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Highlands Today

Time To Whip Out The Lawyer

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Scott Hollifield

Published: December 18, 2007

Congratulations to Alberto Gonzales, who was recently named 2007 Lawyer of the Year, besting runners-up Alan Shore of "Boston Legal" and Nicky "Neck Brace" Carbone, who won a $6,200 settlement for a woman who claimed mental anguish when a can of squirt cheese exploded in her camper trailer's kitchenette.

Isn't it wonderful that a small boy who was the subject of an international custody dispute in 2000, seized at gunpoint by federal agents and returned to his native Cuba amid a firestorm of controversy would be named Lawyer of the Year a mere seven years later. (Note: After Hollifield submitted his column six hours past deadline, we patiently explained that he was confusing Alberto Gonzales, former attorney general of the United States, with Elian Gonzales, the Cuban boy in the custody battle.)

...uh, I knew that. I was testing the editors. With the quality of journalism today, you just never know.

Anyway, a magazine published by the American Bar Association named Gonzales Lawyer of the Year, an award that goes not necessarily to the best attorney but the one who made the most news over the course of the year, according to publisher Edward A. Adams.

That same issue's centerfold, by the way, features a smoking-hot shot of Nancy Grace in a leopard-skin bikini straddling a Harley Softail. No, wait, that was a nightmare I had.

For those lawyers who are reading this while simultaneously preparing a defamation suit, let me, for the record and under oath, say this: I have friends and family members who are attorneys. Lawyers have bailed me out of trouble more than once. I thought "Perry Mason" was a heckuva lot better than "Ironsides." It is an honorable profession and most likely scores higher in public opinion polls than journalists.

But, as a small-town newspaperman, I sometimes tire of being beaten about the head and neck with the lawyer threat. Every ne'er do well who calls up to complain about a story or photo has an attorney on retainer, and he brandishes him like a tire tool.

The following is a typical phone conversation:

"Yeah, is this the editor? I told y'all up there not to put my name in the paper and here it is on the front page, you stupid %$#&. So you'll be hearing from my lawyer."

"Sir, you ran off the highway in a stolen El Camino, took out 12 mailboxes, hit a cow, plowed into a substation and cut off electricity to 6,000 homes. It was newsworthy."

"I told y'all last year when I canceled my prescription to the paper after you put me in there for spotlighting deer that I didn't want to be in the paper no more or I would come up there and whup your %$# and my lawyer would sue you."

"Sir, we have an obligation to report the news."

"Well, that story said I hit 12 mailboxes but it was only 11 because one was just a pole sticking out of the ground with no mailbox on it, so my lawyer said I could sue you for slander."

"It wouldn't be slander, it would be libel and that is certainly not libel."

"Well, I'm LIABLE to come up there right now and whup your %$# and take out papers on you –– on the advice of my lawyer, of course. I want me a retraction."

"You're not going to get a retraction."

"I'm not?"

"No."

"Well ... all right, then. Switch me to classifieds. I've got to take out a yard sale ad for Maw-Maw."

Again, congratulations, Alberto. Now that you're in the private sector, I look forward to being beaten about the head and neck by the Lawyer of the Year.

Scott Hollifield is editor of The McDowell News in Marion, N.C. Contact him at P.O. Box 610, Marion, N.C. 28752 or e-mail rhollifield@mcdowellnews.com Listen to podcasts of Scott's column at www.mcdowellnews.com.

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