C
Cammarata, Joseph A.
Joe Cammarata, self-described as a "country lawyer," has received much press recently in connection with his representation of Paula Jones [who is not a Tax Division Alum] in her suit against Bill Clinton [nor he] who happens to serve as President of the United States. We have reported this item before in the Tax Division Newsletter and report it again only because of the ongoing noteriety. Moving into the spotlight, however, has been good for Joe, because the press has recognized his talents. Example, the Washingtonian magazine recently placed him in the top 50 Washington lawyers, saying:
PAULA CORBIN JONES'S SEXUAL HARASSMENT suit against President Clinton easily could have been dismissed as frivolous, politically inspired, or the act of a woman looking to hit the tabloid jackpot. The elevation of the case into a constitutional question and a serious legal matter can be attributed largely to Joseph Cammarata, 38.
Like the Joe Pesci character in My Cousin Vinnie, the Brooklyn-born Cammarata is an instinctive courtroom strategist. He talked Jones into turning down a $ 700,000 tabloid offer to maintain the credibility of her claim. If the Jones case goes to trial in Little Rock, Cammarata likely will be there to press the claim.
Cammarata likes unusual cases. When he heard on the radio about a Loudoun County high-school student disciplined for allegedly drinking mouthwash at school, he called the parents and took the case pro bono. Within hours he had an injunction from a circuit court judge; the Loudoun school board soon suspended the student's punishment. "The hard part," says Cammarata, "was trying to remember not to call the high-school students 'utes' [youths]," as Joe Pesci did in the movie.
Cammarata received a similar accolade in The Washingtonian Magazine's September 1998 list of top 40 lawyers under 40.
In April 2002, Washingtonian Magazine named Joe among Washington's 75 best lawyers. The write-up on Joe is:
Chaikin & Sherman
ALTHOUGH HE WILL FOREVER BE KNOWN AS the lawyer for Paula Jones, Cammarata is yet another player in the Monicagate scandal who has gone on with his life. Cammarata's representation legitimized Jones's claim of sexual harassment, which ultimately led to President Clinton's impeachment by the House of Representatives.
Now Cammarata has moved to an office off Massachusetts Avenue where he is building on his reputation as one of the town's top personal-injury lawyers. He continues to enjoy representing people who, like his most famous client, are not necessarily rich, famous, or powerful. Clients for whom he has engineered lucrative settlements include bartenders, cabdrivers, and pastors. The Brooklyn native is representing, along with top-rank partner Ira Sherman, ten families whose relatives died while in the care of the DC mental-health system.
Cardozo, a law professor, advocate of clear legal writing and attorney in the Tax Division from 1940 to 1942, died in October 1996. In addition to teaching positions at several law schools, Mr. Cardozo was the first executive director of the Association of American Law Schools. Mr. Cardozo was first cousin of Justice Benjamin Cardozo.
Bob Carney Joins E&Y; a Further Step in Accounting Firms' Takeover of Tax Practice?Tax Notes Today for May 7, 1998 reports that Bob Carney has joined E&Y. Carney, formerly a tax litigation partner for Fulbright & Jaworski joined E&Y's national tax controversy practice. Carney will "head up a practice that formalizes the way Ernst & Young handles its tax controversy work." The article states that Carney is "the first tax litigator to move from representing taxpayers in the courtroom to working for a Big Six firm." The article asks the question whether the move "signal[s] Ernst & Young's reconsideration of a prior decision not to engage in Tax Court litigation?" According to the article, E&Y does not plan to enter tax litigation but will aggressively represent clients in tax controversies short of litigation. The article quotes one unnamed law firm practitioner as follows: "yet another in the stream of lawyers leaving law firms for CPA firms for the familiar triad of reasons: more money, fewer chargeable hours required, and no material client development responsibilities."
Obituary (http://www.boston.com/news/globe/obituaries/articles/2006/12/12/m_ellen_carpenter_52_top_bankruptcy_lawyer/?p1=email_to_a_friend)
M. Ellen Carpenter, 52, top bankruptcy lawyer
By Bryan Marquard, Globe Staff | December 12, 2006A few years after launching a private law practice with four other women in 1989, M. Ellen Carpenter was called to serve on a grand jury, three months of daily duty that most consider an intrusion.
"Many busy lawyers might offer that they couldn't carry on their practice if they were asked to serve. She served," said Jack Cinquegrana, president of the Boston Bar Association.
"She didn't complain about anything," said Martha B. Sosman, a Supreme Judicial Court justice who was then a partner in private practice with Ms. Carpenter. "And she embraced it eagerly."
That willingness to serve, regardless of the task, could be seen everywhere in her life, friends and family members said, from uncompensated work for the bar association to being a mentor for young lawyers to the stolen moments of girl talk she shared on the phone with a niece.
A former bar association president and the first bankruptcy lawyer in that post, Ms. Carpenter elevated her area of expertise and her profession, colleagues say. Few lawyers in the state have had as much impact as she did in the bankruptcy field for the past 20 years, said Judge Joan N. Feeney of the US Bankruptcy Court for the District of Massachusetts.
Ms. Carpenter, who lived in Boston, died in Massachusetts General Hospital Sunday night of complications from a brain aneurysm she suffered that day while visiting her family in Vermont.
She was 52 and had just dined with her mother, siblings, in-laws, nephews, and nieces to celebrate her brother's birthday.
"Everybody in the Bankruptcy Court is mourning Ellen's untimely death," said Feeney, formerly the court's chief judge. "She was one of the finest and most respected lawyers in Massachusetts, and I don't limit my remarks to bankruptcy, though she was the leader and the champion of the bankruptcy bar. . . . There is no one who gave more to the legal community than Ellen Carpenter."
"I am deeply saddened to learn of Ellen Carpenter's sudden death," Margaret Marshall, chief justice of the SJC, said in a statement. "Ellen was an outstanding lawyer and bar leader who approached her work with vitality and zestful enthusiasm. . . . Ellen leaves a tremendous void in the legal profession."
Although no single case defines a career, Ms. Carpenter's name became fodder for water cooler conversations in law firms across the state when she recommended disbarment in May 2005 for three lawyers involved in a closely-watched disciplinary action. As the hearing officer for the Board of Bar Overseers, she filled a 229-page decision with details about the lawyers who were accused of trying to discredit a judge and intimidate the judge's clerk in a case involving the Demoulas supermarket family.
"I have found no case anywhere that deals with facts remotely like those at issue in this sordid affair. In that, I suppose, we should take some small comfort," she wrote in a voice resonant with ethical indignation, adding "They have left what one can only hope is not an indelible impression that lawyers, even very prominent ones, will do almost anything to prevail if enough money is at stake and available for their use."
Ms. Carpenter grew up in Bennington, Vt., the eldest of four children. Her career path may have been decided early by the example of her best friend's mother, who was an attorney.
"She thought about being a lawyer since she was a very little girl," said Ms. Carpenter's sister, Patricia Bolduc of Scarborough, Maine.
"Her mind was so quick it was amazing," said her brother John of Bennington.At the University of Vermont, she was named the outstanding woman in political science in 1976, the year she graduated, and went on to graduate in 1979 from Notre Dame Law School, where she was the current alumni association president.
"She's the first female president of the Notre Dame Law Alumni Association, which she was quick to point out to me," said Ray Marvar, a law school classmate and former colleague. "She was an exemplar of the values that we all want and strive for."
Ms. Carpenter went to Washington, D.C., working first for the US Labor Department, then as a trial attorney in the tax division of the US Justice Department. In 1987 she moved to Boston to join the US attorney's office.
Two years later, some women in the US attorney's office were contemplating forming their own firm. Ms. Carpenter was relatively new in Boston, but was seen as an up-and-comer because of her energy and intelligence.
"The first words out of my mouth were, 'If Ellen's in, I'm in,' " Sosman said.
The firm was Kern, Sosman, Hagerty, Roach & Carpenter, the order chosen for sonority, rather than seniority.
"The other reason Ellen would have given you in later years of the firm was that she was the youngest," said Christine M. Roach, who continued to run Roach & Carpenter with her after their other partners left when opportunities such as judgeships beckoned.
When Ms. Carpenter became president of the Boston Bar Association in 2004, among her initiatives was a task force on financial literacy. In the joint program with the Bankruptcy Court, lawyers go to high schools and teach students about the magnitude and importance of credit cards, budgeting, and personal finance.
"She really dedicated her life to the bar," Feeney said. "Ellen's social life was not going to parties. Ellen's life was her family and the law."
"She was a G-woman at heart," Roach said. "She started out as a government lawyer, wearing a government badge. She never really strayed from that. She always understood that she was an officer of the court and she was trying to obtain justice."Never humorless in the pursuit of what was right, Ms. Carpenter was "a very vigorous, vivacious person with an infectious laugh," said Christopher J. Panos, a lawyer and friend whose 3-year-old twins are her godchildren.
Ms. Carpenter may have been happiest spending time with her family. On Sunday evening, "we were in Bennington for a family birthday party for John," her sister said. "We had just a hysterical, funny, laughing, family dinner. And Ellen told most of the jokes."
In addition to her sister and brother, Ms. Carpenter leaves her mother, Mary Elaine Carpenter of Bennington, Vt., and another brother, James T. of East Hartford, Conn.
A funeral Mass will be said at 11 a.m. Saturday in St. Francis de Sales Roman Catholic Church in Bennington, Vt. A memorial service for the Boston legal community is being planned for next month.
Gene died from lung cancer on 11/1/01. The following is from the Sunday Oklahoman:
Gene Alan Castleberry, age 70, departed this life Sunday, November 11, 2001, at home, surrounded by family, finally succumbing to the lung cancer he had beaten for most of the past 10 years. With his passing, we have lost the company of his charming and irrepressible wit, but are favored with countless memories of his extraordinary sense of humor, his easy, loyal friendship, and his loving, steady devotion to his wife and family.
He was born June 21, 1931, in Oklahoma City to Gus "Gene" & Virginia Carney Castleberry. A few years later, they moved to the MDWash., DC area, where Gene grew up and attended school. He graduated high school from St. John's College in 1949, received his B.S. degree from the University or Maryland in 1954, and his LL.B. from Georgetown University in 1960. Upon graduating from law school, he worked as a trial attorney for the Civil Tax Division of the US Dept. of Justice in Wash., DC, and Ft. Worth, TX. In 1969, he left government service and moved to Oklahoma City to begin the private practice of law, specializing in civil and criminal tax litigation. Here, he worked as general counsel for Standard Life & Accident; was in partnership with Hart & Castleberry; Castleberry & Lisle; Castleberry & Kivel; and lastly joined his son, Patrick, in the firm of Kline & Kline. Until just a month before his death, Gene was an active member of the Oklahoma Bar Assoc. and the Oklahoma County Bar Assoc. He was a regular lecturer in field of civil and criminal tax litigation and procedure, and served on various OCBA committees and panels. Within the Oklahoma City legal community, he was best known for his humor column, Half-Astute Views, that appeared for many years in the county bar publication, the Briefcase, and for his regular duties as impresario for the Oklahoma County Bar Light Opera & Singing Impaired Society, a barely tolerated group of attorneys (and their spouses/ friends) who performed musical parodies and skits at county bar dinners, as Gene would say, "until the police would arrive."
His foremost musical passion was bagpiping. A talented piper since college, he served as pipe major for the St. Andrew's Society of Washington, D.C., and continued playing throughout his life. Gene was preceded in death by his parents, father, Gus (1898-1979) and mother, Virginia (1907-1993); and his namesake, nephew, Donald Gene Castleberry (1976 -1997). Gene is survived by his greatest achievement, his wife, Patsy Murray Castleberry, to whom he was married since 1955. Her patient and affectionate care of her husband during his final illness has served as a remarkable example of the cumulative power of lifelong dedication to one's marriage. He is survived also by sister & brother-in-law, Madonna & Thomas Kolb of Olney, MD; brother & sister-in-law, Thomas & Suzanne Aubrey Castleberry of Millersville, MD; and numerous nephews and nieces. His surviving immediate family are daughter and son-in law, Dorothy & Michael Coker of Norman, OK; son and daughter-in-law, Patrick & Elizabeth Riley Castleberry of Edmond, OK; daughter and son-in-law, Kathryn & David Bumbaugh of Houston, TX; and daughter and son-in-law, Virginia & James Morr of Denver, CO; and his 6 grandchildren (in birth order), Kathleen Castleberry, Anne Coker, Alexandra Bumbaugh, Jillian Coker, Sam Bumbaugh, and Erin Castleberry. Memorial service will be 1:00 p.m., Monday, November 19, 2001, at First Unitarian Church, 600 NW 13th St. & N. Dewey, Oklahoma City. Please attend but, in lieu of flowers, the family requests donations be sent to Hospice of Oklahoma County, Inc., 4334 NW Expwy. Ste. 106, Oklahoma City, OK 73116-1515, in honor of its committed staff who helped our family serve and care for Gene during the last few weeks of his life. In closing, Gene wished the mourning public to know that he donated his "carcass" to science, confident that "its use would not be for education but for comic relief."
Clark, Melvin E.
Clark, a former Tax Division Alum and currently President and CEO of Metroplex, the nation's largest minority railroad construction contractor, is a presidential nominee to the Board of Governors of the United Service Organization, a voluntary service organization for the armed forces, according to a press release on September 20, 1996.
Subsequently, the following press release was issued on 1/16/98 (emphasis supplied):
The President today announced his intent to nominate Melvin E. Clark, Jr. to be a member of the Board of Directors of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation.
Mr. Melvin E. Clark, Jr., of Washington, D.C., is President and Chief Executive Officer of Metroplex, the largest minority railroad construction contractor in the nation.
He previously served as an associate attorney with Klett, Lieber, Rooney & Schorling, a Pennsylvania law firm. Mr. Clark served four years as an attorney in the Tax Division of the United States Department of Justice. He was previously appointed by President Clinton as a Director of the Pennsylvania Avenue Development Corporation. He is currently a member of the National Advisory Council of the Small Business Administration and the Washington-Baltimore Chapter of the Young President's Organization, Inc. Furthermore, he was also appointed by President Clinton to be a member of the Board of Governors of the United Service Organization, Inc. (USO).
OPIC is a self-sustaining federal agency whose purpose is to promote economic growth in developing countries by encouraging U.S. private investment in those nations. Organized as a corporation and structured to be responsive to private business, OPIC's mandate is to mobilize and facilitate the participation of U.S. private capital and skills in the economic and social development of less developed friendly countries and emerging economies.
Cleary heads the "Unabomber" prosecution team. He is currently First Assistant United States Attorney for the Northern District of New Jersey.
The Bergen Record reported on 11/17/99 that Mr. Cleary has been appointed to the post of United States Attorney for 120 days to fill a slot vacated by his predecessor, Faith Hochberg, who was appointed to the district court bench. Mr. Cleary had been the top deputy to the outgoing USA. The Record reports that there is fierce competition between Mr. Cleary and another person for the permanent USA position. If the position is not filled within 120 days, the Judges of the district will name the the person to hold the position in the interim.
Cochran has been recognized as one of the best tax lawyers in Dallas, according to an article in the D magazine for February 1997. The magazine cites as its authority for that accolade the directory The Best Lawyers in America 1997-1998, edited by Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith..
Coles, formerly recently with the Court of Federal Claims Section of the Tax Division, has joined Shell Oil Company (US) as Associate General Tax Counsel. Terry was formerly with Baker & Botts, L.L.P., Houston, TX.
Ed has been named among the Who's Who in Dallas Law Firms by the Dallas Business Journal (7/31/99 edition). Ed has been managing partner of Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld since 1980. The following are quotes from the article (emphasis supplied):
Who in your industry has influenced you and why? Irving L. Goldberg trained me in my early days as a practicing lawyer; Robert S. Strauss, who was my mentor
Greatest challenge of your career/ most rewarding accomplishment: helping a local Dallas law firm grow into an international law firm and the lOth largest firm in the country Major projects handled during your career co-counsel, United States vs. Penn Olin - antitrust case; cocounsel, Kasmir & Candy vs. United States - case involving privilege; lead attorney in various tax cases representing the Department of Justice; various privileged tax matters representing private parties
Scott dies 8/1/02. The following is the obituary from the 8/2/02 Washington Post:
Scott Crampton, 88, a Washington tax lawyer who served as U.S. assistant attorney general for the tax division from 1971 to 1977, died of cancer Aug. 1 at Inova Mount Vernon Hospital. He lived in Lorton.
His practice area during the last 30 years was primarily taxation, although he engaged in a broad civil trial practice in Washington during his early years.
In 1971, Nixon tapped him to be assistant attorney general for the tax division of the Justice Department, a position he held through the Ford administration.He then became a partner with several Washington law firms, including Hamel Park, McCabe & Saunders, Bogan & Freeland and Lalos & Keegan. He had been a partner with Canfield & Smith for the past five years.
Mr. Crampton, who was born in Cleveland, graduated cum laude from American University in 1935 and was a 1939 graduate of George Washington University's law school.
He was a past chairman of the American Bar Association's tax section and a board member of Gunston Hall Inc., a charity devoted to awarding scholarships to needy students, and the Colchester Corp., an Alexandria real estate investment group for which he sometimes provided legal counsel.
He did pro bono legal work for nonprofit organizations such as Pohick Episcopal Church in Lorton.
In the 1940s, he was a member of a gun club that owned land on Mason Neck in the Lorton post office district, an area now called Hallowing Point. When the club disbanded in the late 1940s, Mr. Crampton purchased its lodge house and turned it into a private residence, where he and his family lived.
He was a member of the Kiwanis, the Phi Alpha Delta legal fraternity, the Metropolitan Club of Washington and the Sons of the American Revolution.
Survivors include his wife, Harriet Crampton of Lorton; five children, Susan Crampton of Montpelier, Vt., Don Paul Crampton of Scottsdale, Ariz., Scott Charles Crampton of San Diego and Lucinda Lommasson Hanchin and Louis Harlan Lommasson, both of Lorton; nine grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren.
Crown, a retired Cook County (Chicago) Circuit Court Judge, died March 3, 1997. Judge Cook clerked for Justice Clark in 1956 and then worked for the Tax Division for two years beginning in 1957. Prior to becoming a judge, he was a partner at Jenner & Block, specializing in criminal law.
The Legal Times on 5/4/98 announced that David moved to King & Spalding's Washington office. The article states: "Curtin, a former trial attorney in the Justice Department's Tax Division, focuses on civil and criminal tax issues, white collar criminal litigation, and civil litigation. He has also been an adjunct professor of tax litigation at Georgetown University Law Center for more than a decade."