Federal Judiciary

Law Firm Basketball Team Uses a Ringer

One of my favorite West Wing episodes was the one where President Bartlett puts Rodney Grant (a character played by former NBA star Juwan Howard) on his pick-up basketball team.

What I never expected was that someone would actually use this tactic in real life. But then we get this gem of a story from the New York Law Journal.

A basketball team made up of attorneys from the New York firm Milberg Weiss hired a semi-pro basketball player as a ringer. The firm plays in the Lawyers Athletic League (the biggest oxymoron since "compassionate conservative"), which allows two "non-attorney" members on each team. I think that rule was intended to allow a paralegal or an attorney's spouse to participate, not to go out and recruit a Duquesne University almnus and veteran of the American Basketball Association, like Devone Stephenson.

But the petty vanity of the Milberg Weiss firm is not the funniest part of this story. The opposing team was not very nice to Mr. Stephenson (maybe because he is 6' 8" and, unlike the rest of the players, he has real basketball skills). They taunted him, fouled him four times in a row, and punched him in the face, fracturing his jaw.

And who did the opposing team work for? You guessed it, the Food Bank for New York City. Lawyers for a charitable organization who apparently don't know how to define the word charitable. For the record, when you punch a 6'8" man, you do know how to define the word cajones.

Mr. Stephenson sued, but was unsuccessful, because he had signed a liability waiver before the game (d'oh!).

The thing that surprised me the most is that the Lawyers Athletic League plays basketball. I would have thought that the league would be dedicated to sports more realistically suited for the legal profession: briefcase shotput or the 100-meter ambulance chase.

Full post as published by Supreme Dicta on October 24, 2008 (boomark / email).