As a young lawyer I defended a case brought by a husband and wife who owned a business. The wife was an attorney serving as the company’s counsel. I represented the management of the building where their offices were located. Another attorney, an older one I admired, represented the other defendant, the building’s owner.
A little research at the outset of the case revealed that the wife had filed many, many lawsuits over the years, some in the name of the business, some in her own name as an individual. In this particular matter, she alleged an employee she’d fired had broken into the company’s offices, and we, the defendants, should’ve stopped him. While she insisted she’d verbally told someone with the building about the firing, she couldn’t identify who the person was or even what they looked like, and we had no record of it. The fired employee in the meantime had disappeared. She said she’d gotten his key back but also testified the firing took place over the phone.
While there was no documented damage to the office, they claimed valuable things had gone missing, and information had vanished from their computers. Even after an analysis seemed to show that most everything had been recovered from their system, they were still claiming over a million dollars in losses.
The older attorney and I took depositions, hired an expert, and worked together steadily strengthening our defense such that just prior to trial, the couple, realizing this, came off their high-flying demands and said they’d settle for a modest sum, a figure far less than it would cost for us to try the case. Now, even if we won, we’d be spending more money than if we settled. Everyone—the couple, our clients, the insurers—now wanted to settle. So we settled.
Though it made sense business-wise, I was left ambivalent. I felt my client had done nothing wrong, and I confess, I also had developed some antipathy toward the plaintiffs. When it was all finalized, I spoke again to the older attorney.
“I can’t believe we paid them anything,” I said.
“We won’t be there for the comeuppance,” he predicted, “but it never turns out well for folks like that.”
I’ll always remember that.
Delivered in a marvelous soundbite, it rang true like a proverb.
Do not fret because of evildoers...for the evildoer has no future hope...
The book of Proverbs is full of wisdom, but it’s more than this. Proverbs offers us a range of practical skills and the ability to apply them meaningfully across the whole spectrum of human life. There’s valuable guidance about families, work, friendship, marriage, finances, handling one’s emotions, and the avoidance of vice. There’s even something about lawsuits.
The book is full of gems: pithy, memorable, and astute.
Look to the ant. Watch it closely. Let it teach you a thing or two.
Mercy to the needy is a loan to God and God pays back those loans in full.
Watch your words and hold your tongue. You’ll save yourself a lot of grief.
When you go out to dinner...mind your manners...Bridle your appetite.
Malice backfires. Spite boomerangs.
Don’t brashly announce what you’re going to do tomorrow. You don’t know the first thing about tomorrow.
Know your sheep by name...Don’t take them for granted.
Earthy. Smart. Witty. Most of all, the Proverbs urge us to take up a mindset of humility, one that recognizes it’s not our prerogative to make up our own mind about how to live. Instead it tells us that right and wrong are embedded into the God-created fabric of the universe.
The Lord possessed me in the beginning of His way, before His works of old. I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning, or ever the earth was...Now therefore hearken unto me...blessed are they that keep my ways.
I sometimes wonder if that litigious couple ever received the comeuppance my co-counsel prophesied. Maybe they did. Maybe they didn’t. Proverbial wisdom like his, like that in the book itself, is really all about probabilities. The Proverbs aren’t promises. The Proverbs aren’t guarantees. But the text of this remarkable book gives us a sound manual for living our lives, with the first step being always to remain humble and bow down to God.
The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.
God, may we heed Your proverbial words. Amen.
