FEBRUARY 9, 2023 – Blogger’s note: I apologize for the length of this post, but it’s nothing in contrast with the duration of suffering that will prevail in Turkey-Syria long after fading from our headlines.
Yesterday I sat for my deposition by two New Jersey attorneys. In the prep session the day before, my lawyer counseled me to keep responses as short as possible. “I emphasize this to any clients who’ll be deposed,” she said, “but no one listens to me.” I told her that was a challenge, and that I’d limit my answers to “Yes,” “No” and “I don’t remember.”
“I’m shooting for an A+” I said.
My lawyer laughed, and said, “We’ll see.”
I say, “my” lawyer, but actually she represents the insurance company that insured our family’s real estate company in New Jersey. The covered occurrence is a “trip-and-fall” that allegedly occurred in February 2020. As the chief manager of the company, I was the person on our side to be deposed by plaintiff’s counsel and the attorney representing the insurance company for a tenant who occupied the storefront next to the section of sidewalk where the “trip-and-fall” supposedly happened.
Because the case is pending, I won’t say anything specific about it except what’s in the police report: “The sidewalk where [Plaintiff] had fallen is raised approximately one inch, if not less, and was not deemed to be an immediate hazard (see photographs of same).” According to the same report, “[Plaintiff] drove herself to the [medical center], where it was determined that she had fractured her left ankle.”
I “sat” for my deposition in the comfort of . . . our “sitting” room. Unlike the many depositions I’ve taken in my career—always in a fancy conference room, with everyone wearing a “20-game winner” outfit—yesterday’s Zoom operation was several steps down. No one wore a suit, and except for one lawyer who dated herself by the backdrop of floor-to-ceiling shelves burdened by “law books,” no one else seemed concerned about a video background. (To add a dash of color, I positioned myself to capture on the wall above our couch, a large oil painting of my wife’s five-generations-twice-removed ancestral home in Wales.) Everyone was wearing “Wednesday casual.”
While interrogated under oath, I caught a glimpse of neighbors walking past our house. They proceeded cautiously given the treacherous state of every flat surface in the region. Over the past two months in this place of unrelenting ice and snow, everyone has either (a) wound up on their derriere; (b) known someone who’s landed on their butt; (c) seen the news anchor on the local CBS affiliate, arm in a sling, reporting on the local pastor lying paralyzed in a hospital bed but happy and effusively grateful that so many people had rushed to his aid after he slipped on the ice in his church parking lot; or (d) all of the foregoing.
I have yet to hear of anyone suing or even threatening to sue over the ubiquitous danger of . . . winter. If one of us is “negligent” for not continuously battling ice and snow down to the dry pavement, then everyone is.
In tropical New Jersey, however, civilization has attained such perfection that a person and the person’s hired gun claim the right to compensation stemming from a slight imperfection in a municipal sidewalk. (In this era of “Don’t Tread on Me!” the local “government” takes a “hands off” approach to maintenance of public sidewalks.) That life in a corner of this dangerous planet could be protected by such a platinum indemnity seemed preposterous when I thought about the giant banana peel that has long covered our part of the country. I imagined how even our New Jersey ancestors would marvel at the New Jersey lawsuit.
But at one point in the deposition, while I was waiting for the deposing attorney to formulate his question, I thought about Monday’s colossal natural disaster that crushed tens of thousands of lives and flung untold numbers more into abject misery—the upwards of 75,000 people injured; the hundreds of thousands of survivors either in grief over the death of loved ones or despair over not yet knowing the fate of family and friends; the unimaginable numbers of people fighting just to stay warm, hydrated and nourished, as they search for a place to rest their weary limbs and souls. What possible emotional reserves do they possess to contemplate an uncertain but certainly painful future?
And how many Turks and Syrians, I wondered, who’d suffered a “fractured ankle” were able to “drive themselves to the [medical center]” for complete and immediate, top-flight treatment?
I felt at once anger and empathy; anger over our self-absorbed culture, in which every mishap is a wrong to be indemnified; empathy for members of other places who are in the midst of unspeakable suffering on a Biblical scale.
The “A-plus” I’d been gunning for, now seemed ludicrous in what was an absurd class. More appropriate was an “F-minus” for the #MeNow, I-win-you-lose, all-my-grievances-are-to-be-indemnified elements of our national culture. I know little of the New Jersey plaintiff’s story, but it can’t compare to what’s playing out now among millions in Turkey and Syria. May the very best of humanity give hope and aid to people in the very worst of circumstances.
(Remember to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.)
© 2023 by Eric Nilsson
