Chapter 26

Alan’s turn:

Good Lord, and all this with pTerri’s wedding coming up. Have to grin, her birthday is about a month away, she’ll be 14, and getting married -- poor kid. No, I’m NOT worried about pTerri -- when I say “poor kid” I’m talking about Jerry. I wonder if he’ll survive? My daughter is, to lapse into the vernacular, a pistol.

But back to the issue at hand, we’re being sued. Yeah, go figure. It all relates to a job several months ago, at a utility company over near Little Rock. We had to hot-shot a crew over there to re-do a botched job done by another contractor -- let’s call them “BMA Corp”, where “BMA” stands for “Bite My Ass.” Probably should add “MF” to the end of that title.

Have you ever gotten indigestion from a text message? I did, and I was out of town at a job site when it came, from Beck. Yeah, she opens ALL my mail, reads it, takes appropriate action, and THEN deposits it in my “In” basket. God, I LOVE that woman, for two reasons: First, she’s kinda “in my head”, and second, she consistently makes me look smart. Yeah, doing THAT means she’s much smarter than me, which probably isn’t saying much.

Anyway, the text read, “We’re being sued, but don’t worry -- me and Anders have it covered. Haggarty is already on it, and he says we’ll make money on it.”

Shit, can’t even fly back until tomorrow afternoon. Tried to go to dinner -- had about zero appetite. Even the Shiner didn’t help. Settled for a chicken pot pie and a salad. Helped a little. Talked to Tina, and she thinks it’s funny! She said, “Mr. Jack is grinning -- I think he’s home tonight, using a metal file to sharpen his fangs!”

You ever hear the joke about Jewish lawyers? Why they’re so expensive? The first answer is, “Because they’re WORTH it!” The corollary is: “Being Jewish has nothing to do with it.” True. Jack Haggarty isn’t Jewish, but Beck likes him anyway. So does Anders, which makes me worry a little. “Thick as thieves” comes to mind. And they are -- they play golf, drink beer, generally act like brothers. I probably shouldn’t worry.

So, the next afternoon. Inspect the work, break out my P.E. stamp for the documents, back to the airfield, turn in the truck, pre-flight the bird, and back to Auburn. And (speak of the Devil) Anders showed up, with a smile and a couple of cold Shiners.

“Good afternoon, Sir, and I thank you for your help, and for the beer! How goes the lawsuit?”

Anders said, “Alan, Jack is already on it, and we’re already in contact with the Pine Forest counsel. They wish to join us in a counter-suit, so that they may recover damages.”

I said, “Anders, that’s fine. I welcome their support, but I don’t understand why this suit is being instigated.”

Anders said, “Simply put, BMA did a bad job, people found out, and now nobody will hire them. They’re suing for lost business, and the notion that we’re speaking poorly of them. As it turns out, we’ve never spoken about them at all, neither on paper nor electronically. Neither has Pine Forest, so they have no evidence. As you know, that doesn’t stop people from talking, but talking has little evidentiary value.”

“Anders,” I said, “beyond making them stop their nonsense, I’d simply prefer to make this go away. It interferes with honest people doing honest work.”

Anders laughed, and said, “Alan, when you operate a business, if you have any success at all, you will be sued at some point. There will probably be no basis for it, but the point is that you have some money and others want it. Very simple, really, and the only way to resolve it is to make your detractors aware that you will go for their throats, and win, EVERY time.”

“Thank you, sir, and I appreciate the comment. But still, I don’t like it.”

Anders said, “Alan, the man we need to thank is Jack Haggarty. He doesn’t always know where the bodies are buried, but he knows how to find out, and quickly. He tells me that BMA is now being operated by lawyers and accountants – a holding company - very few engineers. We could own that company in about six weeks -- would you like to have them?”

“Anders,” I said, shaking my head, “with all respect to you AND Jack, I do NOT want them. If we absorbed them, we’d have to support them and all their shoddy work. There’s no telling what kind of surprises they’ve left out there just waiting, like this one, for that ONE fault. We guarantee our work absolutely, and I don’t want the liability of theirs. That said, if they have either engineers or technicians who want to apply with us, there may be a few good ones that we’d accept.”

Anders said, “Perfect answer, Alan. You have the makings of a very good officer.”

“I thought I was, you know...”

“I know, lieutenant,” he laughed. “And you may find it interesting to note that Jack was a Navy lawyer -- a Navy lieutenant commander when he left the service. I think that’s where he learned to find unsuspected evidence. Those Navy lawyers are REALLY smart -- they know to always ask the senior enlisted guys.”

Yeah, I already know: Cindy has a bird ready for a trip over to Little Rock, in a few days. Folks, I REALLY don’t need this. And arriving at the house, Kathy comes running at me squealing, “DADDY!” Followed by Tina. Well, maybe I can survive.

So, a few days later. Beck was right (not a surprise), Anders was right, Jack was right. Why was I worried? And we’re over here in Little Rock, for a pre-trial (potentially settlement) meeting with the BMAMF folks.

Kinda funny: Anders wanted to take Jo’s bird, since it has more luxurious seating. I don’t care, nor does anyone else. Jack said, “If Cindy’s flying it, I’m happy. That girl saved my life, when nobody else could have. I’ll do whatever she asks, whenever she asks.”

We arrived at the airfield, when Mandy was towing the bird out onto the ramp. Jack exclaimed, “TWO of ‘em? How is that possible?” Cindy laughed and said, “Sir, meet Mandy, my little sister. She’s just learning now -- maybe in a couple of years.”

He strolled over and took Mandy’s hand, and said, “Mandy, I have no idea what’s going on here, but whatever you need, ask and it’s yours.” Mandy blushed a little and said, “Thank you, sir. Right now, I have no idea -- I have to go over to Auburn in a few days and find out.”

Jack nodded, pulled his cell phone and stepped away. Didn’t hear more than a couple of snippets, one of which was, “Cindy’s sister. Don’t know. Whatever she wants.” Hmm.

Cindy said, “Gents, buckle up. It’s a bit over an hour -- no big deal.” And off we go, with blonde Dana up front with Cindy.

Dana, whom Cindy introduced to Jack as “my apprentice.”

“Always two, there are, no more, no less,” Jack intones. “A master and an apprentice.” He caught Cindy’s jaw drop. “What?!? Lawyers can’t be geeks?” To me he said, “I don’t care, but I have to say, she’s a cutie. Nearly right up there with Cindy. And if Cindy likes her, I like her.”

So a bit later, we’re at TAC-Air, tying down, and Cindy isn’t happy. She said, “Alan, their fuel prices are too high, and their services are sloppy. I don’t like this place.”

I had to say, “It’s Bill and Hillary’s airport -- what did you expect?”

We’ll deal with it, I thought. At least they recognized her Signature card. And off to a big law office downtown. We met the Pine Forest people - friendly people. We got ushered to bathrooms, coffee, and then to a conference room, where we were met by the BMA folks. This is a pre-trial conference.

A bit later, we’re sitting a meeting between US, represented by Jack Haggarty, the CEO of the little co-op and his attorney, and a smarmy bastard from BMA Corp. and their equally smarmy lawyer and an Arkansas judge presiding over the mess.

After introductory bullshit – lawyers give me gas – they got down to the meat of the meeting.

Says Jack, “There is absolutely NO record of any derogatory comment made specifying YOUR company. That includes written and electronic media. The reports, both the initial findings, with the ‘as-found’ condition, YOUR engineering drawings, and OUR reports of corrective actions and OUR ‘as-left’ drawings are in the hands of both the client and our records group (‘group’ being Donna and a couple of college kids, one of them a proto-engineer).”

The guy’s good, I gotta give him that. He’s in HIS arena. I’m glad he’s on OUR side. He continued, “Neither of them contains proprietary information, and the before and after versions show that not only did YOUR people overlook a mistake, but the fact that you issued a report of satisfactory operation following your installation, a mistake that opened MY client -- your FORMER client -- up for actionable liability following mis-operation of equipment, that leaves YOU in the position of exposure for not only the money our client spent remediating your installation, but also further payment in compensation for lost revenue and ill will on the part of our client’s customer base.”

He took a breath, finished lowering the boom. “And in further support of our case, we are prepared to engage the services of another engineering firm, acceptable to all parties, to perform a third party evaluation of the evidence of engineering service failures.”

(And THAT, folks, is a good reason why you don’t smear an Alabama lawyer’s ass down the length of a Birmingham runway.)