Chuhng-chuhng? Yes.
Ka-ching? Maybe.

26 July 2001—Why I decided to sue a lawyer is beyond everyone’s comprehension.

The motherfucker owed me money, that’s why. The law was on my side. What did I care whether he was a lawyer?

A year ago a friend recommended me to Eric, the art director of a small blues record label and production company. They needed a new logo as well as designs for some cds. Could be fun, I thought. Hell, anything I was going to do would have improved their existing logo. I was about to go on vacation, so I couldn’t do the cds, but I wanted to do the logo. Julie, a close friend of mine who’s a great illustrator and designer, would do the cds.

Over lunch at a café near my office, Eric and I talked about the project, agreed on what I would deliver, and agreed on a fee for my services.

No, I didn’t get it in writing.

Over the next few weeks I produced one draft after the other, getting reactions from Eric and others at the label. We finally got to a final draft, which he thought was great, and then…nothing. I didn’t hear from him for two weeks. When I finally did track him down, he told me that one of the higher-ups at the company had decided that she liked the existing logo just fine. Eric told me he was sorry, but of course I would be paid for my work anyway, so I submitted my invoice.

And I waited.

And waited.

And waited.

Meanwhile, Julie had completed her first cd design. It was accepted and being produced, and it wasn’t until they were set to start the next cd design that she got paid.

I was still waiting.

Eric got tired of my increasingly desperate phone calls and told me everyone, including himself, was waiting to get paid by the guy who held the purse strings, the company’s president, a lawyer whom I shall refer to as The Bacon Man. Eric said he was owed a sum astronomically larger than mine, and I should take up my complaint with TBM.

So I did: repeated calls and emails were never returned. Finally I brought it up with my lawyer, another client of mine. He walked me through the process of taking someone to small-claims court, instructing me to make a final demand for payment, which I did. This was in April.

After still no response from TBM, I finally filed the suit, naming both him and the company as defendants, for the grand sum of $720. I got Paul, my friend and employer, to serve the papers on TBM at his law office, which was conveniently located in San Francisco’s Civic Center, right by the courthouse.

And then I waited for my day in court.

I have always been civic-minded. When I was in high school I initiated voter-registration drives. When I turned legal age I began to actually look forward to serving on a jury. Yeah, I was a nerd, but that’s beside the point.

So naturally I was excited about going to court. The law was on my side, and I was going to get satisfaction. Not only that, I was going to win Litigant of the Year by whoever in the small-claims division gives out such awards. You’re not allowed to have a lawyer represent you in small-claims court, unless you’re a company, but you can get advice from a lawyer, so my lawyer helped me prepare my case. He gave me language and structure to argue my points, he advised me how to establish myself as a professional to make my points stick better, and he helped me draft Eric’s affidavit. He even gave me legal ammunition to shoot down objections TBM might make.

For some reason, despite being owed so much more money than I was, and despite being an employee of the company, Eric agreed to sign an affidavit essentially detailing the terms of the contract, since I never had it in writing. Though I thought it was the right thing to do, I was amazed nonetheless that he had agreed. He said he couldn’t be at the trial due to other commitments, but if I wrote the document he would sign it. So I did, and I sent it to him.

And then I waited.

By the night before the trial I still hadn’t heard back from him. I left several messages, first calm but then increasingly frantic. I left one more in the morning. No response. Fuck it–I would do it without him.
 

Though my case was less solid without him, I was still excited. I dressed up for the event: my favorite black corduroy slacks, my sleek grey shirt, a stylish tie, and a blazer. I had an envelope with three packets of my statement and exhibits, A through F. I mean, I was prepared.*

Friends had all offered their best wishes. Christine, a devout fan of older "Law and Order" episodes, wanted to make sure that upon my entering the courtroom I would appease the forces of justice by uttering the prime incantation: chuhng-chuhng!

Julie met me at the courthouse, and we waited outside the courtroom for the door to open. There was something of a nervous quietness in the hallway, a lot of people waiting there with us, all of them dressed much more casually than we were, which made me envious because it was sweltering that day. One guy wore a t-shirt that read “The MONEY and the POWER.” I asked him if that was his lucky shirt for suing people. Turns out he was the one getting sued, by someone else in the hallway.

But there was one guy in a suit, strolling back and forth between courtrooms. He was a stout man, with a full but neatly-trimmed beard, and he exuded some air of entitlement and expectation, repeatedly looking into the window on the door to see if anything was happening yet in the courtroom.

When we all finally went into the courtroom (it took me a few minutes to remember to say the magic words, and by then it was pretty quiet, so I whispered them to Julie: chuhng-chuhng!), the clerk did roll-call. After calling almost everyone’s name in the room, he called mine.

Here, I said.

Then he called TBM’s name.

Here, the bearded man in the suit said.

Are you representing the company or representing yourself? the clerk asked.

Myself, the bearded man in the suit said.

What was the difference? I wondered.

After roll call everyone had to go into the hallway and share the evidence they had brought with them. The bearded man in the suit looked over my packet, a look of disdain on his face, and he handed it back to me, saying nothing more than thank you.

Back inside, we were collectively sworn in. The judge (turns out small-claims court judges aren’t even real judges, just regular old attorneys having a little fun on the side) called my case first.

Up I went with my stack of evidence and prepared to join the Small-Claims Litigants Hall of Fame. Just as I began to state my case, the fake judge stopped me right there and informed me that I had only served TBM as an individual, not the company he owned. But they were one and the same, I said; the company’s address is his home address. I only served him at his law office because that’s where I knew I could find him. I could feel myself beginning to whine.

No, the fake judge said, they were separate. If I wished, I could continue with the trial, but I wouldn’t be suing the company. I could instead get an extension on the case in order to have more time to serve the company. The smug look on TBM’s face told me I wasn’t going to win pursuing the case against him as an individual.

If I went ahead with the trial, would I still be able to sue the company separately later? I asked the fake judge. He looked down at me and said he couldn’t answer that, as that would be giving advice, which he was not qualified to do. I had somehow forgotten that he wasn’t a real judge.

I took the extension.

At least, I thought, I would now have time to get Eric to sign the affidavit or, better yet, appear in person since the new court date wouldn’t be the ridiculously scheduled day before July 4 that I had moronically agreed to in the first place. But still, somehow I had wasted everyone’s time by being an inexperienced litigant.

I left the place with my tail between my legs. (There’s no chuhng-chuhng when you leave a courtroom, it turns out.) Julie and I walked up the street to Mel’s, and I nursed my wounds with an Oreo shake and a fruit salad. Julie had a more substantial meal, a BLT. (The whole thing had been kind of funny in a way, because the moniker “Bacon Man” had formerly been how I had referred to Julie’s ex, due to a photo she had of him at the supermarket, holding up a package of, well, you know.) The whole day had been thrown completely out of whack: we were having shakes and BLTs at 10:45 in the damn morning.

That afternoon, Eric finally called me back to say he wasn’t going to sign the affidavit or appear in person, after all. He wanted his money, too. And who the hell was I to demand that he call me right away?

We finally worked out a compromise, which he called a couple of weeks later to say that TBM had agreed to. TBM would pay me half, and Eric, when he got paid, would pay me the other half out of his own pocket, a mea culpa of sorts for bailing out on me. He didn’t have to do it, and I was grateful. TBM would call me to come to his office to pick up payment and sign some sort of release.

And so I waited.

Just this week, as I got tired of waiting and prepared to get another extension so I could finally serve the company and wreak havoc with my staggering three-figure judgment, TBM emailed me. Apparently tomorrow I shall arrive at his office and receive cash or a cashier’s check, and I will sign an agreement in which both of us promise not to sue each other further on this matter.

Chuhng-chuhng?