Joseph P. Klock Jr. is director and managing partner of the law firm of
Steel Hector & Davis of
Miami,
Florida. He is also general counsel of
Flo-Sun Inc., the country’s largest
sugar farming enterprise. (Sugar is a major industry in Florida, second only to
citrus in Florida agriculture.) He also has represented a number of companies, government agencies, and
Latin American countries.
He was hired by Florida
Secretary of State Katherine Harris to represent her office in the various legal battles concerning the 2000 US presidential election. His appearance before the
Supreme Court was dismal, mostly because he hadn’t bothered to learn their names. First he called Justice
John Paul Stevens "Justice Brennan" (Justice
William Brennan died in
1990) and followed that up by referring to Justice
David H. Souter as Justice
Stephen J. Breyer, which caused him to suffer the laughter of the court and humiliation at the hands of Justice
Antonin Scalia.
For three weeks of legal work, Steel Hector & Davis billed the state of Florida $682,266. The firm’s lawyers worked for the "discount" rate of $175 an hour, marked down from the typical $250-$500. Klock personally billed for 369.1 hours for a tab of $64,592, plus expenses, including a $9,223 private plane ride from
Tallahassee to
Washington DC.
No word on how much using some of the many lawyers already employed by the state of Florida would have cost, such as, say, our own
Attorney General. Perhaps some of them might have known the names of members of the Supreme Court. Also no word if Klock billed the state for a set of
Supreme Court Flash Cards.