Reporter Overhears Lawyer’s Conversation After Failed Hang-Up
A reporter-turned-media consultant has a tip for lawyers: Make sure you hang up the phone after speaking with a reporter.
That advice went unheeded when one of the newspaper’s reporters was speaking with the executive director of a residential youth home where a teen died while he was being placed in restraints, according to legal media consultant Mary Flood, writing for the Houston Chronicle’s Houston Legal blog. In this case, it was the executive director, Cal Salls, who failed to hang up—but it allowed his conversation with a lawyer in the room to be overheard by a Chronicle reporter.
Salls tells the reporter that any questions will have to be answered by lawyer John Carsey. After Salls’ failed attempt to hang up the phone, it becomes apparent that Carsey is in the room with Salls, the Houston Chronicle reports.
Salls can be heard speaking with Carsey about a videotape of the youth’s struggle with a staffer at the facility, Daystar Residential Inc. Carsey says the video “shows things happening as they should be.” He acknowledges, though, that the camera was placed in a hallway, and, from that vantage point, “We’re never, ever going to see what happened in the room.”
