Lawyers, Lawyers, Everywhere and Not a Drop of Ink . . .

At every turn in the Broderick case, there are lawyers.

Betty Broderick used to complain that newspapers were afraid to publish anything about her bitter divorce for fear of being sued. She was furious when her ex-husband, a lawyer, convinced a judge to seal the official record.

After Broderick was charged with murdering her ex-husband and his new wife, prosecutors sought a gag order against her and others in the case.

And now the latest legal twist.

Dennis Clausen, an award-winning author and creative writing professor at the University of San Diego, has decided not to sign with Simon & Schuster to write a nonfiction book about the Broderick case.

The major reason: Clausen could not get the assurance he wanted that the publishing house would protect him if the book prompted lawsuits.

Clausen had pitched Simon & Schuster on a “serious, thoughtful” look at the Broderick case as “a metaphor for a nation’s values and a symbol of much that went wrong with human relationships in the 1980s.”

Simon & Schuster sent the contracts to the Del Mar-based literary agency Waterside Productions. On Sunday, Clausen bowed out.

“I was concerned that the attention to legal details would make me write defensively,” Clausen said, “and I’d end up with a book with very little spirit.”

Clausen, 46, won the Edgar Award for mystery fiction in 1982 for his best-selling “Ghost Lover,” a thinking man’s novel of revenge and murder in the rural Midwest.

His free-lance writing includes comedy screenplays and a computer software manual. He had envisioned telling the Broderick story in the manner of Truman Capote’s “In Cold Blood,” a mix of detailed reporting and novelistic flair.

On Monday, he happened to read the latest edition of the book “Fatal Vision.” A newly added epilogue convinced him he had made the right decision.

It was author Joe McGinniss’ account of his three years in court fighting a lawsuit filed by convicted murderer Jeffrey MacDonald.

Newspaper Strike Chatter

Strike one and you’re out.

- Senior editors and non-editorial department managers at the Union-Tribune are said to have pleaded with publisher Helen Copley and editor-in-chief Herb Klein to avert a threatened strike by Newspaper Guild members.

- Reporters are taking home their files and phone lists so they can’t be used by replacements hired as strike-breakers. Elected officials are being asked not to talk to strike-breakers.

The first to pledge support were Rep. Jim Bates (D-San Diego) and state Sen.-elect Lucy Killea (D-San Diego).

- Guild members are handing out flyers warning would-be replacements: “Those crossing picket lines to replace us will be deemed SCABS and treated as such.”

- As the Guild sees it, the major obstacle to a compromise settlement is the disingenuous style of King & Ballow, the Tennessee law firm hired to represent the company.

The National Labor Relations Board has accused K&B; of two dozen counts of illegal negotiating tactics during U-T bargaining.

One U-T employee says the K&B; style is captured in William Kennedy’s novel “The Ink Truck,” a comic-tragic tale of a fictional newspaper strike in Albany. In it, an angry columnist talks of Stanley, the company’s lawyer-negotiator:

“Stanley says our 57th proposal is unacceptable without changes. He refuses to specify which changes. Hinted even with changes he wouldn’t like it.”

An Odoriferous Idea

Some men have their names on libraries or dams or great halls of learning. Others have to settle for less imposing edifices.

Jim Dragna, the attorney representing the city in litigation with the Environmental Protection Agency, told federal Judge Rudi Brewster during Monday’s court session that officials are considering names for the proposed $2.6-billion sewage system.

“There has been some discussion of naming the system the Judge Brewster (sewage) system,” Dragna said.

Brewster groaned. Dragna then assured him he was joking.