Just before midnight on 25th April 1948, Officer George Sigler saw a car smash into a parked car on South Mill street and weave on down the road. He caught up with it on Moravia street and arrested the driver, Andrew Masters, who was drunk and bleeding from the nose. Andrew was given the usual sentence of thirty days in the county jail, out in three if he paid the $100 fine and costs.

A decade later, when Andrew was fifty-eight, he was working as a conductor on a Pennsylvania Railroad train that was making its way from Toledo to Canton, Ohio, when it ran into the biggest storm to hit the county all year, which had blacked out neighbourhoods, flooded roads and houses and brought down telegraph wires. Just outside North Lawrence, a few miles before Canton, one of the carriages of Andrew’s train came off the rails, dragging with it seven other carriages, five box cars and three gondolas and tearing up two main lines. No one was killed, but Andrew was injured so badly that he was left disabled and unable to work.

A Youngstown attorney, John Ruffalo Jr, called on Andrew. He told him that the accident that had crippled him had had little to do with the storm that night and everything to do with negligence on the part of the railroad. The carriage had derailed because a fire had started in a poorly maintained part of the wheel mechanism and burned through an axle. Ruffalo specialised in that kind of case. He assured Andrew that he would get him a big settlement. He had taken on the railroads dozens of times on behalf of workers who had been injured and incapacitated due to the companies’ negligence—his most recent case had secured $112,000 compensation from the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad for a railwayman who had lost both legs in a work accident (find more information on the issue at https://www.bruninglegal.com/legal-services/). He told Andrew to expect a $150,000 settlement.

The case took two years to come to court. After a week-long hearing, the jury upheld Andrew’s claim—the Pennsylvania Railroad had been responsible for the derailment and, therefore, his injury. However, they awarded him only $8,500. Andrew wanted to appeal, but Ruffalo told him that it wasn’t worth it, that he should walk away. Andrew was furious, but there was nothing he could do.

Two years later, in 1962, Andrew was contacted by investigators working for the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad and the American Association of Railroads. The railroad companies had tired of Ruffalo’s negligence cases and were digging around for something they could use to get him disbarred. They had already discovered that Ruffalo had been paying a railroad brakeman named Michael Orlando to act as an undercover agent to solicit and investigate cases that he could profitably prosecute. That was probably good enough to have him struck off, but they wanted a better case.

Andrew felt that Ruffalo had let him down badly, and was glad to help. When the investigators asked if Ruffalo had ever given Andrew money during the court case, he said that he had. Andrew had been out of work and had often had no money to live on. When that happened, Ruffalo had loaned him cash to tide him over, with the promise that he would be paid back when the case was won.

The investigators told Andrew that, although that might seem a reasonable thing for a lawyer to do when dealing with a penniless client, the bar’s ethics committee viewed it as buying an interest in a case, which was strictly forbidden. Andrew agreed to testify at a hearing in Youngstown, along with other former clients of Ruffalo’s who had also borrowed money from him but had been disappointed at the outcome of their cases.

A month before the hearing, just before Christmas, 1962, Andrew’s friend, Angelo Medura, dropped in for a visit. He explained that he had a chance of opening a bar, and that Ruffalo was going to back him in the deal. However, if Ruffalo got disbarred, the deal would fall through. He said, “Andy, what are you going to gain by going over to Youngstown to hurt this man?” Then, to cement the appeal to his conscience, he offered him $300.

Medura was an agent of Ruffalo’s and had visited all the former clients, offering cash—and, in one case, a bottle of whisky—if they failed appear in court. Andrew guessed as much, but didn’t blame him. He didn’t know what to do. He wanted to help Medura get the bar and he wanted the $300, but he still wanted to get back at Ruffalo.

The day after the hearing began, a representative of the American Association of Railroads took Andrew to lunch to talk about his dilemma. There is no record of exactly what was discussed, but the result was that Andrew decided to testify and, six months later, Ruffalo was disbarred due to professional misconduct. Andrew may have felt some degree of satisfaction. The train companies most certainly did.

Andrew died in October 1976, at the age of seventy-eight.