TNJ.............. Talking to Another Attorney........

Part One

First thing Monday morning after the Daffodil All Arabian Horse Summer Show, I called that equine lawyer I had been referred to by the friend I'd run into at the horse show. I knew the odds were against me getting an attorney at this late date but I felt insecure enough about the process I figured I'd better check things out. I wouldn't know for sure unless I asked.

My friend had used this attorney in an equine case too, but it was for considerably less that my suit. Still she had been surprised at what he had been able to do for her. He saw so many things that affected the case that she had not seen. She ended up getting way more money than she ever expected because he understood the damages that had been done to her business etc when all she had seen was what she had been owed.

I knew that whole question of damages and how you compute those was going to be the difficult part for me. My experience with the car accident had taught me that. I knew there definitely were repercussions that affected my business but how to figure what they were and get the court to accept them seemed to be beyond the scope of my understanding of the law.

Of course, the attorney was not in. I needed answers with that deadline for discovery fast approaching but I had to settle for leaving a number. I hoped he get back to me soon. I still needed to file my amended complaint and my requests for amendments. They had been granted but I think it was still up to me to "officially" request them. I figured I probably shouldn't be doing anything like that if I was going to be taking on an attorney.

It was late Tuesday morning when the attorney called me back. I was outside turning horses out so I missed his call. Then we played phone tag until I finally reached him on Wednesday. The week was half gone before we ever had a conversation. I was so relieved when I finally heard his voice on the other end of the phone.

There was something soothing about his voice. A disarming kindness came through that I had not expected. The man had 35 years of experience in equine law and he, himself, breeds horses.

When I finally did get this attorney on the phone, once I told him who had referred me and we'd had our bit of small talk about how she was doing, I told the man up front that I had no money and I had been turned down by two attorneys because I did not have what they wanted for a retainer.

Once that part was out of the way, I began imparting the usual information about my dilemma. I told him how I had traded Storm for training so I could get my young horses started under saddle and that we had no written contract. I explained how they'd gotten the registration papers and BG had cut back on how much work he was doing and then the work finally ceased. I went through how I'd blocked them from being able to negotiate those registration papers, Dave and YW's meetings resulting in BG's accounting sheet, and the threatening letter from the attorney I responded to by filing the lawsuit.

Then I went through the facts about my work pro se from which court I'd filed in to what kind of action I had taken. I gave him the clearest picture that I could.

All through the conversation his response was much the same as the two other lawyers had been. In some ways it felt like deja vu so much of the conversation was the same. The case was complicated because essentially it was a he said/she said thing. Because it was complicated it was going to be expensive to pursue. There are no guarantees when you got to court. Anything can happen regardless of how good you feel about a case. Even if we did win, the odds were we would never be able to collect a judgement.

We did have quite a discussion about what this case meant to me both in terms of what I believed Storm's situation to be and how I felt about my reputation. Throughout this conversation there was one thing he did not say......that was he wouldn't take my case.

While we were talking, he kept getting interrupted by other phone calls or someone in the office. He kept apologizing but he insisted he needed to deal with the interruption. Through the course of our conversation we were interrupted by an opposing attorney he'd been playing phone tag with for a week with a deadline of the following day, an emergency call from his farm and the final interruption was from a judge calling from his chambers about another case with a deadline looming.

Instead of putting me on hold for that last call, he told me he really needed to take the call. . He'd already given me his cell phone number but he double checked that I had it before telling me if I still wanted to talk with him, I could call him at home after 6.

I must admit I got off the phone feeling very defeated. There seemed to be so much stacked against me and while he hadn't said he wouldn't take my case, he hadn't said he would either. I didn't know what to thing but my first reaction was to curl up on a ball and cry.

To be continued...............................

Some Legal Hope.......

For those of you who may have missed this story last year, this picture is Solidare's foal, Tango . He looks pretty innocent in that picture but he's got as big an attitude as any of her foals. Put that together with the attitude of Legs' babies and you have primo attitudes and tons of presence.

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