RE: Great news about my court case - get yourself a lawyer

[Hideyo Yamamoto]

I agree, even when calling to get some public records, unless you are an attorney, they really don’t take care of you that well or quickly --- I also think that if you don’t have an attorney, you don’t know that you have an option to fight against them --- I only knew because Greg told me that I could from the very beginning.. so when my permit was denied at the first time, I think that most of the people would have thought that they don’t have any other options but to surrender their animals which is sooooooooooooooooooooooo wrong!  Also, I think that in Albuquerque, there was no one in the past who was trying to fight against the possibility of the ordinance being unconstitutional before me according to Merry – they all gave in because they did not better – even a few of my friends who are in rescue organization (and these are board and president of well known rescue groups) told me not to fight against it, but find a way to go around it because I won’t win –   But, I was never going to give in --- no matter what, though --- that’s a sort of my weakness as well as strength – when I feel I am right, I can’t compromise it – I need to fight until I get what I want and sometimes, it’s not the best way.. “being right” is not necessary the most important thing, but “doing right” might be more important sometimes – I think the city attorney was shocked that I prepared so much information at the hearing, as no one in the past had prepared that much information to fight and he simply got pissed at the end because I did not give in ---   From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Nina Sent: Sunday, January 08, 2006 1:43 PM To: felvtalk@felineleukemia.org Subject: Re: Great news about my court case - get yourself a lawyer   It's so true about people who have attorneys being treated differently.  This is not a very significant example, but it opened my eyes to this very fact and changed the way I pursue disputes.  On one of the many relocations of my youth, I actually had a job waiting for me in NY city.  The company I would be working for paid for my moving expenses and I hired Mayflower to haul my stuff from CA to NJ.  I had neatly marked all my boxes and when the drivers arrived they wouldn't wait for me to inspect all the boxes.  I signed off, but I included a note saying that I had not inspected everything.  Sure enough several of the boxes marked "tools" were missing.  (Another lesson is to mark your boxes in code!).  My significant other and I fought for months with the moving company, through phone calls and letters, each time they would put us off.  (We were insured for loss and damage btw).  Finally we spoke to an attorney about it.  While we were in the attorney's office, after a 10 minute conversation mind you, he picked up the phone and that quick we were okayed a check to cover our losses!  Made me want to spit! Nina [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: No offense taken. Merry and I actually talked for a while about this very thing-- how the city attorney and the city council started acting differently once Merry announced to them she was going to take the case and put together a team of lawyers to fight it. She said the "team" was going to be her, the criminal attorney Hideyo found, and Hideyo's boyfriend, but she did not say that to the city people. She just said a "team" would be litigating it, and she said they all seemed very surprised and then started acting cooperative.  I myself, in my jobs as a legal aid lawyer, have seen over and over how differently people with lawyers are treated.  It is really shocking and appalling.  One of my jobs right now entails going through and reading most of the hearing decisions that come out of the MA (I am telecommuting) welfare system (administrative appeal decisions) to try to get a sense of systemic problems that are occurring and to post relevant decisions on a website where legal aid lawyers can see and use them.  Most of the decisions are in cases where the person did not have a lawyer.  There are so many decisions that are denied appeals, where if the person had had a lawyer I know they would have won because they were completely in the right.  It makes me very depressed. Michelle