For I say unto you in all sadness of conviction that to think great thoughts you must be heroes as well as idealists. Only when you have worked alone - when you have felt around you are a black gulf of solitude more isolating than that which surrounds the dying man, and in hope and despair have trusted to your own unshaken will - then only can you gain the secret isolated joy of the thinker, who knows that a hundred years after he is dead and forgotten men who have never heard of him will be moving to the measure of his thought - the subtle rapture of postponed power, which the world knows not because it has no external trappings, but which to his prophetic vision is more real than that which commands an army. And if this joy should not be yours, still it is only thus you can know that you have done what lay in you to do - can say that you have lived, and be ready for the end.
-- Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., one of my favorite American jurists
If you would not be forgotten, as soon as you are dead and rotten, either write things worth the reading, or do things worth the writing.
-- Benjamin Franklin, one of my favorite Founders (though I'd point out he proved the two options he outlined are not mutually exclusive)
At the hole where he went in
Red-Eye called to Wrinkle-Skin.
Hear what little Red-Eye saith:
"Nag, come up and dance with death!"
Eye to eye and head to head,
(Keep the measure, Nag.)
This shall end when one is dead;
(At thy pleasure, Nag.)
Turn for turn and twist for twist—
(Run and hide thee, Nag.)
Hah! The hooded Death has missed!
(Woe betide thee, Nag!)
-- Rudyard Kipling, whose morality tales are well worth the reading at any age; Rikki-Tikki-Tavi has always been a particular favorite of mine
In September 1996, the law firm of Pitt, Hubbard & Marshall, LLP was born. The data shown in that link is directly from the Corporations Division of the Massachusetts Commonwealth Secretary.
As shown near the bottom of that page, the three named partners were:
* Christine D. Hubbard;
* Mary T. Marshall; and
* Jane H. Pitt
For those who may be unfamiliar with Boston's Financial District, 201 Devonshire Street (the location of their law offices) is an address that ranks among the most expensive square footage in Beantown.
To help put that in context: when I worked in support of the Johnson Family of Fidelity Investments (FMRCo., to be precise), I was working out of the Fidelity headquarters location, on Devonshire Street. In fact, I was working just down the street from them, soon after Pitt, Hubbard & Marshall, LLP was born.
If you (1) scroll all the way to the bottom of the Corporations Division listing; (2) highlight ALL FILINGS; and then (3) click the View Filings button, you'll be able to see:
* A PDF of the firm's Certificate of Withdrawal, essentially dissolving the LLP, filed 04/30/2003. It bears the signatures of Jane Hanify Pitt, Christine Donelan Hubbard, and Mary T. Marshall.
* A PDF of the 2003 Annual Report for the law firm.
* A PDF of the 2002 Annual Report for the law firm.
The law firm specialized in real estate, zoning, land use, and environmental law, according to Mary T. Marshall's professional profile at - surprise, surprise! - Ropes & Gray: Mary T. Marshall, formerly a partner of Pitt Hubbard & Marshall, LLP, a law firm specializing in real estate, zoning, land use, and environmental law, joined the Real Estate Group at Ropes & Gray in 2003.
Real estate, zoning, land use, and environmental law, you say? That rings a bell.
Now, where else have I heard of a crooked Boston firm and land use issues before? Let me see. Let me see. Hmmmm...
Was it this eminent domain case in Texas, involving State Street Bank & Trust Co., as Trustee for the Resolution Trust Corporation, represented by John D. Hanify of Hanify & King (the law firm whose first named partner, the aforesaid John D. Hanify, is Wee Whining Willary's maternal uncle)?
Or maybe it was the very eye-popping tale of how John D. Hanify, Esquire and Resolution Trust Corporation reportedly behaved in the land use case of John and Rhetta Sweeney. Their astounding story, in their own words, contains a great deal of information about how the Hanify Family's connections have come into play throughout this land use case.
On a page of their website titled, THE KENNEDY CONNECTION -- "CHAPPAQUIDDICK REVISITED," they begin:
The question has come up "Why is this Federal Judge, Edward Harrington, going to such lengths to protect the lawyer John Hanify of Hanify & King in Boston, Massachusetts and his father Edward Hanify?"
Here are the facts for you to discern:
It's good to be among the top crooked lawyers in Boston, judging by the Real Estate section of the Boston Globe.
Titled, Law's Reward, it's unclear whether the author meant The Law's Reward or Cardinal Law's Reward.
After all, I'd imagine the disgraced Cardinal has a great deal of gratitude for Hanify & King, for all the fancy, fumbling footwork they did during that whole pedophile priest scandal.
Law's Reward
By Carol Beggy | June 4, 2006
The 6,388-square-foot Colonial that John D. Hanify, co-founder of the Boston law firm Hanify & King, calls home is on the market for $2.775 million. The 18-room house, which has 9 baths and 9 bedrooms, sits on about an acre on Woodbine Road in Belmont Hill. Among the things Hanify added was a regulation pitcher's mound in the backyard to help his sons with baseball practice. Marie Monahan with Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage in Belmont has the listing.
After owning the house for a number of years, Hanify built a 2,600-square-foot addition for his parents, Jane and Edward B. Hanify, to live in. Hanify's father ran the trial department at Ropes & Gray and was chief counsel to Cardinal Richard J. Cushing, Boston's former archbishop. The elder Hanify also represented Senator Edward M. Kennedy during the inquest into the death of Mary Jo Kopechne, who was killed when the senator's car went off a bridge on Chappaquiddick Island in July 1969.
Has John D. Hanify ever been disciplined?
According to the Massachusetts Bar Board of Overseers and its attorney lookup function, not yet.
My suggestion? Type in only the last name, Hanify, to gain a better idea of how many decades the Hanify Family has bullied Boston courtrooms. But to pinpoint his specific listing, here's John D. Hanify's search result.
Let's go back to the Commonwealth Secretary's Office, to look up the corporate data for the law firm of Hanify & King.
Formed on January 1, 1982, the law firm includes several notable names on its list of directors and officers. That Timothy P. O'Neill can't possibly be related to Tip. The Annual Reports and other filings are quite interesting, too.
To look up any other lawyers in this tangled knot (e.g., Hubbard, Pitt, etc.), simply return to the lawyer lookup function at the Massachusetts Bar Board of Overseers.
The practice of law is a privilege, not a birthright. So why is so little discipline being meted out in Massachusetts?
For starters, the Boston Globe is "onto them," and I expect much more on this complex story of legal complicity and duplicity, very soon.
In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if this story breaks bigger than the Boston FBI/US Attorney scandal. In that thorny (and related) story, U.S. District Judge Mark Wolf emerged as a true hero, exposing corrupt FBI agents and corrupt complicity and duplicity in the U.S. Attorney's Office, as well.
It's very important to remember: Before forming Hanify & King, Mr. Hanify served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney for the District of Massachusetts. (In fact, Hanify was "serving the public" in that role back when the infamous Winter Hill Gang and Whitey Bulger - at the center of the FBI scandal - was running loose.)
But, as I said: for starters, the Boston Globe is "onto them," and - quite often - the official investigation gets sparked by a hard-hitting investigative journalism series. Sometimes, those get sparked by reaction to a seeming one-off story, like this one:
Mass. lags in disciplining lawyers: Delays in resolving misconduct charges longer in worst cases, by Jenn Abelson, Globe Staff, April 20, 2005, p. D1, Business.
Massachusetts ranks worst in the country for resolving allegations of attorney misconduct in a timely manner, according to a report released yesterday by the Massachusetts Bar Association.
Delays are longer in the most serious cases, the report concluded, and in several instances more than eight years elapsed between the filing of a complaint and the imposition of a public sanction, such as suspension or disbarment.
"What should the public say about a system of lawyer discipline where it takes 10 years to get a bad lawyer off the street?" said Roy A. Bourgeois, chairman of the Bar Association's task force on lawyer discipline, which issued yesterday's report. "That's not right."
The report is the first significant look at the current Massachusetts bar discipline system, which has existed for more than 30 years and fields over 6,000 complaints a year. The task force blamed delays on the absence of basic requirements, such as effective time standards and a statute of limitations.
Unreasonable delays, the report said, prolong the period of uncertainty for lawyers under investigation and erode public confidence in the discipline system, which was established by the Supreme Judicial Court.
In Massachusetts, the Office of the Bar Counsel investigates and prosecutes allegations of attorney misconduct. The Massachusetts Board of Bar Overseers metes out punishment.
About half of the 38 cases decided by the Board of Bar Overseers in the past two fiscal years had investigatory periods the time between the filing of a complaint and the issuance of charges of four years or longer, the report said. Several investigations took seven to eight years. Allegations that attorney Jodie Grossman misappropriated funds from an estate in the early 1990s remained under investigation for nearly 10 years.
For attorneys publicly sanctioned in 2003, it took an average of 1,046 days from the filing of the complaint to the punishment. By comparison, the national median was 408 days, and Wyoming turned around complaints resulting in public sanction in 120 days, on average.
In 2002, an attorney died while waiting for a decision on alleged misconduct that was reported in 1998 and investigated for 57 months, said Bourgeois, a Worcester attorney.
"I'm a little surprised at the delay, and I hope we can address it now that it has been identified as a problem," said Kathleen M. O'Donnell, president of the Massachusetts Bar Association. "We have to police ourselves, and we have to do it in a way that we ensure the public feels it is being listened to and that we make the process fairer for lawyers who have charges brought against them."
The task force also found significant delays even when lawyers agreed to the charges and the proposed discipline, ranging from 458 days to more than eight years. For example, 3,019 days passed between the time attorney Saul Cohen was accused of client neglect and the date in 2003 when he accepted a suspension of 366 days, Bourgeois said.
"The board will review the report and respond appropriately," said Michael Fredrickson, general counsel for the Massachusetts Board of Bar Overseers. Fredrickson declined to comment further.
The task force made 22 recommendations that will be presented next month to the bar association's House of Delegates and, if approved, sent to the Supreme Judicial Court for consideration. The report recommends a yearly accounting of the number and age of unresolved cases and the adoption of a statute of limitations.
Beginning to get the picture as to just how insidious the incest is in the innermost legal circle of Old Dirty Money Boston? It reminds me of how many snakes form up into a mating ball.
But all it takes is a team of real reporters and real Federal and State investigators (aided by a magistrate who thinks like a mongoose) to quell those cobras.
Wee Whining Willary is the product of a Nepotism Nest like few others in America.
Thus far, neither a life worth the writing, nor writing worth the reading.
And as for his journalism chops ...
- Dave
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