Anyway, this isn't even my problem. It is my neighbor Bill's problem. Bill's first problem is he's a lawyer, a profession which, as he puts it, "in an ideal world wouldn't fucking exist." Bill hates his present job, or at least that part of it wherein he receives work from some skinny nitwit who apparently doesn't recognize the 13th Amendment to the Constitution... Bill has lots of problems....
Which is why the other day I was shocked to see him dancing naked in the lobby waving his Bar Card over his head and blithering something about how he was going to take a fifty percent pay cut to "use this fucker for good instead of evil!"
Hey, it was nice to see him happy. He's a nice guy, and he's done some brilliant things, like the time when, in a fifteen minute telephone call he got his adversary to reduce his claim by $70 million and agree to have the case governed by the law of the only state of 50 which even remotely supported Bill's client's position all in exchange for withdrawing a motion which, if it had won and anyone had really looked, Bill said, he would have had an ugly malpractice case on his hands; like the time we sat in Fat Burger having dinner and he said, "{haha} I have $8 million dollars in my back pocket. My client wanted to give 15 to the plaintiffs," he looked pensively at the congealed grease burger. "I gave them the other 7 and those jackasses are up in San Francisco at some fancy ass restaurant thinking they beat me."
Well, as the old sayings go, "enjoy good times while they last because they won't; you can't teach an old dog new tricks; and a lawyer who represents himself has a fool for a client." For Bill anyway, today has been a sort of Cosmic Convergence of Folk Wisdom Maxims. Like as in "When it rains it pours."
As the last step in getting this stupid lousy paying job he was so fucking happy about he was drooling like an idiot he had to go in (take the day off, not get paid, for like the third day in a row... you'd think the fucking job was for Pope or something) and "show how he would handle these 2 files."
Now Bill wasn't worried. They still talk in downtown Los Angeles about the time Bill was summoned from the spectator's gallery to explain to a judge some other lawyer's demurrer (French, I think, for "They ain't got shit"), and how he stood, unprepared and noteless and argued the case for 45 minutes in excruciating detail ("Like a man possessed by Perry Mason" one derelict said). Bill won (we don't mention the fact that two days later the judge was busted and copped top being perpetually stoned out of his gourd and how that might be how he "understood" Bill). Anyway, he wasn't concerned.
His soon to be boss (or maybe who he was replacing) was -- they were her files. She kept nervously coming in and asking if she'd made any mistakes ("Nope... looks great"). And so the first file passed.
At this point things grow confusing and I'm not sure Bill is reliable. He babbled something about how he thought this woman -- the previous lawyer -- had taken one of the most responsible steps in litigation history... how they had chatted about some archaic law... how they agreed ultimately it was irrelevant... then he started screaming "I should have known, I should have known." I think the BIG boss was the actual plaintiff ("Those fuckers, especially the lawyers, always think they remember something from first year contracts and are confused with torts, which is easy, but I mean really....")
Anyway, last I saw him he had dashed off a 7 page fax telling the BOSS to stay out of the court house and stick to Medicare before he ran out of here with a bat muttering that he'd show me how he could beat hell on the Pope Mobile but I couldn't sue him "if [he doesn't] hurt it."
That was an hour ago and I can still hear the racket in the garage.......