Legal News

?Like Walking on the Deck of a Ship?: Lawyers in Tokyo Talk Temblor

By Ashby Jones

Reports from Japan indicate that the central business areas in and around Tokyo (pictured) escaped significant damage from the 8.9-magnitude earthquake that hit the country Friday afternoon. The bulk of the damage hit the northern part of the country, miles away from the nation’s capital.

Still, lawyers at big international and domestic firms were stranded at their offices Friday night after elevators and transportation were rendered out of service. Click here for the American Lawyer story.

AmLaw reporter Tony Lin talked to several lawyers in Tokyo who felt the temblor up close and, well, up high. Writes Lin:

Los Angeles native and longtime Tokyo resident Maxwell Fox, an intellectual property partner with Ropes & Gray, was getting ready for a client meeting when the first temblor hit around 3 p.m. Tokyo time.

“I’m used to earthquakes,” says Fox by phone from his office on the second floor of the Yusen Building in Tokyo’s Marunouchi district, “but this was the most severe I’ve ever felt. It was rolling, just a very disconcerting feeling.”

Milbank’s Gary Wigmore, a project finance partner, described via email to Lin what he felt from his 21st floor office tower like this:

“The building was moving left and right and swaying several inches . . . . The building creaked, and there was the sound of steel bending.” Books fell from shelves and pictures from walls, Wigmore recalled, and the floor began to move beneath his feet.

“It was like walking on the deck of a ship where you feel like falling and have to reach out to the wall to brace yourself,” he said. “A number of people including myself felt nauseous.”

That, in our minds, sounds absolutely terrifying.

In any event, Wigmore said he and other Milbank workers put on hard hats and walked down the 21 floors to a predesignated area.  The group gathered in a nearby park and stayed there for a few hours. Some then went home, while others returned to the office.

Fox said that Friday night that television announcers were advising those who worked in certain downtown office buildings to stay there overnight, to guard against the effect of aftershocks. Tokyo office buildings are are generally built to the highest standards of earthquake-resistance.

But many, Fox told Lin, were clearly eager to get home.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on March 11, 2011 (boomark / email).