GilroyDispatch.com | Beneath the expectations of the legal profession

Beneath the expectations of the legal profession

Jul 13, 2004
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I have known Bruce Tichinin for almost 40 years, going back to college days at Berkeley. For 12 years we were law partners, including the years in which he made his reputation as an environmental crusader and land-use specialist. He has never been overly concerned about the injury he caused people on a personal level; they were just collateral damage sustained in the pursuit of the Greater Good. But for all his insensitivity to the harm suffered by those who got in the way of his noble quests I have never known him to be untruthful or unethical. Until now.

Now I am shocked by what I read in the local papers. Even given my less-than-sterling opinion of lawyers this scrapes the bottom of the septic tank. The former crusader is now a principal in a plan to develop land at the base of El Toro, a man with a significant personal financial interest in a matter pending before the City. It is apparently undisputed that the City Manager did not look favorably on the project; and it is also undisputed that Tichinin hired an unlicensed ''private investigator'' with an unsavory reputation to conduct out-of-town surveillance on that official in hopes of uncovering a private relationship between him and the City Attorney.

For what purpose? He says that what he meant to do with proof of a sexual affair between the two city employees, if found, was to present it to the council to show the city attorney was possibly not acting independently in her opinion. First, that's one hell of a stretch of assumptions on which to justify the two-bit tail-job; second, what does ''not acting independently'' mean? What reason does he have to believe the City Attorney had an opinion different from the City Manager's in the first place? How could he know, much less prove, what was in their heads? In the legal profession we are taught that regardless of ultimate truth our actions should avoid ''the appearance of impropriety''; this, unfortunately, doesn't by a very long chalk.

If he were representing the Blue-Nose Citizens For Marital Fidelity in Government, then bird-dogging city staff to uncover rampant naughtiness could be argued to be in, and solely in, the public interest. But Tichinin is well-known to have a personal economic stake in matters over which these people have great influence. This time it's not Tichinin saving the environment; there's no noble goal, no high-flown principle. It's just the conduct of pedestrian commerce, a bit of potentially profitable business. Woodward and Bernstein and Michael Moore, with whom Tichinin compares himself, are in fact quite different; they did not have a direct financial interest in projects needing approval from the government officials they were spying on. ''Good government'' and ''government I can control'' are not the same.

And then he lied, in writing, about having hired the gumshoe, but says that his action was not criminal; therefore I suppose we should consider it unimportant. Gee, Ollie North lied to Congress about Iran-Contra but it wasn't illegal because he wasn't under oath at the time. Did that make it any less despicable? If a man's word can't be trusted, what's left?

Bruce, there's a bottom line here that everybody except you understands: you have taken your contest with the City out of City Hall, out of the office, out of the world of business where it belongs, and you have thrust it on the City Manager and the City Attorney right in their homes; you have assaulted their families and friends with it in the most personal, brutal way imaginable without the least concern for the trail of wreckage you leave in your wake. It may be legal - we shall all see - but it is sleazy, disingenuous and dishonorable. It is unworthy of a respectable man; it is beneath the expectations of the legal profession. Even the Mafia had a code: leave the wives and children out of it. Is that too tough a standard?