Incompetent, Irrelevant and Immaterial
Alameda County's most colorful court figure, Leo Sullivan, is no more.
He died Wednesday night of heart disease in San Leandro Memorial Hospital at age 74. He gave in reluctantly, you can be sure, for a man whose talents, wit, intelligence, bounce and vitality carried him through several fortunes, scores of legal adventures and more "heat" in his sunset years than most men could stand.
And there is not a friend, in or out of the legal profession, who was not saddened that Leo was never readmitted to the Bar in his closing years. Others less deserving got the chance.
Let it be said that there was nothing dishonest about Leo. His troubles came because he had no business organization about him. He was very careless about money. It didn't mean that much to him.
There were hundreds of cases he handled without any money at all. Just for the love of the law, the injustice as he saw of it toward a penniless client, the foibles of human nature and an irresistable desire to get in there and fight before Court and jury.
So in his hurly-burly of doing things, Sullivan got tabbed by the Judicial Council and Supreme Court for accepting fees for services unperformed. A sloppy performance on his part, to be sure, but by an attorney who carried an office in his head and whose lapses included walking in an arraignment court and asking the clerk, "Have I got any cases in here today?"
The magic of the Sullivan name was such that defendants were coming to him in droves. And he had no catalog on their names and numbers. As there had been in his big cases:
The sheriff's office bribery upheavals, the commissioners in the Oakland paving scandals, the cemetery grave robbery cases, the Suey Ying Tong war defenses, the Chinese lottery operations, the Tiny Heller gambling charges, the Phil Davis Tahoe boating accident, the Dr. Sam Stern abortion ring trial, the "Cash" Patten grand theft conviction.
This dynamo of a man who studied his law in a law office in the Syndicate Building and passed the Bar became a sensation in the criminal defense field. He had the ability of immediate recall, operated without notes and without a doubt was the town's greatest cross-examiner.
His partnerships and associations included those with Myron Harris, Rupert Crittenden, Dick Lyman and Everett Power. Sullivan was the star each time. He exuded confidence. He was so sure of himself that he would say to a clerk before going into court to cross-examine a policeman, "I'll bet you $50 I'll make a liar out of him in five questions." And he would.
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