“Ryan, I’m a man of my word. I promise you there’s something fatally wrong with your case. I’m going to win.”
Those were the words of opposing counsel. Hey repeated them to me about a dozen times over the course of about 15 months. When he first made that statement, I immediately looked over the file. When I brought the case, I thought I was on solid ground both legally and factually. I poured over my evidence. I did more research. No matter what I did, I couldn’t figure out for the life of me what he was talking about.
You may be thinking that this was a bluff by opposing counsel. Knowing counsel, I refuse to believe it. I’m convinced he thought there was something seriously wrong with my case and he was going to wait to trial to sandbag me with it.
Every time he’d say there was something wrong with my case, my response was “what”. He’d laugh and snicker “that’s for me to know and you to find out”.
I’m a reasonable guy and the last thing I want to do is put a lot of work in on a file and lose for my client. I’d much rather have something pointed out to me, take it to the client, and advise the client that the case isn’t as strong as we thought. This causes sensible clients to lower or withdraw their demands.
He put on a vigorous defense of his client. He objected to everything. Told me he was going to take me on a walk through the practice book and he did. All the while, he refused to tell me what he believed the defect in my case was. He just kept repeating “trust me, you’ve got major problems”.
After the first review of the file, I ignored his threats. They were wasted on me. If there was a problem with my case (which I didn’t think there was) then I couldn’t see it. I couldn’t advise my client to lower its demands. As a result, the litigation escalated and both clients dug in their feet as costs rose.
The one day, I get a call from another lawyer. He tells me that he is now representing the defendant in my case. In one phone call, we settle the matter.
To this day, I never found out what opposing counsel thought was wrong with my case. If he was right, and I think he believed he was, his client never got any value from me or my client for it.
To get any value in a case a lawyer needs to convince either a judge, a jury, opposing counsel, or an opposing party that there is some risk. Most cases settle. Sitting on information with modern discovery rules is practically impossible if opposing counsel does his job.
In most cases, if you have the cards, play’em.