4.Stephen Webster — Direct/Cross

STEPHEN WEBSTER: So I -- I had just started my firm, and, you know, like any small business, you're scared and you're hungry. And a friend of mine called me, Tor Friedman, and said, I have a client for you. And I was like, okay. And he said, He's a law professor. And I was like, okay. And he said, It's a family law case.

And I said, well, Tor, I don't do family law. You know that.

And he said, well, it doesn't matter. He's a law professor. He'll teach you everything you need to know.

And I said, Okay. Well, that makes sense. So I -- I agreed to meet with him. And the night before, I read all the papers, and they were voluminous. TI printed them and actually read every word.

And I -- we had already set up a meeting at voodoo coffee on Tennessee Street, and I really didn't think I was going to accept the case. I could just tell from the tenor of the papers that it was really, really contentious and it just didn't feel like something I probably wanted to get involved in. And -- but I wanted to meet him anyway, and so I met him and I liked him. I liked him a lot. And so I decided I would take the case.

I mean, it's not a prerequisite that I like you to represent you, but in something like that, I didn't want to get involved in a contempt-type case with law professors where, ultimately, it could end up being disrespectful to the court. And I didn't want to be involved in something like that if it was -- if I really felt like it was going to be that kind of a relationship. But when I met him, I didn't feel like it was going to be that way, and so I agreed to take it.

And his primary concerns were he wanted to get more time with his children, if at all possible, but he didn't want to change the -- kind of the time-sharing. He had kind of an unusual request. He wanted to see if there was any way that he could see the children every night when he didn't have them to tuck them into bed and kiss them goodnight. And he said, Look, I'll only stay five minutes. I promise, I won't bother anybody and I'll leave.

And I said, Dan, that's probably never going to happen. That's just probably not reasonable.

And then he was really concerned about parental alienation, which at the time, I wasn't, you know, really familiar with it. I didn't do family law. But I was familiar with it from the perspective of I learned about it in law school and stuff like that. But he was really concerned that the grandmother, Donna Adelson, was really trying to drive a wedge between him and the children.

And he actually told me that he heard her refer to him as "stupid" on a Skype call. He couldn't see her in the Skype screen, but he heard her say something to the effect of "Stupid's on the phone." And he was livid about it, and he was ready to basically kind of go to war over that.

STEPHEN WEBSTER: Yeah. And I -- I didn't have the opportunity to actually talk to him about that yet because he was killed. But it was my understanding that after that filing, he heard her -- actually, he heard her, because that's what he told me. He said, I heard her call me stupid. And -- but she wasn't in the screen but he knew her voice. And so he was very upset about that.

And then the other thing that he was upset about, he wanted the Holocaust diamond back.

STEPHEN WEBSTER: It's untrue. There's a reason he hired me. He didn't retain me because he needed a friend. Tor basically told me on the -- on the phone call, he said, Look, there's going to be a trial and it's going to be acrimonious. And he needs a lawyer that can go into the courtroom and be prepared to fight. He said, That's why I think you could handle this case.

And that was -- we were heading towards a trial. And he certainly -- you know, I mean, he sent me an e-mail the day before, talked about how he was irate because Wendi, unbeknownst to him, had actually enrolled -- or applied to have Ben enrolled at the School of Arts and Sciences, and she didn't even talk to Dan about it. So he found out the day before when he got called from the school saying that Ben had been accepted. And so he e-mailed me and said, I'm irate about this. He said, you know, I don't think it's appropriate. So no --

STEPHEN WEBSTER: Yeah. I mean, it was -- it was why I decided to take the case. I liked him. You know, he was actually funny. Like, he had good humor about it. Even kind of as acrimonious as all this was, the -- kind of the big picture stuff didn't really -- he didn't have any anger, you know. He was angry about the calling him stupid. That made him angry. But I think in his mind, eventually, a lot of this stuff would -- you know, would resolve and should resolve.

He -- you know, he wasn't -- he wasn't vindictive, you know, or vengeful, and that was a big part of the reason why I was willing to get involved. He was -- I felt like he was kind of looking at it like a business deal still, with the exception of the "stupid" comment. And, you know, so he was funny. And, I mean, obviously smart; smarter than I am, that's for sure so...