the pelican

once more with feeling

judgment

the trial has been over for a week but still dreaming about it. every night. all night.

can't stop going over all of it. what happened, how it unfolded, where it went wrong, where it went right, all the variables, the players, the jury, the judge, the attorneys.

this one was a mess from the get-go. fatally flawed long before our firm ever even entered into it. not the sort of thing they would necessarily normally do, really, but something an attorney i work for wanted to do. a good cause. for some good people in a bad situation. and he wanted to help out an old friend. and do the right thing.

he has a big heart, this attorney. and he has a sense of the right thing, he does. and he takes on things the others wouldn't, or couldn't, or won't or just don't. he just takes cases. he wants to do good things. he wants to do more civil rights stuff. he wants to help. he has ideals.

and i admire him.

but this mess was a mess with four or five underlying messes tangled together. and we entered it quite late in the game.

and in truth, nobody wins in these sorts of situations.

no one emerges unscathed.

because you see there was a custody dispute. nobody ever "wins" a custody dispute.

and before that there was a very ugly divorce. and there was a history of domestic violence. and other serious allegations made. there was the desperate scooping up of a child off to a foreign country for over a year, an investigation, arrests. there was a con-man with a history of drug-smuggling. there was an evil control freak dominating sociopath with a background in military intelligence. there was a frightened beautiful manic girl mother. there was a strong supportive older aunt. there were helpless loving protective parents. there was forgery. there were medical records. there was a criminal trial. there was time served in prison. there were previous attorneys. old girlfriends operating undercover. entrapment. wire-tappings. a child advocate who issued false reports to the court without ever interviewing the people involved.

and a default.

and a continuance.

and an inexperienced judge.

and of course, smack in the middle of all this, invisible to us all and around whom all this revolves, present only in spirit with all the families desires and expectations heaped upon her, is a very sad and innocent small girl child.

there was so much anger and hatred and hurt and fear bottled up in that courtroom. such pain. great pain. and frustration. and venom. steaming boiling festering over two years in brewing litigation preparation for this matter, but going back into the previous six years before that of unhappy marriage, brutal divorce, custody disputes, accusations, runaways and investigations and incarcerations. family feud stuff. blame and shame and struggle and pointed fingers smothered in self-righteous indignation and money and control and punishment and vendetta and vanity, all bundled together in a tightly wound seething packet of vituperative held together under pressure wrapped tightly in a thick heavy wet woolen blanket of sadness and futility.

by far the most emotionally grueling courtroom situation that i have ever had to take part in.

day after day i went to sit in that courtroom and watch this stuff unfold. to be there for the clients. to be there for the attorney. to witness it. to help a little. to find exhibits and depositions and folders. to hold it all together. to hand out tissues and mints and take care of everything or anything that might come up, might be needed. to type a jury instruction. to arrange for a delivery. to take notes. to watch the jury. to be there.

essentially, to sit there and watch, after all the work of the previous months, all the scrambling and collecting and copying and organizing and deadlines and tracking and notebooks and scheduling depositions and exhibits. to just be there and watch over it and make everything is going to be OK.

but it wasn't good enough. it wasn't containable. it was too big.

there were moments when it seemed the ornate 15 foot ceilings of the old courthouse couldn't possibly hold all the energy bouncing off the walls in there. bouncing and ricocheting about and masquerading as civil law.

the tall windows popped and cracked. the acoustics were horrendous. everyone sounded like they were talking with their head in a bucket in an echo chamber. one moment the whole place was freezing, the next we were boiling in our own juices. i added some slapstick and dropped my laptop on the floor in the middle of a video deposition playback. my butt went to sleep on the hard bench. the opposing attorney was vindictive and condescending, and he tore at our little 72 year old parents trying desperately to impeach them by beating them over their heads with exact words and phrases snatched from their depositions taken over a year ago. the judge glared at our co-counsel with constant disdain. the haughty clerk briskly whisked the jury to and fro.

in the past, i have had to go to court with bigger cases than this one. done estate litigation, legal malpractice, personal injury, medical malpractice, patent infringement litigation. and, i had done quite a bit of volunteer work at a local women's shelter as a court advocate. every Friday morning for about three years, i was in the courtroom with my battered women and children, to help them get restraining orders from abusive spouses and parents. and in all that time, i saw a lot of he-said she-said situations aired out in the county courthouse. and after watching so many of these mini-trials explode and implode on a weekly basis, i had come to have quite a respect for the crucible of the courtroom and how the truth reveals itself when a space is provided to hold it all together with ideals and ruled with wisdom and compassion. how character shines and shows itself, and how the real fines itself down to be seen as it is.

but this case was not so simple.

yet despite my grim account of the trial that continues to obsess me, it should be said that my attorney, the one i was there to support through this thing, was quite the shining star in the midst of this chaos. he stood up and said what he had to. he told it like it was and he did what he could and he did his best. and the jury respected him. he took care of clients and he tried to take care of his friend. i feel so proud of him.  in awe, to be honest.

wish i could say the same for me, but i can't. i feel in my gut as though i failed it all. tried to do too much. things slipped through the cracks. it was too much too last minute to make it all come seamlessly together somehow. feel as though i was lost in the details of my part. i struggled too much. i wasn't giving enough. i botched it. i feel i have let him down.

and even though the jury was with us, they were improperly instructed in the end, and they did not understand what they were doing. heck nobody gets joint and several liability. that's a given.

and so it's not over, either.

for there will be quite an appeal.

and in the mean time, i wish there was something i could glean from this. something to learn. something to say. the lesson escapes me. or maybe i just won't listen to it.

because it all just feels like a magnificent well-intentioned fiasco.

a ton of work, a lot of worry, an enormous amount of effort, so much love and care and energy put into something that was ultimately doomed from the get-go.

of course by all accounts, it wasn't really a failure. it could have worse. so much worse. and if we'd had an experienced judge, maybe the whole thing could have even been salvaged in some way.

but the lives of these people will not have closure on this matter for some time to come.

i feel for our clients and i just am not accepting this on some level. can't stop dreaming about this, can't stop thinking about it, can't stop regretting things replaying things i want to fix this mess somehow i want a happy ending i want this to be resolved i want redemption justice freedom and compassion for all. just keep going over it and over it. i keep reliving each segment. i can see all the jurors' faces. i can see the judge's unhappy scowl and telling out co-counsel to sit down in the middle of his closing. i can hear the opposing attorney berating my little client.

and so we went to trial and had our guts ripped out and stomped on and then it's back to the office with a pile of work from all the other cases that are screaming for attention after being out for so long, deadlines ahead, responses to file with the court, letters to write, discovery to draft, depositions to schedule and so and so forth. such is the nature of the life of trial work, or so says another attorney at work.

attachment to outcomes – maybe that's what this is about.

there was so much heavy karma involved.

so much desire. so many expectations. so much suffering.

a veritable perpetual motion machine.

posted by: limine at 00:07 | link | comments (6) |

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