♫ You’re a crook, Captain Hook / / Judge, won’t you throw the book at the pirate… ♫
For me, much as I’m certain it likely is for you, it is now “Day Something” (I’ve lost track) of surviving a pandemic. I hope that you are doing all that you need to do to both stay safe and take the appropriate steps to value your mental health and overall wellness.
What I had originally envisioned for a post for today was going to be something that sort of collected a variety of instances of attorneys being jerks and emphasizing how incongruous such behavior is with our current reality, but Michael Kennedy, the chief disciplinary counsel for Vermont, has already done that better than I might have, so here’s a link to his post on that subject.
Instead, I’m going to talk about a very specific, pre-pandemic incident that involves a maritime lawyer and, thus, gives me an excuse to talk about bingeworthy television, and specifically, my absolute favorite comedic television program of all time, Arrested Development.
We certainly live in the Golden Age of Television and will do so for at least a little bit longer until the current shut down in production schedules translates in the future to a lack of new content. But even before this true golden age of television, Arrested Development came on the scene. It hit me in all the right spots. So, if you are somehow desperately trying to figure out what to watch in your spare time and have access to Netflix and haven’t yet watched all of it – please feel free to do so.
Now, I segue from this into how I tie this even tenuously to legal ethics. This past week Law360 released a story, and the ABA Journal online followed with one of their own, about a maritime lawyer who got sanctioned in the form of a $1,000 fine for his bad behavior during a deposition as well as the opposing party’s attorney fees associated with certain aspects of the proceedings which will likely amount to much more than $1,000. Specifically, he interrupted the deposition questioning 145 times including 106 rather lengthy objections. This happened in federal court in Louisiana, one of the few places in the United States where maritime lawyers could thrive because of the robust seaport there.
The order is made available through both web portals but the ABA Journal requires no subscription so it’s likely easier for you to read that one here.
Because of the impact that Arrested Development had on me, I will forever associate being a maritime lawyer with Chareth Cutestory – a pseudonym used by Michael Bluth when he tried to flirt with Maggie Lizer, a lawyer played by Julia Louis-Dreyfuss.
It feels particularly on brand to reference that fictional plotline because (a) the real maritime lawyer involved was named Salley (but not Sally Sitwell) and (b) it feels like if Michael Bluth had actually been permitted to be in a deposition pretending to be a maritime lawyer then he could have ended up with a judge issuing a ruling that said something like this as well:
Of the 255-page transcript of the deposition, Salley appears on 170 pages. Salley objected 106 times, 52 of which were lengthy speaking objections. There are long, speaking objections that cover entire pages of the transcript. One speaking objection and Salley’s attendant argument, which followed a question asking the deponent when an affidavit was signed, covers in excess of six pages of the transcript….
That is simply a smattering of cites to Salley’s objections from the transcript. He also instructed the witness not to answer 16 times…. This Court’s review of the record reveals that none of these instructions was based on a valid reason under Rule 30.
And if you, like many, need a little visual help in getting the whole oeuvre of both this post and the Chareth Cutestory subplot, here you go.
(P.S. Stay safe.)
(P.P.S. And if you take any depositions in the next few weeks by Zoom, or Skype, or WebEx or telephone or otherwise, don’t do the kind of stuff (like speaking objections) that will get you sanctioned.)