Lawyers get a lot of shit. Plaintiffs’ lawyers get even more shit. We’re litigious. We’re greedy. We bring frivolous cases — piping hot cup of McDonald’s coffee anyone?* We prolong our cases to run up the fees. Etc. Etc. Defense counsel on one of our cases once told me he hated that settlements were “annuities for plaintiffs’ lawyers.” But this same guy has dragged the case into its 8th year — long after we got a partial judgment in our favor — making the same arguments he’s lost before and happily billing his client by the hour along the way. Eventually, his greed will be our annuity!
The truth is, plaintiffs’ lawyers work on contingency. We have to select meritorious cases; otherwise, we’d starve. And we have every incentive to litigate them quickly and efficiently, or we’d run out of money. Defense lawyers get paid win or lose. And they get paid by the hour, so they earn more the longer the case goes on and the more motions they file. Now who has the incentive to raise frivolous defenses and file unnecessary motions?
So I thought I’d take this space from time to time to post examples of the silliness we encounter in some of our cases. Not facts or law I disagree with — that’s what the profession is all about. Two sides have a dispute and their lawyers craft legal and factual arguments to help the judge or jury decide who’s right. No, what I’m talking about is the sort of baloney that gives lawyers a bad name. Well, for example:
The defendants in one of our cases filed a motion to strike one of our exhibits for lack of authenticity, forgetting that it was authenticated by their own expert. Even better, the exhibit is a 42-page report from the Department of Justice detailing their expert’s constitutional violations, so we get to use our opposition brief to rehash this guy’s, um, more stellar qualities as an expert.
The same defendants filed a motion to strike our expert for lack of qualification, and submitted to the court a version of her report that omitted her qualifications.
Same guys again. We discovered a clerical error in one of the exhibits to our brief — we had accidentally** attached the wrong photos. Before filing the substitute exhibit, we made a courtesy call to the defendant’s attorney. In 20 years of practice I have never objected to or received an objection to something so routine. She objected. And today we got her . . . wait for it . . . motion for a two-week extension to draft their brief in opposition to our request to correct a clerical error. She needs two more weeks? To write a brief? To oppose the submission of the correct photos. Photos taken by the defendant and provided to us.
Maybe all this is too law-nerdy, but honestly that’s like composing a 30 minute oration on why the person with only a loaf of bread should not be permitted to cut in the grocery line.
Too law-nerdy, but, as always, very therapeutic to write. Thanks for listening!!
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* For a total debunking of this canard, click here.
** Things got a bit, ah, hectic around the filing of this particular brief, leading to this Facebook update the day after: Things I heard the day the brief was due: (1) I thought you were drafting that section (noon); (2) My computer won’t save any of my edits (7:30 pm); (3) Hold on, I just puked in my keyboard (10:30 pm).
Thought Snax 
Oh yeah!?!? Well as a (former) defense attorney, have I got some doozies for you! But I’ll stipulate that the real problem is that there are too many arrogant idiots on both sides of the courtroom.
Did I ever bore you with the story of the attorney who sued the health insurance company on behalf of his chiropractor client? Insurer wanted to terminate a provider agreement, resulting in the guy becoming “out of network.” So he claimed we (the PRIVATE company)+(a PARTY to a CONTRACT) had interfered with his Constitutional Right to Freedom of Contract.
Don’t get me started on the judge who wouldn’t dismiss the claim either.
To terminate a contract.
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(Don’t know how that little sentence fragment ended up on the end of that comment. Please move on, nothing to see here.)
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Well, good point. There is an arrogant (let’s be candid) asshole problem on both sides. From time to time, I’ll read a decision about a particularly misguided plaintiff’s claim and think “damn! friendly fire!” But it’s usually in the context of a decision dismissing the case. Hard to believe a court would not dismiss a constitutional claim against a private party!!
And I liked your sentence fragment! Very emphatic!
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Let me just add that I got a new computer shortly afterwards, and that my use of profanity has increased exponetially as a result of the nameless defense attorney.
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I try not to swear too much in front of the children, but due to the same nameless defense attorney, my eyes are now stuck “like that”
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Unfortunately, the legal profession can’t lay sole claim to having a profusion of assholes. But I guess your assholes have a pulpit, and an asshole with a pulpit is a dangerous thing (see George Bush).
Love the blog!
From your cous, Dan.
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