[fabsroman]

Skyline,

You don't know much about attorneys and litigation. I once went on an interview and was asked how many hours I currently billed at the firm I was working at. I told them 1,850, and that I pretty much billed out whatever they gave me to do, but that I couldn't create litigation. The managing partner's response at the interviewing firm was "You can always create litigation."

Working at law firms, I have seen motions after motions filed to try and wear down plaintiff's firms. Not because the motions would be successful, but because we, as defense attorneys, got paid by the hour and figured that because the plaintiff's attorneys were working on a contingency fee they wouldn't be willing to work as hard because they weren't getting paid. In that case, which happened to be in DC, we even filed a Declaratory Judgment action in Federal Court in Maryland because of diversity of citizenship and an insurance question. Ultimately, the facts deciding the insurance question were to be decided by the DC Court and the Maryland Federal District Court Judge figured that out and dismissed the case based upon the Plaintiff's attorney's Response. Before we even filed the dec judgment action in Maryland, I knew that was the correct action by the Judge and so did the partner because I told her that would probably happen. At the end of the day, the DC case should have been thrown out right away, but we had it drag on for over a year. The Plaintiff wanted $10,000,000 for sheer stupidity and I was billing about $10,000 a month on that case.

Let's see, what exactly was the partner's reason for getting rid of that case right away. Oh yeah, to save the client money, both in the judgment amount and the attorneys fees. Lets look at this some more. She was one of three equity partners in the firm and she just lost a big lead paint insurance client because the leading lead paint plaintiff's attorney told the insurance company that he would not settle any case of its anymore if this lady was the attorney on it. So, she lost a significant amount of money on it. She was falling behind to the other two partners that were bringing in millions of dollars.

Yes, attorneys are not supposed to bring cases that do not have merit, but that doesn't mean we cannot find merit in the smallest thing. Give me a client willing to pay hourly for something, and I am sure that I can find some reason to keep the case in Court. Granted, I always inform that client that the chance is a snow ball's in hell.

Quite honestly, I deplore billable hours at law firms, but that is just the way it goes. So, yeah, this guy found an attorney willing to take his case, or he found an attorney willing to take his money. Do you really think he had a winning case when an animal tested positive for CWD? What was the end result, he lost his herd plus he had to pay his attorney. I would have advised him to let the state take the herd and save the attorneys fees. If he really wanted to run a game farm, I would have advised him to sell his quarantined farm, buy some new land and put the money saved in attorneys fees toward buying some new deer. I would have also advised him of the potential liability if a hunter got CWD from an animal that was killed and he, the farmer, had knowledge that the animal might have CWD. Yes, bad news is hard to swallow, but it is better to deal with it at the beginning than at the end. Yes, everybody is entitled to their day in Court, but the general outcome usually does not change. A good attorney should be able to advise a client as to his chances in Court and then advise him whether to go for it or not. A client of mine, before he met me, had another attorney for a DWI. This client insisted on going to trial, but his attorney should have aggressively advised him against it based upon the facts. However, the client wanted his day in Court and he wanted to tell the Judge what happened. However, his story still had him guilty and it allowed the state to show that he broke his girlfriend's leg in the process. So, what should have normally been a Probation Before Judgment, turned into a Guilty with 12 months supervised probation.

We will never know all the facts or how this farmer's attorney advised him, but in the end I can guarantee you that the state would not be willing to pay the "trophy" fees that these "hunters" are willing to pay for these animals, and I don't think they should because that is taxpayer's money. If somebody wants to get into this business, they should know the risks and they should bear them, not the people.

As far as fenced hunting is concerned, I deplore that also. As far as herd management is concerned, if I owned some land I would plant some crops to help keep the deer around, but I wouldn't "play" with the genetics. Whatever I had, I would live with. Again, it is about hunting, not killing.