HONOR AND MENDACITY, THE YANG AND YIN OF DOING THINGS RIGHT

If you haven’t taken the time to go and watch “The Big Short” movie, you really ought to. It is thought provoking, true, informative, and it will make you angry. (The acting, and the directing are beyond top notch).

Like many folks, for me, this time of year is one of both reflection and planning.  I’m no choir boy, but throughout my professional career, I do and have tried to act honorably, in both the small things as well as the big things. In that regard, one of the definitions of “Honor” is:

a : a keen sense of ethical conduct : integrity b : one’s word given as a guarantee of performance

The converse of acting honorably is to act with mendacity. The definition of “Mendacity” is:

: lack of honesty : the condition of being mendacious

In turn, “Mendacious” means:

: not honest : likely to tell lies

: based on lies

Unfortunately, as demonstrated by so many characters in “The Big Short”, mendacity seems to be  the rule rather than the exception, we certainly don’t aggressively punish mendacious people, even when their mendacity is apparent, and as a result it happens again and again.

There are so many pirates in business who’s conduct is at best on the edge of being unethical, and worse is actually unethical, who profit by their conduct, and, because they make money, are respected by society. In the events described in “The Big Short”, these pirates, in their greed and arrogance almost brought down the world economy.

We don’t handle cases that impact the world economy, we just represent people and families who need our help.  We represent Mrs. Batchelor, in a bad faith case that we tried before a jury, and lost, in the Federal Court in Orlando early last year (part of acting honorably means that we never lie about our achievements, and we are frank about our failures). However, during the trial we detected, and alerted the judge to what we felt was extremely mendacious conduct.

As a result, after the trial, we filed several motions alerting the judge to what we heard and suspected. Ultimately, the Judge issued a very comprehensive order regarding what occurred, and granting our client, Mrs. Batchelor, a new trial. We posted the order on our website for your consideration here.

We’ll try Mrs. Batchelor’s case again in the summer of 2016.