It has been a thrill to create characters that address the issues surrounding an epidemic that is now in its third decade with only the slimmest hope on the horizon for a cure. It’s our desire that the play will bring about new discussions of what has become an old problem.

This upcoming Saturday we will be auditioning actors and actresses at Montrose Counseling Center, one of our sponsors, and are looking to mid-March as our first performance date. I will keep you posted as I learn more about our schedule.

I still remember how he would look on a summer’s day on the prairie hilltop on which we grew up outside Edmond, Oklahoma in the 1950s, his golden hair bobbing up and down through the seemingly endless fields of high grass in which we played, and his sleepy hazel eyes squinting against the blazing sun above protected by those amazingly thick ginger lashes. Sometimes I found myself just wanting to grab him and hug him because he was so cute, but he wasn’t a touchy-feely kind of kid. You know, all boy. So he would have none of that. It sometimes seems like a magical time when I look back on it, as we frolicked and played in those overgrown fields for a good bit of our childhood before we left them behind in a move to Oklahoma City.

There was another brother tagging along before we left Edmond. He was cute and funny and always willing to be our guinea pig, but actually one of my earliest memories of him is coupled with that of my golden brother. Although it may seem distasteful to some, this is my most hilarious first memory of them both. My brother came to get me and show me something. For some reason, nobody seems to know why, I was the only one who appeared to be able to understand him when he was a pre-speech toddler, and since he always accepted my translation, my parents communicated with him through me, but I digress. On this particular day he tugged on my shirtsleeve, then led me into the living room where the new baby’s crib was sitting. Once there, at eye level for him was a single baby turd had somehow managed to escape the diaper of our brother. We both giggled as little boys do. Why is that funny to me? I don’t know. It just is, and it is my first memory of communicating with one and observing the other of my brothers.

© Kelpfish | Dreamstime.com

There are other memories of my childhood that I could never forget and always bring a smile. There’s the time we built a tire swing in the backyard and tested it with our little brother, flinging him on the bouncing tire across the length of the yard when the flimsy rope we used snapped. He only received a few scratches and bruises, which accounts for our survival when the wrath of our mother descended upon us all. And then there is my all time favorite childhood memory when the golden child and brilliant child—now teenagers—teamed up to bust our father’s recliner chair while launching ourselves as high as possible into the air by tromping on the footrest. We escaped that one by barely propping it back up long enough for our dad to sit in it and spill himself out into the corner behind as he opened his morning newspaper. We only confessed once we were old enough to avoid a good spanking—you know, in our early twenties.

Our parents’ divorce and cross-country moves along with the Vietnam draft separated us in our late teens, but we were reunited in Houston in the early Seventies, each in our early twenties and going through our own divorces. It was a time of reunion for us both and a chance to forge a new relationship as grown men—at least, we thought of ourselves as grown. My brother had a great apartment not far from the Houston Ship Channel, where he worked, with a large upstairs bedroom complete with what every young man needed: a king-sized bed. The night I remember so well is one of laughter and mirth as we sat cross-legged in that great big bed, clad only in our underwear, passing a joint back and forth between us as we assessed our marital situations. He perfectly mugged the nagging, unhappy expression that my ex so often wore while I giggled uncontrollably, and we both admitted our worst fear about being divorced: What does Grandma think? It was one of those moments where we both realized our common link in a grandmother who loved us and that we wanted to please with the way we conducted our lives. The irony of it all is that our grandmother was also divorced and probably thought nothing about it, but she was still the arbiter of all that was right and wrong in our world even as young adults. So we laughed uncontrollably and continued passing the joint back and forth until we were ready to sleep. My golden brother, reflecting his melancholy of the period, put Jim Croche’s “Time in a Bottle” on the record player and set it to repeat over and over through the night. If it hadn’t been for the sheer beauty of that particular song, I would have gladly ripped it from the turntable and busted it against the wall.

Now, that is all at least 40 years in the past, and, yes, “If I could save time in a bottle….” I would open it up and return us to that night so many years ago so that we could re-experience the love and camaraderie that we shared that night. Why, you ask? Because 40 years is such a long, long time and so many things happen on the roller coaster of life. Lives, especially among ambitious brothers in our country, lead us far and wide and rip at those commonalities that we shared in our youth. Different career paths take us in different directions and into different belief systems. The chattering heads of our leaders and their paid spokespersons rip and tear at the very fabric of our love and acceptance for one another and make us believe that we must somehow take up their banners and follow them on their selfish marches to the halls of power. And in the end, because two brothers chose two different pathways in their adult lives, they become tossed about on the seas of political change, one being hurt by the political leaders that helped the other succeed, leading to unnecessary bitterness and division.

So since I was unable to save that time in that bottle, I have a different wish for the New Year, perhaps one that will bring us the comfort and joy that we sing about at this time of year. My New Year’s wish is that we all put down the angry signs and turn around and go back home, hug those we love and be glad they’re there to love. The infamous Mame Dennis is credited with saying, “Life is a banquet, and most poor bastards are starving to death.” I have always admired that sentiment and done my best to live by it, and I see a country full of families like mine that are starving to death because of a competition between people who don’t even care that we are alive except when they need us to advance their cause. It’s time for us all to realize that our lives are in our homes and communities, not in the faraway halls of a government run by and for people we don’t know and who don’t know us, and to reject the bitterness and hatred they are selling. It’s time for some real family values, not a slogan being used by one side to beat up the other. Go find someone you love and give them a hug.

Happy New Year, and peace be with you all.

Reviewer's Top Pick

Reviewer:  Greendragon at NightOwlReviews.com

Score: 4.75 / 5 – Reviewer Top Pick
Review:

Irreversible Error by Wolf Phoenix was one of the best mysteries I have read in a very long time.

Erik Steppenwolf is asked by his former partner’s widow Lilah Patterson, to help solve her son Marcus death. While dealing with some ghosts of his own he plunges head first in an investigation.
Along the way Erik meets some very interesting characters. The first is a very outrages drag queen named Lola. Erik also meets Red a young man who enters a wet undies contest. The sparks fly right away with these two.

There are so many twists and turns in this story. Wolf Phoenix will keep you guessing right up until the end. I can’t wait to read the next installment to this story.

http://www.nightowlreviews.com/nor/Reviews/Greendragon-reviews-Irreversible-Error-by-Wolf-Phoenix.aspx

5 out of 5 stars.

By Amos Lassen

Lately Dreamspinner Press has been publishing some really first-rate novels and such is the case with Wolf Phoenix’s “Irreversible Error”.  Erik Steppenwolf is a cop who finds himself in the middle of Houston’s drag scene where hustlers are also found.  He got there because he was asked by an old friend to investigate her son’s death.  He manages to get Lola, a flamboyant drag queen to help him and she introduces him to the hustlers who may know something about the murderer.  As Erik sits at one of Lola’s shows, he meets a dancer, Red, and the two are immediately attracted to each other and as they start an affair, the murder puzzle begins to come to light and hints and clues that will lead to a murder conviction are exposed but there is still the idea that everything has not been uncovered.  Things between Erik and Red begin to sour and they go their separate ways and Erik decides that his foray in Houston is over and he thinks about moving on. However he still wants to find the truth and is not sure that he is over Red.

Phoenix gives us quite a look at Houston and the characters that dwell in the seedy underworld of drag queens and hustlers. He has created several interesting characters and Erik and Lola, along with others, are wonderfully drawn. I do not want to disclose any more about the plot because to do so would spoil the read. Take my advice, you will keep reading this until you close the covers and then want to start it all over again.

[NOTE:  The book can be purchased from Dreamspinner Press and Amazon.com in several formats:  paperback and digital versions that can be downloaded to your PC, phone, PDA, or Kindle gizmo.]

Then, on November 22, 2010, the sequel, Acts of Redemption, will be available also.

However, I decided after the last election that it was time for me to pursue a long lost dream of my own, and follow in the shoes of one of my personal heroes, Charles Dickens. Like myself, Charles Dickens was a court reporter before he became a great novelist. When I first started teaching court reporting, I had the chance to visit and meet the court reporters who carry on his work at The Old Bailey in London. What a thrill. But it was not his career as a court reporter that made him a hero to me.

Charles Dickens

Way back before I even knew that court reporters existed, I thrilled to his novels, especially A Christmas Carol. He dared to take on the social issues of his time by writing fictional stories that illustrated the consequences of a society that had become blind to its own greedy ways at the top of the heap and uncaring of the consequences to the people who actually did the labor to keep everything going. In A Tale of Two Cities, he illustrated the madness that ensued when things broke down in France some 85 years earlier resulting in one of the bloodiest revolutions in human history.

As for Left-Eyed Jack, I want to thank all of you who have stopped by and spent your time reading my posts and commenting on them, both good and bad. Your enjoyment of my writing encouraged me to take a chance on myself and pursue my impossible dream: to become a published author. I am pleased to announce that dreams can come true, even for old men in the wilds of East Texas. I wrote a novel and submitted it to Dreamspinner Press this year on my 61^st birthday. They have graciously deemed me worthy and accepted my novel, Irreversible Error, for publication as well as requesting a sequel.

I am happy to announce today that Irreversible Error will be released October 22, 2010, and its sequel, Acts of Redemption, will be released in November 2010. It has been the most exciting thing that has happened to me in a life that has been almost too exciting sometimes.

I have chosen a new Pen Name for my novelist career, Wolf Phoenix. I selected it after much thought based on the Native American custom of taking a new name for one’s self upon reaching adulthood. I chose Wolf to represent the fact that, like a pack leader wolf, as a teacher I went out into the world scouting the way for my students, and then returned to bring them the knowledge I had gained. Phoenix is a nod to a life spent with Bipolar illness which resulted in great achievements followed by great crashing disappointments. I am happy to report that for some time I have been on medication that eliminates those symptoms, but I still feel a strong attachment to the persona of the Phoenix because of its great ability to reinvent itself and fly again.

For all of you who would like to see what I have done with myself, please come by the new website created for me by Mrs. Jack at http://www.wolfphoenix.com for details. October 22nd, my first novel should be available in a bookstore near you or at the DreamspinnerPress.com website. I will be posting updates on what’s going on at my Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/profile.php?id=100001288913464&ref=ts Friends are always welcome. Stop by.

Hope to hear from you there. As for Left-Eyed Jack, thanks for all your support.

© by Adam Zyglis

As the holiday season approaches, I’m keenly aware of the toll taken on my family by the political climate in the United States.  My Republican/Religious Right Conservative brother will once again boycott the family gatherings due to his anger at our mother, Mrs. Jack, and me for voting for Barack Obama and his concerns, fueled by Pat Robertson’s 700 Club, that the anti-Christ is riding in on a wave of Democrat-inspired socialism.  What a bunch of crap!

What is going on in our country?  Why is “The Right” doing everything in its power to turn everyday Americans against each other like no time since the Civil War?  I think it is very simple: Divide and conquer.  While they keep pouring gasoline on the fires of disagreement between the various groups of society, they are helping Big Business, Big Banking and Big Insurance continue to take advantage of us by tying up any legislation that would enforce regulation and rein them in.  It’s the oldest tactic in the book.  Distract somebody while you pick their pocket.

The Republicans have very successfully used this strategy since the election of Richard Nixon to turn their minority status into a winner in more elections than they have lost.  They have stirred the pot of racial hatred in The South.  They have stirred up homophobia in the rural portions of our country.  And they have made major hay out of the abortion debate.  The Republican Party should call itself the party that calls for the founding of The Divided States of America, because that’s exactly what they are doing.  And their influence—at least where I live—is doing just that.  They are dividing neighbor from neighbor and sibling from sibling as well as child from parent.  I see it in my community and in my family.  The party of “family values” should be ashamed of themselves.

A lesbian friend of mine handed me a letter she had received from Michael Steele and the RNC asking for her support to “STOP the Obama agenda.”  The letter rambled repetitively on for four whole pages asking for donations and issuing bold-face warnings against the “radical socialist agenda” that is being perpetrated by the Obama Administration.  It also made the outlandish claim that “liberal media propaganda” says that “The entire country supports Obama’s agenda.”  Those words are taken directly from the letter.  I thought that was particularly rich considering the last telephone town hall meeting “staged” by my Republican Congressman, Kevin Brady, would have me believe that 100% of the callers did agree with his ideas even though he carried only 75% of the district.  The letter from Mr. Steele was laced with misrepresentations and inflammatory language to stir up those who do disagree with progressive ideas for the future direction of our country.  But not even the word “liberal” is deemed adequate and sinister enough for the Republicans; they have fast forwarded the rhetoric to “socialism,” and not just any socialism, but “radical socialism.”  BE AFRAID!  BE VERY AFRAID!

What this does is stir up the fears of an older generation that lived through the great worldwide conflicts between The West (the U.S. and its allies) and The East (the now defunct Soviet Union).  It urges “people like you to stand up and make it clear that you are not ready to see the United States turned into a European-style socialist state by Obama and the Democrats.”  You know, being gay, I’ve seen a lot of drama queens in my day, but this ranks up there among the most dramatic.  While there is no proof of any kind to back up such an accusation, the RNC is completely willing to put it out there in order to stir up the uninformed and take their money to fill the campaign chest so the RNC can stop something that isn’t even real.

What is going on is the same thing that has been going on for longer than I probably even know about–pure politics.   A powerful, rich group of entities are stirring up trouble among the uninformed masses for their own gain.  They throw in a cup of fear of socialism, a cup of religious sanctimony, and a heap of distortions to distract people from their own agenda of allowing big business of every kind unregulated reign over the rest of us.  And they are stirring up the very people who are most angry at big business by pretending to care about their issues when they don’t care at all.

First, let’s talk about abortion.  After Republicans occupying the White House for 30 of the past 39 years, it is still perfectly legal to get an abortion in America.  For many of those years, especially under Bush II, the Republicans even had control of both Houses of Congress, yet nothing was done to help the anti-abortion movement in this country.  Now, that issue is being trotted out one more time by the same crowd to kill health care reform.  Let me state as emphatically as I can, unless there is an issue of the mother’s possible death, I am AGAINST abortion.  Most liberals feel the same way.  HOWEVER, I am equally AGAINST the right of THE STATE to make that decision for women.  That is a personal decision to be made by a pregnant woman and her doctor—and nobody else!  It seems that the same people who are against THE STATE making health care decisions for them, are the moving force in pushing THE STATE to make a decision about someone else’s health care choices.  I am amazed that anyone could be so unthinking as to rank the health care of a member of their own family—a child, a husband, a wife, a parent—behind a concern for what some stranger is doing in their life.

Okay.  Okay, so you don’t like to have your tax dollars go to help some woman get an abortion.  I understand that, because I don’t like to see my tax dollars go toward blowing up women and children in faraway lands under the guise of justifiable warfare, but I didn’t get a choice in that.  That choice was made for me by my government under George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.  I also don’t want to pay for a bridge to nowhere in Alaska just because some Republican Senator has the power to get it built, but a Republican Congress okayed it anyway.  Perfection is an aspiration, not a result.  And anyway, what I would really like to see in the publicly funded abortion debate is some statistics on how many “welfare mothers” get abortions at taxpayer expense as opposed to well-heeled suburban women and teenagers who get their insurance companies to pay for them.  I have a feeling those numbers would be particularly revealing.  The way I remember it in my teen years once I was aware of such things and abortion was illegal in America, well-heeled white folks who attended church and were considered respectable members of society would fly their daughters to faraway lands at great expense to get their “little social embarrassment” taken care of, and women of less means sought out dangerous, illegal back-alley operations to help them with their decision.  Just because it’s illegal doesn’t mean it can’t be done.

That brings me to my own personal favorite: gay rights.  What is the problem here?  When I was a toddler, there were indications that I might be gay.  It wasn’t about sexual desire; it was about how I perceived myself.  And when I came out to my parents in my late 30s, they both said they had known it since I was a toddler but didn’t know what to say back in the 50s, so they let it go and let me come to my own “decision” about it.  You may wonder how they would have known that I was gay.  Maybe it was because I used to drag around a baby doll that I doll-napped from an aunt who was four years older.  Maybe it was because I was always putting on my aunts’ can-cans and twirling around like Loretta Young when visiting my grandma’s house.  Maybe it was because I had “crushes” on boys and men when I didn’t even know about sex.  I was GAY.  There was no choice.  That’s just who I was.  Of course, society imposed certain expectations upon me that dictated that I hide that part of myself in order to succeed, so I did until I was 38 years old.  BUT I was GAY!

This is an issue of religious freedom: not the freedom to impose your religion on me, but my freedom to agree with your religion or not.  Your religion is a club you belong to, and when you don’t even invite me to join, how could you possibly believe you have the right to impose your religious rules upon me, a non-member?

This story is one told by countless numbers of my friends and acquaintances in the gay community.  They knew from childhood that they were different way before they knew about being “gay.”  Many have also reported that their families have expressed their lack of surprise when they came out.  Whatever it is that causes us to be different from heterosexuals is there long before puberty brings sex into the equation.  But like with all teenagers, puberty brings complications and emotional baggage that must be dealt with, and whether “straight” or gay, those issues often follow us through our lifetimes.  But for a bunch of egotistical politicians to take advantage of ignorance and use us as whipping boys (and girls) for their personal advancement is shameful.  This is an issue of religious freedom: not the freedom to impose your religion on me, but my freedom to agree with your religion or not.  Your religion is a club you belong to, and when you don’t even invite me to join, how could you possibly believe you have the right to impose your religious rules upon me, a non-member?  Now, them’s fightin’ words, pardner!  Get out of my bedroom and tend to your own.

The other painful reality of all this is that my blog will not be read by my right-leaning brother or millions of others who are more interested in Sarah Palin’s latest revelations of her mistreatment, not only by the media, but by John McCain’s campaign staff.  Instead they will be busy reading “Going Rogue,” watching FOX NEWS (NOISE), or listening to Rush Limbaugh as they sit in rush hour traffic escaping left-leaning, minority-run cities for the quiet comfort of mostly white, middle-class suburbia.  Once there, they will begin the frantic life that they have left at the end of their long, frustrating days and wish that someone would do something to help them out.  Unfortunately, they will most likely believe that Limbaugh, Palin, Beck, O’Reilly or Hannity really, really care about their problems and will ignore the REAL right-wing, pro-business agenda of the Republicans and keep on hating those who “drove” them out of the cities and onto congested freeways: minorities and gays, otherwise known as socialists.

As Sunny and Cher sang way back in the 60’s of my high school days, “And The Beat Goes On!”

I’m Jack, I am who I am, and I’m hitting back!

With Liberty and Justice for ALL!

There are two kinds of people: sharpies and mullets. Adapted from DorkofSporks' illustration.

The analogy goes like this.  There are the sharpies of the world who prey upon the mullets by unfair business practices and outright fraud, and the only real recourse that the mullets have is to go out and hire their own sharpie—this would be a plaintiff’s attorney—in order to get back that which was stolen.  This is the basis of “tort law.”  You injure me in some way, physically, financially, socially or mentally, and I sue you to get compensation for my “damages.”  The old model for business practices that I always heard in my growing up years was, “Let the buyer beware.”  That was it.  If you got taken by someone, it was your fault for letting it happen.  But despite the desires of “strict constructionists,” societies evolve and their legal needs evolve with them.  After the financial carnage caused by the robber barons of the late 19th century, the courts and slowly the government responded to the robbing of everyday citizens by beginning to hold the rich and powerful more accountable for their actions.  Then came the Wall Street crash of 1929, which plunged the nation and the world into a financial hole that we seem to be mirroring today.  Greed and unreasonable expectations of the bankers and the investor class have now led us to the same precipice.  And like 1929 the response of the guilty parties is, “We can handle this ourselves, so get out of our business,” ignoring the fact that their “business” is all over our business.

In much the same vein, the big insurance companies of the U.S. are pulling no punches to keep the government out of their lucrative business.  “Let the buyer beware,” they shout.  “We have the greatest health care system in the world,” they warn.  And then they slip in the little booby trap that they want to hide under the roadway: tort reform.  Now, much is made of the “frivolous” medical malpractice lawsuits that are filed “every day” in our court systems.  What is not made much of is the fact that the refusal of the malpractice insurance carriers to come honestly and reasonably to the table and compensate patients who have indeed been injured by a doctor’s all-too-human mistake is the cause of disputes coming to court in the first place.  Come on, we all make mistakes.  That is one of the reasons that we carry liability auto insurance, so that our all-too-human mistake doesn’t bankrupt someone that was injured in our accident.  The auto insurance industry pelts us with never-ending ads about being in good hands with our good neighbor who will save us money as well as peace of mind when we take to the road.  Yet the selfsame companies, over in their medical malpractice divisions, pelt their customers, doctors, with a barrage of scare tactics about how patients and lawyers are out to get them.  No offer of peace of mind there.

What’s the game?  It’s the sharpies, dear mullets, doing what they do to manipulate everyone to give them what they want: a limit to their liabilities on all claims.  That’s right.  ALL CLAIMS! A few years ago when the insurance companies successfully campaigned for and won a “tort reform” constitutional amendment in an off-off-year election here in Texas, they ran countess ads on TV about how difficult it was for pregnant Texas women to get an OB-GYN because they were all leaving the field due to high malpractice insurance premiums.  Well, this was big winner here in “family values” Texas.  There was hardly a breath of opposition as their rescue of OB-GYNs also rescued the insurance carriers from all sorts of punitive damages assessed by Texas juries.

What are “punitive damages,” many of you will ask.  They are an assessment of monetary punishment for bad faith performance by a person or company who knowingly causes damages and doesn’t seem to care.  Many years ago in Corpus Christi, TX, I worked on a case that I think of as the poster child of the need for punitive damages.  One evening a couple of beautiful 19-year-old girls were returning from Corpus Christi to their homes in the suburb of Calallen, Texas, in their late-model American-made sub-compact car.  One of them spilled her soft drink, and they pulled over to the improved shoulder of the two-lane street they were on to clean up the mess.  Unfortunately, while tending to their clean-up, a drunk driver in a luxury sedan, mistaking their taillights for those of a moving vehicle plowed into the rear end of the smaller car, curling the rear-end of the car up over the passenger compartment, exploding the gas tank, and raining the flaming gasoline down on the girls, burning one to death on the spot and burning the other one so severely that she lay in a local hospital for a week before succumbing to her own injuries.

Now, this may seem like a simple drunk-driver-hits-and-kills-someone scenario to many, and he got sent to prison for a long time for his actions.  But there was another actor in this case, the auto manufacturer.  Without naming names, there was widespread knowledge among the people and many news reports about the propensity of a certain model of car made by a certain American automobile manufacturer to blow up when hit from behind.  What came out in the investigation of this case by attorneys hired by the girls’ families was startling.  First, all models of that manufacturer’s cars had the same design flaw and were in danger of blowing up as a result of a rear impact.  Second, in the course of getting records from the files of the auto maker, a damning set of memoranda were found.  The memoranda were between the board of directors, the engineering department, and the legal department.  In the end they showed that the engineering department estimated that it would cost $125 million to perform a recall and fix the defect, and the legal department assured the board of directors that they could defend any lawsuits against them for less than $125 million.  The board of directors, acting on this advice, refused to recall the defective vehicles.  In other words, they decided to weigh their monetary loss against the loss of life that might result from their negligent design, and like most big business, they chose the bottom line.

Courtesy of jordan darkchild/PhotoBucket.

When the jury of 12 ordinary people in a Corpus Christi courtroom came back with their verdict, they sent a strong message to the auto maker: Not to our children in our community.  They assessed punitive damages in the amount of $126 million dollars against the auto maker.  The verdict was breathtaking in its size, but it told the corporation’s board of directors that life is more important than money and expressed what I consider to be the legitimate outrage of everyday people that a big American corporation that we trust with our lives and safety everyday could act so cavalierly.  During the resulting appeal process, the auto maker settled for about half of that punitive damage assessment, but still never ordered a recall on the faulty vehicles.  In case you’re wondering what the defect was, it was very simple.  The mounting bolts for the rear bumper, which were long and unprotected on the back, were pushed into the gas tank upon impact causing a metal-on-metal spark and igniting the gasoline inside.  KABOOM!

Of course the insurance industry has been in a state of outrage ever since this happened and fought long and hard to get laws changed to protect them from similar outcomes, regardless of the actions of their clients.  And of course, with the other hand they have raised the premiums in response to jury verdicts, keeping their bottom line virtually unchanged.  That brings me to another case that is not about punitive damages, but just everyday people being denied compensation from their insurance company after faithfully paying their premiums for years.

Magnolia blossoms courtesy of teamarbeit/Dreamstime.

This case was reported by me in Federal Court in Oxford, Mississippi.  During the recession of the late 1970’s Mississippi residents were hit hard.  A working family from Oxford lost their jobs and decided the only way to hang onto everything they owned was to come down to Baytown, Texas, and work in an oil refinery until things turned around back home.  The husband and wife as well as their son worked at the refinery in Texas to make ends meet, trying to maintain their mortgage and insurance payments on their home in Mississippi, while paying rent down here.  One week night, their Oxford home burned to the ground.  They made a claim on their home-owners policy and were denied by their insurance company, a big national company which will remain nameless.  In order to collect on the insurance policy they had paid all along, they had to sue in Federal Court because the insurance company’s headquarters were out of state.

I met these folks and the attorneys for both sides when I was employed on a freelance basis to go report the trial in Oxford.  It seemed pretty cut and dried to me, but this is the week I learned how important a good lawyer can be.  The attorney for the insurance company was from a big Atlanta, Georgia firm, and he was impressive in every possible way.  He dressed in the most expensive suits, had an impressive movie-star quality smile, and was, no doubt about it, a very expensive, very excellent attorney.  The poor blue-collar family from Oxford were represented by an older gentleman from the community who was in no way up to the task against the powerful and slick—yes, I said slick—opponent that he faced.  As the evidence was presented, nothing came out that sent up any red flags about the family’s reputation.  They were salt of the earth types, never had any brushes with the law, what we used to call “poor but proud” in my childhood days.  They were also what is called “good Christians” by their friends and neighbors.  They bought insurance, paid the premiums, their house burned down, case closed.

Then Mr. Atlanta took the reins of the courtroom, and while never producing a single witness to corroborate his “theory” of the case, he began weaving in his questions a scenario where the family came from Baytown, Texas in the night and burned their house down.  Despite the fact that time cards were produced showing them clocking out the evening of the fire and clocking back in on the morning after, Mr. Atlanta kept planting the seeds of arson in the jury’s minds.  Since I lived in Mississippi at the time and had family in the Houston area that I visited, I knew that such a thing would be impossible, and expected the lawyer for the family to point this out, but he didn’t.  After Mr. Atlanta argued in his closing that he believed the family had clandestinely returned in the night and burned their house down for the insurance money—which is perfectly legal for him to say in closing arguments, which are not considered “evidence”—the jury quickly returned a verdict in favor of the insurance company, leaving the family totally uncompensated for their loss.

I was outraged.  As a court reporter, it would be unethical for me to tell the lawyer for the family what I knew about the driving time between Oxford and Baytown, or betray my feelings in the courtroom, so I kept my head down until I got back to the privacy of the staff offices.  Once there, thinking I was out of public view, I ranted to the court clerk about my outrage at the miscarriage of justice I had just witnessed.  Much to my embarrassment, she looked over my shoulder when I was finishing my rant, and I turned to realize that Mr. Atlanta was standing right behind me the whole time.  He simply smiled at my naive, young face, and said, “It’s my job to make ‘em work for it.”   He then turned and left.  I realized that he was right, but the situation was in no way right.  In an interesting after note to the incident, there was a clause in the insurance policy that protected the bank/mortgage holder against loss under any circumstances, so they were compensated for their loss, but the nice, hard-working family had lost their home and their possessions to a fire and then been cheated by their insurance company.

Photo courtesy of Jgroup/Dreamstime.

In one last example, I go back to Corpus Christi, Texas, where I reported a trial of a medical malpractice case.  A young Hispanic father of four was taken to the hospital for an emergency appendectomy.  A local general surgeon performed the surgery, and after a few days in the hospital, and despite complaints of pain, the man was released to go home on a Friday.  During the weekend his pain worsened, and his young wife called the doctor on several occasions to see what could be done.  The surgeon initially told her to give him some aspirin, which she did.  However, over the weekend, the pain became more and more severe.  The wife called the doctor’s service several more times, and he returned the first of her calls and dismissed the patient’s pain.  As the man’s pain became more and more excruciating , she continued to call the doctor’s office, getting his service where he had left a message for her to “just give it some time.”  Exercising amazing patience, the wife waited until Monday afternoon to call the doctor’s office to report that her husband was literally doubled over with pain in his abdominal region.  The doctor, by his own admission from the witness stand, had lost all patience with the woman and told her to take her husband to the emergency room and quit calling him.

That evening, upon returning to the ER at the hospital where the initial surgery had been performed, the man was observed to be doubled over in extreme unmanageable pain and upon examination was diagnosed to be suffering from necrotizing fasciitis at the surgical incision.  Most folks, myself included before this case, have never heard of this little “bug” (typically Group A streptococcus) that lives in hospital operating rooms, but it is literally a killer.  It eats away at  the fascia level of skin (that’s underneath what’s visible to the eye), and at least back then was incurable.  The young father of four died within 24 hours of his re-admission to the hospital.

Before the case came to trial, the hospital had already settled with the family for an undisclosed amount.  For his part, the surgeon claimed no responsibility for the infection, and on the witness stand testifying for himself he was one of the coldest witnesses I have ever encountered.  It was quickly apparent that he possessed no bedside manner whatsoever, and expressed not one whit of sympathy for the patient or his wife and children.  Expert medical testimony presented by his attorney asserted that it was the hospital’s fault for not having a clean enough operating room, and that nothing the surgeon could have done would have saved the man’s life.  While I agreed with the expert’s assessment of the case, I felt that the surgeon would be harshly dealt with by the jury.  I, myself, thought the surgeon was a cold, unsympathetic, arrogant bastard.  But the jury came to the right decision and found in his favor.  In exit interviews, they expressed their disdain for the doctor, but agreed that it was not his fault.

This verdict does not mean that the suit filed by the family was frivolous.  They had every right to question the surgeon’s culpability in the loss of their loved one, as does every other citizen in this country.  The only way that the family could access the doctor’s records was to file a lawsuit, and had the surgeon’s insurance carrier settled the claim, the surgeon could have been spared being exposed as the heartless person that he was.  I know that the next time I visited my family doctor, a man I trusted with my life, and a man with an excellent bedside manner, I instructed him to NOT under any circumstances allow the said surgeon to operate on me if the need should arise.  My doctor assured me that he was both a competent and reliable surgeon, but to me his lack of any semblance of bedside manner ruled him out forever.  I expect that most of the jurors and others who witnessed his testimony expressed similar opinions to their families and doctors.  And as for the surgeon’s feelings about being hauled into court to answer for his actions, I have no sympathy for him whatsoever.  He was cold and condescending to a poor woman who was trying to take care of her husband and the father of her children.  So, to me, despite his lack of “malpractice,” he deserved what he got, a public exposure of his true character.

These cases are the most illustrative of those I saw from the court reporter’s chair over the years.  There were many more.  As a freelance reporter most of my career, I worked for attorneys on both sides of the docket.  A good lawyer is worth his weight in gold, and a bad one should be run out of the profession, and sometimes they are.  Local and state bar associations have the ability to suspend or revoke the license of attorneys who commit malpractice or unethically take advantage of their clients.  I also have been the court reporter for such proceedings.  These proceedings are held behind closed doors, but as the only outsider in the room, I can assure those who do not know, attorneys are very hard on each other in these meetings.  They enforce their ethics to the greatest extent allowable.

So, why do we need tort reform?  My view is that we don’t.  A very nice doctor visited my site recently, and we have exchanged comments back and forth and I have visited his blog site.  He asserts that much money is being wasted on “preventative medicine” to combat possible malpractice lawsuits.  I agree.  But I remember that every time I got out my Stenograph machine and went to work, I realized that the rights and liberties of others were literally in my hands.  It was a great deal of pressure, and I felt it every day.  But, as I told my students in the 14 years I taught court reporting, “That’s why we make the big bucks.”  All professionals feel the pressures of their jobs, because they are doing important things that affect the lives of others.  That’s why the educational requirements are so high and so many fail to make it through the educational process into the field.  None of us would want to think that our doctor had graduated with a C-minus grade point average.  The same is true for all professionals.  Their training is rigorous and demanding so that they can learn to cope with the pressures they will face.  But in the end, they, like the rest of us, are mere mortal human beings, and they are going to make mistakes.  When in the jury box, we should remember that and be fair to them.  I have seen this to be the case a great deal more often than not.

But the last thing any professional needs is some megalithic insurance company looking over his shoulder telling him how to do his job.  The insurance companies of America should be ashamed of themselves for offering a product designed to relieve the stress of life, and then turning it into a weapon to scare up support for their refusal to do what they advertise they will do.  It’s time for everybody to recognize that insurance companies are sharpies, and they are treating the rest of us like a bunch of mullets.  For those of you who live in fear of malpractice lawsuits despite your best efforts, do your best, pay your premiums, turn off the noise and be happy.  Pretend you’re in a convertible driving down a country road with the top down, oblivious to the fact that an expensive prize bull may be waiting around the next curve.  If he’s there and you hit him, if he don’t kill you, you will kill him, and the rancher will expect your car insurance company to pay for his damages.  But that’s only a maybe.  Don’t let it ruin your drive.

Don’t let Big Insurance use you like a mullet to advance their agenda to deny health care insurance to those they want to exclude due to the bottom line.  Don’t worry; be happy!

Thanks for hanging in there with me so long today.

I’m Jack, I am who I am, and I’m Hitting Back!

With Liberty and Justice for ALL!