TO-WIT: LEGENDS OF THE BAR
There is something about being a lawyer that makes me acutely aware of the passage of time. Maybe its because, as a profession, we spend so much time dealing with deadlines…statutes of limitations, responsive pleadings, the start of happy hour. Maybe its because we are constantly looking over our shoulders at times past to find cases that support whatever proposition we have, for that day, been hired to advance. Or maybe its because I have reached that age where I know with undisputable certainty that I am on the back nine, an image made all the more vivid in my mind by the recent and sudden death on the golf course of a longtime friend and law school classmate, a man six months younger than me, I am obliged to recall.
I was a young man when I started this journey thirty five years ago, but that is no longer the case. Many of the colleagues I have known in that time are gone now, some of them quite dear to me. They are this moment on my mind for several reasons, not the least of which is that three months ago, when my appendix decided to perforate and not tell me until three days later, I almost joined them.
Most of them were not great lawyers. There was nary a Clarence Darrow in the bunch, save perhaps one. But they were good lawyers, good people, and they did good things. Who is there, I ask, to remember them, to recall and recite their legacies? Well, there’s me. I know some of their stories, and by recounting them here, there will then be you to remember them. To borrow a phrase I used many years ago, they were all people of substance, although the composition of the substance varied. Here are some of their stories. Mark them well. Your time will come soon enough.
My all time favorite lawyer story involves Bill Honikker. Bill, as a human being, was a bit rough around the edges. Inside the edges though, he was a true sleaze, but I liked him. He one time referred me a very messy divorce case, one in which the wife had taken photos of herself and her adulterous lover in various stages of sexual congress and which her husband had found. The ultimate settlement included the return of the photos. After the case was over, Bill called me to advise that he would forgo any referral fee in exchange for the pictures.
So yes, he was sleazy. But he is best known for a incident in which he did not personally participate.
In what starts out as a classic dirty joke, a man was sitting on a bar stool, all alone, having a drink. Another man walks into the bar, spins him around on his barstool, punches him in the mouth and knocks him to the floor, flat on his back. As the man is lying there on the floor, the second man stares at him and says “Omigod, I am so sorry. I thought you were Bill Honikker.”
© 2004, S. Sponte, Esq.