Gordon Maag represents the plaintiff, The Estate of Kent Herzog, in a civil action against DuPont for alleged negligent exposure to benzene. Mr. Shirrmeister represents Du Pont.
Gordon Maag advised Circuit Judge Dennis Ruth that while googling Mr. Shirrmeister in April 2007, he discovered that he had been sanctioned in Texas in 1995. Mr. Shirrmeister testified before Judge Ruth that “a paralegal prepared his application and he didn't examine it.”
Judge Ruth apparently takes a dim view of attorneys that fail to carefully review documents for their own signatures, saying, "The court has a problem with attorneys just coming in and saying I didn't read the law and I didn't pay attention to the facts.""What happened in this case was, I failed to carefully read the application," Schirrmeister said.
He apologized to the court and Maag.
"We are lawyers and we are supposed to read the law before you go filing documents, not after you get in trouble or caught, whatever you want to call it," Ruth said.
Judge Ruth has asked for more information pending a ruling.
Madison County Record
This article is a great read for some fine courtroom quotes, including “Have you ever used Google?” and “I just made a mistake. Gee whiz I'm sorry.”
3 comments:
Stay tuned for further developments of a similar story in which attorney Blame T. Paralegal asserts that he had no responsibility to disclose accurate information about himself or his practice to the paralegal preparing a similar application because, "Paralegals are supposed to do research, which clearly was not done in this case."
Blame T. Paralegal says, "Gee whiz I'm sorry I forgot about those pesky sanctions of public record and I'm even sorrier that I didn't Google myself first"...lol
Sure...blame the paralegal when it is the lawyer's responsibility to properly oversee the work of the paralegal. The attorney is, ultimately, responsible even if the paralegal did something stupid.
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