THOUGHTS UNLIMITED

Eugene M. Balitang
Of liars and lawyers

An epitaph on a tombstone reads: Here lies a good lawyer, And he lies still…

Lawyers are liars. Or that, liars are lawyers. The truism holds true insofar as the great unwashed believes. And following Irving Copi’s fundamentals of logic, we may arrive at these propositions – that all lawyers are liars; and all those who lie are perforce lawyers.

Allow me to introduce another facet to this matter of liars and lawyers in accordance with my own observations in my ten years and a day of mediocre law practice. Lawyers are just instruments of the liars. Lawyers are merely merchants in which the manufacturers of lies peddle their wares to the ultimate vendee – the judge.

Sounds interesting? Intriguing? Let’s take a look at what actually transpires inside nearly every law office – or wherever clients meet their lawyers. A hapless mother comes a-sobbing at your home, my son is in Tiger Hill, please help him. Since it’s Sunday, you say – please see me at the office on Monday.

Monday came and there you are with the distraught mother. She starts with a litany of praise, of how his son is this angel and that, short of canonizing him to sainthood. Then you ask why the information is for murder and the mother goes on with another litany of how his son was pushed to the wall, that he was just defending his poor self, he had no choice, blah-blah-blah.

You point out that attached to the information are affidavits of three witnesses attesting to the fact that her son stabbed the poor victim twenty times. The mother dons on her most innocent face and screams that those witnesses are liars, that they were threatened by the policemen to execute their affidavits, that they were paid by the family of the victim, blah-blah-blah.

After the verbal barrage, the mother ends up mouthing your genealogy (something you’ve heard before) and you know how she would conclude before she evens blurts it –you see we are cousins with your father and so are you with my poor darling son who is now at Tiger Hill. You’ll have a hard time believing her litanies but in the end you would vow to represent her poor darling son in his upcoming trial. They cannot pay the price you quoted for your acceptance fee but what the heck—you’re lawyer’s oath enjoins you to uphold your profession and take up your client’s case sans money or malice. And that – you are cousins, as the mother claims.

And so you go to court with all the braggadocio and bravura that is expected of a lawyer – a Hingyon lawyer at that. And with you is the litany of lies that a sobbing mother had poured. You do your best in tearing apart the prosecution witnesses with the tenacity of a pit bull. And as the trial progresses, the people at the other side of the table will be calling you names – criminal coddler, a drug lord (if you represent ‘green-gold’ merchants from Tinoc), a sadist (if your client is a rapist)—and of course, a goddamn liar.

Ah, you may think that’s true only on the side of the Defense. But the same holds true even when you are on the side of the angels—the Prosecution. This time, the mother comes a-wailing that his good darling son was stabbed twenty times by some sonofabitch and she begs of you to send this sonofabitch to the lethal injection table. Again, you listen to the litany of how his good darling son is this angel and that. Then you ask what her good darling son is doing at Hardknoxx Café at 2:00 dawn and the mother will of course claim that he just dropped by for a bottle or two to unwind after a hard day’s job. You ask what his job was and she says—part-time this, part-time that.

Well, sounds fiction? You might say that the scenario applies only to criminal cases. Mind you, it’s the same with civil cases. This old man comes crying foul—claiming his land that he had been tilling since time immemorial was unlawfully transferred and sold by his neighbor. You have that naïve belief in humanity—that a 60-year old man will not lie—so you institute a case for recovery of possession and ownership (with damages since you are a Hingyon lawyer). Alas, when you received the answer of the defendant, you found out, much to your humiliation, that the defendant has a title over the subject land and that he merely tolerated the old man who tilled the land out of pity and compassion.

The reverse scenario will be that—this time the old man comes crying and claiming that a prominent persona in the locality filed a case against him for the recovery of a land that he (this old man) had been tilling since time immemorial. After listening to his woeful tale, you are convinced that it is a case of ‘judicial landgrabbing’ and so you represent him with such ferocity. Only to find out as the trial progresses that this old man is a veteran squatter who waded thru life occupying lands of other people and selling it to others.

The point here, dear folks, is that whatever lies we poor lawyers peddle were first bought by us from you, our dear clients. We simply rehashed or embellished your lies and shove it down the judge’s psyche, hoping that he will absorb it as gospel truth and decide the case in your favor. And you brand us liars! Oh, the temerity.

Another facet of the matter is the inherent nature of truth—does it have an exact definition? I say that it does not have. Truth is dependent on the tragedies of our times, our culture, and of public perception. They say that a lie repeated ten times is the truth. And that, what may be true today may be a fallacy tomorrow, or vice versa. For example, bigamy is a crime in the Philippines —if you are a Christian, not if you are a Muslim (our Muslim brothers have their own Sha’ria courts and their own family code).

If you shoot your neighbor for the fun of it, it is murder. If you shoot a president to install a government, that is rebellion. If the government you installed takes over, you are a hero. Two men argued over who will win in a basketball match. They stood, one grabbed his balisong, the other grabbed his chainsaw, the balisong found its mark and the other man died. Homicide. The family of the victim will damn the accused to high heavens. The family of the accused will damn the victim and his family for provoking their old man and sole breadwinner who is now en route to Bilibid. And in between the long trial, either party will hate the lawyer at the other end, liars all.

Truth is very subjective. It would depend on how we see things. Three witnesses will attest that balisong-man simply defended himself from the attacks of chainsaw-man. Another set of witnesses will attest to the fact that chainsaw-man was stabbed helplessly. Each witness will affirm his own perception of what the truth is in accordance with how he saw things—not actually how things happened. Thankfully, you have us lawyers who will wade thru these lies and study them scintilla by scintilla so that in the end, the truth (or the best lie) will be uncovered.

Of course, the story is different if there are actually no witnesses to an incident and the lawyer will ask you to go and find (and pay) some hombres to testify in court; or that, the lawyer will manufacture a document attesting to a fact that did not exist in the first place. In this instance, indeed the lawyer is a liar—or a magician (if you ask him).

Before I end, do you still insist that we lawyers are liars? Not that it makes a difference, but I hope that I have swayed your perception a little bit in our favor.