This Father in Law Brings Good Luck to Son’s Cases

With his elastic suspenders and polyester pants, he’s the oddest good-luck charm you’ll ever see.

But some say Arnold Browne is better than any four-leaf clover when he walks into Los Angeles courtrooms where high-stakes corporate battles are being fought.

For the past four years, Browne--a plain-spoken former truck driver--has shown up at nearly 50 trials where his lawyer son is working. And his son has won every one of them.

That fact hasn’t been lost on clients, who now insist that the 82-year-old attend all of their depositions, hearings and court sessions.

They’re convinced the ex-Teamster brings more than luck to the docket. They say he delivers a lifetime of street smarts.

Attorney Allan Browne says he only hoped to keep his dad from becoming bored when he invited him to come to court one day in 1991 after he retired from driving a medical company delivery truck.

Lucky thing, too. Sitting quietly in the judge’s chambers, Arnold Browne listened while lawyers argued burden of proof and other legal points as they wrangled over whether a troubled construction project should be placed into receivership. The judge, being polite, finally turned and asked the retiree what he thought.

Browne replied that it seemed to him that receivership would put a cloud on the property, lowering its value and wrecking chances for the owner to sell it as he was hoping to do. The judge agreed with that logic and quickly denied receivership.

The ex-truck driver may know more about torque than torte. But he knows plenty about human nature.

“I see things that sometimes lawyers don’t see,” he said Wednesday during a break in a deposition being taken at his son’s Beverly Hills office.

“I don’t have a law degree--I’ve got no degree of any kind. But I read a lot.”

He sometimes reads a lot in jurors’ expressions, too. That’s why his son asks him to sit in on jury selection questioning. And why he makes certain he’s in court during key parts of trials.

Browne said he sometimes runs his opening statement past his father, who alerts him to holes in the argument or things that aren’t being explained clearly. His old man doesn’t hesitate to let him know, Browne said.

“He’s my reality check,” he said. Not to mention a valuable extra set of eyes and ears.

During a recent trial over alleged unfair competition, Arnold Browne noticed a juror dozing and slipped a note to his son. “I tried talking a little louder and that didn’t work,” Allan Browne said. “So I knocked a book off the table to wake her up and was able to go back over what I’d been saying.”

The elder Browne thwarted possible jury tampering in a trial last fall when he noticed a defendant talking to a juror in a courthouse restroom. In a real estate case, he noticed something that the judge and lawyers alike had missed and helped prevent an easement from being placed on the property of his son’s client.

“It’s gotten to be a joke--opposing lawyers don’t fear me as much as they dread seeing my dad walk in,” Browne said.

Or as a lawyers’ publication commented about Arnold Browne: “Father knows best.”

“Arnold gives a street perspective that keeps you from getting tied up in legalese,” said client Ken Dzien, vice president of Chicago Title Insurance Co.’s regional office in Rosemead. “You can talk about the good-luck charm, but he has a perception of what is basically right and wrong.”

Client Gilbert DeCardenas, president of Cacique Inc. of City of Industry, was pleased that the elder Browne was sitting in on the deposition he was giving Wednesday in an industrial espionage case. “It’s good luck. But I like Allan’s father regardless,” DeCardenas said.

After the deposition, Browne paid his father: He took him to a deli across the street and bought him a bowl of chicken soup.

“He buys me lunch every day,” Arnold Browne said with a laugh. “I work pretty cheap, eh?”