Michael Posner

I remember being assigned to cover the Exxon-Reliance antitrust case with Mike one day in the late 1970s. We had been hanging out at the District Court in Washington with other reporters, including, of course, our main opposition, for hours awaiting the court’s decision. Having no prior experience in reporting from the courts, my job was to secure a phone line when we got word the decision was coming down. Finally, just after the markets closed, we got the written multiple-page decision. I beat the opposition to the nearest phone and called the Reuters bureau. Mike, who’d been by my side all day, had suddenly disappeared. I panicked. A friendly reporter from the New York Post happened to stroll by. I told him I needed to find Mike. He went into the nearby men’s restroom and found Mike, who ambled (yes, ambled) out, took the phone and the decision from me, flipped through the pages and filed the “snap”. I listened as he reported the court had approved the takeover of Reliance by Exxon. While he was doing that, the opposition, having already filed their report, gently but gleefully said it looked like they had beaten us with the court’s denial of the proposed takeover. Mike was still filing and when he finished, I told him what the opposition had said. He said, calmly, “they got it wrong”. Sure enough, Mike was right, as he always was, and, to boot, he beat the opposition not only on timing but with the correct report. We’ll all miss him. ■