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I’m still unpacking, but at least I’m in my new office and the phones are hooked up.

I want to give special thanks to the following, who I will not refer to by name to protect the innocent:

• The crew who helped me move. They consisted of my my wife, two daughters, two sons in law, and a step-son-in-law.
• The technicians from Popp Telecom, who spent almost all day Friday trying to unscramble a spaghetti bowl of wires in this building so that my DSL, phone jacks and Ethernet jacks would work.
• The delivery crew from Office Liquidators in Plymouth, who disposed of some of my old furniture from my old location and delivered new or mostly new furniture to my new place. As close as I can figure, my old desk and chairs had been in use for 27 years – guess I got my use out of them.
• The staff from Senior Community Services, which is my new landlord. They have been very helpful and gracious. Before moving in I had asked them for new paint, new carpeting, a sign in the parking lot and some remodeling. They agreed to everything I asked for.
• They guys from Joe’s Carpeting – who after putting in the carpet have agreed to make some throw rugs out of the remnants for me.
• The neighborhood mail carrier – who is making an effort to see that my mail still gets to me.

This is not the first time I have had an office with a Wayzata Blvd. address. Between 1978 and 1980 I was at 6950 Wayzata Blvd. in Golden Valley. That building is no longer there. Long after I left, it was torn down to make room for I-394. It was next door to the Perkins which is still near the intersection of Highway 12 and Louisiana Ave. I had really forgotten about that old office, until I noticed that there was something familiar about having “Wayzata Blvd.” on my business card. Deja vu all over again.

I have just had a very bad experience with the above two outfits, which I believe may actually be two of many names that they hide behind. Several web pages that I found say that they are also known as “My Cash Now.”

My client had a loan from them, but it was all on line; and the client never had a physical address. I found an address after a bit of searching and used that as the address in the bankruptcy petition, but the notice from the bankruptcy court was sent back – meaning that either it was a bad address or the mail was refused.

I have spent the past hour on the phone with them. They do answer their phone. But all individuals there refuse to provide the address – except for one who put me through to a recording which said something almost too fast to write down. I think I got that address, but I’m not sure because there was no way to get the recording to play again. It was an address in British Columbia, Canada.

In my humble opinion, based on my experience with them today, I cannot characterize them as anything other than devious.

This week I have gone to see both my dentist and my accountant. I like both of these guys, but going to see them tends to be a painful experience. I need both of these guys, but I wish I didn’t.

I suspect that the way I feel about seeing my dentist and my accountant may provide some insight into how people feel when they need to come see me for legal advice or representation. I am fairly certain that very few of my clients are glad about being my client – in fact none are glad about it. While I am certainly glad to see them, seeing me or having anything to do with me must certainly be difficult. If my clients had a choice, I’m sure they’d rather be somewhere else.

I mentioned these thoughts to one of my clients, who stated as follows : “I’m glad to have the company, but I’d rather have a different topic.” Credit to him for putting it profoundly and succinctly.

I’ll share one more fact. Between the dentist and the accountant, I’d rather go see the dentist.

Tomorrow, Monday December 29, 2008, is supposed to be the first day of my jury duty with Hennepin County. I just checked with the phone line, and they will not be needing me – at least not tomorrow morning. So for those of you who have had an appointment with me in the morning, I’ll be planning on being there.

The next time I have to check to see if they want me will be 12:15 pm tomorrow afternoon. I am supposed to call in and see if they need me for Monday afternoon. This annoying process will continue for the next two weeks or so. This has meant that I have had to be careful to not be scheduling any court appearances for any of my own cases with my own clients over the next two weeks. Over the past three months or so, I have been making an effort to schedule hearings on all of my cases before Christmas, so that I would have an open schedule now. This made for a dramatically busy December. With that rush over, it seems a bit quiet now; except that I am on call to run downtown and report as a juror to hear a trial.

I’ll be reporting more as this unfolds.

Twas the day before Christmas, and my phone has finally quit the constant ringing. Yesterday was another story. Even that close to the holiday, there were lots of interruptions. To all who may be reading this, I wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy Hanukkah. I am going to make an effort for at least the next 48 hours to enjoy these holidays. It’s not that easy after all the sad stories I have been hearing. It is nonetheless my intent to do so.

I think that I still have somewhere within me a little bit of the wonder that was there when I was a small child surrounded by all the holiday hoopla and regalia, expecting a visit from Santa Claus. It’s not that I still believe in Santa Claus; but except for the scene in Miracle on 34th Street, he’s never been accorded his right to a trial by jury. Even in that movie if I recall correctly, the judge dismissed the charges without letting the jury make a decision. It seems to me that Santa Claus should be accorded the presumption of existence until proven to not exist beyond a reasonable doubt. I don’t really believe, but I have to admit that he has not ever been proven to not exist beyond a reasonable doubt. That’s a tough standard, and it has not been met. In fact, any student of logic will tell you that it is impossible to prove a negative. Thus it is a safe bet that Santa’s nonexistence can never and will never be proven – at least not with evidence that’s admissible in court.

I just checked the NORAD web site, where there is a special page for tracking Santa. In fact at the moment I am writing this NORAD says they have Santa on radar over Dhaka, Bangladesh. Looks real to me, or at least I can’t prove it’s not.

I have received a summons to show up for jury duty on December 29th — downtown at the Hennepin County Government Center. The people who run the program tell me that I can arrange to check in by telephone to see if they need me. This apparently, however, can only be done after I at least show up in person on the first day.

Not long ago I commented to one of the court clerks that I supposed that the week of New Years Eve and New Years Day would be a slow week for jury trials. She laughed at me and said the opposite was the case. Apparently that week is loaded up with jury trials by people who didn’t want to have the trial Christmas week.

When I first received the summons I called in and got a hold of one of the supervisors. I had lots of excuses, not the least of which was that I have served as a referee in the Hennepin County settlement and arbitration programs. I have worn a black robe, sat at the big desk in front of the courtroom and have been called “your honor.” “So what”‘ was the response. They have required retired district court judges to serve. There is an exception for judges who are actually on duty as judges, but that of course would not apply to me.

I anticipate having more to say on this topic as the situation unfolds.

I have been practicing bankruptcy law and DWI defense for some time now, and it always seems a bit difficult to explain why those two areas of the law seem to mesh for me. So when I saw a story about a bankruptcy judge being arrested for DWI, I woke up and took notice.

Massachusetts bankruptcy judge Robert Somma won’t be returning to his job. Why? He has “agreed” to leave his job to pursue other endeavors. Seems he has been off work since his arrest for DWI in February. When I first read the headline I was surprised, because lots of public officials get DWIs. At least one of the Hennepin County judges currently on the bench has received a DWI while in office. They have to take their punishment, but they are not removed from their jobs.

There were other complications in Judge Somma’s case, however. Seems that when he was arrested, he was wearing a dress. That in itself, while a bit unusual, doesn’t seem to be justification for losing his job either. Apparently he was a good judge and well liked by those who practiced in his courtroom. There’s nothing illegal or unethical about wearing a dress that I know of, although I suppose I have to concede that it could have been inappropriate.

Here’s a link to the Boston Globe story.

I had some unexpected court time this week, especially yesterday. When that happens, my usual discipline of keeping up with returning calls and responding to emails goes to heck. I’ve made an effort to get back to everybody before saying I’m done for the week – which I am – but if I did not get back to you, please call me or email me again.

I usually am pretty good about actually looking at what my spam filter catches before I delete that mailbox, but on a week like this one I may have been more likely to miss a real message that got caught there. If I did not respond to your email, please send me another one.

Well, I’m kind of a “damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead” kind of guy. It’s hard for me to admit limitations. But I just finished a round of phone calls to my children and my Mother-in-Law (age 87, but acts like 57) cancelling tonight’s planned holiday family event.

We’ve had a tradition that some time during the holidays we all get together and head to downtown Minneapolis to go through the display formerly known as the Dayton’s display, now the Macy’s display. Upstairs in the old Dayton’s department store building, since time immemorial going back to at least the 1960s, there has been a wonderful, entertaining and sometimes inspiring display. This year the theme apparently is the Nutcracker.

Earlier in the day during the first round of phone conversations the consensus seemed to be: screw the weather, let’s go anyway. Since then the snow has gotten worse. Then my son reported that his car was covered with snow with ice underneath the snow. When he tried to clear it, he broke off a windshield wiper. After that I found out that one of my daughters is at her boyfriend’s place – which is in Eagan, further away from my place here in Minnetonka than I had figured.

So on with public TV’s version of the weather channel – which at my place is Channel 13. Quite a graphic depiction of the weather radar showed the weather pattern doing a circular thing where there was no sign of it passing by. Looks more like it intends to stick around quite a while.

The storm should be over by Christmas Day. At that time we’ll discuss maybe trying to go to Macy’s another day before the display ends; apparently it runs until New years‘ Eve. I’m disappointed, however, over not being the conquering hero who figured out how to do the event in the face of the nasty adverse conditions. In my business life I have often been that hero, pulling miracle rabbits out of my hat or out of various other places. But upon having given up on the idea of going out in this storm, I am feeling relief.

There’s a whole body of literature on the subject of how if one feels relief after making a decision, that’s a good sign that it was the right decision.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to you all. If you have taken the time to read all this, let me suggest that you turn off the computer now and get face to face with either a family member or a friend. If you can’t get face to face, at least try making use of that quaint and ancient device – the telephone.

It’s a quiet day at my office. Lots of people are calling with questions, but nobody wants to actually come see me. Every other day this week, I have lots of appointments. There must be something about Halloween where people think it’s a bad day to see a lawyer.

I certainly know a few lawyers who I felt may have been vampires, and others who seemed at least borderline demonic. It might be also that lawyers as a profession are more nocturnal than those engaged in many lines of work. A few years ago the wags on KS95 were making a point of telling lawyer jokes around 6 am on the theory that the lawyers would not be up yet at that time, which for the most part I believe was true.

I just received a call from a gentleman in the State of Tennessee. He had a bankruptcy question, but I recommended that he find a lawyer from his own state to ask. Bankruptcy law is federal, but the application of it still varies widely from state to state. There are many questions of interpretation of the new law where the individual courts disagree widely. Asset exemptions are set by state law, and that can make a dramatic difference in the outcome concerning what a debtor may be allowed to keep.

Yesterday a gentleman called who had moved within the past two years from Texas to Wisconsin to Minnesota. He wants to file a bankruptcy here. There are provisions of the new law which are intended to discourage shopping for favorable exemptions by moving from state to state. Under those provisions, if this gentleman wanted to file here right now he would probably have to claim the exemptions provided for under Texas law. What a mess! I have never practiced law in Texas, but all of a sudden I may need to know something about their exemption laws. The last time that happened I made a point of consulting with a lawyer from the state in question. Every now and then I get a call from a lawyer in some other state with a similar question about Minnesota exemption laws.

This has been quite a ramble, if you have managed to keep reading to this point. All I meant to say was HAPPY HALLOWEEN.!