O TIGER’S HEART WRAPPED IN A WOMAN’S HIDE!

O TIGER’S HEART WRAPPED IN A WOMAN’S HIDE!

- William Shakespeare

Folklore has it than when Willie Sutton was asked why he robbed banks, he responded, “Because that’s where the money is.” But today the current topic of conversation is Tiger Woods and why he cheated on his beautiful wife. Multiple theories abound, but I suspect that if you substitute “sex” for “money” and “women” for “banks” you will have found the answer.

I am not embracing marital infidelity. To the contrary, I like to think that the vast majority of husbands are faithful to their wives. That being said, a fair number of men seem to be taking heat from their wives for Tiger’s indiscretions, as if they were somehow complicit. A late night comedian commented this his wife put him on a 10:30 p.m. curfew.

In any event, I sense that there is a subliminal and unspoken war between the sexes, which reminds me of the Korean War that never officially ended. Things are generally quiet but every once and a while something happens and there is a skirmish in the demilitarized zone. Right now that something is Tiger Woods.

But rest assured that this is a temporary phenomenon that will soon pass. Nobody remembers the Alamo. A year from now Tiger will once again be playing golf; both normalcy and boredom will have returned to our lives.

I have much more to say on this topic, but you will have to excuse me. Mrs. Sipsa wants to go see a George Clooney movie.

A Serious Man

When the truth is found to be lies,
You know the joy within you dies.

- The Jefferson Airplane

Last weekend I saw the newest film by the Coen brothers: A Serious Man. When I left the theater, I felt that the film was good but not as excellent as some of their previous work. But the next morning, I woke up at 5:00 a.m. to find myself thinking more about this film. And it has been distracting me ever since.

I will not reveal much about the film, except to say that A Serious Man is a current day telling of the story of Job. Well not quite current day: 1967 to be exact. Is the film’s protagonist cursed? Or is he just being tossed around by the waves of life in a world that is essentially devoid of meaning? But what then of religion? Is there a God? Or does religion simply exist to comfort us with the belief that there is a divine order to what otherwise would amount to a chaotic existence?

Yes, we all like to believe that we are the masters of our fates. If we get an education, if we say our prayers, if we don’t smoke, if we eat less red meat, if we get a colonoscopy - then everything will be okay. But that is not the truth. The truth is that we are all going to die. Can we prolong our lives? Push that day further out into the future? Perhaps. But no warranties. More likely we are only as secure as the next roll of the dice on the cosmic table.

I once saw a man plead guilty to a traffic charge arising out of a motor vehicle collision. Unfortunately, the collision had been very serious; a woman had been killed. Notwithstanding the fatality, the judge fined the man a mere $100.00 and sent him on his way. But if the man had been in another place at the same time – say parked in a handicapped spot in front of the Jewel Food Store - the fine would have been $250.00 and the woman would still be alive.

There are a million stories like that.

The Smile

Ever since my grandson was born, it seemed that he would smile whenever he saw me.

In my office I have a picture of my grandson taken when he was but three months old. He is with my daughter and son-in-law and across his face: a huge smile. Now that he is almost a year old there can be no doubt that his smiles are genuine and not muscular accidents. He will spot me across a room – smile, then dart over to me. It makes my heart sing.

But as I write these words I am riding a commuter train home from my office in Chicago. I have now ridden this train over 15,000 times. But as I look around the train car tonight, I notice that it is without smiles. A few people are reading papers. Some are looking out the window. Some are just staring out into space. But smiles? Not a one. Yet everybody on this train, including myself, was once a small child. Back then, life was an adventure and smiles were automatic things. What happened?

As the economy worsens, Americans adjust to the fact that a lower standard of living will mark their futures. So perhaps there just isn’t much to smile about. But we continue to have dreams of betterment and the hope that one of those rags to riches stories that appears in the newspaper will one day be about us. In the meantime we ride the train, earning just enough income so that tomorrow we can ride it again. We are a nation of worker bees. Somewhere out there must be a King Bee and a Queen Bee. But they are not on the train.

Europe. I was there a long time ago, in the early 1970’s. In those days Europe was divided into east and west. Western Europe was “good” and “Eastern” Europe was “bad.” It’s all changed since then. Now all of Europe leans to the left and is therefore almost entirely “bad.” Evil socialism has crept in.

But wait - those Europeans look like they are having one hell of a time. Their money is worth more than ours. They have free health care. They have a free educational system. They have democratic governments. They are off during the entire month of August. They swim naked on the beach. They have sex. They don’t get fat. They drink fine wine. They live longer than us. And they smile.

America. The sign says: Love it or leave it.

Maybe so.

NICK & NORAH'S INFINITE PLAYLIST

I wonder where Michael Cera will be in ten or fifteen years. He seems to be a skilled actor, but is constantly type cast in the same role: confused teenager in chase of The Girl, who ultimately winds up being mutually attracted to Cera because of his innocent nerdiness. In this case The Girl is played by some young actress named Kat Dennings. She’s got something. If I were single and 18, 19, 20 or even 35, I would probably chase after her myself.

But alas, time has passed me by and I just don’t understand the world that these kids live in. Sex is casual and only slightly more difficult to obtain than cigarettes. They go to New York City on the weekend, hopping from bar to bar while trying to find a band called Where’s Fluffy. And none of these high school kids ever gets carded. Compare to the suburb where I live, Elk Grove Village, Illinois where everybody gets carded. And by everybody, I mean everybody. A man in his 70’s once confronted me in the parking lot of Jewel Food Store and asked me to buy him some beer because he didn’t have his ID.

Anyway, this film started out okay, but began to lose me with a pretty disgusting scene in which a drunken young woman reaches into an unflushed toilet to retrieve her ringing cell phone and her bubble gum. No way that's funny. And so I decided that life in Elk Grove Village isn’t so bad so long as I have an ID.

2 stars out of 4

Olympics (Not)

I’m not used to hearing live rock music playing from the courthouse at 8:00 a.m. But that’s what happened this morning. You see my office faces the Daley Center Plaza and the volume of activity taking place there made it difficult to work.

Yes, today was the day that the 2016 Olympic games were going to be awarded to Chicago. And Chicago was ready. Clark Street, adjacent to the Daley Center Plaza, was closed to traffic and instead was occupied by a fleet of media trailers armed with satellite dishes. Two JumboTron monitors simultaneously displayed the goings on in Copenhagen and the activities that were taking place on a large stage that had been constructed in the plaza itself. The music was mostly from the 70’s and had a celebratory feel to it. If the crowd had been wearing green instead of orange, it would have had the feel of St. Patrick’s Day. Only bigger.

Being from Chicago, I had mixed feelings about the Olympics coming here. On one hand it probably would have been the only chance I might have in my lifetime to witness some Olympic events. On the other hand, the City of Chicago claimed to be broke. It has sold off the Skyway toll bridge and leased out its parking meters for 75 years just to raise some instant cash. City employees, including police, are being forced to take days off without pay. But we were assured that no tax dollars would to go pay for the Olympics and that it would all be financed privately. Sure.

For me the most unsettling part of Chicago’s Olympic bid was the construction of a $300,000,000.00 Olympic stadium which would not survive the Olympics and which would be razed following the games. I know we have turned into a disposable society, but I thought that term referred to items like shaving razors.

But the very first vote in Copenhagen eliminated Chicago as a candidate city. All of of a sudden, the noise in the Daley Center quieted. It was like a wedding where the bride had shocked everybody by failing to appear. On television, a camera panned the crowd. The facial expressions: like ten thousand children finding out simultaneously that there was no Santa Claus.

I decided to go home.

Old Dogs

When I was a young lawyer, they were called old dogs. These were the older lawyers who could be seen every day, hanging around the courthouse. I didn’t invent the term “old dogs” but it certainly seemed to fit.

These old dogs had a certain look to them. Later I would find out that these “old dog” lawyers were not as old as I thought they were. Instead I learned that almost all trial lawyers look older than their chronological age.

The old dogs shunned the spotlight. Or perhaps they once sought it but gave up on the search. In any event, the old dogs were different than the prima donna lawyers of the trial world. The prima donnas operated from large luxurious offices, had publicists and huge staffs. The prima donnas also hired associate lawyers who would cover most of the court calls. In fact the appearance of a prima donna lawyer in court was a rare event, usually associated with a trial and a high-profile one at that.

And so if one wanted to spot a prima donna lawyer, the best place to do so was at an expensive restaurant at lunchtime. In contrast, the old dogs could be found in the courtroom cafeteria during the late morning hours. Usually they were having coffee with other old dogs.

The old dogs were not incompetent. To the contrary, they were journeymen. Unlike us young lawyers, they had been around the block again and again and again. On the other hand, they didn’t seem to be cutting edge.

The old dogs also seemed to care less about their appearance than the younger lawyers. They were not slobs, but they were not slaves to fashion either. And when an old dog removed a file from his briefcase, it usually consisted of a tattered manila jacket jammed with papers. Sometimes the volume of documents crammed into the file would cause the jacket to tear open at the side. But instead of transferring the documents to a new folder, the old dog would simply repair the side of the jacket with tape. Often the old dog’s name and address were preprinted on the folder, usually in the middle near the bottom. I always figured that if an old dog lost a file, this was how he would get it back.

Most of the old dogs represented personal injury plaintiffs. And because I was a young insurance defense lawyer, I had occasion to visit many of the old dogs at their offices when I presented my clients for depositions. Typically the old dogs would locate their offices in old buildings not far from the courthouse. And the old dogs tended to be sole practitioners. Yes they might have an assistant, but otherwise they worked for themselves.

Sometimes the furniture in an old dog’s office looked like it had been purchased from the Salvation Army. Their bookshelves were frequently filled with paperback advance sheets because the old dogs saw no point in wasting money to buy hardbound volumes that contained the very same cases. And the pictures that hung on their walls were old, dated and often had some kind of legal theme.

At times it seemed like the old dog lawyers had boarded a train that just wouldn’t make any stops to let them off. I say this because the old dogs never seemed to retire. But they did die. This would usually be followed by a pleasant obituary for the old dog in a legal newspaper that only other lawyers read. I always wondered what happened to the old dog, now dead dog’s tattered files. I assumed that they eventually worked their way over to the office of another old dog.

The judges treated the old dogs differently than us young lawyers. We pups were constantly being yelled at for our incompetence. But the old dogs were treated with tolerance and even a certain level respect. Maybe this was because many old dogs were older than the judges who heard their cases. Or perhaps the judges feared that a tirade might give an old dog a heart attack.

Next year I will have been practicing law for 34 years. I am a solo practitioner. I have no partners, but I do have an assistant. My office is in an old building across the street from court. I have now commuted, by train, to and from downtown Chicago on over fifteen thousand occasions. I refuse to buy a PDA. I am older than many of the judges who hear my cases and they treat me with respect. I am a journeyman and I know what I am doing. So have I become an old dog? I don’t think so. Times have changed and things are different now. But I can’t quite put my finger on why.

Pandorum

This has to be the worst film of 2009, possibly forever. Zero stars. I wish I could buy the last two hours of my life back. Yes, when I am on my deathbed and the sand in the hourglass is running out, I am going to be thinking of the time that I wasted on this film. Even Ed Wood would have given this film a "thumbs down." Plan Nine from Outer Space is Citizen Kane compared to this monumental waste of celluloid.

What was this film about? I have no idea. It takes place on a large spaceship and whenever anybody talks, there is an echo. The film should have come with subtitles, but I doubt that subtitles would have been enough to save it. The little bit of dialogue that I did pick up made no sense. Then there is some confusion and fighting. People walk around the giant spaceship. A couple of people eat living grasshoppers that are supposedly a good source of protein. Weird weapons are pointed at people's necks. People are put in tubes. There are some jumpy, pale, threatening, demonic zombie-type creatures who resemble the ones that gave Will Smith so much trouble in I Am Legend. They are supposed to be scary, but all I wanted them to do was finish off the main characters so that I could leave the theater and go home.

It is reported that the budget for this film was $40,000,000.00. A good piece of humanity could have been fed for that $40,000,000.00, not to mention the time that could have been saved from peoples' lives.

Dennis Quaid was in this film and it looks like all of his scenes must have been shot in a day. His performance seems to be phoned in, but at least it was a performance. I wonder how much Dennis got paid to appear in this turkey. Not much, I bet.

I am always interested in films starring Dennis Quaid. He has had some good films but he does not appear - well - selective in the roles that he takes. But he does have a name that at least the public recognizes. And so I sometimes wonder if film producers look at the big movie stars and their salaries, then keep lowering their sites until eventually they sign Dennis Quaid.

By the way, I intensely dislike texting - especially when people pull out their cell phones in a theater and start sending and receiving texts during the middle of a movie. Well there was a lot of texting going on in tonight's audience. But for the first time in my life, I wished that I also knew how to text.

Health Care & Socialism

President Obama’s desire to bring some form of universal health care to the United States has been greeted with resistance and may be doomed for failure. The question that remains to be answered is a simple one. Why?

Approximately fifty million people in the United States have no type of health insurance whatsoever. The rest of us have to deal with HMO’s, PPO’s, insurance adjusters making medical decisions that overrule our doctors, claim denials, exhaustion of benefits and exclusions for pre-existing conditions. If we can jump over all these hurdles, we might get our insurance company to pay something. But don’t count on it. Check the court docket in any big city and you will see hospitals suing the major health insurance carriers for payment of assigned benefits. Why do so few wish to escape from this prison?

Health care is a fundamental right in virtually every other civilized country on the planet. It would seem that only the United States is lagging behind. It is curious that the Constitution would provide us with freedom of speech, freedom of religion, the right to a lawyer, the right to a jury trial and apparently even the right to keep a gun in our homes, but include no right to receive fundamental healthcare. Apparently the Founding Fathers, with all of their wisdom, never saw this one coming.

Of course the solution to this mess is relatively simple, and that is to make Medicare available to everybody. And it doesn’t even have to be free. Those under 65 can pay premiums, just like we are already doing to the private insurance companies who refuse to pay our claims. And if you don’t want to buy “government” insurance - if you are satisfied with the coverage and service being provided to you by the No-Pay HMO of Bumfolk, then by all means stay with the No-Pay HMO of Bumfolk. But please allow some of us to purchase this “government” insurance that supposedly nobody wants

The following are the most prominent arguments that have been presented to date that prevents the Sipsa family from buying into Medicare:

(a) Government operation of a health insurance company would amount to “socialism.”

(b) A government operated insurance company would surely be bureaucratic and inefficient;

(c) Private insurance companies could not compete with a government operated healthcare system.

Quite obviously (b) and (c) are contradictory concepts. If a publicly owned health insurance company was truly bureaucratic and inefficient, then private insurers should have no problem providing formidable competition. But would a government operated insurance company truly be bureaucratic and inefficient? For all of its purported problems, I have not heard a single senior citizen tell me that he or she wishes to give up Medicare.

That leaves only one remaining argument, that a government operated health insurance company would drive the United States into a socialist nightmare, complete with healthcare rationing and “death panels.” But since most health care tends to be provided near the end of life and since most of these health care recipients are already being covered by Medicare, why isn’t the rationing and “death panels” already in place? To the contrary, Ray Sipsa’s mother underwent coronary bypass and valve replacement surgery at the age of 83. It was paid for by – you guessed it – Medicare.

Frankly, this “socialism” argument has me scratching my head. The Sipsa family lives in Elk Grove Village, Illinois – a predominantly Republican community. Yet the Elk Grove Park District operates a water park called “Rainbow Falls” for which it charges admission. When a governmental entity operates a water park, is that “socialism?” And if so, where is the outcry? Incidentally, the very same park district operates a health club, a golf course, a theme park for children and a banquet hall. Yes, socialism is rampant in Elk Grove Village, Illinois.

But we are not alone. One of our suburban neighbors is the Village of Schaumburg. In 1999 Socialist Schaumburg built a ballpark to lure a minor league baseball team that continues to play there to this very day. Can you imagine such a thing?

And as I write these words I am traveling on a commuter train. The train is operated by METRA, which is an acronym for Metropolitan Rail - a governmental entity. This train used to be operated by the Milwaukee Road, which was a private company. Unfortunately the Milwaukee Road was losing money until government came to the rescue. Now instead of driving to downtown Chicago in my private car, on a congested expressway, wasting the national's dwindling gas supply, I am typing on my computer as I enjoy socialist air conditioning.

The Chicago White Sox play baseball at U.S. Cellular Field. But the U.S. Cellular Corporation doesn’t own a brick at the ballpark that bears its name. Instead U.S. Cellular Field is owned by a governmental entity that sold off the naming rights.

The Chicago Wolves play hockey at the Allstate Arena, the naming rights having been acquired by the Allstate Insurance Company. But the stadium is actually owned by the Village of Rosemont. Apparently socialism doesn’t bother the insurance industry if they can paste their logo on it.

And we still have public schools to educate our children. Is that socialism? The state also operates the University of Illinois as well as other institutes of advanced learning. Is that socialism?

Yes, socialism is taking over the United States of America.

God help us all.

Lies

Today I am thinking about lies. And lying.

When I was growing up all those years ago, my parents taught me never to lie. There was only one exception: a white lie could be told if necessary to avoid hurting someone. And so I could tell grandpa that he looked good in his striped shirt and plaid pants. I could tell Aunt Lilly that she was as beautiful as ever and that she was not gaining weight.

On the surface, telling the truth would seem to be good advice. Unfortunately it only works if everybody is on board the same train. In any event, lying has become socially acceptable. We have come to expect it.

The American courtroom is practically a Petri dish for lies. In Courtroom 101, the plaintiff is claiming that he had the green light. But wait, the defendant insists that it was he who had the light Somebody is lying and the jury must choose. But lying under oath is perjury, a felony. So will the loser be prosecuted? No. Does anybody care? Not really.

I’ve watched the television drama House on a handful of occasions. The protagonist of the show is a doctor. His philosophy seems to be that everybody lies. He says this repeatedly. His world even seems to be built on this premise. And his world works. The sad truth is that just about everybody lies.

But when did all this lying start? I don’t know. Maybe Bill Clinton told the biggest, most high profile lie of modern times. One might even say that lying reached a new level of acceptability under President Bill. After all, how does one tell one’s children not to lie when the president is doing it? One could almost say that President Clinton’s lies about the Monica Lewinski affair marked the B.C. / A.D. moment on the world’s calendar of lying.

Of course none of the president’s lies hurt his popularity with the American people. Bill Clinton seemed to be a good president and a likeable guy. I’ll admit it; I liked him too. If anything, his popularity soared even after he was caught lying. The rationale seemed to be that if the president (or any other person) was caught in an illicit sexual affair, he couldn’t be expected to tell the truth about it. No, of course not. He would have to lie

And so let be borrow a bit from that fictional character, Gordon Gekko. Lying is good. Lies work. Even when one believes that the ax will fall, lying will at least buy one some time – an hour, a day, whatever. And more often than not, the ax doesn’t fall at all. A husband lies to his wife. What can she do about it? Not much. A wife lies to her husband. What can he do about it? Not much. And if we were to put all of our liars in jail, there would not be enough people left on the outside to work and feed all of the new prisoners.

In the end, telling the truth is like doing the speed limit. It’s the right thing to do, but you almost look foolish doing it.

Now please somebody: teach me how to lie.

The Toothless Jury

The people of the United States are experiencing the diminishment of their rights in the courtroom. The mangled victims of dangerous products and negligent doctors increasingly find their cases being tried in front of well-meaning, but increasingly powerless juries.

Yes the jury might award the plaintiff a significant verdict of damages. But after they have been thanked for their service and have left the courtroom, the judge will pull out a pen and the shaving process will begin. Ultimately the plaintiff might receive some money, but nothing that approaches the jury’s verdict. In many jurisdictions the plaintiff will see the judgment reduced to an arbitrary statutory limit that lawyers and judges refer to as “the cap.” Curiously, the jurors might never learn that their verdict has been bastardized. Most will return to their homes, naively believing that justice has been done and that they were a part of it. Yes, today’s jury has been defanged and declawed. It exists only to pay lip service to a diluting constitutional mandate.

But let us give the devil his due. The powerful and well-financed insurance industry has moved across America advancing a legislative agenda that consists of four simple but brilliant steps:

1. Limit the damages that juries can award.
2. Limit the contingent fees that plaintiffs’ lawyer can charge (usually disguised as “consumer” legislation). This leads to,
3. Plaintiffs’ lawyers being unable to afford to litigate the most serious and catastrophic cases. Which means,
4. Insurance company coffers swell as they keep money that had previously been used to make payments to the innocent victims of negligence.

Of course none of this happened overnight. In order to advance its agenda, the insurance industry first had to convince the public that jury trials were a bad thing. No small task. And so sound bites were used to convince the American people into believing that a jury of one’s peers was a jury of lunatics.

A headline might read:

JURY AWARDS THREE MILLION DOLLARS TO WOMAN WHO SPILLS COFFEE.

Unfortunately few people will examine the evidence or the case beyond the headline, let alone consider the more disturbing but unstated subtext, which suggests that the American people cannot govern themselves through a system of jury trials. Instead the insurance industry will fan the flames of outrage, then push for legislation designed to limit damages in all cases, even the most meritorious and catastrophic ones. As the old saying goes, the baby has been thrown out with the bath water.

These days most Americans probably believe, incorrectly, that our country is drowning in an ocean of frivolous lawsuits. But most legislation does little or nothing to deter frivolous litigation, seeking instead to cap the industry’s exposure on the most meritorious and catastrophic cases. The concept of the frivolous lawsuit was simply the insurance industry’s “Trojan Horse” designed to camouflage its true legislative agenda.

Sadly, the four-point plan is working. Plaintiffs’ lawyers are already beginning to disappear from the American landscape. But as the plaintiffs’ bar shrinks, so will the defense bar, there simply being fewer and fewer cases to defend.

The civil justice system, as we have known it, is about to become an exhibit in the museum.

To borrow a line from Kurt Vonnegut: And so it goes.