Richard Hibey Interview 10

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Oral History of Richard Hibey, Esq.
This interview is being conducted on behalf of the Oral History Project of The Historical
Society of the District of Columbia Circuit. The interviewer is James Rocap, and the interviewee
is Richard Hibey. The interview took place in Dick Hibey’s home on Cathedral Avenue on
Wednesday, October 11, 2023. This is the tenth interview.
MR. ROCAP: Good afternoon, Dick.
MR. HIBEY: Good afternoon, Jim.
MR. ROCAP: In our last session, we discussed the Clair George representation, and today we’re
going to focus on the Mary Mapes representation in late 2004 and then chat about
one of the more significant criminal cases that you handled in the late 1990s in
Toledo federal court. Before we do that, you left Anderson Hibey early in 1995
and joined Winston and Strawn in their DC office. Maybe you could just reflect a
little bit on that and what caused you to leave Anderson Hibey and join Winston
and Strawn and how that happened.
MR. HIBEY: I felt that I needed a larger platform in order to continue to expand my practice in
trial work. I was not in a hurry to do anything because of that feeling, and indeed
there came a time when I felt I should leave, and I advised my partners of that
fact. In announcing my intention to depart, I made it clear that I would not do so
until I was assured that everybody in the firm, and at that time there were
probably more than ten people, everybody in the firm had a place to go. So even
though I announced in 1993, I think that was the year, that I was going to leave, I
in fact did not leave until February 1, 1995. On that date, I took three or four
people with me and, coincidentally, was plunged into a trial that lasted perhaps
three months. It had the interesting impact of preventing me from becoming
acquainted with the members of the litigation department of the Washington
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office of Winston and Strawn, of which I was expected to be the leader of the
group. In due course, that happened, and I had a multi-year relationship with
Winston.
MR. ROCAP: So you showed up, said nice to meet everybody, and headed to trial.
MR. HIBEY: Straight to trial.
MR. ROCAP: And the trial was?
MR. HIBEY: The DeFries case, U.S. v. DeFries and four other union leaders who were accused
of taking liberties, if you will, with the pension fund that existed for the benefit of
union members and union leadership.
MR. ROCAP: This was in front of Judge Jackson?
MR. HIBEY: Yes. Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson.
MR. ROCAP So you’re still very active at this point in litigation in the district court?
MR. HIBEY: Absolutely. I know I had significant times away from the courthouse in
Washington, but it was always because I was in a courthouse elsewhere. That
said, I felt that the Washington courtrooms, and particularly the district court,
were my home professionally.
MR. ROCAP: Who were the individuals from Anderson Hibey that you took with you to
Winston & Strawn?
MR. HIBEY: Gordon Coffee, who was with me for the bulk of my years in trial practice,
indispensable to the needs that were created in the various litigations that he
participated in. Tim Broas, who came from Clark Clifford’s law firm and assisted
me in a number of the cases that we’ve talked about. Pam Rons, who was
indefatigable in the organization of discovery. That was four of us.
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MR. ROCAP: Let’s talk about Mary Mapes. I’ll give a little bit of background here for those
who may not recall. On September 8, 2004, 60 Minutes, a CBS News show,
devoted an episode to issues surrounding then-President Bush’s service in the
Texas Air National Guard during his time there in 1972, 1973. This was in the
leadup to the 2004 election in November. The 60 Minutes report raised several
issues regarding his service, including how he was able to get into the National
Guard during the Vietnam War, and whether he actually fully performed the
service that he was expected to perform as a member of the Air National Guard in
Texas. This 60 Minutes report used, among interviews and other materials, a
series of internal National Guard memos that became known as the Killian
documents. There was an almost immediate controversy over the authenticity of
those documents. CBS management soon stated that they should never have been
used in the report and then commenced an internal investigation which was led by
at the time former Attorney General Richard Thornburg, which resulted in a
lengthy, largely critical report on January 5, 2005. Mary Mapes was the show’s
principal producer, and she was later fired by CBS as a result of the episode, and
you represented her in the internal investigation.
My first question to you is who is Mary Mapes, and how did you come to
represent her?
MR. HIBEY: Mary Mapes was a long-time producer in the employ of CBS. She is widely
credited for having broken the story of the abuses that were committed against
Iraqis at the Abu Ghraib prison that was run by the American military. I think she
won an award for it, a Peabody award at that, I believe. She was also Dan
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Rather’s either exclusive producer or favorite producer. I’m not clear on that after
all these years, but I do know that she put together the story packages for Dan,
and it was he who aired the story about President Bush’s Air National Guard
service.
Mary was a wonderful client, one who struck me as standing behind the
product she produced. She was a reporter of the highest integrity. She had a
mastery of the facts of any project she was on. In my view, she had the best
memory I’ve ever encountered during my career.
I think there was more to the case than the purported inaccuracy of the
documents that formed the basis for the story that President Bush, as a reserve
pilot, received favored treatment during his time in the service.
MR. ROCAP: I believe she thought the documents themselves, while important, were a smaller
part of the overall facts that were being presented during the episode.
MR. HIBEY: Yes.
MR. ROCAP: So when things began going south right after the September 8, 2004 episode, at
some point she came to you, and so maybe you could just describe a little bit
about how that came about and what your first meeting with her was like.
MR. HIBEY: She had gone to someone else who happened to be one of my best and closest
friends in the practice of law, and he was conflicted and asked if I’d be interested
in the case. I indicated I would be and that I needed to meet her. She was coming
to Washington to seek counsel through my friend, and we arranged that she could
meet with me if that suited her. It did, and we had a first meeting where she
indicated that she wanted me to represent her, and it went from there.
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MR. ROCAP: So you were impressed by her, I take it, from the start?
MR. HIBEY: Yes.
MR. ROCAP: What was it about her that impressed you?
MR. HIBEY: Her memory, and the fact that she projected herself to be apolitical. This was
simply a story that came to her, she ran it down in her usual careful fashion, and
presented it to Dan Rather who apparently accepted her work, and they aired the
story.
MR. ROCAP: Did she come with documents and emails and a file and so on?
MR. HIBEY: Not in the first meeting but certainly after that, I was exposed to the documents.
MR. ROCAP: Did you have other people at the law firm who were assisting you at that point, or
were you doing this on your own?
MR. HIBEY: No. I had somebody else, but I’m having trouble remembering who it was.
MR. ROCAP: How would you compare the document background for this with, for example,
Clair George or some of the other cases we’ve talked about?
MR. HIBEY: The document background in the instant case, in the Bush case, was, as I recall, a
small fund of military reserve documents that memorialized the progress of a
particular member of a military reserve unit. I don’t remember there being
anything that approached on its face a smoking gun. I just don’t remember that.
MR. ROCAP: The document collection would have included her due diligence, I take it.
MR. HIBEY: Her due diligence was reported. The idea of due diligence here is a concept
peculiar to the project. She needed to see certain documents. She received them.
She reviewed them. Conclusions were drawn from them and then verified. It
wasn’t a terribly complex set of facts as I recall. They were not incendiary.
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MR. ROCAP: CBS fairly quickly, a few days or maybe a little bit over a week, announced that
they were conducting an internal investigation and that they’d hired Kirkpatrick
and Lockhart to do the investigation, and they had hired Dick Thornburg, who
you, of course, had dealt with in prior instances when he was the attorney general,
to head up the investigation with an individual who was, I think, the former CEO
of the Associated Press. What was your work on this devoted to? Did it involve
that investigation or something else?
MR. HIBEY: The Thornburg investigation?
MR. ROCAP: Yes.
MR. HIBEY: They convened an investigative team and in due course came to us asking for
cooperation.
MR. ROCAP: What was her position? What was her response to that?
MR. HIBEY: It was unremarkable. Yes, we’re going to do it. This was an opportunity for her to
justify her work. CBS had selected a man of integrity, so there weren’t any
obvious concerns about the fairness of the deliberative process. They might come
to the right conclusion, one would hope. They could also come to the wrong
conclusion, one hopes would not occur. But the investigation was the only vehicle
at that time available for us to lay out our story, which I thought was compelling.
MR. ROCAP: So in laying out the story, you worked with Ms. Mapes on getting ready for
interviews?
MR. HIBEY: Yes. And also to do some separate investigations of my own. It ended up that I
met a couple of people whose names I no longer remember who worked with
Mary on the project, and that’s how we got ready.
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MR. ROCAP: Did you meet with Dan Rather?
MR. HIBEY: His lawyer. I met Dan later. I talked to him once on the phone during the time we
were putting things together, but I never sat down with him in a room to talk
about his side of the story, but I knew his side of the story and was happy to
consider it from the source, who was his lawyer.
MR. ROCAP: We’ve both done many witness preparations over our careers, some are good,
some not so good, some witnesses are more focused than others, some are more
helpful than others. Where would you put Mary Mapes in the constellation of
witnesses that you’ve prepared?
MR. HIBEY: Favorably. She didn’t skirt around anything. They asked a question, she gave a
direct answer. There was no having to parse the question and work through it that
way or work around it, as the case may be. The questions were straightforward.
The answers were straightforward. That encouraged me. I thought they might
have difficulty writing an unfavorable report.
MR. ROCAP: In your preparation sessions with her, what was the dynamic? Was she helpful?
MR. HIBEY: Yes. I didn’t have to go through any emotional gates before I got to my purpose
in preparing her. She from the beginning was honest and very straightforward.
MR. ROCAP: So you get to the point where she is being called as a witness before the
individuals at Kirkpatrick and Lockhart and others who are conducting the
interviews. How many interviews did she have with them? Do you recall?
MR. HIBEY: At least two, maybe three.
MR. ROCAP: What were the interviews like?
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MR. HIBEY: There was Mary and me, and then there was a contingent of lawyers. The younger
they were, the more notes they took. The older they were, the closer they were to
the interrogator. The interrogator was usually Mike Missal, who was very honest
and straightforward himself. I didn’t have any trouble with him. I didn’t get into
any fights, if you want to know the truth. Those kinds of interviews can go
sideways in a heartbeat, but it had none of that overarching sense of
incredulousness that pervaded the room. That’s not the way it went down.
MR. ROCAP: Did you have an opportunity to provide argument?
MR. HIBEY: Yes. I would try and clarify the testimony or harmonize the testimony with the
document, if it wasn’t readily apparent.
MR. ROCAP: Anything like a closing argument at the end?
MR. HIBEY: None allowed. I asked for one. I wanted to sum up because I felt that good about
where we were. They said I wouldn’t be required, they got what they wanted, and
they understand where she’s coming from. I pressed the point and said can we at
least have the opportunity to send you a letter, and they said yeah, we’ll take that.
And that’s what we did.
MR. ROCAP: So you submitted at least one or more letters, memos, of some sort?
MR. HIBEY: Yes. It was called, internally on my side, we called it a meshing document.
MR. ROCAP: Why a meshing document?
MR. HIBEY: To show how one document meshed with another document and built from there
to the story that was reported.
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MR. ROCAP: So the report is issued January 5th of 2005, and it’s a lengthy report. I think it’s
over 250 pages, and it’s critical of CBS, of Ms. Mapes, the entire team. Was that a
surprise to you?
MR. HIBEY: No.
MR. ROCAP: Why not?
MR. HIBEY: Because I knew that they were out to kill Dan Rather and Mary. This was what
this fellow Moonves wanted. Leslie Moonves, who worked his way up to the top
of CBS News. I think he was rather unceremoniously let go because of a scandal
of his own making in an entirely different context than this. That’s just my
memory without documentation.
MR. ROCAP: What was Mary Mapes’s reaction to it all?
MR. HIBEY: It happened so much later, I don’t even think Mary and I ever talked about it.
MR. ROCAP: So that was January of 2005. I understand later that year there was a conference in
New York of journalists that you were invited to appear at as part of a panel?
Maybe you could talk just briefly about that?
MR. HIBEY: I wish I could talk more about it. My memory on this is really vague. There was a
gentleman who was a long-time participant in a conference of journalists that took
place in New York. He might have been associated with The New York Times. I
just can’t remember his name. He invited me to New York to speak/debate the
Mapes case before this rather large crowd of journalists. The format was that both
Mike Missal, I think, and I stated the case for our respective clients, and then this
master of ceremonies who was for a long time associated with this particular
event. The master of ceremonies asked for an indication of what these people
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would do if presented with the facts that have just been argued, how many would
publish the story, how many would not. I’ve always had a happy memory about
this because my recollection is that overwhelmingly they voiced their affirmation
that the story should be aired or should have been aired.
MR. ROCAP: After a while, again in 2005, Mary Mapes wrote a book about this, and of course
she had been fired before. Did you have any involvement with the book?
MR. HIBEY: At her request, yes. I reviewed the draft and made some edits. I can’t remember
what they were. One thing I found gratifying was that the meshing document
memo was an appendix to the book.
MR. ROCAP: That would be gratifying. So then ten years later, surprise, surprise, they make a
movie out of all this. Did you know that a movie was in the works?
MR. HIBEY: No. Not until likely she, but it might have been somebody else, said this movie
was in the works, and the author of the script would like to talk to me about it.
MR. ROCAP: That was Jim Vanderbilt?
MR. HIBEY: It was a fellow named Jim Vanderbilt who, as I understand it, wrote the script and
directed the movie. I met with him once for a few hours. I can’t swear that Mary
was there, but I know that there were more than two people in the room.
MR. ROCAP: This would have been at Miller and Chevalier?
MR. HIBEY: Yes.
MR. ROCAP: So then after that, when did you first learn that the movie was about to premier?
MR. HIBEY: My son David, who is also a lawyer, sent me an email in which he said he just
noticed that there’s a new movie out called Truth starring Cate Blanchett and
Robert Redford, and he said that the review mentioned also that actor, I don’t
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know, some Australian actor, portrayed Richard Hibey. I thought he was pulling
my leg. But it turned out that that’s exactly what happened.
MR. ROCAP: Did you get to go to the premiere?
MR. HIBEY: The short answer is I went to a premiere. I believe there were regional premieres
of it. Maybe one other one. But this one was in New York. I called Mary and said
I’d like to score a couple tickets to the premiere. Is that possible. She said it’s
done.
MR. ROCAP: What was that experience like?
MR. HIBEY: Mary Ellen and I attended the premiere at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. When
we walked into the museum, I saw an area that kind of bifurcated the huge foyer.
On one side of this bifurcation was a very well-lighted wall, and that was where
the actors would walk down along the wall, stop, and photographers would just
shoot anybody at that place. I didn’t have to carefully avoid it. I just had nothing
to do with it. So that was kind of a fun thing to see because the only other time
I’ve seen it is on television when they’re featuring somebody who’s a celebrity.
Interestingly, Cate Blanchett attended. Robert Redford did not, nor did the
actor who portrayed Dick Hibey, I’m sad to say. Anyway, we then took our seats
in the auditorium, and they put on the movie.
MR. ROCAP: I’m going to let you with a little fanfare say what the first line of the movie was.
MR. HIBEY: The first line of the movie was, “Mr. Hibey will see you now.”
MR. ROCAP: Was that a surprise?
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MR. HIBEY: Oh ho. It was. Mary Ellen and I looked at each other and were slack jawed that
this is how the thing started. I’d say the author of the script generously went from
there.
MR. ROCAP: Having watched the movie myself, I can recommend it to people if they are
interested in a well-done movie. During the movie, there were a couple of
instances where Cate Blanchett acting as Mary Mapes asked the actor who was
portraying Dick Hibey, “do you believe me?” And at the end of the movie, as
she’s walking out after her last interview with the Thornburg investigation, the
actor who portrays her calls after her as she’s walking away and says, “Mary, I
believe you.” So we know that movies are more dramatic than factual sometimes.
What do you recall about conversations that you had with Mary on that point?
MR. HIBEY: I do not recall that scene playing out with Mary and me, however, I can state with
certainty that there was a time when I felt it was important to tell her where I
stood in order to encourage her to continue. There was some emotional situation
which arose in the context of the interviews by the Thornburg group where I felt it
was important for her to understand that I, who could be very critical of her and
she knew it, believed her. And I told her so.
MR. ROCAP: And to this day you still believe her?
MR. HIBEY: Oh yes. Without reservation, I believed her.
MR. ROCAP: Wonderful story.
You had a couple of representations in Toledo Federal Court, and we’re going to
talk about one of them today and then another one the next session. The one we’re
going to talk about today you referred to as Costin, Skeddle, and Bryant. Maybe
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you could just explain a little bit about what that case was about and how you got
involved in it.
MR. HIBEY: These three defendants were the top three executives at Libbey Owens Ford’s gas
division. They were located in Toledo. My recollection is that they were charged
with undisclosed self-dealing in that they had, without telling Libbey Owens
Ford, their employers, that they had formed a company that was going to provide
certain services to LOF. In fact, that company did so and made a profit, and at the
same time, successfully performed under the new company’s contractual
obligations to LOF. In short, the argument was that the transactions were fair, and
under the law in the Sixth Circuit, that should carry the day. It didn’t, and we had
to go to trial. There were eight defendants, as I remember, three of whom were
Costin, Skeddle, and Bryant. The others included very prominent lawyers from
the area who performed lawyerly duties in connection with paperwork necessary
to establish this entity and perform services on behalf of the new company. There
were other people who were indicted, and I can’t remember exactly how they fit
into the story.
MR. ROCAP: Who was your client?
MR. HIBEY: Ed Bryant, who was one of the top three executives at LOF.
MR. ROCAP: How did you come to represent Mr. Bryant?
MR. HIBEY: Ed needed counsel, and Brendan Sullivan, who represented Darryl Costin, the
lead defendant, contacted me and asked if I would be agreeable to meeting with
Ed and seeing whether we could represent him. I did. We hit it off and went from
there.
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MR. ROCAP: The indictment, I think, was a fairly lengthy one?
MR. HIBEY: As I recall, it was over 300 counts. Many of them were tax counts. It was a huge
indictment. As I reflect back on it, I think it was designed to eliminate the
prospect of the people who helped organize the corporation, the suspect
corporation, and perform the legal services incident thereto, to keep them off the
stand by indicting.
MR. ROCAP: It’s not a surprising strategy by the government, I take it.
MR. HIBEY: No. I guess not. It’s just kind of for those of us who believed in the outright
innocence of our clients, it was a pretty shabby move.
MR. ROCAP: Any plea negotiations before the trial?
MR. HIBEY: No. And never by Costin, Skeddle, and Bryant. I don’t know what the others
might have been doing. There were lawyers in the case, defense lawyers, who
were not cowed by the government’s prosecutive discretion. They stood tall.
MR. ROCAP: The indictment came down in 1995, and at this point, you’ve moved to Winston
and Strawn. The DeFries trial is over at that point. That trial took a long time I
take it.
MR. HIBEY: Yes it did.
MR. ROCAP: Then this one came along. It took two years to get the Costin, Skeddle, and Bryant
case to trial. It didn’t go to trial until 1997. What was going on in pretrial that
took so long?
MR. HIBEY: From my point of view, what happened in pre-trial could be summed up in two
words: Barry Simon. Barry Simon was a partner at Williams and Connolly.
Brendan Sullivan, who has a brilliant reputation for trying many high-stakes
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cases, used to refer to Barry as his American Express Card – that he never left
home without it – and we could see why. Because over the period between
indictment and trial, there was a robust motions practice frankly that didn’t let up
even when we got to court during trial. But importantly, for purposes of this
discussion, we were in Toledo it seemed weekly. I’m sure that could not be true,
but often, very often, to hear Barry argue the latest motion to Judge Carr. It
seemed that every motion bore fruit. It was a brilliant display of a really
outstanding lawyer. As I recall, he was a clerk on the Supreme Court in his day.
MR. ROCAP: At some point, if I recall you mentioning it to me, the prosecutor came into the
courtroom with a document.
MR. HIBEY: Yes. The story you’re asking me to relate has to do with when we were in trial.
We got to the motion for judgment of acquittal and Barry shredded the
indictment. The counts were ruled upon in our favor, and a whole bunch of them
got dismissed. There was still enough to go against these guys adversely, but not
as much as the government figured. My recollection of this is that after arguing
the motion for judgment of acquittal, I think for two days, the judge asked the
prosecutors to recast or retype the indictment so we could see the counts that were
going to trial – that we were going to go further with – and perhaps ultimately to
decision. So they took time off and maybe an hour later, the prosecutor came in
and stood before the court with the indictment in one hand, and he said, “I hold
here what is the carcass of the indictment that was originally brought.” Carr had a
very nice temperament, so he didn’t bite on that and castigate the prosecutor for
saying something like that.
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MR. ROCAP: So you’re doing well at the end of the government’s case, I take it.
MR. HIBEY: Yes. We knew that there was still a verdict that had to be delivered, but trial
lawyers, or at least I, take very rudimentary assessments of where we stand, and
one of them for me is how did we do today. Are we ahead, are we behind, or was
it a tie? And I have to say that it scared me a little bit that every day I thought we
were doing quite well. We being the array of eight defendants each with a
minimum of one lawyer. It looked like a show trial in some communist country.
It’s what it was.
MR. ROCAP: This was a long trial, I take it.
MR. HIBEY: Yes.
MR. ROCAP: Many counts to the indictment. So how did you all structure the courtroom
presentation on behalf of the defendants?
MR. HIBEY: The Williams and Connolly team had the lead defendant and naturally asserted
itself in a way that was consistent with their client’s interests, but also respectful
of everybody else’s interests. It was generally accepted that there were three
underlying transactions that a jury would be asked to deliberate on and that those
three transactions carried the question of guilt or innocence of the principal
defendants, and therefore, of some or all of the remaining defendants. So each of
the three of us, Costin, Skeddle, and Bryant, took on a particular transaction, and
as I recall, there wasn’t a lot of overflow or confusion. They stood discreetly as
transactions one, two, and three. Costin took one, Skeddle took one, and I took
one.
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MR. ROCAP: Do you think that was effective with the jury? Did they get a sense for the three
separate transactions doing that?
MR. HIBEY: Yes because it was inescapable. As I remember, and I wish I could remember
better, they were really discreet transactions. As I remember, mine had to do with
the management of oil wells in Ohio. The other two didn’t have anything to do
with oil wells. So it wasn’t going to tax the jury very much.
MR. ROCAP: You did have occasion to cross examine the government’s witnesses?
MR. HIBEY: Oh yes. Everybody had a shot at them.
MR. ROCAP: You related a story to me earlier that I think is worthy of talking about on the
record here. Maybe you could talk about that particular cross examination and
how it went.
MR. HIBEY: You need a little background because we divided things up that way I just
described. We dug a little deeply into the witnesses that were going to testify
against I’ll say my client Ed Bryant. Gordon Coffee, who never set foot in
Toledo, found, I think in discovery, that a check had been written to this witness
for some miniscule amount of money, $3.45 or something you’d think you would
just reach into your wallet and pay out, but it was a very low figure like that.
Gordon also found that that check had been forged to give people the idea that it
was a check for $37,450, or whatever the amount was. I think there had been
some low-grade prosecution of the guy for having done that. I say low-grade
because I can’t imagine why he would not be in jail, at the moment he was going
to be a witness, because of that transaction, but it wasn’t the case. So the
government called him as a witness. I don’t recall what he was testifying to, but it
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was to an element of dishonesty that he attributed to Ed with respect to the oil
wells. I challenged his credibility with the episode of the check. It was a
wonderful moment. I’m sure any further adjectival description would be suspect
by me.
MR. ROCAP: I suspect you spent a little bit of time on this and with the jury listening.
MR. HIBEY: It was wonderful. It just was wonderful. I’m reluctant to tell you what I saw, but
the jury was fully engaged. Oh, you should know. The others on the defense
teams didn’t know about this. One of the defense lawyers who had Ron Skeddle
as a client – his name is Bob Gold, a wonderful guy – he leaned over to me when
I sat down, and he said to me with deep sincerity, “Savor this moment, my friend,
because you’ll never experience anything like this again in court.” I got a kick out
of that. It was the joy of the moment.
MR. ROCAP: Not all cross examinations go as well as that.
MR. HIBEY: Oh no. But this guy was a patsy that was ripe for the picking.
MR. ROCAP: Long trial. Was it difficult to find a jury?
MR. HIBEY: I thought there would be, because frankly my experience has been principally in
the District of Columbia, and I have found over the years that jurors are reluctant
to sit on cases that are protracted. There’s always an economic cost
notwithstanding the jury fee that they receive, which is never enough. It has
familial costs in that obligations to the family cannot be carried out as previously
done. And then generally the idea that a protracted trial sounds more like lawyers
not doing their job and jurors not wanting to be part of that deliberative process.
Not so in Toledo. I ran into, or discovered is probably a better word, the
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community’s willingness to participate in the discharge of an important legal and
communal obligation. I don’t think we had two people out of an array of well over
a hundred that asked to be excused or said that they couldn’t sit. The others were
willing to do it.
MR. ROCAP: At the end of this long trial, you have closing arguments, which I assume took up
a fair amount of time.
MR. HIBEY: They did.
MR. ROCAP: How did that come about, and why don’t you relay the poor fellow who was at the
end of the line, what he did.
MR. HIBEY: Each of us, as you can well expect, got up and pled the case for our respective
client. It took a while. I think everybody was careful not to rehash stuff, but
merely focus on the government’s burden of proof and the evidence that was
adduced to the favor of the defendants, and go with it. Arguments proceeded
apace. It easily took two days. We finally got to the last lawyer. He was a courtly
gentleman from that area who wisely did not have to surface very much. He let
the case kind of deal around him rather than through him. It was good judgment, I
think. But when he got to final argument, he stood up and he said something like
this. “I’m the seventh and last lawyer to speak to you about this case. I feel like
the actor George Sanders when he became the seventh husband of Zsa Zsa Gabor.
He is reported to have said ‘I know what to do, but I don’t know that I can make it
any more interesting.’” And he just lit up the entire courtroom, no one laughing
harder than the trial judge. That was my memory of final arguments.
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MR. ROCAP: A wonderful way to end. And then from there to the jury verdict. What was the
result of the trial?
MR. HIBEY: The jury wasn’t out very long. I think the verdict came back in December. We
had holidays, Thanksgiving. I don’t think we sat around that time, but I think it
was before Christmas. A couple of weeks. We got acquittals across the board on
the counts that the government went forward on. The government then went
forward against Brendan’s client on the tax counts that had been severed out.
MR. ROCAP: That was a separate proceeding then?
MR. HIBEY: A separate proceeding. And Darryl was acquitted. Then we went to arbitration for
fees under some employment contract arrangement theory.
MR. ROCAP: Arbitration with Libbey Owens Ford?
MR. HIBEY: Yes. I don’t think it went to verdict, but it was settled. I’m not clear on that. There
were a few million dollars that LOF had to pay to cover the fees of Costin,
Skeddle, and Bryant.
MR. ROCAP: All in all a good day at the office it sounds like.
MR. HIBEY: Awesome. Thereafter, a few months later, couple months maximum, I wish I
could be more precise about timing, we had lunch with the jury that acquitted us.
It was a very nice affair.
MR. ROCAP: We’ll leave it at that for today.
MR. HIBEY: Very well.
MR. ROCAP: We’ll be back for another session and talk about another Toledo case and then
your representation of some Middle East authorities, and then we should be pretty
close to done.
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MR. HIBEY: Okay.