A friend of mine recently rear-ended a car while driving. She glanced down at her stereo for a split second and then crunch!! It turned out that the guy she hit was an attorney who represents people in auto accidents. Talk about irony — that’s almost as good as that tree planted in LA to honor George Harrison getting killed by (you guessed it) beetles.
Fortunately, the lawyer turned out to be super-nice and no one was hurt. Since I come from a family with two lawyers, I offered my friend some expert legal advice. For free. I told her to sue the stereo maker for creating a device with such small buttons. Cuz’ that’s how we roll in America.
This episode reminded me of Bill, a lawyer my dad used to work with. Bill looked just like the Egyptian actor Omar Sharif. He dressed in sharp suits and drove a sports car. One day my dad’s secretary was driving into work when a driver veered across three lanes of traffic on the interstate. Without warning, the guy cut right in front of her. She yelped, hit the brakes, and then exclaimed “What an asshole!”
It was Bill.
But Bill’s moment of glory came the day he was speeding down a road and hit another driver from behind. He got out of the car and did what any lawyer worth his salt would do — he tried to convince the driver that the accident was their fault.
Dad’s firm was likely plagued by a driving-related curse. One time another partner (I think it was Ronnie) drove into a parking lot to pick up a client. It was early in the morning, probably around 5am. Ronnie was picking the guy up to drive down to New York City for a deposition. The parking lot was empty, except for the client’s car. Ronnie entered the lot and drove up next to the car. And then hit it.
The client looked at Ronnie and simply said “I’ll drive.”
I’m glad my friend hit who she did. There really are some chill lawyers out there.
My name is Bill and I crashed once. When I got the bill for the engine rebuild, I blew a gasket!
Thomas Sullivan, you cannot be a horrible driver when you taught people to drive! You have a whole book out there about this! You don’t want people asking for refunds.
Pre-stache. But I taught driver Ed and wrote the book with a stache, and it made all the difference. Somehow facial hair is calming.
If Bill really looked like Omar Sharif, he could have gotten away with anything, as long as the other person was a straight woman or a gay man!
Should I grow a stache. I’m a horrible driver.
Love driving stories like this. So, this winter a woman (attorney) hit me in my own driveway. She then spent 45 minutes claiming that I had caused in the incident by distracting her. Unfortunately for her, she dinged up her BMW, while my Subaru was unscathed. Ha!