![]() I told the representative my story, and the rep told me what to do and what to say. People can say what they like about insurance companies, but I’ll tell you that I fell in love with our insurance company on that day. I just dialed up the company on my cell phone. I hadn’t even made it back to the office yet to settle down. I hadn’t even run the situation by any of the lawyers in my firm. I have no idea why I called the insurance company first. The idea of calling someone for help is not something that normally pops into my head. I don’t like being embarrassed by my errors. I’m inclined to keep my mistakes to myself and fix them before anyone else figures them out. I’m the kind of guy who believes I can fix things. ![]() That wasn’t something I was likely to do. ![]() That’s when I called the malpractice carrier. Then I got into the car and headed back to the office. We’re good at damage repair, and there’s nothing like the scrambling most of us do when we’re the one on the line. I was stunned, but not so stunned that I couldn’t keep massaging her and making sure she stayed calm. I met with my client and baffled her with my best bullshit. I hadn’t fully appreciated that the alimony could amount to millions of dollars over years of payments. I hadn’t yet had a chance to calculate the damage I’d caused by multiplying monthly alimony times the potential lifespan of my client (who would have likely been awarded alimony for life). There weren’t lots of other lawyers around, so only those in the courtroom knew what had happened. I was scrambling so fast trying to recover that I hadn’t fully appreciated the impact of the situation. I was embarrassed, but it wasn’t that bad. I watched the judge, like it was a slow-motion horror movie, dismiss my case. I was required to offer the evidence, and I hadn’t done so. I’d never brought it up when I talked with the other attorney, and he, smartly, hadn’t raised the issue either. The problem on that horrible day was that we hadn’t stipulated on that point. That way, we don’t have to call the opposing party during our case in chief. We usually stipulate that we can bring out that evidence on cross-examination during the opposing party’s case. He blabbered on, and I realized there was nothing routine about what was happening.Ī bit of backstory: In our county, the usual practice is for the attorneys to meet before trial and stipulate to allow the moving party to skip the evidence that’ll come from the opposing party. The opposing counsel rose to make what I thought was a routine motion to dismiss at the close of my evidence. I had offered our financial evidence, but I didn’t offer the evidence related to the other party. She was cross-examined after I finished with her. I had to lay out the finances of the family. That would pretty much do it for my case in chief. I had to do the same for the other party. However, I was required to present evidence of my client’s income, expenses, assets, and debts. I’d made my opening statement, I had offered my client to testify on the numbers, and, if I recall correctly, we had stipulated on fault (so no evidence was required). We had to prove some basic elements (fault, dependency, and the other spouse’s ability to support my client). It was my first trial after I’d returned from my heart attack. It’s all fuzzy and covered in years of emotion, denial, and the retelling of the events. I have no idea whether every detail of this is exactly what happened. It’s possible that the coping mechanisms in my brain have rewritten the story I tell myself. I’ll tell you what happened as best as I can recall. I told the client things would get fixed-somehow. I called from the car, having just left the courthouse. The malpractice carrier answered on the first ring.
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