TO-WIT: LESSEE COME HOME
Like many other local bars, our bar association maintains an active and effective pro bono program. Providing legal services to those who truly cannot afford to pay is just one of the many ways that we, as a profession, fulfill our social responsibilities. It demonstrates a keen social conscience, it betters society as a whole and, as an extra, added bonus, anytime a client stiffs us for a fee, we can call it pro bono an feel damn proud.
The day before this last Thanksgiving past, it was my turn to see indigent clients at the bar association office. What that means is that it’s my turn to sit in a sparse cubicle and meet with clients who, in order to qualify for this service, must first demonstrate that life has not been kind to them, and, as a concomitant result, they have precious little money to spend on such essentials as food, clothing and lawyers. If they pass that test, they qualify. I never cease to ponder this enigmatic irony of the social strata. In the world I grew up in, passing a test was always a good thing.
That day found me oozing nobility from every pore, prepared to do battle on behalf of those not quite sufficiently empowered to do battle for themselves. Each scheduled client presented with a different tale of woe, each adrift in the tumult of his or her own quiet desperation, each uniquely one of God’s creatures, and each with a landlord who wanted them the hell out.
The first client lived in a mobile home park. His boyfriend – not, of course, a signatory to the lease; that would have been too easy – had abandoned him for a better-looking and less obese guy, leaving him and his seven Chihuahuas to pay an unaffordable rent by themselves. The landlord, understandably irked by his tenant’s failure to remit the rent for seven months in succession, had apparently suppressed his innate sense of seasonal joviality and had orally advised that he intended to cut off all utilities.
Needless to say, this poor client was distraught. “What can I do?” he moaned. “My doggies will die without heat.”
“Hairless?” I asked. His wail confirmed my worst fears.
Now, I don’t do as many landlord-tenant cases as I used to, but even I recognize a constructive eviction when I see it. A quick phone call to his landlord brought assurances that proper eviction procedures would be followed.
“Thank you so much,” the client said in parting. “At least now I won’t have to spend my Thanksgiving on the street.”
No, I thought to myself, just Christmas.
The second client who came to see me introduced herself and proceeded to advise me that, surprise, surprise, her landlord was trying to evict her. She and her husband, together with their six children, all under the age of 8, lived in a rented home, and raw sewage had been draining from a broken interior sewage pipe into the basement that served as a large single bedroom for the three oldest kids.
The landlord had reneged on his oral promise to reimburse them if they made the repairs themselves, and when they deducted their expenses from the rent he had commenced eviction proceedings. Unrepresented, they had lost at the magistrate’s, they had not timely appealed, and they had just been served withy a writ of eviction.
I explained her position to her, or rather the lack thereof. It didn’t take long.
“We’ll move if we have to,” she said, “but can’t it wait until after Christmas?”
So I called the landlord, prostrated myself and begged for the mercy of the season. “It’s almost Christmas,” I said. “Give ‘em a break.” He agreed to allow the family to stay on only until the end of the year, provided they paid all the rent in advance, and the client agreed.
“Thank you so much,” she said as she departed, “and have a Merry Christmas.”
“And a Happy New Year to you,” I offered back, but with that, she started to cry.
The third client presented no differently, that is to say, post-judgment. “It was either pay the rent or buy Mom a Christmas present,” he said. “I couldn’t do both.”
Now I am hardly an expert on Christmas and its attendant legislation, but as far as I could remember, “a present for Mom” is not yet grounds to open a judgment. Accordingly, I took a more pragmatic tack.
“Get on well with your Mom, do you?” I inquired gingerly.
He took the hint, and a phone call later, he was off to Mom’s.
That was it, but what was it? Hardly the kind of impact I had hoped to make in the lives of the less fortunate. To the contrary, I could now look forward to my own holiday season knowing that the less fortunate who had come to see me would be even more less fortunate by year’s end. Ho, ho, ho, huh?
Oh, I know, I know. I’m a lawyer of long-standing, and I should be used to this by now. We can’t make magic, especially for those whose circumstances have long since accustomed them to disadvantage. But this was the season of magic, and I had such hopes. I had met three people in need and had so little to offer. But I will not despair, for things could always have been worse. It could have been a lot more than three, and that it wasn’t is something for which I can truly be grateful.
© 1997, S. Sponte, Esq.