Minnesota Lawyer Blog

Legendary Minnesota criminal defense attorney Doug Thomson has died after a lengthy illness. Thomson -- who tried many high-profile cases, including the T. Eugene Thompson murder trial in the 1960s -- was at one time widely recognized as one of the top people in his field.

Thomson's former partner, Hennepin County District Court Judge Jack Nordby, said of Thomson: "He was better than any lawyer I have ever known, with the exception of F. Lee Bailey, at giving a closing argument. I saw him win case after case that were just losers based on his closing argument."

The simmering drama at the state attorney general's office reached a climax of sorts yesterday with the abrupt resignation of former attorney general Mike Hatch, but by no means did the saga reach its conclusion. In fact, Hatch's departure probably raised more questions than it answered:

-- Where will Hatch land? Given his reputation as a volatile personality, will a private firm be reluctant to take a chance on him? Or will his obvious legal skills overcome reservations about his demeanor?

-- What will Hatch's role be as the AGO moves forward? His status as a mentor to Lori Swanson is well known. Will he try -- and will he be allowed -- to pull strings behind the scenes?

-- What will change in the AG's office? According to some insiders, Lori Swanson, not Hatch, was the one spending 14-hour days vetting every bit of correspondence that went out of Bremer Tower. Will the new situation allow her to focus on the job she was actually elected to do?

-- With Hatch out and the AGO struggling to replace staff, will recent defectors be welcomed back? Will they want to come back?

-- How will this shake-up affect the office's credibility, if at all? Will the administrative dysfunction that's come to light affect the AGO's ability to effectively pursue important cases?

-- What of the two weeks' notice given by Hatch? Was he strictly following procedure, or will he see this as an opportunity to settle lingering scores before leaving?

-- What's to become of Swanson's political career? A man who nearly became governor was willing to fall on his sword for her. Is that a tribute to how she's being groomed for bigger things?

-- How will the Swanson-AFSCME drama play out? It was the pretext for the public airing of the AGO story to start with, and now it seems to have been placed on the back burner. Will the unionizing efforts in the office pan out, and will Swanson and local AFCSME leader Elliot Seide make peace?

As the AGO story disappears from mainstream news sources, it's easy to see these lingering questions as so much inside-baseball speculation that only law geeks would care about. But in fact, how it plays out from here might be the most important stage in the whole tale.

What do you think will happen?

It would have been a much more dignified end for Mike Hatch's career as Attorney General if he had turned in his office keys four months ago like he was supposed to. And the man is in many ways a walking HR problem with anger-management issues, there is no denying that. However, properly channeled, some of his worst qualities -- his aggressiveness, his single-minded determination, his anger and indignation -- could also be some of his best qualities.

He did do the consumers of this state some service. I wouldn't want that forgotten because of his tardy exit from the AG's Office. When he was taking his hammer to unscrupulous lenders he was fine, but when he took it to his employees, he was out of line. I have heard Mr. Hatch compared to a bull dog, and that is an apt analogy. As AG, he was happiest when he was out chasing insurers or health-care providers on behalf of consumers. But when he was locked in the office, he would start to tear up the furniture. Eventually enough was enough, and it was time for him to go out.

I wish Mr. Hatch the best of luck in the private sector. I have no doubt that there is a job out there where he can put his energy and aggressiveness to good use. Meanwhile, I would call on AG Lori Swanson to make her office a place where the staff enjoys coming to work and serving the citizens of this state. They are dedicated public servants and deserve that.

Former Attorney General Mike Hatch today resigned his post as director of complex litigation at the Attorney General's Office.

In a letter to AG Lori Swanson, Hatch said: "Because of my presence in your administration, it is apparent that changes I made during my administration are unfairly attributed to you. It is not appropriate you should become targets of complaints involving my administration. I hope that with this resignation the public will continue to focus on the good deeds you are undertaking on behalf of ordinary citizens.'' For more, click here. (Star Tribune)

The Pioneer Press has the full text of Hatch's resignation letter. Hatch is apparently giving two weeks notice, which strikes me as a bit odd given the situation.

In any case, I applaud Hatch's decision, which will allow Swanson to work on straightening out the longstanding management issues at the office and get back to serving the people of this state, which I believe she is capable of doing well.

Yesterday’s U.S. Supreme Court decision in Scott v. Harris was notable for a couple of reasons: Most importantly, it established a bright-line rule for high-speed car chases by police: "A police officer's attempt to terminate a dangerous high-speed car chase that threatens the lives of innocent bystanders does not violate the Fourth Amendment, even when it places the fleeing motorist at risk of serious injury or death."

It also made jurisprudential history because the Supreme Court based its decision on a video of the incident, which left a 19-year-old man quadraplegic. In the majority decision, Justice Antonin Scalia said, “The record in this case includes a videotape capturing the events in question. Where, as here, the record blatantly contradicts the plaintiff's version of events so that no reasonable jury could believe it, a court should not adopt that version of the facts for purposes of ruling on a summary judgment motion.”

"We are happy to allow the videotape to speak for itself," Scalia said in a footnote, directing interested viewers to the court's website where there is a link to a video file next to the Scott v. Harris citation.

Justice John Paul Stevens dissented, saying that the video “surely does not provide a principled basis for depriving the respondent of his right to have a jury evaluate the question whether the police officers' decision to use deadly force to bring the chase to an end was reasonable.”

I’d be interested in your thoughts not only on the merits of the case but also on the Supreme Court’s role as fact-finder and its decision to post the video on the Web.

The Pioneer Press's Rubén Rosario, who has been closely following the events at the Attorney General's Office, wrote a piece calling for Mike Hatch's removal. While commending Hatch for his service to the state, he said it's time for the ex-AG to move on.

Formatting the piece as a letter to Lori Swanson, Rosario says: "Your decision to bring Hatch back into the office, according to nearly a dozen current and former staffers, is the main reason why your office's public image, if not effectiveness, is sinking."

Rosario concludes his piece: "You mention Hatch can land a gig at a prominent law firm for substantially more money. Now's the time for Hatch to find that out. It's time to step up. Don't be like Mike. Just do it."

For the full article, see "One more employee at AG office needs to go" in today's Pioneer Press.

The Rocky Mountain News reported last week that the Denver office of Faegre & Benson is being sued after one of its attorneys forged the signature of a federal judge on a legal document. The forgery allowed a client of the firm to obtain a loan and pay the firm for its work.

The attorney involved, Mark W. Fischer, has since admitted the forgery. For the full story, see "Law firm sued over forgery by attorney."

Since everyone reading this is presumably a blogger, I thought you might be interested in reading a little tidbit on the use of blogs from this week's Minnesota Lawyer.

How does a Minnesota attorney end up as a guest on Maine Public Radio’s “Maine Things Considered?”

Rider Bennett business law attorney Patrick Robben is convinced he got on the show because his law blog — the Minnesota Business Litigation Blog — attracted the attention of the show’s producers. Robben appeared on the show last month to discuss legal issues surrounding blogging in general.

Attorneys who maintain law blogs say they can be an effective marketing device that gets their names out to potential clients as well as other lawyers who may serve as referral sources.
Minneapolis attorney LaVern A. Pritchard, founder of the LawMoose legal search portal, said that law blogs can be particularly useful to attorneys who like to write and understand that it is a long-term rather than a short-term project.

“In principle, it can be a good idea if you actually have something to say and there is a defined niche area that you know a lot about,” he said. “The real successful ones are those with good writers, good thoughts and good ‘takes’ on things.”

For more, see Blogs as marketing tools in this week's Minnesota Lawyer. (Password required.)

The Strib has a good article on its website about the dispute between the trial lawyers' and insurance lobby over a bill that would allow direct actions and bad-faith claims against insurers. (Bill pits lawyers against insurers.)

I should be annoyed at the Strib for doing it because we had something similar on the drawing board for today's paper, but wound up holding it over. However, the Strib did a good job and the info needs to get out there, so I will put a check on my editor's pride. We may still do something for the next issue, but our angle would be different.

BTW -- I don't know how many of you have heard those obnoxious insurance industry ads for this bill, but they are so bad that I changed the radio station on my alarm clock just to avoid waking up to them. They have taken the lowest road possible -- demonizing lawyers.

I thought I would create a thread for folks who want to make constructive suggestions about how to improve the situation at the AG's Office.

As I understand it, there are essentially two groups --those satisfied with the status quo and those who find the working conditions extremely difficult.

If anyone has any ideas how management proceses could be changed to make those in the second group happier, please put them here.

Something clicked when I saw Attorney General Lori Swanson's comment in the press that the departures and the way they were being handled was just a normal transition. And then I realized what it was: Swanson has only been part of one other transition of power at the AG's Office before -- when Hatch took over in 1999.

I recall that transition well. I became editor of Minnesota Lawyer right about the time that Hatch was elected to his first term as AG. Skip Humphrey had vacated the AG's Office to pursue a gubernatorial bid, and Hatch, a fellow DFLer, was elected to replace him. Everyone initially thought the transition would not be too bad because both Humphrey and Hatch were from the same party. What followed was a bloodletting on an unprecedented scale. Somewhere around 100 people lost their jobs.

Of course, Humphrey had been there a very long time, so one could argue that change and reshaping an office can be a positive thing to revitalize an organization (although 100 people in an office that size strikes me as excessive.) But what really bothered me was the way these firings were handled. The callousness and lack of empathy for how these people would feel being thrown out on the street after years of service in such an abusive fashion.

When Dan Heilman, the Minnesota Lawyer reporter covering this story, came to me about a month ago with the ruminations he had heard about the situation at the AG's Office, the only part of the story that I found shocking was the allegations from sources that Hatch and Swanson were engaged in union busting. Allegations that a former DFL candidate for governor and a DFL attorney general were taking a sledgehammer to a union? You've got to be joking, I thought. (Of course it has yet to be shown how much merit those accusations have, but the union is certainly having a labor-related disagreement with the AG’s Office. I am still hopeful that Swanson was not directly involved if strong-arm tactics were used.) But, while the union angle was a complete surprise to me, the brutality of the transition was par for the course when Hatch is involved.

We have been able to use the new blog technology to facilitate the reporting of this story. It’s a hard to stifle such a story now. However, it is quite telling if, in fact, Hatch did resort to trying to corrupt the blogging process by doing the electronic version of stuffing the ballot box. Such machine-style tactics have no place in the real world today -- and certainly no place in the virtual world. Hatch may be the first former attorney general in the state’s history guilty of forcing others into involuntary bloggitude.

In any event, I am going to post below an extremely large excerpt from the story Minnesota Lawyer published in June 1999 on the effect on the staff of Hatch taking over the AG’s office. I think you will find the story eerily similar to what is going on now. In fact, you could change a couple of names and run this 1999 story as a news piece on the current happenings at the AG’s Office. I apologize in advance for the length of the post.

From the archives of Minnesota Lawyer, June 28, 1999, six months into Mike Hatch's first term as attorney general of Minnesota.


AG’s handling of staff reductions questioned

Some decry ‘climate of fear,’ but AG's spokesperson says transition pains are normal

By Brian Becker / Minnesota Lawyer
June 28, 1999

While some personnel changes were expected when Mike Hatch was elected Minnesota’s first new attorney general in 16 years, a number of current and former staffers are unhappy with the spate of firings and resignations that have marked the first six months of his tenure.

Since January, nearly 100 attorneys, investigators and support staff have been fired, resigned or otherwise left the office.

Observers say they cannot remember a time when so many staff members have been forced out. One employee said morale in the office is “pretty low and getting lower.” Another said that a “climate of fear” currently pervades the office.

Several former assistant AG’s told Minnesota Lawyer that their terminations were “abrupt,” “curt,” and came with little or no explanation.

One former staff attorney remarked that she still doesn’t understand why she was let go. “All I know is that I got phone call one day and was told to go up to [the Attorney General’s Office at the Capitol] where I was informed I no longer had a job. I had to give them my keys right then. I was told I could not return to the office and that if I had any personal items in the office I would have to pick them up later, after hours, with an escort. "

Hatch and Chief Deputy AG John Stanoch were unavailable for comment, but office spokesperson Leslie Sandberg described the departures as part of an overall “reorganization plan.” She said that while some people have been fired, many of the individuals who left did so voluntarily.

“Some people have seen this as an opportunity for a change,” she noted, “this is public life and people don’t stay here forever.”

Sandberg nevertheless acknowledged that the recent months have been a “difficult period.”

“Our hearts go out to those people [who were fired],” she said, “but we tried to deal with the situation and the reorganization in the most respectful way possible.”

The AG’s office currently employs approximately 220 attorneys and has a total workforce of about 500.

No explanation
During his campaign, Hatch promised he would downsize the AG’s office by eliminating a number of upper-level policymaking positions.

When Hatch first took office, the ax fell immediately on four assistant AGs who worked on the state’s tobacco settlement. (A fifth assistant AG who worked on the settlement left on his own.)
However, Hatch’s cuts have reached much deeper than some expected, affecting a wide range of departments, including criminal, tax, health and education.

What seemed to upset former staffers who talked with Minnesota Lawyer most was that they felt that they were not given an adequate explanations for their terminations. For example, when one former AG asked why she was being fired, she said she was told simply – “shifting priorities.”

“I asked them several times what they meant,” she observed, “but they never gave me any kind of concrete answer.”

Sandberg declined to offer any specifics on how the termination decisions were made. She said questions about why some people were fired and others were not were “inappropriate.” Sandberg was unable to say whether more firings are planned in the near future.

Several former assistant AGs remarked they believe that the current winnowing process has a larger political purpose for Hatch. They speculated that Hatch is planning to run for governor and that one of the planks in his platform will be that he reduced the size of government.

“[Hatch] already says that he cut the size of the Commerce Department and saved taxpayers a half million bucks,” said one former assistant AG, “whether that’s true or not I don’t know. But I do know that firing of some truly talented lawyers [at the AG’s Office] with impeccable credentials and years of experience is not going to make the office more effective.

Other observers asserted that at lest some of the departures came as a result of Hatch’s difficulty in dealing with the “independent thinkers” or people with differing opinions. Several sources recounted a meeting in which an attorney disagreed with Hatch’s assessment of a particular case and was later fired.

“All [this attorney] did was represent the client-agency’s point of view. … That firing sent a chill throughout the office,” said one former staffer.

“I think he’s micromanaging the office,” stated another ex-assistant AG. “He’s apparently decided that he, and not the agency-clients, is going to be making policy decisions about pending cases. And anybody who might not be willing to do his bidding will be forced out. This certainly isn’t how things were done under Humphrey.”

Office morale
Whatever Hatch’s reasons, several current and former AG employees said that the firings have had a palpable effect on office morale.

Staffers are afraid because they “are not sure what is going to happen,” said one source.

“I think he has deliberately created an environment where people feel as if they could be fired at any moment,” said another. “And I think that is a terrible way to manage an office,” he added.

Sandberg said that she understands that some people may be upset and that “no one is ever happy when things like this occur,” but noted that changes in personnel are bound to happen with a change in administration.

Approximately half of the vacancies have been filled, Sandberg said. Forty-eight positions will be eliminated.

“Personally I think that you are going to see the office get smaller as time goes by,” said one attorney earlier in the year. “I think his real agenda here is political and what does that say about his priorities. He is supposed to be concerned about the citizens of this state, but he may be more concerned with appearances.” ...