This is not the kind of post that probably belongs on the law office website. So I guess I will put it here. I may also post it on Speaking For Americans.

My wife assigned me the job of going to the grocery store to pick up some items for Christmas Eve dinner for the kids. When I pulled up on the parking lot I realized I was not the only one with that assignment. The parking lot was incredibly crowded.

When I went inside I was surprised at how many people were pushing grocery carts through the aisles on this Christmas Eve. I was surprised at how many couples there were. I was there alone. But the number of couples behind so many carts really added to the crowded conditions.

There were lines at the deli, at the fish counter, and at the meat counter. That is unusual. But I was glad for my local Dierbergs. I shop at the store in Warson Woods. it is a pretty good store. It is usually well-stocked, clean and I can get in and out quickly.

As I came toward the dairy aisle I noticed there was a glut of people standing at the end. I could not figure out what the jam was. One by one the people seemed to move forward. When I came around the corner, I noticed there were four men standing in front of the display case. Three of them wore Dierbergs aprons. They were obviously employees. I stood there for a minute and watched. I assumed they were solving some sort of problem.

Then I noticed they were talking to a fourth man who was dressed in regular clothes and did not have any employee indicia. The longer I watched it was clear that these men were simply having a nice visit. The problem is that they were taking up more than half the width of the aisle and that customers could not get through.

I kept standing there expecting them to get on their way. Finally, when they didn’t, I went up to them and in a nice way said that it didn’t look real good to the rest of the customers that these employees were standing around blocking the aisle. Especially on a day like today.

Apparently I offended them. One of them looked at me and told me that he was already clocked out. Another looked at me as though I should mind my own business. And I heard the third one ask as I walked away what I had said. I went back to my cart and stood there. As though in an act of defiance the men all stayed and talked for about another minute.

It did not bother me that these men were standing around, apparently on company time, just chatting. I don’t pay their salary. It really did not offend me that they were standing in the aisle and blocking it. I am sure it was just an oversight. I just wanted to point out to them that they were standing there in company garb and obstructing the customer flow. To me it seemed in bad form, especially today.

What will I do about it? Nothing more than write this blog. I will still shop there. I don’t remember the faces of any of the men involved. I just thought I’d tell you about it.

I Gotta Love You

It has been about a year since I have posted anything on this site and yet it continues to get a lot of traffic. So to those who keep coming back to see what I have to write about, I thank you.

I have a new web site for my office and I hope that you will go to it and take a look. I blog there about things going on in my legal life. I do admit that i am a bit more restrained but lately I have been feeling the need to let go on some of the things I see happening in the legal community.

I also invite you to "Like" my law office Facebook page. I do post a few things there that you may find of value.

It is almost Christmas. I hope that you and your loved ones are together and that you are in good health. I will continue to blog, post and just generally raise hell whenever and wherever I can. Thanks for reading. Please visit the other sites if you have time and I would love to have your comments.

Merry Christmas

Can't Do That Much and Do It Well

It is not my intention to get into a pissing match with any particular attorney over this. I just want to point out to you some of the ridiculous things that lawyers do.

When I first started practicing law we were not allowed to do any advertising. We got our business by word of mouth. If we did a good job then our clients would tell their friends and family members and we would get more clients that way.

That way is still the main source of my new clients. People for whom I have worked in the past tell their friends who need a lawyer to come to me. I try to keep that in mind on every case I handle. Not only do I want to do a good job on each case for my own personal satisfaction, I want to make sure that the client is happy with the result.

Now somewhere along the line the Supreme Court of the United States said that it was alright for lawyers to advertise. All hell broke loose. Lawyers ads are everywhere. I don’t quarrel with lawyers who advertise. It is a necessary component of the practice now. So, I advertise. I don’t do it a lot. But you could say that this blog is a form of advertising.

Okay, here is the point of this blog. Below is a list. This was taken from the web site of a lawyer in St. Charles County. He has one lawyer in his firm, him. He is rather young and inexperienced. I have met him. I am not impressed with him and I have not heard anybody signing his praises.

This list is what he claims are his areas of practice. WHAT? You have got to be kidding me. Can one lawyer actually have that much breadth of experience that he handles Adoptions and Aviation & Mass Transit Accidents? Does he even know what it takes, how much money and man hours are involved, in handling an aviation accident? Look at that list. I mean what doesn’t this one lawyer do? (Skip to the end of the list for more of my ranting and raving)

Family Law
Housing & Construction Defects
Adoption
Animal Bites
Assault & Battery
Aviation & Mass Transit Accidents
Business & Commercial Law
Business Organizations
Child Support
Civil Rights
Constitutional Law
Construction Law
Consumer Protection
Contracts
Criminal Law
Criminal Law -- Federal
Custody & Visitation
DUI DWI
Discrimination
Eminent Domain Land Use & Zoning
Lemon Law
Litigation & Appeals
Medical Malpractice Law
Motor Vehicle Accidents
Motor Vehicle Defects
Personal Injury
Premises Liability
Products Liability Law
Real Estate Law
Slander/Defamation/Libel
Social Security -- Disability
Toxic Substances
Traffic Violations
Transportation Law
Trusts
Wills
Workers' Compensation Law
Wrongful Death
Divorce

This is the kind of thing that gives lawyers bad names. Some unsuspecting person could see this website and actually believe this guy handles all of this stuff.

I have been doing Personal Injury work, Criminal cases, DWI case and traffic cases for over thirty years. I have to keep current on the law in every area I practice. I go to seminars about my areas of practice. I do not have the time to keep current in the law on what I would need to know to handle even a divorce or adoption, let alone Trusts and Wills and Eminent Domain. That is why I do not do them.

Wills and trusts can be complicated if done right. It is not for lawyers to dabble in. People’s assets are at risk. There are tax consequences if not done properly.

“Real Estate Law” ? What is that, anyway. Lawyers don’t handle closing any more in Missouri. So does he draft contracts? Real estate agents have been doing that for years.

Transportation Law? Barges? Trucks? What does that mean?

Land Use and Zoning? Let me tell you this. Zoning is a very complicated area of the law. In the St. Louis area there are a only a handful of lawyers who know how to do it well. Every smart lawyer I know who has a client with a zoning problem sends that client to one of those lawyers. Just like those lawyers send their Criminal cases or DWI cases to me. This guy is not on the list of those lawyers who can handle zoning matters properly.

It looks to be a desperate attempt to cover every possible area of the law to lure in some unsuspecting client who is not sophisticated in that particular area of the law.

Sorry, my friends, this kind of thing drives me up a wall. I had to vent about it. As I said, I am not going to mention his or her name. I just wanted you to see the kinds of things lawyers, unfortunately, do once they became allowed to advertise. It hurts the legal profession and makes all of us look like petty money grubbers, or as the term goes, “ambulance chasers.”

If this lawyer came to me for legal advice I would tell him that he may be opening himself up for a malpractice lawsuit himself. But I doubt he would listen to me.

For What It Is Worth

Thanksgiving has come and gone. I am full. I spent the day with my wife’s family. Her father, a Navy veteran of WWII lives in Farmington, Missouri. He moved there to a small apartment after living in the VA home in Cape Girardeau for a while. It is a nice apartment but I think he would like to get back to the VA home. There is one in Warrensburg that interests him.

My father-in-law goes by Bud. He is an interesting guy. He spent his time in the service as a SeaBee. Now he is 84 years old. He spent the rest of his adult life as a home builder. Age has slowed down his body but not his enthusiasm.

I suppose I get reflective around this time of year. The holidays approach. As America continues to diversify it gets harder to remember all of the holidays. Being politically correct has never been one of my strong points. I respect the rights of all people. It is part of my professional responsibility and part of my personal makeup.

On the other hand, I am what I am. To me the “holidays” means Christmas. Entrepreneurs wrestled Christmas from the hands of the Christians years ago. Christmas may, in theory, be a religious holiday. But in the minds of most Americans, from Jews to Gentiles, Hindus to Muslims, it is the period of year when people spend a lot of money on things they would not normally buy.

Christians have the added element of celebrating the birth of Christ. Many Christians voice offense at the term “Xmas.” Some of them are sincere, some of them don’t even know why they are supposed to be offended. Greeting cards range from “Merry Christmas” to “Happy Holidays.”

So, whatever this season means to you, I hope that you enjoy it. With Thanksgiving officially behind us, the “holiday” season is officially upon us.

The law profession is, in many ways, a strange profession. That applies doubly to my part of the profession. As most of you know I handle mainly Personal Injury cases, DWI cases, Criminal cases and Traffic cases.

Think about this. That means for a person to be my client, some type of misfortune must have befallen that person. For example they, or a family member has to have been injured in an accident. It could be a car accident, an injury at work, or some other type of event that visits them unexpectedly and interferes with the day-to-day enjoyment of the simple tasks of everyday life.

Or perhaps they have made a bad decision or choice. It catches up with them in the way of a criminal charge, DWI, or even a traffic ticket. Now they find themselves charged with a crime. Maybe it is something as routine as speeding. Maybe that speeding event brought on a charge of driving while intoxicated or driving under the influence of drugs. That can happen with prescription or even over the counter drugs.

Perhaps a family argument escalates into shouting. One or the other feels physically threatened and calls the police. By the time the police arrive tempers are flaring and there are claims of pushing, shoving, slapping or choking. The police, rather than just let everybody calm down, arrest one of the people involved and now the spouse, significant other, mother or father sits in jail charged with a crime.

In my office I see people charged with everything from Trespassing to Murder. To paraphrase the man on the popular Pawn Star series, “You never know what’s going to walk through that door.”

So how does all of this rambling fit in here? I’m going to tell you right now.

Because of all of my great and wonderful clients, this has been a great year for my law office. We have had some great successes. I have had murder cases, drug cases and even serious assault cases dismissed. Clients facing life sentences, as well as lesser charges, have been acquitted. I have gotten some remarkable deals for clients on DWI and other cases. I would not have had the opportunity of enjoying those victories if it were not for the people in trouble who have asked for my help. Those people came to me and paid the fee I quoted for my services.

We are in some of the worst economic times we have been in for a long time. The holiday season is coming up. Money is tight. Frankly money is usually tight for most of my clients. So I looked around to see how I could help. Here is my solution.

From now until December 23, 2010 any person, old client or new client, who comes to my office charged with a Felony, Misdemeanor, DWI, Traffic Ticket or Municipal Ordinance violation (That means from Murder to Littering) can tell me what they think they can afford to pay for my services. If I can handle the case for that price, I will do it.

Now, I am not going to do it for free. If you think my services aren’t worth anything, why are you in my office, get it? But, if you come to see me on a case that I usually charge $1,000.00 for and you can’t afford that, tell me what you can afford and I may take your case for that amount. I don’t have to take it. (It may be financially impossible to handle a case for the amount you suggest. Ethics rules may prohibit me from taking on certain cases) But for the most part, I will let you tell me what the case is worth to you.

I don’t want to get into all of the details. It has to be a new case. You can’t bring me some case that some other lawyer has charged you a fee on already. I am not going to undercut some other lawyer.

You have to be prepared to pay the fee you suggest or at least show me that you have the reasonable means to pay it.

I may not accept your case for the same fee as I accept for a similar case. Each case is different and just because I take one person’s drug case for $500.00 doesn’t mean I will do them all for $500.00.

You will have to come in to the office to see me and discuss your case. I will not be able to handle these transactions on the phone for all sorts of reasons.

Now I am doing this because of the Holiday season and the poor economy. So that you understand, this is my way of giving back this year. This is my way of showing my appreciation to you for being my clients. Of course, I hope that none of my existing clients have to use this offer. To do so means that more misfortune has befallen you, and I do not wish that upon you. If you have been my client and paid my normal and customary fee this year, consider this as my way of giving back to the community on your behalf. I am doing this in your honor.

I wish you all the best of fortune and luck. I want all of you to prosper. I hope you will use this holiday season to pass along my best wishes to all of your friends and family members. I thank you for the trust and confidence you have shown me in the past.

I will end this offer at 4:00 p.m. (CST) on December 23, 2010.

Should We Teach the Bill of Rights?

“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.” Amendment IV to the Constitution of the United States.

Now that doesn’t seem that complicated to me.

Unless the government can state particularly what thing they are looking for and swear that there is some probable cause why they think it will be where they say it is, they can’t search.

Why is it, then, that people come into my office on a regular basis charged with a crime that is a result of a warrantless search and seizure?

I hear the same story over and over again. “The police said if I don’t let them search they are going to get a warrant.” Okay, let them try. If they had the probable cause they needed they would already have the warrant. Make them get it. It doesn’t go against you at all. If you consent to the search you give up a very important right. And you give up the right to challenge the search in court.

That certainly applies if you have something you shouldn’t have. There is always a chance they can’t get the warrant and never have that piece of evidence they need to convict you. Even if you don’t think you have nothing to hide, unless they spell out exactly what it is they are searching for, they could discover something you didn’t even know you had.

Not long ago a young lady came in my office charged with possession of cocaine. She was pulled over for speeding. It was late at night. She looked a little nervous. The patrolman asked her if she “ ... had anything in the car she shouldn’t?”

Well how should she know what he meant by that? He didn’t know either. He was on a fishing expedition. He had no probable cause to believe she had anything illegal in the car. So, what did she do? She let him search. And, there in the passenger door pocket he found a vile of cocaine. There really wasn’t much in the vile. But there is no lower limit on cocaine. You can’t have any.

Our later investigation showed that a friend of the girl’s brother had left the vile there about a week before that when the brother was using the car. Of course, that is a hard sell to a prosecutor. She was in sole possession of the car at the time. She was the one they were charging.

If she had not consented to the search the patrolman would have had no authority to search and she would have driven away with only a traffic ticket. If he had searched anyway we could have challenged the search in court. Of course, she told him it wasn’t hers. He did not believe her.

Now you don’t think the brother’s friend was going to man up and day it was his, do you? No. So here she was charged with a felony.

The Constitution was put in place to protect the people from the government. It was done so because the founding fathers knew then that government was prone to abusing its authority. So they wanted to protect us.

In my opinion it is an indictment of our educational system that people come out of high school without knowing the Bill of Rights. Some educators act as though teaching kids about their rights to be free from searches, or to remain silent is teaching them how to game the system.

Kids are going to do some wrong things. Some kids are going to suddenly find themselves confronted by police officers whether or not they are doing something wrong. The least they can do is know their rights and exercise them. But if they never learn them, they are meaningless against police officers who are willing themselves to game the system.

Take a minute and tell your children about the Bill of Rights. Learn it yourself. Thousands of Americans have given their live supporting and defending the Constitution. It is a disservice to them to not know and appreciate what they were fighting for.

Guilty Pleasure

This afternoon I was headed from the office to court in Clayton so I decided to take Interstate 64. Many of you still know it as 40-61. I had plenty of time so I got in the slow lane and put my cruise control on 60 mph. There I stayed.

Those of you familiar with that stretch of highway know that there are many places where an entrance lane suddenly appears to the right of the slow lane. Those lanes are for the cars getting on at any number of crossroads. More about them later.

Traffic was not rush-hour heavy. It was a little congested so that sometimes there was a line of cars to my left that were collectively going faster than I was, but still impeding those who were behind them from getting by.

I had not intended to make any phone calls so I had not put my earpiece in my ear. I was just listening to NPR chat on about what the elections meant to everyone. It is important to listen to commentators tell us what we already know. But, hey, I used to be in radio and I am all in favor of people having jobs, even as radio commentators, so I gladly listen.

Suddenly my phone rang. I turned down the radio and picked the phone up with my left hand and held it to my ear. It was the mother of a young man who had recently been horribly injured in an accident. She was calling with concern about his medical treatment and I listened to her, helping her through some of it as best I could while in the car.

I always check my mirrors when I drive. It is just a habit I developed many years ago. I scan from one side to the rear-view mirror to the other side. It was then that I noticed a car weaving through traffic and approaching from behind. I could tell that the operator was in a big hurry.

The car finally got right up behind me. I could see the driver was a young woman. The line of traffic in the lane to my left extended about five cars behind me. But I was in the slow lane. The driver made a couple of futile attempt to insert her car into the traffic lane to her left. She was unsuccessful at that. She began to flash her lights at me.

I am not sure if she wanted me to speed up or pull out of her way. I had no intention of doing either. I was in the “slow” lane. At that point I would have had to pull onto the shoulder to let her by. I was doing the speed limit. All of the cars to my left were going faster than I was. If she just dropped to the back of that line she would have passed me soon enough.

I continued to listen to this injured boy’s mother as I drove along. I did not pay much more attention to the car behind me until we got to one of those entrance lanes. Suddenly she veered to the right and pulled around me. When she got to about my front fender I saw her, holding a soda and the steering wheel with her right hand, turn almost all the way around in the driver’s seat and face me.

Her face was angry. She held her left hand in the “telephone” gesture up to her left cheek and mouthed the words “Get off the phone” at me. She then turned and sped off, once again weaving through the traffic.

I am not sure if she was angry because I was on the phone, or because she couldn’t get around me. Either way she was not having a good day. I continued on my way. The nice lady with whom I was speaking finished with her questions and I hung up the phone.

I have to tell you that I had a guilty pleasure as I rounded a curve a few miles up the road and saw the previous young girl stopped on the side of the highway courtesy of the Missouri State Highway Patrol. I know I shouldn’t. But I did.

But to assuage myself of that guilt I promise that if she calls me to handle her traffic ticket, I will take her call, even if I am in the car.

Oh, I'm sorry, the picture of the knee socks had nothing to do with the article. I just thought I'd use it anyway.

Don't Let the Facts Confuse You.

Updating the blog can sometimes fall to the bottom of the list. This week it has. But I have a window of time today and thought I would bring it up to date, sort of.

I went to a seminar last week that dealt primarily with the updates on DWI laws and Court decisions. Lawyer have to attend a certain amount of Continuing Legal Education seminars each year. In each of those years we have to complete a certain number of Ethics credit hours.

These credit hours are usually jammed in with some other seminar. Thus, this particular seminar had a segment devoted to computers and ethics. Most of the segment was devoted to online social activity.

With the advent of Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and other social media networking there seems to be a problem with lawyers posting some pretty stupid things on the Internet. I have no intention of embarrassing the profession by revealing those to you in this blog. However, some of them are really stupid.

On occasion you might read something here about a case I have handled. You should keep in mind that I am not ever going to disclose anything on this website or any other social media that is not public record. In other words, if you read it here it has already been in some newspaper, on television or in a public document in the courthouse.

Sometimes I talk to you about cases. Please understand that I always change the names of the people involved. In order to further protect my client’s privacy, and I feel the need now to disclose this to you, I also change the jurisdiction (County) of the case and do not truthfully report to you the accurate timeline of the case.

In other words, to protect privacy and confidentiality I have to twist the date, time and place of the case around and change the names so that a casual reader is unable to identify the real people involved.

To make this even more confusing for you, sometimes my clients authorized me to disclose the details of their case. Sometimes they want their case publicized. In that case, I may use the actual specific facts, names, dates and locations. The purpose of sharing any case information with you is to make you a better informed citizen, not to gossip about my client’s cases. You don’t need to know the actual names, dates or places to get the point as to how these situations affect your life. I hope you all can appreciate that.

Is all of this confusing enough for you? This is all as a result of attending that seminar about ethics and computers. The seminar lasted all day. It was Harrah’s casino in Maryland Heights. It was a very informative seminar.

Recently I appeared in Federal Court. I represented a client who was charged with, and pled guilty to, stealing around $17,000 from her employer. I was able to mount a very successful defense for this lady in spite of her guilty plea and she was granted probation. A condition of her probation is that she repay the money she stole. Not bad!

I was supposed to have depositions yesterday morning on a murder case but at the last minute someone from the Prosecutor’s office called to tell me that the prosecuting attorney responsible for the case was ill and would not be available. That sort of threw off my schedule.

My appointment calendar was filled last week with court appearances and appointments for new cases. The court appearances ran the gamut from municipal night court to preliminary hearings on some serious felonies. The appointments, interestingly enough, were mostly for DWI cases. I see a steady stream of people who have been charged with driving under the influence of alcohol. I would think that the bad economy would find fewer people out on the roads. That is not evident based on the people who are finding their way to my office.

There is an interesting website I want to recommend to you. It is called Speaking For Americans. A lot of interesting articles from a number of different contributors. I recommend that you become a contributor. It is free. You can register anonymously if you want. I am sure there are some things about which you feel strongly. Get it off your chest.

I am looking for ideas as to how to improve the law firm’s website. What things would you like to see on a law firm website? If you have any thoughts, please let me know.

Time to get back to work. Speaking of work, I have also seen an increase in the number of people I have spoken with regarding workers compensation cases. No matter how careful you try to be, sometimes the unthinkable happens and you get injured on the job. If that happens to you, a friend or family member I can help you. Just call Katie at 636-486-4861 and ask her to set up an appointment with me. I am sure I’ll be able to get you on the right path for you.