Law Office Stories: Joe Btfsplk

Joe Btfsplk, the world's worst jinx, must have been hanging out with some of the clients of my law practice. The simpler examples were women like Gina Palermo, who was rear-ended by other drivers at least three times over, and Jayne Flynn, who was helping her daughter Kori recover from one car crash when she and her other daughter Kelsy, who was in the late stages of pregnancy, were struck in two different crashes just a short time apart, once by a bus. Vera D. and Rene' E. had more complications to their cases.
     Vera was pleasant, stable, reliable woman who worked in a clerical administrative job for Group Health Hospital. She was sitting down, sipping a glass of lemonade at a wedding reception at a hotel, when a temporary room divider fell on her head. Some men caught it, and propped it back up, but lost control of it, and it hit her a second time. Her neck was sprained and she began suffering headaches, so we asked the hotel to pay for her damages, and it did.
      Shortly after that, she found a tumor in her neck or shoulder, and required surgery. It wasn't cancerous, but she was so frightened, at least until it was diagnosed, that she began losing weight. She liked the looks of her svelter form, so signed up for a commercial weight-loss program that supplied all of her food. The diet had an adverse effect of causing gall stones in many of its customers, including Vera.  Most people were able to have the stones crushed with fairly non-intrusive laser light. Hers were so severe that she required surgery.    
     Upon recovery, she returned to her job on the 19th floor of a Seattle office building. One day, as she was catching Elevator #6 to go downstairs for a break, it felt like it fell; the elevator company insisted, "They can't fall, they just stop hard." She was badly frightened, but a counselor from Employee Assistance spent the day with her, riding the elevator up and down to condition the fear out of her.
     Within days, as she was riding the same elevator, it fell or stopped hard, this time slamming her and another passenger into the walls of the car, and she injured her back. Besides severe pain, intermittently she lost sensation in one leg. When that happened to her as she was walking across her yard, she fell and broke her ankle. We subpoenaed the maintenance records for the elevator, and had an expert look at them.  He found out that the first time the elevator malfunctioned, a technician could not duplicate the problem, so he put the elevator back into service without fixing it.
      The elevator company agreed to try to mediate a settlement to Vera's claim, so we drove downtown to a professional mediator's office. From our parking garage, we had to catch an elevator 3 floors up to the lobby. As soon as it started to move, the elevator began bucking, and Vera almost screamed. She controlled her composure all the way from the lobby to the 12th or 16th floor to the mediator's office, where the case settled.  
     Again, she returned to work at her 19th floor office, but she refused to go near Elevator #6 for several years. Then one day, she forgot. The elevator stalled between floors and the lights went out, and she was trapped in the dark, not knowing how the elevator would move next, until the elevator was restarted half an hour later.
     Rene' E. was a budget analyst for the Seattle Fire Department, and no older than her 30s when she developed ovarian cancer. She underwent surgery and a horrific course of chemotherapy that left her fatigued, and temporarily bald. She asked to have Wednesdays off for two months in order to recover, but the City refused the request, pointing out that it needed its analysts more than ever during the last half of the year, to prepare the next year's budget. Fearful that she would be fired for her inability to work full time, she found a temporary part time position. The City did not fill her position at the fire department at all. We filed a claim for failure to accommodate a disability. The jury awarded her every penny we asked for, for lost salary and benefits and pain and suffering, plus $1.00 to "Send the City a message.'  However, in Washington, "message money," punitive damages, are not permitted, so the City moved to have the entire verdict set aside. Instead, Judge Sharon Armstrong reduced the verdict by $1.00, then awarded me full attorney's fees of 1/3 of the verdict, enhanced by a multiplier for a job  done efficiently. Afterwards, the judge told me that my client came across "Like a saint." Little did she know that Rene' was so demanding that my co-counsel had quit the case, and my staff disliked working for her. She was angry when the City paid up. I think that she liked being the star of the show, and would have welcomed an appeal.
   I don't remember clearly what  Rene' called about next, but I'm thinking that both her cancer had returned, and  she had been injured in a car wreck. Her wreck attorney had not provided "Discovery," answering question under oath to the other side, and she risked having the case thrown out of court. We jumped in and pulled that case out of the bag. But the call after that was the one that makes me put her on the "unluckiest client" list. Her husband had given a piano recital, then they and another couple had gone out to dinner at a nice restaurant. A waiter set a pitcher of hot coffee on top of the partition between their booth and an aisle, but jostled it and poured scalding coffee down Rene's leg. The heat of the coffee melted the plastic liner of her ankle boot, adhering hot plastic to her skin. She ran screaming to the restroom to get her clothing off, while restaurant staff did nothing, not even bringing a first-aid kit.
      Belatedly, the restaurant did everything it could to help minimize her damages. They even sent a car and driver to take her to her medical treatments every time her injury would needed to be dressed.
      When it was time to settle the case, she prepared the demand she wanted to make, but she wanted some things that the restaurant's insurer was not interested in working for, like a personal interview and apology from its CEO, perhaps some other details of involvement in restaurant management.
      After negotiations had begun, she came to my office unannounced one day, with her mother. I was away in court, but she demanded that the staff get her melted shoe out of the file. They found it, but not fast enough for her satisfaction. The next day I got a "notice of substitution"  from another lawyer, indicating that he was taking over the case. I needed to sign it and send the file to him, formally transferring responsibility for the case.
   When I didn't see my copy of the "Notice" with a court stamp come back to me, which was my receipt proving that I had no further responsibility for the case,  I called him. "Oh, she fired me already!" he said. Three or four more attorneys called about the case in quick succession, but  some of them knew me, and all, when they found out that she had let her last attorneys go, declined to take the case.  I never heard how it came out.
      Just before my retirement, she called my office when I was out, nominally to ask if we had any unfinished business.  My bookkeeper informed her that there was a bill outstanding. She left a voice mail for me, saying that she was getting a divorce and moving to Arizona.