I'm Being Sued

That was not my practice, altho, I coud not help but observe, when dealing with
the public, u encounter a very wide variety. Some of them r very intelligent and clever.
It is a delight to deal with them.
Others are not, e.g., a Spanish woman who had been a mathematician in nuclear engineering
(who had obviously been very smart) but whose mind had badly deteriorated,
such that she was impaired in her daily affairs.

Being a trial lawyer was fun; clean, creative work. I enjoyed arguing to the court and the jury.
I have seen people who actually have to work for a living, and get ruff, dirty hands.
Your work is clean.

Being on permanent vacation is fun too; going to Florida on Monday.





David

Then, I 'll give u a discount on my fee.

I would think it would help as a defendant. The jury sees a well off (financially) defendant - of course some poor white trash is gonna try to sue - they think there is money there.

That is what went through my mind when I was on a jury in such a situation.

But the jury will still see you even if you do not speak. It will appear (at least from what you are describing) - that some poor white trash is trying to make some money. But of course this will depend on who is on the jury. If you get a whole lot of poor white trash on the jury, they may think - damn that uppity person had to have done something wrong.

That's odd because on the jury I sat on - the defendants were front and center. We had full view of them. And they testified as well.

do you have a poor white trash problem where you live?

Who are these people? Is there a difference between rich white trash and poor white trash? Why the emphasis on the "whiteness" of the individuals? Are they unique relative to being trashing?

What exactly does "trashy" mean?

Why would anyone want to go to Salem?

On the jury I sat on, we didn't see the defendant's face, as he was facing the Judge and we were seated along the side of the room. We were able to see his mother however, as she was seated in the back of the room.

The defendant didn't say a word.

Have you ever heard of the word "brahmin"? These are the class-conscience Yankees that bent over backwards in the "old days" to keep the Irish immigrants down...down...very down.

Brahmin: A member of a cultural and social elite, especially of that formed by descendants of old New England families: a Boston Brahmin.

Odd I am from Irish decendents.

Of course you all know I am talking of the white trash shown in my Walmart pictures.

Must be a few white trash members here that are upset of my use of the word - nice and desciptive.

it says more about you than them, but ok...

I'm quite educated 'white trash'. I don't like assumptions about people, though all of us do it somewhere along the line; it's part of our navigation system. But still..

I wouldn't say she is poor white trash. The house she and her husband live in looks (from the outside) to be a six room "colonial" built in the late 60s or early 70s with an attached one car garage. They probably have a home computer based on her on-line activity.

He is rather elderly and frail looking.

I remember some sort of television drama in which one of the characters talked about "when the elevens are up," that is the two strong parallel lines in the neck below the chin, a man is close to death. This man has really prominent 'elevens.'

While the insurance company said there are seldom police reports made following pedestrian accidents, it occurred to me that the lack of a police report may indicate that the couple did not call an ambulance when she allegedly fell on the sidewalk.

If she did indeed fall on my sidewalk in April and broke her knee, how did she get home? Her husband doesn't look healthy enough nor strong enough to get her home. How does a woman with a broken knee walk? Did he leave her on the sidewalk and go home for the car? Wouldn't someone have noticed her lying on the ground?

Well, the Salem witch trials are regularly mentioned. Not daily, but at least 2 to 3 times a year as an analogy for something. Arthur Miller guaranteed the trials would not be forgotten.

I moved from Michigan to New Hampshire in 1976. I had visitors from Michigan at least once a month during my first two years in New England. Every visitor wanted to visit Salem because of the witch trials and the House of Seven Gables.

Ah-hah! That's a very good point.

In terms of the 'poor, white trash' thing - my mother used to admonish us kids not to act like 'poor white trash' when we were playing outside in the upscale suburban New Jersey neighborhood we'd moved to when my dad was transferred from the regional office down south to the big office in Manhattan.

I think she was very conscious that SHE, though having a naturally very genteel demeanor and being soft-voiced and well-spoken, had always been considered poor white trash down in Texas because she was raised in the state orphan's home. So weird when I think of how she had to struggle, but still came out of her eighth grade education in rural Texas with perfect grammar and diction. She later went on to nursing school when we were all in school.

But she used to say, 'Now, ya'll don't go out there yelling and running around like wild Indians - the neighbors will all think we're poor white trash.'
My sisters and I would just look at each other and laugh- eventually we shortened it to 'PWT' as in 'Come on now - don't act like PWT.'
My mother didn't think it was funny.
We never called anyone else that though, and neither did my mother.
I have heard some people (not in my family - we don't call people trash) use the term 'trailer trash'.
A British person was talking about trailer parks in the states and I realized they don't really have them over here and then we started talking about the terms 'trailer trash' and 'poor white trash' and I said (he is black- West Indian), 'You know, the interesting thing is that you rarely ever see poor black people living in trailers in the US'.
I wonder why that is.

Sorry for the digression. But I do think, POM, that you have a good point in wondering how she got home and why no one saw her lying there when she broke her knee.
I know that when I broke my elbow, I had to struggle to get myself to my feet. I can't imagine having broken a knee and being able to hop right up and walk away.

When an ambulance is called today, it comes with a fire truck and police cruiser. I looked up the temperature that day: high 60s. My son opens the windows any day the temperature is above 45.

It is possible he could have gone to climb the mountain we see from our back yard. It is possible I went to the supermarket.

However, if they called an ambulance, wouldn't the police have had a report. Even if we were off to the supermarket and the mountain, wouldn't the police have checked in later?

Until you mentioned it, I forgot about the pain of a broken bone (I never had
one but I had to pick up my son from school when he broke a bone and he was practically screaming on the way to the hospital). I was only thinking of the decreased mobility a person would have after breaking a knee cap. It doesn't bother me that the broken kneecap implies a forward fall. What bothers me is the utter lack of commotion.

I also wonder if this person isn't a perpetual bringer of nuisance suits: if suing is a game with her.

Furthermore, if she broke her knee at home, which I suspect she did, then wouldn't she have needed an ambulance? How would she get out of the house and into her car to go to the doctor/hospital?

Of course not - I am just exaggerating both sides of things (as I was a bit in my experience).

Just sometimes you do get those people who see that some one else appears to have a bit of money so they "hope" this could be a windfall of a lawsuit.

On the jury I sat on, when we decided to give a little to the couple of boneheads on the jury by saying the sweet old very nicely dressed couple being sued were some what responsible - you should have seen that shyster lawyer's eyes light up - let he was going make a million. Then to my great satisfaction, I got to see this "lawyer" deflate physically when we concluded that old geezers were not greater than 50% responsibile for the accident..