I remember Jimmy. He had a serious injury, a compacted spinal chord bruise and contusion. He was in pain, walked like he was drunk even where he had never had a drink in his life. I tried his case. I was only able to get a measly result. I remember him walking out of the courtroom, murmuring something… I saw him walking away, ahead of me; I never saw him again.
I remember Suzie. A SWAT bullet took her life. They were trying to rescue her, they said; her father was intoxicated with cocaine and was a danger to her, so they stormed (they called rescue effort) his small office, detonated a couple of grenades (they called them stunning devices) and discharged 64 rounds of high speed rifle bullets within 4 seconds in a 10 by 13 feet smoking office, to protect her. Then a judge took the case away from the jury and said no reasonable jury would ever find this power display by the police was unreasonable. I remember Suzie, and I cry.
And there are so many more.
There are the good times, also. There are the seven and eight figure verdicts. But there is a part of me –and I am sure of you also- that always reminds me those high numbers are reflective of the amount of damage and impairment the injuries have brought into the life of a brother or sister in this human kind of ours. Those numbers become more of a reason to be sober than to celebrate the victory
In the midst of all of this pervasive suffering, how do we go on? And if we can, must we go on?
They tell me, “yes, you must”. But what do they know of the price we pay, in emotional currency, for the honor of being spurned by the political factions? What do they know of of the broken family relationships and of the burning out that so often is waiting for us at the end of the trial?
How is it that the Heart does go on?
For me, it is not an enthusiastic journey; it is more in line with that line of the song the “impossible dream”, …”to fight the unbeatable foe”. And so often there seem to be no winners, only losers. Our win is only to represent in Money, what I call Money Justice, the beauty of the child that has been maimed, or the lost hope for the person that finally wanted to turn their lives around, but are now brain damaged.
In my native Argentina, the folklore of my region sings in the native language, guarani. And they, the native Guarani, often sing about “I make honey out of my pain” (hago miel de mi dolor). As though somehow, pain could transmogrify into beauty; and yet there is the legend of the irupe, where this beautiful flower, lotus like, appeared in the place where both a beautiful princess and a strong warrior had drowned. From death, beauty –as if to parallel ex pluribus, unum.
After you have been emptied out with a loss. After you have felt the pain of the broken bones, the ripped spleen, seen the overwhelming sadness of those “tired” eyes, tired from the pain and despair… you know what I mean.
Tell me, how does our heart go on?
It’s tempting to cite platitudes. Old clichés about being freedom fighters. I borrow from a friend who calls them “parlor tricks”, mere rhetorical devices. Or to paraphrase Gerry Spence, just “silver rivulets on the saddle”
Do we go on because the insanity of abandoning the fight frightens us more than the chaos of staying in it? I asked once “What do you do with the pain?” “What pain?” Spence asked me. “The pain of losing for your clients”, I quipped. He looked deeply into my soul, with kindness that only a warrior of a thousand battles possesses, and said “feel that pain fully and deeply, in the tenders, so that next time, you will prepare for the trial in such a way where losing is not an option; you will not have to feel it again”.
Unless we have become acquainted with the pain our clients feel for having lost everything, and the insanity that surviving in a seriously injured condition means, we cannot meaningfully become peaceful warriors for justice -what we call Trial Lawyers. We will only be lawyers, those vituperated characters of our nation.
If you have experienced the loss of a trial, feel the pain, feel it fully. Prepare. Win for the client. Become a Trial Lawyer.
In the end, I say the heart goes on because it is what it does. It beats. And because you are a Warrior, then the heart –on its own- must go on warring for peace, in the form of Justice.
So be it.