Posted on 08/12/2008 12:11:46 PM PDT by pollwatcher
As most of you know, John Edwards is a lawyer. But that fact alone probably wouldn’t give us subject-matter jurisdiction over the bizarro story involving him and video producer Rielle Hunter (pictured, left). Fortunately, however, Fred Baron (pictured, below right) gives us the in we need.
The dealio: In the midst of the weekend’s news that Edwards had had an affair with Hunter, news also broke that someone had paid not only for Hunter to move from Chapel Hill, N.C., to Santa Barbara, Calif., but for the man who claims to be the father of her child, Andrew Young, to move as well. Who would be so good, so noble, so, well, rich to pull a stunt like that off? None other than Fred Baron, as it turns out, the founder of the Baron & Budd law firm.
“I made a decision on my own, without talking to Edwards or anybody, to try to help them move to a community to try to get away from those folks,” Baron told the Dallas Morning News over the weekend. Baron was the Edwards campaign’s finance chair in 2004 and 2008 and said he paid for Hunter’s move out of his own pocket, not with Edwards’s money...
Added Baron: “John Edwards is an extraordinary human being who made an egregious error. . . . I feel sad because I know John Edwards so well. In life we all make mistakes. . . . It breaks my heart if this is going to disqualify him from being a public servant, because he would be a great one.”
(Excerpt) Read more at blogs.wsj.com ...
Baron and Budd are notorious asbestos lawyers from Dallas.
From wikipedia:
The Baron & Budd asbestos memo is a memo in asbestos litigation where it is alleged a prominent plaintiffs’ firm engaged in subornation of perjury and a cover-up. The Texas State Bar Association grievance committee dismissed complaints regarding the memo. It is cited by United States civil justice reformers[1] and politicians as an example of ethical problems in the plaintiffs’ bar. Accusations about the memo have also arisen in the context of Fred Baron’s relationship with former presidential candidate John Edwards.[2]
In 1997, a junior associate at Baron & Budd accidentally produced to defense counsel a twenty-page memo titled “Preparing for Your Deposition.”[3] Republican Senator Jon Kyl, a tort reform advocate, called the memo a “a startling insight into how asbestos claims are created”; in a Senate Report, Kyl writes that the memo:
gives clients detailed instructions how to credibly testify that they worked with particular asbestos products. The memo also instructs clients to assert particular things that will increase the value of their claim, without regard to whether those things are true. The memo even informs clients that a defense attorney will have no way of knowing whether they are lying about their exposure to particular asbestos products.[4]
Clients were also instructed by the memo to deny that they ever saw warning labels on product packages.[3] The memo was so detailed and comprehensive that Eugene Cook, a former Texas Supreme Court Justice, said at the time that “With this document, you could almost go down the street, get a homeless person, spend a couple of hours with him, and he would be prepared to testify.”[3]
Ethics
Academics disagree as to the ethical implications of the memo. Lester Brickman has called the memo “subornation of perjury.”[5] Others argue that it is merely “zealous representation.”[6]
Reply
Baron & Budd has admitted that the memo was produced by its employees, but denies that the memo instructs clients to lie, and has argued that statements from the memo have been taken out of context by the press.[4] The firm retained a University of Texas Law School professor, Charles Silver, who wrote an opinion that the firm should not face criminal liability for using the memo, based partly on the sworn affidavit of paralegal Lynnell Terrell that she was solely responsible for the authorship of the comprehensive memo and that the memo was rarely used.[3]
[edit] Dallas Observer Investigation
However, the Dallas Observer conducted an investigation of the memo, and found that “a number of former Baron & Budd employees say that the information and techniques contained in the memo are widely used, even taught to employees” and that the “memo was not truly an aberration, but a written example of how the product-identification staff works at Baron & Budd.”[7][8]
[edit] Dismissal of Charges
Judge John McClellan Marshall, who first learned of the memo from defense counsel in the case where it was produced, called the memo “scandalous to the community as well as to the profession,” and “an affront to the integrity of the judicial system,” and referred it to a grand jury for possible prosecution and to a state bar grievance committee.[1] In response to the affidavits from Baron & Budd’s experts, the state bar grievance committee dismissed the charges. The Dallas Observer reports that because of “politics”, the local DA dropped it, requiring the prosecution to be transferred to the Clinton Administration in 1998.[7] Baron & Budd and Association of Trial Lawyers of America made political contributions to the Congressional campaign of the U.S. Attorney’s wife, Regina Montoya, and Paul Coggins recused himself from the case as a result; the Dallas Observer quotes critics who say that the Democratic administration soft-pedaled the case, which was never investigated.[8][4] Judge Marshall had been re-elected twice without opposition in 1992 and 1996, but in 2000, Baron & Budd successfully targeted Judge Marshall for defeat; the Dallas Observer reports a lawyer close to the case saying that “No judge in Dallas will cross Baron & Budd after what happened in that election. They are scared to death.”[8][4][9] Local Texas judges blocked civil discovery into the production and use of the memo.[3] Attorneys for private clients who attempted to investigate the memo found that both they and their clients were targeted heavily by Baron & Budd.[8][4][3] The defendants agreed to replace the attorneys who had investigated Baron & Budd with new attorneys who would not pursue the matter further.[3] And the Dallas Observer reported that the firm responded to its reporting with “a pattern of intimidation and paranoia such as the Observer has never seen before.”[10]
[edit] Legacy
No member of Baron & Budd “has been convicted of wrongdoing, disciplined, or sanctioned” for the use of the memo.[3] But no one ever deposed the paralegal who wrote the memo, her immediate supervisors, or the clients who supposedly were prepared with the memo to testify.[3] Baron does not take the position that these court decisions in his favor “absolutely vindicate that the memo was proper,” but he does insist that “the document cannot be evaluated properly without ‘context,’ and points to [Lynnell] Terrell’s sworn statement that she always orally instructed clients to tell the truth and that she never gave the memo to clients without also handing them a copy of a second article that admonishe[d] them to testify truthfully.” [8][3]
“I paid for this out of my own pocket- no one asked me to”
OK really- does ANYONE believe that? ANYONE??????
Is it any coincidence that “lawyer” sounds so much like “liar”
Well, Fred, it looks as though your earlier “investment” with hopes for great returns in the future won’t be panning out quite they way you wanted.
“It breaks my heart if this is going to disqualify him from being a public servant, because he would be a great one.”
I feel like barfing.
OK, I confess - I had an affair with John Edwards, from 2004 to 2007.
Now when do I get my $4,000,000 house on the beach in Santa Barbara? And my $15,000 a month stipend??
Why would a high minded public servant like Edwards want to mix himself up with this kind of sleeziness? Oh, wait a minute....
Uh, you are kidding right? Edwards declared his wife was the greatest person in his life, or some such? So, a man who would do what he did to the "greatest person in his life" in putting his own ego ahead of this one single person.. a person who married him, bore his children, and even when she was told she was dying stood by him while he put politics first, is a person anyone else should be trusting for anything??? Oh I think not.
This guy has no potential for greatness other than as the ambulance chasing slime that he is. He has shown without a doubt he can be great at that.
My comment over at the blog:
It seems to me the likely candidate as the leaker of this is the guy who drove Rielle to the hotel and reserved the rooms.
It’s also **entirely** possible that Rielle herself recognized that her dime was up with Johnny and sold the story to the tabloid. If she did, and the secret held, she could be ‘burning the candle at both ends’, so to speak.
And it remains to be seen if JE is going to be on the hook for child support. Rielle may well be holding the paternity test back until she decides if Daddy is going to (silk) pony up the cash.
A final thought: everyone is feeling sorry for JE’s wife, and rightly so. But it begs the question: did she have motive and opportunity to drop a dime on JE’s meeting with the mistress?
I think we’ve not seen the last of this story by a longshot– it’s going to be political demise by a thousand paper cuts.
Thanks,I thoughtI heard that name on TV.
And no, I can think of no one who would believe this explanation. Maybe Madeline Albright who believe William J. Clinton's "I did not have sex with that woman."
Yeah, my lawyer had a copy of the memo, or at least what purported to be the memo, from his friend in law school or somesuch.
Discussing tort reform, he gave it to me. It was shocking (presuming I had the real thing). The wiki article is too kind.
Anyone that could be friends with Baron has to be a complete crook.
Not so fast, mister.....
While it may be true that giving her money was your idea, David Perel of NE said last night on Larry King that Edwards knew ALL ABOUT that money....Rielle told him how much was given to her each time it was paid to her.
Perel also said that NE has proof that Edwards met with Rielle in the same hotel on several occasions since the baby was born.
But this sounds a little too-schemey for such a ditz, and seems more like another one of Edwards transparent arrangements.
but whose name is conspicuously NOT on the BC...
Only the lowest, belly-crawling scum would publicly deny his baby...
But we've long known this about him - he's lower than a snake
Good one!!!
Ms. Hunter really hit the jackpot, didn’t she?
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