WHAT’S THE POINT?
As a lawyer, I frequently have clients come to me with a situation where they have been wronged in some manner. Often, there is no good solution to the problem. The law does not provide a right for every wrong. This is an unfortunate fact, but a fact nonetheless. And as an attorney, it is my job to try and explain to people why they are being abused and the reasons why the courts or the police can do little if anything to stop it.
In this world there are two types of people — the law-abiding, honest, hard working, dedicated types, whom I’ll call “winners.” Then there are the deceitful, scared, bullying, dishonest, unhappy, evil types. These I’ll call “doodieheads,” “doodies” for short.
The winners frequently are taken advantage of by the doodies. The basic reason for this is that the doodies have no morality. They are the kind of people who, for some unknown reason, are able to sleep at night, knowing that they have lied, cheated, stolen, bankrupted, embezzled from and betrayed those people who are honest and value driven. Usually they are male, cowardly, with an outer shell of toughness that covers an inner weakness and self-hate for being such worthless losers in life.
The doodies come in many different forms, but their primary characteristic is their ability to read a situation, and change themselves to fit in with the crowd or avoid prosecution. If they are with a bunch of winners, they will change their language, their clothing, their attitude in such a way that the winners will believe the doodie is one of them. The doodie is doing this primarily to gain the trust of the winners so that they will give up something for the doodie, usually money.
But not always. Last week, I was at the Joslyn dog park. There was a crowd of maybe half a dozen people there with their dogs enjoying the glorious weather while the dogs played and romped. Of course, there was a pair of doodies. This particular model took their enjoyment from throwing tennis balls into the trees at squirrels with the intended purpose of knocking them to the ground so that the tough looking rottweilers owned by the doodies could maul and then ostensibly eat the fallen squirrels.
This of course resulted in there being a verbal row over the propriety of such behavior. There was a man who is of the winner set, that was pointing out to the doodies how wrong it was to kill a squirrel in such a manner. He was in a shouting match with the two doodies, and was joined by a woman who also felt it was wrong of the men to throw tennis balls at much smaller creatures.
Realizing that a shouting match was going to go nowhere, I went looking for one of those able bodied animal control officers who are always around when your dog has lost his license, but never around when you need help. I couldn’t find one, but I did find a uniformed officer and I asked him if it was illegal or not to engage in the childish behavior these two doodies were. He said that he wasn’t sure, that he would call an animal control officer and that he thought it would be animal cruelty.
With that, he then proceeded to walk over to the dog area, and surprisingly, the two doodies stopped throwing their balls at the squirrels, which they have been calling vermin and “rats with tails,” and they sheepishly sat their coward butts down on the bench. This had the intended effect of rendering the police officer powerless to do anything. Because he didn’t witness the animal cruelty, he couldn’t write the doodies up for a crime, or even an infraction, which is equivalent to a traffic ticket.
This, by the way, is the primary way in which the doodies evade prosecution. They run, they hide, they lurk in the shadows of life, like the slimy, stinky disgusting thing one finds under a piece of wood that has been left out in the rain for too long. Doodies are chameleons who are practiced at knowing precisely what they can do before a police officer has to take action.
They do the same thing with lawyers and the law. The experienced doodie knows how to get money from an investor by looking like a winner, talking like a winner, acting like a winner just long enough to cash the check. Then, when the winner starts asking for information, or updates on their investment, they start by going on the offensive. The doodie will start by telling the winner that he betrayed the doodie in some inconsequential way, but it will be grain of rice upon which a mountain of condemnation will be built. This is when the winner knows that he has been had. The louder the doodie screams the worse the winner has been had.
We see it all the time. I’ve got a case right now where a man inherited 64 percent of a company, and the 36 percent shareholder is an elderly retired woman but her doodie son is trying to embezzle all the money and take control of the company. The first thing he did was to accuse my client of taking money.
The problem with this type of case is that the winner has to spend money to prove that the doodie is stealing. The doo-die is the one who must produce the documents and most of the time, he won’t, which means that you have to subpoena bank records, accountant records, vendor records — all of which take time and money. The doodies know this. They use it to their advantage.
Doodies are experts at pushing the limits, but not crossing them. This is the gray area, where they are most effective, and the law is the least effective. This is the point where a lawyer says, you have a remedy, but it is costly, or you don’t have a remedy, and you were had. It sucks.
The question though that I put to my clients is “would you want to live the life of the doodie?” Invariably, when I look at a doodie, I have no desire to be them. They are scared, fractured, hurt little men, usually with major emotional problems and appendages smaller than the squirrels. (David Pisarra is a business development lawyer in the Santa Monica firm of Pisarra & Grist. He welcomes your questions and comments. He or (310) 664- 9969.)
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on April 19, 2005. Read the original PDF.