TO-WIT: MY BUCKET LIST
As one ages, it is inevitable that one’s thoughts turn to certain subjects, other than “what happened to sex.” For me, one of those things is my bucket list. Although the list is way too long to suit me, there is onn particular item which plagues me way more than the others.
During my career, I was mostly a plaintiff’s lawyer, and in almost all of those cases I sought money damages for my aggrieved clients. Yes, of course, all of my clients were aggrieved, but a bunch of them of them legitimately so, and they were the ones thus entitled to compensation. It is in this realm that my yearnings still tug at me.
As any of my colleagues can attest, provided they choose honesty over professionalism, it is that given a few years of experience doing this work, it isn’t hard to ascertain what a case is worth, at least within a most probable range. And when I say “colleagues, yes, I am including defense counsel, there’s no way I can avoid it. The blue car/red car cases were the easiest to evaluate, assuming no extraordinary or faked injuries, and even the more complex product liability cases could be thus evalauated. Yet for some strange reason, that honest and mutual kind of conversation was never part of settlement negotiations between opposing counsel.
Say a plaintiff’s car was stopped in a line of traffic and was struck from the rear by defendant’s car. Whenever I got such a case, there were two things that immediately came to mind. “Thank you, Lord” was the first, and then came the wholly unwarranted belief that this would be an easy and quick case to manage. I was always right about the first thought and always wrong about the second.
Even after fifty years of practice, I never gave up hope that I could sit down with experienced defense counsel and come to a quick and easy settlement based upon our similar evaluations, but it never happened that way. Well, except for once, and herein lies this particular tale.
The client was a female who had worked for more than a decade with distinction as a planning officer for a local municipality. For at least the last two years she had been verbally and psychologically brutalized by a recently elected supervisor who quite frequently and proudly announced that he hated women, that he had no respect for women, that he would not even have a work-based conversation with a woman. He would never speak directly to her, nor would he ever acknowledge anything she ever said, going so far as to insist that a male co-worker repeat to him every word she uttered at any municipal meeting. He drove her straight to therapy and Xanax, and then to me.
My filing of the complaint produced defense counsel as instantaneously as blood in the water gathers in sharks. But after a few preliminary conversations with him, I sensed that this guy might be different from others of his ilk, that he might be interested in an honest, straightforward and tidy settlement instead of three years of litigation.
So after the obligatory deposition or five, I decided to take the path I had for years longed for. “Listen,” I said to him one day when I had sufficiently stiffened my resolve, “you know and I know exactly what this case is worth. And I bet we are both at the same number. So I’m going to take the chance and tell you the honest, real, uninflated number that I will take to settle this case. I will not vary from it, and you can settle with me now and save your client a bundle, or you can litigate with me for three years and pay me that number then. What do you think?
He paused for a minute and then said “You know, I’ve been thinking my whole career how much I’d like to settle a case that way. What’s your number?”
I took a deep gulp and told him. Again there was this pause and he said “I think you’re right on, let me talk to my client.”
About two weeks later he called me. “Even though I agree with your number completely,” he said, “my client won’t go there. I am authorized, however, to make you an offer,” following which he gave me a number of his own.
Although it was not a bad number, I emitted a very forceful and theaterical sigh. “I thought you’d be different,” I replied, “but let me discuss it with my client.”
Two weeks later, I called him back and told him that my client, much against my recommendations, was willing to settle for that number. Within a few weeks, the papers were signed, the docket satisfied and the check delivered.
My client was extremely satisfied. “That’s way more than I thought I’d get,” she told me.
“Yeah,” I replied with a grin, “that’s way more than I thought it was worth too.”
Oh, I know what you’re thinking, that I’m no better than defense counsel, and you’d be right. It was my own uncertainty and concomitant need for deception that has kept this item on my bucket list, but considering the generous fee that deceit garnered me, I guess I’ll just have to live with it.
© 2021, S. Sponte, Esq.