TO-WIT: ALLEY-OOP
I have been writing this column for a very long time now, and for a very long time I’ve been irked. You’d think that with as much time and creative energy as I’ve devoted both to my literary ambitions and to your professional amusement that I’d be this magazine’s most popular feature, numero uno, the top dog, its undisputed head shanda.
Oh, but I’m not. According to every one of this publication’s reader’s polls, I rank no better than third. Now if, say, John Grisham were writing for this magazine and maybe Robert Ludlum, I’d understand my perennial third place finish. I wouldn’t agree but I’d understand.
As it turns out though, my popularity is consistently bested by both the obituaries and the disciplinary suspensions. I take it with a grain of salt that all one has to do to be more popular than me is to die, but to be outstripped by unethical conduct, oh, that hurts.
As I’ve been enjoying my annual December vacation in the sun these past couple of weeks, I’ve been giving the matter some thought and I have come up with the perfect solution. It’s perhaps a bit macabre but I’ve decided to give you Romans the spectacle you really want by telling you in advance about all the important disciplinary suspensions that will occur this coming year. You can read them right here, right now, you can have your blood lust sated eo instanter, and then you can be free for the rest of the year to enjoy my stuff completely undistracted by such reprehensible goings on. Next issue I’ll be back to once again make your professional life a living guffaw. In the meantime, go ahead, have your little fun.
BESSIE MAE MUCHO – In utter disregard of the strictures against the commingling of funds, Ms. Mucho is suspended for two years for inadvertently depositing her paycheck into her client escrow account. Noting that her clients received a windfall from her gaffe, the committee is permitting her to practice only medical malpractice defense work during her suspension. “If she continues with such profligate handling of funds,” states the committee, “perhaps she may yet do some good.”
CARMEN MONOKSIDE – Mr. Monokside is suspended for five years for settling seventeen personal injury cases for clients who didn’t exist. “I’m sorry,” apologized Mr. Monokside to the committee, “I accept my punishment and I’ll get by. Thank God I had such a good year.”
EVEL LESSER II – Mr. Lesser, a matrimonial specialist, is suspended for eighteen months for awaking one morning suffering from a bout of acute catatonic hypoprocedurea during which he stacked all one hundred seventy one of his client files in the alley outside his office and set fire to them. “We are sympathetic to his understandable indisposition,” stated the committee, “but having an epiphany is no defense to his conduct.”
T. Fastideus Brewster – Mr. Brewster is suspended from practice for one year for failing to report his partner for absconding to Mexico with the escrow and general office funds and Mr. Brewster’s wife. “I knew I took my chances by not turning him in immediately,” Mr. Brewster said in his own defense, “but I was afraid he’d bring her back.”
The magazine will conduct another reader’s poll later this year and now you owe me. I want your votes; I also want you all to stay alive. Yeah, I know, when it comes to my colleagues I’m not usually this magnanimous, but if history means anything it’s the only chance I got.
© 2013, S. Sponte, Esq.