Lex and the City: Or, How Urban Life Drives Lawyers Crazy

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New York Times reporter Anemona Hartocollis, who has the best byline since her colleague Jennifer 8. Lee, seems to have the “urban insanity” beat at the NYT. She covers acrimonious legal disputes between lawyers and their neighbors:

The war over secondhand smoke at the Ansonia has ended. A couple at the Ansonia, a historic Upper West Side apartment building, who had sued a neighbor over her wafting cigarette smoke have agreed to settle their lawsuit, one of the plaintiffs said on Monday.

The plaintiffs — Jonathan Selbin and his wife, Jenny, both lawyers — had sued their fourth-floor neighbor, Galila Huff, claiming that smoke seeping from her condo into the common hallway was jeopardizing the health of the Selbins’ young son.

Mr. Selbin confirmed the settlement and said Ms. Huff had agreed to take steps to minimize the spread of her smoke. After news of the suit was reported in February, the manufacturer of an air-cleaning system came forward to offer free equipment to Ms. Huff and the Selbins.

(We’ve had secondhand smoke problems with neighbors ourselves, so we’re siding with the Selbins on this. We hope these smoke-containment measures succeed.)
And Hartocollis covers mass transit meltdowns of lawyers, too:

[Train passenger John Clifford] asked the passengers to keep it down, but the chatter continued. In March 2007, Mr. Clifford had had enough. He shouted an obscenity at a passenger talking on his cellphone and slapped the hand of another, and was arrested. On Tuesday, he found himself in Manhattan Criminal Court, telling his tale.

“I stand up for my right to be let alone,” Mr. Clifford, a retired New York City police sergeant, declared from the witness stand at his nonjury trial on charges including harassment and assault….

Although he seemed like a perfect client for a civil rights lawyer, he chose to represent himself. He has a law degree….

Outside court, he compared himself to Rosa Parks, fighting for his right to sit where he wanted in peace.

Um, yeah.
So city living can be frustrating for some lawyers (as ATL commenters in non-urban areas love pointing out, in the geographical pissing matches that periodically erupt here). But hey, things could be worse — at least these lawyers haven’t mysteriously disappeared.
Is New York City becoming the Bermuda Triangle of Biglaw? That’s the subject of our latest column for the New York Observer.
The Case of the Disappearing Lawyers [New York Observer]
A Noisy Train, a Fed-Up Rider and a Day in Court [New York Times]
Upper West Side Couple Settles Suit Over a Neighbor’s Smoke [New York Times]

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