Greg Wood

GREG B.

WOOD “THE FIXER”

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Greg B. Wood THE FIXER “THE FIXER”

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By Anthony Ewart

’m not saying Attorney Greg Wood is the only person who could orchestrate a happy ending to SOPA, per se, but if there was a legal equivalent to the Fantasy Football League, like a “Fantasy Court Hearing,” all parties involved in said issue would probably want to give him a call -- and on a related subject, I’m proud to be the only person you’ve probably ever heard use the term “Fantasy Court Hearing.”

Photo Credit: Jenny Lopez

Attorney Greg Wood (Photo: Jenny Lopez)

In the business of “Show” we’d call Atty. Greg Wood a “Deal Maker,” not a Deal Breaker; an Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) specialist serving as a Mediator/Arbitrator and Settlement Counsel, Greg Wood is able to parlay his 37 years’ experience as a litigator in Intellectual Property (Copyright, Trademark and Patent) Law into helping adversarial clients find common ground on heated disagreements and confrontations bound for huge, tabloid laden courtroom eruptions where hundreds of thousands – if not millions of dollars – can be wasted in legal fees.

In film lore we call characters like this, people able to make problems go away, a “fixer,” and the Hollywood fixer has gone by many different names.

In the 1993 film “Point Of No Return” he was called “Victor the Cleaner,” and aptly played by Harvey Keitel; Keitel went on to immortalize the role of the fixer just one year later in Quentin Tarantino’s 1994 classic “Pulp Fiction” as Winston “The Wolf” Wolfe. Perhaps Harvey Keitel will portray Greg Wood in the PG-13 film version of his life – of course it would be a calmer, gentler, more subdued portrayal than Mr. Keitel is accustomed to since Greg’s mediating skills are subtler and his negotiating techniques layered with greater nuances; still, I think Tarantino would be pleased.

Greg describes the motivating factors for his services this way: “When someone gets mad at someone else the knee-jerk reaction is to sue somebody, well, I don’t let the client’s emotions derail the focus on resolution.

Other people might take the money and sue, but if you come into my office I’m going to ask you, ‘Do you really want to go to court or are there alternative ways of resolution we can explore without you handing over your bank account.’ In other words I want to find out what is really going to be best for your business – right now. Let’s work through the emotions; is litigation the best choice? Do you really want high-profile publicity or are you genuinely interested in solving this problem?”

Essentially what you get with Greg Wood is an Attorney who’s had a long successful career and is now in a position to cherry-pick his cases. Here’s how Greg sums up his philosophy on mediation: “I’ve spent most of my life litigating, so I know the majority of the time, in the very end, cases will settle anyway – meanwhile, you’ve just put your lawyer’s kids through college. So, if there’s a chance to settle in the beginning – at the very early stages – let’s try to get it done. From my standpoint it’s beneficial because I’m not trying to impede the business process, I become an ally of the business process, and when a client sees a good result from a resolution that doesn’t cost them an arm and a leg they’ll come back to me when they have another dispute.”

Clearly Felicitas, the Roman Goddess of “good luck,” had very little to do with the success of Atty. Greg Wood, rather, it’s been the sheer number of repeat business Greg has earned from jobs well done. Mystery solved.

What is a mystery to many is exactly why Greg decided to become an attorney; it wasn’t his first choice. You see, funny as it may sound, Greg Wood is a jet rocket scientist – literally. He has a Masters in Engineering and if you should ever happen to be in attendance at a dinner party in Malibu and someone yelled out, “Help! My Jet is down! Is there an F15 Radar Tracking engineer in the house?!” Atty. Greg Wood would be able to step forward from the crowd and affirm, “Yes, I’m an F15 Radar Tracking Engineer; how can I be of service?”

So, what was the impetus that thrust Greg into the legal world? Oddly enough it was a piece of justice that all of us crave for: beating a parking ticket.

The setting was Westchester, California; Greg, who at the time was working at Hughes Aircraft in Control Systems Engineering and still in his Master’s program, was simply cashing a check. He’d left friends in his car and advised them to move it if a parking officer came by, but upon returning he discovered a parking officer had come by, not allowed his friends to move his car and given him a ticket. With a frustration we can all empathize with Greg decided to fight the ticket. His parking citation was for “parking in an alley,” so Greg went down to the courthouse and picked up a vehicle codebook to see exactly what constituted an “alley.”

The answer was a roadway 25 feet wide or less, so Greg drove back down to Westchester and, with cars whirring by, measured the distance by placing his size 12’ feet one in front of the other. The outcome? 24 feet. Greg had actually been “officially” parked in an alley, but still, the parking officer could have let his friends move the car and, well, he had nothing to lose by trying.

Parking tickets used to be handled in court by Assistant District Attorneys, so Greg found himself representing himself against the full power of the city of Los Angeles . With the Parking Officer on the stand and dutifully answering all the Assistant D.A.’s questions pertaining to Greg’s parking violation, it was now Greg’s turn to cross-examine the witness.

Not being an attorney Greg made small talk with the Parking Officer, stalling while thinking about his plan of attack, but when the judge ordered

Greg to get to the point of his defense, Greg boiled everything down to one simple question: he asked the Parking Officer, “Did you measure the roadway in question?” The Parking Officer responded, “No.” Greg pushed on: “Could it have been as wide as 24 feet?”

“Maybe.”

“Could it have been as wide as 26 feet?”

“I suppose.”

Greg turned to the Judge and said, “Your Honor, if it’s 26 feet I’m not guilty!” The courtroom erupted with laughter and the Assistant D.A. jumped to his feet yelling, “Your Honor, may I ask Mr. Wood a question?!” The Judge agreed and the D.A. looked Greg directly in the eyes and asked, “Mr. Wood, did you measure that roadway?!”

As Greg explained to me during our lunch interview here at Sunset Gower’s Stage café, “It was a deer in the headlights moment, Anthony. I turned to the Judge and said, ‘Your Honor, I don’t have to answer that do I?’ The Judge said, ‘No you don’t, Mr. Wood – case dismissed.’ I walked out of that courtroom thinking ‘Move over Perry Mason!’” …And justice for all.

So, Greg finished his Masters in Engineering, went to Law School, passed the Bar and began his new career as an Attorney in 1975. Now, 37 years later, a career that began with a Homeric defeat of an Assistant D.A., Greg has turned his attention to helping his clients avoid litigation whenever possible.

In Hollywood, anyone looking for their 15 minutes of fame can hurl accusations of intellectual property theft at Studios and Production Companies and get their short-lived publicity – but before things progress to that level, where movie premieres are halted or filming stopped pending court proceedings, you’d call Greg Wood and have him…fix things.

“Litigation is always risky,” Greg tells me shaking his head empathetically, “You have no control over your outcome when you walk into that courtroom because you’re placing your client’s fate in the hands of a Judge or a Jury who may have a completely different perception of your case. The bottom line is businesses want to do business, they don’t want to litigate, and that’s where I step in. I know litigation inside out and will take that route if necessary but I also know how to avoid it for my clients and deliver a resolution where their interests are protected. In a sense I use my litigation skills in the mediation room, behind closed doors, and I solve problems every day that the public has no idea ever existed.”

Agency for Dispute Resolution (ADR) 9595 Wilshire Blvd, 9th Floor, Beverly Hills, CA 90212 800.616.1202 x 718 toll free 818.527.1176 818.772.4677 fax www.WoodIPDR.com www.AgencyDR.com