It seems like any time I get invited to a barbecue, book group, or other gathering of ambitious professionals who tend to comprise my law school classmates’ circles of friends, I always end up talking to the emergency room doctors and the legal aid lawyers. We understand each other. We may have more in common on an individual level with some of the corporate lawyers, sales managers, etc in the room, but not when they’re en masse. They talk their talk, we talk ours. But sooner or later, one of the corporate set hears one of us say something about being yelled at and spit on by a client, or used as masturbation material during what we had hoped would be a professional interview– the usual– and they start asking for war stories. I wasn’t surprised to learn that emergency room doctors get yelled at and blamed for lack of pillows, same as I get yelled at when a prosecution witness shows up. But one universal that surprised me was the “what happened was” story.
“What happened was” is your client’s version of what happened that led to his arrest, or whatever his legal issue is, or the incident that got him to the hospital, and it’s basically a confession. But he’s convinced that it totally exonerates him. He’s convinced that anyone who simply hears his “what happened was” will see that he has been horribly wronged and deserves everyone’s sympathy, perhaps accompanied by a public apology. In my job, I pray that I get to hear this story before we get in front of a judge, because otherwise the judge will hear it all straight from my client’s mouth. Lots of times my client doesn’t trust me but is convinced that the judge and solicitor are wise and understanding people who will bend over backwards to help him if he just tells them his side of the story. A good half of my job consists of getting this story out of my client so I can feed a minuscule amount of it to the judge and preempt my client’s airing the whole sordid tale. Unfortunately, even when I’ve heard it enough times to be able to repeat it in my sleep, I don’t always succeed at keeping my client’s mouth shut.
A few weeks ago, for instance, I had a client who was from somewhere in Africa, by way of New York, and was in Atlanta for a family reunion. While he was in town, he decided to go shopping at the Underground (a mall), and was spotted by a local girl who decided to take him for all he was worth. As he tells it, she approached him at the mall, made it clear that if he spent some money on her, she’d make sure that he had a great night, got as much as he was willing to pay for, and then ditched him. The day apparently ended with him running after her in a MARTA station yelling, “Give me back my money if you won’t have sex with me!” When he finally caught up to her, he grabbed hold of her and yelled for the police, leaving her with no way out except to tell the officer that he’d hit her and then grabbed her to keep her from running away. He couldn’t understand why he was the one charged with a crime, and not her. After all, as he’d explained to the officer, he was just holding onto her because she wouldn’t even hug and kiss him.
He was befuddled that the officer didn’t arrest her for stealing instead of arresting him. He was incensed when I told him that grabbing hold of a woman who wants to get away from you does actually constitute simple battery. But, he knew that he still could get the whole thing taken care of; he just had to explain it to the judge. “I took her shopping; I bought her clothes; I got her hair done. She said she would have sex with me if I spent money on her, and then she told me the wrong way to go in the MARTA station and she ran the other way. I never hit her. I was treating her like a lady. I just hold her so she give me back my money if she won’t have sex with me.”
Okay, you may be thinking that it was borderline malpractice to let my client confess to solicitation in open court. And if I hadn’t known the judge, known that she loves a good story, and known that I’ve never seen her add charges in a situation like that, you’d have a point. Not that my client would’ve shut up no matter what I said, owing to the need to tell the “what happened was.” And as a recent article in an alternative news rag taught me, a lot more people have this need to confess than I’d ever realized.
Creative Loafing recently did an article about the eleven least influential people in Atlanta. http://atlanta.creativeloafing.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A333662
Number 5 on the list is a man named John Fitzgerald Page, who earned web notoriety when a woman who winked at him on Match.com took umbrage at his response, which listed what he considered his relevant stats (Ivy League education, Buckhead condo, number of times per week he works out, etc) and asked for a photo that showed her body. She replied that she didn’t think that they’d be a good match, and he responded with an angry letter listing even more of his positive traits (was on best-dressed list in an Atlanta magazine, had lunch with the Secretary of Defense, is a member of Mensa, can squat or bench press X amount, etc). She sent his response to gawker.com, where he was summarily crucified by a bunch of strangers.
What gets me is that now he has a forum to set the story straight for the whole city and he demonstrates how clearly he still doesn’t get it. In classic, “what happened was” fashion, he explains that he neither threatened nor harassed the scorned woman, but “just sent her an email saying basically, ‘I have these statistics and you can’t hang.’” As for the gawker responses, he complains that “They’re threatening my life because I blew off a fat chick on the Internet.”
All I can say is, I’m glad he’s so gorgeously rich. If he needs an attorney, he’ll have to pay for one. And good luck keeping that mouth shut.
