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WitHout reCourse: Harvey, tHe real estate laWyer
because, as he put it, the rent provisions were totally incomprehensible. Needless to say, this was not an ideal beginning. It was not the way in which one would normally initiate a conference between parties who, theoretically at least, sought to cooperate to make a transaction happen. In fact, Pollack’s act sounded like a deal killer, but why in the world would it be necessary to have a score of people assemble just to say no? Would we have to renegotiate the entire transaction? Would we have to rewrite a fifty-page article (for which I had the primary drafting respon- sibility through many months of negotiating and hard work)? Should we ask Ben what changes he would like so that the document could be understood? Should we get up and leave? No, no, no, and no.
I was shocked by the unexpected and incalculably rude display, but I refused to be thrown off my game. Quite innocently, I said to the assembled group that I was stunned to hear that the document could not be comprehended. I acted as though Ben must have been kidding, even though I knew that he was deadly serious and was out to embar- rass us and demonstrate his superiority in front of his clients—not to mention ours.
How to rescue the situation? “Mr. Pollack” (not “Ben”), I addressed him, “didn’t your young tax partner [who, as it turns out, was present] write a memorandum concerning and summarizing the rent provisions, one that he sent to me for comment?” Pollack had no choice but to affirm that he had. I then told the group that I thought that the memorandum was not only very clear but also flawless. (I resisted saying that if his young lawyer had understood the rent provision, then anyone, even Ben, could understand it.) I thought that that essentially put the issue to rest, but Pollack, who was probably embarrassed and slightly sidetracked but needed to be in control, could not be easily deterred. “Mr. Yaver- baum,” he said, professorially, with a hint of “I’ll show you” in his voice, “would you turn to section 10(f) of Article Three of your lease?”
Thanks to Pollack, who provided the draft with a flourish, I was now sitting with a copy of the three-hundred-plus-page document in front of me. But for some reason—and I don’t know what possessed me—I
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