“Q&A: Al Marquis” |
| Posted: 17 Sep 2010 03:06 AM PDT  Al Marquis of Marquis & Aurbach is a supporter of Question 1 to reform the way Nevada picks judges and is also a cowboy poet. Fri, Sep 17, 2010 (3 a.m.) Al Marquis's life has been a journey. The 62-year-old Las Vegas attorney, a partner at the firm Marquis & Aurbach, has come a long away from his roots as a physics major in college. Marquis is a pilot who has published two books of cowboy poetry and even written an autobiography that described his partying days. Marquis has a wide range of interests. He has a serious side as an advocate who started an organization against nuclear proliferation. But he's not afraid to laugh and joke about himself. "I tell people I have been married for more than 40 years. Three wives, but 40 years," Marquis said laughing. The Pacific Northwest's rain drove Marquis to the desert Southwest 35 years ago. His first job in Las Vegas was with Lionel Sawyer & Collins, but he left after a little more than two years to pursue a business opportunity that didn't pan out, leading to starting his own firm. "I hung up my shingle as an attorney and notary public," Marquis said. "I thought if I could charge five bucks for a notary stamp, that was at least some degree of income." He practices mostly commercial law, but also handles other cases such as representing Metro Police in civil rights lawsuits. IBLV: What kind of work did you do when you launched your firm? Marquis: At first I did anything. My definition of a client was someone with $100 and a problem. And after the $100 was gone, we would figure out what to do next. Those were lean times in 1977 and 1978. What happened from there? I formed another firm in 1978 with Dennis Haney, and by 1992, we had 15 attorneys. He and six others went their own way, and we were down to eight in 1992. Now, we are up to 40. What is your practice? We have always primarily done commercial law. We worked for construction companies and employers. It is mostly a commercial business. I am kind of a business consultant now — mostly clients call me when they have a problem. My primary objective is lawsuit avoidance. How has the economy changed what you do as a firm? We have to change with the times. We were doing a lot of commercial real estate in recent years. In 2007-2008, we did more than $1 billion in closings in real estate transactions. With the recession that has changed 180 degrees. We used to meet with our commercial real estate clients and talk about how to maximize profits, and now we are talking about how to lose the least amount of money. It is an entirely different conversation and not nearly as much fun for the client or for us. There are some really tough decisions that need to be made. I feel so bad for some of these people who were doing really well and now they are just caught among so many competing forces and they have no way out. What do you mean? If you own a shopping center or office building, a lot of tenants are hurting, so they are coming to the owners asking for reduced rents. The rest of the tenants, even if they are doing OK, they want reduced rents as well. While that is happening, you have the lender who comes in and appraises the property and says the appraisal value is less than the loan. They want the owner to kick in $1 million or $2 million to reduce the loan. He is getting less income and can't do that. He is really caught in a bind. Even real estate developers whose properties are doing all right and have tenants in there paying the full amount of rent (have the same problem). Commercial loans are short term — they might be five or seven years or something like that. Why is that? Traditionally, they would go out and refinance the property, but now nobody is lending money on commercial real estate. And so when these loans become due, the owners can't go out and get a new loan. So the owners may lose the property to foreclosure even though the property is fully performing and producing enough income to make the monthly payment. When they lose it, especially when it goes down in value and it is worth less than the amount of the loan, not only do they lose the equity they put in the property, but the bank is going to turn around and sue them on their personal guarantee for maybe millions of dollars. Some people in real estate who have a net worth of $20 (million) to $30 million before this happened are now facing lawsuits for $100 (million) to $200 million. It is depressing. Who are these people? Sometimes they are partnerships, but usually they are local people. For years, that was the way to make money in Las Vegas. You buy raw land and develop it, and you move on from there and roll that over. Everybody thought Las Vegas was invulnerable to any kind of recession. We never were affected before, and people are still in a state of shock that this has happened to Las Vegas. What is going to happen? Nobody knows what is going to happen. Everybody thought it would turn around before now. A lot of people keep pouring their personal money in, hoping the economy will turn around and that real estate values will go back up. But as long as the foreclosures continue, real estate values continue to go down, which leads to more foreclosures. This downward spiral feeds on itself. We need to somehow get that turned around. One, money has to be made available so that homeowners and commercial developers can refinance their properties and go get loans. It is just ridiculous they would lose their property that is performing simply because no one is willing to lend. Also, you have people out there who have bought raw land, and they want to develop that land. And maybe there is an opportunity to have tenants available, but no one will loan them money so they can develop it. How is this affecting your firm? We have lost some clients. We are defending a lot of developers who are facing foreclosure or facing lawsuits on personal guarantees. I got to know our bankruptcy partner a lot better. We can consult with our clients about what their options are and that sort of thing. That is extremely difficult for some people to utter that word. They never imagined they would have to ever consider bankruptcy, but now they have to start talking about it. Then you have lost some business? We have lost some, but made up for it in other areas. We haven't had to lay anybody off during the recession and things have picked up this year so that we have had to hire a number of new people — 10. We went from 85 to 95. What is the state of the law business in Las Vegas these days? A lot of firms are in a similar situation as us. They had to lay off employees and it is tough for those people because very few firms are hiring. For kids coming out of law school, things look pretty bleak right now. And for those who get laid off it looks bleak because it is so difficult to get a job. We were fortunate that we made some adjustments early, and we were able to keep going and keep our employees on and not have to lay anybody off. Others had to. So no consolidation for your firm? No we haven't. We are in control of ourselves A lot of firms have approached us about doing that. We have all of these out-of-state firms swallowing up local firms. I keep seeing names of law firms I have never heard before. We are just proud we stayed ourselves and not merged. Why not merge? We don't want anybody in control of our decision-making. We are very confident in our ability to manage ourselves. We were one of the few firms that didn't lay anybody off. That tells you something. We can make decisions and adjustments. Is that trend passed? They are not as anxious to come to Las Vegas as before. They were coming in droves and now that we lead the nation in commercial and residential foreclosures, that has certainly slowed. You have been outspoken about the election of judges. Why is that? If you wanted to design a system that tempted public officials to be corrupt, you would design the system we have right now. It is just that the amount of money that is necessary to conduct a judicial campaign is just deplorable. It is so demeaning for judges to have to go out and raise hundreds of thousands of dollars and call lawyers and hit them up for this money. From a lawyer's perspective, we don't know who has sufficient integrity to forget who gave them money and who is going to remember who gave them money and who didn't give them money. We don't want to jeopardize the interest of our future clients who may be appearing before these judges, so we feel compelled to give them money. If you give them a campaign contribution, that is perfectly legal. But if you give them money and say "decide in my favor," that is a bribe. Has it swayed decisions? Of course. Of course. Tens of thousands of dollars to help somebody keep their job in public office with these campaign contributions, and they know they have to run again in the future. Who knows when you get a decision whether it is influenced by the attorneys of parties that gave the judge money. You don't know that for sure. Do you have an example? We had a secretary here once who worked for a judge in Reno and she said at least one of the files he was handling he had written down on the front cover the two names of the attorneys and how much money each of them have given him in his prior campaigns. That is one specific example, but how many have that information in their head? Besides, under our present system, anybody who has had a law degree for 10 years can run for judge. That is just ridiculous. You can't just go get a job just because you have a college degree and put your name on a billboard. You have to submit a resume and go through an interview process. We need quality people to be judges. We need a process we can go through so we can narrow this down and ensure we have good, experienced qualified people to sit on the bench. What is the answer? It is a merit selection process that is going to be coming up for a vote in November. It is going to be Question 1. We should amend the Nevada Constitution, and the answer to that is absolutely, positively yes. What would it do? For someone who wants to be a judge, they submit their resume to this panel of lawyers and lay people. (The panelists) go through these resumes and interview these people and they select three finalists and then the governor picks from the three finalists. Once they are on the bench, every six years they have to run for retention and they have to get 55 percent of the vote in order to stay on the bench. A lot of people who want to stay with the present system say the people need the right to select the judges. Right now most of the incumbents are unchallenged so they stay on the bench whether they are qualified or not. No one has any say they are going to stay there. Under the new system, every single judge will have to run for retention, and so voters will have more control. Don't you represent strip club owners trying to stop the practice of taxi drivers getting paid for taking people to the clubs? We don't necessary represent strip club owners. We haven't articulated that. We do represent some concerned businesspeople from Las Vegas who think this is bad business for Las Vegas. The situation has gotten out of control kind, like the judges. There is too much money floating around influencing too many people's decisions. Tourists get diverted by cabdrivers to go some place they don't want to go because cabdrivers get more money. People at casinos are being encouraged to go to a strip club because the doorman or host will split the money with the cabdriver. It is a bad situation for tourists and bad for Las Vegas. We really need to have an ordinance that you just can't pay commercial drivers for delivering customers. But what about cabdrivers needing the income? I sympathize with the cabdrivers. They are a hardworking group. They need to make money. But when it was $5 or $10, it really wasn't influencing anybody's behavior; but now you have to get up to $100 per customer, and now people are focused on that money and sending people there who don't want to be there. We need to change that. What has been the response? I think that the hotels are beginning to realize this is bad for Las Vegas. It is hurting our image. People who are diverted resent that, and they don't want to come back to Las Vegas. The hotels certainly don't want their customers to be encouraged to leave the hotel and go to a strip club. Are you representing hotels, then? I am representing a group of concerned businessmen who want this change. You represent some subcontractors in their fight to get paid for CityCenter. What is the status of that? It is very unfortunate that this was built at this particular time and at the day of completion it was valued at half of the $8.6 billion it cost, and now it has been devalued by half again. The people really suffering as a result of that are the subcontractors and suppliers who have not been paid in full for their work. All the subs and suppliers wanted was to be paid for their labor and materials and CityCenter agreed they would be. We have come to the end of the job and $500 million is owed, and they haven't paid those people. Last spring, there was a lot of press about the MGM screwing these subcontractors and really hurting these little businesses and employees. The MGM came out in May and said, "We are going to pay all the subcontractors." And guess what? What we have gone through this summer is the same thing the subcontractors went through before the job was completed. What is happening? They call it the "CityCenter Shuffle." The "CityCenter Shuffle" is they go to one person and they want all this documentation, so you provide it to them and you await a decision. And the next thing you know, somebody else is making the decision. You have to go to that person over there, and you keep getting shuffled around. And each person wants more documentation, and they never take a specific position on any issue, but they never pay you. That is what happened this summer. Since May, we have been providing all of this documentation to CityCenter. They have indicated they are going to pay about a third, so the two-thirds they are not going to pay they dispute. But even a small percentage of that third has been paid. It is very disappointing. And we are going to have to go back to court and put more pressure on MGM to get these folks paid. Why are they doing that? It is all about money. It is all about money. Who was one of your more interesting clients over your career? I represented Martin Sheen when he was arrested at the Nevada Test Site back in the 1980s. There were a lot of protests about continued nuclear testing. I had gone up there one morning with a friend. We were walking down a desert road and all of a sudden a group of cops come driving by us, and they get off their motorcycles. And there was a group of people huddled together praying together in the desert, and (the cops) start handcuffing one of the people. It looked unusual and we walked over and it turned out they were handcuffing Martin Sheen, and he was protesting. I introduced myself as an attorney and asked if he needed some help and he said "yes." This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php |
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