SEPTEMBER 29, 2023 – We’d first met 37 years before—in the summer of 1975—for all of about 10 seconds. Grandpa had asked me to deliver some papers to the law offices of Smith & Ely at 17 Ames Avenue in Rutherford. He said the papers were his and Gaga’s signed wills and trust documents. I dutifully carried the large manila envelope down Park Avenue to Ames and rounded the corner. I entered the law office and approached the receptionist.
“I have some papers for Thomas Sullivan,” I said.
“Sure,” she said. “I’ll ring him.”
A few minutes later, the attorney appeared. I introduced myself as “Mr. Holman’s grandson,” and handed Mr. Sullivan the envelope. He was a junior partner of Grandpa’s main lawyer at the firm, James S.T.S. Ely, Jr., whom I’d met at a recent Lion’s Club luncheon I’d attended with Grandpa and UB. Mr. Sullivan thanked me for the delivery and said good-bye.
The encounter wasn’t long enough for Mr. Sullivan to remember me, but fortunately it was long enough for me to remember him.
In April 2012 I looked him up to see if he was still in practice and if so, where.
He’d left Smith & Ely and Rutherford altogether many years before. I tracked him down at a firm named by the mouthful[1] in Montclair, about 20 minutes due west of Rutherford. His practice description—wills and estates; guardianships and conservatorships—fit perfectly. As a wills and estates attorney, he’d necessarily have real estate expertise and experience dealing with governance and generational transfers of ownership of closely held business entities[2]. Plus, there was a good chance he’d remember the town “Godfather,” albeit of yore.
I called Mr. Sullivan and introduced myself—for the second time—as “Griswold Holman’s grandson.” Tom remembered instantly the old Rutherfordian to whom I referred. He confessed not remembering, however, his brief encounter with me on that warm sunny day in July 1975. For this I readily pardoned him. “As a student between my junior and senior years of college and therefore having no clue about the workings of the real world,” I said, “I can understand why my cameo role as a messenger would make no lasting impression.” Tom’s warm laugh revealed a person with whom I’d get along.
For the next 10 minutes we exchanged curriculum vitae summaries, and I was favorably impressed by all I heard. Tom had grown up in Rutherford on Donaldson Avenue just up the street from Holman corner. His own late mother had lived in her own home right up to the end of her 96 years. As a kid, Tom had ridden his bike up and down the bordering streets a million times, and he said that more recently on his frequent visits to check on his mother, he’d always drive right past the Holman warehouses. “Each time,” said Tom, “I wondered what will ever become of that prime property.” A graduate of Georgetown University and Seton Hall University Law School, Tom had been in practice for five years when we’d first met. He was now, of course, a veteran, an elder statesman of the bar.
By the time of our phone call in 2012, I myself had been in practice for 30 years, which included seven years managing a group inside a large bank. During that “sidebar” at the bank I had responsibility for hiring and working with many lawyers all across the country. All told, my three decades of muddling around in the law had brought me in close working contact with scores of lawyers, and if there were days when I wondered how I’d managed to fool as many people as I had in my career, I was quite confident of one skill I’d developed: the ability to size up people generally, and lawyers specifically.
My early assessment of Tom Sullivan hit the bull’s eye.
He proved to be an exemplary human being and a superb lawyer, technically as sharp as the best, but even more important, an excellent counselor. With a combination of expertise, experience, and temperament, Tom was the perfect lawyer to counsel me through the turbulent waters ahead. What further bolstered our working rapport were our common outside interests, from downhill skiing to classical music; from reading (books) to discussing history and politics; from spending time with family to escaping to a New England retreat with a saltwater view—in his case, Martha’s Vineyard off Cape Cod and in mine, Hamburg Cove in Connecticut[3]. If I had any reason to believe I’d been a liberal arts major in college, Tom with his Jesuit education had me thinking I needed to go back to school.
For the next 10 years, even into his otherwise retirement from the practice of law, Tom served as anchor, supporter, and counselor through the thick and thin of the most challenging “case” of my own career.
At first Tom was skeptical of Cliff. I couldn’t begin to provide a detailed record of the inestimable contributions that the Master of Horror had already made to what had become our family’s proprietary horror show inside 42 Baghdad Street. My summary of Cliff, however, sounded so improbable to Tom that he was naturally cautious and counseled me to be wary.
Over the ensuing decade, of course, Tom became intimately familiar with Cliff’s remarkable skills, talent, and personality. As matters unfolded and Cliff’s role became more critical than ever, Tom remarked on a regular basis, “I don’t know what you’d do without Cliff.”
These two angels complemented each other perfectly. Whereas Tom was a deliberative and analytical thinker, Cliff had a reliably agile mind, and when facts changed or assumptions were upended, Cliff had no trouble adapting to the circumstances. If Tom was the scholarly and methodical lawyer, Cliff was the quintessentially inventive entrepreneur. While Tom appreciated great literature, Cliff showed a natural facility for articulate, persuasive writing. Tom projected a sturdy calm by his quiet confidence, and Cliff won instant command of every audience by his charisma. Tom was kind and brilliant. Cliff was smart as a tack and generous. Tom was incapable of B.S., and Cliff could spot B.S. a mile away. Though Tom was a liberal Democrat and Cliff was an acquaintance (and supporter) of Trump[4], it was Cliff who unequivocally and without hesitation stood up to racism—amidst a largely liberal crowd awkwardly paralyzed by the circumstances[5]. And most applicable to our joint mission, Tom knew the legal levers like a senior commercial pilot knows the controls of an airliner, but Cliff knew how to grease the system because he was well-acquainted, it seemed, with everyone in a position of influence.
The central lesson of my own legal career was that “the rule of law” is a euphemism for “slower than molasses, more expensive than any budget will anticipate, and guaranteed to lack guarantees.” To this I’d add a corollary: never underestimate the conservativism of judges. I don’t mean in a political sense but in matters of procedure as well as substance in a majority of cases before any particular court. Judges are especially bound to the complex rules and laws that govern legal processes: a judge’s over-riding objective is not to be reversed on appeal. Litigators, on the other hand, are as motivated to “fight” as to “win,” often by a “Hail Mary pass,” the most important feature of which is a straight face and strong voice. Consequently, judges—even politically liberal ones—are generally quite conservative when it comes to rulings in a “non-political” case, whereas lawyers will often resort to “spit-balling,” because it’s the only means to keep the meter running and to win a losing case.
To take these observations a step further, what makes good filmmaking and thus what forms a lasting impression on the public, is portrayal of litigation as a theatrical process in which the more histrionic actor gives the best opening statement, calls the more convincing witness, delivers the most damning cross-examination, and closes with the winningest argument. It’s all over in a 15-minute denouement of a 117-minute blockbuster film.
People often apply this wholly unrealistic Hollywood view to the actual process of litigation. Greased litigators, incentivized to fight—in fact mandated to do so ethically under the “zealous advocacy” element of the Rules of Professional Responsibility—fan the flames burning inside the heads of the legally aggrieved. Influenced by Hollywood and our “fighting” culture, lawyers and laypersons alike too often rush to apply a legal remedy to every wrong—real or perceived. The actual world of law is far slower, more expensive, and uncertain than most people assume or most litigators will admit.
Valid or not, my perspective on the legal system and the practical pursuit of legal remedies had always given me pause when dealing with UB. On top of it all were the factors of family dynamics and my personal relationship with the one and only sibling of either of my parents—a connection that was not without substantially positive, even defining, elements. Complicating matters further was UB’s mental condition. Was he truly “insane” in any legal sense, or was he merely the “craziest” sane person I—or a judge or jury—would ever encounter? Accumulating lots of clocks and thermometers, living on “Table Talk” pot pies and never throwing away the containers . . . even sending what by mid-2012 we figured was north of three-quarters of a million dollars to a drug addict Serbian émigré living in London . . . did not make for certainty in any formal legal action. Deeply ingrained in American jurisprudence as well as American culture is individual liberty and independence, however self-destructive.[6] UB would not go down or out without a fight.
Then there was the critical factor of UB’s age: just months away from 90. Would precipitous action cause undue stress and lead directly to his demise—or, if successful, would efforts to “clean up” his abode and personal care actually extend his life? If matters were left untouched, would his death resolve everything long before a protracted legal battle would and without the angst and cost of open warfare?
Tom Sullivan, attorney extraordinaire, was the one for the job of grappling with these issues. When we concluded our initial conversation, I felt like the shipwrecked soul aboard a raft at sea who’s been spotted by a reconnaissance plane. When the rescue ship docked a decade later I was still thanking Tom—ever more profusely.
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© 2023 by Eric Nilsson
[1] Garrity Graham Murphy Garofalo & Flinn—I kid you not—and every time the receptionist answered my call, the five names rolled off her tongue like an Italian sports car speeding over the cobblestones of a narrow street winding to the bottom of Cinque Terra. Her elocution was aided by a classic New Jersey accent.
[2] In our case, record ownership of the New Jersey properties was a scrambled egg. In the mix was a dissolved partnership and an administratively terminated limited liability company, thanks to UB’s neglect to attend to such matters.
[3] With regularity his route there and back took him within six miles of Hamburg. As recently as June 2023 we tried to manage a rendezvous at the cove, but the ferry schedule between Woods Hole and Hyannis Harbor is unforgiving. Construction delays on I95 torpedoed our plans. Another time.
[4]More about this later. For now, let the record reflect that on the day after the 2020 Election, by which time Trump was already hellbent on selling “the Big Lie,” Cliff called me to say, “I have to admit. The better guy won.”
[5]At Byron and Mylène’s Wisconsin Northwoods wedding (at the Red Cabin), the hired DJ blared out an overtly racist remark about Asians. The guests were stunned. A high percentage of them, in fact, happened to be Asian. Of the 130 people in attendance, Cliff stepped up and took the DJ to task. “What you said was so wrong!” Cliff said to the guy. “I produce big events for a living, and if you pulled that kind of stunt at any event I had control over, you’d be fired on the spot.”
[6] Just as with the sacrosanct First Amendment and freedom to talk nonsense, the law does recognize limits to personal liberty. A fairly universal standard for civil commitment is “posing endangerment to others or to self.” In New Jersey, guardianships and conservatorships can be imposed on an “incapacitated individual,” meaning “an individual who is impaired by reason of mental illness or intellectual disability to the extent that the individual lacks sufficient capacity to govern himself and manage his affairs.” In either case, however, reflecting the bias in favor of individual liberty/freedom, the burden of proof lies with the state (civil or criminal commitment) or the party seeking a court-ordered guardianship/conservatorship.
