Page 7 - NYLS Magazine • 2016 • Vol 35, No. 1

When Helen Palsgraf commenced her lawsuit, she retained Matthew Wills Wood, Class of 1903. Wood had served as president of the senior class, graduated with honors, and was one of four students from his class to receive a graduation award—it was second prize of $100. The third prize winner (of $75) was his classmate and future Pulitzer Prize- winning poet, Wallace Stevens, Class of 1903. In 1908, Wood opened his own office at 80-82 William Street, down the block from where New York Law School would call home between 1947 and 1962.
The head of the Long Island Railroad’s legal department was Joseph F. Keany, Class of 1895. Because he viewed the likelihood of liability to Palsgraf as quite small, he selected a young lawyer, William McNamara, Class of 1923, an Evening Division graduate, to defend the case. He would handle the trial of the case as well as both appeals.
Wood retained an expert witness to testify to Palsgraf ’s emotional injuries resulting from the explosion. The expert he retained—for a fee of $125—was Dr. Graeme M. Hammond, Class of 1897 and an 1881 graduate of the NYU Medical College. Dr. Hammond was at the time one of the preeminent authorities in the field of neurology. Dr. Hammond’s most notable appearance as an expert came in 1907, when he testified for the defense in the first trial of Harry K. Thaw for the murder of Stanford White. That trial resulted in a hung jury. (At his second trial, Thaw was represented by Martin W. Littleton, Class of 1897, who won an acquittal on the grounds of insanity.)
In addition to the three lawyers and one expert witness, two New York Law School alumni served as judges in the Palsgraf proceedings. In the Appellate Division, which heard the Long Island Railroad’s unsuccessful appeal from the jury’s verdict in favor of Palsgraf, one of the three judges voting to affirm the award to Palsgraf was William F. Hagarty, Class of 1898. The second judge was New York Court of Appeals Judge John Francis O’Brien, Class of 1898. Judge O’Brien was the court’s newest member when Palsgraf was argued and was one of the three judges dissenting from the majority opinion overturning the verdict.
Morris Ernst, Class of 1912 - A Champion of Free Speech and Individual Privacy Rights
One of the most significant obscenity cases of the 20th century arose out of James Joyce’s literary masterpiece Ulysses, which had been banned from importation into the United States as “obscene.” No one would publish it in the U.S. until 1932, when Random House offered to do so and fight the certain legal battle. Copies were mailed to New York, and customs officers duly seized them. The lead attorney for Random House was Morris Ernst, Class
of 1912, and a member of New York Law School’s Evening Division. Ernst was a founder of the renowned firm
Greenbaum, Wolff & Ernst and he was recognized as a major champion of free speech.
Ernst contested the seizure at a trial before Judge John M. Woolsey in Manhattan federal court in 1933, arguing that community standards change with time, and that Ulysses as a whole could no longer be viewed as obscene. Judge Woolsey agreed, and, in a much-lauded opinion, allowed Ulysses to be admitted into the United States. The Second Circuit Court of Appeals later affirmed Judge Woolsey’s decision. Ernst continued to achieve great successes in cases arising under the First Amendment and other constitutional provisions. In Roth v. United States, the Supreme Court addressed for the first time whether criminal obscenity laws could withstand constitutional scrutiny under the First Amendment. Ernst submitted an amicus brief on behalf of the American Civil Liberties Union.
Morris Ernst, Class of 1912
Estelle Griswold
Ernst was also author of an amicus
brief in Griswold v. Connecticut, a case providing an important milestone in the development and articulation of the right of privacy and its range of applicability. Indeed, it paved the way for commonly understood privacy principles to extend to controversial areas of life, namely
the regulation of access to birth control and contraception, and eventually to abortion. Griswold’s most important legacy is the precedent it set as the critical underpinning for the Supreme Court’s 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade—and other cases that would come later—where Justice Blackmun wrote: “the Court
has recognized that a right of personal privacy, or a guarantee of certain areas
or zones of privacy, does exist under the Constitution.”
Amicus brief in Griswold v. Connecticut by Morris Ernst, Class of 1912
Matthew Wills Wood, Class of 1903
Martin W. Littleton, Class of 1897
Joseph F. Keany, Class of 1895
William F. Hagarty, Class of 1898
Dr. Graeme M. Hammond, Class of 1897
Judge John Francis O’Brien, Class of 1898
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