Deep depo doo-doo

Houston lawyer Wade B. Reese wasn’t sure what started the rush of personal e-mails yesterday. He even heard from a man who decades ago had practiced law with his father. Then an associate at his own firm forwarded him a Sept. 26 letter that was posted on the humorous law blawg Above the Law as a sort of “you gotta see this” kind of thing. Shortly thereafter, he recalls, he got what he calls the “oops” e-mail from her when both realized that Reese had already seen the letter. See, it was correspondence sent in one of his cases, and he was on the distribution list – a list that apparently others were reading, too. The Houston lawyer behind the letter is Jeff Murphrey, who returned home after Hurricane Ike on Sept. 22 to find a backyard tainted with “a roughly 50 ft. x 6 ft. swath of human excrement, used condoms, and all other niceties that come with a raw sewage leak,” according to the letter. After much effort, the Houston Public Works Department finally arrived to clean it up – on the same day Murphrey was supposed to be in Fort Wayne, Ind., at a deposition, according to the letter. He didn’t make the deposition, which involved a witness in a wheel separation case that resulted in a death, but opposing counsel Dale G. Markland of Dallas did, and the ensuing disagreement over Markland's fees and costs prompted Murphrey to pen a mock mea culpa to Markland, which he CCed to Reese and eight other lawyers in the case. “I am sorry that a hurricane hit Houston,” it begins.“I am sorry that the Houston Public Works Department had to use a fire hose to blow human feces out of my yard on the day our deposition was scheduled,” the letter continues, before accusing Markland of going “back on his word” and being “the only lawyer in this case that consistently goes out of his way to be unaccommodating and unprofessional with the other lawyers.” And the final -- and perhaps most stinging -- zing? “I am sorry you are from Dallas.” Murphrey did not return two calls for comment. Markland did talk to Tex Parte, saying he takes issue with the way Murphrey describes what went down while he was en route to the Hoosier state. “I got word of this when I was in Chicago, Illinois. I never even talked to the man,” he says, noting the depo had already been rescheduled twice before. As the entire situation was beyond his client’s control, says Markland, a 30-year litigation veteran and former V&E partner, his client should not have to foot the bill. Markland was surprised the letter had been posted on the Internet, but says he was not surprised when he received it over the fax transom: “Whether you are surprised depends on the source, I suppose.” Markland says the letter “did gain a response from me,” but he declined to share that letter with Tex Parte readers. He did reveal, however, that it lacked the flair of Murphrey’s missive. “I am not that kind of guy,” Markland says. “I just responded factually to what the circumstances are.”

-- Jenny B. Davis