Easy.

Have a senior partner call you and say: "Excuse me but I was reviewing this draft complaint and I noticed that these transactions go back to August of 1999. Do we have a statute of limitations problem?"

GULP. "Um, boss, er, uh. [pause to think for a second] What case are you talking about?"

"Oh, sorry. Rang the wrong guy"

Right. Thanks. Put heart back in chest.

Posted by: Random Penseur at 03:44 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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1 Ouch. At least it was the wrong guy. You'll recover, sure it'll take several adult beverages, but you'll recover. The other guy, possibly not so much.

Posted by: phin at July 27, 2006 03:55 PM (X42kM)

2 Good to see that your stress level is staying at a nice, even keel...

Posted by: TeaFizz at July 27, 2006 06:26 PM (n8Etn)

3 hope you're fully recovered!

Posted by: michele at July 29, 2006 08:10 AM (oeZuZ)

4 Anything to make a lawyer's heart stop is a good thing. The less, the better.

Posted by: Shawn at July 29, 2006 02:28 PM (1nHnP)

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So, we get there for our inquest. Legal bags full of important legally looking documents with captions and pretty backers, folders full of urgently yellowed research with cryptic notes at the tops of pages [note to self: in about a month, try to remember that the notation "punis" refers to punitive damages and is not a word coined to describe a judge as being a small penis (wonder what kind of google searches this one is going to pick up!)]. All dressed up, polished up for the inquest.

The judge's courtroom deputy looks at us and says, "uh, you guys have witnesses to put on? Live testimony?" And we say, "well, yeah". "Oh", says he, and "I'm going to have to reschedule you until September". "Oh", says we. And then "shit".

The good news is that nice pre-judgment interest keeps acruing at 9%.

And the defendant, in the hallway, acted like such a jerk that when I got back to the office I wrote to the Court to request an emergency conference to discuss how to guarantee my and my client's personal safety.

Yup, a real interesting day.

Posted by: Random Penseur at 03:39 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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I sit here finishing up my opening statement to the Court for an inquest on damages. An inquest is simply a trial where liability has already been proven and the Court is going to determine how much money it is going to cost the defendant. I am happy to be representing the plaintiff on this one. This inquest, this mini-trial, has been all me. I have had zero help from day one on this case, from the initial interview with the client through right now as I ready myself for the conclusion. No doubt, I will be opposing the appeal, too. I am feeling a little like how a sole practioner must feel. The only scary thing about it is that I worry that I am missing something big. Hence my taking a moment to write about it so as to either purge the feeling or prefigure the result.

Hopefully, I will return from this with a nice big judgment for my client. If not, well, it won't be because I didn't try hard enough.

This case, by the way, is responsible for the paucity of posting of late.

Posted by: Random Penseur at 05:54 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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