Ambulance Chaser Chased

Lawyers who "chase ambulances" are not respected in their profession. Their object, of course, is to aid or persuade the injured to bring suit--and split the damages. Ethically, such lawyers are comparable to doctors who would hang around at a bad corner waiting for auto crashes to bring them trade.

Not long ago the Supreme Court of Nebraska was asked to rule on an injunction against the Minneapolis law firm of Davis & Michel. The court upheld the injunction because "agents of these attorneys were traveling in the State [Nebraska] soliciting employment . . . haunting the homes of the injured and bringing great discredit to the legitimate practice of the law."

There might have been an end of the case of Davis & Michel but for the fact that Partner Thomas ("Tom") Davis was a stanch political friend of blind Thomas D. Schall, Minnesota's lone Republican Senator. (Senator-Dentist Henrik Shipstead is Farmer-Labor.) Lawyer Davis it was who argued and won Senator Schall's contest for his Senate seat in 1924. Last autumn eloquent "Tom" Davis, while supporting Farmer-Labor candidates otherwise, supported Republican Senator Schall for reelection. Mr. Schall won--and promptly, as he had publicly promised to do, recommended "Tom" Davis' partner, Ernest A. Michel, for a Federal judgeship that was vacant in Minnesota.

Stranger things have happened in politics than for an attorney who has been cited for ambulance-chasing to become a Federal judge. But the Hoover Administration does not relish such strange things and Attorney General Mitchell, a well-informed member of the Minnesota bar, took strong exception to Senator Schall's proposal. Not even when Senator Schall obtained for Lawyer Michel the endorsement of all the Minnesota Republicans in Congress, did Attorney General Mitchell relent. Senator Schall declared he would have no other man. So last week the Attorney General, backed by his President, let the case go before the public on its merits.

"I cannot myself believe," he said, "that it would be anything less than a reproach upon the administration of justice. ... I am sure that down in their hearts the vast majority of lawyers in Minnesota know that I am right."

The Significance. Larger than the question of whether 'Chaser Michel would get his bench--which it last week seemed most likely he would not--an issue of government loomed in the Mitchell-Michel-Schall controversy. Senators long ago came to regard Federal judgeships as prize packages of the political patronage which it is theirs to distribute when their party is in power. Though the Constitution instructs otherwise, Senators have acquired the habit, which by usage now seems to them a right, of telling the President whom to appoint; instead of, vice versa, the President guided by his Attorney General scanning the bar of a State, selecting a candidate for judge, sending his name to the Senate for confirmation. In more than one instance during the Hoover Administration, recommendations by Senators have been viewed with alarm by the White House. In more than one instance, notably in Pennsylvania and Kansas, the White House has backed down quietly rather than precipitate open warfare. But this time it looked as if the White House would not back down. 'Chaser Michel's case was described by Attorney General Mitchell as "more impressive than any in years." Moreover, remembering the political rash that broke out over the Administration's attempted appointment of Hoovercrat John Johnston Parker of North Carolina to the Supreme Court ( TIME, March 31 et seg.), the Administration undoubtedly welcomed this chance to say "there is no room for . . . men appointed to pay political debts." Should Senator Schall press for his political "right," and should other Senators join him to defend their own similar "rights," the case of 'Chaser Michel might become historic.

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