TO-WIT: WILD BILL
Whenever I go to our annual bar association dinner, I always arrive a few minutes early to insure that I get the seat in the farthest corner of the room with my back to the wall. Its my preferred location and I’ve been doing it now for so many years that a fair number of my colleagues have taken notice.
When they ask why I only say “aces and eights, my friend, aces and eights.” Yes, its an enigmatic answer but the reason is simple enough; at such events I prefer to keep all of my colleagues in front of me and none of them behind me.
In my forty years, I’ve had by my rough estimation almost four thousand adversarial encounters, most of them winners. That means there are a lot of losers out there, some of whom are not
capable of tolerating defeat with the same professional grace and philosophical acceptance I have learned to feign over the years. Thus there are any number of colleagues out there who, with several drinks behind them and me in front of them, might decide that Providence has just provided them with the perfect opportunity to settle old hash.
I know what of I speak. The annals of legal history are replete with examples of just this sort of stuff. Consider the following:
THEODORE H. SLOGGINGSTUFF III – Aspiring for most of his career to be a recovering alcoholic, Ted sustained a personal Titanic when he failed to sober up in time for an important trial. Seething down to his liquid core at opposing counsel for willfully appearing on time, he plotted his revenge, and at a subsequent bar association golf outing he covered himself with sand and hid in a bunker. When his erstwhile opponent shanked a five iron into that trap, he leapt out with his wedge intent on delivering a fatal chip shot from behind. His inebriated state, and a left elbow he never could keep straight, conspired against him. He got off a few swings but then fell, sustaining both a double fracture of the fibula and a triple bogey on the fourteenth.
BARTHOLOMEW PEUTZ – A particularly abrasive and inane family law practitioner, he became enraged during a custody trial in which opposing counsel tauntingly kept mispronouncing his name. At the next bar association Christmas dance he sought revenge by dressing up as an elf and sidling up to opposing counsel with a blow torch concealed in his cap. Alas, premature ignition caused such massive and irreversible brain damage that he was thereafter reduced to during insurance defense work where his significant loss of frontal lobe function was not an impediment to success.
CLARISSA CHEW – Widely advertising for 20 years that she had never lost a trial, Clarissa went into an emotional tailspin when a jury finally returned an unfavorable verdict in her second trial. She sought revenge against opposing counsel at the next bar association’s Halloween Party by leaping upon him from a second story balcony. A stiff wind however misdirected her free fall through an open window. Her caw cawing objections went unheeded, but she did receive a thunderous posthumous round of applause from the those present who thought they were witnessing a flash mob scene from the Wizard of Oz.
Well, now you know the wariness that accompanies me wherever I go. It’s the melancholy detritus of success in an adversarial profession. I so envy you, I really do. I'd kill to be able to choose any seat in the house.
©2014, S. Sponte, Esq.