Pretty disgusting admittance, but when you're a lawyer, and only know how to invent lies, you don't know when you're putting your foot in your mouth.
We lost motion after motion, case after case, and were staggered by the total illogic of the legal system (Louisiana is unique in that its law is based on the French civil law system.)
Then use that system to MAKE A CASE. Are you so unadaptable that you can't use the local system against the locals? It's a lot easier to do that than it is trying to argue from big city precedent.
<i.Every Thursday night we would fly out from DC to Louisiana to argue a motion in front of the local yokel judge on Friday morning, and by Friday night we would return to DC with our tails between our asses.
Well, there you have it. You have to live with the locals to get a feeling for the venue. It's bad enough to be flying in and out as though you were some kind of "big time" operators from pretense land, but it's worse not to understand the purpose of the suit from the bottom up perspective.
Losing all confidence in their $400/hr Washington lawyers, our client paid out something like $750 million to about 1500 of the town's residents.
That's a pretty sad admittance.
These were the plaintiffs who lived on the lake, and, by the economic class structure of the town, were all white.
Listen to what you're saying. You're extrapolating. You have no factual basis for this claim. You have to investigate to make valid assertions.
(I later found out in the settlement records that 3 of our own local lawyers put in claims under the settlement and received money. Hello?
Yes, hello? No lawyer would publicly admit this kind of thing, because you'd be dragged, not escorted, before the bar.
Anyone ever hear of conflicts of interest?) When we went out for dinner with our lawyers...(or sometimes with the opposing lawyers who represented the remaining (black) plaintiffs but were also white)
Speaking about conflict of interest, it may be all cosy and kosher to be palsy walsy with the opponents especially when you're trying to play footsie games, but you lose more than you gain by doing that.
He spent 30 minutes, charged us $50,000, and gave us one piece of advice--switch our local lawyer to the judge's hunting buddy. We took that advice and, after that, we didn't lose a single motion or case.
You lost the case. Better stated, you prevented yourself from winning.
The judge would even invite us into his chambers before we would argue a motion so he could "set and chat" and (unethically) discuss what the motion was about. It was stunning.
Yes. The judge was walking you down the garden path to make sure you would settle while you thought he was engaging in impropriety. The judge was doing to you what you should have been doing to him, using the venue against him, using the fact that he was using you in a way contrary to jurisprudence.
Eventually the opposing lawyers could see the momentum was now in our favor, and we settled with the remaining plaintiffs (the black residents) for a fraction of the other settlement.
If you settled with others based on merit, but settled with an arbitrary sub group based not on merit, you're guilty of discrimination. Better clarify or retract this claim.
When this was all over, I felt so tainted by the experience that I contemplated turning myself in to the Bar and pleading for mercy.
You felt "tainted"? The law was the injured party here. The legal machinery engaged in a process that only could be called extortion. The same process can be used against you and your firm. |
