The Gomer Pyle "Maternity" Test!

This one actually took place pretty early in my career. I had just gone out on my own and could not afford a secretary, so I was all by myself in my little office, hoping that the phone would ring. It was late in the afternoon, and went like this ...

"I need to speak to a lawyer."

"I'm an attorney." (Just didn't have the money to hire a secretary)

"You practice in Cleveland, Tennessee?"

"Yes, but don't you want an attorney there?" (i.e. I don' really think you can afford to hire me. Even at my cheap rates.)

"Nope. They've all been paid off.

(Now, as most attorneys know, the legal profession attracts its fair share of nut jobs and paranoid people. They don't last too long, and upon becoming completely certifiable, ascend to the judiciary.)

"What seems to be the trouble?"

"I want to file a 'MATERNITY' case against Jim Nabors! It don't matter to me what it costs, we want to sue him!" (Now I know they cannot afford to hire an attorney. When a prospective client tells you that it doesn't matter what it costs, that translates into "I don't care what it costs YOU."

"You mean, you want to sue Gomer Pyle? For maternity?"

"Yep. One and the same."

"You think he is your mother?"

"Hell no, he ain't my mother. He's my wife's father and there ain't no doubt about it."

(Although this is the type of call that I usually end rather quickly, not having much business at the time, no secretary to talk to, and really no place to be until I met my buddy at the billiard club, I really had nothing better to do than to hear the rest of the story.)

"I heard he was gay," I said.

"You know, that's what everbody says. But he must not be gay, cause he's my wife's daddy."

(I started having visions of a nice little judgment and some publicity for myself. Believe it or not, I had personal knowledge that Jim Nabors was going to be coming to Chattanooga to attend the wedding of another attorney's daughter later that same month. I was already thinking that I could have him served with papers there. In front of the bride and groom and the preacher and everybody.)

"How old is your wife"

"Thirty four"

"Well, what proof do you have that he's your wife's father?"

"Around the time she was born, his limousine was seen all over Cleveland."

"Wow!" I thought. There may be something too this.

"How do you know that it was his limousine?"

"WHOSE ELSE WOULD IT HAVE BEEN?" he said, obviously irritated.

"Do you have any other proof that he is her father?"

"Yes. On her deathbed, her mama swore that Jim Nabors was the father."

"When did she die?"

"Oh, she didn't die, she got better."

"Well, what does she say now?"

"She don't say nothing. She's been paid off."

It was getting close to my pool match, so I figured I would go ahead and end this call by bringing up the topic of attorney fees.

"Well, sounds like you have a case. How did you figure on paying me?"

"We don't really have a lot of money. You know, with him abandoning her and everything." (Bear in mind this had allegedly happened about thirty years prior.) "We figgered that since this was such an easy case, you could just sue him and then take your money out of that. We thought ten percent or so would be fair."

"I understand it's a good case," I said, "But, suing these big Hollywood stars isn't cheap. I need to get a retainer, up front of at least $2500." (At the time, that would have been exactly FIVE TIMES the biggest retainer I had ever received.)

"TWENTY FIVE HUNDRED? DOLLARS?! Ain't no way we can get up that kind of money. We've already got two mortgages on the trailer."

I then advised him it might be cheaper to try a little harder to find a local attorney in Cleveland that "hadn't been paid off." That way, he wouldn't be faced with the big-city, high-dollar, Chattanooga attorney fees.

"I really wish you would take our case," he said, voice breaking.

Just as I started to feel a little weakness, I looked across my desk to a picture of my three young children. A picture I had placed on my desk for just this purpose. A picture to remind me that I needed to work on cases that would enable me to feed these children.

"Well, I made good notes. If you and your wife get the money together, just give me a call back."

And, as Gomer would have said, "Shazam!",this prospective client was gone forever, leaving me with only a memorable story to tell.

I'm not a drug dealer! I'm a purse snatcher!

Several years ago, a client came to me who had been charged, along with a co-defendant, with the offense of "possession of cocaine for resale." However, he was adamant that he was NOT guilty of the charges. This particular client had already accumulated a nice little record, but according to him, he "DID NOT DO THIS!" So, the interview went like this:

Tell me what happened.

"Well, dis dude called MY pager. wont'in to buy some crack."

"They called YOUR pager? OK. Did YOU return the call?" I asked.

"No, Bron returnt da call. When da person axed fo me, 'Bron jus kep talkin', like he wuz me." (Now, bear in mind that the police report said that my client had returned the call.)

"So, you gave Lebron YOUR pager. How come."

"He say he need to use it."

"So, you weren't there when Lebron had your pager?"

"Oh yeah, I was dere."

'Well, after Lebron returned the call from your oager, what happened next?"

"We went down there fo Bron to meet dude. I drove Bron down there."

'What happened next?"

"We done got dere and when Bron and I walked up. the po-lice bum rushed bof of us. And then dey charged ME with selling crack. Can you believe dat?"

Wanting to illustrate to my client how unbelievable this scenario was, I said, "Let me repeat this. The police called YOUR pager, talked to someone they thought was YOU. YOU and another guy show up. YOU drove him down there in YOUR car. He had in his possession the exact amount of crack they wanted to buy and then they arrested BOTH of you for selling crack?"

"That"s right."

"Well, if you weren't there to sell crack why were you there."

"Man, I swears i wasn't there to sell no drugs. I was only there to snatch purses!"

Moral of the story: When you are ONLY going to snatch purses, don't loan out your pager to drug dealers.

Or, as Confucius might say,: "Cracker who gets busted doing crime, will spend long time in jail house soup."

My dog failed a drug test!

Got a call from a client recently. She told me that she was facing a probation violation. Usually a probation violation is one of three things--(1)New charges, (2) Failure to report for probation, and (3)Failing a drug test.

My sixth sense about such things told me it was number 3.

"Did you flunk a drug screen?" I asked.

"Yes. No. Sort of. Well, not really," she said.

"How is it that you're not sure if you flunked a drug test?"

"Well, because they weren't using MY pee. They were using my DOG's pee," she responded.

She went on to explain that she had a "condition" that she self-medicated, and being too poor to purchase prescription drugs, had no choice but to write her own prescription for street drugs.

Having never heard of this novel way to beat a drug test, I really didn't know what to say next. I knew that to some degree, the drug tests are witnessed, such that it is difficult to pass off someone else's urine as your own. ("Whizzinator" anyone?)

Anyway, she told me that collecting the specimen was really pretty easy. "When he lifts his leg, I just grab ahold and collect it. Then I strap it too myself and run a tube down there and it seems like the pee is coming out of me."

"Well, what drug is your dog taking?" I asked.

"He's not taking any drugs, but he tested positive for cocaine," she replied.

"How is it that he tested positive, but isn't snorting cocaine?"

"Well, my boyfriend smokes crack, so I figured that the dog must have gotten it second-hand."

Picture this dog. Unless this dog is really large, I would wager that it takes a few times to get enough of a sample, so the woman must be constantly grabbing the dog's penis to extract enough pee.

"Woman's best friend," maybe?