Professional Soldiers ®

Quote:

Originally posted by The Reaper
Either your most exciting combat episode,

or your best legal story (and it beter be good).

TR

You guys don't understand just how BORING my business is, do you? LOL

OK, I don't know if this is my best, but this one amuses me. Hopefully I can do it justice.

Several years ago I was representing a manufacturer in a trademark dispute with another large company. My client was using a name to identify computer keyboards, and we wanted to prevent the other company from using a name that is spelled differently but sounds the same to identify another type of data input device. We litigated the case for a while in two different jurisdictions, then agreed to meet with them at their counsel's offices in Denver to see if we could settle the case.

So there we are in Denver -- in opposing counsel's office -- meeting in a conference room. On one side of the table were me (at the time the equivalent of a Captain I suppose), my boss (three stars), and the general counsel of our client. On the other side of the table are four lawyers from the other side plus an in-house lawyer from their client.

At settlement meetings like this, you can proceed in different ways. Often you'll cut to the chase and talk about possible resolutions right away. Other times the parties will start off by talking about the strengths of their respective cases and the weaknesses of the other side's case. The lawyers had all agreed in advance to cut to the chase, but after a little while our client decides to jump in and make a speech. (Visualize me cringing.)

Now I should give you a picture of our client. Very nice lady who pays our bills on time and all, but probably one of the most unreasonable and difficult people anyone has ever had to deal with. She is about 4'10" and fat with closely cropped, bright red hair. We privately call her the bowling ball.

She's not happy with how little the other side is willing to compromise in the first 15 minutes of our discussion, so she launches into this long (and somewhat inaccurate) speech about the merits of the case.

The other side sits and listens to her patiently. Then their lead lawyer says that, while we had agreed not to talk about the merits, she felt the need to respond to the speech by our client. At some point in her speech, she says (as lawyers often do at these events) that our claims are"frivolous." My boss and I look over at our client, and she is turning BRIGHT RED. I swear that you could see the steam starting to come out of her ears.

Suddenly she jumps up and SCREAMS at the other side:

GET OUT!

My boss and I look at each other incredulously, and we see the lawyers from the other side looking at each other the same way. Their lead lawyer says, "Excuse me?" And our client says, "You'd better get out right now or this meeting is OVER!"

I'll never forget the looks on opposing counsels' faces as they pondered this demand to leave their own conference room. But they got up and went to another conference room.

Then our client says, "I am so glad I've been going to therapy for anger management. I've learned that whenever I'm about to get angry, I need to take a break and reassess things and then start over. Boy, I am so proud of the way I handled that."

My boss and I are looking at each other dumbfounded, wanting to laugh but restrained by decorum.

So I then had the duty of going out to calm down the other side and try to get discussions started again.

Later in the day, we settled the case.