Legal News

Law Blog Lawyer of the Day: Joseph Romito

By Peter Lattman

It’s one of our favorite topics: The lawyer as superhero. There was Coughlin Stoia’s Paul Geller, who saved a pregnant woman and her small schnauzer from two attacking pitbulls. There was Keith Radtke, a partner at Faegre & Benson in Minneapolis, who pinned down a gunman who had entered his family’s home. And there was Michael “Dr. Death” Breczinski, a criminal lawyer with a solo practice who faced off against two BB-gun toting teens.

Now meet Joseph Romito, a litigator and estate-planning lawyer at the Framme Law Firm in Richmond. Romito used not his muscles to save the day, but instead used a keen intellect and a passion for Vice President John Calhoun (pictured). He was searching eBay for Civil War-era stuff when he spotted an original, four-page letter from Calhoun. He did a quick reference check of his own 25-volume collection of Calhoun correspondence and discovered that it was supposed to be part of the official New York State Library collection.

He called the NY Public Library, who in turn handed the case over the New York Attorney General’s office. An investigator from the AG’s office successfully bid $1,802.77 on eBay for the document. Last week the office arrested Daniel Lorello, an employee at the New York State archives in Albany, on felony charges; he faces up to seven years in prison. Turns out, he’d stolen a bunch of other things from the archives too. Here are stories from the New York Times and New York Post.

Lorello, who admitted to taking more than 300 to 400 items just last year, said in a sworn statement: “I took the things on an as-needed basis to pay family bills, such as house renovations, car bills, tuition, and my daughter’s credit-card problem. I took many items in 2007 because my daughter, Maria, unexpectedly ran up a $10,000 credit-card bill.”

Romito (Illinois, Wash U. Law) told the Times that he earned his masters at Illinois in history, focusing on the Middle Ages, but that he’s also interested in American history, Southern history and Calhoun in particular. Go Fighting Illini!

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on January 29, 2008 (boomark / email).