No, we’re not talking about POTUS and the OBL stuff. Rather, we have more end-zone dancing from the prevailing party (a lawyer) in Filarksy v. Delia, No. 10-1018 (Apr. 19, 2012).
According to this Above the Law story, Mr. Filarsky wasn’t satisfied with an “in your face” gesture to the losing party, he’s now told the respondent’s lawyer what he can do with himself. Check it out.
But you know what really galls us about this case? It isn’t the lawyers’ sniping and the animosity that apparently goes back a ways and extends beyond this case. It isn’t that Filarksy bothering to send the letters, and the recipient bothering to make them public, have proven to the world that lawyers are indeed as cliche as lawyer jokes make us out to be. It isn’t that the commenters in the Above the Law post try and resolve which of the lawyers is “a bigger tool.”
No, what really galls us about this is that a case involving something as inconsequential as goldbricking over four rolls of insulation gets the welcome mat at the federal court and grabs the Supreme Court’s attention, while we can’t raise our clients’ federal constitutional rights in those same federal courts without getting laughed out the door in cases way more substantial than this one.
Disclosure: along with my colleagues at the ABA Section of State and Local Government Law, I filed an amicus brief in the case on behalf of the American Bar Association supporting the lawyer’s claim to immunity.