The Litigation Junkie

By Suzie Louis

Written by a wig and gown litigator this is the how to avoid disaster in litigation. An insider's warts and all expose of the litigation junkie. Our hapless Cove is in litigation and won’t get out. Our jaundiced author will attempt to help the Cove before it’s too late: he’ll wriggle and squirm, switch me off, slam the book shut, ignore me and no doubt continue on his hapless way. Watch the fun as he destroys his life in the labyrinth of litigation. Unfortunately for the Cove and the many innocents who enter the legal system every year, it's all true.
This small work is a cautionary but hopefully helpful guide, written with a number of purposes in mind but its primary aim is to attempt to save the Hapless Cove from himself. I accept that is unlikely to happen, addiction being what it is, but nothing ventured, nothing gained. What is written here was forged in the fire of legal practice and a resulting sound, if jaundiced knowledge, of the Hapless Cove and the litigation process. This is otherwise known as the legal system or the administration of Justice. For the discussion of the administration of Justice as pure delusion please see my entry in the book at J.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Suzie Louis
• Release date: Apr 4, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476131900

Suzie Louis

It's strange what you eventually come up with when you write for other people: some elements of your own experience emerge as well as fresh, new stories that seem to come from nowhere. This has been my experience since I began to write for pleasure. I initially used my professional and personal life to produce Deepwater, the Litigation Junkie and Diary of a Novice Market Organiser but also found a stream of fantasy that became the Archie the Royal Hot Water Bottle series. I continue to find the creative writing process interesting as I work on a new novel and hope you enjoy the results so far.

Book preview

Chapter 1 An Introduction to the Litigation Junkie

Before my legal career began I was an innocent, blissfully unaware of the dreaded phenomenon of the Litigation Junkie. As yet uninitiated into the lawyer’s code which informs baby barristers about such useful factoids, I had no idea he was to haunt my life thereafter as a pervasive and depressing presence. For that reason I don’t want to run ahead and assume everyone is familiar with this particular, and increasingly prevalent, legal pest, so the account of my first, but regrettably oft repeated, experience which follows may help to enlighten you as to the nature of the beast. However, the Junkie may take offence at being so described so in deference to his prickly sensibilities I will refer to him as the Hapless Cove, whose essential characteristics are also discussed below.

This small work is a cautionary but hopefully helpful guide, written with a number of purposes in mind but its primary aim is to attempt to save the Hapless Cove from himself. I accept that is unlikely to happen, addiction being what it is, but nothing ventured, nothing gained. What is written here was forged in the fire of legal practice and a resulting sound, if jaundiced knowledge, of the Hapless Cove and the litigation process. This is otherwise known as the legal system or the administration of Justice. For the discussion of the administration of Justice as pure delusion please see my entry at J.

I also regret to say that it’s all true: I didn’t have to make it up. You’ll appreciate the horror of that bitter knowledge by the end of the book which is short so you won’t have long to wait.

The entries in the work are arranged alphabetically for ease of reference because the Hapless Cove in the latter stages of addiction is very needy and may have to refer to it in moments of stress, Anxiety, Panic or dare we say it, Paranoia. If that happens I hope he doesn’t forget the tissues. I can’t tell you how many boxes I have bought for the sole use of Hapless Coves in a relatively short career in drag.

As to how it all started here it is. My first experience of the Hapless Cove was at the very beginning of my life as a newly minted lawyer, employed to do commercial litigation, which is lawyer's code for chasing money in the courts. By the way, the code is extensive and to date unwritten. What follows, amongst other things, is an abbreviated crib as to what lawyers say and write to each other and the Bench in an effort to maintain their mystique and dare we say it, entitlement to charge outrageous hourly rates for their expertise and knowledge of the intricacies of the code.

On the first day in my new and I must say, then greatly cherished lawyer's office, one wall was covered in files where the names of the same parties were repeated again and again. The thrill of that first office wears off; you get over these things after you’ve had a number of offices, chambers, files, clients, disappointments in court due to hapless coves and late nights with colleagues swapping gossip and angst accompanied by lots of red wine with consequent detrimental effects on one’s health.

In those far-off rose coloured days the names on the files included: Companies X, Y & Z v Hapless Cove 1 and 4 Ors; (the beginning of the mess); Hapless Cove v Company X (the Cove’s response to the outrageous claims made against him); and Hapless Cove 1, Hapless Cove 2 and Hapless Cove 3 v Company X & 5 Ors (more of the same).

If you’re a trial lawyer you know the kind of thing: under the guise of legal proceedings a company and its directors and/or shareholders and/or employees are at war with each other. They have filed in Court claims and counter claims of an infinite variety, including proceedings against individuals alleging defamation of character in a bravura attempt to intimidate and harass each other, keep face or maintain some advantage. Over a number of years the initial legal dispute, if it ever was one and not just a falling out among thieves, has taken on the scale of a global conflict.

For the uninitiated my files represented a vast and consequently costly legal mess of the company variety started by the Hapless Cove apparently overstepping the mark in a commercial context and getting caught at it by the owners of Company X and its affiliates.

The whole mess had been to trial for months in a very expensive jurisdiction, being code for where a court sits and what power it has to ruin your life. Judgment by, I suspect the jaded, Bench (there were hints in the long delayed judgment such as ‘a plague on both their houses’) who may have also developed piles sitting there so long, was still reserved. This happens when the Bench having heard the evidence and everyone’s summing up of the evidence and the law goes away to think about it all before writing a long, detailed, and in this case, I cannot deny, not very flattering judgment.

Millions (and it was a lot of money in those far off days) had been spent by both sides in legal costs but the venom between the parties was such that no-one could, or would, compromise. So we all, litigants and lawyers, sat there waiting for the judgment which was finally delivered, dare we say with a sigh of relief by the Bench. Then, outraged by the result which effectively cancelled out the claims and counter claims, meaning no-one won, everyone appealed almost everything. More expensive litigation ensued only this time in the rarified air of the appellate division of the very expensive jurisdiction.

One day, years later, without warning when everyone involved in the mess was in Court on another interlocutory skirmish, (that’s any mini trial before the main event, the Trial which is prosecuted with the utmost venom in the hope of scoring a killer blow or at least a drawing of blood against the other side), yet again arguing about nothing it all collapsed. They settled – they’d all had enough and it was a moot point as to whether anyone had achieved anything, other than making their respective lawyers richer. They all walked away from each other, millions poorer but, I suspect, no wiser.

They were all litigation junkies – addicted to the process and unable, despite all common sense, to let go of it. Given the stress and cost of it all, including the damage to the businesses they were litigating over caused by the complete distraction of running the litigation, a rational being would think they’d have seen sense and come to some form of commercial compromise. In any commercial dispute there is usually a way out if the parties want to find one. No, not in this case – it was all out war; bitter and twisted to the end.

The Hapless Cove we were representing was a litigation junkie, an exemplar of the subject of this small work. The Hapless Cove loved the whole experience and didn’t seem to be able to get enough of it. It was amazing. I never saw him despair. When I first met him he'd mortgaged his house to keep paying his lawyers, put up with years of tedious and expensive preparation and interlocutory skirmishes getting ready for the long, acrimonious and ultimately pointless trial and there was more to come because all told, after judgment, I was in it in various ways for about four years. He is typical of what I came to realize is a common phenomenon in litigation: the otherwise rational being, the hapless cove who becomes hooked on the experience and can’t let go.

Of course the madness is not limited to litigation in the corporate sphere. Where I practice there is an infamous domestic dispute that has been on foot in various jurisdictions and in several variations for about thirty years. It all started somewhere in the mists of time with some form of personal aggression. Was it a slap? A punch? A push? Imagination? I’ve never been able to get to the bottom of it but the litigation has consumed at least two lives and created a wealth of legal precedent on the issue of Legal Costs (see L).

On a lesser scale, relationship breakdown with consequent litigation between Hapless Coves and their now ex nearest and dearest about division of the former matrimonial property including, (oh dear) who gets the kiddies, who are treated as property or instruments of revenge for the numerous and grievous faults of the former nearest and dearest which on no account will be forgiven or forgotten, account for some of the longest and most acrimonious matters in my files.

Tell me, is that or is it not an addiction? Aren’t the Hapless Coves slaves to their new found litigation habit? Why can't these people let go of each other? Is this how they continue their destructive, unpleasant relationships - through the lawyers? After years of it and numerous Hapless Coves I say yes to all.

That said it is time to deal with our current Cove who is extremely hapless and regrettably, a typical example of the pest. He is in litigation and won’t get out. Deep breaths all round please. I will attempt to help the Cove before it’s too late. He’ll wriggle and squirm, switch me off, slam the book shut, ignore me and no doubt continue on his hapless way. Our dialogue (all right, I’ll be frank, I will do most of the talking and any interjection by the Cove will be dealt with in the manner it deserves. Please note that my responses to the Cove's unwelcome interjections will be in italics) may at some point before everything, including his life as he knows it, is lost, enlighten him to the nature of his addiction and its consequences. You, dear reader, get to enjoy it all from your superior position as an observer. That is unless you too are in the grip. If you are, hold on tight, I don’t intend to pull any punches.

Chapter 2 Appearance

Well here I am Hapless Cove, I appear – heaven and all the powers that be help me - in the misery that is your life. Why, you ask. You don’t need me and why don’t I just push off?

Oh, poor deluded soul, you do need me; I won’t and just wait and see why. I can see already that we have to go back a step to assist you and our general reader, who is here merely to observe and, I suspect, enjoy your misery, to understand your current, and let’s be honest, irrational condition. Your lack of appreciation of the dire nature of your circumstances is a symptom of the great malaise we will endure together until the litigation is over. Denial is where you are and will remain until the misery becomes too much or it is ended