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Do you need an attorney? Who doesn’t need an attorney for some legal matter? Of course, attorneys charge a lot for their services. Here are ten humorous fortune cookie sayings with lawyers in mind:

1. If the suit fits, sue tomorrow.
2. You are about to come into a tidy fortune. Just ignore the banana peel on the marble floor until it is too late.
3. Would you like some black forest tort cake? I see. You would prefer just the tort.
4. You are about to learn more about cell technology. It is so fascinating that the subject will just imprison you.
5. Divorcing yourself from reality may not lessen your cost from your imminent divorce.
6. Beware of a guy named Mal. This is particularly true if his last name is Practice.
7. People shouldn’t judge you by your appearance unless you are picked out of a lineup.
8. Betty Lou would sure love to court you. However, if you  become unfaithful, she’ll see you in court.
9. You cannot replace your batteries in a case of assault and battery.
10. If you are drunk as a skunk and drive, you just might find yourself making the evening news by five.

Image via Wikipedia

Do you need an attorney? Who doesn’t need an attorney for some legal matter? Of course, attorneys charge a lot for their services. Here are ten humorous fortune cookie sayings with lawyers in mind:

1. If the suit fits, sue tomorrow.
2. You are about to come into a tidy fortune. Just ignore the banana peel on the marble floor until it is too late.
3. Would you like some black forest tort cake? I see. You would prefer just the tort.
4. You are about to learn more about cell technology. It is so fascinating that the subject will just imprison you.
5. Divorcing yourself from reality may not lessen your cost from your imminent divorce.
6. Beware of a guy named Mal. This is particularly true if his last name is Practice.
7. People shouldn’t judge you by your appearance unless you are picked out of a lineup.
8. Betty Lou would sure love to court you. However, if you  become unfaithful, she’ll see you in court.
9. You cannot replace your batteries in a case of assault and battery.
10. If you are drunk as a skunk and drive, you just might find yourself making the evening news by five.

Professor James T. O’Reilly teaches at the University of Cincinnati College of Law, and has published thirty-eight textbooks on legal issues.  He is a member of the National Association of Elder Law Attorneys and is a former chair of the 16,000 member Section of the Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice of the American Bar Association.  In his new book How To Protect Elders From Harm, which is part of the Oceana’s Law for the Layperson Legal Almanac Series, is a useful resource for anyone interested in learning more about protecting elders from insufficient care or maltreatment.

It is a natural human feeling to want to safeguard our parents and elderly friends from harm…

The natural first questions is: Should I complain about what I see happening with this elderly person?  If you are concerned about safety or risk, or about financial fraud against an elder, yes: express your concerns.  The recipients of the complaint will vary according to the situation.  If a person is living alone at home, and you believe is in some danger or difficulty after speaking with him or her, consider contacting the local office of your state “Adult Protective Services.”  To make it more likely that action will occur, call them with facts, names, or any other details that may facilitate their decision to investigate.

How will I know that the elder needs help?  In an elderly neighbor comes to the door covered with bruises when you check in with her, this may be a signal of caregiver abuse…If you visit a nursing home and see deplorable treatment of one or more patients, request a meeting with the administrator.  If this does not satisfy your concerns, then contact your health department or state long-tern care officials; if you can find the ombudsman for nursing homes, that local person should be contacted.

Will anyone act on my complaint?  Yes.  If you act in a calm and businesslike manner, your complaint will receive respect and attention.  The more specific you are, the more likely it is than at investigation will begin.  Persistence matters, but keep your actions polite and firm.

When must the responding person act on your complaint? The response can vary depending on the person contacted; unfortunately, that person may choose to ignore your complaint entirely.  Bureaucrats “must act” when the law requires a response.  Ombudsmen for nursing-home patients must act in accordance with their government office’s standards for investigation.  Private companies and persons may ignore the complaint, if they choose, but doing so is usually bad for public relations and may induce the person complaining to bring a lawsuit.

How should I best assert my complaint? Visit or call, and be specific; in some cases, be ready to write if the ombudsman or government office requires a particular letter or standard form to be submitted.

Should complaints be initiated locally, and made to the officials of the government agency or of the company affected? Yes. The first step is the nursing-home administrator, the seniors-housing director, of the human-services agency director. Physical-abuse cases should go to the local office of Adult Protective Services or its equivalent.  If the offending entity is a provider of services receiving funds form the government, like a nursing-home chain, then consider a complaint letter to the headquarters of that entity, with a copy shown and sent to the federal Office of the Inspector General…

Has this type of harm happened before, or does my case show the necessity of new regulatory protections? Sad, but true, the patterns of elder abuse are very well known.  If abuse of your elderly friend or others in this nursing home looks very bad, the chances are that other situations have looked worse.  Usually the shortcoming is not that the protections are missing from the rules or manuals or procedures-it’s that they are not actually being implemented.  It takes time to discern what’s occurring behind the facade of dignity and caring.

What role does government have as the entity arranging or paying for services to elders?  The benefit of government involvement is that its extensive paperwork requirements will create a record that specifies what happened, through what means, with what persons involved.

In practice, this means the possible civil case can be more readily proven.  In some cases, the violation of the federal standard or state law will be negligence “per se,” so the injured person will win.  Government also sets standards for some of the services or products used by elders and violation of those standards can be used against the defendant.

What role does government have in aiding elders-as protector of vulnerable elders or as regulator of businesses impacting them?  This is one of the basic philosophical questions community leaders must decide.  Protecting elders from harm requires that laws be written, rules drafted, enforcement staff must be in place, and then inspections and follow-up actions be taken.  Is all this worth doing?  Or must any remedy require a lawsuit?  Societies that value their elders’ wisdom also value their peaceful retirement from daily workplace conflicts.  Government should do what it can to reduce harms and to alleviate their consequences.

Does regulatory protection really serve elders’ needs?  Yes.  Government does what the market won’t do; vulnerable elderly people are not going to be protected by the free market with its deregulated and diminished “safety nets.” The very aged person-over eighty- is likely to be vulnerable, as his or her ability to self-protect had diminished with age and physical infirmity.  Government regulation exists to protect the least powerful in society, and thus addresses services and products affecting the elderly.

If we can complain to the government, then why is civil litigation necessary?  Complaints that trigger positive changes, with or without regulatory agency intervention, are the ideal.  But sometimes it will be necessary to go beyond corrective actions, to gain compensation for harm or to ask a court to intervene in a bad situation to prevent further harm.  In general, litigation make sense when a company or person cannot be persuaded to change behavior and the government has failed to act in support of an elder’s needs.

Who can sue?  An injured elder could retain an attorney and bring suit.  A guardian appointed by the court, or a person with a durable power of attorney, can sue on behalf of the interest of an elder.  If the elder dies while the case is still going on, the executor of the estate takes over and seeks damages to be paid to the estate.

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One of the stories out of the Olympics was about those super fast swimsuits.

They may be fast to swim in but they aren’t exactly fast to put on.  One athlete reported that he’d worked his personal best down from 17 minutes to less than 10 minutes…to squeeze into the thing.

The first time a piece of attire intended to be worn into a lake, pool or sea was called a suit was back in 1883.

That’s if you don’t count an 1809 citation for birthday suit for you skinny-dippers.

But of course the word suit goes back much, much further.  Usually we think of a matching jacket and pants when we hear the word suit and that use of suit goes back almost 600 years, although the suits worn then were of quite a different style.

Wikipedia claims that the suits worn by men today trace their history back at least to Charles II who proclaimed the style of clothing to be worn by his followers at court.  As well as a long coat and short pants this included a wig and a hat.

A fancy dressing dude called Beau Brummell moved the male fashion world away from frills about a century later around 1800.

The need for a coat that didn’t get in the way while riding a horse influenced the arrival of the tail coat. But when the recognizable forerunner of the business suit of today first made its appearance about 100 years ago it was considered a very casual alternative.

If you’ve been keeping track you’ll have noticed that the word suit was first applied to matching jacket and pants 600 years ago while old Charles II was last seen walking this earth just over 300 years ago.

Even though Charles II was a Johnny-come-lately as far as the word suit goes I’m going to use his example to delve deeper into the etymology of suit because as I said, it was his followers at court that his decree applied to.

It turns out that the word suit actually means “followers at court.”

The word first turned up in English back in 1297.  This was still a time when French was the language of court and so it makes sense that suit came from French.

The “follower” part comes into play when we reach back beyond French and into Latin.

The word root that suit grew from was sequita like sequence from sequere “to follow.”

That first citation back in 1297 has the word suit with both meanings: attendance at court; and also the similarity of attire of those attending court.

The Indo-European word root identified by the American Heritage Dictionary is sek meaning “to follow.”

Looking there at the words that grew from this root I also notice suitor.

If you have a suitor he or she often follows your daily routine with great interest.

The phrase to follow suit relates as well, although in a roundabout way.

Following suit or following in suit does seem to have been a phrase that evolved simply because suit meant “to follow” but it was the popularity of card playing that seems to have popularized the phrase.

Since playing-cards are numbered sequentially the hearts, diamonds, spades and clubs are said to be different suits.

A number of card games require players to reveal their cards according to the suit of the last card played, hence following suit.

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