TO-WIT: A NICER GUY
It’s bound to come out sooner or later, so I might as well make a clean breast of it right now. And since there’s no one else here but us, I might just as well tell you.
You know those guys who make their living primarily doing defense work for insurance companies? Well, one of them is a close friend of mine and has been for years. There! I’ve said it and I’m glad.
Fearing the derision of other lawyers, I had always tried to keep our friendship under wraps. Whenever he would call me for lunch, I’d always arrange to meet him at the same specialty restaurant. I’d picked it because it was forty miles out of town, where no other colleague would see us together, but for all these years he’s naively assumed I was crazy about Zimbabwean food.
On those few occasions when he insisted on meeting me on a local corner so that we might have a more convenient luncheon, he’s never understood why I wouldn’t show up until after dark. Of course I never understood why he always waited.
Oh, I don’t always socialize with him in a clandestine manner. Why, just a few years ago I invited him to my son’s bar mitzvah, and I was proud to have him there. He was a wonderful sport about putting on the assistant caterer’s uniform I sent him, and it was just bad luck that he missed the most moving part of the service because the caterer saw him standing there and ordered him down to the kitchen to check on the vichyssoise.
The only explanation I can offer in defense of this friendship is that it developed at a time when he was doing plaintiffs’ work only. In fact, we became fast friends early on in my career. We laughed together, we cried together, we even talked about the most intimate subjects during the many lunches we ate together on a regular basis. And then one day, saying something about an offer from a large defense firm to triple his annual income and start him out as a senior partner, he simply walked away from the practice of law altogether and began doing defense work full time.
I was heartbroken, but I simply could not break off our relationship. By then, he had become a dependable sounding board for some of my personal difficulties and in turn I was the only one who would listen patiently while he tried to master a certain barnyard mating call.
Although he has been defense counsel for many years now, our friendship has endured despite the subtle new patterns grafted onto his behavior as an inevitable result of his conversion. For instance, he never picks up the lunch tab anymore, even when he eats alone. His heart, once so attune to the searing tragedy of soft tissue injury and post-traumatic neurosis, quit beating about two years ago, and last spring, to commemorate his induction into the American Academy of Defense Lawyers, he had it removed completely.
A few weeks ago, when I knew that every other lawyer in town would be at the local bar’s quarterly luncheon meeting, I called him for lunch. As soon as he answered the phone, I could tell he was depressed. To my inquiry he was at first vague, but I coaxed him to unburden himself.
“I got nailed by a jury this morning,” he told me, “and I’m feeling kinda’ down.”
At first I discounted his complaint, as he thinks a three figure verdict is getting nailed. But as I soon discovered, this had been no three or four figure verdict, nor five, not even six. After first swearing me to an oath of silence, he confided that the jury had returned a verdict against him for one, count ‘em, one million dollars. I could hardly believe it. Also I could hardly wait to tell someone.
Now I have been friends with a lot of plaintiffs’ lawyers over the years, and I have known one or two who got million dollar verdicts. As primarily a plaintiffs’ lawyer myself, I could always celebrate with them, I could always vicariously share their glory, if not their fee. But never before in my life have I had to commiserate with anyone over such a result. I didn’t know what to say. I just couldn’t bring myself to juxtapose the phrase “I’m so sorry” and “million dollar verdict” in the same sentence and yet “It couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy” seemed to offer precious little succor.
“You know,” he said “I’ve spent twenty years building up a decent reputation, I’ve won a lot of cases I should have lost, but now all they’ll remember is this verdict.”
Although I assured him he was wrong, he was in no mood to be assuaged, and he passed on the lunch invitation. I was concerned for him, but at that moment I had a more pressing problem of my own.
I had recently undertaken a personal injury case with excellent damages but extremely shaky liability. On the theory that the best defense is a good offense, I had immediately filed suit and I had a lot of research left to attend to. My library table was still cluttered with books when my friend phoned a few days later. I assumed he wanted to have lunch with me, but that was not the purpose of his call.
“I just want you to know,” he said, “that I have been assigned your case by the defendant’s carrier.”
He was positively delighted to get new work after his recent setback. For him, I was elated that getting into my case had so completely allayed his concern for his reputation. For me, I was elated too. As a lawyer, he’s good and he’s fair. What more could one ask for from opposing counsel? And besides, now I can put all my books away. What with his track record, I’m not going to need them.
© 1989, S. Sponte, Esq.