Brownstonelit's Blog

1/15/11

Irony! Ahhhhh…. Ya gotta love it!
Ok, so you know how much I love the totally evident George Carland kind of observations? You know, the amazingly obvious ones like…”Don’t eat yellow snow!” Well, here’s another observation that hit me the same way when I was going through several old files in regards to the case that was filed on behalf of Hazel when she was fighting the insurance and Federal Employees Compensation folks. Now, be cool. This observation actually has nothing to do with either the Feds or the insurance folks. It does however have a great deal to do with Hazel’s lawyer.
In my attempt to find certain names, dates and other peripheral information generally buried within the minutia of such documents; I can usually find a thread that binds me to something which supports a previous theory and/or conjecture. I seem to have a penchant for reading documents in a different way than most folks. I read as much for information left out, as much as for information left in. It’s that old, fascination with the holes created in Swiss cheese, rather than the remains that outlines them that tends to intrigue me most.

Soooooo….the document at hand is an itemized billing for Hazel’s lawyer’s fees, and a dandy little piece of paperwork it in! All decked out in three sheets of carbon and onion skin paper- in triplicates, no less! A marvelous document to be sure and concise too. Every conceivable name, address, time allotment and content of said conversations and/or depositions is documented in absolute detail, all for the pricey sum of… whatever it was. Clearly I am not interested in the going rate of quantifiable nonsense in this case. I read and re-read it over and over and something odd strikes out at me. After four or five pages of being alerted to the names of people I suspected had information worthy of invite- names of those who spread nothing but tainted manure and names of those I had no idea even existed…. I am left with one undeniable impression. The author of such was fastidious and precise! Barring that discovery… I came upon another–so tantalizing, I still cannot believe it escaped anyone else’s detection.
There, on the second to last page of this glorious recounting is a billing itemization for the deposition of an FBI agent as witness. Now, this witness to be sure was involved in this case. His very name appears on several other documents—including the notorious GBI Crime Lab report. So you might ask; what is the big deal in this? Of course an attorney would depose an FBI agent integral and/or even peripheral to the investigation of this case! And, if you felt that way, your assumption would be correct! He should have deposed this man.
But I digress. Let’s recap before I move forward.
The document; as with all other’s deposed clearly states, where, when and for how long this man was deposed. What it does not state is…WHO this man was. Not a name anywhere in sight! Now I ask you. How… or rather WHY would you not put this man’s name down? Remember- you are using this as legal tender for fees accrued and yet, you do not place his name amongst the other 50 or so, on your billing list? How can one validate what he either had to say, and/ or that he was even deposed at all if you cannot name his name???

I find that hole in this lawyer’s Swiss cheese to be a very curious one. Who bills a plaintiff for a lengthy deposition of…nobody? Or, at the least of a man you clearly do not wish to identify? Now, now… you might think this just an error in transcribing, or that he must have been undercover…but think! We have already established that this guy’s John Hancock is a rather popular appearance in this case. His name mentioned in the papers 100 times over. Surely the lawyer could have found it amongst the other 4 million documents generated in this case. No my dear readers…this was not just an error. This lawyer doesn’t make errors like that. Not when he needed to use this particular document as his defense and justification for billing fees in a case filed against him by the Plaintiff and the Federal Government for abusive and excessive billing practices.
Hmmmm… wonder why you would intentionally leave this man’s name out?
I wondered that too. That’s why I am going to call him! Let’s see if HE knows why his name was dropped from the billing!

Until later then…

This entry was posted on January 15, 2011 at 4:57 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.