WHEELS OF JUSTICE.(The Talk of the Town)

Like the nanny scandals of the early nineties, several recent public disgraces have counted in common a menial theme--that of the professional driver. There was Yoko Ono's chauffeur, who either tried to extort money from his boss or was the victim of her sexual advances; Princess Diana's, who was ruled (once and for all) to be drunk on the night of the fatal wreck; and the state employee who was paid two hundred thousand dollars to cart around Alan Hevesi's wife. It seemed a good time to check in with Lauren Z. Asher, an up-and-coming Manhattan attorney whose livelihood necessitates the defense, rather than the requisitioning, of the ubiquitous black town car.

Taxis, too: Asher's official motto (emblazoned on ads and ballpoint pens) is "I Will Fight Your Traffic Tickets"; her unofficial motto, as asserted on a recent Wednesday at the D.M.V. Traffic Violations Bureau on Rector Street, is "I try to embrace whatever my motorist says." Asher, who speaks at Lambor-ghini speed and wears her brown hair swept back in a banana clip, is thirty-three. Last year, her second in solo practice, she handled around three thousand taxi and black-car cases, making her, as the editor of Black Car News said recently, "one of the biggies" in the field. In September, she opened an office on Eighth Avenue, a block up from a Luk-oil station and near a couple of taxi stands.

It was 8:30 A.M., and Asher was examining the summons of Olusegun Victor Samuel, a Nigerian cabbie who'd been issued a summons for running a stop sign at the corner of Spring and Washington. "It's an unknown cop," she said--meaning one unfamiliar to her, and thus, likely, with the clubby ways of the D.M.V. court--"which is great for me." Suddenly, Asher ran down the hall, popping her head into a chamber designated Hearing Room 3. "I didn't want the case to get pulled," she explained.

A few minutes later, the trial commenced. Asher, the defendant (wearing a maroon puffy jacket), and the officer who wrote the ticket stood in front of the bench. The officer read aloud from his notes:

"I was on the northwest corner travelling eastbound, when I observed a Ford yellow taxi coming southbound down Washington Street. I observed the vehicle go through a marked stop sign approximately ten feet before the crosswalk and proceeded to pull the motorist over."

Asher made a motion to dismiss.

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