91视频

Ok, stop snickering. We鈥檙e not talking X-rated content here. We鈥檙e just asking local attorneys to share memories of their first solo case, major project or courtroom trial: the nerves and jitters, the planning and preparing, the right moves they made and even the wrong ones. This week, Renee Rothauge, an attorney with Markowitz Herbold Glade & Mehlhaf, describes the 鈥淢eat Capades鈥� in her first trial.

My first trial involved meat and two feuding brothers. An Oregon rancher sold several truckloads of cow carcasses to a Los Angeles meat processing facility owned by the Meat family (fictitious name for this article). Unbeknownst to the rancher, the Meat brothers were feuding like the Dallas Ewings. The younger brother started his own competing business using the Meat family鈥檚 workers, building and money. Father Meat sided with my client, the eldest son. The rancher sued my client for payment. The eldest son sued his younger brother to get him to pay since he ordered, processed and sold the meat.

I was so scared during the days leading up to that trial. My client was mad that he was sued over his brother鈥檚 meat, I was new to the case and still learning about this meat business, and I faced two tough lawyers; the one representing the younger brother was Harvard-taught and boasted superlative trail experience. I planned and was prepared for everything that would happen at trial, or so I believed.

The well-planned turned unexpected when I called my key witness, Father Meat, to the stand. His testimony progressed well — until he began to cry! I was dumbfounded that this tough, 70-year-old German immigrant with a quick temper and tireless work ethic — who had churned some of his sons鈥� conflict — should cry. I assumed the 鈥渃rocodile tears鈥� were intended to gain sympathy in support of his eldest son. I handed him a box of tissues, kept questioning him in front of the jury and chided him after he left the stand.

With the benefit of decades of trial work, handling hundreds of witnesses and being a mother of two, I realize I could not have planned for these tears. But I could have acted differently. I now believe his tears were genuine. In that moment, sworn to tell the truth, he likely faced a horrible truth of his own. There would be no happy family gatherings in his sunset years, and his 30-year legacy spent building a successful company from nothing would be lost. He had failed as a parent and as a business man. Today, I would warn him that the trial could take a sad turn, and I would not scold him for crying in front of the jury.

What I learned in that first trial is the reason I still love the work today. Namely, that trials often reveal aspects of the human condition in unexpected ways, making them the richest of all human dramas. As for my meat drama, it ended happily for me with the rancher getting paid by the younger brother.