I am on my lunch break, posting from the cafe of Frank Gehry’s Disney Hall in downtown LA. I have been imprisoned on a jury – well, not really imprisoned but it often feels that way. I’m on the jury of a civil case. It’s interesting only intermittently and, to be honest, the mind wanders during the endless lawyer’s interjections of “Asked and answered” and “Objection… foundation,” etc. These cries carry me back to the days of OJ when we all got our educations in trial law and learned more than we ever dreamed of the adequacies and inadequacies of lawyers, judges and juries. The system is of course fallible, but it is also tatty. The equipment in the courtroom isn’t up to speed and it is often hard to hear. They keep the temperature low so we don’t fall asleep, although today in LA it’s in the forties anyway, as cold as I can remember in Los Angeles, and I’ve been here awhile.
On the news front, I ran into some attorneys I know in the corridors during one of the breaks. They told me of gossip that there were more Madoff Scandals about to break, including one among the wealthy Persian Jewish community of Los Angeles. Is our entire life a Ponzi scheme?
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