Page 352 - WhyAsInY

Why (as in yaverbaum)
would clarify the situation for me and save me from aimless wandering through the library, trying to find out what was meant by “joint maker,” “recourse,” and “balloon,” among other things. “Well, buhhd,” he said, “we’ve got to find a way to slow this down.” (I soon learned that the defense attorney’s primary tactic was to delay, delay, delay.) He pointed out that the mortgage note started with the words “We promise to pay,” not what he said was the customary formulation: “We, jointly and sever- ally, promise to pay. . . .” Maybe that mattered.
It did. Somehow, I managed to find a record of the debate in Albany when New York adopted what is known as the Uniform Commercial Code (something that Professor Farnsworth had tried in vain to teach me about) and, luckily, some commentary that supported the argument that, if there was a default, the holder of the note with two makers (sign- ers) who were not “jointly and severally” liable had to sue both of the makers at the same time. This resulted in a happy Arnie Roth, who used my discovery and wrote the papers that had the effect of slowing things down substantially, so substantially that the matter settled in a way that made our client happy. I had survived!
Inasmuch as I was still gainfully employed, I was given my next and more taxing assignment, this time from a partner who had clerked for Justice Benjamin Cardozo in the U.S. Supreme Court, Ambrose Dos- kow. Max Freund was intimidating because of his well-earned reputation for toughness; Ambrose Doskow was intimidating because of his well- earned reputation for intellectual brilliance.
This time I understood the fact pattern, which was not unlike that of a TV soap: It appeared that the young and not terribly disconsolate widow of her much older, and now late, husband, named Kern, had had the extremely good fortune to have discovered a three-page last will and testament that looked to have been signed by Mr. Kern and was dated, miracle of miracles, three days before his unfortunate passing. The document in question was purported to have been executed in a small town in France, the widow’s homeland, where the happy couple was vacationing. It was witnessed by friends of Mrs. Kern and, remark- ably, was dated only weeks after the date borne by a seventy-plus-page
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