Note to East Coast Lawyers: Manage Your Trial Schedules With Care

[WSJ_law_blog]

The tale of Herald Price Fahringer (pictured), a New York litigator, offers a lesson in the value of full disclosure.

Fahringer, who is known for defending Hustler publisher Larry Flynt, pornographers, sex shops and porn theaters over the decades, recently drew the ire of a federal judge for not disclosing scheduling conflicts regarding two criminal cases of his that are set to go to trial this fall. (For a 1996 NYT profile of Fahringer (Buffalo Law, ‘56), click here.)

According to a six-page order by Manhattan’s U.S. District Judge Richard Sullivan, Fahringer took over a case in Sullivan’s court in May of this year, knowing that the trial was firmly set for early September and how much pre-trial preparation would be required. (That case, involving the prosecution of Alberto Vilar, a once prominent art buyer who ran a money-management firm that collapsed in 2005, was the subject of a WSJ Page One story.)

Sullivan said Fahringer assured the court that he was familiar with an order stating that the trial would last about seven weeks. But Fahringer didn’t tell the judge he had another trial set to begin in early October, less than four weeks after the Vilar trial was supposed to begin. Sullivan said he would not have let Fahringer into the Vilar case if he had known that.

Fahringer later asked for an adjournment in the Vilar case until November, saying he needed more time to prepare, though he still didn’t tell the court about the October trial, Sullivan wrote. Three weeks ago, Sullivan grudgingly granted the adjounment–but pushed the trial to late September, less than two weeks before Fahringer’s other trial was about to start.

In a hearing last week before the judge handling that other case, Fahringer, in explaining the scheduling conflict, said that when he took over the Vilar case, he anticipated that trial would take only four weeks. Fahringer had “no reasonable basis” to say that, other than his “apparent desire to explain away his mishandling of the trial schedule,” Sullivan wrote. “It appears to this Court that Mr. Fahringer made a significant gamble, which he has now lost, in hoping that” Sullivan would grant a longer adjournment without knowing about the other trial.

Reached by phone this afternoon, Fahringer said he was disappointed about the judge’s order but didn’t think it was appropriate to comment. A status hearing is set for tomorrow.