Over at Ron Coleman’s Likelihood of Success: Ron Coleman’s Pretty Good Blog, Mr. Coleman writes about facing one of the attorneys on KSM’s defense “dream team” earlier in his career.
[Fenstermaker] is very, very stupid. I know this because I he was my adversary in a small case once–a case, in fact, in which he represented his own law firm, and thereby proved the ancient adage about what sort of a lawyer the self-represented get for themselves… Fenstermaker stunned me with this obtuseness. The experience was more akin to attempting to interact with masonry than any other I have had in my litigation career. He was dumb, and he was childish.
I appreciated Coleman’s timing since I just had my first run in with such an adverse party’s attorney who struck me the same way. I am handling a case in which a septic system is draining onto another person’s property. I’m the attorney for the person who owns the land being drained upon. The adverse attorney is pretty much a criminal attorney who handles drug cases and civil and criminal actions stemming from drug use. (Right before the case that I argued with him, he argued a case to try to prevent the forfeiture of a house that was producing meth. There are allegations that the house draining sewage on my client’s land was a meth lab as well.)
That this guy is a bad attorney is beyond doubt. His bar license was suspended at one point for seriously mishandling a series of cases. But that doesn’t always mean dumb. However, when he moved for summary judgment, I decided that he was dumb, getting the same impression that Ron Coleman did about Scott Fenstermaker.
He moved for summary judgment on the theory of a prescriptive easement. My response was to point out that he only made a prima facie showing for 7 years of use, not 10 as required by Washington. His reply was that I didn’t have evidence that after 7 years any of the elements were not met. He said that in a reply and in front of the judge.
I was stunned. How could someone get through law school and then practice law for 17 years – well, when not suspended – and not know what a prima facie showing is? “Stunned by obtuseness” is a good phrase to describe how I felt. I wonder if a lot of times he doesn’t confuse judges into accidentally making the wrong decision. However that didn’t happen last Friday and I won the motion.
I think I might have mentioned this guy before on Facebook. He sent a guy over to serve a motion that I’m sure was supposed to be an attempt to intimidate me. Too bad the guy wasn’t physically capable of intimidating me. (Hey, he was playing the odds.)
In any case, he is now late to file a response to my motion for summary judgment. Sounds like someone is angling for another suspension.
