TO-WIT: HELLO DALI
After forty two years of practicing law I am pleased to be able to say with complete candor that the only thing I really dislike about it is anything done by opposing counsel. And of the myriad things opposing counsel do to frost my cake, none better justify my contempt than the filing of preliminary objections to the exceedingly well drafted complaints I always file for my clients.
I used to look forward to arguing preliminary objections the way a hawk looks forward to a bunny. It was a chance to soar and pounce. The legal research, the writing, the oral arguments, those are the sine qua non of lawyering, the essence of it, as pure as the driven car into another car.
These days though it seems like every single time I file a complaint defense counsel files preliminary objections. Its no longer about properly framing or limiting the issues of litigation so much as it is about giving associates something to do.
Just such circumstance obliged me to appear in argument court recently to oppose preliminary objections of dubious merit. I wouldn’t say the defendant’s objections were completely worthless but only because there was probably billing time involved. Lets just say these preliminary objections had less foundation than a mobile home.
On my drive to the courthouse I couldn’t help but conjure up the fantasy of a bevy of this defense firm’s young associates all standing around some beleaguered secretary simultaneously dictating various and sundry preliminary objection paragraphs right out of a form book. “Oh, I know, I know, lets move to strike for impertinence,” a junior associate enthusiastically proffers with a guffaw, whereupon they all hoot with glee, and once their collective time clock hits two thousand dollars for the morning's work they all go out to Starbucks for Danish and coffee.
One thing was for sure no fantasy. Now that my case had been ensnared by the gooey web of civil procedure, what with briefing and then arguing and then waiting for the court to decide this patently frivolous matter, it would be stuck for months while my client awaited justice and I my contingent fee, and there was nothing I could do about it. That justice is slowed as equally by the inane as it is by the vital is something I've never understood, and over the years my intolerance for it has only gotten worse.
The courtroom was crowded with combatants all awaiting their turn to argue their cases when I arrived, and it was a bit of a palliative that the judge called my case first. Before opposing counsel could utter so much as his first disingenuous word, Judge looked directly at him and said “Is there anything more you could tell me that isn't in your brief?”
When he conceded there wasn’t, Judge said “Then I see no reason for oral argument. In fact, I’ve already drafted an order dismissing the preliminary objections. They were really pretty lame."
With that he handed us copies of his already written opinion and called for the next case on the list.
For a moment I just stood there, unable to fully comprehend an event rendered so surreal by its immediacy. “I’m sorry, what did you say,” I mumbled.
“I said I've dismissed the preliminary objections,” Judge replied.
“I’m sorry, what,” I babbled again, clearly in some sort of quasi-aphasic shock.
Who knows how long I might have stood there muttering in stupefaction had not a colleague stepped up to the bench, taken me gently by the elbow and guided me slowly and carefully back to the rear of the courtroom. "There, there," he said reassuringly, "there, there."
Oh, this is such a cruel profession. What were the Gods of the Law thinking when they served me up this firestorm of the surreal. Its one thing to fret and fume about the law’s abject sluggishness when
I knew nothing else. But now how can I ever again be content with anything less than this kind of blessed immediacy?
If experience is a predictor, I’m not going to see a repeat performance for another forty two years. To paraphrase the Bhagavad Gita, I am become Sisyphus, doomed to spend the remainder of my career struggling to accomplish the impossible. Such is the fate of those with large rocks. I'm afraid it may be true what they say. Dali will never go away again.
©2012, S. Sponte, Esq.