Lawyers in Real Life
By: Hinton Armstrong
I am an Armstrong, and I am an engineer. I am the only one of the five that did not choose the “lawyer life” (random aside: why does everything have to be a “life” these days?).
But I have stories. Ohhhhhh do I have stories. I’m told I am limited to one. So here goes nothing …
We were on a family vacation. A Caribbean Cruise! We were about to board a Catamaran to go snorkeling, when we were all handed a liability waiver.
Being the non-lawyer, I was ready to put pen-to-paper to go swim with the sea turtles. But no. Knowing my family as I do, my eyes immediately cut to my father, who did not have his reading glasses, but is squinting at all the fine print. He was perturbed that we would have to sign away our right to sue if the boat sank, so he decided to talk to the boat captain who had nothing more to do with the liability waiver than the sea turtles.
Mr. Captain obviously did not know what to tell my father, but that did not stop my father from arguing the finer points of U.S. Constitutional rights with a sea boat captain. Now we’re not just holding ourselves up, but the entire boat.
After much whining and complaining on our (his kids) part, he finally decided to hit the beach instead. Those sea turtles were probably better off without us anyway.
