by Richard W. Millar, Jr.

I do not know why it is that I remember certain snippets of things I read long ago, but cannot tell you what I had for dinner last night. For some completely inexplicable reason, I remember Joseph Alsop calling someone a “bottom-dwelling slug.” Mr. Alsop was a political columnist who died in 1989. I have no particular recollection of reading his columns or where he stood politically. I just remember “bottom-dwelling slug,” because, I suppose, it was new to my nascent repertoire of insults. It does not rank up with Churchillian, but it was descriptively uncomplimentary.

In double checking my recollection, I learned that he was referring to John Dean who was then testifying in the Watergate scandal.

I have also learned that the essence of the insult lives on.

Which brings me to an attorney named Edwin Franklin Bush III of Des Plaines, Illinois.

Mr. Bush is the respondent to a six-count complaint filed by the Illinois Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission that is largely based on statements he allegedly made. Actually, I could probably strike “allegedly” as Mr. Bush in his Answer admits making many of them and goes further and states they were true.

In an email to Caidi Vanderporten, one of the attorneys for his wife Erika in his pending divorce litigation, he said: “Caidi, I strenuously object to you being a lowlife bottom-feeder, who suborns perjury, breaks the IRPC, and extorts your own client.”

In his Answer, he admits the email and states, “There was no purpose to embarrass [her]” because “[d]omestic relations attorneys are well known amongst the bar and the public to be bottom-feeders.” Gilding the lily, he adds that he “has spoken to ethics attorneys for years who note the volume of complaints . . . and call these attorneys bottom-feeders themselves.” He concludes that “Domestic relations attorneys generally graduate from third and fourth-tier law schools and will do almost anything for money, including suborn perjury from mentally ill parents.”

In another e-mail to attorney Evan Mammas, who also represented Erika and was Caidi’s father, and which copied Caidi and the judge, he said:

If it means your fat *ss and your suborning perjury piece of sh*t daughter have to get an order of protection against me, we will be in court before Judge Carr before October 21, 2020, one way or the other. You are all child abusing filth, all of you. Bring it. When the justice system fails, I will have my recourse.

Judge Carr himself got both barrels in a hearing in the dissolution proceedings when Mr. Bush directed the following statements to Judge Carr:

See, that’s—that’s why this is a clown car. You are a clown. You’re a child abuser. I mean, honestly, I should call the DCFS on you because you’ve abused these children for two years. What you have done and what people like you do to people all over this country is a disgrace.

Mr. Bush asserts that the statements are truthful and accurate and are constitutionally protected speech. (At this point, I should probably note that Mr. Bush is representing himself in the disciplinary proceedings, if you haven’t already guessed that.)

Nor did he limit his complaints to just the judge; he took on the whole system. In an email response to a request to set a hearing date he said:

I do not agree. This is child abuse, perpetuated by the court and its corrupt and incompetent officers.

In his Answer he said that statement was truthful and accurate and he was referring to a common practice for “corrupt and incompetent guardians ad litem in Cook and surrounding counties to prolong custody cases and pad their fees” and that “the court was also corrupt and incompetent because it entered the aforementioned order(s).”

Summing up, in response to a Bar disciplinary complaint, he asserts that the system is corrupt, the court is a clown car, the judge is a clown and a child abuser, and his opposing counsel are lowlife bottom-feeders who suborn perjury and extort their clients.

Sounds like a perfect defense and he hit all the right notes. What could possibly go wrong?

Richard W. Millar, Jr. is Of Counsel with the firm of FSG Lawyers PC in Irvine. He can be reached at rmillar@fsglawyers.com.