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Insider tells of election's paper pandemonium
© St. Petersburg Times, published January 17, 2001 TALLAHASSEE -- Barry Richard, the Tallahassee lawyer who represented President-elect George W. Bush during last year's election legal battle, says he used five briefcases to keep up with all of the lawsuits. During the 36-day legal fight that began early on the morning after the Nov. 7 election, Richard juggled 45 lawsuits filed in 12 cities before 53 judges with 192 lawyers who made appearances. Richard talked Tuesday at the Capital Tiger Bay Club about life behind the scenes in the highly publicized lawsuit. He was introduced by Dexter Douglass, another Tallahassee lawyer who helped represent Vice President Al Gore. Richard said his law firm, Greenberg Traurig, stationed paralegals in every county courthouse where a lawsuit was possible because many of the lawsuits did not name Bush as a party and they needed early notice to keep up. Many of the early hearings included lawyers who attended by telephone. On one occasion, Richard said he argued a Palm Beach County lawsuit by phone and stepped next door to a law partner's office to argue in a Broward County hearing occurring at the same time. "I never saw a television or read a newspaper for 36 days," Richard added. Later, when asked by reporters how he managed to keep up with so many lawsuits, Richard said he told them, "It's not really hard, I just have to change briefcases. "It reminded me of a juggler who uses sticks to keep plates spinning," Richard added. His firm had 102 people working on the case, including 39 lawyers and 73 paralegals, and kept briefing teams at work 24 hours a day. All of the judges involved worked on expedited schedules and often required the lawyers to file briefs or appear at hearings a day after the appeal was filed. Richard also offered a critique of the strategy used by Gore's lawyers and credited their loss to an early decision. The Democrat's lawyers filed what's known as a protest, instead of letting the vote be certified and filing a legal contest. Florida law gives candidates five days to protest an election after the results are certified. By filing suit during the protest period, the Gore team prolonged the protest period and cut short the time to file a legal contest before electors had to be named on Dec. 12. In the end, they ran out of time for recounts. Richard said he thinks the Gore team strategists felt that the candidate who was certified as being ahead would hold a psychological advantage, if not a legal advantage -- a feeling the Bush team shared. Richard described David Boies, the New York lawyer who represented Gore, as using "the nose of the camel approach," getting his nose under the tent and wiggling it a little farther as he argues. When it appeared that Boies was getting his nose a little too far under during a hearing before Circuit Judge N. Sanders Sauls, Richard said he decided the courtroom dynamic needed to change. "Some described it as the moment I went ballistic, but I tend to be low-key and would say I was relatively ballistic," Richard said. "I've never lost my temper, but the fact is it is sometimes useful to look like you've lost your temper." The strategy worked, and Boies lost his bid to get Sauls to have a hearing two days earlier than scheduled. The ruling Sauls issued after a two-day weekend trial was sustained by the U.S. Supreme Court in a 5-4 decision that overturned the Florida Supreme Court. Richard said he disagrees with those who suggest the decisions of the Florida and U.S. supreme courts were political. "I don't believe any judge or either court was acting out of a design to elect either candidate president," Richard said.
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From the Times state desk
From the state wire
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