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Live and learn: Eddie Greenspan; On defence and the law.
Canadian Business
Mon 31 Jan 2005
Byline: Andy Holloway
"I had no childhood dreams of being a fireman, a policeman, teacher, doctor or candlestick maker or a corporate mogul. I was committed to being not only a lawyer, but a criminal lawyer.
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The allure, the show business part of criminal law, the great trials, cross-examinations, jury addresses that I had read about in all the books when I was growing up, that made me want to become a criminal lawyer, like Perry Mason--none of them talked about the truth.And the truth is that for every great one hour of cross-examination, you have to spend about 50 hours preparing alone in your office, late at night, when no one else is around and you can think it through, take notes. It's completely unglamorous and completely nothing more or less than very hard work. You've got to read everything, think about everything, figure out how you're going to approach a case and then get up and make it look like it's natural, like it just kind of came to you, which, of course, it doesn't if you care about what you're doing.
At the end of the day, people would give up their money to protect their liberty, but would not give up their liberty to protect their money.
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I defend people, not crimes. And I defend innocent people, because until they're convicted, everybody is presumed to be innocent.
I don't believe that we, as lawyers, can make moral judgments about our clients. If they say they're innocent, they're innocent.
The Charter of Rights and Freedoms, Section 11, says that every person charged has a right to counsel. It doesn't say every person except bank robbers, child molesters, murderers.
Most of the public charge, try, convict and sentence people before a person has been charged, tried, convicted and sentenced. They make up their minds fairly quickly. Oftentimes the media make up their mind fairly quickly.
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Sometimes people don't want to be seen talking to me because it may look like I'm their lawyer.
I like being the underdog. The harder they press against my client, the more I get excited about defending them. I prefer to go into the game that way.
People who don't like me say I'm a showman; people who like me say I'm very good at what I do. I do not believe I am a showman, not for one second. I know this much, if some of the top American lawyers were to watch me in a courtroom, they'd fall asleep. But this is Canada--you cannot come on and pirouette around like you're Dustin Hoffman. It doesn't work.
I don't drink. I don't take drugs. I don't play golf. I eat, no question I eat, and if I'm in a high state of stress I eat a lot and I eat very quickly. I don't have any escape. If I'm in my car, I'm thinking about my cases--something is always in my brain.
The law is my vocation, it's my avocation. I don't have an escape, a hideaway place to relax. It's go-go when I'm at rest, and it's go-go when I'm at work.
I will never pop. I turned 60 last year and I love it more now than I did 10 years ago. It's where I intend to be my entire life. I will never retire. I'll never slow down.
My belief in the legal system and my belief in the rule of law is almost like a religion for me--in a tremendously secular way, but it's my home. It's where I'm most comfortable.
When one of my students says the one book they read that made them want to go to law school is Greenspan: The Case for the Defence, there's nothing nicer than that. Actually, there's one thing nicer than that: my granddaughter.
I'm married 37 years. I managed to have two daughters, who, although I may not have spent a great deal of time with when they were growing up, my oldest daughter Julianna practices law with me. She's a criminal lawyer, too, so I must have been doing something right. My younger daughter is an interior designer in New York City, but we talk all the time. I have a wonderful family.
What do I attribute that to? They're not very bright. I'm only kidding. My wife is a great lady. If I had been married to anyone else, they would not have tolerated me. I'm not around. I work on the weekends and I work all the time. That's the way it is and they've been great about it.
When Julianna was six years old, Suzy and Julianna were on a plane going to Montreal. Suzy reports to me that two police officers came onboard with a man who was handcuffed, and Julie got some tears in her eyes. Suzy said "Don't worry, don't be scared." And Julie said, "I'm not scared. I feel sorry for the man." We both said to each other, "She's got my genes." She's a fine lawyer.
A lot of things make a good lawyer. You need a good heart, you have to be a very decent person yourself, you've got to believe in the rule of law and justice and want to fight for it. You have to have energy, intelligence, instinct, drive, and you've got to want to win.
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I don't use lawyer's words. Lawyers actually get up in court and use the word "purport." What the hell does that mean? I try to teach people that nobody in a bar or a beer hall uses the word, purport; you talk like an ordinary, regular person and people will like you a lot better. I never use the word vexatious in a courtroom. I don't even know how to spell it.
My second jury trial was in Sault Ste. Marie, and in my jury address I happened to use the word "surreptitiously." The moment I used it, the jury had the look of the walleyed pike, and I knew I had made a huge mistake that you don't use words that regular folk don't use. |
Whether I'm in the Old City Hall defending an impaired driving charge, or in Superior Court on a murder case or a complex trial, whatever I'm involved in and whatever I'm doing is the most important thing in my life, because it's most important thing in my client's life.
When people say to me you must try to avoid stress, that's a joke. My life even at my rest period has an enormous amount of stress, but I love it. I love the responsibility and I take it very seriously.
Sometimes I go to places where somebody is my client and they pretend they've never met or don't know me to avoid people thinking they are my client.
A lot of people call me and say, "I never thought I'd have to call you about this." People don't necessarily like to make an admission that they even have a criminal problem.
The point at which I know I've won is when the foreperson comes out and says, "Not guilty." I always believe they'll say it, and I want it to be that way in every case. But even Roger Clemens loses the odd baseball game. Not that I'm comparing myself to Roger Clemens, but I'd like to. |
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Any case can go anyway. Even if you think you're going to win, you still have to work very hard to make sure that you win. You can't get cocky.
Has anyone ever asked for my autograph? Embarrassingly, yes, and I always give it for free, not like some baseball players.
I've tried to instill in my children that being a decent person is very important no matter how badly somebody else may treat you. Being a forgiving person is important. Being a generous person is important."
Timeline: Edward L. GreenspanTorontoBorn Feb. 28, 1944, in Niagara Falls
1970: Called to the bar and joins Joe Pomerant's Toronto firm after graduating from Osgoode Hall Law School in 1968.
1974: Comes to national prominence as the junior counsel in the murder trial of Peter Demeter, a wealthy Toronto developer.
1976: Splits from Pomerant with two colleagues to form their own law firm, Greenspan, Gold and Moldaver.
1986: Takes three months off to campaign against the reintroduction of the death penalty by the Mulroney Conservatives.
2004: Current client roster includes Karlheinz Schreiber, Garth Drabinsky, Conrad Black and former stockbroker Mark Valentine.
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Edward Greenspan for the defence
A high-flying lawyer wins cases and respect
RAE CORELLI
When he stands, his trouser cuffs sometimes bunch up on top of his shoes, either because his pants are too long or his red suspenders are out of adjustment. On this occasion, his white shirt, the collar undone and the buttons stretched by a passion for junk food, looks as though he has slept in it. His necktie is a stringy ribbon of indeterminate colour that wanders across his chest from the off-kilter knot under his right ear to his belt. Eddie Greenspan is clearly not among the nation's best-dressed criminal defence lawyers. "I'm just not a clotheshorse," he says. "I got three suits."
But he is among the best at what he does -- perhaps the best in Canada. During the past 30 years, this son of a Niagara Falls, Ont., scrap dealer has built a formidable reputation for winning high-profile cases in courtrooms from one end of the country to the other. "I may have some natural talent, but I don't rely on it," Greenspan says. "That's why I work 18 hours a day."
That combination of ability and stamina, says Halifax defence counsel Joel Pink, has likely made Greenspan the "top criminal lawyer in the country. When Eddie walks into a courtroom, they treat him with a great deal of respect and he probably gets away with things that local lawyers couldn't." Retired Supreme Court of Canada justice Willard Estey calls Greenspan "an extremely good criminal lawyer and the leader in that bar." And Toronto trial lawyer Harvey Strosberg says: "No one works harder and is more deadly in the courtroom." The plaudits are widespread, but they are not universal. One exception: Toronto litigation counsel Ian Outerbridge, who acknowledges Greenspan's talents but thinks veteran criminal defence lawyer Austin Cooper, also of Toronto, is more capable.
Among Greenspan's latest headline-making challenges: representing Daniel Weiz, the 19-year-old Israeli soldier charged (along with three other teenagers) with second-degree murder in the Nov. 14 beating death of 15-year-old Matti Baranovski in a Toronto park. Greenspan is also pursuing a $1-million wrongful-arrest lawsuit he launched in mid-November against Canada and Germany on behalf of Karlheinz Schreiber, a central figure in the long-running Airbus scandal who is wanted in Germany on suspicion of income tax evasion and fraud. The suit alleges that the 65-year-old Schreiber's arrest by the RCMP last Aug. 31 was illegal because he has not been formally charged with anything.
In yet another case, Greenspan has asked the Supreme Court of Canada for a stay of proceedings in nine sexual misconduct charges against former Nova Scotia premier Gerald Regan. In December, 1998, Regan was acquitted of eight other more serious offences, including rape.
At 55, Greenspan's irreverence, knee-buckling schedule (he has from 30 to 50 active cases at any given time) and his artful use of the media have made him a kind of courtroom superstar. He has become the Canadian counterpart of American celebrity lawyers like F. Lee Bailey (defender of Albert DeSalvo, the Boston Strangler) and Alan Dershowitz, who not only got Claus von Bulow acquitted of attempting to murder his wife but appeared in Reversal of Fortune, the 1990 movie based on the case.
While Greenspan has yet to follow Dershowitz onto the silver screen, he has scored well on radio and television. From 1982 to 1990, he was the host-narrator of the award-winning The Scales of Justice, a CBC FM series on famous Canadian trials. Then in 1994, the CBC switched Greenspan and Scales to television, where it won a Gemini Award in 1993 as best show of the year. "I like going on TV and radio to discuss issues," he says. "Do I like the publicity that brings? I'm not shy about it -- sure, I don't mind it, I get tickled by it."
Publicity has not always been amusing. In 1966, when Greenspan was still a student, his firm dispatched him to take notes at hearings in Toronto of a royal commission into the collapse of the Atlantic Acceptance Corp. Ltd., a finance company. The sessions were so tedious that he fell asleep and the judge had to ask a court attendant to wake him up. "It was the first time I ever got my name in the paper," says Greenspan. But not the last time he dozed in court. Once, during a trial revolving around the theft of more than 800 car parts, a prosecution witness began reading all the serial numbers into the record and Greenspan soon nodded off. "Forty-five minutes later when I'm just starting to snore, my partner wakes me up and the first thing I hear is 'B-20, O-17' and I say 'Bingo!' Everybody laughed except the judge, who hadn't heard me."
His 12 years in broadcasting gave Greenspan national exposure and probably brought him clients -- many of them prominent or wealthy -- that he would not otherwise have had. And while he wins most of his cases, there have been some spectacular defeats. One was the four-month-long first-degree murder trial in 1986 of Helmut Buxbaum, owner of a string of southwestern Ontario nursing homes, who paid Greenspan nearly $1 million to defend him. But Buxbaum was convicted in the contract-killing of his wife despite Greenspan's argument that the Crown had failed to establish a motive.
Greenspan's critics at the stodgier end of the legal profession claim he unashamedly uses the media to score points for the people he represents. To that accusation, Greenspan reacts heatedly. "I have never gone to the press to get them involved in a case of mine," he says. "If they're already involved, then I have no hesitation in dealing with the press and using it to help my client."
So what does this help cost the client by the hour? "I'm not going to tell you," he replies. "You get yourself charged with a criminal offence and it'll be my pleasure to tell you, but I'm not cheap by any stretch of the imagination." (He admits to charging between $5,000 and $7,500 for an impaired-driving defence.) However, he says, "if somebody hasn't got the money and convinces me of the justice of their case, then the money doesn't matter and I'll take the case for nothing."
About 10 years ago, the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce closed its branch at Jarvis and King streets in downtown Toronto. In 1995, Greenspan bought the colonnaded grey-stone three-storey building, evicted the rats and spent a rumoured $750,000 on renovations, including a chandelier the size of a Volkswagen that hangs from the library's nine-metre-high ceiling. He kept the ground floor for himself; his four partners labour upstairs.
At one end of the library's richly polished boardroom table that could comfortably seat more than a dozen people, Greenspan is peeling the plastic wrapping from a takeout salmon sandwich. "Left to my own devices, I would go to a fast-food place three times a day," he says. He credits his wife, Suzy, with introducing him to fine dining and, with equally mixed results, to literature, classical music and a love of travel. He reads a lot of crime novels ("it's embarrassing to admit all this") by authors such as Ruth Rendell, Elmore Leonard and Patricia Cornwell. "I also read the sports pages every day," says Greenspan, "because it's an occupational hazard that a lot of judges and Crown attorneys know a lot about sports and I can't stand not knowing what they're talking about."
Suzy Greenspan has had less success with music. "Once we were in Rome and we went to an outdoor opera and saw Aida, and there were like 30 elephants onstage and I thought this was unbelievable," Greenspan says. "So I made her go the next night to see -- what is it? Cavelleria Something -- and there were sheep all over and I loved it. So we came back and I decided to become an opera fan, but when we went to one where there were no animals, I fell asleep. So I started going to zoos."
Among his colleagues, Greenspan's quest for the perfect hamburger is almost as noteworthy as his skills in the courtroom. Calgary lawyer John Bascom remembers the time about 10 years ago when a friend acted as Greenspan's co-counsel in a local case. "They'd work until two o'clock in the morning," Bascom says, "and then Eddie would want hamburgers and they had to drive around town looking for a place, which wasn't that easy to find back then." Halifax's Joel Pink says that when Greenspan was there for the Regan trial, "he told me he had found the best restaurants in Halifax for hamburgers. He had probably eaten in all of them, but they were not on the top of my list of places to dine. I think his favourite place later burned down."
Greenspan's torrid race through the justice system has littered the legal landscape with anecdotes. During the Regan trial, says Strosberg, Greenspan was cross-examining a witness "who began replying to a question by saying, 'Well, Eddie.' " Greenspan, says Strosberg, replied by saying, " 'to you, I'm Mr. Greenspan and you're Ms. So-and-so.' About 15 minutes later, she said she'd heard something to the effect that he was the best criminal lawyer in the country -- and he said, 'Now you can call me Eddie.' "
The Greenspans have two daughters. Samantha, 21, is in a two-year master's program in nutrition at New York University. Julianna, 27, practises criminal law in Chicago. Their parents inhabit the empty nest -- a mortgage-free, million-dollar home in an exclusive north Toronto enclave. "That's what Suzy wanted, that's what the kids wanted," Greenspan says. "It doesn't mean much to me."
Nor, it seems, does anything else, except his family and the law. He lectures University of Toronto law students, and has for more than 20 years been the editor of Martin's Annual Criminal Code, the criminal lawyer's bible. He scorns "sanctimonious lawyers who want to act only for innocent people," and claims that Canadian fears about crime are aroused by American TV ("we are not a violent society").
But what really worries him, Greenspan says, are politically correct trends in the criminal justice system towards defining and protecting the rights of "so-called victims -- and I'm talking about children and women." Crown attorneys, he says, no longer spend time trying to determine a complainant's truthfulness; instead, Greenspan says, "we have a rule of law now that says children don't lie because victims don't lie. Where are we in a system in which if a child says something, then you automatically believe it? I would have thought that the rule is you would automatically not believe it. Somebody cries rape, they're not lying, they can't be lying, so anybody who's accused has to be lying." Does all this discourage him? "No, it makes me angry," Greenspan says. "If we do not defend against these bad ideas, we're going to lose our liberties, as sure as sure can be."
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'Dogged' defence lawyer barks and bites ; Style stands out at MFP inquiry Todd White known as legal JYD
Peter Small. Toronto Star. Toronto, Ont.: |
His cross-examination style recently earned him the nickname Junkyard Dog.
He's the only criminal lawyer among civil lawyers at the Toronto computer leasing inquiry, where his rough-and-ready style has clashed with their more subdued approach.
And at 40, he's a full partner with top criminal lawyer Eddie Greenspan, a position he achieved in 1998, only six years after being called to the bar.
Todd White's grilling of witnesses in the interests of his client, city hall lobbyist Jeff Lyons, has raised objections from city lawyer Linda Rothstein and lead inquiry counsel Ron Manes, as well as occasional interventions by commissioner Madam Justice Denise Bellamy.
But he makes no apologies.
"It was not me nor Mr. Lyons that chose to call these witnesses who make allegations against our client. But if commission counsel calls them, for reasons that I will never understand, I must defend our client in the highest traditions of the bar," White said in a written statement yesterday.
While cleared of any bribery allegations by the Ontario Provincial Police last year, Lyons is to appear today to be questioned about an incident in which he allegedly made an improper request for $150,000 from a sales manager in return for securing a computer leasing deal with the city.
The inquiry is examining how a computer leasing deal with MFP Financial Services Ltd. that many believed was worth $43 million in computer equipment came to cost the city $85 million without council's explicit approval.
As far as being called a junkyard dog by a newspaper columnist last weekend, "I don't think my mother would like the expression, but I think I'll take it in the highest spirit of the tradition of being a defence lawyer, that I'm dogged in my determination to prove that a client is innocent of bribery allegations," White said in an interview.
Born and raised in Toronto, White went to Etobicoke's Michael Power High School.
During that time he was a member of a rock band called Lizzie Borden- the name of a notorious alleged axe murderess- playing drums, percussion and singing lead vocals.
At the University of Toronto, where he majored in history and political science, he played with other bands.
Law school at the University of Ottawa followed, where he helped pay the bills by disc jockeying at dance clubs, one of many part- time jobs he's had since a boy, including delivering the Star.
At law school, he was a research assistant for two professors, toiled with student legal services and even performed stand-up comedy for colleagues. "I love stand-up comedy," he said. And he sometimes sees court work as a kind of performance, where he modulates his tone depending on the witness. "If a witness is sarcastic and talks back you have to control the witness and talk back as well," he said, referring to lobbyist Frank Carnevale, whom he recently questioned for 21/2 days at the inquiry.
At one point Bellamy interrupted his cross-examination of Carnevale. "Mr. White ... the tone of the way you're asking the question is very strong," she remarked.
"I'll re-ask it ... without looking at the witness sarcastically," White offered.
At one point last week, in arguing about his approach to questioning Carnevale, White told Bellamy, "If I have the opportunity to destroy a witness' credibility, I think I'm entitled to do it."
Greenspan strongly defends his partner's tactics at the inquiry.
"Mr. White has been successful in getting the witnesses to back down from their positions," Greenspan said.
In one case, White got former Dell Financial Services sales manager Robert Simone to withdraw the word "shakedown" to describe Lyons' request for $150,000 and agree that "success fee" would be more appropriate.
White is not "a member of this inquiry club," Greenspan said. "He's not going to simply sit there and allow Mr. Lyons to be besmirched. I not only agree with him, I instructed him to do this because I'm very involved in it."
Greenspan says he's a huge Toronto Raptors fan and his favourite player is Jerome Williams, nicknamed Junk Yard Dog. "So we now call Todd 'Junkyard Dog.' And what upsets me the most about it is I that I didn't get that label, he did."
White was one of the firm's best articling students, Greenspan said, and is in court about 200 days a year.
"I consider him to be an effective advocate, a very hard-working guy, works well into the night, every night," he said.
White's brother is a senior Toronto police officer and his sister married a senior police officer, but he always wanted to be a defence counsel, Greenspan said. Among the cases White has worked on were the successful defence of Private David Brocklebank in the mid- 1990s court martial in the Somalia affair, and the 1999 case of Clive Thomas, whose cocaine charges were stayed after White successfully moved a motion to have police reveal the name of their confidential informant.
John Rosen, a senior criminal lawyer, calls White "very hard- working, very thorough and quite talented."
Rosen, who has read media accounts critical of White's aggressive cross-examination style, asks "What's wrong with that? ... I would do the same thing."
No criminal or civil liability can be found at the inquiry, but they often turn into mudslinging campaigns in which reputations can be damaged, he said.
Lawyers have the right to test the credibility of anyone who puts their client in a bad light, he said.
As for being a junkyard dog, for a criminal lawyer "that's a compliment," Rosen said.
Criminal lawyer and Law Society of Upper Canada bencher Todd Ducharme, who knew White when he worked with Greenspan's law firm in the early 1990s, praised his legal skills. "He's intelligent. He works very, very hard."
Marie Henein, a former partner of White and Greenspan, called him "a great guy."
"We're very good friends. He's very personable. He's extremely funny," Henein said.
Melanie Dunn, a junior lawyer at Greenspan, White, says both partners take the time to guide younger advocates like herself.
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Caption: : RICHARD LAUTENS/toronto star At age 40, Todd White is a full partner with top criminal lawyer Eddie Greenspan. At the city hall computer leasing inquiry White is representing lobbyist Jeff Lyons, who is to begin testimony today.
Credit: Toronto Star |
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