The price of vanity and a waste of a perfectly good lie
What we have here is a slice from my real life. Most of what I do is covered by confidentiality agreements and so I can’t reveal much about it. Some of it is priceless and I wish I could, but I can't. The events I am about to relate are, however, well in the public domain, just not given from my point of view. Until now, that is. I shall provide a link or two at the end for those who may want to read further, if I can follow Steve's recipe.
I was in recent times engaged in a dispute between a computer supplier and a TV broadcaster to provide technical advice to the lawyers, because the broadcaster was suing the supplier for rather a lot of money over the supply of a computer system. They were doing this because the project to design and build the system had gone horribly wrong, as these things do on occasion. However, they were so miffed, along with certain other legal necessities, that they decided they had been lied to about the capability of the computer system supplier to do the job and wanted enough money to run a small country in compensation.
Five years passed and rather than settle, as most such disputes do, it actually went to trial. The key witness, let’s just say an American gentleman in the employ of the supplier, had been the main negotiator at the time they won the contract and we had spent considerable time and effort in checking what he claimed, his spreadsheets, calculations, technical and business assumptions etc etc. Despite a certain propensity to feel somewhat nervous about the chap in general, for example I would not have been very happy were he to propose marriage to my daughter, we felt that what he had to say was true and defensible.
Which made it all the worse when, rather than attempt to destroy his evidence about the matters they had brought the case for the other side chose to discuss his academic qualifications. Don’t get me wrong, they attacked his evidence too, but not to the same spectacular effect. In fact his evidence stood up rather well.
Our man, you see, had but one academic qualification; an MBA from somewhere called the Concordia College in the US Virgin islands and they had a copy of his CV. Under questioning our man described the buildings, the classrooms, the course material and many other details of the course of study he undertook; and much much more. They kept him at it for seven days in all and kept returning to the MBA like a bit of sport every once in a while. He never wavered for a moment. It was a magnificent performance under enormous stress.
The great pity is that there is not a Concordia College in the US Virgin Islands. In fact there is a swamp in the location given. The opposing barrister, a Queen’s Counsel no less and a Spurs supporter to boot (which just adds insult to the injury) had obtained over the internet at a cost of a few hundred dollars an MBA for his dog, the now famously well qualified Lulu. In fact Lulu had achieved better grades than our man. My immediate stance that Lulu is not a proper dog’s name was not considered relevant; not that I voiced it outside the padded room against whose walls we were beating ourselves nightly during this torment
In consequence the judge elected to not believe a word that our man said and as in one or two places he was the only one saying it it rather destroyed our defence as can be seen
here and
hereObviously we did not idle our time away while this was going on, although by law we were not permitted to discuss his evidence with the gent we were shoving fingers in the dyke all over the shop. In the main we spent our time furiously cross checking what other witnesses, not likely to be so exposed, had to say on the serious matters. Unfortunately, there were some bits that only our man knew about. If you have read the links you will know that, for my client, this did not end well.
The issue in the end was vanity I suppose; and arrogance. In his spare time our man was something of a well known international poker player. Working in a company surrounded by first class degrees in computer science, business, etc etc he must have felt he needed some letters after his name. So he bought some and, being a poker player, decided to bluff his hand when the stakes went up. The problem was that the truth could be proved, as it eventually was.
One late and depressing night I proposed that we should find ourselves an expert in alien abduction. We could then present the possibility that our man had been abducted for a year and that his memory of the college was implanted to account for the missing time and to replace the memories of the dreadful experiments to which he had been subjected. My argument was that it was going to be rather hard to disprove, unlike the existence of the Concordia College. My proposal was judged not worthy and it was suggested that I return to my spreadsheets, where I was supposed to be. But I still can’t see what was wrong with it to this day, other than its not being true and our team being somewhat scrupulous about honesty. Waste of a perfectly good lie in my view.
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19 Comments
Hilarious, all these real life anecdotes really should be in print. They would make a fantastic read.
You know, like, in 1948, Pithrick bought some wart removal fluid from a little-known chemist, which came in the old glass, vertical-ribbed, brown chemical bottles. On the label, it stated, "Apply to clean skin," so he opted to use the fluid in the bath. Slippy hands. Splosh. Private parts dissolved. And that's why chemical bottles were horizontally-ribbed thereafter.
Steve, one of the things about working with lawyers is that they have the wherewithall to enforce their agreements and so I can't oblige with any secrets that haven't already come out. Although, for a future blog I might try to precis a case (in which I wasn't involved) where a (male) airline steward attempted to enforce, in law, the enslaving agreement that his multi millionaire (male) lover had drawn up by his lawyers (really) in which he signed over all property and assets (considerable) in return for the honour of being his body slave. The agreement ran to ten pages and once the relatives found out the trial ran for longer than you would think. I did an email hacking case which was part of a divorce last year. That was quite juicy, Hell hath no fury doesn't come close. But on that little tease I must leave it. Mind you they haven't paid their bill yet, so I might decide I'm not bound by my side of the deal. Watch this space
You are one of the masters of the universe and have access to what really goes on!! I enjoyed your blog, but had to read it twice as i was not quite sure which side you were acting for!
I would read a novel on this theme. I very much enjoy the novels of Anthony Trollope and wish a contemporary writer wrote of politics, lawyers etc with the same perception, humour and narrative skill.
Did you get which famous case I was fictionalising (badly)?
Maybe Walter Scott needs updating: Oh what a tangled web we weave, a simple email to receive.
Also, I heard this in a pub, so probably untrue, but I found it amusing:
A fellow received a box of 24 rather expensive cigars as a gift, and insured them for a hefty sum. Over a period of time, he smoked the lot. The policy included insurance against fire, so he made a claim based on the logic that the cigars were destroyed in 24 small fires. The insurance company refused to pay out, so he took them to court and won. But the insurance company immediately filed against him and had him prosecuted for 24 separate acts of arson.
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