Worthless, Coat-Tail-Riding, Do Nothing Partner : Rock Salesman in Siberia
AS
My Roommate : Awesome
AS
My Roommate : Awesome
Let us take a trip (no drugs needed) back to late November. Where there once lived an incompetent Judge who had no regard for civil rights and civil liberties, their lived the most annoying (and easy to upset) employer who sat opposite my Roommate and I, along with our client. The case involved a District Manager at a relatively successful store, of the Pic N' Save (or Dollar Store) genre. My client was accused of ordering far-too-much merchandise twice. The owner cancelled the order both times, and, as it turns out, the store actually ran out of merchandise that would have been ordered.
Anyhow, I performed (and I mean it in every sense of the word), the cross examination of the employer. As may be remembered, I am quite successful at pressing peoples' buttons to their breaking point.
Do a "hot Kriss Kross" to the near-present. My Roommate and I knew that there was another employee who had been terminated (our nice work for fired, or thrown the heck out of employment) for the same alleged issue and reason as our past client. When the new client's case came up, Roommate and I got a direct email from the organization's headquarters that we had been requested as counsel. When ask if we wanted the case, we of course obliged.
There are many reasons we agreed to take the client:
1. We knew the case incredibly well as a result of the prior hearing and the 30-page appeal we wrote regarding the exact same occurrence with a prior client;
2. We wanted to work together again;
3. The Employer is petrified of Roommate and I, always a big positive.
However, the real motivation behind our excited acceptance of the case was the one-second payoff we would receive. We wanted to see the Employer's face when he showed up at the hearing.
Roommate and I arrived at the hearing well-before scheduled. We walked into the State Building and were greeted by security guards. As we approached the metal detectors, Roommate turned to me and said, "I hope we don't need ID, because mine is in the car."
I responded in the affirmative, stating that I did not even have it in the car. It was in my pant pocket at home. I walked through the metal detector first, making a mental note that my mobile phone and other metal items did not set it off. The security waved us forward to a table where we were instructed to sign in. We were asked for identification, but we had none to present. The guard remarked that she could not believe we had absolutely no ID on us. However, she let us in anyhow. I guess we looked harmless in our suits - though, as the Employer again realized, looks are deceiving.
We sat in the waiting area for forever. There was no Employer in sight. Then, over 20 minutes past our scheduled start time, the Employer finally walked in, and a few minutes after, our case was called.
While in the waiting room, a man walked out of the room. He looked very jolly and fun. I turned to Roommate and whispered, "And, let us pray. If that is our Judge, my entertainment shall be endless." I guess our client and her daughter heard me, as they laughed.
The organization keeps ratings and write-ups on each Judge. The following was written about this Judge:
"Most advocates would ‘happily’ appear before this judge. He’s ‘thorough and fair,’ if somewhat ‘stern.’ He has been known to be interested in ‘more than just the last day of work.’ He has also been called ‘one of the best judges.’
Average Score: 8.5/10”
Sure enough, the amusement was to begin, and some of the above write-up was completely incorrect.
This case took two hours to complete, which is very long for these hearings. The reason it was so painfully long was because our client required Farsi translation. So, every few words, we had to pause for the translator. Sometimes we would have to repeat this multiple times. Painful.
To further compound the process, the Employer, also fluent in Farsi, felt the need to correct the PROFESSIONAL translator. "I have a Master's Degree," he said. "I know Farsi, and this is not right." And the Judge started to get mad. Everybody would be upset if they were told that a professional translator was wrong in their translation. He did this far too many times to count.
Then, my objections started flying. In unemployment law, the only incident, action or occurrence that matters is the final day of work/the final act before termination of employment. To best illustrate this law, I usually explain the following to people:
If you steal from your employer, and your employer fires you for stealing the candy bar, but you also blow up the store after termination, the fact that you blew up the store is irrelevant and has no bearing on the adjudication for benefits. Likewise, if you defecated in the corner of the store once before stealing the candy bar, and you were fired for the stealing, your misappropriation of bodily substance is irrelevant.
The Employer in this case is the King of irrelevant information. He is so good at not listening to my objections and the Judge's directions to not bring up any acts other than the ordering of merchandise, that nearly every time he opened his mouth, I either followed up his statement or interjected with a relevance objection. He also loved to assume facts not in evidence, and make wildly unsupported conclusions.
At one point, he produced two notarized letters bearing the name and signature of two upper-management employees. Besides the fact that there was no way for us to authenticate the document, past the fact that the signature belonged to the employees, we were not able to cross-examine the witnesses on the statements made. It was also noteworthy that the hearing transcript/record from the first hearing directly conflicted with the letters and most of the Employers statements. Usually a Judge will just say that they are overruling the objection or that they are accepting the testimony or evidence anyway, however, this Judge looked up at me and said, "H, I am admitting the documents into evidence, however, they will be given the weight they deserve." That is a cue that the Judge is disregarding the documents. Go team.
When the Employer was done testifying, it became my turn to cross examine the man. Let's just say it was a lot of fun. I posed questions in the beginning that I knew were going to raise his blood pressure beyond that which is healthy. My success would be measured by the shade of red his face reflected.
As I proceeded through my questioning, my questions were candidly basic in nature. This enraged the Employer, who turned to me and said, "This Attorney, he asks questions that he already knows the answer to. This is not right. This is not right." I looked up at the Judge and said, "Your honor, I’d like to remind the witness that the testimony is not for me, it is for Your Honor and the record."
At this point, the Judge turned to me, shook his head, and looked over his right shoulder at the Employer and told him to answer the questions asked. Then he let out an exasperated sigh.
The rest of the questioning was absolutely entertaining according to Roommate and our Client's daughter. I cannot remember everything, but I do have a few highlights to share.
As was his game during the first hearing, he attempted to launch into baseless narratives, which wasted a glorious amount of time. Though I had an amazingly great time controlling him, receiving only yes or no answers, I did let him dig a grave in a few instances.
At one point, I asked him his specific reason for terminating my client's employment. He began giving one of his brilliant irrelevant answers, when he began to speak about to phone calls he had received from customers at the store where my client had been working. He began to say that she speaks in Farsi at work.
My hand shot up like a bottle rocket filled with compressed helium. I stopped the man from his endless pontification, and said, "Sorry to interrupt, your Honor, but I want to make sure the record clearly reflects what the Witness just said." Then, to the Employer, I asked, "Are you saying that you fired my Client because of her race, ethnicity and language?"
I do believe he suffered dozens of mini-aneurisms right then. Persians, in my experience, are a very proud people, and they are rightfully so. They are raised to love their ethnicity and background. As somebody who loves his ethnicity and religion, and carries a great amount of pride, I respect these feelings. However, I also know it can set people off.
He hastily began to spout off his mouth about my question. "How dare he say that, your Honor. You see I speak Farsi, too. This is outrageous!"
The Judge looked at the Employer, staring him down in disgust at his outbursts, and said, "Answer the question."
Sheer brilliance.
I talked him in circles with the questions to the point where he made another outburst that almost made Roommate and our client's daughter laugh uncontrollably.
I began to ask him questions that unwittingly trapped him in an answer that he had no choice but to give. Once the circle had been run, he realized what had occurred and said, "This Attorney, he is unfair. It is like has forgotten where the law school and court is."
I straightened up in my seat, and quite literally had to conceal my large grin.
In labor law if an employee is fired for misconduct - an act that causes serious harm or detriment to the employer, like stealing - then the employee is not eligible for unemployment benefits. However, if an employee is terminated for poor performance - an act or acts that are below the standard of a reasonable employee, like not cleaning the floors as is required by company policy - then they are eligible for benefits. A trick that we usually try to play is to get the Employer to say that the employee was fired for poor performance. Employers and most every person does not differentiate between misconduct and poor performance, so we get them to blatantly admit such on the record.
Alright, stop. Sneaky time.
This is how that part of the cross-examination proceeded:
H: You say that you terminated my client for misconduct, right?
Employer: Yes.
H: In fact, you allege that she was horrible employee who performed poorly in her job?
E: Yes, that is the truth.
H: So, you fired her because of this poor performance?
E: No, not poorly. She performed worse than poor. She was horrible.
H: So, let me make this perfectly clear for the record. You fired my client for poor performance?
E: Absolutely.
And, scene.
That pretty much handled that portion of the denial of benefits. Score one for us.
After some more entertainment, Roommate proceeded to question our client for our direct examination.
It is amazing to have a competent partner. For the first time, I felt that I could sit back and relax during the portion of the hearing that I was not conducting. It made the experience so much more enjoyable and relaxing; not to mention the fact that it was all the more entertaining.
In fact, we both enjoyed our second hearing together so much that we are entertaining the idea of starting a small business to represent parties at hearings. This way we would continue having all the fun, and make money on top of it. Additionally, we both think that we would be able to make a great amount of money doing consultations to businesses to teach them how to document, prepare, handle and preemptively save them any mess in the future from employment-based legal issues. This is apparently a niche market. Because there are so very few people with our kind of experience, there is definitely money to be made and experience to be gained.
Stay tuned, folks. Stay tuned.
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