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Brief, Affordable Consultations
The client spent literally eight months writing letters and making phone calls, only to suffer the usual routing and re-routing to someone else. This was a proud and stubborn man, but even he conceded defeat. He came to me, and we found an out-of-state corporate address. That took nearly a month, as the company was superb at hiding. In fact, one staffer told my paralegal over the phone, “I don’t think that we actually have an address.” That really happened. Eventually the company offered $500.00 to settle a claim worth between $6,000.00 and $8,000.00. We rejected this nonsense, and filed Small Claims, taking advantage of the new $5,000.00 limit. (It was not worth it to pursue in the regular docket for more money). The company hired a top-flight local law firm to fight my client and my solo practice firm. As trial was about to start, the company increased its offer to $1,500.00. My client said No. We were heard, and won judgment for the maximum $5,000.00, plus $35.00 for the Small Claims filing fee. I will not pretend that this was “justice.” I took my cut of the award, which was far less than I would have earned on an hourly basis, considering all the time put into this. The client received less than he might have for his actual damages, to say nothing of his wasted time and aggravation. And the company chalked it up to public relations – meaning that the newspapers did not pick up the story. Small wonder: the company spends a fortune to advertise in newspapers and on TV. However, half a loaf is better than nothing. YOU CAN BANK ON IT A neighbor was having trouble with her bank. The bank kept saying that her mortgage was in default, and filed a foreclosure action. However, the bank had been cashing her checks all along, and she was current in her payments. She came to me with the proof. I wrote to the bank’s lawyers. The bank was indeed in error; obviously some type of computer glitch, but no one listened to the woman until she called me. The bank knew that it was wrong and faced possible penalties, if not horribly bad publicity, should the story get out. Therefore, it did something almost unknown in banking circles. It set up an appointment, not for us to come in and see them, but for a bank officer and the bank’s highly-paid Hartford lawyer to come to my office (then located in Stafford, not Ellington), to straighten things out. The bank officer and the lawyer did arrive promptly at my office. The lawyer literally reeked of money. I think his suit cost more than my computer. But he was a very nice person; and he did his best to hide his disdain at having to leave an expensive and elegantly-furnished downtown suite to come to a comparative hole-in-the-ground in the country. We settled quickly. All legal action would be dropped, the bank would pay all court costs to date, and the mortgage would be rewritten on more favorable terms. Everyone was happy. The lawyer then took out a laptop and calculated the new monthly payment. With a confident but controlled air, he input the amount of the mortgage, the interest rate, and the term of years, and came up with a figure. All this modern traveling hardware and software was quite impressive. Not to be difficult, but I went to my small battered green book entitled “Financial Comprehensive Mortgage Payment Tables”, copyright 1975, 1983, and 1985. I looked it up, and got a difference of ten cents. Ten cents a month may not seem like a significant amount. However, even with rounding, no mortgage program is ever more than one cent off another program; or at most two cents. I told the lawyer what I had found. He recalculated and came up with his same amount. I looked again and also came up with my same amount. We stared at each other. Then I said that I had a friend at the local bank. If he didn’t mind, I would call her with the input figures, and ask her to calculate the monthly payment. We would go by what she said. No, that’s not necessary, smiled the lawyer; and he agreed to my figure. So all these years, he had been carrying around these impressive accoutrements, wowing other people, and he had been wrong all along. Defeated by a battered old manual out in the sticks. Again, the lawyer was a very gracious person. We shook hands and everyone ended up happy. I don’t recall the banker saying one word. The moral: a more expensive lawyer is not necessarily a
better lawyer. And banks can be wrong.
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