March 24, 2016
By Certified Mail
Mr. Robert Mangeot, Author of Shameless and Baseless Works of Fiction
Dear Mr. Mangeot:
The venerated and venerable law firm Vernon Stagg and Associates represents the selfsame Vernon Stagg, Esq., a noted figure of legal and civic stature in the greater metropolitan Nashville area. We mean none other than the capitol of the great state of Tennessee. Music City.
As you must surely know, having authored such a mistaken and misguided mischaracterization as “The Cumberland Package,” published in the May 2016 edition of Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, you present to Nashville’s reading and voting public a grievously and grotesquely false depiction of Vernon Stagg. For the legal record and for all other records of important nature, now and in perpetuity, in his representation of Mr. Chit “Big Kick” Bowling, Vernon Stagg at no time and in no way engaged in any of the following: conspiracy to commit murder; bribery and fraudulent practices concerning the Tri-Star Bison Show and Sale; inappropriate promiscuous and/or intimate behaviors; unethical billing practices and breaches of client confidentiality; and habitual listening to Artie Shaw’s music. While Vernon Stagg does enjoy a fine swing orchestra, he has no love for the tuneless timbre of a clarinet. This is well-known to his friends and associates and to entire sub-portions of the Nashville community at large. That the Tennessee Bar Association (“The Bar”) may have pursued similar such outrageous claims against Vernon Stagg is both inconsequent and irrelevant. The Bar’s long and lamentable smear campaign against Vernon Stagg is well-documented and understood for the petty display that it is. Vernon Stagg’s good name remains unbesmirched. Given said unbesmirchitude, any portrayal to the contrary represents an assassination of Vernon Stagg’s considerable character and his income, electoral and romantic prospects.
And yet your pernicious portrayal assassinates Vernon Stagg in just such a manner. Humbles, humbugs and humiliates. This, to a legal crusader whose sole purpose in representing the aged and landed Mr. Bowling was to ease the poor gentleman’s mind concerning his estate disposition and business affairs and in furthering the award-winning renown of Mr. Bowling’s livestock. This, to a learned and judicial-appointment-worthy legal mind with no pending charges against him in the Bowling matter or other matters, save for those filed by the Bar.
Sir, on multiple occasions you portray Vernon Stagg in private and personal situations with his client’s wife, Mrs. Felisha Bowling. This is the height of impugnatious irresponsibility. With a client of Mr. Bowling’s vast holdings and ailing condition, it is natural for counsel to confer regularly and repeatedly with the spouse when of sounder mind and body. It is not unknown for these meetings to take place at certain of the downtown business district’s finer hotels. Indeed, so laughably lacking is your assertion of infidelity, and so redoubted is Vernon Stagg’s reputation, that any reader or law enforcement officer of good faith would find simply no need or cause, none at all, to review hotel security camera footage on said dates and times. Shame on you, sir. Shame on you.
The immense irony of what truly and tragically transpired in the Bowling matter is that Vernon Stagg himself is the aggrieved and injured party. Vernon Stagg was threatened with the blackest of blackmails and with serious harm to his person and to the winning Vernon Stagg smile that is and shall forever be essential to his crusading livelihood. Your deceptive and dilatory depiction to the contrary only inflicts insult upon his injury.
Vernon Stagg, for example, is no longer met with the same welcome at Claudio’s on Commerce, known to the Nashville legal profession and to age-appropriate potential companionship as the crown jewel of downtown cocktail establishments. Regrettably he may soon be forced to take his after-hours networking elsewhere, such as closer to the Broadway honky-tonks and their itinerant tourist traffic. The gins and tonics at such places shall inevitably contain both suspect gin and equally suspect tonic. Your “The Cumberland Package” casually and carelessly creates such very damage upon Vernon Stagg.
Sir, if you do not redress your reckless and reprobate work, Vernon Stagg resolves to remonstrate and respond, i.e. as in reparation, recompensation, restitution and reconstitution. Specific damages Vernon Stagg has already endured due to your fictional farce include:
- An immeasurable amount of pain and suffering;
- $479,999,999.99 (conservatively) in hypothetical future loss of legal clientele;
- $5,000,000.00 in fees from the most experienced medical and psychiatric experts available necessary to attempt, however doomed the task, to measure Vernon Stagg’s immeasurable pain and suffering;
- $2,132,564.87 in self-charged legal hours, health insurance premiums and other expenses incurred in vigorous defense of Vernon Stagg;
- $67,403.63 to secure both premium gin and premium tonic required to maintain five (5) years of Claudio’s-grade mixological content;
- $10,000 paid to a Certified Public Accountant to audit Vernon Stagg’s vinyl, cassette, compact disc and electronic musical download collections to officially certify no possessitory traces at all of Artie Shaw’s music.
Vernon Stagg’s extensive and exhaustive list of damages experienced is expounded upon as Exhibit A.
To recap and reiterate the harm you have heaped upon Vernon Stagg: calamitous complaints of conspiracy; intimations and indications of intrigue, infidelity, and inappropriate dealings concerning Mr. Bowling, Mrs. Bowling, and his celebrated herd of bison; loss of professional standing and personal companionship; uncertain political advancement; detriment to both gin and tonic; and perception of customary consumption of clarinet-based cacophony. In total, your “The Cumberland Package” holds Vernon Stagg up to derision, disparagement, disdain, discord, disgrace, dilution of beverage and any and all possible negative culminations and conclusions drawn from your wanton warping of potentially non-factual facts.
Mr. Mangeot, our firm is adept and authoritative in assisting those so esteemed as Vernon Stagg in their pursuit of justice. In such pursuit we have filed many claims of injury on behalf of many clients, and certain of those claims have not been dismissed. We have the vastest of vast reaches. An apparatus. If you wish to avoid the above damages and the shame that proceedings will surely wreak upon you, we demand that you immediately and at once clarify and correct your fictional flimflam whether or not corrections are supported by factual fact.
Given the gravity of your conduct, we recommend that you consult with proficient and professional legal representation. Vernon Stagg and Associates charges quite reasonable fees (on fixed, hourly and/or contingent basis) considering our wide-ranging expertise, and we are available for consult twenty-four/seven other than when called to court or happy hour drink specials.
Very truly though badly injuredly yours,
Vernon Stagg, Esq.
Sole and Managing Partner
Vernon Stagg and Associates