I Love Lawyers or Thank You, Sir, May I Have Another

This article in today's SH-T reminds me of why I love lawyers. Apparently, Nadel's Tampa attorneys are getting anxious for a paycheck and will be asking a judge to unfreeze some of Nadel's frozen assets so they can get theirs. Before anybody else gets theirs, of course. They're lawyers, after all.

If not, "it will force a re-evaluation of our position here," says one of his legal team. That means, "no dough, no go" in layman's terms. What the attorneys are asking for, essentially, is to be paid with some of the money that Art Nadel stole from his investors so they can:

1. get him off,
2. get him a reduced sentence, or, in the best case scenario,
3. get him out on bail to live comfortably while they draw out the court hearings until he dies of natural causes, all the while raking in exorbitant fees for this legal filibustering, paid for by, yes, other people's money. Talk about a win-win situation for Esquires Foster & Cohen....

I have to laugh at some of the reaction in the reader commentary section of the SH-T. Everybody, of course, wants to hang the guy and are adamantly opposed to freeing up any assets to pay these lawyers. Some suggest that Nadel be forced to use a public defender. Which means Nadel's defense would still be paid by other people's money--us taxpayers.

The good folks at Cohen, Jayson and Foster--solely in the interest of justice, I'm sure--have graciously offered to work at the 'deeply discounted' hourly rate of $300/hour. Why, you can hardly find high school kids willing to cut your lawn for that kind of piddling money these days.

The attorneys also note that their travel, legal research and copying expenses have, so far, reached $10,000. Who do they have running the Xerox machine--Manny Ramirez??

Peg Nadel, Art Nadel's wife, did assign to the law firm a note and mortgage with $124,637 balance for a Sarasota condo. Of course, she didn't say who the condo belonged to, but assured the attorneys that it was a nice place and the owners, whoever they were, have done a lot of work on it recently.

While arguing before a US District Judge in New York about how utterly preposterous it is to consider Nadel a flight risk and should be released on bail, the defense team took the bold move to pinky swear that Nadel would "irrevocable consent to extradition."

Which means in American that Nadel, who is definitely not a flight risk, mind you, but if he gets out on bail and would decide to, let's say, take a vacation like he did when his scam first came to light, that he would not oppose extradition back to the states. Not that he would try anything like that....

I can't believe the judge said 'no.' Communist.

"Peg, please send some more of those travel brochures to me here in the joint. I think I'll be out on bail soon."