by Richard W. Millar, Jr.

Atrial practice is governed by deadlines. Sometimes I think it is more deadlines than practice. There is software designed to calendar deadlines so the lawyers won’t miss any of them. Sometimes the list of deadlines is longer than the complaint. And, I confess to harboring the suspicion that, sometimes, software just makes up deadlines, perhaps to justify its cost. It can print out things I’ve never seen before to warn me of events I have never heard of.

You can win or lose a case because you remembered or forgot a deadline, no matter the underlying merit.

To make it more insidious, the deadlines are buried in rules. There are state rules, federal rules, administrative rules, local rules and the lesser known make-or-break local-local rules generally believed to have been whelped to bedevil out-of-town counsel by “home-towning” them.

And then there are the lawyers inflated with self-importance, whom I refer to as the Pufferfish Lawyers, who believe that the rules where they practice (read: Los Angeles) override the rules of the hinterlands. I can remember a clerk who had a sign on his/her desk that said: “I don’t give a damn how they do it in Los Angeles.”

So, what do you do when you run up against one of these rules that you had not anticipated?

You lie.

Because the rules have importance and can be outcome determinative, it needs to be a big lie. One of such character that anyone who hears it would be loath to question it. Like “I have cancer.”

Which brings me to one Vincenzo Field of Illinois.

Mr. Field is the subject of an Illinois Attorney Registration & Disciplinary Commission recommendation for a three-year suspension or until further order of court.

Mr. Field’s claims of cancer started early with his application to law school in which he excused a low initial SAT score and inability to complete a master’s degree and withdrawing from a Ph.D program because of multiple surgeries for stomach cancer. The Commission found the statements “clearly false” but found he could not be disciplined for them because he was not a lawyer yet.

The Commission, however, found a “gotcha” when he applied to be a lawyer and did not disclose that he had lied on his law school application.

This background might have gone unnoticed were it not for his continuing pleas of cancer to obtain extensions of time in various cases.

In one case, he obtained a discovery extension by telling opposing counsel he had been out of the office for about four months due to surgery removing tumors from his stomach and abdomen, and he filed a motion for an agreed upon extension induced by his claims.

In another matter, he sought to obtain extensions for a couple of depositions because his son was having surgery to remove part of his stomach and intestines, going so far as to “check in” at the deposition to say surgery was about to start and he would have limited access to his cell phone. The Commission found there was no family emergency, there was no illness, there was no surgery and there even was no son.

My personal favorite involved a request to extend a deadline for expert disclosure. Mr. Field stated that he had retained one Fred McClinton and was going to meet with him to get his report, but Mr. McClinton’s daughter was hit by a car while riding her bicycle. Her injuries were worse than initially thought and Mr. McClinton had to withdraw. Mr. Field provided opposing counsel with copies of emails he sent to Mr. McClinton thanking him for his efforts and expressing sympathy for his daughter.

By now, you know where this is going. The emails were fake and sent to a fake address. There was no accident, there was no bicycle, there was no daughter, and Mr. McClinton was a name that Mr. Field simply made up.

That takes a lot of work!

A partner at Mr. Field’s firm found out and Mr. Field then essentially self-reported.

This makes me long for the good old days where a simple “the dog ate my pleadings” did the trick.

Richard W. Millar, Jr. is Of Counsel with the firm of Friedman Stroffe & Gerard in Irvine. He can be reached at rmillar@fsglawyers.com.