Disclaimer – you might just get more information here than you want.  When a court reporter shows up for a deposition, they usually don’t have a clue what they are going to hear.  Sometimes we know we’re taking an expert or the plaintiff, but it’s usually a mystery assignment.  So the day I show up and know the deponent, it starts off a little uncomfortable.  I used to hate being the court reporter in divorce court, as you’d sometimes know the people or see them later in the store, and you knew WAY MORE than you wanted to about what went on behind their closed doors.
 
And this deposition begins normally, asking the plaintiff what she had done that day.  The suit was against a department store, so I figured it was about a slip and fall or perhaps a wrongful shoplifting accusation or something like that.  So the attorney begins asking the witness to tell her story of what she’d done that day before she went to the store, and we go down that path.  He then segues into, “So at some point while at the store, did you need to use the restroom?”  Yes, she did.  So she and her companions go into the restroom, and it was then that the questions began to get weird – I mean, really way out there.  “So which stall did you choose to go into?”  “Why did you choose that particular stall?”  “Did you have purchases that you took into the stall?”  “Did you take your purse?”  “Did they have a hook on the door for you to hang your purse, or did you have to hold it on your lap while using the restroom?”  “If you held it on your lap, was it on the right or left side?”  “Was it mainly resting on your knees then?”  “Was your purse large or small?”  “How much did it weigh?”
 
I’m beginning to really wonder about this.  I mean, where could this possibly be leading?  What possible scenario of a case would need to know whether this woman hung her purse on the door or not or what side of her lap/legs it was sitting?  It continues.  “Did you actually use the restroom?”  “Did you sit on the toilet, or did you kind of squat over the commode?”  “Did you lean on the side of the stall to balance yourself if you didn’t sit down?”  “Did they have those little paper things that you can lay on the toilet seat?”  “Did you use it?”  I’m trying not to be bug-eyed, but this attorney is one of the most smooth, suave guys I have ever known, and I just cannot imagine where he’s going with this.  I truly am wondering if the next question was going to be, “So did you need to use number one or number two?”  Thank God, we didn’t get to that, but we did continue on down the line of, “And when you were finished, did you wipe?”  I mean, truly, this actually happened!  This is making no sense to me whatsoever. 
 
The witness then says, “Yes, I was getting ready to wipe, but I hadn’t reached for the toilet paper yet, and that’s when it happened.”  FINALLY we get to what in the world we are there for!  She goes on to describe that as she sat on the toilet, the toilet paper dispenser on the right-hand wall jumped off the wall and flew across the stall, landing on her left foot.  Yup, she didn’t touch it – it just flew off and went a foot or so to the left rather than falling straight down.  And she ended up not really realizing she was hurt until two weeks later when she got an x-ray of her foot and it had a hairline fracture and realized it must have been from this department store incident.
 
I had told my mom and sister the story, and now every time we are together in a large bathroom, each of us in a stall, I’ll usually say, “Watch out for the toilet paper!”  We’ll all die laughing, and when we come out, the other people in the bathroom are usually keeping their heads down like, “Don’t even look at those idiots – what in the world!”  It has gotten funnier over the years, I must say.  And you’re wondering how in the world I’m going to twist this around into something spiritual…
As I remembered these questions and the absolute randomness of them, the crazy nature of the subject matter, discussing things that SHOULD NOT BE discussed, it made me think that there is some day that we will all answer for the things we do in secret.  In the Bible, Jesus would even say that if you had a thought in your mind of lust toward another, you were committing adultery in your heart.  This is proof that God not only knows what we do, but what we think, and surely what we do in secret.  I was embarrassed for my acquaintance, I was embarrassed to hear these details of whether she sat or squatted or leaned against the wall of the stall to use the restroom, but how awful is it going to be some day when we have to answer for even the thoughts that go through our mind?  Thank you, Lord, for the forgiveness and peace you offer – that there is no fear of what might come out on judgment day, because it’s all been forgiven and forgotten!  

​Was with a friend yesterday who kept tripping on her flip-flop, and it reminded me of some of the “are you kidding me” trials I’ve reported.  The trial we called “The Flip-Flop case” involved a man who had gone to the U-Haul store in Charleston on a rainy day, wearing flip-flops, and he tripped walking toward the counter and injured his knee, I think, pretty badly.  U-Haul’s defense was that if you are wearing flip-flops, you can’t complain when you slip and fall. 
 
I have to tell you, when they were doing their opening statements, I was thinking the same thing.  Those things are dangerous, even when it’s not raining!  So we spend a WEEK learning about the slippability of flip-flops.  Did you know that some flip-flops have, say, a slippability rating of 10, where others only have a rating of 3 or 4?  We learned about the rubber composition and how the grooves in the bottom are made, or if they have no grooves, what that does instead.  I mean, court reporters learn a lot of things as we do our jobs, but this is one I could have done without.  Long, slippy story short, the jury didn’t take a long time to side with U-Haul – if you wear flip-flops and slip and fall, don’t go suing anyone!
 
The even more stupid case was one that Judge Ranson did as one of her very first cases.  I remember being so excited to do our first trial together, and I was writing realtime for her, as the first realtime courtroom in Kanawha County – I mean, we were in the big-time!  Well, this case belonged in the little-time….this guy had bought a sander from Black & Decker and had gotten it kind of gunked up, so while the sander is running, he takes it and knocks it against his leg to try to undo the muck that had accumulated.  And of course, it being a sander, it sanded right through his jeans and took a small hunk out of his leg.  So he sues because there wasn’t a warning that said, “Don’t touch your body with this sander while running!”  It reminded me of the time my grandmother wanted to iron a wrinkle out of her dress and didn’t want to have to set up the ironing board, so she just gave the dress a little swipe with the iron – and you got it!  Leg also took a swipe and she got burned.  I wish I could remember the lawyers who had taken these cases, but I can’t – I’m sure those lawyers lost their rear end in costs and fees and wish they’d never agreed to take those cases.
 
And these “are you kidding me” stories remind me of the old Indian legend that is told about a young boy who hiked a tall rugged mountain, capped with dazzling snow.  When he reached the top, he stood on the rim of the world.  He could see forever, and his heart swelled with pride.  Then he heard a rustle at his feet, and looking down, he saw a snake.  Before he could move, the snake spoke.
 
“I am about to die,” said the snake.  “It’s too cold for me up here, and I’m freezing.  There’s no food, and I’m starving.  Put me under your shirt and take me down to the valley.”  “No,” said the youth.  “I am forewarned.  I know your kind.  You are a rattlesnake.  If I pick you up, you will bite, and your bite will kill me.”  “Not so,” said the snake.  “I will treat you differently.  If you do this for me, you will be special.  I will not harm you.”
 
At last the youth tucked the snake under his shirt and carried it down to the valley.  There he laid it gently on the grass, when suddenly the snake coiled and leapt, biting him on the leg.  “But you promised…” cried out the youth in pain.  “You knew what I was when you picked me up,” the snake said as it slithered away.  The boy knew the danger of touching the snake, yet he gave in to the temptation.  The devil is so subtle in his temptations that sometimes it can seem harmless, but the results are painful. 
 
Next time an “are you kidding me” situation comes along, resist the temptation!

​There are good court stories (funny, interesting), and there are bad court stories.  Real bad.  About 15 years ago, I got a call from a client wanting me to appear for a guilty plea hearing in Washington County, Ohio.  The courts in Ohio use digital recording, and if they have something important, they will bring in a live court reporter to do trials and things like that.  My client explains that this was set for a trial that day, but his client was going to plead, so it would just be an hour or so to get that done.
 
I arrive in Marietta, get set up, and the defendant comes before the Court, and she asks him if he is there to plead, and he says he’s pleading not guilty.  She immediately proceeds to put a jury in the box, and there I was, the official court reporter for a trial.  I had no idea what I’d shown up for.  This guy was a professor at Marietta College, and he was caught with thousands of child porn images on his computer.  He had also pursued and groomed young boys from Parkersburg to get them to engage in sexual acts with him, and he had filmed it, photographed it.  There was a lot more, but that was the gist of the charges.  We began to pick the jury, and one of the questions the lawyer asked was what magazines the jurors received at their homes.  One guy said he received Playboy magazine.  They left him on the jury – I thought, “What’s up with that?”  He was a big, burly, tattooed former Marine, looked like a pretty rough guy.
 
We get the trial started, and the story begins to emerge, of how this professor would go to Parkersburg and seek out boys who appeared low income, sort of lost little waifs, and he would befriend them, begin giving them rides home, buy them tennis shoes, pizza, ingratiate himself into their lives, take them to Kings Island and other fun places, all the while making them do sick and perverted things in exchange for their shoes and food.  It was beyond sickening.  These boys testified, and by the time of the trial, most of them were grown men.  I’ll never forget one of them testifying about how he was going to school to be a teacher, and I’m sitting there thinking to myself that it would be a miracle if he was ever hired, once the newspapers printed all the details of this situation.  These boys talked of how they were confused and hated themselves for selling their soul and their body for these little piddly tokens of affection.  Each of them knew each other and knew the others were probably going through the same thing as they were, but they didn’t talk about it amongst themselves. 
 
On top of these horrible in-person acts, this professor (Doctor Robert Anderson) was an online predator, pursuing children and preteens in America and even across the ocean.  He had this little 7-year-old that he had quite the running action with, who would tell him he got up in the middle of the night to talk to him on the computer while mommy and daddy slept.  He had this child go get a ruler in one of these exchanges and take a picture of it next to his privates so he could measure it.  Sick, sick.  I truly went to work each day nauseous and resenting my client who got me trapped into this nightmare.  There were times I had to physically regurgitate the vomit and bile that would rise in my throat. 
 
This case lasted almost a month, and we had to go through thousands and thousands of pages of instant messaging (back in the AOL days), thousands and thousands of sick, wicked photographs of children.  The jurors had to view each of these pieces of evidence so they could determine a series of things:  Age of child, perverse nature of image, etc.  I had to mark the exhibits and see them as I put stickers on them.  The attorneys would put them up on a big screen, and I would just wheel my chair around so that I wasn’t looking at the screen, which would put me staring at the jury instead.  The juror I had wondered about that received the Playboy magazine, the muscle-bound Marine, sat in that jury box and bawled like a baby with every image.  I mean tears pouring down his face, snotting and blowing his nose, just torn up.  The women cried at first and then got looks on their face of resolve and purpose and just DONE. 
 
The day the authorities swarmed into the college to try to seize these computers, they had the professor away from everyone, but somehow he was able to get word to a fellow partner in crime at Athens, Ohio University, and that guy remoted into the computers and wiped them clean.  They had a Doomsday plan, and it almost worked.  Thank God the forensic computer guys wouldn’t give up, and they worked and worked and worked until they got those images restored.  That guy from Athens ended up dead before the Anderson trial of some weird poison or something, and there was an investigation ongoing about that.
 
This guy was a creep.  I mean, he looked like a creep, and the evidence proved he was not just a creep, but a sick, sick purveyor of evil.  True evil.  It took me over three years to remove the things I saw from my mind.  I would see a blond little sweet, innocent boy, and I would have a flashback of the 7-year-old from Sweden.  I would see a preteen boy with ratty clothes and shoes, and I would see those young men who will never be the same.  I would drive by that adult book store place on the way to Parkersburg and images would flood into my mind.  I prayed and prayed for the evil to leave my mind, my memories, but it took a long time.  And I am an ADULT.  What does this kind of thing do to children?  It is unthinkable.
 
I tell this story today because I haven’t thought about Doctor Anderson in a long time.  Thank God.  But there was a recent killing at Mount Olive prison, and I read the article, and it was HIM!  I honestly thought he would have been in an Ohio prison and someone would have done him in long before now, but he had been sentenced in West Virginia as well, and had lasted this long before someone beat him up and killed him. 
 
Parents, if you have given your child an Internet-enabled device and do not have a block on it, you have just opened up the door to the Doctor Andersons of this world.  By this time, 15 years later, the accessibility to this evil has multiplied a thousand times.  You say, “Oh, I have good kids – they know not to do anything like that.”  You may have good kids, but even though children don’t go searching, there is evil lurking right around the corner searching for THEM!  Please, please, protect your family, your children, from these things.  I shudder to think of what the chances are that my granddaughters will be able to find a young man to marry who is pure in spirit, whose eyes have not been tainted by the pornography that is around every corner.  Or that my grandsons will be protected from this so that they can have normal and healthy marital relationships. 
There is no greater duty as parents and grandparents than to help our children navigate this world with confidence, with safety and with peace.  Just wanted to remind you today that there is GOOD and there is EVIL in this world, and the Bible is true when it tells us in 1 Peter 5:8 that we are to “Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.”  Don’t let it be your family!  Your kids may hate you for a while for “depriving” them of what everyone else has, but wouldn’t you rather that than they be a victim to this evil?  Stay strong, parents – this is the highest calling we have in our lives!

This past week was Court Reporter and Captioner Week, so I had drug up some of my favorite court stories into my mind to make little videos and put on the website.  Well, I got them refreshed mentally, but my body didn’t get time to video them.  For several years, we have taken depositions of inmates who have accused guards in the prisons of sexually abusing them.  One of the very first cases we had was of an inmate who had gone to a facility as a kitchen worker, transferred from another facility.  This woman had accused one of the administrators of long-term sexual abuse.  She described the man coming in late at night and sending for her to come to the kitchen to cook him something, and then something else would get cooked, you might say.
 
There were letters written back and forth between them, and some of it did sound like a love affair.  The attractive female attorney who represented the prisons began asking her about this “affair,” and intimating that this sexual relationship was consensual and that she encouraged it and wanted it.  The inmate answers a few questions, then she gets real direct and says to the female attorney, “Have you MET YOUR CLIENT?  Have you met him?”  She gets no answer, so she proceeds on.  She says, “If you have, then you KNOW!  You can smell this man coming 50 feet away, and his teeth are all rotten and his breath would knock you over.  And he has a mole the size of a quarter right at his privates.  The ONLY way this man could get a woman is to get one that’s locked up and has no way to say no.” 
 
Wow.  That was one of those moments you don’t forget.  I felt really sorry for this girl.  She was a woman by then, of course, but just like most of them, had been abused as a child, started doing drugs, then stealing, and before you know it, she’s locked up in prison and is the play toy of a monster.  I hate like anything that I missed the administrator’s deposition, but the story that came out of it was that it was videotaped, and they begin asking this man about whether he has this mole or not, and he denies it.  The inmate’s attorney says, “All right.  I’d like you and the videographer to go into this side room, and he is going to film you proving that you have no mole there.”  The videographer goes pale.  He didn’t realize this was in his job description.  But amazingly, the truth begins to get told.  “Well, I might have a mole, but I’m not sure it’s the size of a quarter…..”  You’ve got to laugh.
 
As I thought about telling that story, it reminded me that our sins will always find us out.  Anytime I have EVER tried to hide something in my life, either God reveals it or my guilt forces me to reveal it.  It’s just not worth it…
 
I read an article in the Charleston paper this week that has stuck with me as well, on the same vein.  A man in Texas died, and his daughter wrote things in his obituary such as “he lived 29 years longer than expected and much longer than he deserved.”  The obituary noted that he left behind two “relieved” children, a son and daughter, along with “countless other victims,” including an ex-wife, family members, friends, neighbors, and “doctors, nurses and random strangers.” 
 
“Leslie was surprisingly intelligent; however, he lacked ambition and motivation to do anything more than being reckless, wasteful, squandering the family savings and fantasizing about get-rich-quick schemes,” it stated.  “Leslie’s hobbies included being abusive to his family, expediting trips to heaven for the beloved family pets and fishing, which he was less skilled at than the previously mentioned.” 
 
It continued, “Leslie’s life served no other obvious purpose.  He did not contribute to society or serve his community and he possessed no redeeming qualities besides quick-witted sarcasm which was amusing during his sober days.”  The Houston Chronicle reported that this man had pleaded guilty to an assault charge in 1979.  He also pleaded guilty in 2008 to assaulting a family member by pouring hot liquid on his then-wife of 40 years.  The next year, he pleaded guilty to violating the resulting restraining order by calling another family member and threating to kill her.” 
 
As we watch ugliness and vitriol poured out on this forum called Facebook, I pray it does not get on us, get in us, so that we turn into people who spew forth hate and rantings and ravings about this or that.  Let’s use our lives so that when we leave this world, our children and those around us “rise up to call her blessed” like the Proverbs 31 woman.  Life is too short, and as proven just this week by a dear friend of mine not awakening at 53 years of age and a terrible murder occurring to another man who just committed the crime of simply opening his front door.  Let us all be about our Father’s business, trying to save those whom the devil seeks to devour……

​Talia had to prepare her first-ever trial transcript this week, and because it’s totally different than depositions in formatting and language, I told her I wanted to proofread it myself rather than one of our regular proofers.  She had complained and complained about the acoustics in the courtroom and the attorney who talked like he had marbles in his mouth, how her ears hurt from pressing the headphones in so deep to try to pick up what he was mumbling.  She has a tendency to exaggerate, so I didn’t pay much attention to her griping.  I should have, though!
 
I remember when she came home from her first deposition and said it was terrible, she couldn’t hardly understand a word the guy said, that he talked so low and gravelly that she was three sentences behind trying to sort out what he was saying, on and on and on.  She always has been a good storyteller, and sometimes she embellishes on the details, so we just laughed and said, “Oh, yeah, Talia, I’m sure it was!”  I proceed to rail on about “Let me tell you about some witnesses I’ve had!”  She goes to her car and gets her backup recorder and says, “No, you’re not hearing me.  Listen to this guy!” 
 
She turns on the recorder, and out comes this growling sound, kind of like you would do if you were pretending to be a bear.  “RRRRRR.”  Honestly, it sounded exactly like the people who do the “Do not smoke” commercials that have their finger over that little hole in their throat.  All of us were sitting around the table listening to this when she pushes “Play” like a maestro, needing to prove her point.  We all were like, “What??  What was wrong with him?”  She recounts that he said he had smoked his whole life, like several packs a day, and he said he just kept getting worse and worse.
 
Anyway, that wasn’t the story for today, but today’s story reminded me of that event.  I’m reading this transcript, and I thought she did a great job, not very many “off” things, so I forgot about her saying she had a hard time hearing.  There was one point where the Judge says to the marble-mouth lawyer “You know I can’t hear a word you say.”  And then again later, the Judge says, “I can’t understand a word you say.”  Well, we get to this one point in the transcript, and something just wasn’t right – it didn’t make sense, and seemed like something was missing.  I ask Tal what is up with that part and she’s like, “I have no idea – you listen and see.”  We’re both sitting at our kitchen table at the time, computers and papers spread everywhere, trying to get through 775 pages together.  She passes over the computer and sticks the headphones in my ears.
 
She turns on the audio and all I hear is this huge roar of a fan and beneath the fan real low is this “garble, garble, garble” kind of like someone talking under water.  My eyes bug out and I practically scream, “What??  THIS is what you’ve had to listen to for 775 pages??”  She begins to laugh and says, “I TOLD YOU!  Listen to it about six more times, and you’ll finally realize there’s a human trying to talk in there.” I listened and listened, and honestly, I couldn’t make heads nor tails out of it.  I could pick up enough to make the sentence seem right, but only God knows if it was perfect or not.  I take the headphones out and say, “Well, I thought you did a good job before hearing this, but now I’m really impressed!”  She says, “Well, my ears are about broken, and I practically have callouses from pressing the headphones in”……see what I mean about exaggerations?
 
We keep reading, and honestly, we were both so bleary-eyed and tired that it’s a wonder we were sitting up straight.  We both had had to work the two days we were doing this, so we wouldn’t start reading until late in the afternoon anyway.  Let me tell you a little bit about this case so the next part will make sense.  This was in a very rural county, and there was this family who did not have their children at the hospital, they had no birth certificates, they never went to school, no electricity or running water in the house, and there were seven kids, five boys and two girls.  The father and one brother had already been convicted of sexually molesting the girls, and the father even testified that “Well, my brothers and I fooled around with our sisters, so yeah, I figured my boys were also.”  It was a bad bad deal.
 
One of the brothers who had not been charged yet was named Forest.  One of the sisters had testified he also abused them, but so far he hadn’t been indicted.  So the prosecutor is in his closing argument, and he says, “This brother forced his sister” -- and up jumps marble-mouth and screams into the courtroom, “Forest hasn’t even been charged with anything!”  The prosecutor turns around and says, “I said ‘forcible.’”  The Judge then says, “No, you said ‘forced.’”  When I read that, I began to laugh hysterically!  Talia looks over at me with this “What’s wrong with you – I’m trying to read here” look.  I read it to her and say, “Even they can’t hear what they’re saying!”  This leads to Tal acting it out, of course, and we both laughed until we cried.  Proof of how tired we were, as I’m sure you guys are not seeing it’s that funny.  I guess you had to be there.
 
For some reason, that has stuck with me this week, and I’ve laughed over it several times.  As I was laughing over it, God began to speak to me.  He says, “When I say things to you, it’s in a still small voice, and you don’t seem to hear me sometimes either.  And you don’t listen hard and harder and longer and take more time to make sure you heard what I said; you just move on to the next thing.”  And how right he is.  How many times do we stop everything, turn up the “God ears” and listen and listen and listen, trying to make sure we don’t miss that tiny small voice? 
 
I would encourage you today – put in those “God headphones” and press so hard that you get callouses…..all of us will be better for it!

 

​Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me—put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you.
Philippians 4:9

​Tom and I spent a few days out of town this week for our anniversary (22 years!), and we ate at Cracker Barrel on the way.  I cannot eat at Cracker Barrel without remembering one of the craziest depositions I ever took.  I was excited to do this deposition because it was a new client, a really nice young attorney we used to go to church with.  Turned out this was his first deposition, which he tells me kind of nervously before the depo begins.  I assured him that he would do great, may have even told him about actually throwing up during my first deposition, so he certainly couldn’t top that experience!  He laughed, and the opposing attorney brings his client in, and the deposition begins.
 
I had noticed the young attorney had a neatly-typed outline before him, which is crucial for most attorneys, but certainly unseasoned one who don’t want to forget something or lose their train of thought.  He starts out with the quintessential first question:  “State your name, please.”  The witness says, “Well, you want my name I go by now or the name my mama named me or the second name they gave me when the courthouse burnt down?”  Well, even for me, with 20 years under my belt at that point, that was a new one.  The young lawyer says, “Well, I’m not sure.  I guess the name your mama gave you.”  The witness starts down this trail of how he got his name at birth, then when he was four years old, the courthouse burned down and he had to get a new birth certificate, so they decided to name him after a relative, Uncle So-In-So because he was so successful in business (then we heard all about his business), and then when he got older, he decided he wanted to go by a different name.
 
No lie, this answer went on for FIVE full pages.  I had never had this happen before, and as I look over at the lawyer, he has this deer-in-the-headlights look.  The witness finally winds down, ready for the next question, and the lawyer goes back to his outline.  Next question is address, followed by some background information like high school, work history, that type of thing.  You know, the usual in every deposition.  About three background questions in, this deponent decides he’s going to take control of this deposition.  He says he doesn’t need to answer these questions because it has nothing to do with all that junk that Cracker Barrel had sitting around, and he wasn’t there to talk about himself – he wanted to talk about Cracker Barrel and how they injured his wife.
 
This kind young lawyer tries gently to get him to continue on the normal way, and his own lawyer even told him that “It’s just background – don’t worry, we’ll get there.”  He balks at this and will barely give any information, which is totally frustrating the questioner.  Not only is he giving little information, he is actually fighting about almost every answer.  Finally, the lawyer gives up and heads to the day of “the incident.”  He says, “Let’s talk about the day of your wife’s accident.  What were you doing that day before you came to Cracker Barrel?”  By then, this deponent has had it.  He practically screams, “What in the world does it matter what we were doing that day?  None of that has anything to do with the fact that you cannot walk into a Cracker Barrel without tripping over all that junk you guys want to put everywhere when all we wanted to do was come and eat.  I don’t know why you’re wasting your time asking me these questions when if you hadn’t had that quilt rack where it was and that quilt hanging over so you couldn’t see the legs of that thing, none of this would have happened!  Do I need to ask these questions for you?”
 
The lawyer tries to peel back to his question so he can stay with his outline.  I mean, his order had already been blown way out of the water, but if he couldn’t keep control on the actual details of the accident, he was going to be in trouble.  He explains that he will get to the actual incident, but that he needs to get the background so he can lay a foundation.  The man just continues on and on and on, arguing and fussing and wanting to tell his story.  I mean, it just wouldn’t stop.  I cannot remember all the details, but about halfway in, I was spurting laughter, trying my best not to, but it was just impossible.  The plaintiff’s attorney was Mike Ranson, and he was literally laughing out loud.  I kind of thought during the whole thing that this would probably be about like trying to take my father’s deposition – he’s a storyteller, and sometimes he can get off on a yarn…
 
I hate to admit that as the day went on, I laughed out loud more than once, and literally wrote this young attorney an apology note for my behavior.  I just could not help it.  This man’s wife had tripped on a quilt rack, and he just couldn’t stop with the mantra of “If you didn’t have all this junk in the way and allowed people to just get into your restaurant to eat, none of this would have happened!”  At the end of the day, this poor attorney looked like he had been run over by a train – well, a run-away witness of the likes I had never seen before nor since.  And now I cannot walk into a Cracker Barrel without thinking he was probably right, and he sure gave this new attorney a story to tell about his first deposition.  I think it beats my story of throwing up, actually…
 
The moral of the story is:  Every day is an adventure to be enjoyed – sometimes you’ve just got to go with the flow.  And you’ll be happy to know the young lawyer is now a seasoned professional who manages a very successful law firm, so it all ends well.  Enjoy those storytellers in your life, and make sure that God knows your name (you know, the one your mama gave you and the new one you got after the courthouse burned down and the one you like to go by….)

Every court reporter secretly wants to be a lawyer.  There are times when in trial or deposition, I know the court reporter is thinking, “Would you just sit down and let me do it?”  I’ve seen lawyers that are so far afield in their thinking about what’s important in a case, lawyers that were so unprepared it was painful to watch, lawyers who could care less about their client’s case (and it showed!).  Then again, there are the phenomenal lawyers, and I am blessed to have many of them as clients.

Occasionally, I’ll have to get aggressive when trying to collect payment, and I just hate, hate, hate collections!  Every month, I’m on the phone trying to make sure people got their invoices, see if they have a problem with something, etc., etc.  Lately, I have sued a couple people that were just literally blowing the invoices off, acting like they didn’t owe them or just didn’t care if they owed them or not.  My reporters work on a percentage basis, and if I don’t collect, they don’t get anything, and frankly, that’s just not okay with me.  They work very hard, get their transcripts turned around in seven days, and to have to beg to get paid a year later is ridiculous.

This week, I had a hearing coming up in magistrate court against a plaintiff’s firm that had just blown off a couple bills.  They had gotten the case continued once a couple months ago, last minute, and this week was our day of reckoning.  I got my case prepared, all my documents ready, put on my best “lawyer” attire, and off to court I went.  I had my cross examination of this lawyer all prepared as to why he didn’t think he owed the bill, what his defenses were, etc.  He shows up about the time the hearing should start, slides into the bench beside me, and says, “Now, what is it going to take to get this thing to go away?”

I say, “Get your checkbook out, and it will be gone in an instant.”  He laughs and says he doesn’t owe the bill.  Now mind you, we are sitting very close to each other on a bench, legs touching, faces about five inches from each other, the public all around.  I said, “What do you mean, you don’t owe it?”  He says, “I didn’t authorize this expense.  I don’t hire court reporters.  I never, ever hire a court reporter, and I didn’t hire one on this occasion, so I don’t owe it.”

I pull the invoice out, and his firm did in fact hire us, even expedited the transcript because their trial was coming up.  I had been told by his associate who used to work for him that the client didn’t win and wouldn’t pay the expenses, so that was why we weren’t getting paid.  I said, “Your firm did hire us – even expedited it – and do you understand what happens when you expedite something?  That means my reporter goes home, stops doing whatever her family needs her to do, and she does whatever YOU asked her to do.”  And then you just can’t find it in your heart to pay her for her work?
 
He keeps insisting he doesn’t owe me, that this young associate who worked for him didn’t really work for him but had this deal if he brought in money, the firm got money – if he didn’t bring in any money, then the firm didn’t make anything.  Therefore, he made nothing, so he doesn’t owe anything.  I look at him, my mouth agape.  “So because you lost your case, my court reporter gets stiffed?”  Let me make sure I understand this.
“Well, she’s not getting stiffed – she just isn’t going to get paid, because I don’t owe her anything.  My client might owe her something, but not me.”  I pull out the case law all across the country that is right on point that when a lawyer orders a transcript, the obligation to pay is between the attorney and the reporter, not the client and reporter.  The reporter doesn’t even know who the client is half the time, much less have any communication or agreement about paying the bill.  The law is clear that the attorney owes.

He can get out of that one also.  It’s not him – it’s this young attorney.  I should go after him.  I say, “He worked for you at the time, so it is YOU, your firm, that owes.”  “Oh, no, no, it’s not me, it’s him personally.”  I say, “Did he or did he not have a business card with your firm name on it?”  “Well, yes.”   “Then he worked for you, he is your agent, and you are stuck.  You owe this bill – why don’t you just pay it?”

Well, the stories began to roll – he’s a corporation and I should have served him through the Secretary of State, not personally.  If that didn’t work, he got a divorce and didn’t have any money – his house was for sale and his beach house is for sale and all he got was his kids and his Harley.  You name it, he had an excuse.  We are sitting here arguing for 20 minutes so far.  He says, “Well, just give me a continuance and I’ll try to get some money out of the young associate and see if that works.” I said, “NO, you have continued this once and I’m ready – I’ve got case law and I’ve got a statute that says the court reporter can’t work on a contingency fee, and I’m ready to go.  NO continuance.” 

The bill we were arguing over was around $650.00.  He says, “I’ve got two $100.00 bills in my pocket – I’ll give you those and we’ll be done.”  I just about came unglued.  I said, “You know what?  Your sob story does not touch what happened to my court reporter this year, and I am not going to give her work away for free just because you want to come up with every excuse in the world not to pay her.  She deserves better than this!”  He says, “I can see you’re really into this – don’t you have enough money anyway?”  I said, “Yes, I do – but SHE DOESN’T, and I won’t make a penny off this mess – having taken two days off work already, gotten the paperwork ready, pulled hair out just getting the suit filed, paying out $90.00 just to file it.  The more he said he didn’t owe, the madder I was getting.

Long, long 45-minute story later (in which he said even though I was getting heated, I had good legs), we settled for $500.00 in 45 days.  He offers to shake on it, and I say, “No, you’re going to write me out something saying you’re going to pay it.”  He says, “You don’t trust my word?”  I say, “Well, you just told me you didn’t have a good reputation and you didn’t care to take this sob story in to the judge and let him and the public see that you don’t pay your bills.  You just put it in writing.”  He writes me out a little note saying he will pay me in 45 days, signs his name.  Then he waits a minute, grabs the pen again and puts below his signature “(UNDER PROTEST).”  I literally laughed out loud – “Just had to get the last word in, didn’t you?”  “Well, it IS under protest.”  Whatever.

And what spiritual lesson is there in this?  I have thought about this so much this week.  As I think about this situation, I realize it is EXACTLY what our Lord does for us – he is OUR ADVOCATE.  When we can’t make our way, Jesus intervenes for us, he does the arguing for us – he goes to God and begs for us for the things we deserve, regardless of the circumstances.  He is our advocate against satan, arguing for us when we’re so messed up, we can’t think to hold our strength up against the wiles of the devil.  The devil can get us so confused, he can put reasons and excuses into our lives, story after story of why we’re so defeated, so depressed, make such bad choices, why we’re not living up to our potential and doing right. 

​But you know what Jesus is doing?  He’s going to our Father, reminding him of what we deserve, all the goodness that God has for us, and the fact that the work has been done to pay for it – it is paid in full, and all we have to do is claim it!  Always remember, you have that advocate, the one who will fight for you when you can’t fight for yourself!  Seek Him …..

​We went to the Roane County Bar dinner last night, and as usual, it was such a great time! The attorneys that practice there are warm, funny and have great stories. Mort Titus regaled us with his annual comedy routine which involves everyone in the audience being made fun of, embarrassed in some way or sucked up to (the judges, of course!)  He is talented way beyond his legal mind.  We sat at a table with Orton Jones and his wife, and Orton is one of the best storytellers I have ever known.  He remembers details about everything and was telling a story about having gotten a severe spanking because he found a grasshopper in his spinach in eighth grade and he took it to the cooks to show them.  These were the days school administrators whipped with paddles with holes in them, and he said he got it good.  I’m not sure what was so bad about his showing of the grasshopper, but he turned out to be such a good man, I guess it didn’t hurt him any
 
Ryan Ruth and his wife were there as well (the couple who had the wreath stolen off of their front door as well as packages that had been delivered by UPS to their home).  Their security camera caught it all, and they have been on the news all week.  Seems 20/20 is interested in their story as well, so we may see them on national news soon.  They are such a nice couple, and we got all the details on their ordeal and how they’ve been made famous because of it.  Oh, and interestingly enough, the thief had 34 misdemeanor charges dismissed just a couple years ago, and drives a BMW!
 
It reminded me of the Mahan brothers who used to hang around the courthouse and do petty little crimes just to “get by.”  One of their crimes was to go to convenience stores (back when deposits were made on pop bottles) and the store would have all the cartons of returned bottles stacked up out front.  Well, the Mahan boys would just pick up a carton or two out of the stacks up front and take them in to get a refund on the bottles.  I guess it worked a few times until the clerks got wise to them.  Carol, Tom’s secretary, said she knew of them hanging around the courthouse after hours, and if anyone wanted to go in, they would collect a $5.00 “entry fee” to allow them to enter the courthouse.  They did know the system fairly well…
 
They also got in a fight one time that resulted in one brother getting his rear end slashed with a knife.  He comes before the court, and I’m the court reporter, and George Scott was the judge.  He is getting arraigned, and somehow the nature of the crime got brought up, and he unbuttons his pants and begins to drop them, turning around in the process, and Judge Scott quickly shuts that down!  I was glad, as his rear was right on my eye level about two feet away from my face….oh my.  They would get sent to the drunk tank at Weston to dry out, and if they’d be there together, they’d always try to escape out the third-story window by tying sheets together and helping drop each other down so they could sneak and get something to drink.  One time, the sheets broke and one of them fell two stories down.  Did not get hurt a bit.  I’ve always heard you can’t hurt a drunk…….
 
One of the other “old days” stories that came to mind is a Jackson County story.  Cheryl Cunningham Donohoe was the judge’s secretary, and her office was where everyone sat to await going in for hearings that were held in the judge’s chambers.  The judge had something else going on, so several of us were waiting our turn in Cheryl’s office.  We were going to have a hearing on a 60-day evaluation on a young man who had been sent off to determine his competency to stand trial.  Homer Fisher was the sheriff, so he had the prisoner, and Joe Hash was the prisoner’s attorney, so the three of them were on one wall, and I was on a different wall waiting to go in with them.  This young man starts telling his attorney (loud enough for all of us to hear) that he had a really hard time while he was at Weston.  See, there were these bugs that just kept crawling on him, crawling on him at night, in the day, while he slept, while he was awake, just kept crawling all over him and all over him and they were in his hair and in his ears and on his stomach and on his back and just everywhere.  He just kept repeating this mantra over and over, all the while scratching himself from top to bottom.  These bugs just wouldn’t leave him alone, they kept crawling on him and crawling on him and crawling on him.  His hair was standing on end where he was clawing for these bugs, and he was pulling his shirt up to scratch, just still digging while talking about these bugs. 
 
His attorney, Joe, was just calmly listening with half an ear, barely registering what he was saying.  Well, not the rest of us.  Cheryl and I were looking at each other, and we were watching Homer begin to scratch his head, and I’m scratching my neck, and Cheryl is giving me the “shivers” look.  He kept on and on about these bugs, and by the time we got called in, we were all scratching from head to toe.  We get into the hearing, and to tell you the truth, I can’t remember the result, but when we come out, Cheryl is going crazy with a Lysol can.  She’s spraying the chairs, the handles, the desk, the lamp, wiping furiously like there is a monster chasing her.  I said, “What in the world’s gotten into you?”  She says, “While you were in there, I read his report – HE’S GOT CRABS!”  I can still see the look on her face, 30 years later.  Thank God we all escaped his fate……I can feel the bugs crawling on me even now……
 

Today I wanted to tell my bank robber story…
 
When I was about 19, I had my first job with Judge George Scott covering the counties of Roane, Calhoun and Jackson.  I was young and naïve, having grown up relatively sheltered.  One thing my father taught me was the value of picking up hitchhikers – oh, I know, not the safest thing in today’s evil world, but then and now, it is a ministry of his.  I sat in the back seat with random yahoos frequently, and really didn’t mind it a bit – they all had a story to tell, and my parents were showing me how the Good Samaritan of today should act.
 
That said, I’m on my way home from work one day, and it is around 6:00 p.m. probably.  We lived on a country road, Barr Run, that wasn’t frequently traveled really, and I come upon this green car sitting in a curve kind of pulled off the road, heading in the opposite direction of where you would have pulled off on your side of the road.  That should have been Clue No. 1.  Anyway, I pull up beside the car, roll down my window and ask the guy if he needs help.  He says no, he’s just waiting on a friend to come and help him with his car.  This was before cell phones, so I say, “Well, would you like to come home with me to wait on him or to call someone?”  He says no, he’s good, he’ll just wait there.  I say, “Okay, but you’re more than welcome.”  He says thanks, and on I go.
 
I get home, start making supper, turn on the news, and there has been a bank robbery in Ravenswood and they are still looking for the robber!  Driving a green car and may be hidden on a side road!  AAAAAHHH!  I’ve just invited this guy home with me!  I call in to the Ravenswood Police Station and tell them my story, and they ask me to come down.  I go down, and it is the most pitiful interview I have ever seen.  They ask me a few questions and then say, “Okay, that’s it.”  Every question he asked, he wrote the whole thing down and then asked it, then wrote my answer down, so it took forever!  I say, “Do you think you should ask me what he looked like?”  The officer (who isn’t there any longer) says, “Oh, yeah.  What.  Did.  He.  Look.  Like.”  I tell him what I noticed (which honestly wasn’t much and perhaps I shouldn’t have suggested the question), and I am released.  They don’t catch him, and you don’t hear a thing about it again.
 
About three to five years later (A LONG TIME), this FBI officer calls me and says they believe they have caught the bank robber that I spoke to, and he needs to come and see me with a line-up.  I’m like “Oh, gosh, I didn’t even notice that much at the time, and now all these years later, I am sure I won’t be able to ID him.” He wants to try anyway.  I begin to fret and pray, “Oh, God, give me wisdom I don’t have; give me discernment; show me this face that I cannot remember so a criminal does not go free because I NEVER pay attention to anything!”  The FBI guy shows up at my home, I look at the array and they all look exactly alike.  I say, “Could I maybe see the statement I gave at the time to help me remember?”  “No, ma’am, we cannot help you with this – you have to do this on your own.”  Oh, it was awful.  I had to send him away with the news that I had no idea.  I was sick.
 
I don’t know if they were able to convict the man or not – I was supposedly the ONLY witness who had seen his face in Ravenswood, but he had robbed other banks as well, so hopefully they caught him for one of those.  I think our current bank robber isn’t as sophisticated, or he would have had wheels……let’s just say if you think you see or talk to him, TAKE NOTES and PHOTOS!  

Have been crazy upside down with three focus groups this week, but it’s all good – amazing, though, how we interact with each other.  The jury system is revered by the world as we are the country with the best justice system, the system where our peers judge us – how could it be more fair than that?  If you’ve read any of the John Grisham novels, you know that there can always be a “bad guy” in every situation, but in 32 years of reporting and trials, I have only come home sick to my stomach two times, just feeling like what happened was wrong, so wrong.  Sometimes as a court reporter, you know way more than the jury does and you wonder if they had known “the rest of the story,” would the outcome have been different?

The focus groups we did this week were kind of like that – the attorneys argued their case, but they would leave certain pieces of information out, and then after the group had deliberated, I would go in and fill them in on a few tidbits to see if it changed their opinions any.  There was a really sweet African-American lady in one of our groups, and she was really fighting hard for her side, but everyone else wasn’t buying it.  Once I told “the rest of the story,” she says, “Now, Mister, you done gone and disappointed me.”  It was hilarious – she says, “Now, buddy, I was your best friend here, but now knowing all this other junk, we can’t be friends anymore.”  I so love the black culture and how real they are – I’ve often said I could easily go to a black church.

Anyway, I say that to say this:  Our last group didn’t have as much information as the other ones, and they were a mix of two for the plaintiff, two for the defendant and two undecided.  What ended up happening was an unbelievable lesson in human behavior.  The two for the plaintiff were way more passionate about their cause, and they literally took over, rolled over these other people and swayed them in their direction through the force of persuasion and passion, oftentimes in very heated ways.  The two undecideds caved easily, and the other two held out for the defendant for a short while but ended up caving all the same.  I literally could not believe it, watching remotely, how those who previously believe something just threw it away and went with the strongest in the pack.

The whole experience made me wonder about our passion for our faith.  How often do you try to persuade someone to believe in Jesus Christ?  Have you ever?  Would people even know you’re a Christian?  One of the most interested books I’ve ever read was written by a guy named Lee Strobel, and it was called “The Case for Christ.”  Lee’s wife had gotten saved, and he wasn’t having it – her faith was threatening their lifestyle, their marriage, their relationship, and he was a journalist, a seeker of the truth, and he set out to show her logically and intelligently how this faith in this dead guy was just wrong, a made-up desperation of seeking for some emotional crutch to deal with problems in her life.

What happened was the exact opposite.  He set out to seek the truth, who was this Jesus, what did history say about him, did he really exist, was he just a prophet or a good man?  How many times did the Bible contradict itself, on and on.  He set about this like he was going to do an expose on 20-20 of this cult of these infantile people, religious fanatics, built around this mythical figure Jesus Christ.  As he studied and researched, the evidence became clearer and clearer that this Jesus really was the Christ, and he ended up getting saved also and is one of the most passionate speakers and writers of how to share your faith and to make “The Case for Christ.” 

When I first read his book, I was very convicted that I knew this Jesus, had known Him for years, and I wasn’t sharing my faith and researching it and studying it like he was, and I vowed to do better.  I would say I failed at that.  Oh, I don’t hide my faith – it is all over me – but I do not actively debate those who may not know him and try to convince them of my passion.  Why don’t I?  If we were on a jury and someone disagreed with us, wouldn’t we fight to the end, until we got them convinced of our belief?  I would wager to bet that we have argued with our friends and co-workers and perhaps relatives about ten times as many things as we’ve tried to convince them to try our Savior.  Am I right?  Lord, help us. 
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I so appreciate when the Lord comes in and convicts me – it lets me know He’s still working on me, He hasn’t turned his back on me.  And don’t worry, I’m not gonna beat anyone over the head with it, but I am going to study to show myself prepared so that I am always ready to give anyone willing to listen a passionate argument on why they should try Christianity – won’t you join me?