Professor Goldings
Once upon a time Morris Goldings was a big-name lawyer in this town, a champion of the First Amendment, which in his case meant he defended those who ran the strip joints and porno houses when the Combat Zone was an interesting place on a Friday night. Then Goldings, known for his straw hats in summer and fedoras in winter, got caught stealing $17 million of his clients' money, and did almost three years of soft time in a federal minimum-security pen, where he was known as number 24149-038. Now his students call him professor.
Goldings, contacted through his Boston lawyer, Steven Brooks, didn't call me back yesterday. And his new employer, Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., said no one was available to talk because a tropical storm was on the way. But the school's website lists Goldings -- disbarred and still on probation -- as part of the ''core faculty" for the Criminal Justice Institute, which focuses on ''complex theory and issues surrounding criminal behavior, prevention and intervention."
''Our instructors are waiting to share their experience and knowledge with you," Tammy Kushner, the institute's director, says on the website. (Goldings also works as a paralegal.)
Considering his experience, Goldings is marvelously qualified to teach Fraud 101. To recap: In early 2001, Goldings checked himself into a psychiatric hospital after his partners blew the whistle on millions in missing client funds. The numbers eventually added up to $17 million from such longtime Goldings clients as the widow of former governor Endicott ''Chub" Peabody and Brockton's Petronelli family, which helped develop Marvin Hagler into the middleweight champion.
In 2002, Goldings got a wet-kiss sentence from US District Judge William Young, a hanging judge who let Goldings off with three years and three years' probation and ordered him to write a 50-page essay on ''why I ripped off my friends and clients." Where the money went only Goldings knows for sure. Three former clients have received $375,000 from a fund that reimburses the victims of crooked lawyers; nobody has gotten a dime out of the bankruptcy court yet. Goldings firm, Mahoney, Hawkes & Goldings, dissolved in the wake of the mess.
We are still waiting for the tell-all essay from Goldings. But if victims are expecting a humbled Morris Goldings, they should think again.
For 18 months, while he was doing easy time at the Federal Medical Center at Devens, Goldings was using his Harvard Law training to fight a pitched legal battle with the government to be released early to a halfway house. And he won -- including $170.85 in court costs. That is $170.85 more than most of Goldings's victims have recovered. No one ever said the man was a bad lawyer, only that he was a thief.
Humility is not a word that comes to mind as you read motion after motion by this jailhouse lawyer. He lectures prosecutors about ''pointless lawyering," accuses the government of ''clever wording," ''avoidance of the facts" and lack of ''candor," and complains of the ''dilatory and really contemptuous approach of the government." Goldings, 68, whines the government's actions are costing him Social Security benefits, forcing him to pay $180.80 a month for Blue Cross insurance he can't use.
The injustice of it all is almost enough to make me weep. ''I need to resume employment as soon as possible," Goldings tells the court in a footnote. ''My Social Security has been suspended [and] my wife's employability is limited because of responsibilities as the only child to her 98-year-old father."
And on and on it goes. My favorite line among his diatribes about how terribly unfair the government is being: ''There is more than a little chutzpah in all of this."
Professor Goldings could teach a graduate course in chutzpah.
Steve Bailey is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at bailey@globe.com or at 617-929-2902.
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