‘Unsettling.” “I was surprised, concerned, upset.” “There were a whole bunch of things flying around in my head at that time.”
This is the kind of language a veteran, sober-minded and judicious lawyer like Richard Runes uses when he is thinking, “I pooped a brick.”
It’s an example of how the corruption-cloud of Sheldon Silver radiated outward from the Chernobyl that is Albany to infect even the unsuspecting.
Silver’s second slippery scheme was, if anything, even more outrageous than the first one brought up by the US attorney — that Silver fleeced taxpayers by directing $500,000 in your money to reward the doctor who was steering him millions of dollars’ worth of asbestos victims whose cases could profitably be litigated.
Maybe you never felt Silver’s hand in your pocket. Maybe you don’t care.
But picture your firm trying to do an honest day’s business and even employing a compliance lawyer to make sure every single detail is up to code — when, suddenly, you realize you’ve unwittingly been paying off Silver.
It’s like the horror movie when you try to call for help and you realize the killer is already on the line, right there in the house with you.
What the hell do you do? Panic. Which is what Runes more or less did. He went to the boss of Glenwood Management and other top brass to tell them. They were equally upset. But no one could figure out how to get away from Silver.
It’s an illustration of how deeply involved Silver was in everything that goes on in this state: All roads led through Shelly.
Glenwood, we have learned in this trial, had a cautious but workable relationship with Silver. They were landlords, he was a tenant advocate. He was like the lion to whom they would occasionally throw scraps of red meat so they wouldn’t get eaten. The lion mostly stayed caged.
But when Runes found out Silver was personally profiting — to the tune of some $750,000 — from real-estate tax work, it was like turning around to find the lion was sitting at your dinner table wearing a napkin around its neck and holding a knife and fork in its paws.
What’s an honest firm supposed to do? You stop feeding him, maybe he gets angry. You continue feeding him, and that might be an ethical and/or legal risk. You never asked to get involved with Shelly Silver. You’re involved anyway, deeply.
Runes was so scared that when he went to the lawyer in the firm who specializes in ethics rules, even though the conversation was protected by attorney-client privilege, he didn’t even tell say exactly what he’d just learned.
Instead, he used one of those hypotheticals familiar to Dear Abby readers: “Erectile dysfunction would never happen to me, but suppose I have a friend who . . . ”
Runes described to his firm’s ethics lawyer a vague scenario that left out all the juicy details and got an OK.
So, problem solved, right?
When prosecutor Howard Master asked Runes whether his concerns had been resolved by the conversation, Runes paused. And paused. And paused some more.
“Not completely,” he said. “Because I was uncomfortable with the arrangement.” Nobody rests when there’s a lion on the loose.