Miss me?

I am back. Did you miss me? If you didn't you can blow me where the pampers is. (if you know the movie reference then you have great taste in bad movies). I have got to say the past few weeks have been hectic as hell here in the grand mid-south.

An example: I was hired on Monday to handle a mess complicated custody case were a third party (my client) is attempting to get custody of a teenaged girl from her mother. This is not easy to do. Under the law of this state a parent is the preferred person to have custody. A third party must prove one of the following: abandonment, moral unfitness or that the parent is otherwise unfit. There is a case where one parent killed the other and the courts held that the living parent was not unfit to have custody once she got out of prison, so you can see it is a steep climb to win.

Anyway I digress, so I am hired on Monday about 5 pm to get custody, the child has been reported a runaway and or kidnapped. Local media get wind of it Tuesday morning – the story the lapdog reporter, I mean watch dog reporter want to run is "Local girl kidnapped, cops not doing anything". Anyway I call up bubba newsdog and talk to him and explain that if he runs that story they will have to run a retraction and my clients, one of which is the "kidnapped" girl will sue. That problem over.

I file the custody suit on Tuesday, call the judges admin asking for a Temporary Restraining Order hearing for Thursday or Friday since I have a MAJOR mediation in a personal injury case set for Wednesday and need Tuesday to go back over all the medical records one more time and talk to various claims rep so that the P.I. case can settle.

About 1:30 p.m. Tuesday the Judge calls, says she has read the petition and that in her mind the case cannot wait, come to b-ville at 4 and she will have a hearing. Ok, b-ville is a 40 minute drive from my office. I drop everything, call the clients, tell them to come to my office, we prep them for the hearing then fly down the road to court. We have a hearing, I type an order. On the way home clients get pulled over on an APB for the kidnap. I get that all cleared up. I get back to the office, fax that Order to the school and every local police department and FBI to make sure the kidnapping issue is cleared up.

I take a deep breath and now get to go back over medical records – it is 9 p.m.
We settle the P.I. case after six hours of mediation – which is basically a neutral attorney who will listen to both sides' evidence and play devils advocate while helping the parties negotiate a settlement. After 67 hours of total time spent on the case, it settles and I will get a whole $2000. I want to cry.

Random thought: I cannot decide if I want to punch Rachel Ray in the face to shut her up or screw her silly. I wonder is she goes once around the pan with e.v.o.o. to get lubed up.