“He simply seems to enjoy exposing himself to her security cameras.”
Imagine that you stumble across this disconnected sentence, devoid of any context. Maybe it’s something you overhear in a conversation while you’re walking down the street. Or maybe you glance at a book that somebody’s reading, and there it is:
“He simply seems to enjoy exposing himself to her security cameras.”
Even though you don’t know the context, and even if you’re not really thinking about it, your brain makes a few connections all by itself.
First of all, the subject is he, which is hardly surprising, considering what comes next, because nearly all of the people who expose themselves are male.
And what does he do? He seems to enjoy exposing himself. That’s really all you need to know about him, because he’s obviously a disgusting excuse for a human being.
But wait. There’s more.
He’s not just exposing himself to any random person: He is exposing himself to her. Again, that’s not a surprise: Nearly all arrests for exposure are men who expose themselves to women.
But he is doing more than just exposing himself to her. Adding a sordid twist that’s sadly appropriate in this age of digital communications, he’s transmitting his disturbing image via her security cameras. So this is a perversion in more than just the sexual sense: He’s repurposing the device that’s supposed to provide her with some measure of security, and he’s perverting it to deliver a shocking image that will make her wonder if there really is any such thing as security anymore.
Placing the sentence back into its original context, we learn that this particular accusation was the invention of Tommy Chase Garrett, a lawyer who is “one of the top-rated attorneys in the nation,” according to the Super Lawyers website. Tommy is a partner in Scheef & Stone, which has been listed as “one of Texas’ top-ranked law firms” by the renowned legal information service LexisNexis.
So, who is this miscreant who was singled out for special recognition by Tommy the Super Lawyer?
That would be me.
Later, after I sued him for libel, he denied that he’d said it. And even if he had said it, he hadn’t meant it. (It turns out that “exposing himself” doesn’t actually mean “exposing himself.”) And even if he had meant it, that didn’t matter, because he had merely been expressing a personal opinion, which is the God-given right of every American.
But even if he had said it, and even if he had meant it, and even if it had not just been an opinion… well, none of that really mattered. In the final analysis, Tommy told me, he could say anything he wanted to say, as long as he wrapped it in the protective sheath of a lawsuit.
And so in paragraph 9 of the Trespass Counterclaim, between a prosaic account of how I had entered Sonia’s property “without her authorization or consent” and the lofty notion that “the property of every person is so sacred that no one can set foot upon another’s property without the property owner’s leave,” I was surprised to find the stunning accusation that I enjoyed exposing myself to Sonia’s security cameras.
I felt like I had been gut-punched. Why would Tommy say something so perverse? I know lawyers are obligated to zealously defend the rights of their clients, but does zealous representation include falsely accusing their litigation opponents of committing heinous acts of sexual depravity?
My first thought was that he was simply trying to bully me: He was making the point that I would come to regret tangling with him, that I had entered his world where he had control, and that he could make my life miserable anytime he felt like it.
But more recently, I’ve come to realize that it was much more insidious than just a simple power play.
Tommy, I’ve learned, likes to sneak wildly inappropriate sexual innuendos into his legal arguments. His technique, I believe, is subliminal: If he can plant a brain-worm in the judge’s mind that suggests that in addition to being a trespasser I’m also a sexual deviant, Tommy’s job will be that much easier. The judge will be biased against me before he even hears what I have to say. It’s a diabolically clever technique, and so subtle that judges might not even realize they’re being played.
Or maybe it’s just that Tommy is sexually repressed, and that his pathology pokes through when he gets excited about legal matters.
Or maybe it’s both.
Later, Tommy insisted that he could say any vile thing about me that sprang into his mind. He could, for example, accuse me of being an international terrorist. Or, if he were in the mood, he could claim that I was a mass murderer. Or a pedophile. Or he could say that I went around exposing myself to women.
And by the way: If I had the temerity to sue Tommy for libel because of something he said in a lawsuit, I’d be violating his sacred “right to petition.” He’d sue me right back, and I’d end up having to pay him hundreds of thousands of dollars.
But wait a minute, you say: If Tommy the Super Lawyer invents some disgusting things about me and I sue him for libel, I could end up owing him a boatload of money because he hid behind a lawsuit while he catapulted scurrilous accusations at me?
Now you’re catching on.
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