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Law Blog Obituary: Boston Trial Watcher Tony Torosian

By Ashby Jones

Any LBers out there trying to do a little screenwriting on the side — and maybe struggling to find the kernel of a law-related story that hasn’t yet been done?

We humbly suggest you take a look at this Boston Globe story. The seeds of a great movie are in here somewhere.

The story’s actually an obituary of sorts about a man named Tony Torosian, who recently died at the age of 75. Torosian wasn’t a lawyer or a judge. He wasn’t a professor or politician, agitator or regulator. He was just a citizen who loved a good trial.

Torosian was, as the Globe writes, “one of Boston’s most dedicated court watchers.” He reportedly “scoured” the newspapers every day to find out which local court was slated to offer up the most compelling testimony, the best judges, the quickest lawyers. His main venues: the U.S. District Court in Boston (pictured) and the Suffolk County Courthouse.

Along the way, he picked up the respect of many of Boston’s better courtroom operators. "He had the book on all the lawyers,'' Jack Cinquegrana, the co-chair of the litigation department at Choate Hall & Stewart, told the Globe. "He knew the good ones and the bad ones, and he was a very astute observer of their abilities in the court room, the judges, too.''

"Tony would always tell me if he thought I got what I wanted from a witness,'' Boston defense lawyer Rosemary Scapicchio told the Globe. "I would sit with him and say, 'Tony did you believe that guy?' And he would say, 'Nope, wouldn't believe him for all the world.' You got a better sense from him of where the jurors were. He was one of the best, I think, at predicting what a jury would do.''

Wednesday, upon word of his death, Boston federal judge Mark Wolf requested a moment of silence for Toroosian.

"There are some people who drop into court proceedings occasionally, there are others who come more regularly, but nobody was as almost religiously devoted to observing the operations of this court as Tony,” he said. "We've lost a valued member of our family.”

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on March 25, 2010 (boomark / email).