Bar Tales: Stories From A Southern Rural Law Practice

By Chris Callahan

Zany, crazy, juvenile and almost always humorous short stories from one rural southern county's bar association over a period of 35 years. These stories are absolutely true and you will meet the real judges involved, many of whom still practice law. Meet characters like The Queen of the Universe, Judge Silly (spelled Cilley), Judge Suzy, and a District Attorney Brad Greenway once called a "folksy mountain lawyer" by The Charlotte Observer newspaper. This book will show you what really goes on behind the scenes in courtrooms in rural areas of the south, and you may never think of your lawyer the same way again after reading this book. Our Bar Association is famous for our annual Bob-B-Que and our Bar Minutes are so funny there is a mailing list across western North Carolina.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Chris Callahan
• Release date: Feb 18, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301305858

Chris Callahan

Chris Callahan was born, and lived most of his life, in rural Rutherfordton, North Carolina. Student Body President during the race riots of 1970 at RS Central High, an All Conference football player, Chris was a Morehead Scholar at UNC-Chapel Hill where he also played football his freshman year and later served on the Student Legislature.A graduate of Wake Forest Law School in 1977, Chris has practiced law exclusively in his home town of Rutherfordton, NC. Ordained in the Charismatic Episcopal Church in November of 2001, he now lives in Swannanoa, NC and is an Elder at First Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in Black Mountain, which he calls the most "servant oriented and intellectual community of believers he has ever experienced."Active in Kairos prison ministry since 2002, Chris initiated Kairos prison ministry at Marion Correctional in Marion, NC, in 2008 and now usually leads music on Kairos weekends in Western North Carolina.Married to Elsie Callahan, he is the father of three sons: Tristan, Joshua and Nicholas; two stepdaughters: Amy Knight and Lesley Gillespie; and one step grandchild, Aurora.

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Preface

I have practiced law for thirty five years now entirely with my office located in Rutherford County, North Carolina. It is a rather rural foothills county of approximately 60,000 residents and only thirty or so full time, active, practicing lawyers. That in legal parlance is called a favorable lawyer to population ratio.

There are no large towns in the county, thus leading to our motto posted at the county borders: We're Small Town Friendly. I guess that's what you have to say when your largest town, Forest City, has a population of only about 7,500.

The county seat where the courthouse is located is Rutherfordton, which has a population just over 4000. We have a lot of fun with our name, which was derived from General Griffith Rutherford, a Revolutionary War hero at the battle of Kings Mountain. Like the test to pronounce Shibboleth in Judges, Chapter 12:5-6, we can always tell who's not from around these here parts—to use our local lingo —by asking them to pronounce Rutherfordton.

The correct way is not Ruth-er-ford-ton. Trying to pronounce it correctly brands you instantly as a foreigner. All you have to do is say it most any other way, and you will sound local to us.

We even have T-shirts on sale at downtown stores on which the front says, 'I ♥ Ruff'ton, Rolph'ton, Rudder4ton, Rullerfourton,' and the back says, That's Ruth•er•ford•ton." But the back of the T-shirt pronunciation is wrong. You can tell I'm from here because I pronounce it Ruff'ton and my late daddy used to always call it Rullerfourton.

Before any out-of-county lawyers get excited about relocating their law practices to this county, I feel inclined to warn you: while it's certainly true there is a high people-to-lawyer ratio, that doesn't mean there's a lot of money-to-lawyer ratio. Our county has struggled mightily over the last fifteen years, from the closing of all the textile mills in the last half of the nineties to the Great Recession that started in 2007. Our county's unemployment is currently at about fourteen percent, and at one point two years ago we were the second highest county in North Carolina in unemployment at over sixteen percent.

But unemployment numbers really only tell half the story. There is a huge difference between a high school graduate worker who has worked twenty years at a textile mill, is skilled in his job, and earns a salary based on production and making $38,000 a year, and then the next year, having lost that job, he's working at Wal-mart for $17,000 a year. This, in my opinion, has been an even bigger problem than simply lost jobs and unemployment—the loss of higher paying manufacturing jobs to service and retail jobs based on a fairly low hourly wage.

So I'm frequently, particularly in this continuing economic malaise, asked, How's business? My answer often is, Business is fine. It's clients who can't pay that's the problem.

With most of the manufacturing jobs gone—Broyhill Furniture, General Fireproofing, Burlington Industries, Stonecutter, Spindale Mills, Mastercraft, Mako Marine, Johnson Outboard Motors all used to be located here—we are instead super excited to see Facebook locate their East Coast data plant here, even though they may ultimately only employ fifty workers.

Not even the lawyers can escape this downward trend. The legislature recently reduced the price that court-appointed lawyers get paid to only $55 an hour for most misdemeanor criminal, juvenile and Department of Social Service's abuse and neglect cases. This means for the majority of lawyers who are honestly reporting their hours in a case, their pay from the State just fell from $75 an hour to $55 an hour.

But with an average of about thirty full time local practicing attorneys, about twelve who do criminal work, three who do principally real estate work and loan closings, the remaining fifteen or so handle the balance of civil litigation, domestic and family law matters, bankruptcy and disability, small claims cases and drafting contracts and wills.

What this means is that we see each other all the time—every week, sometimes every day. We are constantly trying cases with the other lawyers. Unlike a big city with two hundred plus lawyers, we try cases against the other lawyers over and over, year after year.

Which means one thing: ya' better get along with the other lawyers or life will be miserable. This isn't like Charlotte where you can be an ass to the other lawyer and maybe not have another case with him or her for five years, if ever at all. In our county, the adage what goes 'round, comes 'round is certainly true. You jerk another lawyer here around—lie to him, misrepresent facts, default him, renege on a promise—you've got not only that lawyer to deal with on many more cases, but who knows how many other lawyers will be on their side to boot. And there's no tellin' how many cousins they'll have here.

The key word may be pretentiousness. We—and I'm speaking now for most of us here—are not pretentious. We think that some big city or out of county lawyers sometimes are, but not us! We'll call a spade a spade in a heartbeat and your lousy worthless case a lousy worthless case in a heartbeat too, if it deserves it.

I guess lawyers earning six figure salaries working in huge law firms with offices on the sixteenth floor of a skyscraper overlooking a city may be entitled to think pretentiously, but when you're working out of your home or a rental office earning less than six figures at $55 per hour on a court appointed case—well it's kinda' hard to even pretend pretentiousness, if you get my drift.

Besides, before they split this judicial district up about six years ago, we had a Chief District Court Judge named Silly. It's spelled Cilley, but you'd never guess how many times I've had this conversation over the years:

Who's our Judge tomorrow?, the client asks.

Judge Silly, I say.

You're kiddin'. Did you say my Judge was silly?

No, his name really is Silly, but spelled C-i-l-l-e-y. I'd say.

Ohhh—myyy—goodness, the client would slowly say.

This kind of thing only adds to our lack of pretense, and probably accounts for why we're such a close group here. We really care about each other. I cannot imagine having to practice all the time in Mecklenburg or Buncombe Counties—and we're not even like Cleveland, Polk or McDowell Counties, who neighbor us.

And since we're not pretentious, we can get pretty real with each other. We go to each other's funerals when a family member dies, but we also have some fun, like telling jokes, shooting paper basketballs at waste cans, calling each other a myriad of nicknames, and even wearing a camouflage suit to court. Myself, I've occasionally worn orange Chuck Taylor's and Birkenstock sandals to court. We once went through a phase where we all wore bow ties on Fridays to court to suck up to Judge Randy Pool who fancies them. I still wear mine almost all the time.

But just because we're not pretentious and just because we're rural, doesn't mean we're less than good lawyers. The past Lieutenant Governor of North Carolina was Walter Dalton, who was born in Spindale, went to high school at R-S Central, and practiced his entire legal career as a member of our bar. We've had a Federal Judge and Congressman, Woodrow Jones, as a member of this bar, and the late Toliver Davis was the US Magistrate for our federal court in Asheville. So Dumb we're not, but Fun we are.

Anyway, when you get this loose some crazy things can happen. What you have here are some stories that are absolutely true to the best of my recollection. We have told these stories to each other and particularly to all new lawyers for years, and we keep saying, we ought to write these down. Well, now that I'm past sixty, my wife Elsie advises that I'd better start writing them down before I start fergettin' them. So here is a sampling of the absolutely true stories I remember best.

1

Calling Mr. Lyon

During District Criminal court up to two hundred people jam the courtroom while one of our local District Court Judges deals with over a hundred misdemeanor cases: traffic tickets, DWI's, petty larcenies, worthless checks, assaults. I have been asked several times over the years to describe this court: people expect me to say Perry Mason or Matlock, and are always somewhat surprised when my answer is Night Court.

Usually the same local attorneys handle the large majority of these cases, although out-of-county attorneys occasionally come through. Much of the time there can be substantial waiting before a lawyer's case is called, or in the between time of handling one case and waiting until the next case is called.

Boredom can quickly set in. When the Superior Courtroom across the hall is empty, attorneys would hang out there and tell jokes and pass the time. Years ago when chandeliers used to hang from the ceiling, Bob Harris use to lead us in shooting imaginary baskets through the chandeliers with wadded up paper basketballs, as we waited for a court official to summon us next door to hear our next case.

Fridays can be particularly goofy. Usually non-officer cases are scheduled on Fridays. This means that the cases heard are the ones where an individual has seen a magistrate and sworn out a charge against another person. In other words, a law enforcement officer has not initiated the misdemeanor charge—the victim does. These can range from legitimate assaults and worthless checks to frivolous prosecutions and races to the courthouse between two parties to take the first warrant out, hoping the magistrate will think the second person coming is merely retaliating—thus getting a refusal from the magistrate to issue the second warrant against the person who beat him in the race to the courthouse.

Judge Cilley called Friday court in Rutherford County Yap and Slap court, meaning most of the charges were of the he/she threatened me and he/she hit me variety. So humor tends to soar on Friday courts as the weekend approaches and the charges tend to range from the reasonably serious to absolutely stupid, but in any event law enforcement officers are not there testifying as witnesses, so it's a lot of what we call he said-she said stuff.

One Friday about twenty five years ago, Bob Harris and my younger partner, Hugh Franklin, get bored enough to decide to have some fun with Judge Loto Greenlee. Bob gets Hugh to pass a note to the Judge while she's sitting on the bench to Call Mr. Lyon at 919-879-7000.

Unbeknownst to either of them Judge Greenlee has been waiting on a phone call from the Governor's office in Raleigh, hoping for an appointment to an open Superior Court seat. Back then almost all of North Carolina east of Charlotte was in the same 919 area code, so this scribbled number handed her could be anything east of Charlotte to the casual observer.

Seeing a note to