I fought the law

DISCLAIMER: If you are a lawyer, you might want to skip this week's entry on It's Been a Slice. I know how sensitive lawyers can get and I know how insulting I can get. In this post, I will knowingly make blanket statements and unfounded claims with little to no proof to back them up. If you are a lawyer, you won't find this particular post funny. (As for the rest of you, you may not find any of my posts funny, but I am addressing just the lawyers right now.) I am giving you fair warning to get out now.

I worked in the marketing department of a fairly large east coast law firm for nearly ten years. In that time, I grew to really, really hate lawyers. For the most part (uh-oh! here comes one of those blanket statements I was telling you about!), I found them to be arrogant, condescending know-it-alls who were convinced that just because they went to law school, they were capable of doing your job in addition to their own. They were experts on everything. They were a source of knowledge on just about any subject. On a personal level, I was often given unsolicited design advice and instruction from lawyers. 

It's complicated.

The firm that employed me was very aggressive when it came to marketing and the marketing department boasted over a dozen members. Nevertheless, lawyers constantly injected their own ideas, based purely on the fact that they went to law school. Once, I was designing an invitation for a conference in our Harrisburg office. The lawyer I was working with asked for the size of the invitation. In a telephone conversation, I told him it would be in postcard form, measuring eight and a half inches wide by five and a half inches high. He said he could not visualize it and requested a printed sample. I asked if there was a ruler available in his office. Again, he pressed for a printed, actual size sample. I told him it was the size of a regular piece of copy paper — one that is currently in a tray in the office Xerox machine — folded in half widthwise. He was not interested in any sort of exercise in origami. He demanded — demanded, I tell you! — a printed sample. I was convinced that, despite his years of college and law school education, this guy was either too important or too dumb to know how to operate a ruler.

One of my other jobs at the law firm was producing standard "support" ads for program booklets. These are very generic ads, usually offering "congratulations" or "best wishes" for someone being honored by a local organization. These ads were solicited to raise additional funds to either lessen the overall cost of an event or to contribute to a charitable entity. Because the law firm placed so many of these kinds of ads, the ordering process was streamlined to a few clicks on the firm's intranet. Every so often, an attorney - who was placing one of these ads - would request a full-color version. I would check the specifications from the organization to see if they allowed for color. If they did not, I would inform the attorney that the booklet in question would be in black & white. This, of course, would lead to an argument, because you cannot tell a lawyer that they can't have something they want. I would explain — again — that the booklet would be printed in just black ink. In some cases, I was ordered to submit a color ad and "see what they could do." Of course, "what they could do" was to tell me to resubmit a black and white ad.

Another time, I was having a heated discussion with a co-worker in her office. Perhaps our exchange got a little too loud and our voices carried out into the hallway. One of the firm's lawyers poked his head into her office. I expected him to tell us to keep our voices down, which would have been understandable. But, no... he actually began offering ways in which we could solve our little disagreement. My co-worker and I were so taken aback by the uninvited hubris this guy exhibited that we nearly forgot what were were arguing about.

Yet another of the firm's lawyers supplied a mailing list of contacts to whom he wanted a mass-mailing sent for an upcoming seminar that he would be hosting. He was very specific about the names included on the list and asked the woman in charge of mailing to pay close attention to the list — not to add any of the firm's other contact lists to his special list. The invitation was prepared, printed and mailed to his special list, as per his instructions. After a reasonable amount of waiting time, the seminar was canceled for lack of interest. The special list received not a single reply.

I was relieved of my position at the law firm just before Spring of 2018. I have had three jobs since then. But, my feelings toward lawyers have not waned. 

If you are a regular reader of this blog (besides me, I wonder why anyone would be a regular reader of this blog), you know I spend an inordinate amount of time watching television. I have taken notice of several commercials for local law firms — two in particular. The first features a local lawyer discussing his various case wins with a group of folks in a relaxed setting. Everyone is seated on a sectional sofa while the lawyer expounds on his winning record — delivered in a tone that's a strange combination of empathy and arrogance, with the "empathy" part sounding very insincere. The lawyer in the commercial reminds me of a lawyer I encountered almost ten years ago when an alleged UPS employee sued me (via my insurance company) over an alleged fall on my property. He is slimy and weasle-y and in a gazillion years I would never hire this guy to represent my interest in anything.

In another series of commercials for another Philadelphia law firm, the two principals are shown discussing important facts of a pending case (I assume) while strolling past prominent and recognizable sights in Philadelphia. There are scenes of them near the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall and City Hall. (I suppose they opted against showing them cavorting with Gritty and that's probably for the best.) Both gentlemen are dressed in tailored business suits. One of them, however, desperately needs a haircut. Up front, he has a receding hairline, but in the back....? It appears as though he leapt from his barber's chair to attend to an unexpected emergency and never returned to finish up his haircut appointment. Ever. And that appointment was months ago. I'll tell ya... if I decided to employ the services of this particular law firm and this guy and his "bushy bushy blond hair-do" walked into the office for our first consultation, I would immediately show myself to the door. There ain't a jury in the world who would take this alta kaker and his flowing locks seriously. Plus he reminds me of an old boss that I hated.

I actually have plenty more to say about lawyers, but I think I've made my point. Plus, I probably have lost a few readers.

So, sue me.

www.joshpincusiscrying.com

let's go trippin'

Oh what a fucking ordeal this turned out to be. (Wait a second. That sounds familiar. Didn't I just start a post like that? Are all subsequent blog posts gonna start like that? Well, only if they turn out to be a fucking ordeal... like this one.)

It began way back in 2009. That's right – this tale is six years in the making, However, I didn't become aware of it until a year later. But wait – I'm getting ahead of myself.

In 2010, I received a letter from an attorney informing me that this was my final warning. As far as I was concerned, it was also my first warning, as I had not received any previous correspondence from this particular lawyer. I quickly skimmed the letter and my attention was grabbed by such legal-jargon words as "negligence," "fault," and a few more fearsome-sounding Latin ones. Although the return address was in Philadelphia, I was not familiar with the particular law practice. The letter, upon closer scrutiny, recapped an incident that (allegedly) occurred on my property the previous winter. A seasonal employee of the United Parcel Service was (allegedly) attempting to make a delivery to my home. Because of the nature of my wife's business, she receives assorted sized packages of merchandise at our home on a regular basis. (Before you jump to a conclusion of an illegal operation, Mrs. P operates an eBay store and sells a variety of legitimate merchandise.) The UPS employee, who I'll call Miss Menteuse, was carrying a stack of boxes and (allegedly) tripped on my driveway. The letter went on to brandish the words "damages," "restitution" and several others that could all be punctuated by the greedy "cha-CHING" of a nuisance lawsuit.

I immediately called my insurance company. I explained about the letter to my agent's assistant*. She listened attentively, taking down details, asking a few questions including for a copy of the letter. I followed that call with one to my local police department. I asked if any reports of an accident had been filed about my address in the past year. Police records were checked and my answer was negative. So, I figured I'd just let my insurance company handle it. After all, that's what I pay insurance for, right?

So that was that. Wrong!

A little over a year later, I was contacted by mail by a new lawyer. This one was contracted by my insurance company to represent me. The letter explained that I would most likely have little or nothing to do regarding a pending lawsuit and that everything would be handled between my insurance company and their office. This letter was just informational. So, I filed it under a stack of papers on my nightstand and forgot about it.

Until I received the next letter, many, many months later. This one requested (demanded?) an appearance by my wife and me at a deposition. Mrs. P and I were to be questioned informally, but on the record, about the (alleged) incident. Furious, I arranged for a day off from work. My wife and I trekked out to a corporate campus in the western Philadelphia suburbs to "our" attorney's office. Here we got to meet the (allegedly) injured Miss Menteuse for the first time, nearly three years after her (alleged) "episode on our driveway. We also had the pleasure of meeting her legal representative – a shifty, slimy, hairy-knuckled shyster in an expensive-looking pin-striped suit. He looked like an extra in a B-movie Godfather rip-off and spoke like those slick ambulance-chasers you see on afternoon TV between The Price is Right and Judge Judy. A court reporter sat poised to document every word and the questions began. 

Miss Menteuse's attorney produced a wrinkled legal pad from his weather-beaten briefcase and kicked things off by calling me "Mr. Menteuse." 

I corrected him. "Pincus," I said.

"Huh?," he replied, as though he had never heard either name before. Realizing his error, he over-apologized and explained that, of course, his client's name was "Menteuse" and it was an honest mistake. 

Caution! May cause
irreparable damage!

And that's pretty much how it went. This distracted, fourth-rate Clarence Darrow hammered me with elaborately-phrased scenarios that evoked both confusion and impatience from me, my wife and my attorney. He often prefaced a question with "Now, I'm not trying to trick you.," accompanied by a leering, toothy grin. Each time, it was quite obvious that he was trying to trick me. Eventually, Miss Menteuse recounted, to the best of her apparently-rehearsed recollection, the events of December 2009. She told how the boxes she was carrying were piled way past her eyes, blocking her line of vision. She explained that she, indeed, walked all the way up to my front porch and decided not to scale the two steps, instead opting to seek alternate access to my front door. She then walked backwards to the sidewalk, and admittedly, without checking the path in front of her, crossed my narrow driveway and fell. As she rubbed her (alleged) injured ankle, she looked around and surmised that she had caught the heel of her work boot in a small, uneven piece of paving – a small, time-eroded imperfection that had been in that condition for the twenty-five years I have owned my house. Then, Miss Menteuse launched into a sob story, touching on (alleged) unemployment, being a single parent (allegedly), (alleged) constant pain and the (alleged) impaired ability to function properly as a productive member of the human race. All delivered with the gut-wrenching emotion of Meryl Streep in Sophie's Choice. However, there was nothing wrong with her that an award of fifty thousand dollars wouldn't cure.

Several tedious hours later, we were dismissed from the proceedings. Our attorney confidently speculated that this whole matter would come to some kind of settlement before it would reach an actual court date. My wife, whose greatest concern was that we would be in jeopardy of losing our house, was assured that was an impossibility. This was more of a thorn in our insurance company's side. Relieved, we thanked him and headed home.

But it was far from over.

Another year has passed when we received a letter, once more, requesting our presence at a non-binding arbitration. I called our attorney for a translation of the "legalese" of the letter, of which his office was copied. He broke it down in layman's language. A panel of three impartial attorneys would hear both sides of the case and make a decision of either dismissal or a monetary award. The decision, however, could be appealed, in which case, another settlement could be attempted or it would go to trial. A case of this nature, according to our attorney's experience and speculation, would be dismissed by any sane judge.

We soon found ourselves in the sterile, corporate surroundings of municipal building in the county seat. Three gentlemen in dark suits introduced themselves as the arbitration committee and informed all parties that they were ready to proceed. The entire deposition was reenacted for the benefit of the committee, with Miss Menteuse's attorney, once again, showing off everything he learned from Perry Mason reruns. Miss Menteuse offered her testimony first, tinging her answers with sorrow. In addition to her belabored account of the (alleged) incident, she told an irrelevant anecdote about a family vacation to Niagara Falls that seemed to baffle all present. When it was my turn in the hot seat, I repeated my statements from a year ago nearly verbatim (it was the truth), as Mrs. P sat behind me with the most forlorn look on her face. And once again, we were dismissed.

Another year's passing brings us up to the present. It turns out that the three-person panel fell for Miss Menteuse's tale of woe and deemed me an uncaring slumlord who had neglected the upkeep of his property for twenty-five years until it fell into an unsafe state of disrepair. They felt that the sum of thirty-two thousand dollars would make everything all better. Miss Menteuse's attorney felt otherwise and filed an appeal one day after the committee's findings were tendered. It seems either he or his client were not satisfied with the amount of the reward. So, after many months, another arbitration was agreed upon. This one will (allegedly) be it – final! binding! winner take all!

Once again, we were to meet on neutral grounds – this time, an attorney's office in downtown Philadelphia. Mrs. P and I arrived at 8:30 in the morning – forty minutes early for our appointment – only to be informed that the schedule was changed and the session would take place in the afternoon. We left and I returned alone, after being told that Mrs. P would not need to be present. For the third or fourth time (I lost count), the story was told. The boxes, the neglect of my property, Miss Menteuse's carelessness, my disregard for human life, her pitiful, struggle-filled existence – all the drama and pathos for a brand new, singular audience. Miss Menteuse's weaselly little legal representative was blatantly disinterested. He never put down his cellphone, he shuffled through an unorganized stack of papers, he tripped over words and couldn't recall dates or events. He told everyone that over the course of the last year, Miss Menteuse had lost an adult daughter in a fire (it was irrelevant to the case and was only used as a sympathy ploy), then went on to compare her pain from the fall to that suffered by someone who had been in a fire. His closing statement rambled on and on, still trying to get me to admit that my driveway is a deathtrap. Finally, the proceedings ended and, after some deliberation, the solo arbitrator would give his decision withing the week.

I received an email from my attorney. It was a summation that read like the recap of a long round of Deal or No Deal:

In today’s mail I received the arbitrator’s written opinion. He found the plaintiff 49% negligent and you 51% negligent for this incident. He determined that her damages were worth $26,000. However. based upon the reduction for her 49% the net award to the plaintiff is $13,260.

She and her lawyer essentially fucked her out of thirteen thousand bucks.

So, after six grueling years of paperwork and (alleged) doctor visits and depositions and arbitration, Miss Menteuse will end up with (after her slime ball attorney takes his cut) approximately $8000. I hope she's happy. Now that this is all over, I know I am. 

Allegedly.

www.joshpincusiscrying.com

*In over thirty years, I think I actually met my insurance agent only once.