SPARTACUS - A plague of lawyers upon you and your house
This past weekend, we had some of our upstate neighbors over for dinner. It was a beautiful Hudson Valley evening, cool, dry and relatively bugless; perfect for eating outdoors, which we did.
Over drinks, the conversation turned, as it often does in NY these days, to real estate woes; soaring prices, rapacious contractors, missed opportunities, etc. The typical stories one hears in the waning days of a cheap-money-fueled speculative cycle. (Though these "waning days" have gone on far longer than most -- myself included -- expected.)
Our closest neighbors are big-time interior decorators; partners in a firm whose clients include a remarkable cross-section of both household-name-type billionaires as well as a smattering of the merely rich. Their work shows up in Architectural Digest several times a year, as well as in some of the more plebian shelter mags.
They had a great story to share involving one of their billionaire clients, who recently bought and renovated a significant upper east side Manhattan town house. The renovation was extensive, and the work lasted nearly two years. Close to the end of the job, our friends were approached on the sidewalk in front of the worksite by an attorney who happened to have his office in an adjoining building. Introducing himself as "sue 'em Stu", he said that if Mr. X (their client) made him a fair offer, he would never hear from him again. Somewhat mystified, since our friends had heard no complaints about damages or other problems from any of the other neighbors, our friends thanked him and promised to pass along his message.
Several weeks later, they were served with papers naming them (along with nearly 40 other firms whose trucks had ever visited the job site, including one poor unfortunate tradesman who had nothing to do with the project) and their client as respondents in a lawsuit claiming more than thirty causes for action (including one repetition of an earlier cause that evidently was added to the list twice), including wrongful death (one of the elderly tenants of the adjoining building evidently died over the previous two years) and every other conceivable offense one could imagine.
Of course, the adjoining cooperative apartment building on the other side of the construction site had no complaints, as did all of the other surrounding buildings.
Now several years later, our friend's client is trying to sell his house, but prospective buyers are put-off by the unknowable extent of the potential legal liabilities. And who can blame them? In our legal "system", who knows what a given jury in New York County might decide when a famously wealthy respondent is on the hook for damages in a contest with a cheap shyster in a wrinkled suit representing himself and alleging everything short of Jimmy Hoffa's body being buried under the foundations?
Now don't feel too bad for our friend's client. He's rich, and can afford to hire people to sort this all out for him. And the tradesmen and other vendors are indemnified against loss and legal expenses. (Though they are not paid for the time and aggravation of dealing with this mess.)
But there has got to be something wrong about a legal system where someone with nothing more than free time, a legal degree, a typewriter, and a vivid imagination can force another citizen to spend a couple of hundred thousand dollars in order to defend himself. (Unless, of course, he were willing to settle with his tormenter for, say, half of what it would cost in legal fees to take the case to trial.) And if the guy says "I've done nothing wrong, why should I pay this asshole a dime?", forks up the couple of hundred grand to go through the pre-trial discovery, hiring of expert witnesses, etc., takes the case to court and wins, what happens then? Well, he's out the money he spent on his defense, he gets to keep what he already owns, and he can feel morally vindicated. Meanwhile, the shyster plaintiff is off in pursuit of his next free lottery ticket.
In the words of the great Soviet-era, Russian philospher Yakov Smirnoff; "America! What a country."
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