Might as well buy a lottery ticket hoping to win enough money to fund your own case rather than cling to the faint hope of finding a pro bono attorney or even one working on contingency. My bitter experience stems directly from my father’s death, caused by gross, willful negligence at the hands of those entrusted with his care. Despite a formal DHHS investigation, which unequivocally substantiated my claims, and over 300 hours of undeniable audio, video, and documented proof illustrating the horrifying ordeal he endured, no one stepped forward to help. Justice wasn’t served, not in this life, nor, it seems, in any other.
It’s not that lawyers told me there wasn’t a case. Instead, they said it was “too complicated.” One attorney spent a week supposedly weighing my meticulously prepared case, only to dismiss it with a curt email: “Regrettably, we have too many other cases to manage additional workloads at this time.” After that, my emails went unanswered, my pleas seemingly silenced by convenience.
Apparently, lawyers today prefer the ripest, lowest hanging fruit, the easy cases promising easy profits. In our society, drowning in incompetence, there’s no shortage of simpler, safer bets. Yet, you’d think there would still be at least a few brave souls seeking justice, not only easy money, who would choose righteousness over profit, integrity over convenience. But I learned the hard way that righteousness rarely outweighs the bottom line.
I handed them an almost complete case, indexed, transcribed, painstakingly timestamped. They didn’t even bother to read it. Beyond the injustice, what wounds me most deeply is the realization that my father’s profound decency, the quiet dignity and unwavering ethics that defined his life, ultimately meant nothing in a system indifferent to such virtues. His goodness didn’t offer him protection or redemption in death. Perhaps it was naive to believe that it ever could.
This realization doesn’t just hurt, it isolates, minimizes, and disillusions. It deepens the bitterness of loss. Forgive me for venting my frustration this way, but it’s all I have left.
I’m sorry, Dad. I truly tried. Turns out, you were right about lawyers, too. I’m writing this with just a few weeks remaining in the statute of limitations. It doesn’t have to be like this, but all indications are that decency simply costs too much for those in power.