An electronic court filing hit my inbox this morning on a case dating back some 18 years. The notice contained a very neatly handwritten note from a now 19-year-old young lady injured on a playground when she was just over a year old. I won’t go into detail, but the little girl entered the world under tragic circumstances to parents with struggles of their own; the odds were stacked against her from day one. The playground injury seemed like one more tragic incident in her already chaotic life experience.
The little girl’s parents filed suit on her behalf, and the parents filed claims of their own to recover medical expenses they incurred for the little girl’s medical care. Unfortunately, the plaintiffs’ counsel failed to timely serve the complaint. And more importantly, plaintiffs’ counsel let the statute of limitations run on the parents’ claims. I filed a Motion to Dismiss for the defendant premises owner, and the trial court granted the Motion from the bench. After the hearing, the plaintiffs’ counsel had a few unprintable words for me in the hallway of the courthouse. I shrugged my shoulders and said, “well, maybe I am a ******, but at least I’m not gonna’ have to call my legal malpractice carrier when I get back to the office.”
Since the statute of limitations hadn’t run on the little girl’s claim, the plaintiffs’ counsel continued to pursue her claims. For several reasons that need not be repeated, I scheduled the little girl’s parents’ depositions at a courthouse so they’d have to go through a metal detector before sitting down for the deposition. And, true to form, the little girl’s father threatened to “whip my a**” in the middle of a benign series of deposition questions about whether the father was focused on his injured child after the accident or focused on cataloging “alleged defects” in the playground equipment. Of course, he was focused on the little girl and not on defects in the playground equipment, and that’s what I wanted him to admit! The parents finally admitted they had no evidence of a defect in the premises and I ended up settling the case for less than the cost of defense. I paid the meager settlement funds into court to be held in trust until the little girl’s 19th birthday.
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