<Begin Segment 21>

MC: I don't know exactly how to ask this question, but it seems to me that that sort of, the kinds of strategies and approaches that you were using in your early law practice, seems to be at odds with some of the core values of many Asian American cultures, that is, go with the flow, don't create waves and so on and so forth. And did you ever feel any sense of contradiction as you were doing this? Or had you become so assimilated into maybe the civil rights countercultural types of social movements that you didn't really feel any stress?

DM: No, it was always scary to do something like this, 'cause you're doing, you're taking a risk. And then it's not a risk just about yourself, it's a risk of whether you're gonna be successful for your client. So you kind of feel responsible for the strategy that you develop. And the lawyer part aside, I think still, I was a little bit worried. But I think of when I was younger and crazier and they didn't have what they call Rule Eleven sanctions, which is a rule that's been enforced now that if you file something frivolous the other side can make you pay billions of dollars in attorney's fees. We could do anything we want then. So the contours of law have changed a little bit in that area and made people a little more restrained. But no, I did, I did... there were twinges, I guess. But I guess, you know what it is? If you believe in the rightness of your cause, if you believe they really screwed this guy, which I really believe, then there's no reason not to screw them back. It just seemed like a perfectly symmetrical equation that is totally acceptable to my conscience. The problem I have sometimes is, you know, if you got a client that wasn't as screwed, as totally screwed. You gotta believe in it a hundred percent to do that. Then you don't feel quite comfortable doing something to someone else. It's my own sense of justice, is what it is. So it's not susceptible of a formula, I don't think, but I think, I think in Don's case there's no question that we did whatever we could. And Fred Korematsu and Gordon Hirabayashi and Min Yasui, no question we were right.

MC: You were fueled --

DM: It was the same thing.

MC: Sure, you were fueled by a sense of righteousness about your cause.

DM: Exactly. It's wonderful to have that clarity of vision. You don't always get this in an ambiguous, gray world. And one of the first class-actions I did, the California Blue Shield case, the same thing. I knew we were right. But those cases aren't, you don't get all the time, or that often, I should say.

<End Segment 21> - Copyright © 2003 Densho. All Rights Reserved.