Posted on 05/14/2006 6:33:35 AM PDT by radar101
San Diego lawyer Jim McElroy insists he isn't terribly bothered by the scathing insults and threats directed his way. A few weeks back, someone wrote him an e-mail telling him to “burn in hell.” Someone else sent a note that opened with the words, “Hey Dumb--- McElroy.”
Then there was this message, e-mailed several months ago. “When outraged Americans come and commit justifiable homicide against James McElroy, I'm throwing a party and inviting McElroy's family and friends and co-workers . . . It will be a great festive day!” McElroy has practiced law in San Diego for 19 years, usually toiling away in relative anonymity on business litigation and other civil cases. But he has become a public figure of sorts for his efforts to remove the Mount Soledad cross from city property, a battle he and his client, an atheist, may be on the verge of winning after a bruising 17-year legal fight. This month a federal judge gave the San Diego 90 days to remove the cross from public land or face a $5,000-a-day fine.
McElroy's courtroom victories in this bitterly divisive case have made him, in some quarters, the most reviled lawyer in town. Even some of his family members wag their fingers in his direction, although he insists their chiding is all in good fun – sort of.
“I've got a dear aunt who's very active in the Catholic church,” said McElroy, 54, who is balding and sports a graying goatee. “She shakes her head every time she sees an article about the cross case and she says, 'Jimmy, what are you doing?' ”
McElroy is no stranger to controversial litigation. He sued white supremacist Tom Metzger. He represented a group of doctors who perform abortions in a battle against protesters. As a crusading college student in Illinois, he engaged in organized debates against members of the Ku Klux Klan.
Still, McElroy said, the level of raw hatred directed his way in recent months rivals anything he has seen in his career. On a recent morning, McElroy – the self-described “black sheep” son of Richard Nixon supporters – stood near his desk on the 14th floor of a Broadway high-rise and played some messages left on his answering machine.
“I think you are absolutely disgusting,” one caller said. “How can you get up in the morning and look at yourself in the mirror?”
Another caller declared, “You guys are a bigger abomination than the doggone stupid atheists that you represent.”
A few months ago, McElroy received a phone call so vitriolic that, at his secretary's urging, he notified the police. The profanity-laced message threatened a Mafia-style “hit” on him.
“It sounded like a cross between Tony Soprano and the 'Godfather,' ” he recalled.
Church and state Such are the heated emotions surrounding the Mount Soledad case, which has been crawling through the court system since 1989, when atheist Philip Paulson, a local Vietnam War veteran, filed a lawsuit saying the existence of the large, mountaintop cross on city property violated the principle of separation of church and state. McElroy has been involved in the case since 1996, when he volunteered to help Paulson file a motion. In the past 10 years, he hasn't charged his client a dime, but McElroy has billed the city hundreds of thousands of dollars under a legal provision that forces the losing side to pay the victor's legal fees in certain constitutional disputes.
The city already has paid him $100,000, a judge has ordered the city to pay him an additional $280,000, and McElroy intends to bill the city for a large sum – “well into the six figures” – on top of that.
On May 3, U.S. District Judge Gordon Thompson Jr. – who ruled 15 years ago that the cross was unconstitutional – gave the city 90 days to remove it or face daily fines.
Last week, in the latest effort to preserve the monument, Mayor Jerry Sanders and Congressman Duncan Hunter, R-Alpine, proposed that the federal government seize the La Jolla property by eminent domain.
McElroy responded to that maneuver by labeling it “probably one of the silliest ideas I've ever heard.” He said he might ask the judge to increase the potential fine to $10,000 or $15,000 a day.
At this point, the city's chances of saving the cross seem remote. In recent years, courts have invalidated three land transfers – two sales to a private group and a gift to the federal government – designed to keep the cross in place. In 2003, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the city's appeal.
The way McElroy sees it, the law is so clearly on his side that the city's decision to keep fighting amounts to throwing away taxpayers' money.
“It's not very often that attorneys say there's no way in hell I'm going to lose this case,” he said. “Pigs will fly when this appeal is lost. You could put a high school kid on it and he'd win the appeal.”
Not new to controversy The more success McElroy has in court, the more cutting are the barbs fired off in newspaper columns and on local talk radio. Rick Roberts, the conservative KFMB radio personality, sees the Mount Soledad litigation as an example of political correctness run amok. “One person is offended so everyone has to stand on their head for them,” Roberts said. “Just because you can make a federal case out of something doesn't mean you ought to do it every time.”
Lawyer Charles LiMandri, a religious activist who has helped the city litigate against McElroy, sees “a certain anti-Christian sentiment” in the efforts of McElroy and his client.
As for the hostile e-mails and phone calls McElroy has received, LiMandri says he doesn't condone them.
“It's the worst possible thing they could do to further our cause,” LiMandri said.
But then he added, “When you go against the will of the people on such an emotionally charged topic, you're creating a climate where this type of reaction could occur.”
McElroy has been in this position before. In 1993, he helped win a $12.5 million verdict against white supremacist Tom Metzger of Fallbrook by persuading a jury to hold Metzger responsible for the actions of his skinhead followers, who were convicted of fatally beating an Ethiopian man with baseball bats in Portland, Ore. During some of McElroy's court appearances in that case, he had a police escort and wore a bullet-proof vest.
He also received hate mail after suing the state director of Operation Rescue, an anti-abortion group, in 1995. The suit resulted in an $880,000 verdict for his clients – four doctors and a San Diego clinicthat performed abortions, who said they were being harassed by the group.
McElroy, a divorced father of three grown children, has been living in San Diego since he moved here from his hometown of Decatur, Ill., to attend the University of San Diego School of Law, where he graduated in 1977.
He is the son of a construction worker who always voted Republican. But somehow, by the time McElroy graduated from high school, he had become a left-leaning social activist whose hero was John F. Kennedy.
He won't discuss his religious beliefs.
“I don't want it to become about me,” he said.
He professes to be fairly comfortable playing the foil to the “zealots” and “crazies” out there. Over the years, he has taken some minor safety precautions to protect his family and the staff of his solo practice. But his concern for his physical well-being is “relatively limited,” he said, and he insists the nasty e-mails and phone calls don't bother him that much.
“My view of it is, if they're really getting mad, I must be doing something right.”
He did have one phone conversation that he actually found enjoyable. A few weeks ago, a woman left an irate message and her phone number on his answering machine. McElroy called her back, and they had a long, intelligent, perfectly civil conversation in which they discussed the legal and philosophical issues surrounding the case.
He didn't change her opinion about the cross, but he thinks he convinced her he wasn't such a monster after all.
“She understood I wasn't some evil guy trying to take a sledgehammer to her religious symbol,” McElroy said. “We had a meeting of the minds, and that's always a nice thing.”
Alex Roth: (619) 542-4558; alex.roth@uniontrib.com
It's the Gramscian method.
Hatred of the lawyer and his client is misplaced. It is the judge that is abusing his authority, and rather blatantly.
“My view of it is, if they're really getting mad, I must be doing something right.”
So does this mean his goal is to upset people of faith? How evil.
They should print the second picture full page in every newspaper in CA, with a caption underneath, saying, "This cross removed by liberal lawyers. judges, and the ACLU. Remove judges that want to destroy our American traditions -VOTE REPUBLICAN."
The problem is, nobody really holds these people accountable.
The problem is the Christian do not act more like Muslims. The Christians should surround this cross, tens of thousands strong, and refuse to leave. When the police show up. Hold their ground.
But they won't. They will instead write letters to their representatives, a few letters to the editor and post their gripes in internet forums.
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