The lawyer beside Lindsay Lohan - Los Angeles Times

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AppId is over the quota

When Lindsay Lohan showed up for court on Thursday, the crowd was not as large as it has been for the actress — anticipating perhaps a resolution, rather than the sort of dramatic turn that's made her five-year legal saga as compelling as any TV reality show.

The 25-year-old Lohan has been in and out of jail and rehab so many times, her story line seemed to arc toward failure.

She blew off therapy and community service, ticked off counselors and judges. You never knew what to expect from her in the courtroom — a tearful plea, a pout, a fingernail painted with a vulgar taunt.

But one thing never seemed to change: the steady presence of lawyer Shawn Holley, who is as movie-star pretty as her client but has the gravitas to smooth Lohan's rough edges.

I've been pulling for Lohan from the beginning. She's a talented actress whose on-screen portrayals are an angsty mix of innocence and defiance. Her movies "Mean Girls" and "Freaky Friday" are classic favorites of my daughters.

But talk about bad role-modeling. As a fan, I found Lohan's missteps disappointing. As a mother, I found her jaunts exhausting. She became a symbol of the reckless self-absorption that's become routine for some young women — and I don't just mean Hollywood starlets.

As I watched her legal troubles mount — two DUIs and a jewelry theft — I took an odd sort of comfort from Holley's presence. They seemed to me more than client and lawyer.

When Lohan was sentenced to jail in 2010, she sobbed in the courtroom on Holley's shoulder. When Lohan was handcuffed in 2011, Holley looked down as her client was led out of court, as if the lawyer could not bear to watch.

On Thursday, Holley scribbled notes on her legal pad as the judge complimented Lohan's progress. She allowed herself the slightest smile when the judge pronounced Lohan's probation "terminated."

We witnessed the hug between Lohan and Holley. We didn't get to hear Lohan's whispered "I love you."

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A few hours after Lohan was freed, I headed off to meet her lawyer. In my 30-minute drive, I heard the story of Lohan's court hearing three times on the radio. She was wearing a "tight-fitting blue pantsuit," one announcer intoned.

She wasn't. It was more like teal, and it was tailored and tasteful — conservative, if you're 25.

It seems we can't resist a dig, even on her most triumphant morning. That reflects our investment in her bad-girl persona. And that troubles Holley.

"Lindsay's incredibly strong, but she's also very fragile," Holley said. "I can't imagine what it must be like to be her and feel how much people are kind of waiting for your downfall. That's got to be difficult, hurtful. And she doesn't deserve it."

That's the celebrity lawyer speaking — but it's also the mother of a 9-year-old daughter, an attorney who got her start as a public defender, a woman who still remembers her own youthful misadventures.

"Let's just say I had fun," said Holley, who went to UCLA from Fairfax High, spent a year teaching English at Washington Prep, then enrolled at Southwestern Law School because she didn't know what to do with her life.

She'd spent lots of time around lawyers. Her mother — who was single and 19 when Holley was born — was a legal secretary who earned her MBA in night school and spent years managing law firms.

Holley got her legal start interviewing car thieves and crack addicts. "You walk into this [courtroom] holding tank, and it's hot and it stinks and it's nasty," she said. And no one understands their legal rights. Most were ready to plead guilty, she said, even if they had a legitimate defense.

"You start seeing that you're dealing with the concept of liberty in real life."

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Lawyer Says Zuccotti Park Demonstrators Broke No Law - New York Times (blog)

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Robert Stolarik for The New York TimesPolice officers in Zuccotti Park, on Nov. 15, 2011 where they removed tents and arrested Occupy Wall Street protesters.

When hundreds of police officers entered Zuccotti Park early on Nov. 15, they dismantled tents and other structures that had been erected by Occupy Wall Street protesters in defiance of rules established in September by the park’s owner, Brookfield Properties.

The police also arrested dozens of protesters who refused to leave the park, charging them with offenses that included trespassing and disorderly conduct, as officers set up metal barricades around the park’s perimeter.

On Friday, a defense lawyer argued in Criminal Court in Manhattan that such charges filed against two of his clients should be dismissed.

While it might be appropriate for Brookfield to establish rules governing behavior in the park, the lawyer said, the company could not order people out of the park, because an agreement with the city required it to be open to the public 24 hours a day.

“Brookfield lacked the authority to exclude people,” the lawyer, Jethro M. Eisenstein, argued in support of a motion to dismiss the charges, contending that it was “unseemly and unjust to allow Brookfield to harness the power of the state” to clear the park of protesters.

But an assistant district attorney told Judge Matthew A. Sciarrino Jr. that the company was within its rights to revoke permission for protesters to be in the park while the police and sanitation workers removed banned structures.

“They have to have the ability to enforce rules,” the prosecutor, Ryan Hayward, said. “They did deem it necessary to close that park.”

Judge Sciarrino asked both sides to clarify certain points. He asked Mr. Eisenstein if he thought the rules allowed people to use Zuccotti Park for any purpose. Later, he told Mr. Hayward that experience had taught him that sometimes, “the law is not simply what the city says it is.”

At the heart of the arguments is the issue of what authority and responsibilities Brookfield has in managing Zuccotti Park, a half-acre granite expanse in the financial district that the Occupy protesters turned into a headquarters in mid-September. The park was created under an agreement that allowed developers of a skyscraper across Liberty Street to build 500,000 extra square feet of office space.

In return, the developers created a public space that would be open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

According to papers filed by Mr. Eisenstein and the New York Civil Liberties Union, Brookfield can limit public access to the park only after going through a process that involves gaining the approval of the City Planning Commission.

The district attorney’s office, along with the city’s Law Department, disagreed, writing that “Brookfield Properties was faced with a situation where the volume of tenting, structures, sleeping bags, pillows, clothes, trash and other personal property had created a safety condition,” and that the only effective remedy involved clearing people from the park.

At one point, Judge Sciarrino asked Mr. Hayward if he agreed that there was a distinction between rules of conduct and rules of access. Mr. Hayward replied that he did and that in order “to ensure compliance with rules of conduct that temporary closure needed to be effectuated.”

Mr. Eisenstein countered that the closure could not accurately be termed temporary because metal barricades surrounded the park for nearly two months after Nov. 15, and that people entering during that time were subject to searches by private security guards.

Judge Sciarrino did not rule immediately on the motion.

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