Michael Sean Quinn, Ph.D, J.D., Etc.
Law Offices of Quinn & Quinn
2630 Exposition Blvd #115
Austin, Texas 78703
(o) 512-296-2594
(c) 512-656-0503
mquinn@msqlaw.corn

One Lonely Lawyer:
Dates Bought, Services Defective, Lawsuit Brought

        Julie Hyman, a New York lawyer, couldn’t get a date, so she bought a series of them, together with training and advice services from what should be called a “date broker,” but which is more commonly called a matchmaker. She paid $8,000.00 for the services, in advance.
Hyman portrays herself on her website as a 43 year old lawyer, who got out of Cardozo Law School 18 years ago, who was both a teen fashion model and a child star(let?) of some sort, and who has been involved in the entertainment industry all of her life.  Her law firm websites lists both divorce law and entertainment as her foci, and the website says that she has three NYC “Top Attorney Clients”—two in Manhattan and one  in her bailiwick, the Bronx.
Of the two listings, perhaps divorce is her main interest. Does the fact that she is selling divorce related merchandise on the website but nothing fashion and/or entertainment-related suggest this?  What about the fact that one of the items is called “Julie Hyman’s Divorce Kit,” for $49.95, while the other is entitled “Julie Hyman’s Divorce Kit Deluxe,” for  474.95, but there is nothing linked to fashion or entertainment.
Hyman’s is an unusual website. There is the usual semi-official identity picture, but there are also 20+ pictures of her posed in different ways at different ages. It is also very unusual for there to be a photo of a lawyer’s dog, where only the dog is pictured, and even more unusual for there to be an image of a partially animated TV commercial of her “Super Girl” underwear hawking Fruit of the Loom’s “Underoos.” (She remarks in the “All About Me” section of her website that she took a lot of kidding about that incident in high school.)
According to Hyman, she was having trouble meeting men, so she retained someone who had appeared in a TV reality show, “Matched in Manhattan.” Their contract apparently called for “’8 dates/one date per month with highly educated men with an entrepreneurial spirit that were single and not in relationships,’” according to the lawsuit Hyman filed against the date broker, as reported in the NEW YORK DAILY NEWS, of two weeks ago.
What she got, she says, was fewer dates, at least one cancellation, at least one no show, and no coaching or feedback, as promised in the agreement. She also claims—and the broker admits—that men he provided had undisclosed special relationships with the broker:  partners, maybe, or something of the sort.
On one level, this strikes me as an easy case to try for the plaintiff. Without shallow humor being intended, she got screwed.  The broker was not just an insensitive lout; probably a dork when it came to business, but also something of a cad. Someone could go on and draw from what he said to the newspaper that he was a bit of a crook.
He did not provide her with enough dates. It looks like he may have sent her the wrong people, perhaps because he did not get to know enough about her. He did not provide her with helpful after-date reports. He also did not provide her with the advice built into the agreement. It looks to me like the defendant stumbled and blundered or worse.
But it is also a difficult situation for Hyman. She has a sophisticated education; she is professionally experienced in both law and entertainment, and she is a lawyer specializing in the exigencies of male-female relationships.  She is 6’ tall; she is canine centered; and she knows she is something of an odd-ball.  She must have believed that she needed coaching and feedback from the broker, and that fact at least suggests men-women relationships were not one of her gifts—very good looking though she was–and that such relationships of a subtle and nuanced sort may have been difficult for her, no matter how she looks or presents herself.
So, is there an interesting and possible instructive question here about lawyer conduct?  In a subtle way, there are two.  They both hang on the bringing of the suit.
Suit Brought at All #1. Hyman should never have brought this suit at all. It illustrates, what some might call, a profound lack of judgment. As a general point, whoever got herself into this situation made one mistake after another.
The basic problems revolve on structuring the relationship.  It was far too hap hazard. Who is the date broker really? What is his experience? What kind of information does he work from? Why is the obligation to provide dates spaced out at one month intervals, if that’s what the spacing was?  Why would the arrangement not call for the woman that was a party to the contract to read up on, inquire about, perhaps interview and approve the candidates? After all, various forms of something like this are done with other dating services.  Why were “feedbacks” needed? What sort of information would the broker try to get from the man? Why did a woman like Hyman need this sort of information, given her history? The whole arrangement was poorly planned and set up.
Suit Brought at All #2. The very bringing of this lawsuit was a bad decision.
The damages to be won were probably more than would be collected.  There is not all that much money at stake here to peruse except for the punitive damages which might be awarded in a fraud case, and they probably won’t be collected.   Even those might not be all that great; they are seldom won; and big punitive damages on top of quite small actual damages often won’t survive on appeals.
            The best that can be done here may be a modest settlement, and a lawyer can make substantially more than such a sum from hourly work. The lawsuit under discussion will take a fair amount to time to prepare, some time to gnash teeth over, some time for “upsetedness,” and some time to make up for sleep already lost.  Figure the hours up, multiply them times a reasonable hourly fee, and it is clear which one is better.
            Finally, the practice of a lawyer who brings this sort of case will be undermined to some degree. Not only will the lawyer suffer from what was discussed in §#1, the lawyer will also suffer from a critique of judgment.  The §#1 question, is “How could this girl, sophisticated though she is, let herself get into this ridiculous situation?” The §#2 is “How could a lawyer bring a case where she is the plaintiff, which she knew would trigger publicity as to her judgment about bringing the case at all?”  
Many people will say “In bringing the case, she is exposed to publicity about her judgment in entering into the absurd contract. That was a bad idea. Lawyers should hide their legal mistakes about themselves if they can, and it is legally permitted.” Many people may also say, “No rational lawyer would, in the normal course of things, expose their own poor decision-making to the kind of reaction that will arise if this lawsuit is filed and publicized, unless the lawyer has another goal—another purpose. What might that be?”
The only one that is obvious is the one found in the age-old principle of publicity: Some of it is better than none of it.  As often as this principle is repeated, the principle is false.  The situation under discussion is a virtual paradigm of what’s wrong with the idea that bad publicity is invariably preferable to none. The proposition that silence and modest loss can be preferable to negative publicity is established by the fact that when someone runs unnecessarily into harm’s way, not only might it not hurt the person, it might send out negative information of its own. Consider the following question: “Do I actually want that lawyer representing me in my divorce case given the lawsuit she filed essentially about her own ridiculous errors—she set the whole thing up, really without thinking?”
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On February 22, 2015, the following article was brought to my attention. It may be a different account of the same situation discussed in the sources upon which I depended. I confess that I do not have a positive reaction to the subject of the HuffPost piece, but that does not distinguish my attitude in the slightest from the one I previously had. Still, the whole “affair” was a complete and unpleasant mess. 
://www.huffingtonpost.com/matt-titus/confessions-of-a-nyc-matc_b_6142720.html