A lawyer who listens
Two days before a key legal hearing in September 2014, Ruth trudged into her newest lawyer’s office, leaning on a cane and carrying a framed photograph of her family.
Leena had scraped together enough money to pay attorney Douglas C. Kittelson, who, she said, was the first lawyer who truly listened.
Ruth’s case was about to go to arbitration, where a neutral third party would decide whether Ruth had to pay Henry S. Miller’s commission and attorney fees. That decision would be legally binding.
Kittelson, court records show, immediately sensed something off about Ruth. He scrambled to file paperwork arguing that the arbitrator should consider her mental condition.
But it didn’t matter. The arbitrator would not consider Ruth’s health because the paperwork had been filed too late.
He ordered Ruth to pay an amount that had ballooned to more than $100,000.
‘A sympathy argument’
In a downtown Dallas courtroom, Leena listened as Kittelson asked a judge to nullify the award.
“She is a sweet lady, but she had all the signs of dementia,” Kittelson told the judge, according to a transcript of the hearing. “It would be a travesty of justice not to consider that evidence.”
One of Henry S. Miller’s attorneys countered that it’s not clear whether Ruth had dementia back in 2012. Regardless, he said, she had her daughter to advocate for her.
“The defendant keeps asserting her age and circumstances is somehow an excuse for not following the rules,” lawyer Jamie Wall told the judge. “Somehow entitling a person who happens to be 92 and who happens to perhaps not have the money some immunity from having to follow the rules.
“And it is purely a sympathy argument,” he said.
The judge ordered a do-over with a new arbitrator. The first one, he ruled, had not allowed Ruth’s lawyer enough time to prepare his defense.
For a moment, Leena almost let herself celebrate.
http://www.dallasnews.com/news/community-news/dallas/headlines/20160323-93-year-old-with-alzheimers-is-target-of-dallas-real-estate-firms-lawsuit.ece