TO-WIT: JUST SAYING NO
"I'm sorry," I said to the woefully plaintive African American woman on the phone, "but I just don't think I can help you."
Was that me saying no? Was that the same me who has bled with every sad soul in my path ever since I hung up my shingle more than thirty years ago?
And this case was right up my alley. Her twelve year old son had just been picked up by the police and held at the station under suspicion of firing a weapon in the town. The only evidence against him was that he was seven blocks away from the scene at the time. When the police cruised by in response to a complaint and snatched him off the street, he was playing with his friends. He had no weapon, he had no record, he was nowhere near the scene, but he was black and he was on the street.
He wasn't held long, maybe three hours, before the police called his mother. She drove down to the station, retrieved her badly frightened son and left, but not before delivering a tirade which, if she was to be believed, curled the wallpaper in the Chief's office. And now she was out for revenge.
"What would you like me to accomplish for you," I had asked.
"I want to teach them a lesson," she replied.
"Do you mean an apology," I inquired, but I already knew the answer.
"No, I want to teach them a lesson."
"And how large a lesson did you have in mind?"
It was clear, of course, that she wanted money and lots of it. And while I had enormous empathy for her plight, I knew I couldn't help her, at least not the way she wanted. As grievously as her son had been intruded upon, there was little money in the case. I certainly could of obtained for her and her boy an apology, maybe even written in blood, but that wouldn't have satisfied her. The only blood writing she wanted was as a signature affixed to a check.
I surely know that being black in America is no easy feat. Neither is being Jewish for that matter, and that in significant measure accounts for my resonance with these kinds of cases. But if my years at the bar have taught me anything at all its that the law can't solve everyone's problems, and as a concomitant result, neither can I.
I have not come to this place in my career easily. In earlier times, I would have had this case signed up eo instanter. I would have filed suit, I would have spent countless hours on
the matter, I would have perhaps gained a small recovery for the client and counsel fees for me as well. But not anymore.
This change of posture has come to me not so much as an erosion of spirit as an erosion of faith. The judiciary has grown considerably more crimped in its willingness to deal with such issues, in part the legacy of a president who now has the great good fortune to remember nothing of what he did to cut out the heart of the federal bench.
In addition, the current strictures of political correctness have created a nation of whiners, a populace who, in the belief that the courts and the legislatures are the proper means by which to avenge every slur or correct every deficit , have so trivialized the playing field that ears once attune to such matters now turn deaf. Do we really care to accord every form of discrimination the full and mighty protection of the law? I think not. I mean, if there's no one left to abuse and make fun of, why bother to get up in the morning?
Oh, and this used to be such fun. Nothing ever excited me quite as much as suing a pompous public official who had become surfeit with the arrogance of power. "You only think you can do this," I might say to myself through gritted teeth as I filed for injunctive relief or
declaratory judgment, "but really you can't."
"You might think no one can stop you," I might say with sneering lips as I scheduled a deposition, "but I can."
It has been in my blood and in my constitution for so long I hardly know what to do with the new sense of freedom. No longer will I lay awake at night dreaming of wreaking havoc on those bent upon wantonly intruding into the private lives and liberties of my clients. No longer will I yearn for bodily torture as a sanction against pomposity, stupidity or just plain meanness. I'm free of all that now, free, free, I tell you. From now on, its just real estate closings for me. Yeah, that's it, real estate closings - and lots of golf. For once I'm going to have a real life in the law.
I know I can do this. I know I can live without having my moral juices constantly aquiver, just like I know I can learn to eat baloney sandwiches on white bread with mayonnaise. There’s really nothing to it, really nothing at all.
There, I feel ever so much better. Now what did I do with her phone number? It's here somewhere.
©2002, S. Sponte, Esq.