Posted by David Brown on October 31, 2008:

Bob was my late law partner and amazing friend. He had an amazing insight into people. God help any litigants who lied to him as he would detect dishonesty in a flash. When he hired me as a young associate, he evidently saw promise in that he passed over a number of applicants. I spent my entire career trying to not let him down. He had that ability to lead rather effortlessly. He had a sonorous voice that resonated through a courtroom and a charisma which was the envy of every trial attorney he ever met. He knew how to hold the attention of a jury and take control of a courtroom. Bob believed that you had to take control of a courtroom and never give it back for a moment. He was clever with the Rules of Evidence and a stickler for procedural details. Any witness who took the stand unprepared to testify in Bob's case walked away with scars on his psyche. He was at home in a courtroom and always put his clients first. He knew that the job was to be of service to the client and to win. Sometimes that entailed being unpleasant towards a witness or even opposing counsel, and he was certainly not intimidated by any Judge that I ever saw. He had over one hundred trials that went to verdict. Bob never settled a case out of fear but only if he respected the ability of the other side to prove its case. He was a shrewd negotiator and tactician and he always managed to maneuver a courtroom battle into an area of the case where he had his greatest strengths. He was a great teacher to me but he could sure be tough. It took me years to prove myself to him and I cannot tell you how many times he would just "happen to be driving by the office late at night" and check to see if I was there when he knew that I had work to do. Bob was stingy with verbal praise. The good thing about that was, however, that when he said that you did something right he could, by God and by country, believe that you did. Bob and I never felt that we needed a written partnership agreement. Even dividing up partnership funds, we simply did what we thought was fair and we never had a disagreement. He was a generous partner and rigorously honest. His adoption of the West Point Honor Code was to the bone, not something that was simply discussed. For the small law practice that we were, Bob and I took two cases to the California Supreme Court, and had numerous appellate decisions including numerous published appellate decisions in varied areas of law. We did our own appellate work. We worked our cases up from case intake with our clients all the way to the highest level of appeals regardless of how technical and procedural those appeals were. While we would sometimes consult with outside counsel, we believed that if we couldn't do it in our own office then we shouldn't be involved in the case to begin with. I think that the appellate successes in Supreme Court were probably Bob's greatest point of pride in our practice. In this regard, Bob was truly a "lawyer's lawyer" in that there were occasions where we represented other attorneys and it was an incredible compliment to think that they would want to hire Bob as no one understands legal talent better than attorneys themselves. We ventured into class action litigation later in Bob's career and Bob never shied away from the enormous financial commitment which is required to take on those kind of cases. In later years, Bob did not practice as much, although he did show up at the office everyday. This situation allowed us to enjoy hours and hours of conversation. We would ruminate over favorite topics including firearms and ammunition, marksmanship, hunting and some fishing topics. Mostly, we liked to talk about people. Bob had treasured friendships that were remarkable for their confidence and intimacy. After he passed even I learned about friends that he had that I did not know about. I will never forget there was someone at his service in Manhattan Beach who had worked on a number of Bob's properties over the years, and I thought it simply to be a casual friendship. This gentleman was crying uncontrollably and when I talked to him he could barely speak, but he told me "Bob saved my ass one time." I don't know if he meant financially or in a legal predicament, and I wasn't in any shape to ask. But Bob had never told me of anything remarkable he had done for him. We often spoke of Bob's years as a cadet. He loved West Point and believed it was perhaps the defining achievement of his life. I know that when he would describe what is taught at West Point, and what he learned at I Corp, I could see it reflected in the way that he practiced law, and the way that he required all of in the office to practice law with him. As Bob and I would ruminate and discuss people and psychology and what motivates people, it was always amazing to me how he could see through the veneer of what people want us to perceive and really get to the heart of their true motivations. He was also willing to look at himself with such an honestly harsh eye that I wondered where he might have gotten it. He always told me that he had learned it at West Point. He told me that he believed that people needed to just "get over their emotions" and get tasks accomplished. He had no patience for pity or self-pity, and whining was absolutely out of the question. He could be beyond blunt and tell it like it was. As everyone who knows him knows, he would also use humor to soften his bluntness a bit, but you never missed the point. I never failed to be amazed at how many times Bob and I would analyze a situation, disagree, and the perspective that he had that I had doubts about would ultimately be proven correct. I finally got smart enough to take his advice more, and am a happier man for it. Even when Bob's health began to fail at the end, I would call him every day when I was in trial and give him a full report. Then on the weekends I would drive up to his palatial home in Palos Verdes Estates where we would sit looking at the ocean, and I would recount for him the entire week's events. He would give me advice on the trial itself, on how to handle witnesses, and even things such as how to keep my focus in trial and not let even well meaning people from the office distract me. When Bob was still coming to the office everyday when I was in trial his office door was right next to mine and he would literally run physical interference with anyone who brought me anything that did not have to do with the trial that I was in. Everybody knew it and it was like having a mean bulldog outside my door. He would just say "No, Dave is in trial. Give it to me." He wouldn't even tell me what it was or let me know what people were bringing to me, he would simply handle it so that it would not clutter my mind. He had been in trial himself so many times that he knew that it required 100% attention. Where do you find a friend and a law partner like that? I am getting tearful dictating this. I guess it shows that Bob and I were the same in that I am having someone else send this and I am just dictating into a dictaphone the way Bob and I always did it. It was my great honor to take care of Bob when he was not well, and when he was well I was his second lieutenant. I will never get over it. Everyone here at the firm misses him so much. I asked Tracie to take a picture of a shadow box that one of my cousins had made. It has a picture of Bob as a cadet, his dress blues, one of his first academic reports, and a letter to his parents from Brigadier General J.H. Michaelis informing them that Bob had taken the oath of allegiance as a cadet. It also has a copy of "Bugle Notes" from 1954 and a ring hop program from 1958. It sits outside my office and I see it every time I walk into or out of my office. It was so hard for me to bury Bob at West Point for my own selfish reasons. I want him closer to me. I realized, however, that it was his wish to be interred there, he expressly told me so. He changed the way I see the world.

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