The Island of Collegiality Goes Under
- Mike Dickey
- Jul 18, 2024
- 3 min read
"See the signs and know their meaning."
-Natalie Merchant
Yesterday I missed a conference call.
The subject of the call was coordination of deposition dates and mediation in a rather large construction defect case involving a condominium tower in Bay County. We represent the condo association. Arrayed on the other side are counsel for the contractor and for maybe a dozen or so subcontractors who've been sued as third-party defendants for their role in creating this leaky building.
The lawyer for the contractor sent out an invitation to everyone to join the call at 3 p.m.
At 2:05 p.m., he sent a friendly email asking if I planned to join the call. His office is in Tampa, and so of course his 3 p.m. came an hour earlier than ours in the panhandle. I was already on another call by that time, and apologized for the confusion.
Afterwards he sent around an email to me and to all the participants summarizing the substance of the call. We were the only ones who missed the call, because we were the only ones who were from the county where the case is pending.
Ponder on that. A case that will be tried in front of a Bay County jury, and presided over by a Bay County judge, has only one attorney among maybe fourteen who practices primarily in Bay County. Every other lawyer in the case hails from Miami or Tampa or Fort Lauderdale or Orlando.
A dozen years ago I would've known most of the lawyers on that call, because we all were from the stretch of Florida from Tallahassee to Pensacola. Not anymore. With the advent of Zoom, large construction cases now are almost exclusively litigated from elsewhere, insurance companies taking their business to big firms in big towns who'll charge a little less by the hour but somehow end up billing more because they overwork the files and their junior lawyers.
There's no collegiality, no sense of community that used to be the lubricant that made the wheels of our court system turn. There's an anonymity that creates a landscape where deceit and backstabbing, dressed up in fake courtesy, become the norm because you know you'll likely never see that person again. And they know they'll likely never see their own clients again, given that they're hired and paid by insurance companies, who in turn reward all that sharp dealing with more cases because sharp dealing is pretty much the business model of that industry.
Oh, and they bring their own mediators with them, usually old retired south Florida litigators or former judges who couldn't find Panama City on a map but pretend to ask incisive questions about what a judge or jury might do with an issue, having never eaten oysters at Hunt's or sipped a beer with one of those judges or a county commissioner at Econfina. They don't know what they're talking about, but it doesn't matter because they're of the culture created by these downstate firms. So my mediation business is down by maybe half, and it's not going to get better in my lifetime.
But it's important to keep things in perspective. I'd rather eat a bucket of penises than defend construction defect cases for an insurance company, so it's not like those poor souls down there are taking bread off my table. In fact, I'm one of the lucky ones who has more work than I can say grace over, and frankly I dislike the construction litigation that occupies so much of each workday. It's boring as hell, always the same endless war of attrition and arguments about whether a sliding glass door really needs a drip pan. Seriously. That's a big issue in one of my cases right now.
And best of all, I'm 60. The days of grinding out 2000 billable hours each year drafting interrogatory responses and taking depositions are mercifully behind me now. I spend more and more time giving advice on my schedule, and less rushing to meet court-imposed deadlines or commiserating in open court with a judge who's just as tired and frustrated with the whole game as I am. Thank God this old body and brain just slow down as a matter of biochemistry. To quote Maurice Chevalier, "I'm so glad I'm not young anymore."
What a great song that is. Here, I'll share the YouTube link from Gigi:
The fountain of youth is dull as paint
Methuselah is my patron saint
I've never been so comfortable before
Oh, I'm so glad that I'm not young anymore
The video makes me want to go back to France. Maybe one day.
But for now I have a little deposition prep, then a full day grilling a guy I actually like who's an unlucky defendant in one of these construction defect cases. I'll be nice. I always am.
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