Getting blood out of a turnip

Remember the sentence - "You can't get blood out of a turnip"?

That probably dates me! Where do you suppose the age-break is for remembering that sentence?

I got to thinking about it today, as I recalled my visit to Judge Bolger's courtroom yesterday. Just what is accomplished when an attorney tries to get blood out of a turnip. Can he?

No; if it's not there, it's not there. Ahhh, but you might be able to squeeze it out somewhere else, such as out of your client's pocket, unless you are working on a contingency. But maybe you are working on a minimum.

Let's say you are a hard-working attorney and you are suing someone who didn't complete payments on a car loan. Ignore the fact that he surrendered the car voluntarily, when he realized that he wasn't going to be able to pay for it after losing his job two years ago and not being able to find new work. No repossession was involved.

Ignore the fact that "paper" on the car is today higher than the price he paid for the car five years ago.

Ignore the fact that his home was in foreclosure and that he was seriously "underwater" on the home mortgage.

The attorney's advice was "Borrow from somebody." What? You mean borrow from somebody when you know you can't pay them back? Isn't that fraud?

So what does the attorney do? He goes after a judgment against the house in an attempt to get paid on the car loan. Hello? There is no money there! It doesn't take a rocket scientist or a Ph.D. in Mathematics to figure out pretty quickly that, if there is no equity in the home, then there isn't any money to get by putting a lien on the house.

The lien for the car debt is preventing the homeowner from completing a restructuring of the mortgage so that he could keep his home. If the car debt lender would back off for two weeks, then the homeowner could keep his home.

The Woodstock lawyer who is taking a hardball approach on this is neither serving his client or the community. He would lose nothing by standing down temporarily. He will get nothing for his lendor-client by following the path he is on. There is nothing to get.

Integrity might require him to inform his client that you can't get blood out of a turnip. It's the economy, stupid. Maybe he'll find himself in a situation someday where he can't maintain an expensive home and two luxury cars. Karma has a way of doing that to some people.