Insufferable Lawyers

Ishmael said he knew it was time to go to sea again when he hung around too long at funerals, and felt melancholy about his life on land. Maybe the sign I need to truly retire from the practice of law is how little tolerance I have for the agressive, obnoxious personalities of my professional brethren.

I got a call last week from an old friend, who's a retired doctor. He was subpoenaed to give a deposition about a patient he saw one time in 1996! He has zero recollection of the gentleman, and hasn't even been near an examination room for 8 years.

I called the lawyer who issued the subpoena, and it turned out she worked for a friend of mine, a partner at a large firm. The partner came to the phone, and I asked whether the doc could simply send in a letter saying the note in the file WAS his, abut he had no other memory or information.

My friend said that sadly, the plaintiff's lawyer was a stickler for detail (the word he used was better: "asshole," and that he would insist on having my doctor friend testify about the authenticity of the single note in the chart.

I asked then for a simple favor of having the depo take place at the doc's house, lest he have to schlep Downtown for this annoying bit of his civic duty. My friend agreed.

Tonight my secretary called, telling me I had an "urgent" call from the plaintiff's lawyer. I know him, sort of, from years ago when I was a clerk at a firm where he was a young associate. I guess he was concerned why I, a fellow plaintiff's lawyer, was involved in his case, and wanted a preview of this pro forma depo.

Now, had I been in HIS shoes, I'd have said simply "Dave --what's the deal here? Seems like a simple records custodian depo --why are you involved?"

He took a different tack. Before I was even finished saying hello, he launched into a soliloquy about how his case was "worth $50 million" and how the defense lawyer was "going to get his head handed to him," and he assumed tomorrow's depo was no big deal...

I let him go on, as he was obviously enjoying the sound of his own voice, and then I answered, deadpan, that his client, years ago, told my doctor friend that he was planning, someday, to find a way to hurt himself and claim fault, that "no matter what, I'm going to win the Lotto at the hands of some idiot company."

There was a pregnant pause, and then the plaintiff's lawyer started saying that if my doctor friend had kept that to himself, it would be a breach of ethics, that he must be lying, and that he (the plaintiff's lawyer) might have to call the Medical Board (it's actually the Department of Health, or D'OH), etc... etc..

I answered that my client was retired anyway, and was therefore immune from these threats.

Again, stunned silence, until I said "Dave (what I will call him, because that's his name)I'm just kidding. My doc has no memory of your client at all, and there's only a depo because you, apparently, never agree to dispense with these things."

He laughed, nervously, the laugh of someone who saw his huge case's success pass before his eyes. I felt grand...

In fact, my inderstanding of this whole dustup is that his client IS badly hurt, but essentially hurt himself by misusing some sort of machine. My friend has defended these types of cases before, and gotten defense verdicts for his corporate clients.

I have no dog in the fight, of course.

Still, I wonder whether I was ever that insufferable. Nah --I never loved the sound of my own voice, at least to that extent...