Legal Commentary

And Lawyers Wonder Why The World Hates Us

By Patrick J. Lamb

Yes, this is the story of "the Fountain Lady."  A woman walking in a mall, texting away while oblivious to her surroundings, tumbles into a fountain.  The episode is captured on video by mall security, the video is released to YouTube and goes viral.  No one knows who the Fountain Lady is and no person can be recognized from the grainy video.  Let sleeping dogs lie, right?

Not in today's world.  What's an embarrassed person to do?  Hire a lawyer and go on national television to lament your grievous injury.  And what is lawyer to do?  Grab 15 minutes of fame and say profound lawyerly things to a national audience.

Thankfully, in this instance, Anderson Cooper could not restrain himself. To the Fountain Lady (who, by the way is Cathy Cruz Marrero of Reading, PA): "Coulda, coulda coulda."  "You needed a towel, not a lawyer."  And to the lawyer: "Oh my god, come on lawyer. An explanation for how this happened?  'Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, the lady was texting, so she didn't see the fountain and fell in."

As an aside, Google now reports 235,000 hits for Cathy Cruz Marrero.  For fountain lady? Over 6 million hits.  But now everyone knows Cathy Cruz Marrero is the person who walked into the fountain.  Oh, the world also knows she was arrested in October 2009 for theft by deception and receiving stolen property, and that she has four convictions for retail theft in the late 1990s.

Moral of the story?  Sometimes lawyers need to tell their clients to suck it up and remain silent.

Full post as published by In Search of Perfect Client Service on January 21, 2011 (boomark / email).