Greenspan remembered for courtroom skills, humour

Eddie Greenspan, ONTARIO JEWISH ARCHIVES PHOTO

Renowned criminal defence lawyer Eddie Greenspan died in his sleep last week while on vacation with his family in Phoenix, Ariz. He was 70.

Greenspan was remembered for his high-profile cases, his advocacy on important constitutional issues, and for a wicked sense of humour that he sometime employed in court. Members of his family, delivering eulogies at his funeral last weekend at Beth Torah Synagogue in Toronto, said he’d always enjoyed comedy and jokes and instructed them to continue that tradition at his funeral.

His daughter, Julianna, honoured his wishes.

“It made him crazy that he couldn’t give his own eulogy,” she told the 800 people present. “He gave me an order: ‘When I die you must be funny, very funny, no sentimental BS.’

“If my father knew the outpouring of press coverage would have been so enormous, he would have faked his death years ago,” she quipped.

“Eddie was a hilarious guy. There was absolutely nothing sacred to him,” said his close friend George Jonas. “If it gave him the opportunity for a good line  – and frankly even when the line wasn’t that good – Eddie would go for it in a flash.”

One courtroom quote attributed to Greenspan when the prosecution had a weak case was, “I wish I was as thin as the evidence against my client in this case.”

Jonas, who wrote Greenspan: The Case for the Defence, knew the Toronto lawyer for 40 years.

“The law was everything to him. He often said that he mentioned to his wife that she would be his mistress because he was married to the law. It was obviously a joke, but he was married to the law.”

Greenspan played prominent roles in a number of high-profile cases, including those involving wife killer Helmut Buxbaum, businessman and lobbyist Karlheinz Schreiber, media entrepreneur Garth Drabinsky and Saskatchewan farmer Robert Latimer.

“He was also fascinated by show business in a way I never was, even though I was in show business,” Jonas said.

For his part, Jonas was interested in legal matters. At one point, Jonas traded his subscription of Variety magazine to Greenspan in exchange for his copy of Dominion Law Reports, which Greenspan edited.

Leo Adler met Greenspan while he was still a law student and Greenspan was a junior lawyer working with Joe Pomerant on the Peter Demeter trial. “It’s the case that made him,” Adler said.

Jonas co-authored a book on the case, By Persons Unknown: The Strange Death Of Christine Demeter, which highlighted Greenspan’s contribution to the case, Adler said.

Jonas and Greenspan went on to collaborate on The Scales of Justice, a CBC production that dramatized high-profile legal cases, including several on which Adler worked.

Adler played himself in one episode. The taping went on past midnight, after which he joined Jonas and Greenspan for a late night coffee and doughnuts.

“Eddie would then go back to the office. He had a full bedroom set up in his office, since there were times he would go back and work and prepare,” Adler said.

Daniel Brodsky articled for Greenspan in the late 1980s, around the time Greenspan’s biography was released. Greenspan presented him with a copy of the book, with the inscription, “Don’t read the book this year. You won’t have time.” 

“I thought he was kidding,” Brodsky said, but “it was no joke. Two or three days later, I was sitting in a doughnut shop downtown at two o’clock in the morning while Eddie rehearsed his jury address to whoever was in the doughnut shop, willing to listen.

“He was intense. There was a reason he got the nickname Fast Eddie. It was because Eddie seemed to be everywhere, doing everything.”

As part of his job, Brodsky accompanied Greenspan on a cross-country book tour that coincided with cases Greenspan scheduled in each city. Greenspan would start the day enjoying a shave in a barbershop, while being briefed by Brodsky on cases he had coming up. From there, he’d go to the radio station, talk about the book, and then head to the courthouse before catching a plane to the next destination.

Greenspan was adept at surrounding himself with competent people who provided him with case research and prepared him for court. He was sort of like a conductor leading an orchestra, Brodsky said.

Among those who articled for him were Marc Rosenberg, who currently is a justice on the Ontario Court of Appeal, and fellow Niagara Falls resident and prominent lawyer Alan Gold.

In a 2006 article in Canadian Business Magazine, Greenspan outlined his views on the practice of law and the reasons he got into it.

“I had no childhood dreams of being a fireman, a policeman, teacher, doctor or candlestick maker or a corporate mogul. I was committed to being not only a lawyer, but a criminal lawyer,” he said.

“The allure, the show business part of criminal law, the great trials, cross-examinations, jury addresses that I had read about in all the books when I was growing up, that made me want to become a criminal lawyer, like Perry Mason – none of them talked about the truth. And the truth is that for every great one hour of cross-examination, you have to spend about 50 hours preparing alone in your office, late at night, when no one else is around and you can think it through, take notes.

“It’s completely unglamorous and completely nothing more or less than very hard work. You’ve got to read everything, think about everything, figure out how you’re going to approach a case and then get up and make it look like it’s natural, like it just kind of came to you, which, of course, it doesn’t if you care about what you’re doing.”

Adler recalled Greenspan as “a very good cross-examiner. Going back to his sense of humour, he had a very good sense of timing. He was very theatrical.”

 use as a vocal opponent of the death penalty. In 1986, when there was talk of making it a free vote in parliament, he put his practice on hold for several months and travelled the country to lobby against it.

“As a lawyer and a citizen, I can’t thank him enough,” said Adler. “People don’t realize how hit and miss court can be… I believe Eddie played a huge role in making sure it was defeated.”

In recent years, Greenspan became more and more concerned about the rise of anti-Semitism in polite society, Jonas said. “He took it seriously when it was embraced by well-educated, accomplished, successful people.”

“Over the past two years, Eddie became a beacon of strength for Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center,” said Avi Benlolo, president and CEO of the centre. “He readily agreed to speak at our conference on anti-Semitism in June, and most recently, he co-chaired  our State of the Union luncheon.

“In fact,” Benlolo said, “we had a wonderful lunch meeting just a few weeks ago where Eddie was deeply concerned for the rising tide of anti-Semitism, particularly on campuses. We developed a specific course of action that he planned on addressing over the winter break. He had so much more to give in this regard and his loss for our community is profound.”

Greenspan grew up in Niagara Falls. Last July, he and his brother, Brian, returned to their hometown to be presented with the keys to the city by Mayor Jim Diodati.

The Niagara Falls Review, citing his teachers, said Greenspan was known to be bright, but they complained he wasn’t taking their classes seriously. He was known, however, for his skill in public speaking.

His father, Joe, was a scrap metal dealer who aspired to be a lawyer, but was forced by circumstances to give it up to pursue the family business.

Although their father could not pursue his ambition, Eddie and Brian became prominent lawyers, as did Eddie’s daughter, Julianna. His sister, Rosann, serves as executive director of the Center for the Study of Law and Society at University of California at Berkeley.

“All his life, his father groomed his children, especially Eddie, his eldest son, to fulfil the dream he had to be a litigator, and Eddie happily fulfilled his father’s dream,” Jonas said.

He also served as a role model for a generation of lawyers inspired by his work and his ability to steer public policy by his advocacy against capital punishment, Brodsky said. 

“We saw it could happen. We saw how one person could make a difference. It was tremendously inspiring,” Brodsky added.