                           20050206.01

     When we spoke about the Nantucket litigation a day or two
ago, I was readily persuaded by your suggestion that the
description of pathos would seem inappropriate in a legal
document and would expose me to scorn and ridicule; and well it
might.

     On further thought, however, it occurs to me that if one
contemplates tort action against the Town of Nantucket one has to
be prepared to persuade the jury that the actions of the Town of
Nantucket were in fact injurious, and that these injuries were
felt.  It would be unnecessary, and indeed unwise to exaggerate.
The psychological strategy would be to fashion a conceptual
framework into which each juror would project his own
experiences, his own fears, his own resentments, and let the
juror in a sense exaggerate on behalf of a plaintiff with whom he
sympathized.

     As I write this, the voices and facial expressions of my
patients come to mind, when I describe my experiences with the
HDC. "How awful," they say, "How terrible," "I admire your
courage." "I'd die if they did that to me."  It is by eliciting
such reactions that one gets million dollar verdicts. Moreover,
perhaps the jury would credit me not only with the humiliation to
which the Commission subjected me, but the scorn and ridicule
that you rightly fear I might earn before the Board of Selectmen
as well.

     In my present state of mind, I cannot suppress the fantasy
that the Commission is bluffing, and that they will issue the
Certificate on Feb 15. But then again, the fact that I can't
imagine how any lawyer would let their case go to court, may be
indicative not of the weakness of their position, but of the
weakness of my imagination. In any event, a tort case could never
be brought unless my claims were sustained by some appellate
tribunal. If the Commission relents now and issues a certificate,
would I still have a case?

     One of the facets that interest me most concerns sworn
testimony and the fallibility of memory.  They claim that I
extended the 60 day period.  I can be confident of the
truthfulness of my denial, because during the critical period I
never set foot on Nantucket, I never telephoned them, they never
telephoned me, and there is no written evidence.  But what if I
had visited their offices, what if I had conferred with them on
the telephone, then obviously, I couldn't be quite so sure; then
I would worry whether my memory was failing me, and whether I
should trust it; I would begin to wonder whether I was slipping
into Alzheimer's disease; whether I was going crazy, whether I
sparked the whole controversy because I was crazy from the
beginning, or whether the controversy was driving me crazy,
whether the the statement: "You or your wife extended the sixty
day period." from an official of the Town of Nantucket, if not
indeed designed to drive me crazy might yet have the effect of
doing so.

     Or is the contemplation of a ten million dollar damage suit,
with myself as plaintiff pro se, in itself incontrovertible
evidence of insanity? Or is the concept of insanity still
meaningful in a society that elevates a proponent of torture to
be its chief judicial officer?

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