Well, business kept growing and so did my firm. The next early hire was Sharon Thompson, who came aboard after Bob Brody left, but Brad Boeckman was still associated with me. Don’t remember how Sharon was hired, but she was a well-thought-of deputy public defender and could make general appeals, settle cases, try the cases if necessary and was a very good brief writer. She stayed with me for several years, and after marrying another top gun in the Public Defender’s Office, Chris Strople, got a job with the fourth District Court of Appeals in Santa Ana and eventually was the Appellate Law Clerk who said yes or no when it came to granting or denying a Writ, such as Habeas Corpus, or prohibition or Mandate, to mention a few examples. The firm name became Schulman, Boeckman and Thompson, still located on Civic Center Drive in San Ana at the time.
When I first started private practice in Orange County, I did not limit my practice to criminal cases, but took on some civil cases as well. One of the cases involved a client who lived in Ensenada, Mexico. At the time, Ensenada was a small fishing village and port located about a 40 minute drive down a coastal highway south of Tijuana, the border town. I believe the client Enrique M. was referred to me, but, after all, I am 90-plus years old, and my memory is not as swift and sharp as it was in the olden days. It could be, because Enrique was formerly the maître d of a restaurant called “The Cove,” located in the ritzy Hancock Park area of Los Angeles. It was my favorite restaurant, great food and reasonable prices. It was just south of Wilshire Blvd. and across the street from another eatery considered one of the best in LA, called the Windsor. I believe both places have since closed, but in the 50s and 60s, they were tops. Generally, a meal started with a Beefeater martini, then their house salad (great Ceasar salad, and mixed by the waiter at the table) garlic rolls, steak and a baked potato, filled with chives, butter, bacon bits and cheese, dessert, coffee and red wine accompanying the meal. Can’t remember the dessert, but it was good as well. Took dates there, and one was a special gal who ended up as my wife. Anyway, Enrique probably found me because we knew each other from my visits to his restaurant. Enrique had purchased a mobile home in Southern California and the sellers were supposed to deliver the home and install it on Enrique’s property. The sellers delivered it, but did not install it as promised, so Enrique had to find and pay some local company to do the work, and he wanted reimbursement for his costs and extra for his troubles. He hired me and I immediately filed a lawsuit asking for reimbursement, costs for his troubles and a fraud allegation against the sellers in the Orange County Courts. Shortly after service of the summons and complaint, I was contacted by attorney Keith Monroe, who was a new practitioner in Orange County, with an office consisting of a small house located on Broadway in Santa Ana. (There were not a lot of high rises, and small converted houses were the norm at the time for attorneys and firms in the Santa Ana area.) The big multi-story buildings located in Irvine, Costa Mesa and Newport Beach did not exist in the 60s and 70s.
Keith Monroe was a very smart man, a Stanford Law graduate, but also very practical. We quickly settled Enrique’s case for reimbursed costs, and a little extra for the troubles. (That’s the way cases should be disposed of, but rarely are, as each attorney on either side generally work on an hourly fee and more often than they should, cases are drawn out to “milk” the case or add unnecessary fees.) I might add, the “milking” process was one of the reasons I despised civil (really not so civil) practice and went into the LA DA’s Office about 3 plus years after I was admitted and licensed to practice law.
Both Keith Monroe and I quickly steered our practices to criminal law defense. As a matter of fact, Keith became famous based on a United States Supreme Court case called Chimel v California, found in 395 U.S, 752, which was decided around September 1969, and which became one of the, if not the, major case involving the suppression of evidence obtained by an unlawful search and seizure of resultant evidence in violation of the 4th amendment of the US Constitution forbidding unlawful search and seizures of evidence from being used to convict. In Chimel’s case, the officers obtained an arrest warrant for Chimel in a burglary investigation. When the officers went to Chimel’s residence to arrest him, they asked for permission to search the residence, which was refused. The officers searched anyway, claiming the search was incidental to a valid arrest and recovered loot taken in the burglary. Over objection by Keith, the court allowed the evidence to be admitted on the incident to attest theory, which was pretty much the law in State courts and Federal courts. The ruling of admissibility was sustained by the California District Court of Appeal and a request for a hearing before the California Supreme Court was denied. So, Keith filed what is known as a writ of Certiorari commonly known in the profession as “Cert” to the U.S. Supreme Court which was granted (allow me to divert at this time to explain that not many such writs are ever granted by the US Supreme Court. In my practice, only once did I file such a request to be heard by the Supreme Court and the best I got, was, I passed the 80% rule which means 80% of requests are denied. Then if not denied, outright, then the 20% not summarily denied find themselves in a position where SCOTUS (acronym for US Supreme Court) orders the Solicitor General of the United States to respond to the petitioner’s request. After the response, then generally a handful of petitions are granted, with the bulk being denied, which unfortunately was my case. (I mentioned the case in an earlier blog involving a suspected bank robber armed with some very deadly weapons and an ounce of cocaine.) Back to Chimel. The rule in the case is a search incident to an arrest must be from the suspect’s immediate person or within the suspect’s reach even if the suspect is lawfully arrested by a valid arrest warrant. Prior to the rule, any search for evidence could be very wide, as long as it was based on a valid arrest, it would be considered incidental to a valid arrest. A whole subsequent line of cases, both State and Federal, developed on Search and Seizure cases based on Chimel. Keith was asked to lecture to various law groups on the subject and was highly respected in the criminal defense area. I might add, earlier I believe I might have mentioned, and if I didn’t, I will, I was active in the creation of the State Bar specialization section and pushed it through for criminal law by making sure those who had become specialists on the temporary specialist program by “grandfathering” in, would take an exam. Both Keith and I, as well as other grey-haired defense lawyers, sat for an exam 30 or so years after our last exam, and passed a pretty tough test. Keith and I became pretty good friends, but unfortunately he became ill and passed away as a rather young man.
Getting back to Enrique, and more on Ensenada. Before settling the case, Enrique suggested, and I might add, familiarizing oneself with the layout of the area in controversy is my habit as well, I come to his home in Ensenada to actually see what was needed regarding landscaping and foundational work for proper installation of his mobile home, a good idea. So, Enrique made arrangements for me to stay at a rental near his location. Actually, outside of a few trips to the border town of Tijuana, when I was single and a little younger for not-so-nice purposes, which I think is better left out of this story, I had never been anywhere. So, my wife, Maxine, and I got a sitter for our kids, got into our Ford Station Wagon and commenced our trip. It’s a very pleasant drive from Newport Beach: get on the Pacific Coast Highway, go south through Newport and Corona Del Mar, down the open coast to Laguna Beach, through Laguna, and at Dana Point, merge onto the 405 Freeway into San Diego County, go through the Marine Camp Pendleton Base to Oceanside and a bunch of near coastal villages, through San Diego ending up in Chula Vista, the last US town before next to the border between Mexico and the US. Before crossing, I was warned, get insurance, otherwise if for some reason there is an accident and no insurance, then big trouble. Well, when you cross into Mexico border, you are in a foreign country for sure, and the border area of Tijuana was third world and then some. To get to Ensenada, one has to go through Tijuana, then a very small town with a few paved streets, to get to the highway that goes south to Ensenada, the northern end of the Baja Peninsula. You will see huts made of paper, cardboard with tin roofs and people living deep in poverty, not a pretty sight. Once out of Tijuana, the trip is rather nice, along the coast, past a small resort or two until you come to a split in the road, where one lane goes around a small hill to the left, and the other lane goes to the right, and the lanes merge on the back of the hill and continues into the town of Ensenada. Shortly after the merge of lanes and at the far northern part of the town to the right and located by the ocean was a group of small houses and apartments called Quintas Papaguyo, where we were booked to stay. Drove in, went to the check-in area, got just a lovely apartment, and settled in. Explored the compound and discovered a group of rental houses with quaint names such as “Casa Azul,” “Casa Rosa” and others, where people would rent the houses at a very modest rate and bring their families. There also was a very nice swimming pool. But unheated, which did not bother the kids at all. Later went to Enrique’s place, got the lay of the land, was served cocktails and snacks and invited to dine at his restaurant called “Enrique’s Little Cove,” with the world’s smallest bar: two stools. Had great dinner and for the first time among other treats started with turtle soup. Also, Mariachis playing and singing requests such as “Jalisco no te Rajes, Cielito Lindo, Grenada and other tunes. Needless to say, we fell in love with the place, and periodically returned with our kids, and sometimes with their friends, rented one of the little houses, generally on the waterfront. We explored the town, bought fresh-made rolls made in a little bakery across the street that had a primitive stone oven, wine, made by the local friars at their nearby monastery, Vino Roso and Vino Blanco (red and white) and Mexican gin called Oso Negro (black bear) Also, I would go into town with my daughter, Julia, who was about four or five, buy fresh lobster, clean them, boil them in sea water, get some butter, melt the same and boil up some potatoes and have a grand feast. My family and I returned as often as we could, fished off the rocks, played in the pool and had a grand time. However my first major trip was to Mexico City and Acapulco. The experience was quite different, and I will tell you about it later.
Marshall
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