The Lost Supreme: The Life of Dreamgirl Florence Ballard (21 page)

Flo with husband Tommy Chapman in

1968, outside Saks Fifth Avenue in Detroit.

The Andrew Skurow Collection

Attic Books

Diana Ross and Flo’s daughter

Lisa Ballard Chapman at

Florence’s funeral.
Detroit Free Press.

The Andrew Skurow Collection

Lost Supreme_8 page insert 11/19/07 4:53 PM Page 8

Florence Ballard’s

death certificate.

Cause of death:

coronary artery

thrombosis.

City of Detroit

Flo’s daughters with Mary

Wilson in 1988. Left to

right: Nicole Ballard

Chapman, Mary Wilson,

Michelle Ballard Chapman,

and Lisa Ballard Chapman.

Steve Holsey, The Michigan Chronicle

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according to court papers filed later by Flo, Louisell “told me that Mr. Baun was his neighbor and that he would go over to Mr. Baun’s house to get my money and files. After hearing this I requested that he send my retainer back.” Louisell did so, and Flo then contacted two other lawyers, who, she said, declared the case too big for them: Freddy Burton and an attorney named Bloom.

During her search, Flo said, one attorney told her, “‘Leonard Baun and I are good friends. I can’t possibly do anything.’ They wouldn’t prosecute him or anything. So that’s when I said as far as I’m concerned they’re all down there holding hands, and I felt that all my rights were just violated.”

Flo, Tommy, and Billy finally got an appointment to see Wayne County assistant prosecutor Mike Connors on May 29, 1969. After arriving at the meeting place and waiting forty-five minutes, they concluded he would not show up for the appointment. The three wandered over to the courtroom run by Wayne County Circuit Court judge George W. Crockett Jr., a fellow African American, where assistant prosecutor William O. Cain, presumably prompted by the judge, referred Flo to attorney Bernard Adams.

It’s appropriate that Flo, Tommy, and Billy went to Judge Crockett’s courtroom when they became desperate for succor. Crockett had cofounded what is believed to be among the first racially integrated law firms in the United States. As manager of the Mississippi Project during the civil rights struggle, he had personally attempted to find the men who had murdered civil rights workers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner. As a Detroit judge, he became involved in the New Bethel Baptist Church shootout in which a Detroit police officer died and more than 140 African Americans were arrested. And finally, in the House of Representatives, which he entered at age seventy, he became well known for his constant denuncia-tions of apartheid in South Africa.

Shortly after meeting with Crockett, Flo hired Adams as her attorney, and he started negotiating with Baun, who refused to give up the documents involved.

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Over the next six months, Flo and Billy fruitlessly contacted the FBI, the State Attorney General’s Office, the American Bar Association, the IRS, the Circuit Court, state senator Julian Bond, state senator (later, mayor of Detroit) Coleman Young, the Civil Liberties Union, Congressman John Conyers, five or six more lawyers, state representative James Del Rio (later a judge), and officials of the Bank of the Commonwealth. In continuing desperation, Flo also fruitlessly sent President Nixon a plea for assistance. Finally, on September 17, 1969, she signed a contract engaging the prestigious Detroit African American law firm of Patmon, Young, Kirk, Dent & Feaster as her legal representative against Baun. She asked Patmon, Young to sue Motown as well. Believing that Motown hadn’t given her anywhere near all the money she was due, she had nothing to lose, now that her solo career was dead, and everything to gain by jousting once again with one of America’s largest black-owned firms.

Attorney Gerald Dent of Patmon, Young was assigned to both cases. He filed suit against Baun’s law firm on Flo’s behalf on October 1, 1970. In accus-ing Baun of “gross negligence, malpractice and breach of fiduciary duties and obligations,” Flo and Dent charged that

• Motown had given Baun $75,689 that Motown owed Flo, which Baun had not turned over to Flo, and some of which Baun had used to purchase stocks and securities in his own name.

• Baun had induced Flo to create Talent Management International, Inc. to generate superfluous attorney fees for him and his law firm. She noted that Baun had had no previous experience in the music business, legal or otherwise.

• Baun, without Flo’s consent, had utilized $5,000 of her trust funds to purchase stock in TMI, some of which he caused to be issued in his name; had become president and treasurer of TMI; and had commingled some of Flo’s funds that had been entrusted to him with his own.

• Baun had obtained possession of stock issued in Flo’s name, buying without Flo’s consent or knowledge $10,000 worth of stock with money from her trust fund.

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• Baun had paid himself $43,050.24 during 1968 in legal fees, some of this amount paid to other attorneys he had hired without Flo’s knowledge or consent.

• Baun had endorsed Tommy Chapman’s name on a check made out to Chapman dated December 20, 1968.

In this and other ways, Flo claimed, Baun had withdrawn all the funds in the trust account and commingled them with his own funds. As a result of these activities, she charged, she suffered from a variety of mental and physical ailments.

Baun’s partner Rudolph Vulpe, who had left the firm in 1967, was dropped from the case, but Baun’s other partner, Harry Okrent, was not.

Although there’s no evidence that Okrent had anything to do with the alleged mistreatment of Flo, his status as Baun’s partner—thus partly responsible for Baun’s actions—would later cost him a substantial sum of money.

Baun denied the charges, contending that he had performed one thousand hours of legal work for Flo in 1967, 1968, and 1969, that his legal fees were reasonable, and that he had worked diligently on her behalf. He denied that he purchased any stock in his own name with Flo’s money, but if he had, it was a mistake, and in any case the stock went into a joint bank account with Flo. Baun also struck a low blow by claiming that the reason Flo’s ABC

endeavor failed was that she “did not possess the talent necessary to make the venture a success.” The suit began percolating through the courts.

Meanwhile, investigators and attorneys working for the Michigan State Bar Grievance Board had begun closing in on Baun for stealing more than $147,000 from the estates of four other people, all deceased and all unrelated to Flo. Baun would be found guilty of these charges by a hearing panel in 1975. Two members of the three-person panel would vote to suspend his license to practice law for two years, and the third would vote to disbar him.

After hearing the panel’s recommendation, the Grievance Board would vote unanimously to disbar Baun. Baun appealed to the courts, which would uphold the disbarment on April 21, 1976. Baun would appeal again in 1978, 124

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citing new evidence that during his period of misconduct he had been suffering from a massive brain tumor pressing upon both frontal lobes of his brain. At the hearing on this appeal, Baun’s former law partner, Harry Okrent, would take the stand and undergo questioning.

Baun’s Attorney:
Did you notice any change in [Baun’s] attitude, his behavior, his appearance, anything of that nature?

Okrent:
Very sudden change.

Attorney:
Sudden?

Okrent:
Very sudden. I can almost pinpoint the day. It would have been either
December of 1968 or January of 1969 [just after Flo’s attempt to build a solo
career had collapsed].

Attorney:
What brings you to that date?

Okrent:
Because all of a sudden the big, friendly, puppy dog became a surly dog.

He didn’t seem to enjoy anything. He had a sort of crazy, almost immediate
big-shot complex. He became enamored in trying to be a talent seller of people that have artistic talent of one sort or another. Show business intrigued
him. The law business, he worked at it, but it was obviously work, it wasn’t
play anymore.

Despite Harry Okrent’s testimony, Baun’s appeal was rejected and he would remain disbarred until 1981.

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Within the plantation system, you don’t

really resist.

—Attorney Gerald Dent, on

Motown Records

In addition to
working on Flo’s case against Leonard Baun, her new attorney, Gerald Dent, filed suit on her behalf against Motown, as well as Gordy, Ross, Wilson, and Birdsong on February 1, 1971. The naming of her fellow Supremes—particularly Wilson and Birdsong—in the suit was largely pro forma; everyone knew it was aimed primarily at Motown and Gordy.

The suit charged that the defendants had conspired to separate Flo from her royalties. It also charged that Gordy and Ross had “secretly, subversively and maliciously plotted and planned” to expel Flo from the group. It noted that Flo had arrived at a settlement with Motown on February 22, 1968, for a total of $139,804.94 in rights and royalties, a sum that was “meager and grossly inadequate.” Although Gordy had posed as her “trusted friend,” she argued, Motown and its talent management arm, International Management Company, also headed by Gordy, had kept the $4 million in royalties she was owed.

Flo said in her suit that she had received a $225 weekly allowance but had never seen an accounting of the Supremes’ income. Based on this lack of information, she requested that her earlier agreement with Motown, which 125

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forbade her to bring future suits against anyone or anything related to the Supremes or Motown, and in which she had signed away her rights to any future income from the Supremes, including royalties from records she sang on, be declared nonbinding.

Michael Roshkind also was a defendant in the suit, which asked for the $4 million in royalties, plus $4.5 million in punitive damages. Flo also claimed other relatively minor damages totaling another $200,000. And finally, as the stinger on the end of the scorpion’s tail, Florence asked the court to forbid the Supremes from using the name “Supremes,” partly because she had selected it in the first place but had been denied the right to use it.

Dent worked for two and a half years preparing and arguing this case against Motown. The problematic relationship between Motown and its performing artists was succinctly expressed by a courtroom exchange between Dent and the judge in the case, Wayne County Circuit Court judge Benjamin D. Burdick. Burdick questioned Dent about why Flo hadn’t fought harder against the unfair compensation she had been receiving while she was a Motown star. The attorney replied:

Dent:
Within the plantation system, you don’t really resist.

Judge:
What do you mean by the plantation system?

Dent:
Plantation system like in the Old South, the slave system and the servant
system.

Judge:
Do you mean the slaves didn’t resist?

Dent:
I’m talking about the relationship that existed.

Judge:
Do you mean this was an “or else”?

Dent:
It was.

Judge:
“Do this or else?”

Dent:
The situation was very similar to that. . . . It was her disposition not to
fight them and the reason being that she was conditioned by this system and
by Gordy and others to not offer any type of meaningful resistance to them
in their particular ultimatum and ways.

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A respected attorney, Dent worked hard on the case, but in an amazing decision straight out of
Catch-22
, Judge Burdick would dismiss Flo’s case in October 1971. His finding was that, because Flo had not given back the money she received after signing the original release “nor has offered to do so, nor has the monies in her possession, she may not maintain this suit against the defendants.”