SINGLE JEOPARDY
A Peter Sharp Legal Mystery
By Gene Grossman
From Magic Lamp Press
Venice, California
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved
© MMX Gene Grossman
Kindle Edition 2.0 August, 2010
This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, by photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher, Magic Lamp Press, P.O. Box 9547, Marina del Rey, CA 90295
The Complete 15 book Peter Sharp Legal Mystery Series
http:www.LegalMystery.com
Single Jeopardy
By Reason of Sanity
A Class Action
Conspiracy of Innocence
…Until Proven Innocent
The Common Law
The Magician’s Legacy
The Reluctant Jurist
The Final Case
An Element of Peril
A Good Alibi
Legally Dead
How to Rob a Bank
Murder Under Way
The Sherlock Holmes Caper
*****
If a shipbuilder build a boat for some one, and do not make it tight, and if during that same year that boat is sent away and suffers injury, the ship-builder shall take the boat apart and put it together tight at his own expense. The tight boat he shall give to the boat owner.
Number 235, from Hammurabi’ s Code of 282 Laws
Chapter 1
Boating can be a great sport, but not in a back yard – which is where I’m presently doing my yachting, as the result of several swift moves choreographed by my soon-to-be ex-wife and her beady-eyed divorce lawyer, whose cheap business card should be changed to read ‘Gary Koontz, Schmuck at Law.’
My sleeping quarters were involuntarily changed from the bedroom, to the living room couch, and then out to this 1956 classic forty-foot Chris Craft Constellation, a bull-nosed cabin cruiser I’ve been restoring out here in the yard for the past seven years. Having been told to take the rest of my life off by the law firm I was formerly employed by, I’m sitting here in the cabin of my boat/office talking on the phone to my San Fernando Valley friend Stuart.
One good thing about Stuart is that no matter how bad off you might think you’re doing, Stuart can convince you he’s doing worse… and he usually is. His cause de jour is suing the United States Government and some large corporations for poisoning him: he claims to be suffering from mesothelioma, a form of asbestos damage to the lining of his lungs that he claims was a result of spending four years working in the Navy as a ship’s boiler room engineer.
To humor him, I prepared and filed a lawsuit last month so that he wouldn’t blow the Statute of Limitations, and now he wants to go ahead with it by having the U.S. Marshall’s office serve the lawsuit on all the defendants.
Wonderful. A federal case. Just what I need at this low point in my life. I tell him now that I’m semi-retired I don’t have the office staff, but I’ll try to associate another attorney in on the case who is much better equipped to handle this type of case.
My involuntary retirement may not be such a bad thing after all, considering the fact that there’ll be no boat restoration distractions from clients like Stuart. For the past few years, every time he calls it’s to either file another lawsuit or go with him to meet his uncle Label, who’s supposed to own a boat in the Marina.
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When I was a kid, growing up in Chicago on North Kedzie Avenue, one of my favorite Saturday afternoon pastimes was packing a lunch and hopping on my bike for a long bike ride down Lawrence Avenue, and then south along Sheridan Road, to Belmont Harbor. I would spend all afternoon there sitting on the concrete seawall, daydreaming, my legs dangling over the edge. I used to rest my arms on the middle rung of the guard rail – the rail that kept the have-nots without boats away from the privileged few ‘haves’ who not only had boats, but also had the political pull to get a mooring in the city’s most popular Marina. The daydream was usually the same… someday I’d have one of those big, shiny, varnished wood cabin cruisers, complete with an ornament that so many of them seemed to be displaying on their foreward decks – a beautiful redheaded wife.
It took almost thirty years, before fate was kind to me - but with a string attached: I was allowed to achieve my dream, but found out you aren’t allowed to enjoy both the boat and the wife at the same time.
There’s a tragic procedure that takes place in many marriages, all brought about by a conflict of goals. A woman will view a prospective husband as a work in progress… a project… an acquisition she can transform into something respectable who is safe to bring to boring social functions. On the other hand, a man looks at a woman, likes what he sees, and hopes that she stays just like that forever - without ever changing.
Unfortunately, the opposite of what they each hoped for usually takes place. The woman fails in all her attempts to change the man, whose traits are usually etched in stone. And on the other side of the equation, the woman goes through all the personality and cosmetic changes, winding up being nothing like what the husband thought he would spend the rest of his life with. Some states have a six-month waiting period before a divorce becomes final, but it might be a better idea to put the waiting period in front, making it a six-month wait and then a trial period before the marriage is a locked-in deal.
Neither going through changes nor staying the same is necessarily a bad thing, but either case can cause disappointment and strain on a marriage. That’s what happened in our case. My wife Myra is still beautiful, but she progressed from being a gorgeous demure redheaded receptionist, to a legal secretary, to a paralegal, on to law school, passed the Bar exam and now is a ball-busting brunette prosecuting attorney with the local District Attorney’s office. On the other hand, I have remained a completely unchanged, dedicated, poor, defense attorney representing the downtrodden (but in most cases guilty) people who have been charged with crimes by her office.
The philosophical difference between prosecution and defense attitudes can be enough to break up a marriage. This strain on the relationship is never brought out clearer than when the mind-sets collide head on at a social gathering. Most prosecuting attorneys eventually assume the zeal of people on a crusade to ‘put away the bad guys,’ who are all assumed to be guilty just because they’ve been arrested. Even the smallest file on a misdemeanor theft is no longer a case… it’s a crusade, with the defense attorney looked upon as being a troublesome barrier between the D.A.’s office and justice.
The calendar clerks never put Myra and I up against each other in the courtroom, but our being on different sides of the fence has created a Marcia Clark versus F. Lee Bailey type of atmosphere, as displayed on television every day some years back during the O.J. Simpson criminal trial. I’ll never be able to figure out how that republican-democrat marriage of Mary Matalin and James Carville seems to have flourished so well unless they finally figured out how to do what my soon-to-be-ex and I never mastered: leaving all of our philosophical differences behind at the office.
Things got worse when we tried to bring our circle of friends together, because hard-nosed right-wing district attorneys with that prosecutorial badge-heavy swagger don’t mix well with left-wing defenders of drug-dealers, pornographers and child molesters. But that wasn’t all: when it looked like my boat restoring project was within a year of completion, we went boating with some friends and discovered that my beloved wife has a very low tolerance for motion. She can get terribly seasick at any distance more than 10 feet from t
he dock. Seasickness is quite common with self-centered people who have difficulty taking into consideration the boat, motion, other people around them, and a lot of other factors that contribute to the illness.
Our differences didn’t stop just with the enjoyment of boating. I had to work my way through high school, college and law school by playing piano in saloons. Once we could afford a nice living-room piano, I discovered that my wife was tone-deaf and didn’t like the way I played. This was definitely a marriage-counselor’s nightmare, so I guess that’s why while I’m out here in the back yard sitting in an old boat, my wife and her lawyer are inside that nice Brentwood home, scheming. Looking over there occasionally I notice his beady eyes peering out at my boat through the house’s mini-blinds. He spends a lot of time ogling my wife and my boat... but it’ll be over my dead body before he gets his hands on my boat.
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I’m hoping that Stuart will tire of talking soon so I can get back to trying to fix an electrical short in the boat’s wiring system before it burns the boat, and my wife’s house with it. She owned the house before we were married, so she’ll no doubt stay in at after I’m gone.
Fixing things on the boat are harder than I expected – mainly because I don’t know what the hell I’m doing. Boat wiring is a lot different than house wiring: you can’t just connect things with supermarket extension cords, because they’re not heavy-duty enough to withstand the extremely harsh elements of a saltwater environment. Humans don’t belong in the ocean, and the ocean keeps telling us that by trying to invade our territory just like we’re invading its. An electrician friend of mine told me that I’ve done a nice job of cosmetically restoring this old tub, but without a complete re-wiring job it won’t last too long after it’s put in the water. Without a steady source of income, I’ll have to cross that bridge when I come to it.
*****
Chapter 2
Not having handled any personal injury cases for a couple of years since my tow-truck driving friend lost his job and my paralegal Ricky Hansel disappeared, it was a pleasant surprise last year to receive a phone call from one of the alcoholic insurance adjusters I used to do business with. Whenever an adjuster calls it’s usually because he’s got some money to offer you. I thought that this call was for one of the old cases I’d filed and forgotten, so I agreed to meet with him at a local eatery.
Quite often when there are multiple plaintiffs in the same damaged vehicle, the adjuster will be given authority to dispose of all the cases at one time, for some maximum total amount of settlement money. In cases where one plaintiff attorney is handling everyone in the car, the attorney and adjuster usually get together to calculate how the distribution of funds will be made between the plaintiffs… and if the meeting is in an establishment where alcohol is served, there’s always a possibility that the settlement amount might increase towards the maximum as the successive rounds are served. Our meeting started out cordially enough, but one small thing bothered me. I only had one drink, but I didn’t recognize the names of the people involved in the case. I told him I didn’t represent these people. The adjustor must have thought I was either trying out a new settlement tactic or experiencing the onset of Alzheimer’s. When my denials of representation became more adamant and he realized I wasn’t kidding, he produced some recent correspondence he received from my office, listed at “Peter Sharp & Associates” and signed by my wannabe ‘associate,’ Ricky Hansel, who in reality, was a former law clerk of mine.
I pointed out to him that the Ventura Boulevard business office address and telephone number printed on the letterhead weren’t accurate, and showed him my present business card. He admitted that he didn’t use the phone number on the letterhead because due to our previous dealings my number was still in the speed dial of his phone. The only way to get to the bottom of this situation was to visit the address on the letterhead and meet with ‘attorney’ Hansel.
I kept thinking that this is unbelievable. Ricky was the nicest guy you could ever want to meet… and a hard worker. One time I had a case where title to a classic car was illegally transferred. Ricky worked on it almost full time for over a month until all the paperwork was properly filled out and we were able to repossess the vehicle for the client. Everyone liked him and there was no doubt that when he finished law school he’d quickly build a successful practice. Little did I know that he didn’t want to wait until finishing school – or becoming a lawyer to start building his law practice. We both drove over to the business address printed on the correspondence and saw that it was one of those storefront private Mail Box places whose customers use their box numbers as ‘suite’ number on stationery. We were told that pasted on the clerk’s side of the box was the directory label ‘Peter Sharp & Associates.’
After a convincing argument from me plus a twenty-dollar bill, we convinced Jack Bibberman, the store’s mail clerk, to reveal who rented that box. My suspicions were confirmed when he named my former paralegal Ricky. Jack told us that he never met the guy… the box rental transaction was all done by mail and the guy only came in once to pick up a UPS package delivery… probably stationary. All mail pickups from the box were probably done at night after the counter closed.
The adjustor finally seemed to believe me and I thought the matter was closed. Our local legal newspaper, The Los Angeles Daily Journal, carried the story several months later: Ricky was arrested, convicted, fined and sentenced to several years of probation for the misdemeanor of practicing law without a license. Needless to say, his chances of ever being allowed to take the California Bar exam were greatly diminished, if not gone forever. What I didn’t expect was what the insurance company did next... they turned the matter over to the State Bar for a full investigation… of me.
The State Bar filed charges against me for ‘negligent supervision of an employee’ and ‘aiding in the unauthorized practice of law.’ Usually those types of charges don’t result in a serious disciplinary sentence. In fact, I thought my hearing was actually going quite well… until they brought out their files from the past fifteen years and the State Bar’s prosecutor told the hearing judges about my alleged previous ‘attitude’ towards the Bar’s investigation attempts.
The first recital was about when I began my practice in a Van Nuys storefront office on Sylvan Street, a block away from the Van Nuys courthouse. The small coffee shop next door to my office was going out of business, so I bought and re-named it “Peter Sharp’s Division 86.” At the time, there were eighty-five divisions in the Los Angeles Municipal Court system, ergo our name and the double intendre of being “86’d.” In those days, the Bar didn’t allow attorneys to do any type of advertising: They considered it to be conduct described as ‘unprofessional.’
Most people got a kick out of the place’s name, but some jerky attorneys in the neighborhood (are there any other kind?) complained to the Bar that because my name was on it, that I was unethically advertising. When the complaint letter from the State Bar came in, I informed them that I heard Ralph Williams (the largest auto dealer in the San Fernando Valley at that time, with more than twelve dealerships on Ventura Boulevard) was going to attend law school and then open up an office in the Valley. I requested that we hold off on my hearing until Ralph opens his law office, so we can see how well the Bar does in getting him to remove his name from all twelve of those car dealerships.
The Bar didn’t care for that response, but it must have struck a proper chord, because I didn’t hear from them again for another two years. This time it was another nasty letter telling me that I was once again being accused of wrongfully advertising because of my personalized license plate – “PS ESQ.”
I did some quick research with our state’s Department of Motor Vehicles and informed the State Bar that they finally caught me, and I would be looking forward to my hearing, assuming they would be holding it in the downtown sports arena, so that the other three thousand two hundred fifty one California lawyers with “ESQ” in their license pla
tes could also attend with their attorneys and defend themselves.
Once again they backed down. I never had any problems with the State Bar again over unethical advertising – but they finally got their pound of flesh: any other attorney in the same situation would probably have gotten a slap on the wrist and a severe warning to straighten out his act. I was expecting a suspended sentence and maybe a fine, but it’s not a perfect world.
In view of my past experiences with our revered State Bar Association, along with the fact that Ricky appeared as a witness for the State Bar and blamed everything on me, testifying that I set him up with the mail box and shared the fees, the prosecutors took Ricky, the convicted criminal’s word over mine. Several years before my hearing the State Bar lifted its ban on advertising; the judges didn’t care – they admitted the recitations anyway, as evidence of my lack of respect for them. The Bar must have decided that it was time to make an example of another attorney, so I wound up with a two-year suspension and probation. Go figure. An immediate appeal might have delayed the suspension for a while, but considering all that was happening in my life at the time, I thought a break from the active practice of defending scumbags for a while might be a good thing… an appeal could always be done later… and that’s why I’m sitting in a back yard on Waterford Street in Brentwood Glen, trying to talk my friend Stuart out of going ahead with a suit against the Federal Government. I’ve had enough of going up against the establishment for a while.
The suspension was bad enough, but it had a profound effect on my prosecutor wife and her mad dog associates. I was now looked upon as a common criminal… because for the next two years I would be reduced to doing legal research, private investigating and process serving for other attorneys. In their eyes there were only two types of criminal defense attorneys: those who had been suspended for unethical behavior and those who hadn’t been caught yet... and neither category met with their approval.
Single Jeopardy Page 1
