Attorney finds Enough Laughs in Career to Fill a Book

LAKE SAN MARCOS, Calif. —  Milton Green spend half a century in the legal profession as an attorney and law professor. In that time, he found enough he thought was funny about the law to fill a book.

For instance, Green recounts the tale of a lawyer who wanted to discredit the testimony of a witness in a personal injury suit.

The witness as the best friend of the supposed victim and had testified that his friend had been acting strangely since the accident.

“You don’t know how he acts when he is alone, do you?” the lawyer asked.

“No,” the man on the stand answered. “I was never with him when he was alone.”

Now 82, Green said he was the lawyer in that exchange. It’s one of the anecdotes that fill “It’s Legal to Laugh--A Collection of Humor About the Legal Profession.”

New Lawyer Needed

In another case, Green recalled the tale of an attorney whose wife sued him for divorce on the grounds of impotence. About the same time, the attorney’s former secretary sued him for support of her illegitimate child, saying he was the father. The lawyer lost both cases.

Some of Green’s subjects might disagree, but the retired law professor says his book reflects favorably on the legal profession, who members are sometimes considered a stodgy, starched group.

The book was released by Vantage Press in the spring of 1985. The first printing of 500 copies sold out, and Vantage just finished a second printing of 800 copies. A retired appellate court judge has ordered nine copies for members of the U.S. Supreme Court, and Green said there’s a waiting list for more.

“Stories like these show that lawyers and judges do occasionally step down from their pedestals--if they don’t fall off them completely,” Green said. “When you penetrate their hard crusts, they really are only human.”

One such attorney practiced law well into his 90s, Green writes, frequently challenging opponents in court by shouting, “I deny the allegation, and I defy the ‘allegator.’ ”

When a reporter asked him how he kept going, the old attorney said, “Well, when I get up in the morning, I have my breakfast and then read the paper. I look in the obituary column, and if my name isn’t there, I come down to the office.”

Green also tells stories about jurors, one of whom had kept a jury deadlocked for hours. As the dinner hour approached, Green said the foreman called the bailiff and asked about food.

The bailiff asked, “Shall I order 12 dinners?” The jury foreman replied, “Make it 11 dinners and a bale of hay.”

Green, who retired in 1978, collected many of his stories by studying old notes and speeches and writing colleagues for permission to include a remembered anecdote.

His previous writing was more serious. His textbook, “Basic Civil Procedures,” is widely used by law school freshmen and has been translated into Japanese.

After leaving the courtroom, Green went into teaching and spent 12 years at Hastings College of Law in San Francisco, among others. He had also taught at the University of Colorado law school and recalled one of his students, Byron R. (Whizzer) White, now a U.S. Supreme Court justice.

“He was never absent, always prepared, but he never opened his mouth,” Green said. “I thought he had been overrated, but when I graded the exams, one stood out 10 points above the rest--Whizzer’s.”

One of Green’s favorite cases came out of the California Supreme Court and involved a plaintiff who sued for injuries sustained when he fell into an open hole in a sidewalk.

The defense contended it wasn’t at fault, because the plaintiff was drunk when he fell into the hole. The plaintiff appealed and the high court reversed the decision in 1855, saying in part, “A drunken man is as much entitled to a safe street as a sober one, and much more in need of it.”

Green said he never expected his book to be published and was surprised when the first printing sold so well.

“It’s a fun book,” he said. “I amuse myself by dragging out these little things.”