A Slight Case of Hubris

Wednesday, at twenty past five I rushed out of the new Federal Building, the one the Young Senator's dad got built, into the early evening. I had just left our local US Bankruptcy Court, a place I never expected to be when I left the house at quarter to eight that morning. What I had just seen was the latest chapter of an ungoing legal farce. Except this farce featured a lawyer who was in real danger of going to jail. He was in danger of going to the state prison because he refused to obey an order issued by the highly specialised court, the one that has jurisdiction over workplace injuries, where I have worked and practiced for most of the last twenty years.

The client is well known in legal and political circles. He is a persistent critic of the state courts. He was embroiled in a vicious feud with the former chief justice. He had big political ambitions, and a little bit of success. All his grabs for the big brass ring had failed.

He is smart. As a very young man he was a top aide to a man who became one of our most revered US Senators. He has aged into a distinguished looking fellow. He is, however, arrogant, with a big mouth. He also was very prideful. His arrogance and his pride would not allow him to admit he had been suckered by the former employee whose case landed him in such a world of trouble.

He had refused to comply for six months. My interest in this: I was the attorney who represented him at the hearing where the order was entered. This was the hearing last June that ended with client being ejected from the courtroom by the judge and me being publicly fired, for all practical purposes. In other words, I represented the client from hell.

I quickly got out of the case. The rules of professional conduct do not allow me a lot of leeway, but I can say we had a serious difference of opinion about defending the case. My client was on the spot, stuck good by his neglect of his business and the machinations of a former employee. I've seen hundreds of these nusiance cases. I've prosecuted a number of them. My client could extricate himself from this little mess for a few thousand bucks. He has publicly refused to pay him a dime.

He has consistently and publicly stated the former employee's claim was fraudulent. He was probably right. But it was a well executed fraud, and once the court entered its order by law he was obligated to pay the guy every week until the court ordered payments stopped. And by the way, an employer who is not current in his payments is precluded from doing anything in his own defense.

I spent most of the summer and fall rehabbing my shattered ankle, so I followed the ongoing comedy from afar. I heard a lot about the open disrespect he showed the court. I heard about the patience of the judge, who was obviously determined to let my former client have all the rope he wanted. Because in the end, the client will either pay or go to jail.

Six months later he was in bankruptcy court begging the judge to keep him out of jail. Briefly he had put his firm into Chapter 11. All civil proceedings against his firm were automatically stayed. He apparently forgot that he was also named as a defendant, personally. The judge in the injury case, who had two deputies standing by to take my former client away, proposed to continue the action against him personally. That had happened that morning. At five PM we were in the Bankruptcy Court listening to the employee's counsel, the bankruptcy trustee and the bankruptcy judge all heap polite scorn upon my former client's motion for a stay. They bounced him out.

He filed for personal bankruptcy later that day. The original court proceedings will resume next month. My former client remains a free man.

Attorneys who do bankruptcy believe he is playing with fire, using the Bankruptcy Court as a stall tactic. The public report of his filings indicate that neither his business nor he personally are insolvent. It smells like a fraud on the court.

All this because he couldn't admit he had been had. He tried to turn a crummy little nusiance case into some kind of great crusade for civil rights. Just what this crusade is about he could never explain. This is the result: He just turned sixty-five, and financial ruin and possible jail time is hovering over him.

It would be sad if he wasn't so arrogant. A slight case of hubris.