23-Compromise

“You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometime, you just might find you get what you need.” – The Rolling Stones

            This is a true story. I’ve changed the lawyer’s name because I probably don’t have all the details (timelines, dialogues, locations, etc.) exactly right, and I don’t want to misrepresent him even in a small way. You may be sure that the main storyline is correct.

            Jay is a retired environmental lawyer who spent most of his career working in the deep south, southern Alabama and northern Florida. He represented clients in lawsuits against major lumber companies to prevent them from destroying the forests.

            As you may expect, it was hard going. The southern judges he brought his cases before were conservative and not very open to understanding his clients’ point of view against a major employer in the region. He lost pretty much all of his cases for a long time, like maybe a decade. His friends in environmental law questioned his sanity. Why was he beating his head against a wall when he might do more good somewhere else? 

            But Jay had a plan. He told them he was educating the judges. Every time he went before the same judge his argument was slightly different. He got to know them. They got to know him. The judges started to listen to him more and ask him questions. The basis of his point to them was that “conservation” and “conservative” mean the same thing. Also, he recognized that they were principled people, even though they were focused on principles other than those his clients were focused on. Jay believes that you can always have a productive dialogue with a principled person no matter how far apart you are starting.

            Slowly he made progress. He started to win a few cases, then some more cases. The lumber companies got spooked and put out the word that Jay was threatening to put them out of business and destroy all the jobs. The big lumber companies don’t do all the logging themselves. They contract a lot of work to small logging operations, a lot of family businesses with one or maybe two or three crews depend on their contracts. 

            One day one of Jay’s clients was sitting in his own office and the phone rang. On the other end of the call was the owner of one of these small logging operations. That man told Jay’s client that he was destroying the jobs that supported his whole family, and he should watch out because the logger had a weapon and knew where he was.

            Jay’s client was cut from the same cloth and told the man to come ahead. He had a weapon too and would be waiting for him.

            Nothing came of this, and Jay and his clients kept winning cases. Jay started hearing from the other side, the environmentalists. They were thrilled at his success and some suggested that they should take this opportunity to drive these big logging companies completely out of the region. Jay felt that would be a bad idea. These forests needed to be managed. There was a role for commercial logging as long as it was sustainable. 

            Finally, people started talking and guidelines were established. The lawsuits faded away, and the logging companies continued to log but now in ways that preserved and supported the long-term health of the forests. They are probably not making as much money as before, but they are still working, still logging and selling lumber.

            A while after this, Jay’s client from the phone call episode was again sitting in his office when a man he didn’t know walked in. This man introduced himself as the one who had threatened him by phone some years earlier. As Jay’s client started to think about the gun he had in his drawer, the man in front of him apologized for his call. He said he hadn’t understood what the lawsuits were trying to do. He said that now he realizes that because of Jay and his clients, the forests will stay healthy, and he and his family will have work to sustain them for generations into the future. He thanked him for what he and the lawyers had done.

            This is compromise in its highest form. The environmentalists wanted the logging companies gone. The logging companies wanted the environmentalists gone. Neither got what they wanted, but they both got what they actually needed: sustainably logged forests.

            Are they all friends now? I wouldn’t go that far, but they are learning to live with each other, and at least some of them are willing to admit they are better off now.

            This is because one man wouldn’t give up until he got his point across, even though it took years. He did it by being patient and persistent and by respecting his opposition, both the judges and the lumber companies. He understood where they were coming from. They finally understood that he wasn’t trying to destroy them, just keep them from destroying the forests, and—most importantly—he wasn’t going away. Together they found a third way, a way in the middle of what each side thought they wanted, a compromise.

            This is how society progresses. We must never forget it.

Hugh Moffatt
Nashville, Tennessee
November 14, 2025