Years ago, after a pair of cases lasting years that caused great stress and strain in my firm, I knew I was on the path to semi retirement. I was fortunate to be able to do it, thanks to a simple combination of planning and luck, and three essential tools many in my cohort lacked: staying married, living below my means, and sending my Ds to public school from K- grad school.
Despite that hope, the past years have been a repeat of Pacino in III: just when I thought I was out -- they pulled me right back in! And it's been fine -- more shekels in the investment account to leave someday to the kids and grandson are nice, as is the ability to give charity.
But I always refuse to not allow the career to eat my kishkes out, as the Latin saying goes. Until recently.
A former client referred what seemed to be a huge case: a young father of 6 struck and killed by a truck driven by a construction company executive --with tens of millions of insurance coverage. The first thing we must assess when given a case is pocket size of the defendant -- for the first thing they teach you in plantiff's lawyer school is you can't get blood from a stone. Next is damages -- the "so what" part of any accident. Finally, and easiest for us to deal with, is fault -- proving the rich evil doer was responsible. As my old boss Ed taught -- when your client drives his car into a tree -- sometimes you gotta sue the tree.
Well, this case seemed to have the trifecta we need, and we had our dear friend undertake the lead counsel role, but he got bogged down. From January through early Fall, he seemed to have difficulty getting things going. There were international barriers -- the decedent was from another country -- but still, the delay was not acceptable.
So my partner and I sat down with our man and had a serious talk -- maybe it was time we started referring the complicated cases to a smart, aggressive young lawyer who is a sort of protege of mine. We agreed, but the ensuing discussions about who would do what, and a fair sharing of work and fees took hours and hours, because like many things in life, the surface issue was truly only the visible part of the true issue, and we all had to confront matters like aging, lack of mental acuity going forward, and good old laziness versus actually working hard.
Well -- we finally, after much tensosity and aforementioned kishkes issues, worked things out -- and our young Turk was ready to roll. I made two trips to the office to get all the new papers signed, and it seemed we were off to the races. Then last night I got the call.
During the months delay, our man never retrieved the traffic homicide report -- and it contained a troublesome fact: our client's decedent was nearly THREE TIMES OVER THE LEGAL LIMIT when he was out on the road and killed. Yes -- a bit of a hindrance to the prosecution of what seemed like a can of corn case.
I hung up the phone and shook my head and had a little self critical laugh. It just proves the absurdity of what we do professionally sometimes. I summoned my best Silvio Dante and said to myself "F-ing clients! They mess up the case!"
But the revelation was bigger -- unless I am ready to truly dive back into the profession fully -- so much of what I do is Macbethian: lots of noise, but like the tale told by an Idiot. And that idiot is me.
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