No Day In Court
No offense to my few lawyer-type friends out there, but your job is weird.Lisa and I spent yesterday in mediation for our lawsuit against the family whose car was parked in our kitchen last November. So we got an up close look at the intricacies of law. Which is to say, we mostly sat around all day while other people talked in various rooms.
At 9:00, our guy told us we probably wouldn't get as much as he had hoped. Since he had hoped for waaaay more than we did, that wasn't a problem.
Around 10:00, four people showed up and were ushered into our conference room. One was the mediator. One was the attorney for their insurance company. One was the on-site adjustor for our insurance company. And one was some guy whose role we never did quite figure out. Nice guy though. As was the mediator. As was our adjustor guy. And that other attorney was there too.
Soon began the process of people walking back and forth from room to room. Occasionally somebody would call somebody else on the phone. Once in a while somebody else would pop their head in our room and thank us for our patience. The mediator spent about 15 minutes explaining the facts of life to us and was very genuine and very honest and very sympathetic.
Around 1:30, both the mediator and our attorney said they thought they had the best offer and, while it was less than we thought, it was enough to pay for our upgrades to the house and to push some of our red closer to the black. So we all shook hands.
Our biggest disappointment was not money. We would have been fine with nothing because we are learning in all things to be content. We prayed before and after the whole session and truly felt that God's hand was involved from start to finish. No, the thing I regret the most is that nobody from the family involved was there. We never wanted them to be hurt financially, but it would have been nice if someone would have had to miss a day of work. The truth is, an apology would have been worth twice as much as any settlement.
But it's not to be. And we're okay with that. We avoided our day in court. We got to see a little of what practicing law is really like. And for one, brief, shining phone call, I got to see my goofy, gap-toothed, video-game-playing ex-next-door neighbor speak genuine lawyerese. That alone was worth the price of admission.
posted by Thurman8er @ 8:42 AM
5 Comments:
Glad you got it worked out. If you have learned to be content with what you have, you have learned a great lesson. Thanks for your example.
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The fact that you and Lisa prayed before and after your brush with "justice" is an encouragement to me. I wish you could have gotten more but as you said, an apology would have been nice as well.
Hey - They should have given you permission to assign the "offending family" some math homework.
"Yes your Honor, I would like to assign all the "even numbers" on any given page. Oh, you must show your work! That will teach you to drive into my kitchen."
What amazes me is why you had to take them to court...and mediation? Uh...let's see...car driven inside house...house severely damaged...driver had "insurance"...insurance pay for car inside hurt house. NO? Some day you will have to explain what happened in between. (You are indeed a very forgiving man.) Was this an example of the "new Math"...like 2+2+2 does NOT equal 6? Sort of takes accountability down to a different level,
Well, as someone who has gone through that process dozens of times all from the perspective of one of the guys in a suit walking between rooms and talking on the cell phone, reading that was very helpful.
your comment about wishing the other side had been there was a good reminder of how personal these issues are for the people involved. For me, it is about serving my client and trying to do that well, but it is also my job and it is easy to lose site of the fact that real people are involved in the dispute. That may seem ridiculously obvious to everyone not a lawyer, but when your whole job is that kind of fight, you have to depersonalize. But to do the job well, you can't completely depersonalize.
I'm glad you got it resolved, I know those messes can be unpleasant.
In response to "Timeless'" very understandable question, I just have to say that when two lawyers are involved, there is no such thing as a clear cut issue. Give me any black and white issue and I can argue for black or white or grety or even indigo and any good lawyer can do the same. that's why being a juror or judge in our system is the toughest job on our entire legal system. Often, you have look at both sides and decide which is right when they both sound good.
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