Mukilteo Musings

Passion for Justice

Leonard Schroeter!! Oh yes, Leonard...there is a wonderful interview of him in this month's Washington Law&Politics, www.lawandpolitics.com, entitled Landmark Legacy by J. Kingston Pierce. Leonard worked for Thurgood Marshall (who later would become one of our great Supreme Court Justices) and did research for Brown v. Board of Education. Brown "made clear that racial-segregation laws in American public schools were unconstitutional." We are now celebrating the 50th anniversary of that decision which led to monumental changes in our civil rights during the 1960's. Leonard, 79, is a prominent retired Seattle attorney. I can call him Leonard because he was my boss and mentor for six years. To be honest, he was difficult to work for and he didn't teach me much about the mechanics of the practice of law. BUT, he taught me a hell of a lot about passion for justice and for that I am grateful.

I do believe it is a part of Seattle's culture to protest injustice. We are the first to take to the streets or to write letters when situations are not fair. As parents, this is how we raise our children--to speak up--to fight wrongs and to help those who are treated unfairly.

I worked for Leonard, who made the decision to hire me, from 1979 until 1985 in downtown Seattle. He retired in 1989 and I haven't seen him since. He was Jewish and Harvard educated and I was this girl from Montana---oil and water---but he liked me and he thought I was smart. As a young attorney, his advice to me was that I was too f***ing polite. Everything I turned into him for review, he would scribble on it, "Let's Discuss!" For Christmas one year, I had a red rubber stamp made for him that said "Let's Discuss!" He hated Christmas gifts but he loved this one. He respected my passion for the environment but teased me mercilessly for trying to save paper. I can just hear him saying, "It's OUTRAGEOUS to try and save paper in a law office. Paper is what we do!!" He didn't like it much but he understood when I left in 1985 to have babies.

He was responsible for my claim to fame, Herskovits v. Group Health. The case became known as "Loss of a Chance" and it was decided by the Washington Supreme Court in 1983. Mr. Herskovits went to Group Health complaining of a cough; they never looked into it; he never could see a doctor; and they gave him cough medicine. Finally, he went to see an outside specialist who diagnosed lung cancer and he died. Group Health admitted they screwed up but maintained the case should be thrown out because even if they had diagnosed the lung cancer much earlier, Mr. Herskovits in all probability would have died anyway. I argued, under Leonard's tutelage, that Mr. Herskovits lost a "CHANCE" of survival and should not a jury be the body to decide if that loss is worth anything??!! We cannot have health care providers be willy-nilly negligent and then claim it doesn't matter (that passion for justice thing). The Washington Supreme Court agreed with us and my case ended up in law books.

As a matter of fact, my husband attended exactly one year ago, a conference in Brooklyn, New York at the Brooklyn Law School. The conference was titled, "Science for Judges" and he was participating as a scientist. You can imagine his shock as he listened to the speakers and a Brooklyn Law School professor spoke about how he teaches a landmark case from Washington State every year to his students: Herskovits v. Group Health!!!

You know, I should shoot an e-mail off to Leonard about this and I should end it with, "Let's Discuss!"