloyd's candle would have been lit. I tracked her down a few years after David's passing to offer my sympathies for both of her losses and some memories of Lloyd. She replied graciously, because that was Margie.
I have no connection to his remaining family or what has become of his firm, but I would not be who or where I am if those not quite two years of my life had not intersected with his.
As for that present:
The tile and floor guy did come, later than expected but with plenty of observations and the dog was decent while he was here. Our other big project of the day was getting the Frankenmower, as we now call it, back to the cutting of actual lawn. I thought I'd photographed the genius repair Eleanor came up with, but today required a modification. Her original idea (with slight suggestion from me) was to engineer a replacement handle above the line where we couldn't reach the broken part, then bolt it to the broken bottom. Conceptually, this worked, but once she got out on the front lawn, the bolts came loose. The fix for that? Replace their nuts (which hopefully won't have to be scratched;) with wingnuts that can be hand-tightened; reposition them so the nuts are ON TOP of the assembly, so gravity works in your favor and you can see them if they start coming loose; and then make their tightening a regular routine at the beginning and end of every mowing run.
Et voila!
I finished the front and got to much of the back before the battery ran down, including the "Swamp" section that had been unmowable previously due to how much rain we'd gotten last month. The battery is charging, the nuts have been tightened, and I'll finish it off tomorrow. That and weedwhacking around the composter, which has weeds so high I swear I heard cries of FEED ME, SEYMOUR! coming from in there.
At least I've got a better dentist than Audrey did;)
ETA. I did! I did take a before pic! Why I couldn't find it in uploads or on my phone, NFI:
See? Perfectly engineered, except the bolts were in from the top down. When I did the first cut after re-disposing of the mow-nster, I could actually see one of the wingnuts turning left (and not at Albukoikie), so I stopped and turned it back. And checked them all after I was finished.
Then the law school placement office put up a notice, first seen only in those pre-Internet days by the few of us still sticking around Buffalo because we really had no place else to go. Small Rochester firm, debtor-creditor work, Box 123. I don't remember if the "box" thing was blind or not, but it wouldn't have mattered, anyway, since I wouldn't have known Relin & Goldstein from Hole & Wall. I should have, though, for I took and enjoyed a bankruptcy course in my third year and we'd studied the just-released Supreme Court decision in U.S. v. Whiting Pools, 462 U.S. 198 if you're keeping score at home. A unanimous Court ruled in favor of a Chapter 11 debtor's right to regain possession of its assets from a prior seizure by the Internal Revenue Service. Whiting Pools was a Rochester area business, and Lloyd Relin, all of 44 at the time, was the one who argued it. Seasoned SCOTUS practitioners in the courtroom told us how impressed they were with his presentation. I would much later be a part of a strange addendum to the story of that case, though.
August plodded on, my downtown lease was running out of days, but one day a letter came from Lloyd: please call Betty, my secretary, to arrange an interview. Long distance be damned, I did, and I was on the 11th floor of my future legal home within a week. I was not alone, though: through a then-girlfriend, I knew that a mutual friend of ours had also interviewed, and I later heard through her that he'd been offered the job. By then, I'd cold-storaged some of my stuff, sold some off, and hauled the rest in that stupid Mustang 400 miles to my other sister's basement on Long Island to begin my exile.
Tom turned them down- he went into academia where he remains almost 40 years later- and by the beginning of that September, Lloyd's partner Paul, in charge of managing the staff, called me at Sandy's and made me my first and then only offer. I jumped at it, hauled all the shit 350 of the 400 miles back, found an apartment that led to a church that led to a marriage, and began my apprenticeship on October 1, 1984.
Lloyd continued his prominent rise. He and Paul had received many offers to merge into larger shops; they turned them all down, having done it once and been miserable in it before breaking off on their own in 1976. I was their second associate hire, my task mainly helping Lloyd with BK work but getting feet wet in collections, civil defense work, real estate and one and only one workers comp case. My fellow associate Howard gave me most of the on-the-job training except for bankruptcy; that I learned from the master. As I was beginning my second year as a Real Boy Lawyer, he'd been taking on big referrals as sole or co-counsel from much bigger shops, and he agreed to take sole responsibility for a new Buffalo Chapter 11 case that was so complex and toxic, nobody in Erie County would touch it.
I spent a lot of time on that case with Lloyd, since I knew my way around town better. He could never say no to a challenge, also doing bankruptcy trustee work, taking on bar association and non-profit committee assignments, and raising three kids. He was in his study at home on the night of May 21, 1986 when his heart gave out. Rochester's premiere bankruptcy practitioner, gone at 47. We found out this morning that year because, again, no Internet and too much shock.
Things proceeded quickly. In the Jewish tradition, funerals and burials come fast, and Lloyd and Margie hadn't pre-planned. He wound up in a short-term rental from his partner Paul's family. Then the regrouping began. Since we had a ton of BK cases and I was the only one with any expertise, I was kept on. Howard continued his own specialties, accelerated his own partnership track with Paul (I'd eventually get it a year or two ahead of schedule), and became a close friend of mine including ushering at our wedding. A third associate, just graduated from Syracuse, was almost let go before beginning but they found a way to work him in and I still remain friends with him after we both left the firm after Paul's direction veered too far from what we each wanted and what Lloyd probably envisioned.
I got an incredible amount of support after his passing. Referring and co-counsels, judges, even opponents offered not only sympathy but assistance as much as they ethically could. I learned more in those next two to four years than I would have in 20 if I'd just been Lloyd's "second." Some clients left, but most stayed. One that did neither was the owner of that pool company; as with many SCOTUS precedents, the decision didn't resolve the case, and that Chapter 11 went on for years after, with the firm being owed a lot of money for the costs of briefing and travel to DC. Eventually, Paul started trying to clean up some old bankruptcy receivables, and when the owner was sued for fees, years after all the work and success, he filed a counterclaim against Lloyd for malpractice.
Now THAT's chutzpah. It's also time-barred; you only have three years to sue a lawyer for malpractice, but by trying to use it as a shield, he at least had an argument. Other than, you know, the argument Lloyd FUCKING WON in the highest court in the country. I don't remember how it played out; I just remember being mad as hell that someone would disrespect his memory that obnoxiously.
I left that firm in 1994. I saw Paul in his office a handful of times when I was representing clients sued by his firm; our chats were civil but we're not exchanging holiday cards. Howard, I have either never seen once since leaving 27 years ago this month (my recollection) or I met for lunch once (Eleanor's). Steven and I crossed paths in court pre-COVID and we still chat regularly.
Lloyd was a serious, studious man, but his humor could slay you. Walking back to our cars once on one of those Buffalo case appearances, probably months before his death, we passed a ground-floored office that we could see a guy through a floor-to-ceiling clear window. Just to make conversation, I said, Boy, I wouldn't want to work that close to passersby on a street. He didn't miss a beat: Yeah, it'd be really hard if you had to scratch your nuts.
That wasn't Lloyd. Yet it was.
----
I wish I could share a picture of the man, but we had no firm parties or such back then, and the Internet has his obituary, his wedding announcement from 1961, but no pics.
Except I do have one, sort of:
That's Lloyd's son, David, and in that photo he is a dead ringer for his dad. It is included, in black and white form, in a book he co-authored in 2006 called Three Cups of Tea. This was the tale of the effort by his co-author Greg Mortenson to bring schools to the forever-troubled lands of Afghanistan and Pakistan; here, David is with Ibrahim, an elder of one of the towns they brought their message of peace to.
I became quite a believer in Mortenson's message; when I saw that picture in my copy of the book, I proudly brought it to court with me to show the by then senior judge, who was clerk of the court when Lloyd and I walked in with our weird filing back in early 1986. Mortenson was a Distinguished Speaker at UB and I tried to meet him after his arena-filled talk to pass my regards to David through him.
That copy of the picture, though, comes from a much sadder tale. In 2011, 60 Minutes did a piece questioning some of the factual underpinnings of the book- of fabrications by Mortenson of events and connections of his group to the schools that were built. As the accusations began to question David's own credibility as a journalist, he could take no more and took his own life in November of 2012.
He was 49, outliving his dad by two years and reaching the same age our oldest sister did, who was born the same year Lloyd was. I never met him other than for two seconds at his father's shiva, but I was deeply saddened by the turn his life took.
As for Lloyd's 1961 bride? She moved to an urban home, eventually remarried, lived a full and creative life, and died a year ago today at 81, a day after the Erev Shabbat service at which Lloyd's candle would have been lit. I tracked her down a few years after David's passing to offer my sympathies for both of her losses and some memories of Lloyd. She replied graciously, because that was Margie.
I have no connection to his remaining family or what has become of his firm, but I would not be who or where I am if those not quite two years of my life had not intersected with his.
----
As for that present:
The tile and floor guy did come, later than expected but with plenty of observations and the dog was decent while he was here. Our other big project of the day was getting the Frankenmower, as we now call it, back to the cutting of actual lawn. I thought I'd photographed the genius repair Eleanor came up with, but today required a modification. Her original idea (with slight suggestion from me) was to engineer a replacement handle above the line where we couldn't reach the broken part, then bolt it to the broken bottom. Conceptually, this worked, but once she got out on the front lawn, the bolts came loose. The fix for that? Replace their nuts (which hopefully won't have to be scratched;) with wingnuts that can be hand-tightened; reposition them so the nuts are ON TOP of the assembly, so gravity works in your favor and you can see them if they start coming loose; and then make their tightening a regular routine at the beginning and end of every mowing run.
Et voila!
I finished the front and got to much of the back before the battery ran down, including the "Swamp" section that had been unmowable previously due to how much rain we'd gotten last month. The battery is charging, the nuts have been tightened, and I'll finish it off tomorrow. That and weedwhacking around the composter, which has weeds so high I swear I heard cries of FEED ME, SEYMOUR! coming from in there.
At least I've got a better dentist than Audrey did;)
ETA. I did! I did take a before pic! Why I couldn't find it in uploads or on my phone, NFI:
See? Perfectly engineered, except the bolts were in from the top down. When I did the first cut after re-disposing of the mow-nster, I could actually see one of the wingnuts turning left (and not at Albukoikie), so I stopped and turned it back. And checked them all after I was finished.