Shooting the messenger
Bad things happen to the best of us, and often for reasons beyond either control or reason. While we don’t like talking about our fortunately-rare failures, the result of a recent divorce case is instructive.
We were told by the client through her attorney of her belief that her husband had substantial overseas interests. The husband claimed that he had received a few million from the sale of his overseas interests, and that his only other tangible assets were his 43 classic cars.
We determined that his financial interests had been located in Slovenia. Our associates in Eastern Europe went to work, and, lo and behold, we discovered that it had apparently slipped the husband’s mind that he still owned a business outside of Tomlin. Since he had recently sold a third of the business for $7 million, we were able to demonstrate that his remaining two- thirds share of the business was worth in the neighborhood of $14 million. We were pleased with the job we had done. It was done right. It was done in a timely manner. It was done for less than we had estimated.
We presented our findings, complete with all the appropriate documentation, and were promptly fired by the angry wife. The attorney later told us that his client was so enraged at finding out that her husband really was lying to her that she fell back on the time-honored approach of shooting the messenger.
