Quibbles And Bits: Lawyers Under Oath?

by Kevin Burton

   Who’s hungry for some quibbles and bits?!…

   The cat litter my cats use is called Vibrant Life, which strikes me as funny. Vibrant Life sounds more like a megachurch.

   Vibrant Life a kind of paper litter, which at first did not strike me as funny. It’s more expensive than the sand litter all my other cats used, and it isn’t stocked at the store that’s within walking distance of our house. 

   But when they sent us home from the cat shelter with paper litter and said that’s what our two girls were used to, we said paper litter it is. You don’t want to throw your new cats any curveballs when it comes to litter.

   It’s as if I heard them saying, “You don’t give us any surprises, we don’t give you any surprises. Capish?”……

   So now thanks to Google I find out there are, several Vibrant Life churches, in Texas and Minnesota. 

   The cat litter boasts that it is three times as absorbent as sand litter.  The churches have their literature too, on their websites. I say it’s best that we not dig too deeply into this. 

   I don’t think Vibrant Life is an especially good name for cat litter or a church. It’s sort of OK for a church, but a church and its name really should point directly to Jesus.

    As the name of a cat litter, Vibrant Life seems maybe chemically induced……  

   When I lived in México I had a friend named Areli. She was actually more a friend of my then girlfriend Rosa. Well, Areli was late all the time, to everything.

   But she was always exactly 30 minutes late to everything. So she was reliable in a backward sort of way. That I could live with.  I knew how to plan.

   So I think of Areli as I try to schedule with my ride service on Thursdays to go see my mother.  This is a federally-funded ride service offered by the county where I live for blind people and others who can’t drive.

   My mom gets up crazy late, like noon or so.  So that’s when I was scheduling rides. But for a while the service was always 20 to 40 minutes late, but it was never late at the end of my visit.  So that cut into the time I got to spend with my mom.

   Sooo, I started making appointments for 11 a.m., reasoning they would arrive at maybe 11:30 and I’d get to Mom’s just before noon.

   Wouldn’t you know it? Now they have started pulling the dirty trick of being on time, which means mom is sleepy when I get there.

   Where is Areli, the half-hour girl, when I need her?…..

   Just wondering: why aren’t lawyers, judges and others who might speak in court required to swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth?

   In a court room it’s the lawyers who do more talking than anyone.  Why aren’t they put under oath? 

   Witnesses are sworn in and deliver the truth under the threat of a perjury charge. What about lawyers? Are they free to lie?

   I found this on the legal site www.divorceutah.com:

   “Why aren’t lawyers required to be sworn under oath in a court of law? Because the lawyers aren’t testifying. The only people who are sworn to tell the truth are witnesses who give testimony in court, not the lawyers presenting and arguing the case.”

   “A lawyer is himself/herself still obligated to be truthful in his/her capacity of presenting and arguing the case in court, but lawyers are not sworn as witnesses in court unless they are themselves testifying.”

   A dishonest lawyer will tell the truth and nothing but the truth. It’s the whole truth part that gets violated. That’s my uneducated guess. They are paid to win a case, right?

    There is pressure on lawyers to be truthful, according to my friend Laura, a longtime teacher who passed the bar exam (on her first try!) in Ohio a couple of years ago.

   Laura said that in Ohio there is a code of ethics test you have to pass before you can practice law.  She said she know of some dishonest lawyers but that most bad lawyers aren’t liars, but grossly underprepared. 

   That’s all well and good. I still say, swear them in. Why not?…

   Can we swear in politicians too?