Monday, November 18, 2013
Page 7
PERSPECTIVES (Column)
Italian American Lawyers Association Adds Feature at Dinner Meeting: a Commercial Break
By ROGER M. GRACE
I suppose it was inevitable in these super-commercialized times—when the city’s leading newspaper now has ads on its front page and PBS stations air paid spiels—that a bar association would sell time on its program for a vendor to make a sales pitch.
That’s just what the Italian American Lawyers Association is doing this week.
Faced with dwindling finances because of a drop in membership and diversion of revenues to fund an administrative assistant slot, the IALA has decided to include a live commercial at its dinner meeting on Wednesday.
On that day, it will hold what it bills (erroneously, as I’ll discuss) as its “9th Annual Wine Tasting and Dinner.” For a payment of $1,000, one Michael Kern will be allotted five minutes on the program to tout his legal services business.
Bar associations regularly have “sponsors” which provide cash, or cookies, or door prizes. They are acknowledged on printed programs or placards and are sometimes allowed to have written materials on tables at the events. This newspaper has been such a sponsor at IALA dinners and those of other groups.
However, for a bar association to relinquish five minutes of its program to a vendor who pays for the privilege of coming to the podium to solicit business is unconventional, to say the least—or “tawdry” as one IALA loyalist puts it.
IALA past president Carey Caruso, on the other hand, says he doesn’t care, quipping: “I’ll just time my potty breaks to coincide with the commercialization.”
Some would view the new practice (if the arrangement with Kern does become a practice) as obnoxious and an imposition on those assembled. Yet, others might find increased commercialization on the part of bar associations, and courts as well, to be an answer to sagging finances.
Bar associations could interrupt MCLE lectures, periodically, for “a word from our sponsor”—and make money.
Municipal transit authorities have long raised funds through placards on buses and signs on benches at bus stops; too, buses are now wrapped in advertisements for movies and TV shows. The state could garner revenue for the courts by imitating these approaches. Bail bond companies, abrogados, and others would surely be willing to pay for placards on wasted wall space in courtrooms, as well as benches in hallways. There could be wrap-around ads on courthouses and digital billboards.
There could be advertisements in the Official Reports; commercials at oral argument sessions of the Supreme Court and courts of appeal; paid-for videos at State Bar swearing-in ceremonies provided by, for example, a malpractice insurer.
The concept fostered by the IALA could spread. Billboards on church walls. A Taco Bell stand in the Lincoln Memorial. Discount coupons in the Congressional Record.
…Or so it might be envisioned by advocates of commercialization.
Although Wednesday’s program is also billed as “Past Presidents Night” and my wife is a past president of the IALA (serving in 1996), we have no intention of paying money to attend and have to endure a commercial, as if we were there under the auspices of Mr. Kern.
A harbinger of commercials being included on the program was the presentation last year by a representative of the vineyard whose wines were being sampled. Brazenly, she veered from an explanation of the wines, launching to a wordy sales talk, glorifying her employer and boring the audience.
The program this year will feature former State Bar President—now vintner—Tom Stolpman telling about his wines and—it is to be hoped, for the sake of those assembled—not delivering his own five-minute commercial, hawking his wares like a 19th Century peddler of nostrums at a traveling show.
Aside from the general inappropriateness of selling minutes of program time, there’s an especial reason why they should not be sold to Kern. It reflects sheer ingratitude to a steadfast friend of the organization.
One of the services offered by Kern’s company is court reporting. Yet, the IALA has had a long association with Jonnell Agnew, owner of a Pasadena court reporting firm and an associate member of the group.
At each meeting, Agnew roams through the room, selling raffle tickets—proceeds of which go to the IALA scholarship fund—and performs other services for the IALA.
“That woman has gone above and beyond for us,” past president Claire Ambrosio remarks.
She protests that it is “really in poor taste” to afford a platform to Kern, a stranger to the organization, when Agnew has never been given time on the program, though the value of her services has far exceeded $1,000.
Ambrosio, a sole practitioner who headed the group in 2003, expressed her views at the Nov. 4 board meeting, but they did not prevail.
Reference to the ninth “annual” wine tasting is incorrect. An annual event is, of course, one that takes place every year. In 2011, three theretofore annual events—the “Gaelic and Garlic” Night, a joint dinner with the Irish American Bar Association; “Marco Polo Night,” a joint meeting with the Southern California Chinese Lawyers Association and the Japanese American Bar Association; and the wine tasting—did not take place.
So, when these events started up again last year, they could no longer properly be described as “annual.” On Wednesday, there will be the IALA’s ninth wine tasting, or second annual wine tasting since its reinstitution.
Why were the popular annual events skipped in 2011? That year, a high-profile personal injury lawyer was president and did things his own way. For a year, the IALA was essentially out of existence, supplanted by the Tom Girardi Club.
Girardi provided entertainment at the 2011 events, such as performances by Kenny Rogers and by the Beach Boys. He largely subsidized the events to the tune of about $1 million (the precise amount being unknown to the IALA). Freeloaders without meaningful ties to the organization relished the lavish events; stalwart members of the group grumbled.
Their displeasure arose because the dinner meetings were held at swank venues, rather than the customary site, Casa Italiana. Girardi refused to hold a single meeting there.
The Casa is an Italian community meeting hall north of Chinatown and across a parking lot from St. Peter’s Church. The IALA had been convening there since its first general meeting on July 20, 1977.
“It’s our home,” the IALA’s 1990 president, George Schiavelli, a retired U.S. district judge, reflects.
There’s camaraderie and warmth at meetings there. The experience is unique and precious.
An April 26, 1979 article in the Los Angeles Times, titled “Casa Italia: Where Pasta Is Like Mama Used to Make,” tells of a recent IALA meeting there.
“There were more than 200 lawyers, family and friends at the lawyers’ meeting honoring retiring Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Alfred P. Peracca,” the article recites.
It tells “why the lawyers and 28 other social, cultural and philanthropic societies choose to meet at Casa Italia.” The reason:
“They come because the cooking is like that at home. Mounds of mostaccioli ooze with sauce like Mt. Vesuvius erupting, wine flows,…The place is alive with talk and the clacking and banging sounds of plates and platters being rolled in carts down the aisles. It’s a happy place….”
When the IALA sought to return last year to that happy place, its home, the welcome mat was not out. The group found a need to pay what amounted to an apology fee—$1,000—to atone for the Casa’s 2011 anticipated revenues falling short owing to the IALA’s absence.
While there is no expectation that the association’s regular events won’t take place next year, it appears that the 2014 president, Damien D. Capozzola, will be holding meetings at venues other than the Casa—departing, as Girardi did, from tradition, and damaging continuity.
It used to be that local attorneys and judges who enjoyed IALA festivities knew that on the third Wednesday of the month, it was time to go to the Casa at 6 p.m., when the cocktail hour commenced. They went there by habit. That habit was broken when Girardi was president; it was resumed by some, not others, in 2012; if again broken in 2014, it might well be unrepairable.
UPDATE: Capozzola has sent out an e-mail listing programs for 2014 and specifying the Casa as the venue.
Capozzola is already facing criticism within the organization but is a headstrong, if not arrogant, young man who is not about to submit to guidance.
“I have a vision for where I want to take this organization during my year as President and into the future, and I am going to pursue it,” he said in a recent e-mail.
At the last board meeting, he made clear that he fancies himself as being above the sort of menial tasks performed by his predecessors and will operate on a loftier level, glad-handing and lining up corporate sponsors.
Without getting into all the “he said” and “she said,” Capozzola proved himself to be touchy and foul-mouthed, employing the “f” word during a snit.
The president-elect is the son of one of the group’s founders, Carl “Tony” Capozzola.
The chief founder was the legendary trial lawyer Paul Caruso, the organization’s first president. His son Carey Caruso, the 1989 president, says of the prospect of again straying from the Casa:
“I think that’s not a bright idea. Our identity is intertwined with that of the Casa.”
An Italian American lawyers group assembling at an Italian meeting hall is, he remarks, “a perfect fit.” He hails “the ambience, the food” there.
(Carey Caruso’s father, who died in 2001, in 1984 represented Damien Capozzola’s father on a charge of obstructing justice in connection with a federal probe of a drug ring. Paul Caruso secured for his client a suspended two-year sentence with Capozolla spending only two months in federal prison as a condition of probation—and later succeeded in persuading the Supreme Court to impose a mere two-year suspension of his law license.)
The question is whether the IALA in 2014 will become the Damien Capozolla Club.
The current president, Court of Appeal research attorney Rebecca Delfino, last week dispatched by e-mail a flyer for the IALA’s Dec. 4 meeting. It will be a “Supreme Court Night.”
It was in 1992 that the congenial president and IALA co-founder Gene Carloni, since deceased, put together the first dinner meeting with members of the high court. That’s one tradition with which Girardi did not dispense.
What he did dispense with was the custom of introducing the justices (let alone allowing the chief justice to speak)…and dispensed with common sense by showing a soft porn video of his wife gyrating. Understandably, no member of the Supreme Court attended last year’s dinner.
Upon the assurance that propriety will not again be breached, five of the seven members of the court have accepted the invitation to attend the December meeting. Schiavelli will emcee, as he did for several years...up until 2011, when Girardi decided to assume that task, himself. So, the event will again be marked by class.
In deference to the Supreme Court, there will be no commercials.
Delfino will turn over the gavel to Capozzola at the Installation Ball on Jan. 25. It is to be hoped that the organization will not quickly slide downhill after that…though indications are that it will.
I’m not Italian, but I do care. I’ve accompanied my Italian-American wife, Jo-Ann, to IALA meetings from 1988 to the present (though we skipped 2011). Close friendships between us with some of the regulars at the get-togethers have developed through the years. Many good times have been had by us, as by countless others, at those dinners at the Casa.
I would hate to see the disintegration of a group that has been so convivial, spirited, and constructive. But bonehead moves like selling time on the program for spiels and removing events from the Casa—again!—coupled with Capozzola’s superciliousness, do not auger well for the IALA, the membership of which is dwindling.
And turning a deaf ear to sound reminders by the treasurer, James Michalski of the law firm of Holland & Knight, that spending more revenues than are garnered will lead to a deficit, is perilous to the IALA…far more so than like disregard of the basics of economics is for the nation, which has cushions.
The IALA is a local bar association with a vibrant past but, unless its course is recharted, one with a dim future.
Copyright 2013, Metropolitan News Company