Two things which I think show what kind of man Cal was (nothing like his caricature of himself in TV commercials):
(1) The first home Cal and his first wife Barbara bought in California was in Ladera Heights in the 1950s. It was a nice house in a middle class neighborhood near LAX. They still lived there in the late 1970s when they were getting divorced despite the fact that Cal easily could have afforded a house in a much more prestigious neighborhood. Cal loved the house and he really liked his neighbors. Almost all of whom by then were Black. He really wanted to keep the house in the divorce, but it wasn’t realistic.
(2) Cal then bought a ranch in Glenn County, where he lived for the rest of his life. We were there preparing for discovery in the palimony/divorce case brought by second wife Susan when Jerry Goldberg got a phone call from his wife Lesley that she and their two kids had suffered minor injuries when their minivan was sideswiped while she was taking them to school. Cal insisted on immediately flying Jerry back to Los Angeles in his private plane. Lesley and the two kids arrived back home from the hospital before Cal and Jerry got back to LA. Waiting in the driveway when Lesley arrived at the house was a new top of the line minivan from one of Cal’s dealerships. No charge. In return, the dealership took the damaged minivan, repaired it and sold it as a used car which had been in an accident.
Calvin Coolidge Worthington was born in Oklahoma, the sixth child of 9 in a dirt poor family. He dropped out of high school at 15 to join the Civilian Conservation Corps, one of FDR’s Depression-era New Deal programs. After Pearl Harbor, he enlisted in the Army Air Corps. He always had wanted to be a pilot. He was a standout in training, excelled at aerobatics, and flew 29 missions over Germany as the pilot of a B-17 bomber. He led the first American bombing raid on Berlin.
Later, he trained new officers to become pilots, including two of the original Mercury Seven astronauts. He was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross and five Air Medals.
After the War, he wanted to become a commercial pilot. But, no airline would hire him because he didn’t have a college degree. His family had moved to Texas and he sold his car there for a small profit. He bought another car, parked it in front of the post office, and sold it. Later, he rented a vacant lot for a week and sold 3 cars that week, making $500. He decided he was destined to sell cars for a living. However, he personally never owned another car.
After moving to California and starting an auto dealership there, he had the foresight to go on local television late at night doing commercials where he made fun of himself…and his dog Spot, who never was a dog. The first Spot was a gorilla. Almost any animal you can thing of, other than a dog, played Spot. Cal wrote the commercials and the jingles himself.
Cal’s second wife, Susan, was a model who appeared in some of his commercials.
I first met Cal when Jerry Goldberg had me prepare an extraordinary writ to get the trial court to issue an order terminating his first marriage. Bifurcated divorces where the marriage is dissolved before other issues are decided are common in California and favored in the law. Cal wanted one because Susan was 8 1/2 months pregnant and he wanted to be married before the child was born. The trial judge was a good friend of Barbara’s lawyer, whose opposition to the bifurcation was that she didn’t want it. He inexplicably denied it.
The order wasn’t appealable and an appeal would take too long anyway. Two days later, I filed an extraordinary writ seeking an immediate order that the trial judge grant the bifurcation. The appellate clerk called Barbara’s attorney who told her they wouldn’t be filing any papers because “only 1 in a 1000 of these extraordinary writs are ever granted.”
The next morning, at 11 am, the clerk called and asked me to be in her office before Noon. I was. She handed me the original and 4 copies of the signed (by all 3 Justices) Extraordinary Writ, with instructions from the Court to personally serve it in the trial judge that afternoon. It ordered him to sign and have filed the Bifurcared Judgment no later than the close of business. He was shocked when I served it on him, but he did it.
Jerry Goldberg had friends who were judges too, and at 4:00 that afternoon, with Jerry and I as the witnesses, one of them married Cal and Susan in his chambers. He had married Jerry and Lesley two years earlier on the ski slopes at Mammoth.
Happy Ending, right?
Not quite.
About 10 years later, Susan filed for divorce. Concurrently, she filed a civil palimony action against Cal. Because they were living at the ranch, she filed in Glenn County. Susan’s lawyer was Marvin Mitchelson. If you read my Dennis Wilson post, you are familiar with him.
Palimony cases are hard for plaintiffs to win. You are trying to prove the existence of an oral agreement made between two unmarried people to co-own property. Jury trials are available in those cases and representing the defendants, Jerry and I always requested a jury. Married women and single men tend to be the most skeptical and hostile to such claims.
Somehow, in the 7 palimony cases I had against Marvin, his clients always claimed that they had entered into the exact same oral agreement. Word for word. I guess it’s easier in the word processor that way. Susan’s complaint was identical to the others. The one big advantage she had was that she and Cal got married. She was going to get community property; she just wanted the allocation to begin a few years before they got married in the judge’s chambers.
If you read my Dennis Wilson post, you already know how this case is going to turn out. The fun part is how it got to that verdict.
I believe Glenn County had less than 15,000 registered voters back then. That was our potential jury pool. There were ten times as many sheep. We always used jury consultants in these cases and generally the recommendation was the same: middle-aged, church going, married women and unmarried men older than 35. Pretty much the entire jury pool there.
The trial started with opening statements. Marvin went first, representing the plaintiff. He was very condescending, talking down to the jurors even more than he did in Los Angeles. They really disliked him. Jerry, on the other hand, was very good with juries. At Loeb and Loeb, he won 47 out of 47 jury trials representing a California bank against doctors, dentists and others who had borrowed money from the bank to invest in a fraudulent real estate scheme. Not easy when representing a bank.
In his opening statement, Jerry talked to the jurors like they were his guests in his living room, just chatting with them while a cozy fire roared in the background. They loved him.
One of many important things I learned from Jerry was not to make too many objections in a jury trial. Unless you can keep the evidence out altogether, and it’s very harmful, don’t make objections. And never make objections as to form. The other attorney will simply rephrase the question, it will get answered, and it will look to the jury like you were trying to hide the information. Marvin, on the other hand, constantly made objections, the majority of which were groundless and overruled. The jury disliked Marvin even more.
The testimony ended after 4 days, and the judge finished giving his jury instructions at about 4:00 pm. The jury went to deliberate. At 4:20, the bailiff told us they had reached a verdict. 20 minutes was a new record for us!
We went in and sat down and the bailiff brought the jury in. When they were seated, instead of asking if they had reached the verdict, the judge said something like this:
Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, the Bailiff advises me that you think you might have reached a verdict. Are you sure? The reason I ask is that you have sat here patiently for 4 days. If you are still deliberating at 5:00, then you are each entitled to a free dinner at XXX restaurant. It’s on the county. And, because your verdict won’t be entered until after 5:00, you will be each entitled to another half-day of juror fees. Are you still sure you have reached a unanimous decision?
The jury quickly huddled and then the foreperson advised the judge they needed more time to deliberate. The bailiff took them back into the jury room, came back, took some things back in, and then came back out. When we asked him what he had taken back in, he whispered “I shouldn’t be telling you this, but they asked for a couple of decks of cards.”
At 5:00, they all went to dinner. They returned about 5:40. At 5:45, they again announced they had reached a decision. At 5:48, the foreperson announced a unanimous decision in Cal’s favor.
(1) The first home Cal and his first wife Barbara bought in California was in Ladera Heights in the 1950s. It was a nice house in a middle class neighborhood near LAX. They still lived there in the late 1970s when they were getting divorced despite the fact that Cal easily could have afforded a house in a much more prestigious neighborhood. Cal loved the house and he really liked his neighbors. Almost all of whom by then were Black. He really wanted to keep the house in the divorce, but it wasn’t realistic.
(2) Cal then bought a ranch in Glenn County, where he lived for the rest of his life. We were there preparing for discovery in the palimony/divorce case brought by second wife Susan when Jerry Goldberg got a phone call from his wife Lesley that she and their two kids had suffered minor injuries when their minivan was sideswiped while she was taking them to school. Cal insisted on immediately flying Jerry back to Los Angeles in his private plane. Lesley and the two kids arrived back home from the hospital before Cal and Jerry got back to LA. Waiting in the driveway when Lesley arrived at the house was a new top of the line minivan from one of Cal’s dealerships. No charge. In return, the dealership took the damaged minivan, repaired it and sold it as a used car which had been in an accident.
Calvin Coolidge Worthington was born in Oklahoma, the sixth child of 9 in a dirt poor family. He dropped out of high school at 15 to join the Civilian Conservation Corps, one of FDR’s Depression-era New Deal programs. After Pearl Harbor, he enlisted in the Army Air Corps. He always had wanted to be a pilot. He was a standout in training, excelled at aerobatics, and flew 29 missions over Germany as the pilot of a B-17 bomber. He led the first American bombing raid on Berlin.
Later, he trained new officers to become pilots, including two of the original Mercury Seven astronauts. He was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross and five Air Medals.
After the War, he wanted to become a commercial pilot. But, no airline would hire him because he didn’t have a college degree. His family had moved to Texas and he sold his car there for a small profit. He bought another car, parked it in front of the post office, and sold it. Later, he rented a vacant lot for a week and sold 3 cars that week, making $500. He decided he was destined to sell cars for a living. However, he personally never owned another car.
After moving to California and starting an auto dealership there, he had the foresight to go on local television late at night doing commercials where he made fun of himself…and his dog Spot, who never was a dog. The first Spot was a gorilla. Almost any animal you can thing of, other than a dog, played Spot. Cal wrote the commercials and the jingles himself.
Cal’s second wife, Susan, was a model who appeared in some of his commercials.
I first met Cal when Jerry Goldberg had me prepare an extraordinary writ to get the trial court to issue an order terminating his first marriage. Bifurcated divorces where the marriage is dissolved before other issues are decided are common in California and favored in the law. Cal wanted one because Susan was 8 1/2 months pregnant and he wanted to be married before the child was born. The trial judge was a good friend of Barbara’s lawyer, whose opposition to the bifurcation was that she didn’t want it. He inexplicably denied it.
The order wasn’t appealable and an appeal would take too long anyway. Two days later, I filed an extraordinary writ seeking an immediate order that the trial judge grant the bifurcation. The appellate clerk called Barbara’s attorney who told her they wouldn’t be filing any papers because “only 1 in a 1000 of these extraordinary writs are ever granted.”
The next morning, at 11 am, the clerk called and asked me to be in her office before Noon. I was. She handed me the original and 4 copies of the signed (by all 3 Justices) Extraordinary Writ, with instructions from the Court to personally serve it in the trial judge that afternoon. It ordered him to sign and have filed the Bifurcared Judgment no later than the close of business. He was shocked when I served it on him, but he did it.
Jerry Goldberg had friends who were judges too, and at 4:00 that afternoon, with Jerry and I as the witnesses, one of them married Cal and Susan in his chambers. He had married Jerry and Lesley two years earlier on the ski slopes at Mammoth.
Happy Ending, right?
Not quite.
About 10 years later, Susan filed for divorce. Concurrently, she filed a civil palimony action against Cal. Because they were living at the ranch, she filed in Glenn County. Susan’s lawyer was Marvin Mitchelson. If you read my Dennis Wilson post, you are familiar with him.
Palimony cases are hard for plaintiffs to win. You are trying to prove the existence of an oral agreement made between two unmarried people to co-own property. Jury trials are available in those cases and representing the defendants, Jerry and I always requested a jury. Married women and single men tend to be the most skeptical and hostile to such claims.
Somehow, in the 7 palimony cases I had against Marvin, his clients always claimed that they had entered into the exact same oral agreement. Word for word. I guess it’s easier in the word processor that way. Susan’s complaint was identical to the others. The one big advantage she had was that she and Cal got married. She was going to get community property; she just wanted the allocation to begin a few years before they got married in the judge’s chambers.
If you read my Dennis Wilson post, you already know how this case is going to turn out. The fun part is how it got to that verdict.
I believe Glenn County had less than 15,000 registered voters back then. That was our potential jury pool. There were ten times as many sheep. We always used jury consultants in these cases and generally the recommendation was the same: middle-aged, church going, married women and unmarried men older than 35. Pretty much the entire jury pool there.
The trial started with opening statements. Marvin went first, representing the plaintiff. He was very condescending, talking down to the jurors even more than he did in Los Angeles. They really disliked him. Jerry, on the other hand, was very good with juries. At Loeb and Loeb, he won 47 out of 47 jury trials representing a California bank against doctors, dentists and others who had borrowed money from the bank to invest in a fraudulent real estate scheme. Not easy when representing a bank.
In his opening statement, Jerry talked to the jurors like they were his guests in his living room, just chatting with them while a cozy fire roared in the background. They loved him.
One of many important things I learned from Jerry was not to make too many objections in a jury trial. Unless you can keep the evidence out altogether, and it’s very harmful, don’t make objections. And never make objections as to form. The other attorney will simply rephrase the question, it will get answered, and it will look to the jury like you were trying to hide the information. Marvin, on the other hand, constantly made objections, the majority of which were groundless and overruled. The jury disliked Marvin even more.
The testimony ended after 4 days, and the judge finished giving his jury instructions at about 4:00 pm. The jury went to deliberate. At 4:20, the bailiff told us they had reached a verdict. 20 minutes was a new record for us!
We went in and sat down and the bailiff brought the jury in. When they were seated, instead of asking if they had reached the verdict, the judge said something like this:
Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, the Bailiff advises me that you think you might have reached a verdict. Are you sure? The reason I ask is that you have sat here patiently for 4 days. If you are still deliberating at 5:00, then you are each entitled to a free dinner at XXX restaurant. It’s on the county. And, because your verdict won’t be entered until after 5:00, you will be each entitled to another half-day of juror fees. Are you still sure you have reached a unanimous decision?
The jury quickly huddled and then the foreperson advised the judge they needed more time to deliberate. The bailiff took them back into the jury room, came back, took some things back in, and then came back out. When we asked him what he had taken back in, he whispered “I shouldn’t be telling you this, but they asked for a couple of decks of cards.”
At 5:00, they all went to dinner. They returned about 5:40. At 5:45, they again announced they had reached a decision. At 5:48, the foreperson announced a unanimous decision in Cal’s favor.
