A personal reminiscence, or how I unexpectedly (re) met my grandfather at law school

By Michael B. Goldenkranz ’78

For many Americans, Labor Day means a final trip to the ocean or lake at summer’s end or a barbeque closer to home. For me, though, the September holiday brings to mind my maternal grandfather’s important role in securing rights for union members victimized by corrupt or abusive union leaders. For me (and my children), it shapes our values and spawns our volunteerism and pursuit of access to justice.

Yet I may have never known that aspect of my grandfather’s life, had it not been for an unexpected event in 1978, during my last year of law school, on the first day of labor law class, when I (re) met my own grandfather in a very different context.

As a child, I puzzled an eternity about a sign in my grandfather’s shoe box-size den. The room was like a magnet and a mystery to me—cluttered with old books, important-looking papers, and a narrow but fascinating nameplate-like sign that perched above his old metallic desk. It clearly read, “ThiMk before you speak.”

I never felt comfortable asking Grandpa about his misspelled desk sign. And so, I wondered over many years if it was simply an error due to his Polish Russian accent, or a deliberate joke. Perhaps a pun-like reminder to pause before you speak, and get it right? It was not until years later that Grandpa’s “ThiMk before you speak” sign took on a new and profound meaning.

That day in labor law class, I encountered the landmark case of [Solomon] Salzhandler v. [Louis] Caputo, 16 F.2d 445 (2d Cir.), cert. denied, 32 U.S.L. WEEK 3213 (U.S. Dec. 9, 1963). I was stunned—Solomon Salzhandler was my maternal grandfather. Prior to that moment I did not know anything about his David v. Goliath-like legal story. 

I hardly had a clue that Grandpa Solomon, who had been a house painter and financial secretary of the painters’ union, had risked his livelihood and physical safety in the very early 1960s in an effort to stop what he perceived was ongoing financial wrongdoing and theft by corrupt senior union officers in Brooklyn, New York. His case would ultimately be petitioned to the US Supreme Court and result in precedent-setting rights for union members to challenge union officials—without suffering the horrific, retaliatory, career-ending retribution and financial damnation that my grandfather suffered.

Grandpa was his grandkids’ buddy. He taught me to play chess in elementary school; helped me learn my Hebrew prayers; asked us about our lives and taught us the importance of family. He loved to preside over Jewish holidays and play pinochle with our dad and the uncles. He was generous with his porcupine-whiskered hugs.

I knew Grandpa Solomon had been a pharmacist in the “old country.” I knew he held very strong beliefs, principles, and convictions. As a result, he fled the politics and pogroms of Russia and Poland in 1920 with my grandmother and the firstborn of their eventual six children. 

But even though my family lived near my maternal grandparents and saw them frequently when I was growing up in Brooklyn in the early 1960s, I was too young then to appreciate the enormity of Grandpa Solomon’s seven-year legal battle against corruption in the very union that he loved, was active in, and in which he had served with a spotless record for over twenty-five years. 

He had been regularly re-elected financial secretary (akin to treasurer) and took great pride in his service to the union. After a change of top union officers, Grandpa’s mandatory yearly audits revealed what he believed to be disturbing financial revelations about the local union’s president and perhaps other officials. 

Grandpa tried without success through proper channels to get the funds repaid by the union officials who had blatantly misused them. He provided ample documentation to back his audited claims. When those efforts were ignored and rebuffed, he bravely and publicly called the union officials out at their meetings and distributed pamphlets and flyers accusing them of theft, etc. The union president in 1961 accused my grandfather of libel and handpicked a panel for a union hearing that blackballed Grandpa Solomon, at age 61, from his union position, union activities, and union presence, for five years. 

Grandpa was deliberately and effectively deprived of his livelihood as a house painter and wallpaper hanger for the rest of his life. The union internal hearing in dismissing my grandfather relied, of course, on its own iron clad union rules and its constitution, which were skewed to prohibit challenges. Grandfather next filed suit in the US District Court challenging the union board’s dismissal. Relying once again on the union’s own rules and constitution, his case was dismissed.

Even after suffering a disabling stroke, Grandpa would not give up. He appealed to the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, claiming the union and its officials were hiding behind their own self-serving rules. And that freedom of speech and the right by a union member to challenge a union for corruption were paramount reasons for the enactment of the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act of 1959.

The Second Circuit, in 1963, approached the case quite differently, and found in favor of my grandfather. It reversed the District Court and returned the case to the court to award damages. The local and district union heads sought to prolong the matter and protect their practices and decision by seeking intervention and relief from the US Supreme Court. In December 1963, almost a year to the day before my grandpa passed, the Supreme Court declined to hear the case, leaving the precedential ruling of the Second Circuit US Court of Appeals to stand, and be cited to this day.

Seeing Grandpa’s case in my labor law case study text was and still is a turning point: After reading the appeals court’s opinion in his case, I began to see how my Grandpa Solomon was a man who by “thiMking before he spoke” truly stood up for his principles. To this day, his progeny continue to speak out on behalf of those without a voice.

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Michael B. Goldenkranz ’78 was a health care attorney and later a member of a hospital’s executive team before retiring. In 2023 he was awarded the King County Bar’s 2023 Individual Pro Bono Award and the Washington State Bar Association’s Pro Bono and Public Service Award. He has been volunteering for the King County Bar Association’s Neighborhood Pro Bono Legal Clinics in Seattle, almost weekly, since 2004.