No Madam, I have never sued anyone. I’m too nice a handsome guy. But yes, indeed, I have been sued, and how exciting that was! It was not a pleasant happening, but still, just one lawsuit in a 50 year professional career, I have to be grateful. And the best part is that I was completely exonerated, just as Trump was when the Senate in all its partisan wisdom acquitted him after the partisan House impeachment.

The background of the baseless and malicious lawsuit brought against me is in and of itself quite a story. So much so that I’m working on a film script about it. The story revolves around the Kinkaid Family of Sistersville, WV, a small town along the banks of the Ohio River. If you ever go there you will be stepping back in time. I think the script will be good enough to sell on its own, but even better with a stellar cast. My plan is to convince Saturday Night Live alumni to take a dramatic turn and play the important roles in my film. The characters are the patriarch, J. Wells Kinkaid (to be played by an aged Will Ferrell), his wife Martha (picture an attractive yet insecure Kristen Wiig), and his three adult children from a prior marriage, who are Jack Kinkaid (as portrayed by an angry but nervous Dan Aykroyd, married to Mary, a dislikeable conniving woman with that role being performed in character by Jane Curtin), and Bob Kinkaid (that role being played by a mild-mannered Fred Armisen, married to Barbara, the brains of the family’s business, who will be played by Maya Rudolph), and Jana Kinkaid, the doomed-to-be spinster daughter (picture a less attractive Rachel Dratch) who will only be in my film because of a solidarity I had with her, i.e., she is the only person I have ever met who has the same birthday as me. My working title for the film is “Keeping up with the Kinkaids” and I think it will be best-suited for streaming as a limited series,

J. Wells Kinkaid owned the Wells Inn, a quaint Victorian style hotel in Sistersville which was managed by his son Jack and his interfering wife Mary. Mr. Kinkaid also owned farmland in Plainview, Texas, which were managed by his son Bob with the competent assistance of his wife Barbara. In the early 1970’s, about two years after his first wife passed away, J. Wells married Martha, a seemingly refined woman from the Pittsburgh area. She was 32 years younger than him, and a few years younger as well than his sons, Jack and Bob, so from the outset there was that. I think that his sons believed she seduced and took advantage of their father and likely married him for his money. Having had several meetings with Martha on estate matters after Mr. Kinkaid’s death (even playing golf with Carl Bauersfeld and her in Sistersville one afternoon, followed by social drinks at her home), I don’t agree with that opinion. Nevertheless, after J. Wells died in 1974, just a few years into his marriage with Martha, the issue of money, that root of all evil, did come into play.

Mr. Bauersfeld (picture Buck Henry, although I’ll have to find a look-alike for him in my film since he’s dead), one of the three partners in Ash, Bauersfeld, Burton and Mooers for whom I worked, knew Mr. Kinkaid from a tax case he handled years prior. He prepared Mr. Kinkaid’s Will which in essence left an equal 25% of his estate to Martha and each of his three children. Seemingly, that was a fair disposition, but was it? Each of the children was to receive their share outright, but the Will stipulated that Martha’s share be held in a trust for her lifetime benefit. The thought was that J. Wells wanted Martha to be taken care of for her life, but that whatever was left in her trust at her death would go to his children or grandchildren and not to any heirs or friends of hers. That didn’t sit all that well with Martha, but even worse in her view was the fact that her dearly departed husband named his son Jack, who could barely tolerate Martha, as a Co-Trustee with Martha of her trust. Martha had several telephone conversations with Mr. Bauersfeld concerning her uneasiness with the trust provision, and it came to a head one afternoon when annoyed by Martha’s calls Carl Bauersfeld, a true-blue chauvinist, told Martha that if she was so worried about having enough income she should get a job. That is something which should never be said to a grieving widow. I wouldn’t have been surprised if he also said to her “you know, you could be a cocktail waitress”

After that conversation Martha hired a Pittsburgh law firm to protect her interests. The lawyers in that firm commenced negotiations with the Kinkaid children to not just abandon the trust but also to increase Martha’s share to one-third which was the statutory share of a surviving spouse who timely renounces the deceased spouse’s Will. The problem with taking that stance was that the West Virginia statutory time deadline for filing a renunciation of the Will had passed. So those Pittsburgh shysters turned their guns on Carl Bauersfeld and me, claiming that we failed to advise Martha of her statutory right to renounce the Will. They engaged a D.C. law firm to bring a malpractice lawsuit against us. Then one foggy Christmas Eve a postman (picture Garrett Morris) appeared at the front door of my Harmon Road home and handed me a registered mail summons and complaint. I was served. Merry Christmas indeed!

We contacted our malpractice insurance carrier and they hired Bill Foote, a Rockville attorney (picture Andy Samberg) to represent us in the malpractice suit. Small world that it is, Bill and I were in the same 1966 graduating class from the University of Scranton. (As an aside, isn’t it astounding how Scranton seems to creep in all my stories) Bill and I never met in college. I just knew of him as a star on the tennis team. But we bonded quickly and easily in our attorney-client relationship. I will take some credit for influencing his life. When we were in Parkersburg, WV, in 1976 for depositions in the Kinkaid case we roomed together at the town’s finest cheap motel. Bill and his wife did not then have children and I went on and on all night about what a delight it was to be a parent (this, of course, was before Patrick and Justin were born). Heeded by my counsel, I’m sure, Bill and his wife proceeded to have children, four daughters, none of them twins but all born within just a 42 month period. Talk about a fast worker! For years after Bill and his wife sent me Christmas cards showing a picture of the four lovely Foote girls.

But I digress. What followed after the malpractice suit were two years of depositions and settlement offers. That time period also included an IRS audit of Mr. Kinkaid’s estate tax return, with the principal issue being the values of the Texas farmlands. That required Mr. Bauersfeld and me to travel through the panhandle section of Texas to Plainview, an area very worthy of its name, where we and the IRS agent took the depositions of farmland appraisers. We were able to settle the IRS audit during that trip with very little additional estate tax. Our flight home was from Dallas and since we arrived there about three hours early I asked a cab driver to show us Southfork Ranch, the famous homestead of the Ewing family on the immensely popular Dallas television series, and also Texas Stadium, the home of the Dallas Cowboys, where I rolled down the window and discreetly flipped a bird.

But I digress yet again. What happened to me in the malpractice suit? Was I jailed or disbarred? Did I have to sell my valuables to raise cash to pay damages that were awarded in excess of the malpractice insurance coverage? Did my wife threaten to kick me out of the house because she was humiliated by my professional failure? Happily all was well that ended well. The truth emerged during the depositions that I had in fact timely informed Martha of her right to renounce the Will of J. Wells Kinkaid. While I didn’t attend her deposition, I was told by Andy Samberg, I mean Billy Foote, that she testified I did make “some reference” to that and added that it just wasn’t in writing and she didn’t understand the details. That testimony took the winds out of their sails. There was no requirement that the advice be in writing, although that clearly would have been the better practice, and I would add parenthetically that Carl Bauersfeld, an attorney with about 35 years more legal experience to me at the time, should have done just that. As for not understanding the details, Billy asked her why didn’t you follow up with someone to explain what details you thought were lacking, and apparently the bitch had no response.

At the end of the day the estate finally settled with Martha, giving her one-third of the estate outright, and the malpractice suit against Carl and me was dismissed with prejudice. The insurance company didn’t have to pay a dime, except Andy’s fee. At least that’s the way the movie will end. As my wife was fond of saying, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.