Shysters of the Sea

I know some lawyers. I do. And I actually consider some of them my friends. In my defense, those litigators I’ve chosen to befriend (it is hopefully a reciprocal arrangement) are among the rarified kind, which is to say they own moral compasses.

I apologize to those acquaintances in advance then, for what I’m about to say, for I believe that in a modern society such as ours, lawyers are the cultural equivalent of hired thugs.  They simply forgo hoodies for the tailored suit, their teeth are bleached rather than gilt, their shared gang tag the ubiquitous Esq, writ in Gothic lettering wherever they lurk.

Lawyers threaten not with Berettas but with bankruptcy.  They intimidate with boilerplate. They crush the resolve of law abiders with incessant delay. And they bury their victims not with shovels in the woods but paperwork in the courts. A Glock is a water pistol compared to the lethal force of an “order to show cause.”

Why am I fuming legalese in a boating blog? Because a sailing friend of mine recently fell prey to the assaults of one such shyster, though the crime didn’t begin with the legal firm. It began with yet another scourge of the sea, the certified mechanic.

I think most of us have been victimized by the local expert whose credentials have been passed along by the un-skeptical. Somebody knows the name of the local "Yanmar guy." Or a company like Mack Boring, restricted by its distribution agreement with the aforementioned engine manufacturer, passes on the number of a business in your area since they can’t sell you parts themselves. Welcome to the jungle.

It may be that some of these referrals actually know what they’re doing. They may even be friendly dudes. Here’s the thing: I don’t care if they’ve graduated cum laude from Snap-On U. I don’t care if they sport prosthetic torque wrenches for forearms. It’s all a moot point if they don’t show up for work.

Sadly this happens too often in a small community. A couple guys monopolize a business, saying yes to every job that comes along when they know they can’t satisfy the demand. I carry in my head a list of numbers I will not call again, simply because of the likelihood that neither the call nor the message left will be answered. Entire boating seasons have been scratched while owners await a response to, “Will you please come do the work you said you’d do?” And whole businesses have floated on the deposits of those who believe that a man’s word is his bond. Fat friggin’ chance.

I know my friend, and I know he has a legitimate complaint, and he can prove it with copious documentation. In fact he proved it in our local court system. For the court’s part, it awarded him his money back. The thing is, the mechanic, utilizing his typical modus operandi, didn’t show for the proceedings. What the man who took my friend’s money did instead (after my friend’s exasperated wife turned to the Web with a negative review in the local paper that finally brought our mechanic to life), rather than attend to the work promised, or return the money advanced in good faith, or even address the complaint in his own words, instead this man went and got himself a lawyer.

I have to figure one of two things. Either this lawyer was taken in by the mechanic's song and dance, which would make him one remarkably credulous lawyer, or he determined that the mechanic was giving him a song and dance, and didn’t care. He may indeed have coached his client on the finer points of the soft shoe, so as to defeat a system put in place to protect the citizenry from cheap Vaudevillian acts.

It does however beg the question - Why would a lawyer take on the case of a man perjuring himself in small claims court for the kind of chump change high-rolling types use as straws for doing blow?

We the people submit the following as evidence: said lawyer owns a boat.

Ah! So our briny barrister now has a 24/7 mechanic in his “employ,” and honest boaters looking for any kind of engine work in our harbor will either have to take a number higher than Johnny Cochran's, or pull out the service manual and socket wrenches.