Law Stories

I’ve had my offices in the same building for twenty years.  Don’t ask me why, it just happened that way.  The building is squeezed in next to some big old department stores, not far from the red-light district, and surrounded by the downtown building boom.  It’s amazing what happens when yuppie urban planners and real estate developers turn old cobblestone streets into a mall.  I’m on the fourth floor in a corner office.  Really sort of nice once you’re inside.  Cool in color, awake to the street below, oriental rugs, a framed print of the Constitution given to me as a Christmas gift by my young partner in crime, an infrared photo of Cape Cod from space, a lithograph of the port of Boston in the eighteen hundreds, the picture of F.D.R. that adorned the vestibule to my parent’s apartment in Newark.

When I got out of law-school I was forty years old and not such a desirable commodity.  I’d worked as a hospital administrator for years and there were simply no law jobs for forty year old freshmen lawyers with a background in hospital administration.  So when I was finally offered a position paying less than half of what I made at the hospital I took it and worked for nine months with an in-house insurance defense outfit.  I felt I really had no choice.  And I learned a lot.  That firm was a little like being in a MASH army field hospital.  There were lots of cases needing attention, thousands of cases, with more coming in all the time.  American Field Insurance Group represented mostly taxi companies.  The insurance side of the company had actually been established fifty years ago when the immigrant founder of the taxi companies got tired of paying someone else for his mandatory auto insurance premiums.  So he started his own insurance company.  And then he bought garages and parking lots and real estate and before you knew it he was ninety years old, many times over a millionaire, and the proud possessor of the first nickel he had ever earned or stolen.

I drive to Yvonne mother’s home through neighborhoods I haven’t been in for years, streets that haven’t changed a bit, one, two, and three family houses, some boarded up, shingled, every one, once a working class neighborhood, now just poor, yards with fences and dogs barking behind them, nobody on the street in daylight.

I stand on the porch and knock at the door of the first floor apartment.  I hear someone coming down the hall on crutches.  “She’s a looker,” Crawford had said to me, but I’m still unprepared for the stark beauty of Yvonne Smith.  A junkie no doubt, probably a sometime whore, twenty-five or six perhaps.  Angry.  Or is it only guarded?  Skinny.  Sexy.  Five foot seven maybe, with gorgeous dark skin, dark eyes, and tight straight hair pulled back in a bun.  A loose black shirt is buttoned up to the middle of her sternum between her breasts.  I see her taught nipples when she leans over on her crutches.  I note the tingling in my lips.  I remember the story a doctor friend told me of how he compulsively peeked down his female patients’ shirts and stared down their blouses even after he’d completed their physical exams.

Yvonne’s wearing impossibly tight jeans cut off below the knee on the right leg so she can get them on over her cast.  Bare footed.  Her toenails are painted red.  The skin on her face glistens.  She wears no makeup.  Her lips are full.  She sticks the tip of her tongue out between them when she’s thinking.  Who is this person, I have the space to wonder.  Where is she from?  What is she really like?

“Come on in mister lawyerman, I thought you’d never come by to visit me.”

“Well, I couldn’t get you to come to my office.  And you said you had to see me or you’d go to another lawyer.  And the court hearing for the fellow who was driving the pickup that ran over you is this Thursday.  And I know you’ve been talking to the people from the district attorney’s office.  And you’re going to give testimony under oath.  So here I am.”

“Come in then.  Let’s go to the kitchen and sit down, please.”

I follow her down an empty hallway, past a closed bedroom door on the right.  There are no posters or pictures on the hallway wall.  The light from the kitchen guides me.

“Pardon the mess.  This here’s my mother.”

“Ma’am.  Pleased to meet you.”

“Same here.”

“Nice little apartment,” I say.

“Oh not really,” says Yvonne’s mother, “but kind of you to say.  I can never get the maintenance people to do anything”

There are so few clients who connect with me on a real level and here are two women who I sense are talking with me as straight as if we were long time friends.

“You want some instant coffee Mr. Benjamin?”

“Please call me Todd.  No thanks.  I really haven’t got a lot of time, but I did bring a copy of the police report and I’d like to go over it with you.”

“Well that’s fine, but I want a coffee.  Say momma would you pour me some hot water please into this cup?”

“Sure, Sugar.”

“Okay, go ahead mister lawyerman, your time is more valuable than mine’s.”

I let that slide.

“Well, here are the police reports,” I say, pulling the folded photocopies from the inner pocket of my suit jacket.  “And here is the interesting part from the first one.  You see here where it says ‘description of accident’ how it says … no better let me read it to you.  ‘Officers on routine patrol in the B104 car receive radio call of woman down on Seaver at Forest.  Twenty-six year old black female in obvious distress laying in roadway crying with manifest ankle injuries.  Victim states she was thrown from truck and tires ran her over.  Called 911.  EMT’s arrived for transport to City Hospital.’”

“Yeah, well that’s what happened.  It did.”

“I believe you, but what I want to focus on here is the phrase ‘victim states she was thrown from truck.’  But before we do that let me also read you what officer Collins said after his visit with you at the hospital.”

“Victim, Yvonne Smith, age 26, states she was waiting for bus when picked up by unknown stranger.  States driver, black male, six one, 180 pounds, 30 years old, light skin, baseball hat, no recalled scars, stopped and offered ride.  Says she wanted to go to Brookside and he headed toward downtown.  Tried to get out and he wouldn’t let her.  Pushed on door of moving vehicle.  Fell out landing on right shoulder and run over by rear tires.  Could ID.”

“Interesting, no?”  I say.  “Because in this report it says, ‘pushed on door of moving vehicle and fell out,’ which makes it hard to place the blame squarely on the driver.”

“Well, but that’s exactly what happened.  I told you.”

“I understand that’s exactly what happened, and I don’t want you to lie, but remember what I told you, that if it wasn’t an accident you won’t recover any money.  If you’re interested in pursuing a criminal complaint it’s one thing, and we would treat that differently, and you wouldn’t need me as your lawyer.  But if what we’re trying to do is recover money then this has to have been an accident.  Now couldn’t you have just leaned against the door and it sprang open and you fell out.”

“Well, that’s exactly what happened.”

“Or maybe you were partially out the door when he accelerated and took off and that caused you to fall.”

“Yeah, well it was like that also.”

“Good.” I say.  And then I say some more.

The first time I spoke with her was by phone, in mid-September.  I remember the Red Sox had just lost a critical game to the Yankees.  Pedro Martinez had thrown eight brilliant innings and the Sox had scored no runs.  They lost one zip.  I got to the office early Monday morning after my run and before I even closed the door, Katrina, the paralegal from hell, yelled out from the library, “Someone looking for a good lawyer, I told her to try another number, pick up on line two.”  A little commentary about my competency made over our technologically sophisticated intercom.

“Todd Benjamin,” I say into the phone.

“Mr. Benjamin, I’m looking for a lawyer.”

“Yes.”

“You’re a lawyer, right?”

It always starts this way, very sharp on the probing repartee.

“Yes I am ma’am, how can I help you?”

“Well where do I start?  It’s such a long story and I’m not sure what to do.”

“Why don’t you just try to tell me what you want to tell me about how you hope a lawyer can help you.”  I yawn, barely containing my impatience.

“Well, I had a little accident the other day and I saw your name in the Yellow Pages and want to know if you can help me.”

“Maybe I can, and maybe I can’t ma’am, but I have to know what it is you’re talking about.  What kind of accident was it?  Where did it happen?  How did it happen?”

“Well, you see, I was waiting for the bus when this guy came up to the bus stop in a big truck and asked if I wanted a ride.  And I sort of knew him, or had seen him around, so I got in.  And then we drive somewhere I didn’t want to go. I know the city, and he is way the hell away from where I was going, and I tell him “stop and let me out.”  But he didn’t.  So I opened the door and he grabbed onto my belt and then he let go of my belt and sort of pushed me and I fell out of the truck and the rear tires ran over my ankle.”

“Tell me your name please.”

“Yvonne.”

“Yvonne what?”

“Smith.”

“And where do you live, Ms. Smith?”

“Well, you see, I’m calling from the hospital, and I had to have two operations, and I don’t think I’m going be able to keep my apartment, and I’m going to have to live up with my mother again, and I don’t want to.”

“And what is your mother’s address?” I ask. She clear has my attention.

“How much is this going to cost me, mister lawyer?”

“Nothing Ms. Smith. The way I work on accident cases like yours is that I don’t charge anything for my time and effort unless I’m successful in recovering money for my client.” Here comes the spiel, it’s rote by now. “… and if I do recover money for you, then I get one third of the money we recover and you get two thirds of the money, but if we get nothing then my time and effort cost you nothing.  Now tell me, did the police investigate the accident?”

“Well, yes and no.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Well they came to my hospital room to talk to me.”

“I see.  And did the police also come to the scene of the accident?”

“Well, that I don’t know, you see I was hurt pretty bad and the ambulance came and took me to the City Hospital before they was any police there at all that I know of.”

“And who called the ambulance if you know?”

“Well I don’t, you see.”

“Alright, I understand Ms. Smith, Yvonne.  A case like yours can get complicated fast, even though it’s only an auto accident.  And I think, if I’m hearing you correctly, that you’d like to get some money to pay your medical bills and to compensate you for the pain and the injuries you’ve suffered in this accident.  Am I right?”

“You got that right.”

“Right.  And there are just so many things that can go wrong in a case of this kind that would make it hard for you to collect that money, just so many things, that you really must retain a lawyer.  Whether its me or some one else, its important that you have legal counsel representing you, making sure that you get the money you deserve, that you don’t say anything that hurts your case, that the insurance company, if there is one, treats you fairly.”

“Oh, I understand that.  I’ve been hurt before.  I want the money.  And I’ve decided already, you’re my lawyer, mister.”

“Thank you, Ms. Smith.  Okay, to start working on your case I will need you to sign certain documents.  One is a contingent fee agreement which confirms there will be no fee due me from you if I am unable to successfully recover money for you but that if I do help you recover money I will be paid the one third fee we discussed.”

“That’s fair.”

“And, of course, I also need a medical release, so that I can get your medical records from City Hospital, or from any other place where you may receive treatment.”

“That’s fair too.  So when are you coming out to see me?”

“Well, what I’d actually like to do Ms. Smith, Yvonne, is to send my investigator, James Crawford, out to meet with you.  Mr. Crawford will have the papers for you to sign, he can get some additional information from you, take some photographs, and he will then get us a copy of the police report.”

“That sounds good.”

“Good.  Now promise me that except for me and Mr. Crawford you will not talk to anyone else about this case, this accident, the circumstances that come before your accident. Nothing. To no one. Please. You can’t even talk about how you are feeling in regard to the injuries you suffered in the accident except to tell the doctors and nurses how much it hurts. You get it? Nothing related to you accident. To anyone.”

“Well, of course I did talk to the police.”

“Yes.  Well in the future tell anyone who wants to talk with you about the accident, even the police, that you are represented by counsel and can’t talk to them without talking to me first.  What is it you said to the police?”

“Well, like I told you, I told them I was waiting for the bus and that I went for a ride with this guy, Jeff I think his name was, and that I wanted to get out of the truck, and he didn’t want to let me get out of the truck, and then he sort of pushed me out, and the rear wheels ran over my ankle and busted it badly.”

“Alright Yvonne, please understand something.  If what the man who drove the truck did was an intentional act, that is, if he purposely pushed or shoved you out of this truck, then your chances of recovering against his, or the truck owner’s insurance policy, assuming there is such a policy, are less good than if you just fell out of the truck, and the accident was a result of the truck driver or truck owner’s negligence, their lack of care under the circumstances. That’s what we mean by negligence and then you will be able to recover.  You understand the difference?  Because to my mind it is important for you not to say you got pushed out of the truck.  Do you understand me?”

Oh I could go on.  And I do.  What a life this lawyering is.