Florida

"The guy is full of crap and he is despicable.''

In this case, however, that is Miami trial attorney Ariel Furst, discussing not me for a change but Mike Catalano, from this Herald piece:

The Serrano family is represented by civil attorneys Furst and Stabinski. Catalano says that in November, during a meeting at their office, they said the family wanted Delrisco to ``rot in prison'' unless he fingered the El Paso bar in a Homestead strip mall as his watering hole just before the 5 a.m. crash.

``I said to myself, `These guys want me to cheat,' '' Catalano remembered.

But Delrisco maintains he left El Paso at least five hours before the crash, said Catalano, who would not say where Delrisco went after leaving the bar. His high blood alcohol content after the crash suggests he kept drinking elsewhere.

Catalano complained to prosecutors, then agreed to play along while stressing that the story was a fiction. He made several phone calls that were recorded by an investigator. As part of the sting, Catalano also offered to have Delrisco author an affidavit falsely attesting he drank solely at El Paso, a document he said was later drafted by Furst.

But Delrisco never signed the document or knew of its existence -- it was actually signed by a state attorney's investigator and notarized by Catalano. He delivered it to Furst's office, while hiding a digital recorder in his blue suit jacket pocket.

``I made it very clear that I was uncomfortable because it was not true,'' Catalano said. ``At no time, did [Furst] back off.''

Michael, a blue suit? In the dead of winter?

Oh well, good thing in complex commercial litigation we never deal with businesses that lie, cheat or steal.

Rump's grammatical take is here.

Full post as published by South Florida Lawyers on February 15, 2010 (boomark / email).