Calling Floyd Abrams

I once had a client I came to think of as “the wacky caterer.” I represented him through a series of bizarre and sometimes hilarious situations, until it mercifully ended — for both of us — in his filing for bankruptcy.

Years later, he called me again, putting my “legal skills” to the test.

He was now managing a restaurant where a story had appeared in El Diario — the largest Spanish-language newspaper in New York — claiming the restaurant was a drug-dealing location. The story was wrong, and El Diario printed a retraction. Still, according to the “Wackster,” business had fallen off badly.

He wanted to know if anything could be done, and whether the retraction protected the newspaper from liability. (Okay, he didn’t say that exactly — but that’s what he wanted to know.)

I didn’t think he was calling me “officially,” meaning he wasn’t going to pay for my opinion, but I told him I would “look into it.”

A pretty stupid thing to offer, I admit — and I regretted saying it almost immediately. But this is what I did....

My legal brain knew that I didn’t know the answer, which usually prompts me to do my kind of research — the kind where I ask myself, “Who can I call?”

I categorized this as a “First Amendment case,” because it had something to do with a newspaper. The only First Amendment lawyer I had ever heard of was Floyd Abrams.

If he were a baseball player, Floyd Abrams' nickname would have been “Mr. First Amendment.” To put things in perspective, he represented The New York Times in "The Pentagon Papers" case.

So, what I did was, I called Floyd Abrams.

Want to get through to a famous lawyer? Call at 7:00 PM. I got right through. I told him I was a solo practitioner in Forest Hills and that I had a potential case. He said, “Forest Hills? I went to Forest Hills High School.”

So did I.

We shot the breeze for a while, and eventually he told me the law on newspaper retractions and liability.

I gave the information to the wacky caterer, but I didn’t tell him who I had called.

I did tell all my lawyer friends, though — and they always said the same thing:

“YOU CALLED FLOYD ABRAMS?!?!”

"Yeah"

And I’d do it again, too!

BTW - I created the illustration in this piece using A.I. I asked it to make me age appropriate for when this story took place (approx age 35). Wish I could actually DO that!