Island, I might be the only guy on the board that genuinely likes both you and Denis. It really bothers me that you guys fight.
I'm not Denis' free lawyer. He comes from a family of lawyers here in Minneapolis. His dad was a prominent lawyer and later judge. I was a young city attorney when I was assigned to his courtroom on consecutive three week cycles in my training. I appeared before him hundreds, if not thousands of times and had trials before him. At one time in my life I thought Denis' dad was making it his personal mission to make everything hard for me. Turns out he was riding me because he had taken a liking to me. He's retired from the bench and up to a few years ago still filled in as a temporary judge when they needed a fill in. I sometimes see him on the skyways going to lunch. He's a legend up here, for good and bad, and like the Shakespeare quote, all in all a man the likes of which I'll never see again.
So when I first started posting on the board, some character claimed he was from Minneapolis and started dropping the names of all the legal greats from the last generation - people who are famous inside the community, but who you wouldn't know if you weren't in the business. He wouldn't tell me who he was until he let his last name slip. I asked if he was related to the judge and he said kind of, he was his dad. Of course, my mystery friend turned out to be Denis.
Since then he's one of the few Pelicans I've met and I like him a lot. He's a good guy and in Minnesota is considered a bit of a rogue closet Republican because he likes Dave Durrenberger and is smart enough to know that Walter Mondale might have been a good friend of his father's but he's not the person you want to run the country. Up here in these circles (and maybe in La La Land) that makes you suspect.
So anyway, his army of free lawyers doesn't include me and I long ago quit doing things for friends for free but I'm sure he has an army of family and family friends. I limit my pro bono work to posting free legal analysis here on PPOT because it's fun, I like it and sometimes I can do some good.
Knowing Denis a little, I'm sure he could put the pimp slap on a deserving fellow, but I always thought the pimp slap was more allegorical.
So there you have it.
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