Scott Glovsky:

Welcome to Trial Lawyer Talk. I’m Scott Glovsky, and I’m your host for this podcast where we speak with some of the best lawyers in the country. Today, we’re very lucky we have Jim Leach. Jim is a wonderful lawyer from South Dakota who really has walked the walk and talked the talk. He’s fought for the rights of Native Americans for years, decades. He’s fought for the right of the downtrodden, the poor, the abused, and he really is an inspiration for all of us. He practices out of South Dakota, but his cases have national impact and are really, really involve lessons for all of us and a lot of insight. So let’s get started.

I’m very happy to be talking with Jim Leach, who is such a wonderful guy that’s been part of the foundation for Trial Lawyers College, and truly a lawyer that represents what I think we all aspire to, who’s fighting to make people’s lives better every day, and has devoted his career to doing this. Jim moved to South Dakota right after graduating from law school in 1975 to work as a volunteer lawyer for the Wounded Knee Defense Committee, a pro bono organization that defended Native Americans that were charged with serious federal crimes after they occupied the village of Wounded Knee for 71 days in their search for a better life. Over the years, he’s done many different types of cases and legal work, including environmental and treaty cases on behalf of Native Americans, and most recently, he’s one several lawsuits on behalf of prisoners. He’s had three successive laws enacted by the state of South Dakota that restricted election rights to be held unconstitutional. It’s really my pleasure to be talking with Jim Leach today. Jim, thank you so much for being with us.

Jim Leach:

Well, thank you for inviting me, Scott, and I hope I’m worthy of that very kind introduction.

Scott Glovsky:

Yeah, well, you are. Jim, can you share with us a story of a case that had a profound impact on you?

Jim Leach:

Yes. The one most recently that comes to mind is a case that successfully challenged the practice of small police departments in South Dakota of forcibly catheterizing drug suspects when needed to try to get evidence of drug use.

Scott Glovsky:

Can you share with us the story from your client’s perspective?

Jim Leach:

Right, I-

Scott Glovsky:

Can you reverse roles with your client?

Jim Leach:

Well, yes. I had six clients in the same case, all bringing the same claims, each arising from a completely separate factual circumstance. But the one client who I think was actually the most important client in the case, because her treatment said the most to the judge about the reality of this, was a woman named Gina Alvarez. I can take on the role of Gina and speak as Gina if that would be helpful.

Scott Glovsky:

Yes, please reverse roles with Gina.

Jim Leach:

All right. Well, I live outside the small town of Winner, South Dakota, and it’s hostile to everyone except well off white people. I know that. But I was with my boyfriend, and we were drinking, and I was driving home, and apparently I failed to dim my headlights at night when I went past this oncoming state trooper. So he turned around and pulled me over, and arrested me for a DUI. But that’s just the beginning of the story, that’s not the end.

Scott Glovsky:

What happened next?

Jim Leach:

Well, I basically started to freak out because I have a problem being in closed spaces, and he put me in the back of his patrol vehicle, and I just … I hadn’t been using any drugs except marijuana, and I just started to freak out. What I’m going to tell you now is not a secret because it’s been filed, and it was eventually filed in the court case in my deposition. But I have a history of really a lot of abuse, of every kind of abuse, in my family of origin. What happened, and how this played into what happened, is that this trooper thought that I was under the influence of drugs, and he took me to a local hospital, and as … I was freaking out. I was yelling about my having been abused, and I was yelling at my father, and my father wasn’t even there.

Jim Leach:

As I did that, a nurse stripped off my pants and my underpants, and a male patrol officer actually grabbed one of my legs and held it open, and the nurse grabbed the other leg, and another nurse stuck a catheter into my urethra, and up my urethra into my bladder, and I just was freaking out. This is so hard because of my prior experiences in life. They drained the urine out, and finally took the catheter out, and they had their urine.

Scott Glovsky:

Gina, if you could put that feeling in a sound, what you’re feeling at this moment when you’re being attacked-

Jim Leach:

As Gina, I don’t think I want to do that to your listeners.

Scott Glovsky:

You must have been absolutely terrified.

Jim Leach:

I was terrified, I was out of my mind, basically.

Scott Glovsky:

A lot of pain.

Jim Leach:

Yeah, there was pain, but it was just … I was reliving things that happened to me long ago.

Scott Glovsky:

A lot of trauma.

Jim Leach:

Yep.

Scott Glovsky:

You must have felt powerless.

Jim Leach:

Beyond powerless. I was and am a working person. I had a small, little restaurant that I was running and keeping open. I’ve worked my whole life. I just … trying to get by. And to have police do this to me, it was one of the most humiliating things that’s ever occurred to me in my life.

Scott Glovsky:

Gina, what else do we need to know?

Jim Leach:

I had some physical problems. I had a urinary infection that I had to be treated for. This experience affected my relations with my boyfriend a lot because I just couldn’t be close to anyone and couldn’t be close in the same way that we had been before. I had flashbacks about this. It was all … There was nothing that was ever going to be done. I plead guilty to DUI, and then about a year later, out of the blue, I heard from this lawyer.

Scott Glovsky:

Okay.

Jim Leach:

That’s when the case started.

Scott Glovsky:

Okay. Then, Gina, let me have you reverse back with Jim.

Jim Leach:

Okay, I’m back. Jim’s back.

Scott Glovsky:

How are you feeling, Jim?

Jim Leach:

Okay. Kind of emotional.

Scott Glovsky:

Now, Jim, we’re going to hear your story that … although we’ve heard, obviously, part of it. How do you get involved in this case?

Jim Leach:

Well, I think there’s two stories to that. There’s the deep story, and then there’s the less deep story. I think I can tell them both really shortly. The deep story is that I’ve always wanted to work for people who are social outcasts, and what are sometimes called isolates in society. I think that’s because I grew up extremely emotionally isolated, and it took me a long time to overcome that. But the more direct story is that I became aware of this practice, that it was going on in South Dakota at all, when a newspaper article appeared about a man this had happened to in central South Dakota. I live in Rapid City, which is … It’s about 70,000 people, which is the second largest city in South Dakota. It had never happened here, but in some small towns in South Dakota, it did happen, and I later learned it had been going on for at least 20 years. It had probably happened to hundreds of people. But all that knowledge came later.

At first, I just learned about this one man. I read this newspaper article and I thought, “My God, that’s shocking. How can anything like that go on in the 21st century, let alone the 20th? This is horrible.” And I just felt I had to do something. I said I don’t know where this is going, but I don’t think I can respect myself unless I try to do something about this. So, I used that ethical rule that I don’t think a lot of lawyers know about, which is Model Rule of Professional Conduct 7.3B, B as in baker. It’s a rule that’s been adopted pretty much everywhere across the country, and it allows lawyers in cases that are not seeking monetary gain for the lawyer to make direct solicitation of a client by directly contacting the client. In other words, I think we all know that if someone had a motor vehicle collision, or something bad happen to them, as a lawyer, we’re prohibited from direct in person solicitation. But, in a case where the lawyer is not seeking financial gain, rule 7.3B allows it.

I always knew that if I did these cases, they’d be pro bono cases. The only way I’d ever get paid, not from the clients, but if I won the case, and if I could surmount the other obstacles toward a fee award, I could get paid by the defendants. In those circumstances, I just … I contacted the person in the newspaper article and talked to him, and he definitely was interested in filing a lawsuit. Then it went from there, and through investigation, and then later through discovery, I found my other five clients, including Gina Alvarez.

Scott Glovsky:

Tell us about your journey in the case.

Jim Leach:

The short story, the short version is tha