Just a local COVID lawyer

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Day 769,852,102 of quarantine. According to Dr. Anthony Fauci, the United States is still “knee-deep in the first wave” of this pandemic. In March and April, many prognosticators believed that the summer months would bring us a respite from the virus. Others even worried that we would let our guard down during this expected period of calm before the “second wave” hit in the fall. Not so, unfortunately. In my state, for example, the governor recently decided that the re-openings of many bars, salons and restaurants was premature, so we are back to sheltering in place.

We have all had to adjust and adapt to this new normal, in myriad ways. For example, instead of driving to my favorite local French bakery, I’ve attempted (emphasis added) to make sourdough bread in an effort to satisfy my unhealthy appetite for carbohydrates. My wife took the first bite of my recent product (very brave of her, I thought) and, for a brief moment, I legitimately thought I had poisoned her. She promptly spit it out, and our bulldog, Lily, took one smell of the half-digested morsel and walked away dismissively (Lily regularly tries to eat goose poop on her walks, so that should tell you everything about my baking skills). With my regular barber closed, my wife attempted to cut my hair last week. On a related note, my colleagues at the firm have seen my full collection of hats on video calls this week. Finally, my regular 6 p.m. weekly happy hour with co-workers has been replaced with a 4 p.m. “sweatpants happy hour” with Lily. As I think about it, it would be OK if that tradition continues post-quarantine.

Despite these new activities that we’ve all adopted — I’m not the only one who’s doing sweatpants happy hour, am I? — it still seems as though everyone has a little extra time on their hands these days. My family and neighbors, in particular, seem to be pursuing new interests and activities. Unfortunately for me, many of these new pursuits implicate the legal system. I’m not the only lawyer in my family — my step-father is an accomplished litigator — but I am the cheapest (my “friends and family” rate, it turns out, is $0 per hour), so I’ve been fielding more calls than usual lately. My family has become fond of calling me their “local COVID lawyer,” meaning a lawyer who, because of the pandemic, is reachable at home and has time to handle problems they would not otherwise dream of bothering someone with. It’s a title and role I hope to quickly shirk.

It started last week. My mother called me, and I immediately sensed she was upset, based solely on the fact that she was screaming, “I’m so f—— upset!!!” “What happened?” I asked, bracing myself. “There was another car accident at our intersection. Someone could have been killed!” Apparently, a car sped through the stop sign and “T-boned” an unsuspecting vehicle that happened to have two small children in the back seat. After hearing her recitation of the facts, I shared her concern. This intersection is indeed very dangerous. As just one example, I once personally witnessed a fleet of supercharged all-terrain vehicles speed through this intersection, without even touching the brakes at the stop sign, at what appeared to be 80-90 miles per hour. I didn’t even know ATVs could support that kind of speed.

My mother has complained to the local authorities in the past about this intersection, but this time felt different. She vented for a few minutes and then told me she would call me back. About two hours later, I got an email notification with the subject line: “Your Day of Reckoning!!!” It was a draft letter from my mom, addressed to the local alderpersons. It was nine pages long, single-spaced and culminating in a threat of legal action. I read it, mouth agape, shuddering at the thought of the poor souls who would receive such a missive. She called me to discuss. She mentioned that, in the time it took me to read the letter, she already had recruited several neighbors to co-sign it.

I gave her several suggestions, most of which were to strike whole paragraphs and tamp down the personal attacks. In my experience, such tactics do not encourage productive, solution-focused results. My last edit was to remove my name and contact information from the letter and replace it with that of my step-father. Sometimes, the most important part of effective lawyering is knowing which fights to pick, and which cases to pawn off on your family members.

Next, my wife, Laura, decided that it was high time “we finally do something about our dilapidated garage.” Apparently, now that she is home all the time, she can no longer bear the “eyesore” in our backyard. We purchased our house — a Victorian-style home built in 1888 — last year. One of the “long overdue projects” that the sellers warned us about was the garage, which was original to the house and had never been updated. It doesn’t have electricity, flooring or a stable roof. It’s a large structure, though, so we’ve always had designs on either fixing it up as a garage or converting it into a livable, or at least usable, space.

We found a local contractor who specializes in accessory dwelling units — basically, a small, secondary house in a backyard — which are gaining in popularity throughout the country. He came by last week to measure our lot and the structure. Unfortunately, under the current zoning rules, our lot is too small to support a new ADU. If we can convince the zoning board that our garage was originally and has always remained a “carriage house,” however, we can essentially make any improvements we want without having to seek a variance. We may, however, have to get the support of our neighbors. More on that later.

I immediately got to work. I called up my local library and requested any records they could find on my house, hoping to uncover evidence that the structure once was used as a carriage house. I took photos of the window near the top of the garage which, to this “non-horse person,” appears to be a window that would have been used for loading hay into the upstairs portion of the structure. I’ve been scanning historic photo archives, hoping to find a shot of horses on my street or, more important, in front of or in our garage — anything that I could provide as evidence to the zoning board.

Laura suggested that we could simply dress Lily up as a mini-horse, snap a few black-and-white photos in front of the garage, and send that photo along with our submission to the board. I’m not sure if she was joking, but I reminded her of my ethical obligations as a lawyer. As I always say, “It takes years to build a reputation, and one ill-advised, fabricated old-time photo of a bulldog dressed as a mini-horse to ruin it.” I sighed and turned back to drafting my submission to the zoning board.

As I was working on my zoning brief this morning, my doorbell rang. I went downstairs and found five of my neighbors waiting on my porch. Having heard that the “local COVID lawyer” lives in their neighborhood, they thought that they would pay a visit to see if there was anything I could do about what they called “the most dangerous and disruptive menace to the neighborhood EVER!” (Although they were speaking out loud, and all at the same time, there was no doubt about the capitalization). When I inquired as to the details of their concerns, they patiently explained they were talking about the fireworks that are still being set off on a nightly basis on our street. I looked from one of my worried neighbors to another (while still silently thinking about our garage — er, carriage house — renovation) and nodded sympathetically. I told them I empathized with their plight, and that Lily hates loud noises as well. I explained, however, that I am very busy these days dealing with local aldermen and zoning boards. I said it thus might take a while before I could get to it, but I’d see what I could do.

I bid them all a safe evening, closed the door, turned to return to more pressing matters — and almost went sprawling as I tripped over the large red-white-and-blue box that still sat in our front hallway. The box, labeled “From Sea to Shining Sea Inc.” was our recently delivered weekly shipment from the finest purveyor of fireworks this side of the Mississippi (guaranteeing to produce more than 40 shots of whistling comets and explosions, “or your money back”). I yelled upstairs to Laura that we’d have to postpone our next fireworks display, at least if she wanted our neighbors to sign off on her garage renovations.