Discovery is that part of a law suit where the two sides
exchange information and prepare their cases for trial. There’s written discovery, that’s a big part
of it. Depositions are involved too,
showing up in person and answering lawyers’ questions.
Scoobie was a client of ours, a plaintiff in a personal
injury case. “Scoobie” is not his real
name, he actually went by the nickname of another beloved television
character. He was a hard guy to get
ahold of, and the office had had no success in getting in touch with him about
the discovery process. Without his
cooperation, the case would be dismissed.
No one else involved wanted to deal with it. Let it blow up, there’s no money in it. He’ll screw up the case somehow, it might as
well be now. Besides, a jury would hate
him. That was the thinking.
Scoobie was a young man with a poor education and no job,
and no prospects.
I said, I’ll take care of it, no problem, I’ll go get the
family to help me find him. The address
was a large but inexpensive home in a new development in the Eastern Empire of
Los Angeles, in San Bernardino County.
It was a large, loosely connected, extended family consisting of a matriarchal
grandmother and lots of children, grandchildren and cousins, aged from grammar
school to adult men and women, a real houseful.
It was an African-American family.
I got to the address at about 10:00 a.m., unannounced, ready
to devote all day to it. A large,
powerful man opened the door. He was
initially very suspicious. I am never
offended by this. In fact, I recommend
that all black Americans be suspicious of any white man that they don’t know,
and most of the white women too. Was I
police? A parole or probation
officer? From Children’s Services? Once I had convinced him and another adult
man that I worked for Scoobie and was trying to help him get some money that
was coming to him they invited me in and introduced me to grandma.
She was sitting in a recreation room, in some kind of huge
Barcalounger, and I never saw her get up.
There was seating for at least fifteen people, and many children and
teenagers were present. The TV was
on. She sized me up and quickly accepted
me at my word, and then I was in. A pair
of young men materialized. They were
very interested in the proceedings. We
sat around discussing strategies for finding Scoobie, and since the young men
traveled in the same circles as Scoobie they were full of ideas.
They figured that I would never find Scoobie on my own, so
they offered to come with me. I was
delighted because this seemed to offer a real chance of success. They thought that there was a good chance
that he was at the home of one of his girlfriends, and they knew where several
of them lived. Along the way we could
just ask people for possible leads. They
were really enjoying themselves, it was like playing detective.
Scoobie was at the home of the second girlfriend that we
checked. He was a husky, Geri-Curled twenty-five
year old, with that devil-may-care, always cheerful attitude that I have
noticed many times in young men in his milieu.
Having given up on education and the job scene, and fully expecting to
go to prison someday or get shot, he was well adjusted to making the best of
everything that was available to him. He
and the cousins spoke a semi-dialect that was not quite Black English, but not
quite standard either. They were easy to
understand though, and they were smart guys so they understood me just
fine. Having gotten acquainted, we all
went back to the family home.
I had brought along the written discovery, so we set up at
the dining room table and got started on that.
Along the way a lunch of fried fish was prepared for everyone in the
house. It was cooked by the big guy who
had answered the door, he was about thirty-five years old and he didn’t say
much. It was served in a paper towel, to
be eaten by hand. Delicious, by the
way. I ran the situation down for
Scoobie and he agreed to be more cooperative in the future. We had a date for his deposition the following
week, and he promised that he’d show up.
I made sure to get as many phone numbers as I could in case we had to
look for him again.
He did, in fact, show up at the lawyers’ office for the
depo, and he was on time. One hour
early, as I had instructed him, so that we’d have time to prepare. One of the girlfriends drove him. I used the common lawyer’s technique in these
depo preparations. You don’t want to
just feed the client lies to say at the depo, you can’t just feed them a
script, but you want them to say certain things and avoid other things. You don’t want them to actually say out loud
truthful things that you would then have to tell them, please God, don’t say
that. So you say, here’s how these
things go, and launch off into some hypotheticals, if this is what happened, it’s
bad, if this is what happened, it’s good, if someone says something like this,
they’ll probably win. “Just tell them
what happened.” I always threw in a “if
I kick you under the table, shut up.” Many
people just ignore you, but some bright lights internalize your hypo’s very
quickly and do a great job of incorporating the good points into their
answers. Scoobie was one of the good
ones.
To win his case, we would have to show that the landlord at
the apartments where he had fallen down the stairs had prior knowledge of the
dangerous condition. This is never
easy. I had mentioned this, but I never
feed him a particular strategy. At the
perfect time, he dropped in that he had told the super at the apartments about
a loose railing on several occasions, but the super had just blown him off. I had no idea whether this was true or not,
but he said it on his own initiative so my conscious was clear, and my actions were ethical according to the rules. He
described running up the stairs and the railing coming loose in his hand,
causing him to fall backwards.
He totally aced the depo, and he showed that he would be a
great witness for himself if the case went to trial. Before we left the building after the depo, the
lawyer called me into his office and we settled the case right there.
This was treated as some kind of miracle of mine back at the
office.
These were typical events in the life of a lawyer in Los Angeles, and another
episode in the adventures of a simple man trying to figure out race relations
in America.
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