The legal peregrinations of “Scrooge McDuck”

by David Benjamin 

“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”  — Albert Einstein

MADISON, Wis.—So, there’s this guy. Let’s call him Individual One. He’s rich, okay? But he really hates to pay his bills, He’d rather just sit in a big room on a pile of money and brag about how rich he is. Come to think of it, let’s call him Scrooge McDuck. Anyway, eventually, he gets in trouble for not paying his bills. So, he hires a bigtime lawyer. Pays the lawyer a big retainer (but not as big as the lawyer asked for). Actually, Scrooge McDuck doesn’t pay the retainer. He says, “Bill me.” Anyway, the lawyer loses the case and Scrooge McDuck is embarrassed and humiliated because he hates to lose, plus—even worse—he has to obey the racist, duck-hating judge and pay the bill, which is a lot. He pays up but decides to stiff the lawyer, whose invoice is bigger than the bill he didn’t want to pay in the first place. He fires the lawyer, who takes him to court for not paying his bill. Scrooge McDuck, of course, hires another bigtime lawyer, who loses the case and Scrooge McDuck has to pay the first lawyer’s bill, but he also fires the second bigtime lawyer and refuses to pay him, who sues him for not paying the bill, which means Scrooge McDuck has to hire another bigtime lawyer, which is okay with him, because he never pays lawyers and the lawyers keep signing on with him—working for free because … well, who knows why? Maybe they think it’s cool to go to cocktail parties and say, “Hey, I’m Scrooge McDuck’s lawyer. How ’bout that, huh?” Anyway, This goes on for years, until one day, Scrooge McDuck gets into bigger trouble than just screwing creditors who keep begging to get screwed. He’s not worried, of course, ’cause, after all, he’s Scrooge McDuck! But, just in case, he hires an all-star team of bigtime lawyers, who know his reputation and so, they insist that he pay a really big retainer before going to work for him. He doesn’t like that at all, but he’s counting on hiring other bigtime lawyers to sue his present bigtime lawyers to get his retainer back, especially if they lose the case. Scrooge McDuck’s defense in this case is what’s commonly referred to in legal circles as “horseshit.” So, surprise, surprise!, Scrooge McDuck’s all-star lawyers tell him, “You can’t win,” to which Scrooge McDuck responds by firing them all and refusing to pay his bill. Then he hires more lawyers, this bunch not quite so bigtime because all the bigtimers by this time have figured out Scrooge McDuck and wouldn’t touch him with a ten-foot Slovak. The lawyers, of course, are scared to ask for a retainer, ’cause they really need the job. So, they take Scrooge McDuck’s horseshit defense to court and lose. Scrooge McDuck says, “There are lots of courts. Do it again.” So, the medium-time lawyers do it again, and lose, and do it again ten more times, and lose ten more. They say, carefully, to Scrooge McDuck, “Really, boss, we don’t think this turkey’s gonna fly.” But Scrooge McDuck reminds them of the number of courts there are in the world and says, “Do it again.” Another fifty courts later, after they lose fifty times, the medium-time lawyers throw up their hands and say, “This turkey not only won’t fly. It got killed six months ago trying to cross the freeway. It’s dead, boss. Dead!” So, Scrooge McDuck quacks, “You’re fired!” and, of course, refuses to pay the bill, which motivates the medium-time lawyers to hire a few of the previously fired bigtime lawyers, to sue Scrooge McDuck to pay his bill. So, of course, Scrooge McDuck, flushes all the lawyers’ bills down the john and goes out lawyer hunting. He finds a crew of smalltimers who are too insignificant to even think about asking for a retainer. But they all go home to their wives and kids and brag that, hey!, they’re the new lawyers for Scrooge McDuck, who is reputedly “richer than God … at least he says so.” Only one of the wives has the chutzpah to cry “Says so?” and mention that Scrooge McDuck is a pathological liar whose brain has been shrunk, dehydrated and pitted from a lifetime of inhaling industrial-strength featherspray. Nevertheless, promised a huge payday from Scrooge McDuck, especially if they can win his next case, the smalltime lawyers sign on, just as a series of bigtime prosecutors start to look into Scrooge McDuck’s lifetime of inhaling hairspray and weaseling his way out of the sort of trouble that would land any normal shmo like me and you in Sing Sing for the duration. The lawyers tell Scrooge McDuck this is a serious criminal indictment and not horseshit, but Scrooge McDuck can’t see the difference, instead insisting that “I did nothing wrong. I’m a legitimate waterfowl.” So, of course, he tells his new semi-pro lawyers to go to court and get him off, at which the lawyers who have seen the evidence, tell him it’s easier bellowed than done because, as one brave but foolhardy fourth-chair litigator tells him flat out, “You did it. You’re guilty, boss.” Of course, Scrooge McDuck fires the poor bastard on the spot, and the poor bastard doesn’t even submit a bill, because for him just getting away from the crazy son of a bitch is worth its weight negotiable bearer bonds. So, Scrooge McDuck turns to his remaining smalltime lawyers, shysters and ambulance-chasers. He goes, “Get into that courtroom, boys and girls, say I didn’t do it.” But they remind him that he did do it, right out in the open where everybody could see, and he goes, “That’s okay. I’m Scrooge McDuck. Tell ’em I didn’t! And keep saying it, over and over!” The lawyers, at their wit’s end, say, “You can’t lie to judges,” which sends Scrooge McDuck into gales of mirthless laughter, after which he says, “I’ve been lying to judges all my life. How d’ya think I got so rich?” To which he adds, “And popular! Everybody loves me.” Which prompts one shyster to say, “Not everyone.” She’s fired, of course, and she dances out the door singing show tunes and kicking her heels. In the ensuing conversation, Scrooge McDuck insists over and over that his smalltime lawyers lie for him in court, and they all answer that they can’t, or they’d lose their license to practice law, to which Scrooge McDuck asks, “Where’s your loyalty, guys, to me or the stupid Bar Association.” They choose the Bar Association, dancing out the door, singing show tunes and kicking their heels. This leaves Scrooge McDuck once more lawyerless and the smalltime lawyers penniless because they know they have no chance in hell of ever collecting their fees from Scrooge McDuck, whose outreach for a new legal team proves arduous, because, as it turns out, he has run through the country’s entire population of competent attorneys—bigtime, middling and smalltime—plus every available mouthpiece, fee-chaser, personal-injury shark, paralegal, second-year law student and court stenographer in every phonebook from Tijuana to Madawaska. There ain’t no lawyers left, but Scrooge McDuck is unfazed, because his ace-in-the-hole is his son-in-law, who’s gotta be a great litigator ‘cause he’s Jewish. So, the son-in-law is hired but he asks for a huge retainer, so Scrooge McDuck says, “Okay, son, just take it out of my daughter’s allowance.” So, for the first time, one of Scrooge McDuck’s lawyers gets paid, but this doesn’t actually work out, because the son-in-law’s wife looks into her underwear drawer and finds all her savings gone and she figures out exactly what happened. For her, this turns out to be the final indignity. She heads to the courthouse, pulls a brick out of the wall with her bare hands (ruining a nail), goes into the courtroom, rares back and throws it—she has a great, arm, by the way—right at at the head of her cheapskate old man, Scrooge McDuck. Too late, the son-in-law sees the missile about to smash his father-in-law’s shrunken, dehydrated and pitted brain into strawberry jam and cries out an anguished warning.

“Donald, duck!”