Week’s Off to Poor Start for ABA Head

CHICAGO — With the American Bar Assn. split over abortion, this week figured to be a rough one for ABA President L. Stanley Chauvin Jr. but he didn’t figure just how rough.

Last Sunday, the Louisville, Ky., lawyer flew here to prepare for the upcoming meeting, carrying a briefcase containing $55,000 in $100 bills. The money belonged to an unidentified client, he said, and “was escrowed with me” concerning a civil matter. Checking into the Hyatt Regency Hotel, he put the briefcase in a safe-deposit box. On Tuesday morning, the briefcase and the cash were gone.

Chicago police and hotel officials have had little to say since then, except the standard: “The investigation is continuing.”

The glum Chauvin also has said little, except to express regrets that he did not deposit the money in a Louisville bank before leaving town. With lawyerly understatement, he told reporters: “I think I could have done things a little differently.”