Foul-mouthed clients can make a #*@*$ mess for lawyers
by Dan Heilman
What's a lawyer to do when his client won't stop swearing? That's the question Chicago attorney Joseph R. Ziccardi is trying to get a federal judge to answer.
Ziccardi was hit with sanctions totaling over $29,000 by U.S. District Judge Eduardo C. Robreno after Ziccardi's client, Aaron Wider, managed to use the f-word (or variations thereof) 73 times during a deposition. Ziccardi didn't help his own cause by chuckling at his client's profanity and failing to discourage him to clean up his act. Ziccardi is now asking for permission to drop the client and begging for the sanctions to be lifted.
Wider's loose-tongued ways might sound excessive until you learn that the 73 f-bombs were dropped over the course of 12 hours' worth of depositions. What's one effenheimer every 10 minutes? The film Scarface contained the big daddy of cuss words 226 times in only two hours and 50 minutes.
