Me And The Pig Man
Tom Trubiani was a nice enough guy if you could get past the smell. And the insanity.
Apparently, I can only string two words together after downing a giant cup of coffee. (That makes it sound like I have a substance abuse problem which I definitely don’t have. I prefer the term “crutch” which makes it sound like I’m an invalid, like Tiny Tim. Everybody loves Tiny Tim. Even though you couldn’t call him “Tiny Tim” today. You’d have to call him “Height-impaired Tim” or something woke like that. Are my eyelids supposed to twitch?)
A n y w a y,
Tom Trubiani was known as The Pig Man
He lived not far from here on 94 acres of land in a dilapidated farmhouse where he raised pigs. Big pigs. Big, feral, hard-to-contain pigs. Sometimes they got themselves shot because, well, what else are you going to do with an angry 300-pound pig?
Somebody was always complaining about Tom’s scary monster pigs roaming freely across the land, but Tom didn’t care. He was a veteran, and he was living the life he wanted to live.
“Look at that pig,” he’d say with his deeply Southern accent. “That’s a happy pig.”
I talked to Tom a lot, I can’t remember why. Maybe he was lonely. I answered the phone in the Judge’s chambers, so, I got to talk to The Pig Man.
Tom had a beautiful voice, but he was completely insane. You knew when he was in the courthouse because he left a trail of pig shit-scented straw everywhere he went.
There was straw in the parking lot, there was straw in the elevator, and there was straw and the ghostly presence of pig drifting down the hallway to where the trail ended at my door.
Now, I was raised on a farm, so I know that some manure is better, in strictly olfactory terms, than others.
Cow is okay, horse is great, chicken is not good, and pig…. Pig is bad.
The problem was that, not only was Tom pig-headed (pardon the pun), he was schizophrenic.
Tom had a hard time keeping up with his mortgage and was always in the middle of a foreclosure. The cases were filed and dismissed, filed and dismissed.
Eventually, a plaintiff in one of the cases filed pictures of the interior of Tom’s home. It was about what you’d expect. Tom was essentially half pig, and his toilet and bathroom walls were smeared with feces. The man clearly needed a guardian.
This was about the time that an attorney named Chris Carlson latched onto him. Chris was going to “help him” sell his 94 acres.
(Oct. 8, 2003) The Supreme Court today voted 7-0 to suspend the law license of Medina attorney Christopher Carlson for two years for violations of the Code of Professional Responsibility.
The violations arose from Carlson's dealings with a client whom Carlson represented in litigation involving an undeveloped 94-acre tract of land near Medina owned by the client. Carlson purchased the property from the client in October 2000 for $10,000 in cash and assumption of a $42,500 mortgage.
Within a week after the sale of his property to Carlson, the client voluntarily admitted himself to a veterans' hospital and was confined to its psychiatric unit. He was subsequently diagnosed with schizophrenia and found incompetent, and a guardian was appointed for him by the Medina County Probate Court.
At the time Carlson bought the client's property, it was listed with a realtor with an asking price of $975,000. Two days prior to Carlson's purchase of the land, the client had received through his realtor a written offer of $5,000 per acre, or approximately $470,000, from another prospective purchaser.
In today's per curiam decision suspending Carlson's license, the court agreed with findings of the Board of Commissioners on Grievances and Discipline that Carlson violated state disciplinary rules both by acquiring an interest in property that was the subject matter of a case in which he was involved as an attorney, and by entering into a business transaction with a client when the client relied on his counsel.
The justices held that Carlson's misconduct was "so egregious that it requires a more severe sanction" than the six-month license suspension recommended by the Board of Commissioners on Grievances and Discipline.
"… (Carlson) unabashedly arranged to buy the farm of his mentally ill client, which was the subject mater of the litigation for which the client had hired (Carlson), for a small fraction of its worth," the court wrote. "Moreover, he set up the transaction to give the appearance that his client had consented after full disclosure…”
Yet another reason to hate attorneys.
I didn’t work at the court when all this went down. However, I did work for an attorney who was essentially in cahoots with Tom’s lawyer.
Of course, they’re all in cahoots, but only a small fraction of them get caught.
Carlson’s license to practice law was suspended for two years. In the interim, he was again brought in front of the Ohio Supreme Court for scamming another client out of money. That time, he lost his license for good.
Lawyers think they’re untouchable because they have such disdain for their clients (especially women and the elderly). They act like the law is a game of Three-card Monte—they double-talk and lie and pump out reams of paper in order to create confusion and uncertainty.
The irony in Tom Trubiani’s case is that 20 years later, his 94 acres still sit vacant and unused. His house was knocked down, but the dreams of commercial development never came true.
The land is maybe worth $500,000 if anybody’s interested, although the tax value is half that. I’m surprised some developer hasn’t planted houses on it yet.
But if you do ever buy a house there, be prepared for the ghosts of vengeful pigs and Tom Trubiani to wake you in the night with their furious oinks and the cry of, “That’s a happy pig!”
Brutal story. And people wonder why there's so little faith in the justice system. This MFer only gets his license suspended for exploiting a mentally ill person. Meanwhile, tens of thousands of African Americans have been imprisoned for life for smoking weed three times. SMDH.
If you want to learn more about Wall Street corruption you should read this book called Black Edge by Sheelah Kolhatkar. https://www.amazon.com/Black-Edge-Inside-Information-Wanted/dp/0812985796/ref=sr_1_1
I've read it twice, and I'm using the central premise of a corrupt hedge fund as the setting for my second novel.