Foreword
Every lawyer with any experience – at least, every trial lawyer – has a treasure
chest of “war stories”:
Accounts of internecine courtroom battles, battles with clients, threats from clients’
husbands, battles with insurance companies and doctors, etc., etc.
Most of these stories have more than a trace of humor.
“War stories” are exchanged among attorneys at bars, at bar conventions, and in
conference rooms where they await trials, docket calls and depositions.
Occasionally a lawyer gets tired of fighting the battles and settles in to write about them.
Some of these accounts even get published. I
recall how impressed I was, as a young man, with Louis Nizer’s My Life in Court,
which came out in 1961. Since then we have been
treated to the written recollections of Melvin Belli, F. Lee Bailey, Edward Bennett
Williams, Gerry Spence, and Johnnie Cochran.
There are two differences between those guys and me:
1. They were major generals; I was a foot
soldier.
2. They never lost a case. . . .
Chapter 4: Carla L’Ashley
. . . If you think it is amusing that blacks name their children Major, Colonel, Doctor
and Lawyer (and Placenta), you need to comb through the files of a redneck country lawyer. . . .
I had a male client – a farmer, married, with children and grandchildren – whose
given name was Girlie. . . .
Chapter 20: Lanny and Katie
Lanny Bailey walked out on the streets of Bowling Green stark naked.
Not a stitch on. Shortly before 10 p.m.
on a chilly evening early in March.
Lanny was not all there. His wife said that he
had been “arguing with God.”
And a policeman shot him. In the middle of the
street. Dead.
Two plugs in the middle of the heart.
In self-defense, the cop said. Lanny was carrying
a pocket knife.
I was retained by Lanny’s widow, Katie. To
sue the cop, and the City, right? . . .
Chapter 23: The Courtroom
The courtroom . . . was heated by a pot-bellied stove, stoked by the Jailer.
A bell rope hung from the Courthouse steeple into the middle of the courtroom, right above
the jury box – tied, at the bottom end, in a hangman’s noose. . . .
A local lawyer actually entered the courtroom once carrying a burning lantern, with Court in
session, and responded, when asked from the bench what he was doing, that he was “looking
for an honest judge.” . . . | 