The whale lawyer Chapter 9

I don't know whether the comments are a distraction or not. We only have 6 chapters to go, now 5.

Chapter 9

“Can I just dismiss it myself?” Ira asked Jay, the clerk who had served 3 probate judges before Ira and who knew more about the inner workings of the court system than anyone alive, as well as the outer workings. Judges were elected to Probate Court, not appointed for life.

“Of course you can.  It is ludicrous.  But Ira, you’re an elected official.  There were 20 people protesting outside of the court two days ago.  There were close to 100 today.  There were maybe three times as many at the aquarium.”

“it’s a handful of nuts.  Do you know what the owner of the aquarium threatened me with?  Threatened to take me off the bench if I didn’t do something!  They threatened a sitting judge!  Isn’t that illegal?”

“Doesn’t matter.  I’d agree with you that it was a ‘handful of nuts’, but there are literally a million hits on the video posted of the attorney interview.”

“Oh my god!  My kids asked me about it.  I couldn’t make myself watch it.  Have you seen it?”

“No, but I think we may be the only people in south Florida who haven’t.  The point is that it may not be politically expedient to dismiss this yourself.  And ‘technically’, Hyatt is an injured war hero.  It’s not a mistake that this Brian Koolman and his group picked him.”

“So what do I do?”

“ The lawyer for the aquarium are coming by this afternoon to meet with you.  Tell them to put together a motion and an order that you have to sign, something you can say you had no choice to sign.  Then you go to the public and say you had a heavy heart being ‘forced’ to do this, but that you are hamstrung by the law.”