Biography
The following interview on Tuesday, April 22, 2003 is with Robert Scott Davis who graduated from Trinity College in 1985 with a Bachelor of Science in History and English. then receiving his doctorage from SMU Law School. The interviewer is Michael Fazone.Transcript
The interviewer is Michael Fazone, and the interviewee is Robert Scott Davis.MF: Date and time.
RSD: April 22, 2003, 11:40
MF: Name.
RSD: Robert Scott Davis
MF: Where do you currently reside?
RSD: 2800 Pecan Tyler, Texas.
MF: How long have you lived there?
RSD: Tyler for the last 14 years, that house for 6 years.
MF: Discuss your educational background.
RSD: Went to and graduated from Richardson High School in Richardson, Texas. Graduated in 1981. In 1981 I started my undergraduate education at Trinity University in San Antonio. I graduated from Trinity in 1985 with a Bachelor of Science in History and English. After graduating, I was accepted and attended SMU Law School, where I received a jurist doctorate degree. After that I went to work for a year for the court of appeals in Dallas for the honourable Sue Regard as a law clerk. That was 1988 to 1989. In 1989 I went to work for Judge Steger as one of his 2 law clerks and worked for Judge Steger until 1991.
MF: What is your current position and how long have you held this post?
RSD: I'm one of the two managing partners for Flowers & Davis, law firm with principle place of business in Tyler. We have 12 attorneys here in Tyler and then we have a Waco office with 5 attorneys.
MF: How long did you work with the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas?
RSD: 2 years as Judge Steger's law clerk. Basically, the way that Judge Steger runs his chambers, you have 2 law clerks, a junior law clerk, and a senior law clerk. Now it's changed up somewhat he has law clerks that actually are working longer terms for him as permanent clerks. But back during the time period that I worked for Judge Steger each clerk would work for two years. The terms were staggered so that you would have a senior clerk and junior clerk each year. When the senior clerk left a new junior clerk would come on and the junior clerk would move up to the senior level. Back then things were not as computerized as they are now. Basically his law clerks would pull and put together a yearly docket for the judge to handle. What that would entail is pulling all the case files that the judge had assigned him, the information that the judge had for each case and then setting the cases on a monthly basis and then determining the number of cases to set, the type of cases on a monthly basis and send it to Judge for his approval. Additionally, the law clerks back then would prepare a docket list for the judge every month. Back when I clerked for Judge there might be 30 to 35 cases on a given docket, and he would have his own jury panel that would report to his court. One large jury panel would actually serve the court for three months and all of the cases that were set for trial, the jurors would be picked from that panel. So you might have jurors that actually served 3 or 4 times on jury panels or even more. The docket would be called first of every month we would prepare a list outlining what each case was about for judge. Judge would go through that list and ask questions about each case if he had any, and occasionally pull the file himself depending on the case and review it prior to docket call. At docket call and jury selection each of the cases would be set for trial during the course of that month and each jury would be picked. Judge would usually give each side 10 minutes to go over the jury panel which is a fairly short period of time. But he would pick a tremendous number of juries and a tremendous number of cases.
MF: Discuss changes in the court during your tenure. What judges initiated these changes?
RSD: We became computerized. When I started with judge there was only one computer in the chamber and that computer was "manned", if you want to call it that, by Judge's Secretary Betty Rhinehart. She basically was the only person who knew how to use that computer system. And it was huge, a behemoth of a computer and it had, now we have tiny little floppy disks, back then these disks looked the same but were about five times as big. That's what everything would be stored on. We worked on IBM Selectrics, and we were very happy because they had the automatic backspace and erase buttons. So you could go back and erase each letter in sequence that it had been typed out, instead of a whole word or using correction fluid. But we would type up these huge dockets on IBM Selectrics. One clerk would have the odd numbers and on clerk would have the even numbers. So everything we had for judge was on the IBMs…we would draft out, usually by hand draft opinions for Judge. Those would be submitted to Betty to form into an initial draft. Like findings of fact and conclusions of law. So basically Judge would conference with us and tell us after cases were heard or conference with us on motions and tell us how he would rule on the case and authority that he was going to rely on and kind of spell it out for us. Then the law clerks would draft up, create an initial draft of the opinion and order that Judge would sign. And then judge would review those opinions and orders, sometimes pull the cases, if it was an area of law that we didn't deal with all the time. But generally judge had his memory, he could remember case names from 40 years ago. And he could generally review opinions and know if the law clerks were missing a beat. He's amazing, he's the least reversed judge in the eastern districts of Texas.
MF: Procedural?
RSD: At the time I worked there I guess there were a few procedural changes. Prior to my time there, and in fact the last year I worked there, Judge worked a circuit essentially. He would hear cases in Tyler, and Marshall and occasionally hear cases in Texarkana or Sherman or Paris or one of the other divisions. Generally it would be Marshall. That process stopped after my first year there. Each judge was assigned, except for conflict cases, one area that they would primarily sit in.
MF: Interpretations of the law?
RSD: Yeah, you would have Supreme Court and Fifth-Circuit, that would rule on issues from time to time that would ever change the law or create a new body of law that you would have to deal with and it occurred on a fairly consistent basis. Back when I was with Judge the Americans With Disabilities Act was brand new and we started getting cases with the ADA. Dow v Bayer (that's what he said, don't know if the spelling is right) was new which was a disqualification of experts with a lack of real knowledge of the subject matter or testing over the subject matter. And Judge actually had one of the premier cases on that issue involving Merill-Dow pharmaceuticals. There was a lot of movement during that time period on how jail litigation was handled, Judge Justice spearheaded the Ruiz case and Steger had a tremendous amount of prisoner litigation. And basically at that time the procedures were changed to where spears hearings (that's what he said but I don't know what they are) were allowed. And a lot of these inmate cases would go first to a magistrate judge for determination as to whether they had a case or not before they proceeded to Judge Steger at the district level.
MF: Discuss public perception of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas.
RSD: I think it has varied from time to time, depending on the issues that were in front of the courts. Back during the period when you had school desegregation issues going on and prison litigation issues going on a lot of the general public really did not like the federal court system. Over time things progressed to where a lot of the faith in the federal judicial system was restored after the turbulent years of the 70s.
MF: What was Judge Steger like?
RSD: The word that comes to my mind and that people talk about and laugh about all the time is he's like a big teddy bear. He really is. He's just the nicest guy in the world; he has a huge heart. He would do just about anything he could for anybody.
MF: Describe your interaction with Judge Steger.
RSD: We got to be very close, I've always really looked up to him like a father. He'd take you out fishing, usually it would be the senior clerk. But when I was a junior clerk I loved to fish, so Judge would take me out fishing with him even when I was junior clerk. That was the greatest time in the world. You'd be out there with Judge all day. You'd wake up at 5 and be out at his house by 5:30, we would fish from 5:30 until it got dark. And I remember the first time I went fishing with him he was older back then, in his late 60s or early 70s and he was stalwart, he would be out there all day long, he wouldn't tire. First time I went I figured we would fish the morning and go back in and go back to work. But we fished all day, and I didn't take sunscreen and I got so sun-burned, I mean my ears were peeling it looked like I had some horrible skin disease.
MF: How had Judge Steger influenced your career?
RSD: Most of my litigation now is federal court litigation, probably 75% of what I do is in federal court. So he's influenced what I do tremendously from the area of the subject matter of litigation that I handle. Because it's the area that I dealt with primarily when I was with Judge Steger. From a professional and personal standpoint, I always (and this may sound crazy), but I always ask myself what I think Judge would do in particular situations, from how to try a lawsuit and how you question a witness to how you act in a court and how you treat the court staff, the court personnel the judge, jury panel all the way down; everything that you do in court, I ask myself what judge would do and look back to how he handled attorneys.
MF: So he taught you Etiquette?
RSD: All the etiquette as well as the area of my subject matter. More than anything else, every attorney is faced with as a practice the ethical issues, you just are, it is the nature of the beast. Of everyone I've known in my life, Judge Steger had more integrity than anybody else I've ever known. To the point where he would not replace the curtains in his office until they literally were falling apart. They were absolutely disintegrated, because they had been up there 30 years. And he would painstakingly go through the long distance calls from the office to make sure that if he made a long distance call from the office it had been properly paid by him and not the government, it didn't matter if it was 30 cents. There was a black and there was a white and there were no greys. I cannot think of a time that I knew him and worked for him that he's ever done anything improper, it's just amazing. That's in his personal life and professionally.
MF: Don't see that as much nowadays.
RSD: There's a lot of folks that I really respect out there but that whole generation was a special generation - the WWII generation. If you look at Judges life, everywhere from flying "spitfires" in North Africa, a British plane, one of 2 American groups; to being one of the test pilots of jets in the United States; youngest U.S. attorney at the time in history when he was appointed by Eisenhower. Up until the time he was appointed to the federal bench everything he did in his life was legendary and he did it with tremendous integrity, it's amazing.
MF: What judges have been influential to you and how?
RSD: I think very highly of William Justice, he and Judge Steger were diametrically opposed politically and their rulings on a lot of issues were probably different but I have great personal and professional respect for Judge Justice. I didn't always personally agree with every decision that he handed down but he was a very fine man. Currently Judge Hannah and Judge Guthrie probably are the three judges that I know best on the bench and Judge McKey right now at the federal courts. They've molded my practice somewhat as well, but they base the way that they handle their courts, and they'll tell you this, they base the way that they handle their courts and try law suits on the way that Judge Steger did because that's who raised them in federal courts. Judge Ward will tell you, if you're a former Steger law clerk he'll tell you: "you know the way Judge Steger did everything? That's the way it's done here." And pretty much the same with Judge Hannah. Judge Steger was such a good judge that all these guys have patterned what they do after him. And they're all brilliant men and women but you see a lot of Judge Steger in the way they do things.
MF: What cases have been influential?
RSD: There was a great case and Judge Steger always laughed, he would call me Robert Fun Davis because I thought all these cases were fun. I just had a blast working them and helping judge on them and watching the attorneys in court. You can learn so much, for one thing when you watch all these cases get tried, and back then Judge had case after case after case that went to trial. Now it seems like nothing gets tried, back then everything, you saw tons of cases go to trial. So you got to see a lot of really good attorneys and some attorneys that you'd see their performance in court and think "Damn I shouldn't be intimidated anymore, this isn't so tough!" But you get to see the really good attorneys. I guess the case that stands out most in my mind while I worked for Judge was the case of Dorfman et al v Art Machen and associates; it was a huge oil and gas case, everything from re-co to fraud to conversion it had tons of causes of action in it. And one of the attorneys in fact that led attorney for the defendants was T. John Ward who is now a federal district judge here in Tyler. It was the longest case that Judge Steger ever tried. The case lasted about 5 weeks, if you know Judge, cases lasted about 2 or 3 days. This case probably had 20 attorneys involved in it, just in the courtroom, not to mention the attorneys who had done research on the issues. There were multiple parties and it took a long time to try. And it was such a cool case to be involved in it was really fun. And Judge kind of spearheaded a process and it had been talked about before theoretically, but I didn't know of any other occasions when it had been implemented in the eastern district. There were so many pieces of evidence in this case, such a huge case, that the day before anything was going to be admitted into evidence the attorney would appear in front of magistrate Judge Judith Guthrie. Judge Guthrie would make an initial determination on the admissibility of the evidence that was being sought to be introduced. And that determination could in essence be appealed to Judge Steger. But while trial was going on in Judge Steger's courtroom there was another procedure going on right down the hall in magistrate Judge Guthrie's courtroom to determine the admissibility of evidence. That way you avoided [a case] like the O.J. Simpson case and that nutty Judge out in California , you avoided all these silly bench conferences where you have to take the jury out and it's just a waste of time, Judge doesn't do that. He doesn't play those silly California games that you see going on. It moves fast and you administer justice the proper way. Judge would come up with very inventive ways to do that like using Judge Guthrie on the evidentiary issues prior to the use in his courtroom. And it worked out beautifully.
MF: What judges have affected daily life and the community?
RSD: I think Judge Steger had and I think Justice has. I think that trend continues on with Judge Hannah, the chief judge and Judge Ward on down the line with the other federal district judges. The federal court, if you're an attorney, is known to be very well run and well ordered. You get scheduled, you don't get continued in your cases, you go to trial. Unless you're dying you go to trial, so the process of justices moves very rapidly in federal court. It's not held up for long periods of time, things are handled in the proper way. Because of the types of cases they handle they handle criminal cases and major criminal cases, and criminal defendants know that if they're guilty of the crime they're going to be held to task. And they're not going to get out of a criminal charge easily if they're guilty. But by the same token, the U.S. attorney's office knows that if they bring these charges against people that they better have the evidence to back it up. And the presentation in court better be professional and well done. And civil litigants know the exact same thing. You don't play games in this court you present you evidence and abide by the rules and if you don't you'll be jumped on with both feet. I personally know that because there have been a few times I've been jumped on with both feet. It's very Steger-esque, if I can use that term, in the way that the judges handle themselves in the eastern district. I think Judge Steger, probably more than any other jurist has set a precedent for the way that judges handle the litigants, attorneys and courts in the eastern district. Now Judge Justice was very influential in terms of the types of cases he handled, he was a proponent of civil rights. I think that trend has continued on with Judge Hannah. The difference is that back then Judge Justice was being criticized by the news media for doing the things he was doing, and those criticisms now as we sit here today were very improper. Judge Justice was doing the right thing under the law and the right thing according to the precedent that was out there. Judge Hannah now is to a very large extent carrying on that task. The difference is, and I handle a lot of civil rights litigations for a lot of counties, if Judge Hannah is not happy with a procedure or some way that we're doing business, like if he doesn't like the way that we execute warrants or he doesn't like the way that we do interdiction work, then by-golly we change it. We do it the way that he wants it done. And he wants it done the right way, so we listen very carefully to what the court says. Back in the 70s I'm not sure that everyone listened to the federal judges the way they should have, and a lot of people got sent to prison because of it, a lot of sheriffs and city commissioners.
MF: What issues were the most important?
RSD: I think for Judge his biggest impacts, there were multiple, I think he had a big impact on shaping civil rights litigation because of his decisions. He would take the law and apply it to the facts, he wouldn't jump out there and go overboard. He had a tremendous impact on criminal litigation and cases, especially on the application of re-co and forfeiture cases; and also some of his interpretations of the Americans with Disabilities Act.
MF: How has the law changed as a result of the U.S. District court for the Eastern District of Texas?
RSD: I think there's been a tremendous impact in the way that re-co cases are tried. Judge Steger probably had the first reported re-co case out of his court in fact I made a note of the case. I try to keep track of some of the judges more noteworthy rulings. That case was in 1980 and it was one of the first cases that applied re-co. Re-co is a very complicated statue, but this case resulted in the conviction of numerous county officials for offences ranging from corruption to murder. And actually, this is interesting, Judge Hannah was the U.S. attorney at the time and he tried that case in Judge Steger's court. It was a case against a commissioner, sheriff and several officials from Gregg county. I was trying to remember the defendants names, but I cannot remember offhand. I should have them written down…Sheriff Welch. The case will be under the United States v Welch (maybe Welsh). Judge Steger told me what Judge Hannah's closing line of the case was it was a summation to the jury, and he said: "These county officials have sullied the constitution just as surely as if they spat upon the flag." And he pointed to the U.S. flag, and Judge Steger said you couldn't hear a word in the courtroom, a very dramatic moment. Judge Steger's interpretation of re-co has been the interpretation that has held since the statue came out until the present day, I mean he really set the trend for it. U.S. v Cobble was a criminal case that Judge handled, it was also a re-co case, was another case where Judge Steger really built the body of re-co law especially criminal re-co law. Rex Cobble used to own this place in Dallas where they would sell all this country, kind of cowboy gear, in fact I shopped there when I was in high school - back in the urban cowboy years. Cutter Bill's that was the name of the place, but his guy, they called it the cowboy mafia. Cutter Bill's wasn't working out for him so he was flying all these drugs in to his ranches and they would get them off shrimp boats and they'd take them to the ranches. It was quite a big deal. Another case was the U.S. v D.K.G., also a re-co case, you can also see where the re-co line is going here. That case was incredible, it was a ranch up in Denton, this guy who owned this ranch who had been a stock car driver. That was the way that they had moved the drugs around the country, this guy was based in Florida and transported all the drugs where he would go race. So they would drop the drugs off from city to city while he was on this racing circuit. So he got sentenced for that down in Florida, but the judge down there was a very liberal judge down in Florida. He basically turned this guy over almost scott-free just for giving some information about his contacts. So this guy moved up to Denton County and was continuing to do the same thing he did before, running it out of Denton County. When he was caught here, it came to an end. The fascinating thing about his case was when the Marshall Service went out and raided the property. There are some pictures that are probably still in the file; but this guy had gotten wind that they were coming to raid his place so he had his cars packed up, his Mercedes'. He had gold bars in his trunk, bags of gold jewelry and hundreds of thousands of dollars in case I mean he was ready to roll when they caught him. Judge Steger basically forfeited all those items, so that was one of the first forfeiture cases, it was about 10 million dollars. It was later auctioned. But that was one of the first re-co/drug forfeiture cases that was handled in the United States. It's still cited extensively. If you look at the citation history of the case, out of the fifth circuit court, it'll blow your mind. Literally hundreds of citations.
MF: In what direction is the court moving?
RSD: I think the court in the east district is right where it should be, I think it's a very moderate court. I don't think it's liberal or conservative, I think it's a court where the judges let you present your case and try your case. There is not a whole lot of judicial activism, judges aren't out there to overrule the Supreme Court in the eastern district, they're trying to do what judges are supposed to do, which is apply the existing laws to the facts that are pres in court. That is what Judge Steger has preached for years and that is the way I see the court going is exactly the way he preached it.
MF: Did Judge Steger shape the times, or was he a product of them?
RSD: I think Judge shaped the times and I think he's had a tremendous amount to do with shaping the present day. You know judge was not a judicial activist who tried to rewrite the law he basically maintained a very steady and stable course throughout the times of the turbulent 60s and mid-70s. He didn't do strange things, he stayed the course and he followed the law and applied the facts to the law and I think the reason we're at such a moderate stage right now is because Judge Steger stayed the course. He resisted all the calls across the nation for judges to be activist and to do things that were not in their periphery. Really in my estimations there is a separation of powers, in my mind he never overstepped or crossed that line. I think that we're in a very moderate position and a good position where the law is applied to the facts, the laws that exist, largely because of Judge Steger. He sat that precedent. The judges who are on the bench right now all tried cases before Judge Steger, and they all appreciated the fact that when you came into judges court you didn't have a judge thinking he was going to change the law, he was just going to be honest and try the case. You really feel like you get crewed around with as an attorney when the judge is set up against you, and that happens in some courts. It doesn't happen in the eastern district of Texas, now and sure didn't happen then. They do the same thing as Steger. If you really want to be in front of judges who know what they're doing and know how to try cases, then the eastern district is the place to be. I would put the eastern district, now I've practiced in all the districts of Texas more-so in the eastern, this court in the eastern district is better than any other court in Texas. That's just the honest to God truth.