Those Lovable, Quirky Professors

–From Susan M. Harrelson, UNLV Law School, Date of event: Spring 1999.

Professor Joe Thome taught Contracts II to the charter class at the William S. Boyd School of Law, UNLV, in Spring 1999. We went to school in the former Paradise Elementary School, where the classrooms had the most horrible acoustics in history. One night, Professor Thome put down his microphone to take a drink of water, and apparently forgot to take it back up. He walked around speaking into that water bottle for a good five minutes, his lecture completely inaudible, before he needed another drink. When he saw the microphone sitting on the table where his water should have been, he finally realized his mistake.

–From Kelly McQueen, University of Arkansas School of Law at Little Rock, Date of event: 1994

While quietly daydreaming in Land Use, a small upper-level course taught by the venerable Robert Wright, author of not only our textbook but also the Nutshell on Land Use Planning, I was surreptitiously passed a small folded note by one of my classmates. He was looking intently at me. He appeared to be choking. Perplexed, I carefully opened the note in my lap, not wanting to attract attention, reading the words “check out Professor Wright”.

So I did – obviously for the first time since I’d sat down for class –for he had a long piece of toilet paper tucked into his suit pants. It took real force of will to keep quiet, watching Professor Wright walk back and forth at the front of the class, lecturing in solemn tones on serious topics, with nary a clue that a full two feet of white tp followed in wake. It quickly became apparent that it was easier to stifle our laughter than it was to get someone to tell him.

Respected, aged, and in no small measure intimidating, he was just not the kind of guy one wanted to tell that he had brought something back from the john with him. Ultimately our training to be tough, fearless and hardened lawyers failed, and we did nothing. He went the whole class that way – finally exiting the class into the hall full of people.

Maybe one of them would tell him.

–From Cullen McVoy, Hastings College of Law, Date of event: 1969

In 1969, my first year at Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco, I had the privilege of studying torts under the renowned William Prosser, known as the “King of Torts.” He was getting on in years, and could be seen popping his nitro-glycerine heart medication before class. But he got himself to work every day, driving a bright red Mercedes sedan across the Bay Bridge, commenting that the risks involved in that trip exceeded most of those he discussed in class. He was a great teacher–vital and animated. You could feel his deep love of the law, and life-long commitment to the development of its principles.

[McClurg note: For laypersons, Prosser, who died in 1972, was the main author of the most widely used Torts casebook in law schools.]

Prosser taught that tort principles had to be carefully crafted to balance two objectives: They had to be broad enough to compensate the deserving, but narrow enough to avoid a “flood of litigation.” He often spoke of this “flood of litigation” in dark tones that made it sound like the end of the world as we know it.

Hastings followed the rule that in the first year they scare you to death, the second year they work you to death, and the third year they bore you to death. This being my first year, I tried to keep a low profile, and seldom asked a question in class. But this “flood of litigation” captured my imagination, and one day I got up the courage to raise my hand and ask, “Professor Prosser, has this ‘flood of litigation’ that you are so concerned about ever actually happened?”

His response was very long and involved, and I cannot claim to remember or understand all of it. But in the end the answer seemed to be no, it had not happened, at least not to any significant extent. Having surrendered my anonymity and survived, I pushed the question a little further, “Is there any particular reason why not?”

Prosser was not known for his humility. The word at school was “Prosser thinks he’s God, and he may be right.” His answer this time, in so many words, was that it hadn’t happened because he was guiding the courts to make sure it didn’t happen. Astounding as this may sound, he may have been right.

McClurg note. Bless Dean Prosser, one of my all-time heroes. Most people aren’t aware that Prosser was one of the earliest, and funniest, legal humorists. His classic piece, “Needleman On Mortgages,” about a practical joke played on an obsessive law student in search of the ultimate (and nonexistent) law school study aid, is really funny.  It made the cut for one of the top 25 funniest law journal articles in my co-edited book Amicus Humoriae: An Anthology of Legal Humor.

–From Christine Preta, Albany Law School, Date of event: 2002

My Contracts professor—a very smart guy who, unfortunately, recently passed away—was rather eccentric. He often came to class in Hawaiian tee shirts and sandals (even in the winter, and I go to school in upstate NY where there’s lots of snow). Anyway, he had been teaching for a number of years so he had quite a reputation with the student body.

He was extremely Socratic and barely lectured or even answered questions. He always ended up throwing them back at the class. Needless to say, by the end of the year we were all rather frustrated by his teaching (gotta love that Socratic method!). So he agreed to do a review session for three hours before his six-hour Contracts exam.

Everyone—and I do mean everyone—showed up for it. The classroom was packed. It was standing room only. He started the “lecture”—taking questions and actually answering them. Mid-way through answering a question one of his teeth flew out and landed on the desk. He just continued to speak, barely noticing that it had fallen out. The class was mortified—should we tell him? Did he know and was ignoring it?

Finally, I think he realized that no one was paying attention and casually picked up the tooth, washed it off in his coffee mug (which we think was filled with water), stuck it back in his mouth (it must have been a crown or something) and without missing a beat continued answering the student’s question.

It was one of the funniest things ever. Of course, we held our laughter until the review session was over!

–From Tanya Stankunas, Harvard Law School, Date of event: Fall 2002

We were studying Civil Procedure with the irascible Professor Arthur Miller, and discussing counterclaims and crossclaims. We’re deep in the intricacies of compulsory and permissive counterclaims, when a student poses the question: “Can you do a permissive counterclaim, to the compulsory counterclaim, to the crossclaim?”

Miller’s response: “I love it when you talk dirty …”

–From Professor Ken Chestek at University of Michigan Law School, University of Pittsburgh School of Law, Date of event: circa 1977.

Our first-year Contracts professor was notoriously more “mysterious” than most of our other first-year profs; we generally had to work pretty hard to fathom what he was asking us. One day in the winter semester he began a class by wandering down an unusually long frolic-and-detour that seemed to bear little, if any, relevance to the subject of Contracts.

We strained to see where he was going; nobody, however, dared to interrupt him. Finally, after about twenty minutes, a student meekly raised her hand and asked, “Professor, could you, um, tell us what case you are talking about?”

The professor looked at her for the longest time, with a blank expression on his face. The rest of us sat dumbstruck, waiting to see what kind of tongue-lashing was forming behind those impenetrable eyes. Finally, without saying a word, the professor closed the book on his podium, and gently laid it down on the desk. We cringed. He then opened up a different book, thumbed through it, and finally looked back up at us.

“I bet you all want to hear about Contracts today, don’t you?”

–From Janet Subers Heydt, Temple University School of Law, Date of event: Fall 1998

On the first day of Criminal Law class at Temple University, our professor (a great prof) was going around the class asking each of us who we were and for a few statements as to what we were all about.

He got to one gentleman in the class, whose name I forget, but who the whole class knew worked for a “gentleman’s club” (a/k/a, a strip joint) as the manager or bouncer. Well, the professor looked at him and said, “Don’t I know you from somewhere? I’m sure I know you. You look very familiar.” He was rather insistent that he knew the gentleman.

Most of us left class that night still chuckling! At the end of the year, after I had gotten to know the professor better, I clued him in as to the laugh we had at his expense!

–From Jonathon Harwood, St. John’s University School of Law, Date of event: circa 1985

In the mid-1980s at the St. John’s University School of Law in Jamaica Estates, New York, Dean Fagen was our Torts I professor. He was one of those classic imposing law professor figures whose authority was never challenged. If there was ever any doubt about who was in charge, it was put to rest the day someone questioned him about a difference between his lecture and something in the legendary “Prosser On Torts” hornbook.

“Prosser’s dead,” Dean Fagen said, “Listen to me.”

–From Travis Smith, University of Oklahoma College of Law, Date of event: 1976

I began the University of Oklahoma Law School in the fall of 1976. I had a professor named Elmer Million for property law both semesters of my first year. Prof. Million had retired from the NYU law school and returned home to Oklahoma to teach. Among other things he is noted for, Professor Million has a son named E.Z. Million.

Professor Million taught us about dower and curtesy, both of which had been abolished in 1907, but not about abstracts. Another useful thing he taught us was a poem to help you remember, “The name of that little star shaped thing you see in print sometimes,” referring to the asterisk.

The poem is:

Mary had a little plane

In which she loved to frisk.

Now I tell you Mary loved

Her little _____________ (McClurg note: I couldn’t really figure out what the heck this poem means, but there’s some possibility the last line could be offensive. So I’ll leave it to you to try to figure out the last three words of the poem with the hint that they rhyme with asterisk).

–From David Keller, University of Florida College of Law, Date of events: circa 1977

Those of you who went to schools with big-time college football programs will appreciate the following story sent to me by David Keller, a former high school classmate who graduated from the University of Florida law school the year I arrived there. (I’m not sure exactly how he did that, since we were in the same high school class and I went straight through college to law school, but David was a really smart guy. Maybe they let him skip college.)

I remember on the first day of law school, our criminal law professor, Robert Mann (since deceased), called the roll. He got to Don Gaffney, my classmate who had been the starting quarterback for the Florida Gators for the past 3 years. Don said “present.” The professor asked Don if he had a wife named _______? (maybe Mary, but I don’t remember her name now nearly 25 years later). Don said yes. Professor Mann asked if she sold lawn mowers at Sears (or something equivalent). Don said yes. Professor Mann said, completely deadpan, “I thought I recognized your name from somewhere.”

On another occasion, Professor Jeff Lewis called on a guy in our class who was always raising his hand trying to get noticed and attract attention to himself. After the guy answered a question with an obviously wrong answer, Professor Lewis sad, “Put your head down and rest a little while.” We thought that was pretty funny.