Attorney Jim Elsman has been a fixture in the Detroit area legal community for more than six decades.
By Tom Kirvan
Legal News
At the spry age of 88, Birmingham attorney James Elsman remains as quotable as ever, declaring that "age is just a number” while continuing a law practice now in its 64th year.
Elsman, whose litigation practice focuses on plaintiff action cases, even filed for a writ of certiorari at the U.S. Supreme Court earlier this month, his third case before the high court over the course of his legal career.
"For some reason, you have to file 40 bound booklet-sized copies with the Supremes, for only nine justices to read, and that is just the beginning of sorrows in complying with their rules," Elsman said with a smile.
The defendant in his case before the court is Michigan's own Dow Chemical, Inc., the multi-national company headquartered in Midland.
"They poisoned 170,000 women with their silicone breast implants, and paid only $1.7 billion of the $3.2 billion they promised the court to pay,” Elsman bemoaned. “The case is about 30 years old, and no other lawyers are interested, but I am still alive and am chasing that $1.5 billion shortfall, while asking for exemplary damages and lost interest on money over time, since Dow stalled and paid, in fact, nothing – a neat corporate high-finance trick that begs for justice. This is a $7 billion case or more."
Elsman said that Garan Lucow Miller of Detroit is serving as Dow’s defense counsel.
"They are great lawyers and have over 100 lawyers at offices all over the Midwest, and Kirkland & Ellis is back-stopping them. Kirkland is the world's largest law firm centered in Chicago. It is a ‘David and Goliath’ story, no doubt," Elsman said of the high stakes case.
Elsman began his legal career with Chrysler in 1962, earning the worldly sum of $7,500 a year, some $300 more than Wall Street was paying first year lawyers at the time. He joined the automaker, at its corporate offices in Highland Park, after law school at the University of Michigan and Divinity School at Harvard. He earned his bachelor’s degree from U-M, where he studied Chinese and Russian for a possible career with the CIA.
When asked what he observed as “new in the 64 years of your practice,” Elsman without hesitation answered: "Women, women, women. There were only two of 150 in my Michigan Law Class of 1962, and now they dominate the elections of judges. Maybe you don't see great women trial lawyers yet, but many great female judges.
“Trial law is still in the hands of silk-stocking firms like Honigman, Dykema, Miller Canfield, Clark Hill, and Plunkett Cooney or, in tort law, by the big TV advertisers like Bernstein, Morse, Fieger, and Ven Johnson,” added Elsman. “There are also good tort firms like Sommers Schwartz, and some good solo-focused firms for headline cases."
Continuing, Elsman said another notable change is: "We don't have big libraries of books anymore, as most research is done online via West and LexisNexis, or, if you want el cheapo, you go to the internet and Google. Add to that another big change: We go to court, not by car, but by ‘Zoom.’”
As to what has not changed over the course of his career, Elsman lamented: "Judges still seek your money at election-time. I never have given, as it is wrong in what is supposed to be an unbiased judicial system. It is near corrupt for a judge to hear a case where there is a ‘giver’ against a lawyer who is not. The sin of Adam is in all of us, and even judges are not blind to it. I might have put out a sign for a judge, but never have I given money. So, sorry to those in black robes, but not sorry at all."
Which begs the question is Elsman a wild-eyed liberal, considering his case against Dow Chemical? No, he declared.
"I started practice at Chrysler Legal Department, doing international auto mergers and acquisitions, sitting right next to the Chrysler president's office,” he said. “They called us the ‘high priests,’ as those execs worried about their jobs if ‘Legal’ did not sign-off on something.”
But such work was not for Elsman, he indicated.
"One problem was that I only could afford the car I had in law school – a Volkswagen Bug – and I had to park way out of the way,” he noted. “Second, I wanted to go to court, and we hired mostly outside counsel at Chrysler."
Thus, Elsman wrote an article for the prestigious American Bar Journal and opted out of Chrysler, renting a T-suite in the Guardian Building in the financial center of Detroit for $140 a month.
“It was hard at first to feed two kids from my Catholic wife, but, before long, I had a payroll of 15 lawyers as ‘Elsman, Young & O'Rourke,’ doing mostly corporate work for Chrysler and Michigan Bank and Standard Federal Savings & Loan. Eventually, I moved the firm to Birmingham, bought a building and have been here for 30-plus years."
Most people, even his close friends, are surprised to know that Elsman went to Harvard Divinity School before he attended law school.
"I was a Protestant believer and wanted a year in the wilderness to clear my head from an active undergrad at Michigan, when I was editorial director of The Michigan Daily, which produced 30,000 papers a day, and I got scoops in Little Rock, Arkansas, when President Eisenhower integrated the high school with troops from the 101st Airborne and I had to sneak by their bayonets.
“That was the fall of '57; in the spring of '58, I didn't wish to lay on a beach in Ft. Lauderdale, so I went to corrupt Cuba to try for a story on Fidel Castro in the mountains, but I was again arrested and almost shot by Batista's cruel soldiers with a Thompson machine gun,” he recalled. “I was held in Moncada Barracks for three days, near Guantanamo Bay, where, by and by, the 9/11 terrorists are now being held without trial by the U.S.”
Married for as long as he has practiced law, Elsman and his wife have two children and six grandchildren. As he has aged, Elsman has made certain sacrifices in his daily life.
"It is more about what I don't do,” he said of his outside interests. “No more of the nonsense of politics. Not even tennis, where I ran the State Bar tennis tournament for a decade or more at a clay club I bought in Detroit at 6 Mile, McNichols and the Lodge Freeway, called Metro Racquet Club with six gorgeous courts to slide on. Nobody could beat me in the beginning, but in sports, you are always one match away from defeat. I won some trophies all over the U.S., but never could beat those guys from Florida, Texas or California, who retire on Social Security and play outside all year-around. I also played in Japan and South African tournaments, but never got nationally-ranked above No. 5 in my age group.”
His wife “is my relaxation,” said Elsman, “as we talk about the world and life, she being in a wheelchair, and two years younger than me.”
Raised in Taylor and Allen Park, she refers to herself as a "Downriver girl,” who hopes someday to see a great-grandchild, according to Elsman.
"My extra anchor in life is my church in Bloomfield Hills – a small church with only about 20 on a Sunday, but Pastor Brian and his wife, called ‘Hope,’ are great, but they think I know it all because of my Harvard Divinity background, where I was also a pastor. Yet, you don't know all about God, not even 1 percent about the stars in the sky. All I know is that I want to meet Jesus somewhere when I die, and give a good report. It is that simple! The end, except, I have no plans to retire, but to re-fire, and, with meds and a good diet, to reach 100.”
In the meantime, Elsman will remain focused on obtaining a positive outcome in his latest case before the Supreme Court.
“I will lose sleep and risk my heart and tempt stroke by fighting for a poor and sick Ms. Sutherland, who deserves a jury trial, as promised by the 7th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and before that, the Declaration of Independence,” said Elsman.
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