…a lawsuit is really great fun. It brings some interest into life, with coming and going and raging over it. You will have a great deal to do…” – Honoré de Balzac, The Country Parson and Albert Savaron
On September 13, 2007 I sat down with my lawyer to sign the lawsuit I call Fein v. The Skush-O’Briens. (To be free to spill the beans about everything and everyone, I’ve changed almost all the names except mine. The spiffy faux noms such as “Skush-O’Brien” are on loan from Damon Runyon, who knew a bit about scoundrels.)
Fein v. The Skush-O’Briens was and still is an egregiously righteous complaint against a family of out-of-staters who bought the majority shares of my Greenwich Village townhouse co-op and have done their best to bring the building down financially and structurally. I’d been stuck with this clan of scofflaws and deadbeats for too long and way too intimately – the youngest of the clan also lives in this very small building. By 2007 I was ready to sue them.
“I’m so excited!” I spontaneously exclaimed to Miss Billy Perry, the young legal associate who researched and wrote the lawsuit. She looked alarmed. “I don’t know if a client should be excited about suing, exactly,” she said.
I laughed and assured her I was OK. I am so down with the legal system I have a permit to get excited. You see, I’m an expert in the art of lawsuits.
And in Sidebar For Plaintiffs I’m going to tell you everything I know about the whole shebang. Using my lawsuit as a basic storyline, I’ll take you through every stage of the legal process – including some stages lawyers don’t even know about.
After getting hooked on Sidebar for Plaintiffs, you’ll never look at a lawyer or a lawsuit in the same way again.