What began as a legitimate complaint became a nightmare. . . . : I’ll Get Back to You

Eight years ago, bombarded by warnings that I had better make out a will in case I died suddenly, I went to see a lawyer for help. I was not feeling well at the time and, being something of a hypochondriac, was worried I might pop off before my affairs were in order.

I could envision my poor wife and the dog Hoover being forced out of our house for reasons having to do with my indolent behavior during a short, disgusting life spent drinking vodka martinis instead of filling out the proper forms for a last will and testament.

The funeral would be a pathetic gathering of friends and relatives who would attend out of respect for my widow and a nagging fear that I might someday have a column in hell and write about them from there.

I had been thinking about all this when I announced to my wife one day that I was feeling poorly and was going to see a lawyer about a will.

She said, “You have a sinus infection. Hardly anyone dies of a sinus infection.”

But I reminded her of a photographer we knew who had a sinus infection that turned out to be a brain tumor, which also causes a runny nose. He blew his nose so hard one day it ruptured an artery and he died. We used to laugh and say he blew his own brains out.

Anyhow, I went to see an attorney in Calabasas who had been recommended very highly. He was enthusiastic at first and began talking about being my personal attorney and the executor of my estate. But as we got into it, he began to realize I was less rich and famous than he thought and immediately lost interest. I recall that midway in our conversation, he suddenly yawned and flicked on the intercom and said to his secretary, “I’ll take all calls now.”

After a few moments more, he assured me he had all the information he needed and would have a will for me to sign in a week or so. That, as I said, was eight years ago. I never got the will and when I called to ask about it, he said, “I’ll get back to you,” but never did.

Which brings me, rather circuitously, to the case of Lucille Bolin.

She’s the elderly lady who, in 1978, paid $10,885 to a contractor to build a swimming pool in the back yard of her Sun Valley home. The hole was dug too close to a neighbor’s yard and the pool would have extended out of Bolin’s property. The work was stopped when the neighbor refused to grant an easement or sell Bolin the sliver of land she needed. The contractor wouldn’t refund her money, so everyone said sue.

Suing has become an activity rooted in avarice and encouraged by lawyers to fatten their own wallets in an era of Big Bucks Law. When the world ends in fire, the last act of mortal man will be that of a lawyer, singed and dying, struggling into court to file a personal injury suit against God.

In this case, however, the pool contractor should have been sued. He had been furnished with a surveyor’s report that clearly defined the woman’s property but still dug the hole in the wrong place. So Bolin went looking for a lawyer.

Therein began a 10-year odyssey that took her to five lawyers, drained her life savings of about $100,000 for legal fees, put her on welfare . . . and got her zero justice.

Not only was she not compensated for the half-finished pool, but now she’s stuck with a pool she can’t afford to fill or finish and a house she can’t sell because . . . right . . . the pool isn’t filled or finished.

The lawyers she hired took her money and then essentially forgot about her. One to whom she had paid several thousand dollars in advance never contacted her after that. When she finally got to him, he couldn’t remember who she was or what the case was.

A second lawyer also took her money, did nothing and offered as an excuse only that she had been busy. If Bolin didn’t like it, she could get herself another lawyer.

Someone suggested she ought to sue those two lawyers, but when she hired a lawyer to do that, she was finally told the one-year statute of limitations had expired and there was nothing anyone could do. The law protects its own.

The bottom line is that Bolin finally got her case to court and lost on the basis of what she calls total incompetence by a lawyer who finally did something, but did it wrong.

As a result, she’s had to move out of her house and put it up for sale because she can’t afford the monthly payments. She borrowed money from her daughter and now lives in a mobile home.

What began as a legitimate complaint against a contractor became, in the insensitive hands of lawyers, a nightmare for a woman who just wanted a swimming pool built. Had there been big money involved, I’m sure she would have gotten better treatment from those who equate moral judgment with a percentage of the take, but, unfortunately, there wasn’t, and she ended up with nothing.

If we are ever to return to a time when morality triumphs over legality, we might have to take Shakespeare’s advice. “The first thing we do,” he wrote, “let’s kill all the lawyers.”

Leaving one, of course, to sue.