A few weeks prior to Christmas, my girlfriend and I purchased airline tickets to travel across the country to be home for the holidays. We were to leave the last weekend before Christmas. On that Friday, a senior partner told me I needed to argue a motion on Monday. I told him that I was flying home the next day, but he said it was “urgent.”
I asked his assistant for the materials, but she didn’t provide them until the end of the day. To my surprise, the motion was to be heard in a small resort town located a time zone away. I searched for an assistant to arrange a flight and accommodations. All of them had gone home. So, I booked my own flight and motel on my credit card.
Meanwhile, my girlfriend left to go home without me, and I ended up swallowing a $600.00 re-booking/scheduling fee to join her the next week.
I flew into the town on a small, single-engine plane. The descent into the airport was horrific. The pilot made three attempts to land because he couldn’t see the runway through the blowing snow.
The next morning, I attended court. The judge was three hours late because of the snow.
Five minutes into the motion, it became clear to me that the urgency of the motion was questionable. In fact, the judge even thought it was premature. It was apparent that the senior partner scheduled it to ruin the opposing lawyer’s holidays.
I ended up missing my flight out of town that day because of the delay and because I didn’t reset my watch to the new time zone.
A few weeks later, someone told me that the airport I flew into was notoriously unsafe in the winter.
I recall that this partner once flew to this small town to do a simple motion. But it was during summer. I hear the golfing there is fabulous that time of year.
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