Let me give you the executive summary of this story: Democrat Bruce Braley is running (increasingly in a flailing-type manner) for Senate in Iowa.  He’s currently in the middle of a dispute with one of his neighbors because one of the latter’s chickens ended up at Braley’s vacation home at Holiday Lake, Iowa*. Which happens, and as it turns out Braley won that dispute: the chicken-owner (who uses them as part of her duties as a therapist**) was told by the Holiday Lake Housing Association to contain her chickens. So, problem solved, right?

Wrong! Bruce Braley is a trial lawyer, remember?

That didn’t satisfy Braley, a litigator since 1983, a former president of the Iowa Trial Lawyers Associationfrom 2002-2003, and a former Board of Governors member of the Association of Trial Lawyers of America (since rebranded as the American Association for Justice).

Before the 30 day window closed for Hampton to rectify the problem, Braley called Grinnell attorney Thomas A. Lacina, a partner at Charnetski, Lacina & Clower, LLP, and issued a veiled threat to litigate the matter. To resolve the dispute, Lacina billed the association $1,692, according to budget documents reviewed by board members at their July 10 meeting.

“You really can’t publish what my opinion is,” said Terry Maxfield, the board’s secretary. “I think it was petty. For someone with a higher education like that, it was petty. It was a waste of resources and money.”

And this is why we all hate trial lawyers.  The billing isn’t Lacina’s fault (he’s the association’s attorney): the man earned it by convincing Braley that the association would win a lawsuit, and apparently Bruce Braley is enough of a natural-born danged fool that it takes extra time and money to get an idea through the man’s head.  But silly lawsuits can cost you valuable resources even when you win them, or even keep them from cooking off.  But you can’t really expect Bruce Braley to transcend his very nature: after all, as a dog returns to its vomit, so fools repeat their folly.

That’s Proverbs 26:11, in case any of Bruce Braley’s staffers are reading this.  I shudder at the potential ignorance that his campaign might display in that field of study.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

PS: Joni Ernst for US Senate.  She’d comment on this, but she’s out doing [her annual military service].

*This is what this is all about, mind you.  It’s about Bruce Braley having to vacation somewhere where he’s got neighbors who have chickens, for whatever reason. That’s why he wants to be a Senator – or a lobbyist, sure.  He’d have to move then, too.

**A therapist who also works with special needs children, and she does use the chickens for that sort of thing.  And, yeah, domestic animals and pets can be a big part of that kind of therapy, depending on the situation. Pay careful attention to the people who want to mock this element of the situation, in other words: those people may have other potentially-crippling emotional issues.