TO-WIT: REQUIESCAT IN POX
It was the first thing I noticed when I walked into the office that morning. My secretary, always the epitome of dedication, decorum and professionalism, was sitting at her desk reading the morning paper. Even though it was only twenty minutes before her starting time, there was work she could have been doing. Because she has always been the epitome of loyalty, professionalism and diligence, I decided not to dock her pay; after our more than forty years together, I suppose she’s earned some modicum of tolerance.
“Okay,” I asked her, “what’s so noteworthy?”
Rather than answer, she handed me the paper and pointed to something she had circled. “I think you will find this interesting,” she said, and as always, she was right. It was the obituary of a local colleague and indeed I did find it interesting.
I can say with unusually complete truthfulness that I really do like most of my local colleagues. Sure, this is an adversarial business, and of course we knock heads and hearts with colleagues all the time. Many of them, though, are my friends, and once the dust settles from whatever the confrontation du jour may be, hostilities cease and our friendships resume. The resumption is always somewhat easier for me if I have prevailed, but regardless of the outcome my colleagues and I remain nothing less than cordial. Even if I have shared no previous relationship with opposing counsel other than the mutual desire for professional evisceration occasioned by the temporality of litigation, once ended I have no trouble resuming my default minimum level of disdain.
Ah, but with this guy it had been completely different; this was a guy I had not liked for a long time, and his passing troubled me not in the slightest.
I’m guessing you’re guessing there’s a back story here, and you’d be right. It happened a long time ago, and while I am not the sort to hold grudges for more than a few years or so, this was something one doesn’t forget, not if one has any sense of professional integrity.
It isn’t complicated. He and I had been litigating over a commercial lease and as part of his case at our non-jury trial he had introduced into evidence a forged document. Because I am a good lawyer, I had been able to determine in advance of trial that not only was it forged but that he had forged it. Because he was a crappy lawyer, he hadn’t a clue that I might figure it out. It was kind of fun lying in wait for him to offer it into evidence at trial, and when he did, I ambushed him with elation.
“Gee,” I asked his client during cross-examination while waiving the document in front of him, “the handwriting on the signature line here sure looks familiar, doesn’t it? Do you recognize it?” He squirmed a bit in his seat but said “no.”
“Mr. _______,” I asked, then turning to counsels’ table, “doesn’t this handwriting look familiar to you too?”
The matter was left there until I put my client’s case in. Then I readily proved the false signature on the document was in opposing counsel’s own handwriting. The judge had no trouble finding for my client.
“In addition,” she said from the bench, “I will report this to the Disciplinary Board and the District Attorney for appropriate follow-up.”
From that day until he kicked the bucket, I don’t think we ever talked again, and I was okay with that. I don’t often talk to felons, convicted or otherwise, and I’m quite certain he had no burning desire to communicate with me. Nothing stirs up a corrupt soul’s enmity towards another more than having had that corruption exposed and having then been bested by it as a result.
Oh, what do you do with a man like that, one who’s professional sine qua non does not include integrity? Not needing the answer as much as I do, our bar association observed his passing as it customarily does; all members were invited to gather at his church for the funeral and enter the front door as a group. It is meant as a salute to a departed colleague, a moment of reflection on what waits for us all, and a reminder of the collegiality we strive to maintain. I’ve done it for many others, I hope that some might do it for me, although a church won’t figure into it.
This time I didn’t go. I was content to let him pass into the hereafter without any unwarranted assistance from me. Someday I may have to answer for these grim, perhaps somewhat celebratory feelings. Being dead is kind of a solemn thing and a permanent one at that. There must be some nice people out there who will miss and mourn him, and that I can’t imagine it doesn’t make it any less so.
Somewhere it is written that we shouldn’t speak ill of the dead. As I suppose my own turn will someday come, I have always believed in that dictate and always will, just so long as any documents appurtenant thereto haven’t been forged.
© 2019, S. Sponte, Esq.