Neil Chayet — hosted ‘Looking at the Law’ on radio for 41 years
Neil Chayet, a judge’s son whose health law practice was less renowned than the minute-long summaries of court cases he delivered weekdays to a national radio audience for 41 years, died Friday in Salem, Mass. He was 78.
His wife, Martha, said the cause was small-cell cancer.
By the time he retired from radio in June, Mr. Chayet had distilled more than 10,000 cases into quick legal yarns that kept his “Looking at the Law” segments a staple on the Boston powerhouse station WBZ-AM and the stations to which it was syndicated nationally by CBS News Radio.
“He wanted to keep doing it,” Peter Casey, the news and programming director of WBZ News Radio 1030, said in a telephone interview. “He had no intention of stopping until he had to.”
Mr. Chayet shied away from talking about cases that were widely known, leaning instead toward interesting and quirky ones that were untethered to a particular date. He found some cases himself, but he also relied on research by law students hired to assist him and friends in the legal community.
“He had his favorites, like insurance cases or ones involving pets,” one of those assistants, Aaron Williams, said in an interview. “He had that rare ability to make cases accessible to the lay listener and make them punchy and fun.”
When Mr. Chayet started “Looking at the Law” in 1976, he feared that he would not have enough to say for very long. But, as he told Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly 30 years later, “I have rooms full of potential story ideas.”
Mr. Chayet’s on-air formula was simple. When he introduced himself, he always stretched the ‘l’ in his given name. Then came a rapid summary of the case that was cogent, colloquial and friendly, like a disc jockey talking about a singer’s new release. And he almost always ended with wordplay or a pun (the worst of which his wife said she had the right to veto).
“So Gary’s family is all shook up,” he said near the end of a segment about a lawsuit over Elvis Presley memorabilia. “But for Nancy and her family, it’s a big hunk o’ love.” And after summarizing a smuggling case in which officials in Washington state shipped 5,000 pounds of marijuana into Puget Sound on a barge and set it on fire, he said, “No tern was left unstoned.”
Neil Lewis Chayet (pronounced CHAY-et) was born in Boston on Jan. 17, 1939. His father, Ely, was a judge in Norfolk County, Mass., and his mother, the former Blanche Poretsky, was a homemaker. He graduated from Tufts University and Harvard Law School.
As a young lawyer in the mid-1960s, Mr. Chayet worked for the Law Medicine Institute at Boston University, where he was an adviser to a psychiatric task force that was evaluating information about Albert DeSalvo, who, known as the Boston Strangler, had confessed to being the serial killer of 13 women. (He was convicted of armed robbery, sex offenses and assault.)
“It was my job to deal with the number of psychiatrists who called us to say, ‘I have the strangler in my practice,’ ” Mr. Chayet told the EagleTribune, a Massachusetts newspaper, in 2013. “I was stunned when I got the first call. And then I got others.”
He was also one of the lawyers in a widely publicized state lawsuit filed on behalf of inmates at the Bridgewater State Hospital, which housed the criminally insane; the suit accused filmmaker Frederick Wiseman of violating their privacy in his documentary “Titicut Follies” (1967). A decision by a Massachusetts judge largely banned the film from being shown nationally, except for educational purposes, for many years.
Mr. Chayet’s ease at talking to the media brought him to the attention of the Boston radio station WEEI, which hired him to start the “Looking at the Law” segments. In 1991 he moved to WBZ, where he also hosted a Sunday talk show for many years.
Devoted as Mr. Chayet was to “Looking at the Law,” it was always a sidelight; through all the years he remained a well-connected lawyer, lobbyist and lecturer.
He delivered his final law segment on June 30. It was about a classaction lawsuit against the technology company Hewlett-Packard over a flaw in one of its printers. He ended by saying, “So the next time you’re frustrated, instead of hitting print, you can hit the printer — in court.”
In addition to his wife, the former Martha Gruntmeir, he is survived by his sons, Michael and Ely; his daughter, Lisa Chayet Sahlberg; five grandchildren; and his sister, Jayne Olken. His marriage to the former Susan Mullen ended in divorce.
Mr. Chayet, who was active in the Massachusetts Republican Party and considered running for the Senate and governor, was long interested in creative ways to resolve conflicts. At Tufts’ experimental college, he recently taught a course in conflict resolution that examined legal cases, psychology and the study of brain function.
Casey, of WBZ, said Mr. Chayet had spoken excitedly about expanding his work in conflict resolution, adding, “He was more passionate recently about the course and setting up a center for resolving conflicts than ‘Is this script ready?’ ”