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Sacramento insurance coverage attorney Blane Smith can be quick with a quip.
Ask him if there are other lawyers in his family and he may dryly answer, “No, I was the first to go wrong.” And then execute a perfectly timed pause to allow for a laugh.
“I don’t think you have to be a stiff to be a professional attorney,” Smith says, but he also cautions that there is a time and place to “crack wise,” and it’s critical to know the appropriate when and where.
“When you get a laugh out of people, suddenly you feel better,” he says. “It puts you at ease. But one place you really can’t do that is in a courtroom. If a judge thinks you think it’s open mic in his courtroom, he’s going to cut you off at the knees and you’ll end up looking really bad in front of the jury.”
Smith’s sense of humor is evident in a 1979 comment he wrote as a law student for the University of the Pacific Law Journal that carries the lengthy title “The California Legislature Steers the Antitrust Cart Right Off the Illinois Brick Road” and that he claims incorporates “the most obscure pun of any scholarly work on antitrust law.”
California’s antitrust statute is called the Cartwright Act and Smith’s comment concerns an amendment made to the act in response to the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Illinois Brick Co. v. Illinois. The court ruled that indirect purchasers of goods or services cannot seek damages for antitrust violations committed by the original manufacturer or service provider. The amendment to the Cartwright Act allowed for exceptions.
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