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James Burdick (Family photo)
From the Detroit courtroom to the Hollywood writers’ room, attorney James Burdick carved out an unconventional career, representing clients including a key figure in the Jimmy Hoffa disappearance, and writing in the late 1970s and 1980s for such shows as “Mork and Mindy” and “The Mississippi.” He died last week in Bloomfield Hills at age 82 from advanced congestive heart failure and other complications.
After returning home from Hollywood, from 1991 until his retirement about 18 months ago, Burdick was associated with the Bloomfield Hills law firm of Hertz Schram. He specialized in white-collar criminal defense work, earning the respect of his peers and judges with his keen legal skills and thoroughness.
“Every day was a good day when Jim was around,” said close friend and colleague at Hertz Schram, attorney Wally Piszczatowski, in a eulogy delivered Sunday at the funeral at Ira Kaufman Chapel in Southfield. “He was an ethical, passionate, fearless advocate for his clients. Didn’t matter big, small, rich, poor.”
“He was funny. He could do crazy stuff. He would call people by crazy names. Everybody had a crazy name at our office. He'd walk up to Vic Norris and go ‘Vic, Victoria, Victorious, what’s going on?’”
Raised in Northwest Detroit
Burdick grew up in northwest Detroit. The son of Mary and Wayne County Circuit Court Judge Ben Burdick, he had an older sister, Andrea, whom he liked to tease and playfully torment, as siblings often do.
For the first two years of high school, his father sent him to a boarding school, Cheshire Academy in Connecticut, 25 miles southwest of Hartford, that was considered a feeder school for Yale University. But according to Rabbi Harold Loss, who officiated at the funeral, Burdick was told entering his senior year that Yale had reached its quota for Jews.
So Burdick, who was a “greaser” — often clad in leather jacket and pointed shoes — returned to Detroit his senior year and graduated from Mumford High School in 1961. He qualified as a "smart greaser,” Rabbi Loss noted.
He graduated with an undergraduate degree from Wayne State University in 1965 and then from the University of Michigan Law School in 1968.
After Law School
After law school, Burdick became an assistant Wayne County prosecutor and for 3 1/2 years roomed with friend Bernie Friedman, who also worked as a prosecutor. Friedman, who attended the funeral, would later become a federal judge.
After leaving the prosecutor’s office in 1972, Burdick entered private practice.
James Burdick as a young lawyer
In 1975, he represented Chuckie O’Brien, the self-described foster son of James R. Hoffa, the former Teamsters president who had vanished after going to the Machus Red Fox restaurant on Telegraph in Bloomfield Township to meet with some mobsters on July 30, 1975. O’Brien was a person of keen interest in the case.
Burdick had gone to law school in Ann Arbor with Hoffa’s son, James P. Hoffa, who insisted O’Brien knew what happened to his dad. But Burdick advised O’Brien to invoke the Fifth in the grand jury and refuse an FBI polygraph test.
“Of course Jim junior was really pissed at me for not having him take a polygraph and I'm like ‘I'm not going to do it,’” Burdick told Deadline Detroit last year during an interview before the 50th anniversary of the Hoffa disappearance.
“Somehow or another the FBI got it in their heads that he was somehow involved,” Burdick said of O’Brien. “They had no evidence, they had nothing, and they tried to get him to snitch on somebody. There was nothing to snitch on.”
Ran For Congress
In 1976, Burdick ran as a Republican for Congress in the 17th Congressional District against Democrat William Broadhead and lost by a margin of 64–34 percent. In the 1980s, he would become a staunch Democrat, and later a particular critic of President Donald Trump.
In the late 1970s, after his congressional defeat, Burdick decided to head west to Hollywood to write. While doing so, he represented people involved in the Writers Guild. He then started writing for TV shows including CBS’s legal drama “The Mississippi,” “Mork and Mindy” on ABC, and for Joan Rivers productions. He used to meet with Rivers.
“If you know Mork and Mindy, that touched his kind of insightful approach to life, for the level of sarcasm that mixed it all up together,” Rabbi Loss said.
In the late 1980s, he returned to the Detroit area to work. In 1993, attorney Marc Whitefield gave him the name of Judith Rubens, a mother of two young children who had lost her husband, Dr. Mark Rubens, in a scuba diving accident. She had a son, Andrew, 9, and a daughter, Laura, 6.
Judith and James Burdick
Burdick, who had been previously married for a brief time, lived in Bloomfield Hills. He initially thought Judith was “geographically undesirable” because she lived around 15 Mile and Haggerty in West Bloomfield. But according to the rabbi, the first phone call together lasted 2½ hours, and subsequently, they started dating.
“I met him when I was a 33-year-old widow with two young children still navigating the grief of losing my husband Mark in a sudden and tragic scuba accident,” Judith Burdick, a psychotherapist, explained during her eulogy. “Jim came into our lives like a breath of fresh air and he made me laugh a lot. He was funny at a time when laughter felt so distant. He brought it back to me and the kids.”
She recalled the first time she introduced him to her children. Her son, Andrew, looked at Burdick and asked if he was going to marry his mom.
“If I’m lucky,” he responded.
Adopted Both Children
They were married in 1995, and Burdick adopted both children. They filed for divorce in 2013 but remained very close. In fact, he moved in with Judith in his final days, and she cared for him. “The love was always there and growing,” she said days after the funeral.
L-R: Judith, Laura, Andrew and Jim
Their son, Dr. Andrew Rubens, 41, said during his eulogy that from the very beginning Burdick “did something that I will always carry with me. He made space for my first dad. He never tried to replace him, never made us feel like loving Mark meant loving him any less. In fact, he did the opposite. He made sure we knew it was OK to keep loving him, to keep honoring him, to keep talking about him.”
“Technically, Jim was my stepfather, but that word never really fit because from the moment he showed up he was my dad, and that is how I always refer to him.”
He said his father always had his back.
Rubens recalled the time Burdick came to his defense as a kid when a neighbor berated him and his cousin for accidentally throwing a baseball into their yard.
He said his dad got into it with the neighbor and admonished him for talking to the children in a harsh manner.
As Burdick was walking away, the man’s wife yelled out, “What an asshole,” to which Burdick responded: “See, even she knows you’re an asshole.”
Books and Movies
Burdick’s daughter, Laura Rubens Hartman, 38, said during her eulogy that Burdick was her rock as a dad, and she was so proud of him as a lawyer. She also noted that he introduced her to the best movies and books.
James Burdick with the family dog, Pearl (Family photo)
“I was quoting Young Frankenstein and Dirty Rotten Scoundrels at like, 9 years old,” she said.
“We drove each other nuts,” she said. “Our relationship was so complicated, but it was ours, and I didn’t always choose the easiest path, and I know you worried about me… But you taught me to be strong and be resilient, and I made it out OK; better than OK.”
His work as a lawyer in high-profile cases often landed him on TV, appearing on Geraldo, Larry King Live, Good Morning America, HBO Undercover, Dateline NBC and other shows.
Some high-profile clients included Jonathan Schmitz, who murdered Scott Amedure, a Lake Orion resident, after they appeared on “The Jenny Jones Show” in March 1995. The theme that day was secret same-sex crushes.
Jones brought Schmitz in front of the cameras and told him that he was Amedure's secret crush. Three days later, Schmitz withdrew money from his savings account and bought a 12-gauge pump-action shotgun. He then shot Amedure at his trailer and confessed on a 911 call that he killed him because he was humiliated on national TV. It became known as the “Jenny Jones Show murder” and triggered debate over ambush TV.
Burdick argued in court that Schmitz suffered from mental illness and meant to commit suicide when he shot Amedure with a shotgun at close range. In November 1996, Schmitz was convicted in Oakland County Circuit Court of second-degree murder.
In 2017, after 22 years in prison, Schmitz was released.
Represented Athletes
In 2004, Burdick represented Indiana Pacer Stephen Jackson in a brawl with Detroit Pistons fans at the Palace of Auburn Hills known as the “Malice at the Palace.” He was was accused of throwing a chair into the crowd. And in 2011, he represented Fab Five member Jalen Rose in a drunk driving crash in West Bloomfield Township.
Burdick eventually found a particular niche defending healthcare practitioners. He was often spotted in the federal courthouse in downtown Detroit representing those clients.
“Jim was a trailblazer,” attorney Piszczatowski, a former federal prosecutor, said. “He was the go-to guy in that arena, and he really captured that part of the practice of law. He did very well, and he was always very successful.” Other lawyers often came to him for advice on the subject.
He said Burdick also “broke the mold” in writing sentencing memorandums in federal court, which are the last chance for defense attorneys to convince a judge to impose a more lenient sentence than prosecutors want.
He said Burdick, who was a great writer, humanized the client in the memorandums and told a narrative that was far more compelling than just stating facts.
“He really created the template for what we all tend to use now,” Piszczatowski said during the eulogy.
“He did help so many people, hundreds in their time of need, when they needed to be comforted… he did that over and over and over.”
“I’d like to thank you, Jim, for everything you’ve done for me, for the path you cut that I could follow, or try to follow, because I don’t think I could ever match up to it.”
