A tribute to Ed Masry
On December 5, 2005 our firm lost a dear friend and the world lost a great lawyer and a greater human being. Ed Masry of the California law firm of Masry & Vititoe worked closely with our firm for the past five years on several environmental contamination cases in upstate New York. Ed’s enthusiasm for living, and more particularly, for the cause of justice, was an inspiration to all who knew him. Ed took on many causes, some popular, some not, but always because he believed he was right and his client’s rights were being violated.
When I first met Ed and Erin it was after the Hinkley case and the movie made about that case had made both of them household names. I asked Ed whether the movie was an accurate portrayal of events in the Hinkley case and he said it was pretty close. However, it was only later that I learned that rather than the struggling, disheveled attorney portrayed by Albert Finney, Ed was actually a well respected trial lawyer and sports agent for many years before the Hinkley case launched his and Erin’s environmental careers. Ed represented many famous Los Angeles sports heroes including Roman Gabrial and Isaiah Robertson as well as some infamous characters including a notorious Los Angeles televangelist whom Ed felt was being persecuted by the State of California.
What made Ed special was not only his legal talent, but his warmth and charm. For years Ed would introduce himself by saying: “Hi, I’m Ed Masry but you probably thought I was Paul Newman.” In more recent years even as Ed aged he decided that Paul was getting too old so he switched the line to Tom Cruise. Most of all Ed loved people and more specifically, helping people. The son of immigrants, his father from Syria his mother from France, Ed progressed from very humble beginnings and volunteered to serve his country during the Korean Conflict. When he returned home he attended college but never earned his degree. On a lark he joined a friend who had graduated college and took a law school entrance exam. He scored so highly on the test that he was accepted to Loyola Law School and graduated with honors.
In the last ten years of his life Ed fought many illnesses but this did nothing to dim his spirits. He suffered from diabetes, was on dialysis for as long as I knew him and was also a survivor of three different forms of cancer. Through it all he never missed a beat and only let on to those closest to him how sick he was. He lived every day of his life to the fullest probably because he never knew which would be his last.
At Ed’s memorial service on December 13, 2005, one of the attorneys who assisted Ed and Erin on the Hinkley case, told a great story about the day he became involved in that case that typifies the type of lawyer Ed was. Ed came to this lawyer with a dilemma. He and Erin had been fighting PG&E for two years and had nearly run himself into bankruptcy having mortgaged his house and everything else he owned to help finance the case. PG&E had offered $10,000,000 to settle the case, which would have been the biggest fee Ed and his firm had ever earned. But as tired and financially stretched as Ed was he knew in his heart that he couldn’t take the offer. The case was worth much more than PG&E had offered and that was Ed’s dilemma. Most lawyers would not have held out under those circumstances, but Ed was not most lawyers. The rest, as they say, is history.
Although the relationship between our firms remains strong and will continue for many years into the future, there was only one Ed Masry and he will be sorely missed.
