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Famous Last Words:
Feb. 4th, 2011 05:48 pm"Gimme a match; I want to see if my gas tank's empty."
"Floor it, you can beat that train easy."
"Dude! This cartoon about Mohammed is REALLY funny!"
"Prepare to beam down to the planet's surface, Ensign Redshirt!"
And the one from this morning, to strike terror in all lawyers' hearts?
"I'm not going to call the calendar in order; I'll take the simpler ones first."
----
Mine wasn't the first on the published calendar, nor did I have any hope of it being moved up on account of it being easy. I take on more than my share of cases maliciously designed by the Multistate Board of Future Bar Exam Questions, and this one was no exception. Yet, let's have a look-in on some of the ones that did make that cut, shall we? (Full disclosure: I have nothing to do with any of these cases, or their parties or lawyers, except one very remote one I'll mention. Well, other than having had my brain sucked out through my nostrils and slammed onto the floor by them.)
Contestant Number One. As with the two to follow this one, I could hear why they got picked for the head of the queue, because on paper, they looked simple. Maybe too simple; by the look of things, they didn't own much of anything. The first just liked to be a little mysterious about things; when asked the relatively simple question of what her current address was, she said, "I don't really have a residency," leading to some cross-eyed looks from all in the room and a disclosure of what probably was Mom and Dad's basement. She had multiple bank accounts, yet never put any money into them, cashing her paycheck and paying her rent and other bills in cash. She brought bank statements for the three months before her filing date, yet didn't have any clue about how much was in them on the day of that filing. (Granted: I run into this issue all the time, and I know, you don't have your statement for the filing date when you file, but you have at least three weeks from that date to this one to either get it in the mail or print out an online verification of it- a concept somewhat lost on Mister X, Esq.) She ran a small craft business briefly, but didn't have any information about what it did or whether anything was left over from it. Easy Case Number One wound up taking 20 minutes of a one-hour calendar consisting of seven cases. Teh Math, already it is not working.
Contestant Number Two. Another International Woman of Mystery, who also has bank accounts that never seem to show anything going into them. When asked the mandatory question about owning real estate in the past six years, she replied that she'd sold a house in 2009; while this specific question is not on the written forms you fill out, there IS one about whether you transferred any property within the past two years, which she answered "no," even though she clearly did. So now her lawyer is feeling a bit defensive, except for the facts that (a) he wasn't the one in his firm who prepared and signed the papers (that would be "A" in the firm of "ABC&D") and (b) "B," the one stuck showing up on a snowy Friday at 9 a.m. while "A" is probably vacationing in Florida, is about 327 years old. Once someone's suspected of misleading on one point, the trustees tend to be much more inquisitive about everything else, and so he got into extended discussions about her pay stubs, the final pre-filing one possibly not filed with the court as the law requires; about her IRA, which btw has 10 times more in it than ours does but she gets to keep the whole thing if it was properly set up; and about her ex-husband, which you could tell she really enjoyed discussing. In the end, "B" was sent off with a laundry list of things needing to be provided and amended, and I have a serious question in my mind about whether he has all those questions in his mind given, you know, the 327-year-old part. (That possibly missing pay stub could be fatal to her case if it's not just provided but formally filed, and they've been positively rabid about enforcing this stupid regulation added to the law in 2005.) I am seriously calling the "D" dude in that firm, who used to be my law partner ages ago, and letting him tip off both "A" and "B" that they might have a problem here. Meanwhile, my problem was fast becoming the fact that Second Easy Case globbed up another 20 minutes and we now have a final 20 to do the five cases that weren't as easy as those two.
Pop quiz! A bankruptcy case filing requires you to put down a lot of numbers. Dollars, addresses, account numbers. What do you think might be the worst one to make a mistake on during your initial submission, that would be the most potentially difficult to fix and/or cause the most amount of trouble if left unfixed?
[Poll #1677274]
Naturally, Contestant Number Three managed to pick the best- or in this case worst- answer to that one: ( Spoiler cut, of sorts ) Dude's case was fairly simple after that whole goat rodeo, but still, the clock's striking ten and my chances of meeting my 11:00 appointment anytime before 11 are looking pretty bleak.
----
In the end, the only break I caught was on account of the whole mess going overtime: Case Number Five had to be held because Debtor Number Five had run outside to feed her parking meter moments before 10. That got us on the clock a little before 10:30, and off it not THAT long after it. (And yes, I have a list of homework, too, but I expected that.) I made it to the 11:00 only a little late, it went relatively painlessly (which tends to happen when your client is being deposed by an attorney you taught at a seminar on how to do it), and despite never finding BAD WOLF at RIT myself, Emily assures me she got a picture of it, which after a little photoshopping I will duly post.
Best of all, she's home and safe, as am I, as soon my beloved will be. And it's the weekend. You better believe I'm planning on taking the easy part of it first.
"Floor it, you can beat that train easy."
"Dude! This cartoon about Mohammed is REALLY funny!"
"Prepare to beam down to the planet's surface, Ensign Redshirt!"
And the one from this morning, to strike terror in all lawyers' hearts?
"I'm not going to call the calendar in order; I'll take the simpler ones first."
----
Mine wasn't the first on the published calendar, nor did I have any hope of it being moved up on account of it being easy. I take on more than my share of cases maliciously designed by the Multistate Board of Future Bar Exam Questions, and this one was no exception. Yet, let's have a look-in on some of the ones that did make that cut, shall we? (Full disclosure: I have nothing to do with any of these cases, or their parties or lawyers, except one very remote one I'll mention. Well, other than having had my brain sucked out through my nostrils and slammed onto the floor by them.)
Contestant Number One. As with the two to follow this one, I could hear why they got picked for the head of the queue, because on paper, they looked simple. Maybe too simple; by the look of things, they didn't own much of anything. The first just liked to be a little mysterious about things; when asked the relatively simple question of what her current address was, she said, "I don't really have a residency," leading to some cross-eyed looks from all in the room and a disclosure of what probably was Mom and Dad's basement. She had multiple bank accounts, yet never put any money into them, cashing her paycheck and paying her rent and other bills in cash. She brought bank statements for the three months before her filing date, yet didn't have any clue about how much was in them on the day of that filing. (Granted: I run into this issue all the time, and I know, you don't have your statement for the filing date when you file, but you have at least three weeks from that date to this one to either get it in the mail or print out an online verification of it- a concept somewhat lost on Mister X, Esq.) She ran a small craft business briefly, but didn't have any information about what it did or whether anything was left over from it. Easy Case Number One wound up taking 20 minutes of a one-hour calendar consisting of seven cases. Teh Math, already it is not working.
Contestant Number Two. Another International Woman of Mystery, who also has bank accounts that never seem to show anything going into them. When asked the mandatory question about owning real estate in the past six years, she replied that she'd sold a house in 2009; while this specific question is not on the written forms you fill out, there IS one about whether you transferred any property within the past two years, which she answered "no," even though she clearly did. So now her lawyer is feeling a bit defensive, except for the facts that (a) he wasn't the one in his firm who prepared and signed the papers (that would be "A" in the firm of "ABC&D") and (b) "B," the one stuck showing up on a snowy Friday at 9 a.m. while "A" is probably vacationing in Florida, is about 327 years old. Once someone's suspected of misleading on one point, the trustees tend to be much more inquisitive about everything else, and so he got into extended discussions about her pay stubs, the final pre-filing one possibly not filed with the court as the law requires; about her IRA, which btw has 10 times more in it than ours does but she gets to keep the whole thing if it was properly set up; and about her ex-husband, which you could tell she really enjoyed discussing. In the end, "B" was sent off with a laundry list of things needing to be provided and amended, and I have a serious question in my mind about whether he has all those questions in his mind given, you know, the 327-year-old part. (That possibly missing pay stub could be fatal to her case if it's not just provided but formally filed, and they've been positively rabid about enforcing this stupid regulation added to the law in 2005.) I am seriously calling the "D" dude in that firm, who used to be my law partner ages ago, and letting him tip off both "A" and "B" that they might have a problem here. Meanwhile, my problem was fast becoming the fact that Second Easy Case globbed up another 20 minutes and we now have a final 20 to do the five cases that weren't as easy as those two.
Pop quiz! A bankruptcy case filing requires you to put down a lot of numbers. Dollars, addresses, account numbers. What do you think might be the worst one to make a mistake on during your initial submission, that would be the most potentially difficult to fix and/or cause the most amount of trouble if left unfixed?
[Poll #1677274]
Naturally, Contestant Number Three managed to pick the best- or in this case worst- answer to that one: ( Spoiler cut, of sorts ) Dude's case was fairly simple after that whole goat rodeo, but still, the clock's striking ten and my chances of meeting my 11:00 appointment anytime before 11 are looking pretty bleak.
----
In the end, the only break I caught was on account of the whole mess going overtime: Case Number Five had to be held because Debtor Number Five had run outside to feed her parking meter moments before 10. That got us on the clock a little before 10:30, and off it not THAT long after it. (And yes, I have a list of homework, too, but I expected that.) I made it to the 11:00 only a little late, it went relatively painlessly (which tends to happen when your client is being deposed by an attorney you taught at a seminar on how to do it), and despite never finding BAD WOLF at RIT myself, Emily assures me she got a picture of it, which after a little photoshopping I will duly post.
Best of all, she's home and safe, as am I, as soon my beloved will be. And it's the weekend. You better believe I'm planning on taking the easy part of it first.