Lawyer of the Day: Daniel Hynes
Young New Hampshire lawyer Daniel Hynes, who is just 27, has earned a place among our Lawyers of the Day for extorting hair salons.
Feel free to use the Power of the Law Degree to ensure that your landlord heats your apartment adequately. But using it to threaten beauty parlors… that’s just wrong. From the Concord Monitor:
A Manchester lawyer who threatened to sue a Concord salon for pricing haircuts differently for men and women and then took money to settle the matter was found guilty of theft by extortion.A jury took about 1½ hours to convict Daniel Hynes, 27, on Wednesday. Assistant Attorney General Elizabeth Baker said Hynes sent letters to at least 19 salons in the state.
One arrived Dec. 20, 2006, at Claudia’s, the North Main Street hair salon owned by Claudia Lambert. In the letter, Hynes said prices should be based on the time a cut takes or on the length of hair, instead of on gender. He wrote: “I demand payment in the amount of $1,000 in order to avoid litigation,” according to court documents.
Since he was not representing a client, Mr. Hynes defended his right to extort by citing the First Amendment and the right to petition the courts. We are surprised it took the jury an hour and a half to deliberate on this.
Hynes would have been wise to enlist a female friend to play his client in this fiendish plot. His reasoning comes across as a bit weak:
In one court document, he argued that the price structure that he saw as discriminatory had caused him stress and mental anguish, despite the fact that prices for men were less than those for women. He said he was being denied an “inherent benefit in being treated equally.” He pointed to a woman’s right to vote and said he benefits from her right, even though he is a man.
If Mr. Hynes is not disbarred, we’d like to talk with him about how we can get a haircut for under $100.
Update: Find out how Daniel Hynes fared on appeal.
Lawyer guilty of salon extortion [Concord Monitor]
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Comments
WOW and FIRST
Looks like he's got himself into a hairy situation.
Looks like he just couldn't cut it in the legal profession.
Dude
Apparently
Needed
Income, the
Extorting
Loser
What, no comments about how he is a TTT school grad of Western New England College of Law? Shocking.
Merely a haircut? Should have thought about brazilian wax--most salons won't do men, but will women.
Another fine Harvard Law grad. No wonder it's dropping in the Vault charts.
He's now represented by a public defender, so yeah, sounds like he needed some cash. Maybe the law school loans and no hope of a job made him snap. Or maybe he's just stupid, which is why he doesn't have a job in the first place.
These pretzels are making me thirsty.
Douchbagery indeed
Can we have a post about a minority lawyer behaving badly or anything about law firm/school rankings? I'm jonesin' for some A#1 d-bag comments.
Western New Englang College of law is NOT TTT. PENN Law is TTT, WNCL is just a decent regional law school.
The Brazillian wax thing seriously pisses me off. I guess they are worried about creeps that will come in and try to get off on the waxing table or something, but those of us who simply don't have the time or energy to shave our bumholes on a regularly basis get shafted (pun slightly intended).
10:50,
Calling WNEC Law a TTT is *very* generous. There are, after all, 4 tiers, and WNEC, with its tentative hold on ABA accreditation, is lucky to be counted in tier 4. I mean, it's a safety school for NESL kids, and many of those have Down's Syndrome.
10:58,
Thank you.
10:58, that's a classic post.
Gallion OUT!
Harvard and Stanford were safety schools for me.
This is what happens when they let anybody play lawyer. There should only be ten lawschools and if you aren't smart enough to get in, then you just have to do something else.
So explain something to me. Had he actually sued and then taken money to drop the suit, it would be a settlement, but having taken money not to file is extortion? What is the logic? It seems that had he actually taken the step to file he would be in the clear.
TMFI, 10:57!
11:02,
Keep 'em coming!
Also, I guarantee you did not go to Yale "lawschool."
What is NESL?
Bald as We Wanna Be
What is TTT?
think about it 11:04, just think
11:07 - Actually, I did. I went to Yale Law School in Costa Mesa, CA. It's a correspondence law school and is a sattelite campus of Yale University in Connecticut. It was all explained in the pamphlet I picked up at Wallmart. I got a Law Doctor degree for $999.99 and was even able to take that gunsmithing class at the Warden school as an elective.
You guys should probably check it out. It's a good deal.
WNEC Law's Web site is priceless. http://www1.law.wnec.edu/
Check out the photos they display on the home page. Click refresh on your browser a few times to see more.
Just checked out the website. Didn't I tell you guys that they have Down's. (See Matthew Stillman's photo).
Hill-Go to Super Cuts--only $14.00 and if you get one of their coupons you can get $2.00 off--more than enough to cover the tip
Looks like this wasn't the first time.
http://www.wirenh.com/News/In_Brief/attempted_extortion_at_two_Dover_bars_200701161872.html
All manner of crazyness in Pass-a-chusetts. They need a (much) tougher bar exam.
From Holly Wunkte's bio page: "Before I wrote my LSATS, . . . ." Comic gold!
You guys are not only rude to make fun of WNEC, you are also factually inaccurate. Didn't you see the latest Vault rankings? WNEC is number 3!
I go to WNEC Law. Can I work for Cravath?
Guys, does my WNEC JD better prepare me for complex, bet the hot-dog stand litigation, or sophisticated, cross-retail counter transactional work?
You are all sheep.
I am glad I am rich, white, and work at Cravath.
11:52 - Game, set, match. Well played my friend, well played.
Yet another reason I have my girlfriend cut my hair in the bathroom.
Baaah
from the JD admissions page: "Each year, the Admissions Committee assembles an interesting and diverse class of students."
@2:57, "from the JD admissions page: "Each year, the Admissions Committee assembles an interesting and diverse class of students." "
From scratch?
These negative comments about WNEC amaze me. Here you have a bunch of so-called "legal professionals" taking an elitist position that all students from one school are inferior. I'm not sure if it says something about our profession or about the people who make up the profession. While, concededly, most WNEC students probably can't get admitted to a top-tier school, there is something to be said about going to law school, any law school. There is something else to be said about respecting your brothers and sisters who are currently members of the bar or who will one day be members. Comments like "Didn't I tell you guys that they have Down's" and "Guys, does my WNEC JD better prepare me for complex, bet the hot-dog stand litigation, or sophisticated, cross-retail counter transactional work?" simply make me realize that this profession, our profession, has a bad stereotype for a reason. There really are some mean-spirited people who call themselves lawyers. I hope one day that these people who write these mean-spirited things have a son or daughter who goes to a lower-tiered school and that you have to explain to your tier-1 friends how your daughter doesn't have "Down's" but, instead, shunned tier 1 schools because she is interested in push-cart litigation.
Granted, WNEC is barely a TTTT, and some derision is warranted, but wasn't there an article a few weeks ago, on this very site, about one of their grads who became a bigsh*t tax partner at S&C? How many of you posters are partners at v5 firms? I think implying that their students have Down's crosses all sorts of lines.
Comment 4:19 written on a computer at the public library during a break from scouring the wanted ads.
4:19,
What was your first clue that lawyers are assholes?
Also, perhaps you are new to ATL, but there are a number of vocal d-bags with serious inferiority complexes here. Hence the obsession with law school/firm rankings and prestige.
4:19, if you are still here,
It's better to be a good barber than a shitty lawyer. That's WNEC is a joke (and that's why my kid, regardless of how smart he or she grows up to be, will not go to WNEC.)
Hynes forgot an essential part of prosecuting a lawsuit: The client.
The lawyer here is a jerk with too much time on his hands.
But theft by extortion? How else do cases get settled? Courts try to encourage settlements, so I don't see this living through the appeal process absent extraordinary facts.
He was definitely in one hairy situation!
I was in class with the kid for 2 years. Never brought a book and asked only the oddest of quesitons. It all makes sense now. Hang on, fry-0-lator is beeping....