Page 450 - WhyAsInY

Why (as in yaverbaum)
three prospective permanent lenders for their approval—and they, in turn, were all represented by Kelley Drye & Warren, whose website boasts that it has been at it since 1836! (Why that is of any importance in a negotiation is beyond me, but because Kelley Drye thinks that one should be impressed by the fact that it started billing for its time when Andrew Jackson was president, I have passed on that apparently crucial part of their resume; Rosenman somehow managed to trace its lineage to 1916—Woodrow Wilson was in the White House—and somehow that never had the slightest effect on me.)
The purpose of the meeting at Kelley Drye’s wood-paneled offices was to discuss the question whether or not the lease would have to be amended in order to make it “mortgageable” or “financeable” (in other words, in a form that would satisfy the concerns, arcane and otherwise, of institutional lenders who would have to live with the document if they had to foreclose and, therefore, would have to be able to become the tenant, prior to the termination of the ground lease, their security). There were at least twenty people, attorneys and clients, in the Kelley Drye conference room, but the meeting was essentially a contest between the most senior real estate partner at the law firm, Benjamin (“Ben”) Pollack, and yours truly, whom Pollack, for reasons known only to himself, thought that he had to best, if not humiliate. Pollack was a man who had earned a reputation over the decades as extremely expe- rienced, smart, serious, cold, and arrogant, bordering on mean. I, on the other hand, was a far less seasoned practitioner, and one whose normal style was to keep things light (within reason) and to be nothing but polite, warm, attentive, and rarely confrontational. On the other other hand, you’ll recall that in the past I had been obliged to argue in the presence of, or with, among others, Benjamin Munn Ziegler, Abe Fortas, Max Freund, and, of course, the most powerful adversary of them all, Justine Yaverbaum.
Pollack started the meeting by theatrically throwing up his hands, shaking his head negatively, and announcing to the entire room his authoritative conclusion that the lease was absolutely not financeable
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