I usually try not to bore you with war stories from the practice of law, and I have, for the most part, succeeded in keeping them out of this blog. I figure that you’re mostly not interested and that reading about my law practice is not what brings you here each day. However, something happened today that I just had to pass along. It’s not often that something leaves me completely flabbergasted and largely speechless, but it happened today.

Background: In the spring of 2007, a lawyer friend called me. His client had been sued, but had blown it off until it was too late. Because he’d been served with process and had not responded to the law suit within the time limits established by the Rules of Civil Procedure, judgment by default was taken against him, and a damages hearing was set. The case involves consumer fraud claims, and by statute, a successful plaintiff can be awarded treble damages and attorney’s fees in such cases. Thus, there was a substantial sum of money at stake. My friend had a scheduling conflict, so he asked me if I would handle this case for his client. I said sure, provided that the client understood that, under the circumstances, there wasn’t going to be a whole lot I could do for him. My friend said he’d explained that to the client, and that the client wanted to dispute the case in spite of the fact that his own negligence had resulted in the default judgment being taken against him.

The client retained me. He signed my fee agreement and paid my retainer. I attended the damages hearing and did the best I could. I managed to knock out some of the requested damages, which was good. However, the court still awarded the plaintiff treble damages and set a hearing to determine the amount of her award of attorney’s fees, as permitted by the statute. I filed a motion to vacate the default judgment. I contested the hearing on attorney’s fees. I did all that I could. Not surprisingly, it was not enough. The court denied the motion to vacate the default judgment, and the damages awards became final. At that point, there was little I could do, so I negotiated a deal with plaintiff’s counsel for my guy to make payments. The client made the first payment and then defaulted on the payment arrangement.

By September, the guy was second-guessing me to the lawyer who had originally referred him to me about the hopelessness of the case that had been royally screwed up by his own negligence in not timely responding to the law suit. That created some tension between me and an old friend whom I’ve known for nearly twenty years, which I most assuredly did not appreciate. Fortunately, after hearing the whole story, my old friend backed me up on this, which finally put an end to the second-guessing. Then, unhappy with a problem of his own creation, he stiffed me on the last $2500 of his bill. I have not heard from him since the end of September of 2007. After it became obvious that he wasn’t going to pay me, I decided to sit on the thing for a year or so and then turn it over for collection. I wrote the obligation off this summer when my computer was stolen.

That now brings you up to speed to today’s events.

This morning, I get a call from the client. Not surprisingly, plaintiff’s counsel had taken action to execute on his judgment and had sent the sheriff out to padlock the guy’s business, which is a sure way to get someone’s attention. The client actually had the gall to call me to ask whether I would help him. And he actually had the nerve to be surprised when I told him that until he pays me what I’ve been owed for the last 13 months, I will not do anything to help him. Supposedly, he’s bringing me money today, but I’ve heard this before from him, and I will believe it when I see it.

“Chutzpah” is one of those very useful and wonderful Yiddish words that has made its way into common usage in the United States. According to The Joy of Yiddish, chutzpah is defined as “gall, brazen nerve, effrontery, incredible ‘guts,’ presumption plus arrogance such as no other word and no other language can do justice to.” This client is the walking, breathing, definition of chutzpah, calling me like that and asking me to help, knowing that he owes me a substantial sum of money after second-guessing me and then refusing to communicate with me or pay me for more than a year. It’s absolutely astonishing.

I’ve been sitting here, just shaking my head in disbelief since that call came in. Unbelievable. Just unbelievable.

UPDATE, 10:30 P.M.: Not surprisingly, the guy didn’t show up with money today, and he at least was smart enough not to call me to ask me for help again. My guess is that until I sue him for the fees he owes me, I’ve heard the last I’m going to hear from this deadbeat. Good riddance.

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Hat tip to reader Stu Younkin for bringing this to my attention….

From today’s issue of the Winchester Star newspaper:

Belle Grove soldiers on after Cedar Creek split
By Jason Kane
The Winchester Star

Middletown — For the first time in decades, Belle Grove Plantation commemorated the Civil War alone.

The entirety of this year’s Battle of Cedar Creek re-enactment took place on the adjoining Civil War Battlefield south of Middletown, leaving Belle Grove visitors to contemplate gentler things.

A league of women in hoop skirts told guests about everything from Civil War food rations to parlor games Sunday as the sounds of musket fire and cannon blasts echoed from the battlefield next door.

The separate events stemmed from a disagreement in June between Belle Grove Inc. and the Cedar Creek Battlefield Foundation over the expansion of a quarry near the 18th century plantation and the adjoining battlefield.

Elizabeth McClung, executive director of Belle Grove, said of this weekend’s divided festivities, “We don’t really see it as separate, but complimentary events. They provide battle re-enactment and we provide the social history.

“Both are windows into the past. People come here to have more of a low-key experience.”

In addition to a wreath-laying ceremony Sunday afternoon in honor of all those affected by the battle on Oct. 19, 1864, the mansion brought in the Frederick [Md.] Ladies Relief Society, a Civil War-based living history organization, to give tours of the plantation house turned museum.

On Saturday and Sunday, people from all over the United States, including California, Michigan, Texas, and Washington state, drove up the plantation’s long entrance.

Rather than hearing a litany of battle names and war-related dates, visitors instead learned of the Cooley family, which lived in the plantation house when the battle broke out in 1864.

Many civilians starved in those years, but not the Cooleys, who probably would have been “comfortable” during the war, said Marty Riddell, vice chairwoman of FLRS. They had money, she said, and were able to continue raising livestock and growing vegetables in their garden.

Still, they weren’t immune to the common inconveniences of the times, Riddell said.

Cut off from drinks like coffee, the Cooleys probably made a substitute concoction composed of sweet potatoes and dried chicory. Black molasses made a nice fill-in for sugar, and if the family wanted salt, they probably scraped it off the ground of their smokehouse.

Riddell has been participating in the Belle Grove battle commemoration for the past 10 years, and said the crowd this year was particularly sparse.

“I’m not sure why. Maybe it’s the economy,” she said.

Attendance figures were not available Sunday, McClung said.

In one of the mansion’s rooms, Tammy Strickland and Breanne Lamb sat in hoop skirts, showing visitors a sampling of war-time games from the 1860s including a board game similar to Chutes and Ladders. A “gentleman’s only” game drilled young boys on morality by illustrating “scenes from the life of a country gentleman.”

Visitors learned how to produce fine lacewear through needlework and knitting — which continued to be the vogue throughout the war, even as entire cities were reduced to rubble.

Another guide told of how the Cooleys moved to safer ground when the bullets began to fly around the mansion on Oct. 19, 1864. A few stayed behind, as was the tradition, to “make sure that not too much walked away” in the hands of soldiers, said Larry Keener-Farley.

Several shots hit the front of the plantation house in the rain of gunfire, but “if a [mortar] shell would have come in and exploded, the damage and the resulting fire could have destroyed the house,” Keener-Farley said.

He loves to tell visitors about Confederate Maj. Gen. Stephen D. Ramseur’s death in the mansion.

During the Battle of Cedar Creek, he had been wounded once and had two horses shot from beneath him, but he still rallied his men. He was wounded in both lungs and died the next day.

After he took his last breath, Union officers visited Ramseur’s body in Belle Grove’s library.

“They were killing each other during the day, but when the battle was over, they would stop to honor a gallant foe,” Keener-Farley said.

Dave Lamb, an archaeologist from Des Moines, Iowa, stopped to visit the plantation during a pilgrimage to Middletown.

Since he was a little boy, Lamb had been hearing stories about his great-grandfather being captured at the Battle of Cedar Creek and taken to a Confederate prison camp outside of Savannah, Ga.

The long wait to visit the battlefield was worth it, he said. “From a preservation standpoint, this is tremendous.”

In the front yard of Belle Grove, a group of soldiers lounged and laughed, playing fiddle music and singing. The scene mimicked a picture of war-time Belle Grove, minus the battle.

That this sort of thing happened at all is a tragedy, but not so much of a tragedy as a stewardship organization that abrogated its sacred duty, all for eight lousy acres.

And my guess is that attendance was down at the Foundation’s event because people heeded the call to boycott an organization that would sell its soul to the devil for eight acres. I’m glad people stayed away. Maybe, just maybe, the Foundation will get the message that it screwed up in epic terms. At least I hope so.

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Hat tip to reader Todd Berkoff for bringing this to my attention.

The State of Delaware’s second-most famous Civil War general, Maj. Gen. Alfred Thomas Archimedes Torbert, has been honored with a monument by his hometown, Milford, Delaware. The photo comes from the Milford Beacon newspaper:

By David LaRoss
Milford Beacon
Fri Jul 04, 2008, 08:06 PM EDT

Milford, Del. –
Milford’s general finally has his statue.

On Sunday, June 29, the Milford Museum unveiled its monument to Gen. Alfred Torbert, a 7-foot bronze statue that now stands less than a mile down Walnut Street from where the Civil War general lived 130 years ago.

“This should have been done a long time ago,” said Marvin Schelhouse, chairman of the committee that designed, raised funds for and installed the statue.

The statue will present an opportunity for Milfordians to learn about “a local, historical figure of extraordinary talents,” Milford Mayor Dan Marabello said at the dedication ceremony.

For Schelhouse, the statue is the culmination of more than 40 years of research and dedication to Torbert’s life and achievements.

“I’ve been building toward this since 1964,” he said.

The former Marine has been a Civil War buff since before he enlisted, and he spent much of his time in the Marine Corps base at Quantico, Va., studying Torbert. And as it turns out, he contributed more than enthusiasm to the project.

Two months ago, when the statue arrived, it was almost perfect, except for the sword in its hand, which was almost a foot too long. The museum had a replacement ready well before the unveiling, but actually swapping out one sword for the other required a bit of brute force, and two of the hooks that held the sword onto the statue’s belt snapped off in the process.

That’s not an easy thing to replace, but Schelhouse found the perfect replacement in a surprising place – his own closet. The statue is now wearing two hooks from his own replica Civil War belt.

“It was an exact match,” he said. “Now it’s wearing something of mine.”

The push to build a statue began in January 2007, and was a community effort from the beginning. The cost to commission the work was supported largely by donations from individuals and private companies.

“We took in $75,000 in private donations,” said committee member David Kenton. “And when we hit a hurdle, we needed $10,000 and the city of Milford came through.”

Milford School District Superintendent Bob Smith and his assistant, Peggy Short, took over 100 reference photographs for the sculptor to use – a good thing, since they ended up giving the job to a sculptor in Beijing, China, who would have had to fly 8,000 miles to see the models first-hand.

Schelhouse said that price was the biggest factor in commissioning the job outside the United States.

“Museums are poor. We scrape money where we can,” he said.

Ze Feng Tao, the artist and owner of the local Portrait For You art studio, volunteered to be the project’s liaison to China, making contact with the artist and reporting progress back to Milford.

“I figured the liaison would have to be in China for as much as a month. Tao was there for four months,” Schelhouse said.

Torbert was born in Georgetown as the youngest of seven children, and entered the United States Military Academy in West Point after high school, he received a second lieutenant’s commission after graduation. In 1861, he turned down commission to serve in the Confederate Army, opting to stay loyal to the Union.

He commanded both infantry and cavalry in the Civil War, first as colonel of the 1st New Jersey Infantry – part of the Army of the Potomac, the largest Union force in the eastern front – and then as commander of the 1st Division of the Army of the Potomac’s Cavalry Corps. He fought in the campaign surrounding the Battle of Gettysburg, and in 1865 briefly commanded the entire Army of the Shenandoah.

“He’s a genuine hero,” Schelhouse said.

After the war, Torbert took on a series of diplomatic posts in Cuba, France and El Salvador before settling down in Milford. He died in 1880 in the sinking of the S.S. Vera Cruz, and is buried in the Methodist Episcopal Cemetery in Milford. “It’s easy to pick out which grave is General Torbert’s – it’s the biggest monument in the cemetery,” said Rev. Earle Baker, who gave an invocation and benediction at the ceremony.

Torbert, of course, had the dubious honor of being one of three generals fired by Phil Sheridan during the last year of the Civil War. He was a decent soldier who was out of his element commanding cavalry and then was punished for it by Sheridan.

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Featuring superb animated maps by master cartographer Steve Stanley, this presentation on the web site of the CWPT makes it abundantly clear why it is so important to stop the quarrying of the Cedar Creek battlefield.

It also amplifies and puts into graphic terms the magnitude of horrendous failure of the Cedar Creek Battlefield Foundation to protect the battlefield it is supposed to steward.

Please take a moment and click the links to generate a letter to Carmeuse making your opposition to the expanding mining operation known. It will cost you a few minutes and a $.42 stamp, but perhaps it will help to prevent the loss of pristine battlefield land to a limestone quarry. Once that land has been quarried, it is gone forever, so time is of the essence. Please act now, while there’s still time.

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I’m 47 years old, and a lifelong Philadelphia sports fanatic. It’s been 25 years since a Philly pro team won a world championship. In my lifetime, there have only been 5 of them (2 by the Flyers in 1974 and 1975, 2 by the 76’ers in 1967 and 1983, and the Phillies in 1980). Consequently, a true Philly sports fan is defined by pain and suffering and heartbreak. We know suffering, and we know heartbreak. “There’s always next year” is the constant refrain. In 1973, the 76’ers went 9-73 for the season, the worst record for a professional team ever. The Phillies are best known as the only team in the history of professional sports to roll up 10,000 losses, a dubious record of futility at best. The other defining moment in Phillies history is the epic collapse of 1964, when they had a 6.5 game lead with 12 to play, lost 10 in a row, and finished third. That’s also not a happy memory.

With such a history of heartache, it’s often hard to get excited about it when teams do have good seasons. A few years ago, when the Eagles went to the Super Bowl, I was very blase about it, because I knew they weren’t going to win. It’s hard not to be terribly cynical about it when you’ve been disappointed so many times.

At the same time, few memories of my youth are more vivid than watching Tug McGraw strike out Willie Wilson to end the 1980 World Series and the joyous chaos that erupted as the Phightin’ Phils won the only championship in franchise history. I was 19 years old, and I always thought that there would be more such moments. I was wrong.

Last night, for only the sixth time in the 125 year history of the Philadelphia Phillies, they won the National League pennant and are headed to the World Series! Completing an utter domination of a scrappy Los Angeles Dodgers team, the Phillies won 5-1 behind the dominant pitching of Cole Hamels, Ryan Madsen, and Brad Lidge and slammed the door on the rest of the National League.

Somewhere, the late, great Tug McGraw’s Irish eyes are twinkling this morning, he’s patting his heart as he always did after a narrow escape, and he’s saying “YA GOTTA BELIEVE!”

This time, I do.

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Please forgive my being quiet for the past couple of days. I had a major deadline to meet yesterday–I had two different briefs due yesterday, and had to allow my job to get in the way of my hobby. One brief was time-stamped 4:53 and the other 4:54–the Clerk of Court’s office closes at 5:00–meaning that I met the deadline. Now it’s back to business as normal.

I want to recommend a great book about a true American hero to you. Gunnery Sergeant Nick Popaditch enlisted in the Marine Corps in 1986 and served his country with great honor for 18 years. A photographer snapped his photo in Baghdad in 2003, smoking a victory cigar, with the downed statue of Saddam Hussein behind him. He became known as the “Cigar Marine” as a result of that iconic photograph, which appears on the dust jacket of the book.

In 2004, while commanding a tank in Fallujah, Iraq, Gunny Pop, as he’s known, stopped a rocket propelled grenade with his face and lived to talk about it. Although he was awarded a Silver Star for his valor that day, Nick lost an eye and was critically wounded, but he survived. He was medically discharged from the Corps in 2005.

Gunny Pop has written an amazing memoir of his ordeal titled Once a Marine: An Iraq War Tank Commander’s Inspirational Memoir of Combat, Courage, and Recovery that was recently published by Savas-Beatie. Because of my relationship with Ted Savas, I’ve known about this forthcoming book for quite a while, and had the good fortune to read the manuscript before it was published.

I can’t say enough good things about this particular book. Fast-paced and extremely well-written, Gunny Pop has written a simultaneously fascinating and incredibly moving narrative that details his military career and the ordeal of his wounding and recovery from that horrible wound. A husband and father, his memoir tells all about how that day in Fallujah affected his life and the lives of his loved ones. Gunny Pop represents the best that the United States Marine Corps has to offer, and we all have much to learn from the lessons of his life.

Although there’s obviously a great deal of difference between modern warfare and what we study in the Civil War, those of us who study the Civil War, and in particular, those of us who study the stories of the common soldiers who fought the Civil War, Gunny Pop’s story has a lot to offer. The impact on his life and on the lives of his wife and children of the disabling wound that he suffered translates well to the ordeal of the common soldier of the Civil War, and there is much insight to be had as a result.

Do yourselves a favor and read this unforgettable book.

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They say that all good things must come to an end, and that, unfortunately, includes our vacation. We’re got home from North Carolina last night–it’s a wicked long drive, nearly 700 miles. It rained here while we were gone, and I had two weeks worth of lawn to mow this afternoon after we picked up the dogs from the place where we boarded them while we were gone. So much for vacation…..

The trip was fabulous. I did very little with respect to the Civil War. We visited a few of the handsome monuments erected by Dare County regarding the Burnside Expedition that captured the Outer Banks and to speak to the Outer Banks CWRT on Tuesday night. That went well; I had about 30 people there and it was a good, attentive crowd. Mostly, it was walk on the beach, relax, read, do a bit of writing, and just hang out. We had one bad weather day–it rained on Friday–but most of the week was spectacular weather.

I dread the thought of what will be waiting for me when I get to the office tomorrow….

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There is simply nothing like the sound of the ocean. It’s a sound that is at once relaxing, reaffirming, and tantalizing. There are times when just hearing the sound of the waves crashing into the shore are what I need to get myself back in kilter and back in balance.

Due to job fluctuations and having to pay for care for my parents, Susan and I haven’t had a vacation since May 2006. Until now, that is. We’re in the Outer Banks of North Carolina this week, staying in a beach front house with some friends. I spent about an hour just flying a kite on the beach today. It was great therapy.

Other than to speak to the OBX Civil War Roundtable on Tuesday night, I am neither working nor doing anything Civil War while I’m here. This is about rest and recharging batteries, so don’t expect to hear from again until we get back to Ohio a week from today.

Enjoy the respite from me while I enjoy the respite from the world.

And go PHILLIES!!!!! Scridb filter

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Yesterday, I mentioned that Mort Kunstler had called me to discuss a painting he’s planning on doing of the 6th Pennsylvania Cavalry. Today, Don Troiani e-mailed me to let me know that he’s finally ready to begin working on a scene of the charge of the 6th Pennsylvania Cavalry at St. James Church during the June 9, 1863 Battle of Brandy Station that he’s been planning for the better part of ten years. He asked whether I’d be willing to help and answer questions for him on it, and I agreed. I’ve already given Don pretty much everything that I have on this episode, but I am nevertheless more than happy to help.

That makes two scenes of the Lancers by two prominent artists in two days. How cool is that?

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I had a very interesting but surprising telephone call this morning. Renowned Civil War artist Mort Kunstler phoned me this morning, out of the clear blue sky. Mort has gotten interested in the Rush’s Lancers and figured out that I know something about them. He’s planning to do a painting of the Lancers, and got hold of me to see if I might be interested in helping. I’ve worked with Don Troiani, Don Stivers, and Dale Gallon in the past, and enjoyed each instance. So, I readily agreed to help Mort.

I quoted him my usual fee for helping: a copy of the print personally signed to me, and we had a deal.

I’m looking forward to working with him, and am especially looking forward to seeing my favorite regiment honored. I will keep everyone posted as to the progress of the project.

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