Kill All the Lawyers, Part 9
WEST, WOODY
Kill All the Lawyers, Part 9 The Florida fiasco is what you would expect given our national penchant for suing. BY WOODY WEST GOING TO LAW, as the phrase used to be—that is, suing the rascal whose...
...the lawyer inquires...
...Included in the $29,000 he is seeking is $8,000 for fees for an attorney—and indeed he has found one to take his odd case, frivolous as it might seem to those not versed in the arcana of the legal tribe...
...Traveled far to get here...
...But in a society that seems to have raised litigation to a prominence both of psychic satisfaction and entertainment— how many of the Judge Judy variety of television shows are there now?—it's probably not worth digging for it...
...Then there was the award of $2 million in punitive damages and $1 in compensatory penalty to a young woman by a jury in North Carolina against Duke University...
...This suit was filed by a guest of the state of Maryland (45 years for kidnapping and assault...
...It thus comes as little surprise that our national habit of adjudicatory fervor should end up deciding a presidential election...
...He asserted he was denied parole as a result...
...He chose only to see her as a woman...
...The university claimed that the young woman wasn't talented enough to kick for a NCAA Division I team...
...This is a rich vein of high-grade ore of which the surface has only been scratched by the ingenuous Maryland felon...
...It might be especially useful for those who scribble for rent money— but public opinion likely holds that journalists deserve scant sympathy and less representation...
...Grant replies, "Far enough...
...One chilly evening he stops at the general store downtown...
...In our time, it has become more than a tradition, rather a national pastime, ranking just under baseball and a click above 1-900 phone sex from the office...
...Grant says he is...
...14, 2015...
...Oh, much the same as in Galena—lawyers nearest the fire...
...The school had referred him to a therapist who diagnosed the lad with "gender identity disorder," and that presumably accounted for his preference to arrive for class wearing wigs, high heels, and padded bras...
...As it happens, there is quite a good one, if well aged, in Max Byrd's new novel Grant (nicely written, by the way...
...She was dumped from the football team for which she wished to be a kicker solely because she was a female, she testified...
...The spectacle these last days in Florida is but the capstone on an edifice of litigiousness that has grown to prodigious height in recent years...
...As every schoolboy knows, Ulysses S. Grant was forced to go to work in his father's Galena, Ill., leather-goods store just before the Civil War, having failed up to then in every enterprise he essayed, including the army, of course...
...Let's suppose, however, that Brunhilde had made the Duke varsity: Given the feminist tactic of, first, to whine, and, second, to sue the bleeps, if she had a kick blocked, doubtless she'd charge there was a "hostile working environment"—and call her lawyer...
...The plaintiff from his "strong lodgings"—as Dickens put it—said he purchased the typewriter and several ribbons, and each was defective...
...But, wait, there's more—as they say on late-night TV ads...
...Consider only a single recent news cycle, as we colorfully say in the biz...
...scheduled release date Feb...
...Which may be why lawyer jokes will never go out of fashion...
...The victorious attorney piously pontificated that the Duke coach "chose not to see her skills...
...And a disconcerting portion of these judges who learned their lawyerly bobbing and weaving in contemporary law schools have a utopian itch which they relentlessly scratch on the bench...
...This suit obviously has a stunning potential in our wildly communicative culture, doesn't it...
...He realized they were defective only after inserting them to begin typing his brief...
...And cell phone users may be motivated to go to law for any call they can assert diverted their lives a nanosecond from some imperative connection...
...He is suing a typewriter company for $29,000 claiming he would have won parole if—his typewriter ribbon hadn't broken...
...Then the lawyer adds, "Look pretty rough, looks as though you might have traveled through hell...
...one asks him...
...There must be a moral in these and other proliferating instances of promiscuous going to law...
...I have," replies Grant...
...Laptop makers will be hauled to the bar of justice after supposedly vital documents vanish terminally into cyberspace because of a poor placement of the "file" key...
...Forget Florida and all its unseemly passions for a moment...
...Woody West is associate editor of the Washington Times...
...We sue each other and corporations and governmental institutions from a sense of outraged principle, for monetary gain, and out of plain cussedness...
...As puppies grow into dogs, so do a fair portion of the legal apprentices advance over the years to be judges...
...BY WOODY WEST GOING TO LAW, as the phrase used to be—that is, suing the rascal whose sheep are in your meadow and cows in your corn—is a hallowed tradition in this land of liberty...
...Alas, there are no grounds for optimism so long as the law schools continue producing lawyers like litters on puppy farms...
...A judge in Massachusetts ruled that prohibiting a 15-year-old boy from wearing female clothing to school amounted to "the stifling of a person's selfhood merely because it causes some members of the community discomfort...
...Well, how did you find things down there...
...Yeah, right, the jury snorted—her sex was the motivating factor...
...A group of Galena lawyers are sitting around the stove when they notice the shabby Grant...
...There was a flurry of results illustrating this trend, rulings that called for an aspirin, if not stronger pharmaceutical assistance...
...The judge held that the boy could wear any clothing or accessories that any other male or female student may wear, which is about as inclusive as it gets...
...Stranger here, ain't you...
...Fax manufacturers will be at risk when a last-minute contract submission fails to reach its destination because of an alleged glitch in the machine's viscera...
Vol. 6 • November 2000 • No. 11
