Boobus Americanus as attorneys, part two

I am back with Boobus Americanus as attorneys, part two.  As I mentioned in the first part, I have worked for many years in the legal field here in California and worked with quite a few attorneys. Some good ones to be sure. But I have also worked with some real “winners”.

Remember the pompous drunk I mentioned in my earlier post? I sure do, I doubt I could ever forget that guy unless they gave me a frontal lobotomy! I worked on a probate case for this guy where the woman who died owned like 20 acres of scrub-brush land in Nevada, and also a few acres out in the California desert. Well before I went to work for him, this “winner’ had filed a full blown probate case on her estate. The only problem was that she had sold her valuable residence back in 2001 or so. So the only assets left were several thousand in a bank account, the few acres out in the California desert, and the Nevada scrub-brush land.

The case had been filed and the probate referee had not appraised the value of the estate yet. This attorney had someone else working on the case who had said that, “the land out in the desert must be worth at least $30,000.00 or more”. Guess what folks, the California desert land was worth about $6,000.00 and there was about $5,000.00 in the bank, and the bank account could have been transferred without a probate.

This joker could have filed an easy probate and had the estate settled in about 2 months or less
without even going to Court!!But that would be too simple. And he could not bill as many hours that way.

Since the scrub-brush land was located in Nevada it could not be probated in California.  It was valued by the county assessor at slightly over $1,000.00. And that was probably inflated!!  It would cost almost what the land was worth just to get it transferred over.

There was probably more value in the rattlesnakes that lived on the land!! At least you could use them to make anti-venom for snake bites! Who knows you could probably have gotten some value out of the scorpions too!!  Why not. The land was not worth much.

The “guy from Arizona” wanted to coordinate the two probates!!  Give me a break.  Talk about a huge waste of money. And he was serious. He told me, “with all due respect we should start an ancillary (coordinated) probate in Nevada.” It would cost more just in the filing fees to do what he wanted than the land was worth! And his client would never respond to the letters that we sent to her regarding the estate. This guy had some of the worst clients I had ever dealt with.

I worked on another case where his buddy downstairs had prepared a trust for someone. There was also a will that had been prepared but the will was only signed by one person. The law in California states that a will must be witnessed by at least two persons. So the will was invalid, not even worth the paper it was printed on.

I did some checking on the pompous drunk online and found out that he was sued for malpractice only two years or so after becoming an attorney. And he did more appeals than you could shake a stick at. I looked at a few of the cases and this guy lost every appeal I looked at.  Twice he prepared and filed the wrong objection to a probate and the Court’s turned him down. Twice he appealed and lost.  I checked recently and found out that not only did his clients lose an arbitration case by someone who alleged that they defrauded them, but the person they defrauded had recorded some of the conversations.  They tried to get her in trouble but when it went to Federal Court the Judge ruled that she was justified in recording the conversations because she had a reasonable belief that a felony would be committed.  And while I was working for him these same clients wanted to resign from a certain organization of which they were members and he asked me to research to see if that organization could still press charges against them even if they resigned. I did the research and found out that they could in fact still press charges.

The joker’s office was something else. He had his offices on the second floor of an old building in an Orange County, California beach city. I worked in another office he had that was mostly used for storage on the first floor.  The building was very hard to find, even if you did a mapquest search the directions would not be correct.  Many of his clients had trouble finding his office.

There was a situation where the men’s restroom was locked and could not be used for around 2 weeks or so. Nobody could figure out why. Even when it was open there was usually no paper towels or soap. Right before I left someone had broken into the box that was used for outgoing mail. I had to walk about two blocks to place some outgoing mail
in a mail box down the street.

This guy was constantly asking me did you finish this work. I would tell him that I was still waiting for his client’s to give me the information that I needed to finish the work. The Friday before I left on a short vacation he called me around 4:00 P.M. to ask me if I could do some work on a probate case for one of his client’s because she was asking about it. I checked and his client had never responded and given his office the information that we needed.

This guy was constantly saying, “Oh I have plenty of work”. The fact is he went on vacations about every other week and many times while he was gone I would not come into the office for a day or so because I knew there was not enough work for me.  I was supposed to get about 30 hours a week of work. Most of the time I was lucky to get 20-25 hours a week. This guy would have his booze ready to drink before he had even left the office!!

Right before I left, in fact on my last day I came into the office and there were several cases that he wanted me to work on. I did the work and then he called downstairs all pissed off stating that I had not done the work right which was not true.  I had in fact done what he had asked. He then deducted some of my hours off what he owed me and wrote me a check. I did not object. I promptly took his check to his bank about two blocks away and cashed the check. There was no way I was going to take any chances on this guy. Good riddance to him.  I would rather sleep on a park bench than work for him again.

Stay tuned. More to come on the subject of Boobus Americanus as attorneys.