Lawyers celebrate being cheap bastards
Staff writer
Marion County lawyers admit they are “cheap bastards.”
They even celebrate it with a golf trophy engraved “Cheap Bastards Cup” that changes hands each year when lawyers attend a continuing education and social day that includes a lecture, lunch, golf tournament, and dinner.
“Every year we do it the last Friday of July,” Marion County Bar Association president Josh Boehm said.
This year’s event was Friday at the courthouse and Marion Country Club.
The “Cheap Bastards Cup” took its name from a comment made by a former Kansas Bar Association president who gave a lecture several years ago at an annual continuing education class in Marion.
According to a Journal of the Kansas Bar Association article, since Rachael Pirner had other plans for the afternoon and evening of the day she lectured, no one thought to invite her to have lunch with the group.
At a later meeting in Thomas County, Pirner thanked them for her meal and jokingly told them they were “unlike those cheap bastards in Marion County.” Little did she know, one of the lawyers at that meeting had connections here, and her words would race back.
Marion County lawyers sent Pirner a check for $5 to reimburse the price of her lunch. The signature line on the still-uncashed check reads, “Cheap Bastards.”
This year’s lecture, attended by 50 lawyers from as far away as Prairie Village, was given by McPherson attorney David Harger. His talk centered on how lawyers should advise clients on matters of social media postings.
In one case, a lawyer was fined more than half a million dollars for telling his client to remove photos from his client’s social media page. Although the client won a lawsuit he brought against a driver who injured him, his lawyer was fined anyway.
“A lawyer’s job is to preserve evidence,” Harger said.
Ann Parkins, also of McPherson, spoke to the group about recent changes in expert testimony rules.