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In many countries, advocates are allowed to take a pillow-talk briefing and represent their spouses in court. The trouble is, if advocates lose such cases, their despair, plus their client’s impending personal criticism, can trigger certain unprofessional moments.

Having just lost a criminal case in which she defended her husband, Kathy Brewer Rentas, an American media litigation lawyer, has been charged with assault for allegedly shaking the prosecutor's hand so vigorously that she injured the woman's shoulder.

Mrs Rentas’s husband Anthony is on federal probation for distributing cocaine in New York. He admitted violating the terms of his probation, and Mrs Rentas had gone to court in Fort Lauderdale, Florida to represent him. Having heard the case, District Judge William Zloch ordered that Mr Rentas be put under house arrest for 90 days and complete his probation. Court officials said Mrs Rentas then insisted on shaking hands with Assistant US Attorney Jennifer Keene.

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According to an arrest report, Ms Keene didn’t shake Brewer's hand at first, “but Brewer insisted that she do so and continued to follow Keene". The report says Brewer “forcefully grabbed on to Keene's right hand and squeezed it, pulling Keene toward her” and forcing her off balance. With Keene in hand, the report goes on, “Brewer made an upward, then a quick downward motion and pulled Keene toward the ground”. One witness said the arm was almost ripped from its shoulder socket. Lawyers are good at being disarmingly polite but they’re not usually that bad.

Mrs Rentas was charged with assaulting a federal officer. She spent the night detained in solitary confinement and was later released on a $100,000 bond and ordered to get a psychological evaluation to see if she needs counselling or anger management training; she faces up to a year in jail if convicted of the assault charge. The psychologist who does the evaluation will, of course, have to be careful about how he greets her.

In the UK, it’s worth mentioning, there is a convention among barristers not to shake hands with each other. The origin of this custom isn’t definitively recorded. One explanation, though, is that shaking hands was a very old way of people demonstrating, when they met, that they weren’t holding a weapon, and that there was no need for such assurances between friends, especially learn’d friends.

Professor Gary Slapper is Director of the Centre for Law at The Open University

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