Richard Hibey Interview 12

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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 at Richard Hibey’s home on Cathedral Avenue on
Monday, October 23, 2023. This is the twelfth interview.
MR. ROCAP: Good afternoon, Dick.
MR. HIBEY: Good afternoon, Jim.
MR. ROCAP: Our last session was late last week, and we covered a number of things. We
covered the relationship with Paul Manafort and some of the things that
relationship led to, as well as the Sun Diamond case and the David Geisen case.
Today we’re going to focus on two or three representations, one involving the
Palestine Liberation Organization and the Palestine Authority, and then talk about
your involvement in the United States Olympic Committee investigation of the
Salt Lake City matter, and a couple of other smaller but fun things.
So why don’t we start with the Palestine Authority and PLO representation
which began in 2007, in the spring or summer of 2007, and maybe you could just
describe how you got involved in it, what the state of the cases was at the time,
what they were about.
MR. HIBEY: There came a time, I think you said in 2007, when the Palestinian Authority was
defaulting in a number of cases brought against them here in the United States
under our anti-terrorism laws. The Authority finally appreciated that these
defaults could ultimately end up in judgments for hundreds of millions of dollars.
The gist of the cases that were filed was that the Authority, which was the
recognized governing entity of the Palestinian people, was ultimately liable under
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theories of material support of terrorism for various incidents that claimed Israeli
lives through violence in the occupied territory of the West Bank.
The Authority then began through one of its departments to search for
counsel that could take on all these cases. That unsurprisingly led to an effort that
featured Palestinian American lawyers being solicited by the Authority to
consider representing the Authority in these cases. For various reasons, political
and otherwise, there were no takers of serious importance.
One Palestinian lawyer contacted another Palestinian lawyer whose firm
couldn’t or wouldn’t take the case, and that young lawyer went to one of his
friend’s classmates, and that person was himself a young associate of our firm. He
brought to people’s attention in our firm that this was a litigation that we’re being
asked to consider taking on in representation. We convened, in the litigation
department of our law firm, and concluded that we were interested and available.
That led to a couple of internal meetings where we explored what would be
implicated if we were to get involved in something like this. The “implications”
meaning what would happen in litigation, not so much what political impact it
might have on us representing the Palestinian Authority. We got through all of
that internally and indicated to a certain lawyer in the city who was legitimately
conflicted from taking the representation himself on behalf of his firm. He
arranged for a meeting with a gentleman whom we understood at the moment we
met him was the prime minister or about to be named the prime minister of the
Palestinian Authority.
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That meeting went very well. When it was over, it was agreed that we would
represent the Palestinian Authority in the litigation here in the United States in
connection with these anti-terror cases that were being filed. That resulted in a
multi-year litigation in a number of U.S. jurisdictions, with an actual trial in one
of the cases in New York, and an active motions practice in connection with the
other cases. There could have been as many as six or seven. That occupied our
attention for all the years we were in the cases.
MR. ROCAP: I assume one of the major issues was personal jurisdiction?
MR. HIBEY: Jurisdiction for sure. We did a deep dive into the jurisdictional implications of
every one of these cases. We were involved in discovery where appropriate on
both sides. Internally, we split the responsibility between Mark Rochon, a very
talented trial lawyer, and myself. We staffed the discovery and the depositions
and things accordingly.
MR. ROCAP: Was there discovery in Palestine?
MR. HIBEY: Yes. In Jerusalem, I represented the Authority in a number of depositions that
were being conducted by various U.S. citizen attorneys who had a case that was
on our docket. I can remember when a leading political figure – a Palestinian who
was serving a life sentence but who was nonetheless not forgotten by the
Palestinian people – was noticed for deposition. That had to be defended, and I
did. At the same time, in New York, very, very detailed litigations were
underway, very complicated stuff on issues of jurisdiction and ultimate liability
that resulted in a full-scale jury trial and verdict of some colossal amount that was
utterly vacated by the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. There was a case
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in D.C., which never got to the jury phase of which had an incredible journey
nonetheless.
MR. ROCAP: Before we get to the D.C. cases, the New York case, was that your responsibility
or Mark Rochon’s?
MR. HIBEY: It was principally Mark’s, and our team was fully engaged.
MR. ROCAP: And ultimately it went up to the Second Circuit after the jury verdict and was
reversed on jurisdictional grounds?
MR. HIBEY: Yes. As a matter of fact, it was after we were out of the case. All of our work was
the basis for the ruling in that case.
MR. ROCAP: I think even in the D.C. cases, not to spoil the ending here, but about two or three
years ago, I believe the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit found that
there was no jurisdiction over the Palestinian Authority for these cases that have
been ongoing for at that point almost twenty years here in D.C.
MR. HIBEY: I don’t dispute that.
MR. ROCAP: When you first got involved in these cases, I know you entered appearances, you
being Miller and Chevalier and yourself personally, up in New York in the
Southern District as well as here in D.C., back in 2007. What was the state of the
cases at that point in time and what did you have to do fairly quickly?
MR. HIBEY: I think they were all in default. We had, in addition to New York, I think we had
one in Rhode Island. I know we had one in Rhode Island because I appeared in
that case. I just can’t remember where else and whose docket we ended up on.
MR. ROCAP: I think you had two or three here in D.C.
MR. HIBEY: Yes. For sure.
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MR. ROCAP: You had one in front of Judge Collyer, one in front of Judge Kessler, and one in
front of Judge Leon.
MR. HIBEY: Yes.
MR. ROCAP: What was the client like to work with?
MR. HIBEY: We worked through a liaison who was not a governmental employee, but he was
designated by the prime minister to interact with us on behalf of the Authority.
That relationship all the way up through the prime minister was one of the best
relationships I’ve ever encountered in my career. We never had any dispute as to
which way to go in a particular case. We saw to it that he and the prime minister
were fully informed with the freshest facts available, understood what was going
on, and it was a wonderful professional and personal relationship that we enjoyed
with the liaison and also with the prime minister.
MR. ROCAP: In terms of information exchange and cooperation and so on?
MR. HIBEY: Totally.
MR. ROCAP: Who was the prime minister of the Palestinian Authority at that point?
MR. HIBEY: Doctor Salam Fayyad.
MR. ROCAP: One of the cases was Shatzsky v. PLO. That was in front of Judge Leon, I believe.
MR. HIBEY: Yes.
MR. ROCAP: Before Judge Leon went on the bench, I believe you had a representation that
involved him.
MR. HIBEY: Yes.
MR. ROCAP: Maybe you can talk a little bit about that and how that played into the proceedings
in front of him in the Shatzsky case.
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MR. HIBEY: I used to do work in collaboration with Baker & Hostetler and so I was wellknown
to them. There came a time when five or six of its partners were sued for
professional negligence and malpractice and all sorts of nefarious claims, and the
firm asked me to represent it and its lawyers, and I did, and it ended up being a
very, very nasty case in terms of the litigation experience.
MR. ROCAP: Was it here in D.C.?
MR. HIBEY: It was here in D.C. It was in the Superior Court. It was a case that just wouldn’t
go away because from what I could tell, the plaintiff despised lawyers in general
and hated these six really excellent men in particular. The lawyer for that plaintiff
was a handful to deal with since he looked upon my clients and me as evil
incarnate. During the trial proceedings, I learned that the lawyer had a dedicated
phone number and name where if you called the number, you would get a report
on the day’s activities in trial. I’m paraphrasing, but merely paraphrasing. I could
be almost totally accurate. When you dialed the phone number, which somehow
we were provided, you would get a tape recording that said something to the
effect, “Today is X date, you have reached the telephone of the devil’s advocate. I
will describe to you events that took place today at the trial of William Shatner,
something like that.”
MR. ROCAP: Not the Star Trek William Shatner?
MR. HIBEY: Not the Star Trek guy, but this guy was in outer space, nonetheless. “You have
reached the devil’s advocate, here to report on the day’s events in the case of
Shatner against . . .” And he would name the six clients and the law firm. And
then what passed for a report was fantasy. That’s putting it charitably. There
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wasn’t a grain of truth in anything this man was saying, but there you have it.
That’s what the experience was.
MR. ROCAP: I understand you had a run-in with him about something going on in the
courtroom one day?
MR. HIBEY: Yes. There was a highly incriminating document that was attributed to the
plaintiff, and it was so important in my mind that I had it blown up three feet by
five feet. I planned to use it in the afternoon of a certain day of trial. In
preparation for that, I told the courtroom clerk that I was not going to lunch but
that I was going to work in the courtroom, and she, an incredibly officious lady,
locked me in the courtroom so I was by myself. I then unfolded the courtroom
easel in order to prepare it to carry the three-foot by five-foot document that I had
magnified. The easel didn’t work. It had a very unstable piece that could not hold
the document, so I looked around the courtroom and I saw that there was another
easel, which looked a lot newer, by the way, and I thought, well, I’ll just use this.
So when everybody else returned from lunch, I had already positioned the easels
for use. But I hadn’t done anything to demonstrate my possessory power over
this new easel, but it would be easy because I had practiced with it during
lunchtime. I put the thing up in a second. So there came a time in the trial when I
was vigorously cross-examining Dr. Shatner and pulled up this three-by-five-foot
blowup of a document and flashed, no, did more than flashed, showed it,
published it, to the jury. Then when I was done with it, I said well I’m not going
to hold this thing. I’ve got more questions. I’ll just put it here. I put it on the new
easel. The devil’s advocate, operating under his own name at the time, exploded,
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yelling, “That’s my easel.” And then he took his considerable bulk in a
diminutive frame, and shoved himself into me as I was trying to do something
with the exhibit on the easel, I think to secure it on the easel. “That’s my easel.”
And he gives me a shoulder, and I fell backward, not to the floor, because I
caught myself before I hit the floor, to the horror of the trial judge and to the
amazement of the jury. So she excused the jury and brought order to the
courtroom. And that was what happened. Unbelievable.
MR. ROCAP: You probably didn’t use the easel any time after that.
MR. HIBEY: Oh me? I made light of it. I said, “I thought this was the court’s easel and I just
needed some assistance and it was here.” They didn’t know what to make of that.
It’s not exactly what two adversaries would expect.
MR. ROCAP: Taking the rough-and-tumble description of litigation to a new level.
MR. HIBEY: Exactly.
MR. ROCAP: What was the outcome of that particular trial?
MR. HIBEY: They wanted $37 million in settlement, where they felt that they were entitled to
$75 million. They got $250,000.
MR. ROCAP: Not a bad result. We got away from the Palestinian representation. We sort of
went off on that tangent because Judge Leon, prior to becoming Judge Leon, was
one of the six Baker and Hostetler defendants.
MR. HIBEY: Exactly. So now let’s go into the world that we were just stepping into on behalf
of the Palestinian Authority. We learned that one of the cases that we would be
taking over was Shatsky, and that was before Judge Leon. The moment I saw that,
I told my teammates we’ve got to disclose this, and they said of course, and I
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called this lawyer, David Strachman, immediately upon my confirmation that this
was Judge Leon’s case.
MR. ROCAP: Mr. Strachman was the lawyer for the plaintiffs in the Shatsky case?
MR. HIBEY: Yes, and I disclosed to him that I had represented Judge Leon when he was a
lawyer in private practice and that the case lasted a long time, so I was his lawyer,
and he was my client and I thought he should know this. He said, “It doesn’t
matter. He’s entered a default, and we’re not going to lose that default. We’re
going to press on in front of him because he’s the kind of judge I need to come to
closure on this case which is currently in default.”
MR. ROCAP: How did that strategy work for him?
MR. HIBEY: Before we get to the strategy, the judge, when he learned almost at the same time
coincidentally that I was now in the case, summoned everybody to court for a
hearing. Before anybody could open up his mouth, the judge disclosed fully the
fact of my representation of him in connection with the lawsuit brought by a
disgruntled client. The judge said, “This is your opportunity to argue that I have a
conflict. I don’t think I do.” Strachman didn’t think so either and said pointedly
that he wanted the judge to stay in the case, and he did. I had gone on the record
to disclose that before this hearing, I had talked to Strachman directly, the first
conversation I had ever had with him after we entered the cases, was on this
subject. So everybody went away satisfied that they had met their obligations of
disclosure regarding my representation of Judge Leon.
As the case moved along, I am almost certain that there was a vacatur of
the default and that other lawyers came into the case. First, a guy named Tolchin,
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followed by a guy named David Schoen, Andy Lowe, and I don’t remember if
there was anybody else.
The case moved glacially through the court until finally it was dismissed.
It went up on appeal. We did not handle the appeal. I don’t remember that we did.
And the Authority prevailed.
MR. ROCAP: At some point, Miller and Chevalier’s representation in these cases came to an
end. At least from what I can tell looking at the PACER dockets, in January of
2016, Miller and Chevalier was replaced by another law firm to take over the
representation. What happened there?
MR. HIBEY: There was a new minister with whom we had no history but who had history with
other Arab American lawyers who persuaded the new minister that the
unfortunate result in New York was a proper place for new blood to come into the
case. The fact of the matter is the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit threw
out the case that Mark so wonderfully tried in New York, and the basis for the
dismissal of that case in its entirety was supplied by our work.
MR. ROCAP: As I mentioned before, all of that work that you did ultimately resulted in I think
all of the cases in both circuits being ultimately dismissed based on the factual
record.
MR. HIBEY: That is correct.
MR. ROCAP: I think that pretty much concludes the Palestinian representation unless you can
think of anything else we should talk about. Maybe we can instead move on to the
United States Olympic Committee investigation.
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MR. HIBEY: I should add a very important footnote. Against the background of all this
litigation, a star was born. Her name is Laura Ferguson. She was a partner of the
firm who was recruited to join the defense team for the Palestinian Authority. She
wrote brilliantly. She had no experience arguing in court that I’m aware of, and
I’m almost certain that she had never argued in the federal courts of appeal. All of
that changed when she agreed to join the defense team. At least by the time I left
the firm, I don’t believe she’s ever lost a case on appeal. I saw her argue in the
First Circuit in connection with one of these cases, the name of which has passed
me by now. As I remember, the panel was Souter, Lopez, and a judge who was
legally blind. The day before the argument in a mandatory mediation session, a
retired appellate court judge of the state of Massachusetts urged me to settle the
case because based on his experience and his reading of the briefs and his
understanding of how this court of his operated, we were going to lose and the
amounts were always staggering. I turned him down. The next day, as she was
arguing, Judge Lopez would smile at various points that she made. I had not seen
that in an appellate court. After the argument, the mediation judge walked up to
me to tell me that he was watching the argument and that I was right not to settle,
that she in all likelihood was going to win the case, and she did. I can’t remember
what case we were in for the Palestinian Authority, but we ended up in the
Supreme Court in another case, and she argued it to a successful conclusion. So
that’s why I say a star was born.
MR. ROCAP: Great story.
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The background of the U.S. Olympic Committee investigation was that in I think
in 1998 or 1999 there was information that became public about gifts being made
by Olympic organizing committees, including one in Salt Lake City, to
individuals who were on the International Olympic Committee, in order to
presumably gain favor in terms of winning the bid, and that led to a number of
investigations and reports. You were involved in one of those. Maybe you can
talk a bit about how that came about and what your role in it was. I know it
resulted in a report in 1999, but talk a little bit about that.
MR. HIBEY: I think I’ll just simply say that what you just described is what confronted, shall
we say, the Olympic authorities. So they determined that they needed an
investigation and report on the circumstances surrounding the award of the 2002
Winter Olympics to Salt Lake City. They appointed George Mitchell to conduct
the investigation. He in turn needed counsel to assist him in the investigation, and
I was asked to be that person. This was one of the great experiences of my
professional life.
George Mitchell is as advertised – a great American whose integrity is
unimpeachable, and who’s not afraid to make a call where it is, shall we say, not
entirely popular.
I believe I was at Winston at the time. I had two wonderful associates who
worked with me on the matter and who assisted me in drafting the report, which
ultimately George endorsed. It was a thoroughly wonderful professional
relationship. I should add that the young lawyers who worked with me were Mike
Atkinson and Jared Silverman.
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The whole IOC was corrupt, and that corruption leeched downward into
the marrow of the local Olympic committees, men who would compete for the
award of the next Olympics to their particular jurisdiction locality. What we
uncovered was obvious. Gifts would be given to the members of the committees
charged with the responsibility of determining who should get the next Olympic
games. We found some stunning examples of that misconduct, and it formed the
factual basis for the arguments we made concerning gifting members of the
various big committees. I’ve lost the language. The big committees and I can’t
remember the other wording.
MR. ROCAP: There was a report that you all prepared that was over fifty pages, I think. You,
under George Mitchell’s direction, ended up making multiple recommendations to
strengthen the integrity of the Olympic location award process.
MR. HIBEY: Some of the recommendations were accepted. Notably others were not, ones that
would have put some teeth in the whole process. One was to put the Olympic
Committee under the jurisdiction of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act because it
would be designated a public interest entity, something like that. As I remember,
the IOC and the USOC did not accept that recommendation.
MR. ROCAP: So that was a quick few months?
MR. HIBEY: Relatively quick. We reported to the USOC I think a couple of times in person.
What stood out for me on that score was that one of these members hated me. I
conducted a telephonic interview with him and three of his lawyers. The lawyers
didn’t interfere with me directly, but they were always whispering. I couldn’t tell
you what they were saying but they were whispering. That was one thing. The
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other is this guy was offended that he should be questioned or that the committee
should be questioned, and he wanted me to know that. I can’t remember anything
else about his behavior on the telephone during the interview, but shortly
thereafter, George and I flew to Colorado Springs, which is where I think the U.S.
Olympic Committee is headquartered, to give a report to the Committee about
where we were at this time of our investigation. At the end of his little
presentation, George said, “Are there any questions?” This guy got up, the one
who gave me a little trouble over the phone, and said, “I have a statement to make
about your counsel,” and then went on to say he didn’t think I knew what I was
doing, that I was asking him questions that he should never had to answer, that I
offended the dignity of the movement by presuming that certain conduct was
widespread, and so on. During his little recitation, complaint, I was sitting next to
George. He pushed his chair back and leaned over to me and whispered, “Sounds
like you’re doing your job.” Then the man completed what he had to say. George
did not say thank you, okay, or anything like that. He said, “Are there any other
questions.” People were very quiet. And that was the end of it.
Then there came a time when we were finalizing the report, just before we
were going to publish it to the press in New York. I was at Winston’s offices in
New York, and we arranged for secretaries and the like to help us finalize the
piece. George Mitchell and I stayed up until 3:00 in the morning to finalize the
document, never a complaint over the hour or anything. He was all business in a
most collegial way. We put the report on the street later that day, took a press
conference, and published the report.
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The moment of the publication of the report in New York, George insisted
that I sit on the dais with him. It wasn’t because he was going to take some
incoming arrows. It was because of the generosity of this man to give a lawyer an
opportunity to be recognized. And that was it.
Then, I’d say a few months later, some Senate committee, and I have no
idea now which one, convened a hearing on the report and invited George
Mitchell to testify. George said, “Dick, we are going to it so be ready.” I sat next
to him during what was a love fest between senators and George Mitchell. People
like John McCain stand out in my memory and other senators who made a point
to come over and attend the hearing as a tribute to him. At some point, he very
generously pointed to me as his general counsel to answer a question or
something like that. Great man.
MR. ROCAP: Wonderful recollection, and wonderful experience.
There are a couple of stories we wanted to talk about on the lighter side.
The first one I think we’ll talk about is the rice paper case, and maybe you can
talk a little bit about what that case was about and some of the experiences you
had along the way. We’re not entirely sure of the year, but you were in private
practice, and it was probably in the middle of your career.
MR. HIBEY: There might be a way to nail down a date because it came after the fall of the
Republic of Vietnam, and people were escaping the country, especially the crowd
I was representing, as it turned out.
There was something called the Trading with the Enemy Ac, and there
was a list of countries the U.S. couldn’t trade with, one of which was Vietnam,
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especially when there was no more a South Vietnam. My client was the wife of
someone later identified to me as the former chairman or chief of staff of the
Army of the Republic of South Vietnam. One thing I came to know is that
Vietnamese men of wealth stop working at a relatively young age, but it frees
their wives to do business. So my client was the lady, the wife of the general, and
the problem was, she was importing food stuffs from Asia for restaurants and
grocery stores here in the United States. The government seized – it’s a crazy
number, and sometimes when I think about this, I wonder if I have it right –
eleven tons, which would be 22,000 pounds, of edible rice paper. Now it was
generally understood in those days that the best edible rice paper in all of South
Asia was Vietnamese. There was a marked difference in quality, taste, texture,
etc., from the other countries of South Asia that manufactured and purveyed this
particular product.
So apparently we had eleven tons of very tasty rice paper, and it was held
up in a Customs facility potentially rotting away. A lawyer in town, one of the
wonderful people in town, named Bill Hannan of O’Connor and Hannan, brother
to Archbishop Philip Hannan of New Orleans, called me up and asked, “Can you
help these people?” I said, “I don’t know if I can help, but I can try.” And I
looked into it.
The client was these two people, and they were, “Whatever you need, we
really hope you can cause this to happen.” They were very kind, very gentle. I got
ahold of a bunch of experts, and when I say I got ahold of them, I told the clients
what I needed and they were able to produce a couple people who would attest to
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what I’m about to tell you, mainly, “Yes indeed, this was rice paper unmistakably
manufactured by Vietnamese hands, but they’re not in Vietnam. They’re in
Thailand.” As anybody who knows rice paper knows, there’s a qualitative taste
difference between Vietnamese rice paper. But here we have attestations that this
was Vietnamese but not made in Vietnam. I took that information and went to the
U.S. Attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia. I think his name was Frederick
Sinclair. A nice guy. He didn’t have some of the barnacles that I associated with
prosecutors in the Eastern District. After a while, he submitted what I had to say
to his experts and thankfully, they reversed the government’s course. As a result,
the goods were released.
I prepared a bill for the work that was done, and, at their request, sent a
messenger to get the bill. I gave the bill to a young Vietnamese kid, and he takes
it back to the clients. I figured on a thirty-day cycle, we’ll get paid, and we
probably won’t have to wait for payment much after that because they seemed to
be really pleased with the result. I didn’t have to wait thirty days. I didn’t have to
wait an afternoon. The day I gave them the bill, they sent this kid with a check for
the entire amount. I thought that was really nice. I was grateful.
They had a message for me through the messenger. “We would like to
hold a dinner in your honor to celebrate your victory at,” and they listed a
Vietnamese restaurant on Braddock Road, and “Are you available and when are
you available.” I said, “You don’t have to do that. You’ve been kind enough to
pay me already. There’s no need to do any more than that.” This kid, the
messenger, was very concerned. “No, you don’t understand. The client wants to
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have this dinner for you.” And he pressed. I could feel that what we were doing
here was having a little cultural misinterpretation, so I relented and said, “I’ll tell
you what, my wife and I will be more than happy if you tell us where and when.”
He said, “Well we can work that date out, but right now I’m instructed to get a list
of everybody who’s going to the dinner, your children, your siblings, your mother
and father, the whole family.” By the time we were done with the back-and-forth
on that, it ended up that my sons, who were less than 12 years old at the time, and
Mary Ellen were conscripted into going to a dinner at this restaurant, which was
closed for the night because of a private celebration. The front part of the
restaurant was dark. In the back of the restaurant is a large room. There had to be
fifty people there. What I came to learn, because I shook hands with them, was
they were all part of the general staff of the military, all refugees after Saigon fell.
I thought Saigon fell in 1975, so I’m trying to figure that out.
MR. ROCAP: I checked while you were talking, and Mr. Sinclair was an assistant U.S. attorney
in the Eastern District between 1972 and 1978, so I’m sure this happened around
1976, 1977, or 1978.
MR. HIBEY: Yes. That’s about right. So then we go in there, and the men line up to be
received by the general and his wife and me and Mary Ellen and the kids, who
don’t have a clue what’s going on. I was close behind them in that regard. I shook
hands with all these people, colonel so-and-so, general so-and-so, and finally this
one guy came up to me and said, “Mr. Hibey,” and he gave his name. He said.
“I’m a graduate of the Lewis School of Hotel Management.” I know that school.
I think it’s out of Cornell. Anyway, he said, “I hope someday to be able to have
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my own restaurant and to welcome you to it where you will receive every kind
consideration.” I actually represented him shortly thereafter in connection with a
failed romance that can only be settled with money. I don’t remember much more
than that.
We had a wonderful evening. The meal had a name to it in French, La
Sept des Liste, the Seven Delicacies. It was out of this world. Happily, even my
boys ate it. These folks believed in friendship. Thereafter, the general and his wife
would contact me monthly and want to go to lunch somewhere, their treat, and so
I always made time for them for as long as it was going on. During that period of
friendly relations, they gave us a piece of Vietnamese art that was etched in glass.
It was quite lovely. She offered to pay my mortgage.
MR. ROCAP: That’s what you’d call a grateful client. We should all have such a grateful client.
That’s a wonderful story.
MR. HIBEY: Yes. They’re wonderful people.
MR. ROCAP: One more short story for this session, and that is perhaps one of your most
masterful jobs as an attorney, but one that very few people know about, that
involved Our Lady of Mercy. What is Our Lady of Mercy and who was the
client?
MR. HIBEY: We’re Catholics. We belonged at the time to Our Lady of Mercy parish in
Potomac, Maryland. I was on a committee for the building of the new church. We
are close to the former pastor, Monsignor John Enzler, who later had a brilliant
career for Catholic Charities here in the Archdiocese. One day, John calls me up
and says, “I received a summons to go to court in connection with an offense that
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could cost the parish $1,000.” I said, “What did you guys do?” He said, “It has
something to do with garbage, and I don’t understand it.” I said, “I don’t either.
We’re not even in the District of Columbia, so let me check into it.” I get the
ticket. I look at it, and it’s a ticket/summons, $1,000 if you contest it and go from
there. So I said, “Look, we’re going to contest this thing.” He didn’t know
anything about it. “I’ll tell you who I want because we’re going to have to go
down and have a hearing in front of the equivalent of an administrative law judge.
I need the janitor of the church, the president of the council. I’ll be there as your
lawyer, and you have to come. We all go down to this place, which apparently
does so much ticket business that it’s a separate free-standing facility.” It’s not
even in, as I remember, police headquarters. We walk into a hearing where the
hearing officer, not in judicial robes, is seated on a dais that’s so high relative to
us that I swear he could have a nosebleed, but that’s the way it was set up. We go
in there and we sit down, and he disposes of a case or two, and he calls our case. I
stood up and said if we have a right to discovery, I’d like to see the discovery
because we haven’t gotten anything except this ticket. He turns to the officer and
said, “Give counsel your file.” The guy quickly hands me a slender file which
contained a statement sheet of what the basis of the charges were on such and
such a date in the District of Columbia at so-and-so Southeast in the alleyway was
a pile of garbage strewn all over the alleyway and contained certain photos of
which are included. Something like that. I started going through it, and it’s
garbage on the ground, very unsightly, and a donation envelope with the name
Our Lady of Mercy on it. These guys were pretty astute. They picked up what I
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was doing and did it themselves, and it was this. I looked at the items and
particularly the photographs, and I put a very querulous look on my face and
handed them on to the other guys shaking my head, and in doing so, each of them
did the same thing, shaking their heads. I stood up and said, “We’re ready.” This
guy called the case again and then dismissed it.
MR. ROCAP: Did the judge look at the file too?
MR. HIBEY: Yes. I handed it up, and he said, “This case is dismissed.” I leaned over to Father
John, who had the same recollection years later. He came here for dinner a couple
nights ago. He said I remember this case, and what he remembered was I leaned
in, and I said to them, “We have to leave, we have to leave quickly. We’ll deal
with everything once we get outside, so quietly leave.” And we did. We got out
on the sidewalk, and I said to these guys, “I suppose you’re wondering what just
happened in there?” “Yes.” I said, “I have absolutely no idea.” And I didn’t. I
still can’t figure it out [laughter].
MR. ROCAP: The mark of a brilliant lawyer is being able to win a case that you have absolutely
no idea what’s going on.
MR. HIBEY: No idea.