TO-WIT: REMEMBRANCE OF THING PAST
He was starting to sweat. I liked that. His eyes had already taken on the glassy stare of a deer in the middle of the road as a late model GMC Suburban, headlights ablaze, bore down on it. He tried rephrasing the question and again I raised the same objection; “No proper foundation.”
The rivulets of sweat on his forehead and around his ears now became a tsunami, fogging up his glasses and dripping down onto his yellow legal pad.
“Just a moment, please,” he said as he took out a microfiber cloth to clean his glasses. I noticed the logo of the American Academy of Trial Lawyers on the cloth and wondered where he got it.
This was the deposition of the president of a corporation I had sued on behalf of my client, and this young, inexperienced defense counsel was trying to get some business records into evidence. The trouble was that he didn’t know how.
Other than for my congenital antipathy for defense counsel, there really was no reason to torment him this way. When he soon asked for a fifteen-minute recess I nodded my assent, whereupon he scurried out of the office like a mouse seeking the haven of a hole.
I had some business of my own to take care of and was standing in the men’s room doing just that when I sensed someone standing directly behind me. Unfinished and unadvisedly, I whirled around, causing him to jump out of the way with an alacrity quite amazing for someone who’s been dead as long as he has.
“Christ,” I exclaimed, “what are you doing here.”
Now I know what you’re thinking, and you’re wrong. My spontaneous exclamation had nothing to do with the son of G-d, no. “Christ” happened to be this late gentleman’s first name, a colleague we had all known as “Christy.”
Being dead, he said nothing. Rather, he just wiped himself off and stared at me with a disapproving frown. He then wagged a wrinkled finger at me and disappeared, leaving naught behind but a few yellowed paper towels.
In the next instant I found myself much younger, just out of law school and taking the deposition of the doctor in my first tort case. Christy had been defense counsel in that case, and there he was again, sitting across the table from me in his forever attire, a blue double-breasted suit, white French cuff shirt, brown shoes, silver hair brushed straight back and several fountain pens protruding from the pocket of his coat.
“Now,” I said to the doctor, “please refer to your records and tell me your diagnosis of my client.
“I object,” Christy said, “you haven’t laid the proper foundation.” I didn’t know what he meant, so I asked the same question again, this time with different pronouns. Again he objected and again I rephrased, this time leaving out the adjectives. When he objected again I didn’t know what to do.
After an agonizing pause, he said “Unless this witness can testify these records were prepared under his supervision or control, and that they were made in the regular course of business at or near the time of the treatment, I will continue to object.”
It was an act of kindness I’ve never forgotten. I recall it often and it always feels as kind as the moment he gifted me with it.
I immediately found myself back in the present deposition and alas, also back in my seventies. Before my young colleague could stutter another word, I said to him exactly what Christy had said to me years before. When the deposition ended, he said “thanks,” nothing else, but that was all he needed to say.
Handing down the kindness Christy handed down to me felt really good. Nonetheless, the trial of this case is coming up soon, and I am eagerly looking forward to kicking his ass. That will feel really good too.
©2020, S. Sponte, Esq.