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THE COURTROOM GOES TO THE MOVIES PAUL BERGMAN & MICHAEL ASIMOW (Kansas City, Andrews and McMeel, 1996) reprinted by permission Michael Asimow Chapter 3 The Lighter Side of Lawsuits (extract) To plaintiffs and defendants who are unfortunate Synopsis: Husband and wife square off in court in a comic commentary on the battle of the sexes. MGM (Lawrence Weingarten). 1949. Black and white. Running time: 101 min. Screenplay: Ruth Gordon and Garson Kanin. Director: George Cukor. Starring: Spencer Tracy (Adam Bonner), Katharine Hepburn (Amanda Bonner), David Wayne (Kip Lurie), Judy Holliday (Doris Attinger), Tom Ewell (Warren Attinger), Jean Hagen (Beryl Caighn). 
Adam's Rib: Doris Attinger's (Judy Holliday) hat is not the only thing standing between Adam and Amanda Bonner (Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn). Academy Award nomination: Best Screenplay. his sweetie, Beryl Caighn. Doris pulls a gun and, after consulting the instruction manual, fires away, wounding him. She's up for attempted murder. The prosecutor is Adam Bonner. Adam, who reveres each law as if it were written on a stone tablet, is highly displeased when his wife Amanda takes on Doris's defense. The only time he wanted to be together with Amanda in front of a judge was when they said "I do." He is even less amused when their friendly neighbor and Amanda's client Kip Lurie composes the hit song "Goodbye Amanda" in her honor. Adam is downright indignant at Amanda's defense. She asserts that Doris should have the same right as a man to rely on the "unwritten law" that it's okay to shoot one's spouse caught in, as the lawyers say, flagrante delicto. Betraying a teeny bit of insecurity, Adam says, "Con- tempt for the Law, that's what you've got. It's a disease, a spreading disease ... the Law is the Law... You start with one law then pretty soon it's all laws, pretty soon it's everything; then it's me." This is an example of a favorite lawyer argument: the "slippery slope." If we take one little misstep, the result is chaos. Adam goes beyond the slippery slope; he produces an avalanche. At the trial, Beryl testifies that Warren was at her apartment only to sell her a new health and accident policy. In light of what happened, that showed remarkable foresight. Warren had never touched her, Beryl claims, except they shook hands quite a lot. Warren admits that he had hit Doris a couple of times, but claims that she hit him too, espe- cially after he fell asleep. She never stayed out all night, he concedes, though he wishes she had, so he could get a decent night's sleep. Doris testifies that she only meant to frighten Warren and didn't mean to hurt him or Beryl. She has three kids and was just trying to save her marriage. Amanda calls three highly successful women (a chemist, a foreman, and a circus performer) as witnesses to show that men and women are equal. The circus performer illustrates her act by hoisting Adam above her head, which makes it difficult for Adam to cross-examine her. Adam and Amanda discuss the case at home each evening. He urges her to drop it, and criticizes her for shaking the law by the tail. She complains that he never sees her point of view and breaks down in tears. Their relationship deteriorates steadily throughout the trial. Adam complains that he wants a wife, not a competitor. Finally, after the circus incident, Adam moves out. Adam's closing argument does not go well. Amanda interrupts him by objecting to his reference to Doris as a criminal and he completely loses his composure. He snatches Doris's hat off her head, complain- ing that he had given that very hat to Amanda. He even introduces the purchase receipt into evidence. Needless to say, the jury acquits Doris. In the ensuing media frenzy, it looks like Doris and Warren may get back together but Amanda and Adam remain cool. Kip tries to take advantage of the situation by ro- mancing Amanda in her apartment, and Adam charges in with a gun. He claims that he can use the "unwritten law" too. Luckily, it's a licorice gun, but Amanda is not amused. The next day, at their accountant's of- fice, in the midst of a discussion about the deductibility of interest pay- ments, they make up and head for the farm together. This proves once more that discussion of tax law can be a potent aphrodisiac. Adam mentions that he might be the Republican candidate for judge. Amanda asks if the Democrats have picked their candidate yet. room high jinks too seriously. Still, the picture raises a few concerns. Most important, it is completely inappropriate for a husband and wife (or two lovers, for that matter) to be opposing each other in court, even with the full knowledge and consent of their clients. The district attorney's office would surely have reassigned the case to another prosecutor once Amanda appeared for the defense. Adam and Aman- da's personal relationship could have interfered with their ability to represent their respective clients. It would have been easy for Amanda to give in to Adam's wishes in order to improve the atmosphere at home. This didn't happen in the movie, but it could have. Actually, the harm went the other way -- Amanda succeeded in rattling Adam in a way that no other defense lawyer could have. Under ethics rules, a lawyer should not represent a client when that representation may be adversely affected by the lawyer's responsibilities to a third person or to the lawyer's own interests. It isn't clear how Amanda got Doris's case. Apparently Amanda called up Legal Aid and volunteered to take it. Since she wasn't get- ting paid, this seems appropriate. There is a long and noble tradition of lawyers handling criminal defenses for free, even though the pub- lic defender is also available to do the job. More troubling is the fact that Amanda used Doris's case to make a point about equality of the sexes. It is always dangerous for a lawyer to use a client for the purpose of making a political statement. The client's interests may play second fiddle to the lawyer's agenda. Here, Amanda's political agenda and Doris's best interests seemed to coin- cide -- Doris was acquitted. However, it is easy to imagine male jurors being turned off by the equal rights defense. Or Amanda might coun- sel Doris to turn down a favorable plea bargain just so that Amanda will be able to make her novel "unwritten law" defense in front of the media. Amanda's use of the three successful women as witnesses to show that men and women are equal was funny but wholly irrelevant. The fact that women can be successful in business or the circus tells us absolutely nothing about any issue in Doris's case. But perhaps we have to allow comedy writers to take a few liberties with the rules of evidence. The same is true of Adam's snatching Doris's hat during his closing argument and demanding to introduce the purchase receipt into evidence. Who paid for the hat has no bearing on the case and the closing argument is too late to introduce evidence. At least, Amanda could have objected that the hat was "im-material." Amanda's "unwritten law" defense in Adam's Rib is entirely bogus. There is no "unwritten law" that allows men to kill their wives when they catch them in bed with a lover. Something like this was recog- nized on the frontier a hundred years ago or so, but it is not recog- nized any more and never was in New York. At most, the passionate- lover defense gets you a reduction from murder to manslaughter (or, in this case, attempted murder to attempted manslaughter). The judge should have stricken all argument and testimony designed to establish the "unwritten law" defense, not to mention Amanda's theory that women are as entitled to it as men. The true meaning of the "unwritten law" is that jurors may ignore the judge's instruction and acquit a spouse who kills after finding his or her wife in bed with a lover. Jurors, after all, can always free a de- fendant whom they think is unjustly accused. In this day and age, however, it seems doubtful that jurors are really going to be that for- giving. Adultery no longer seems to most of us sufficient provocation to excuse murder. The most important and the best part of Adam's Rib is Amanda. In 1949, there were very few female lawyers at the bar. Law school classes contained only a handful of women, if there were any at all, and the general sense was that the profession was not suitable for women. Thus Amanda was a wonderful role model for women who were consider- ing possible careers in the taw (see Women Trial Lawyers in the Movies, below). Amanda is loving and committed to her marriage, but equally committed to her politics and to her client, even when it jeopardizes her marriage. The sexual politics so humorously dramatized in Adam's Rib remain as fresh today as the day the film was written. |
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your law firm or to represent you in a criminal case? Would you want to fall in love with one? Definitely not, if you base your decision on what you've seen in the movies. Almost without exception, trial movies present women lawyers in viciously stereotypical terms. It's almost as if filmmakers are scared stiff of powerfull successful women. What do we learn about women lawyers from the movies? For one thing, they're looking for love in all the wrong places. • Carolyn Polhemus in Presumed Innocent slept her way to the top. Before her untimely death, she had affairs with her college professor, the lawyer who hired her into the D.A.'s office, the supervising deputy, and the D.A. himself. • Teddy Barnes in Jagged Edge leaps into bed with her client. As a result, she loses all objectivity about the case. • Maggie Ward in Class Action is carrying on a secret affair with her law firm supervisor. • Gail Packer in ... And Justice for All is on the ethics panel -- and sleeping with a lawyer who is being investigated by the panel. • Laura Fischer in The Verdict allows herself to be used by her law firm as a sexual spy on the op- position. For another thing, women are just lousy lawyers. They have no judgment or common sense, their per- sonal lives are a mess, they don't understand trial tac- tics and their ethics are in the toilet. • Maggie Ward in Class Action conspires with the opposing side in a lawsuit to do in her client. Maggie is boiling over with neurotic hatred for her fa- ther, pointlessly bullies a witness during a deposi- tion, and drinks herself into oblivion every night be- cause her work is so distasteful. • JoAnne Galloway in A Few Good Men took nine weeks to try a drunk and disorderly case and has no common sense about how to handle herself in trial. A male twerp who's never tried a case in his life does the heavy lifting. • Ann Talbot in The Music Box represents her father in a denaturalization proceeding. She loses all objectivity about the case, first suffering from an in- ability to even consider the possibility of her father's guilt and then overreacting violently when she is convinced of it. • Jennifer Haines in Guilty As Sin plants incrim- inating evidence so that her guilty client won't get away with it. Although she's a competent lawyer, she uses terrible judgment in accepting this creep as a client. Framing him with fake evidence is the only way she can figure out to save her own neck. She's also shaky on evidence law. • Kathleen Riley in Suspect allows a juror to be her investigator in a murder case. • Gareth Peirce in In the Name of the Father tenaciously digs up the evidence of police miscon- duct that frees the Guildford Four. But she loses her cool during the critical hearing, shouting unprofes- sionally at the key police witness. • Kathryn Murphy in The Accused plea-bargains away a pretty good gang rape case -- then bullhead- edly insists on prosecuting the onlookers, against the sensible orders of her boss (of course, she does man- age to win the case). • Belinda Conine in Philadelphia makes a hor- rible blunder when she cross-examines the plaintiff who is dying of AIDS. She hands him a mirror and asks whether he can see any visible lesions on his face. Otherwise, however, Conine does a decent job of representing her detestable client, even though she hates doing it. • Jennifer Hudson in Physical Evidence just barely manages to avoid getting into bed with her client before he's acquitted. She works hard in his de- fense, but she calls a key witness over his vehement objection because "we have to." • Stand up T.K. Katwuller. Your performance in Defenseless (an absolute turkey) gets you the worst ethics award. T.K. defends a client in a murder trial without telling the client and the police the embar- rassing facts that she was a material witness to the murder and even left behind the clue that implicated her client. Of course, it wasn't always this way. Women lawyers got off to a wonderful start in 1949 in Adam's Rib. Amanda Bonner took a criminal case pro bono because she saw that it raised an important issue of women's rights. She did a great job representing her client, even though it infuriated her husband Adam who was prosecuting the case. She was a loving wife, yet a dedicated and skillful lawyer. This movie must have made armies of little girls want to go to law school. Of course, there were very few female lawyers at the bar in 1949 and only a handful of women in law school. Today, women lawyers fill every professional role with distinction. The gender balance in law school is close to 50-50. The same proportion of men and women have bad judgment and lousy ethics. Filmmakers -- get a life! Stop picking on fe- male attorneys. |