The $500,000 Telephone Pole : The Lawsuit Comes Calling

There was a registered letter waiting at the Post Office. I signed for it, lugged it on home to our place on the west side of Anaconda, Montana, and checked in with Pam. My wife is disabled. That year, 2003, was a particularly rough one for her. On many a day, she could only struggle up out of that waterbed long enough to make it to the bathroom and back.

The mail could wait.

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This is a three part series describing a series of events surrounding a one-vehicle accident in Santa Fe Springs, California.

Part One: Trucks, Lousy Drivers, Lawyers, and the LAPD

Part Two: The Cowboy goes to Court

Part Three: The Lawsuit Comes to Call =================================================================

I'd been trucking down in California on the morning my sister called. Mom had finally passed from this Earth on August 26, 2002, at the tender age of 89. A few weeks later, in mid-September, I had a falling out with my favorite company dispatcher. No longer her Golden Boy, ever competent to take any load assigned to me and deliver it on time, anywhere in the lower 48 states, I was suddenly "on her list" for sure.

Not her Christmas list. The other one.

Time to quit, retire, hang up my CDL, so I did just that. Four years later, my share of the estate Mom left us three kids would be gone and I'd have to jump back into the workforce, but in February of 2003, I didn't know that. We'd bought a little place, fixed it up, and believed we'd be there until death did us part.

Pam was okay, or at least as okay as she ever got in those days.

The registered letter was not okay. I was being sued for $500,000.

According to the lawsuit filed by an attorney in Los Angeles County, my horrible nasty awful bad driving had put my eighteeen wheeler smack in front of the poor harmless right-acting innocent lady who'd smacked her Mitsubishi Montero into a Santa Fe Springs telephone pole and knocked herself cold. I was named in the suit, and so was my former employer, the company that owned the truck I'd been driving and had dispatched me to that location.

Dang!

My three-part course of action, considering that I knew the company would hang me out to dry if remotely possible, was never in question:

1. Retain my own California-based attorney,

2. One who qualified as a bone-crushing, gunslinging, case-winning Monster from the Tort Lagoon,

3. ASAP!

A few hours of Googling did the trick. My White Knight of choice (a) lived in southern California, (b) had experience in accident-related lawsuits, and (c) had for fifteen years been a hardcore East Coast prosecutor specializing in taking down Mafia families under the RICO Act. Clearly, the guy could fight. Of equal importance, we were on the same page from the get-go.

I remember asking him his opinion of the ambulance chasing shysters who'd filed this frivolous suit, wondering, "Do you think these fools even realize I beat that ticket?"

He laughed. "I seriously doubt it!"

One $3,000 retainer later, we were in business.

The case was settled a few weeks later. My guy had written both the opposition and my former boss letters which declared, in essence, "Up yours!" Did he include copies of the Traffic Court decision showing I'd been found Not Guilty of negligent driving despite the LAPD cop's opinion? Does an old school outhouse smell a lot like the job market in 2011 America?

The trucking company did what most outfits do to keep nuisance claims out of court: They settled. For $25,000 out of their pocket, not a dime (except for my attorney's retainer) out of mine...far less than the cost of their client's wrecked SUV, and a far cry from half a million smackeroos.

And that was that...

...except for one thing. You know folks tend to suspect all politicians and all lawyers are lying, cheating, backstabbing, thieving, lowlife critters who could improve the human race only by committing mass suicide, right? Right. Surprise! My California attorney sent back fully eighty percent of the retainer, a check in the amount of $2,400--he'd kept only $600 to defend me (with great success!) against a $500,000 telephone pole!

I've not asked the trucking company for a reference, though, and I'd not likely ask to get hired on there again, either.   Company owners tend not to appreciate drivers willing and able to stand up for themselves.

As for the lawsuit being filed in the first place, hey, Los Angeles County. Need I say more?