2 March 2005
Bruce Jackson
How the lawyer Bill Kunstler got the judge Bruce Wright to sign a totally illegal court order for the right reasons(Retired New York State Supreme Court Judge Bruce McM. Wright died in his sleep this week at the age of 86. The New York Police Department used to refer to him as "Shake 'em loose Bruce" because he refused to use bail punitively and he wouldn't automatically assume poor people were more criminal than rich people. He was a good man.)
One day in the early 1990s the great civil rights lawyer William M. Kunstler was leaving the Bronx County Courthouse when he was approached on the steps by a group of people who asked for his help. Bill was always overcommitted and his staff did whatever they could to keep people from getting to him on the phone or on the courthouse steps because they knew that if the people had a good story Bill would take the case. Their insulation was never perfect and people with stories always managed to get through.
This one was irresistible. The people had, at the owner's invitation, moved into a derelict apartment house in the South Bronx. The owner told them that if they made it habitable he would give it to them. So they did. They worked for more than a year making that grand old derelict live again. Then the owner sold it to someone else who said he didn't care what the previous owner said, the building was his and they were to get out. He got a judge in the Bronx to issue an order saying if they didn't get out immediately the sheriff was to evict them and dump their worldly possessions on the South Bronx streets.
They were certain that if they could get back into court on Monday and present the facts they could get the eviction order rescinded. The new owner was counting on getting them out over the weekend and taking possession, which would make it far more difficult for them to get back in. To make matters worse, they were poor people, so they had nowhere else to go.
Bill called Bruce Wright, who was then a sitting New York State Supreme Court judge in Brooklyn, which is King's County. He asked Bruce for an order reversing the Bronx judge's order. Bruce told Bill he had no authority in the Bronx and neither did he have authority to overturn the order of another state supreme court judge. Kunstler said he knew that, of course Bruce Wright didn't have authority in the Bronx or authority to overturn another supreme court judge's order. But the sheriff who would be carrying out the eviction wouldn't know which judge to obey and he'd certainly obey the most recent order he received and, rather than risk getting into trouble himself, he'd let the judges sort it out on Monday.
"That's all they need, Bruce: just until Monday. Just give them a stay ordering the sheriffs to stay out for 72 hours."
"This is totally illegal," Wright said to Kunstler.
"Of course it is," Kunstler said to Wright.
"But if I don't do it, these people lose their homes?"
"They lose their homes. The Bronx judge shouldn't have issued that order. He was wrong."
"Well," Judge Bruce Wright said, "This time, maybe two wrongs make a right. Come on over. The order will be ready when you get here."
There were some ruffled feathers in the Bronx, but Monday morning things indeed were sorted out. The poor people got to keep their apartment house. A few months later they received formal title and they had a swell party to celebrate in the garden they'd planted in what had been a vacant lot next door. They took visitors on a tour of the building, showing the work they'd done and talking about the work they still had to do. Outside, every place you looked, it was like Berlin in 1945: nothing was standing, except this fine old fixed-up apartment house, with its very happy new owners and their very happy lawyer. Bruce Wright couldn't make it, but he sent best wishes to the new owners and their lawyer.Copyright 2005 by Buffalo Report, Inc.