What Were They Thinking?

This is the story of a lawyer who caused justice to prevail in a lawsuit conducted under the American Judicial System.  He is currently being disbarred for conduct unbecoming an attorney.  Needless to say.

 

Not really.  At least not yet.  Right now he is basking in a well-deserved success.  It is a tale fraught with anguish, pain and insanity.  It wasn't any of those things when it happened, but now that I am telling it, it has all of those things in great volume.  And from the horror that is my thought process, only I alone am escaped to tell thee the tale. 

 

Yes, yes.  You should now call me Ismael.

(If you are not of such a literary bent, then in the alternative you can refer to me as "the man from Nantucket.")

The heroic lawyer in this tale is my buddy, Cory Brundage.  And if "heroic" seems a, well, generous choice of words to describe Cory, it will all make sense when I tell you that on the opposite side of this case in the courtroom were a bunch of lawyers on the payroll of an auto insurance company.  You have to see how that would make Cory a shining pillar of moral goodness by comparison (notwithstanding those convictions for consuming "lite beer" and for watching an entire episode of "The Bachelor").

 

Now, it is not in my nature to hold anyone up to negative comment, so the actual auto insurance company will remain anonymous.  Though it couldn't hurt for me to tell you that the company is not All STATE; and neither is it FARM Bureau Insurance.  (Nod, nod, wink, wink.)

 

 

 

The key facts are as follows.  A nice, middle-aged woman is driving along a quiet street, peacefully and sensibly.  As she crosses an intersection, a car driving at the speed of a Shenkansen bullet train comes over a rise, runs the red light, and explodes the car of the nice woman.  And, for that matter, pretty much explodes the nice woman, too.

 

 

It turns out that the driver of the bullet train does not have any insurance.  And why would he, since he also doesn't have a driver's license?  But that's not a problem for nice lady because she has faithfully paid premiums to [delete company name before publishing] Insurance Company for "uninsured motorist coverage."   Which means that they pay the same as if they had insured Johnny Jetpack.

 

Except that they don't.  Of course not.  What's the point of taking people's insurance premiums if then they are going to come back and hassle you to pay for things?!  Just drag you feet and tell them 'no' until they get that crazy idea out of their head.

Then in steps Cory Brundage, in the uncomfortable position of being on the side of Truth, Justice and The American Way.  And tries to get the company to pay the nice woman.  Who, by the way, has terrible, permanent injuries, ongoing medical bills, and chronic, persistent and excruciating pain.  Oh, wait.  That latter problem only occurs when she has to listen to Cory explain the law.

Nonetheless, when unnamed insurance company with the initials S- F- suggested that the right amount of money to fix all of the nice woman's problems was   .   .   .   wait for it   .   .   .   wait for it   .   .   .   a payment of less than $22,000, it makes you suspect that you can get a job in that company's claims department without having completed your Ph.D in mathematics.  Or, for that matter, your preschool course in number blocks.

However, it is possible that the decision-makers actually went through some sort of thought process to arrive at an offer that can best be put into words as "Take us to court!  We double-dog dare you!"  And I can think of two scenarios in which that would have seemed to them to be the epitome of cleverness.

The first scenario is that the Einsteins at the insurance company thought that the fear of having to conduct a trial would cause Cory to accept a payment of the loose change found in the sofa cushions in the company's break room.  Their reasoning would have been:  He's a solo lawyer, while we have an army of lawyers--so while we can spread the burden of a trial, he is facing days or, more likely, weeks of misery, grindingly hard work, too little sleep and caffeine-fueled monomania.  So he'll take our offer.

If that was their thinking, it gets the honor of being the greatest, most boneheaded misreading of another person since George W. Bush looked into Vladimir Putin's eyes and thought he saw a soul.

 

 All you really need to know to understand how bad the misreading of Cory was is to know that he doesn't just run marathons; he runs ultramarathons; and not just ultramarathons, but super-long 100-mile ultramarathons.  Through the Arizona desert one time; and through the highest mountains in Colorado another time.  When I say that these races are crazy hard, what I mean is that at the end of the race, most competitors are greeted with the enthusiastic greeting, "Great job!  Now get back in your straitjacket so that we can take you back to the asylum!"

 

Since Cory is not legally committed to an insane asylum--and, no, living in a state governed by Indiana Republicans and Governor Mike Pence does not qualify as being in a looney bin--okay, it almost qualifies, but not quite--the only explanation for Cory's participation in these events is a deep, turbulent wellspring of self-loathing at his very core.  His inner hatred--well founded, we can agree--drives him to make himself miserable.  Like Dunbar in Catch-22, Cory is only truly happy when he is completely miserable.  So forcing him to go to trial is like a belated Christmas present.

 

So that is scenario one of the possible thought process.  Scenario two is even more concerning, in terms of disturbed, delusional thinking.  In that scenario, the insurance people want to go to trial.  They want a jury of ordinary civilians to make a decision as to whether to side with a nice middle-aged lady with a verified, documented collection of injuries that would put to shame the collective rosters of the entire NFL; or to side with a gaggle of lawyers flying the battle flag of corporate greed. 

 And how would that thought process have gone?  Given that ordinary people view claims adjusters, insurance company lawyers, and insurance executives less favorably than the IRS or the Taliban--or even an IRS operated 100% by members of the Taliban?  I can only assume that these decision makers had been watching too many of their own commercials, which take place in some nonexistent, glossy, heartwarming, scripted world, in which your hypothetical good, neighborly insurance agent is always be there to find your hypothetical lost dog, give a hypothetical doll to your hypothetical sweet, adorable daughter, and to save you from your own stupidity of wandering into a herd of angry buffalo.

 

Maybe the folks at this unnamed insurance company convinced themselves that jurors for a trial in the real world would think they were living in the advertising world.  It would explain why they made sure that they did not make an offer to pay the claim that came within 100 miles of being reasonable.

And it would qualify as the stupidest idea to ever cross the human mind since the beginning of prehistory.  Hey, somebody has to be Number One in Stupidity.  And auto insurance companies are starting that race in the front of the pack.

(By the way, if you keeping score at home and want to see the rankings of the top five dumbest ideas of all time, the second through fifth, as determined by Stephen Hawking, Sir Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein, Rene Descartes and Lindsey Lohan, are as follows:

 

2.  "Let's develop a new line of cars called the Edsel!"

 

3.  "I think I'll enter into a relationship with Madonna!"  (Ranked No. 2 in the Coaches Poll.)

 

4.  "I'm going to invade Russia as winter is about to start."

 

5.  "I need to write a blog because people are so eager to hear what I have to say.")

 

And now the happy ending to my story.  Cory stuck in his thumb and pulled out a plum and said, "What a good boy am I!"

 

 

 (Actual Courtroom Artist's Drawing)

 

 

Jury Award:  $750,000.