Philadelphia

A Story by Abishai100

A bright young lawyer in Philadelphia is fired possibly because of AIDS-bigotry and requires an 'ardent' small-time counselor, a heterosexual man (Amlan), to be his lawyer.

A fanfiction-adaptation of the searing American film Philadelphia (Tom Hanks). Thanks for reading,

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The City of Brotherly Love is a hospitable place of incredible multiculturalism and fabled sports-teams which bring the entire nation a sense of patriotism ever since the days of the Declaration of Independence and it's the setting of our modern legal drama involving a dangerous form of bigotry.

Andy had been a successful lawyer with a prominent Philadelphia Law Firm and had achieved much successes for his office and had been promoted to the level of senior associate of the firm, which was a great triumph for the young African-American Harvard graduate as well as for his caring extended-family who lived with him in Philadelphia, the City of Brotherly Love.

ANDY: I had to leave this excellent firm to seek legal counsel for my special and troubling case about being summarily fired.

You see, Andy was fired summarily from the respected/prominent Philadelphia law-firm not because he was African-American but that it was discovered that he was afflicted with AIDS and was attempting to hide this 'ugly truth' from his peers/superiors, all the while maintaining excellent personal hygiene and self-care measures to track the development of his AIDS condition. He'd acquired the devastating condition (AIDS) from a sexual indiscretion with another man at a Philadelphia adult-theater. He began collecting illness-themed artworks in this Philadelphia loft and continued to feel proud of his homosexual identity, and his family supported his activities.

ANDY: It was so humiliating being fired and then waiting in the small-time law office hallway of Amlan to seek new counsel.

AMLAN: I'll tell you honestly, Andy, I don't know what kind of case you have here for me.

ANDY: You're a small-time lawyer, Amlan, and my last hope; I know you can take this case!
AMLAN: Andy, you hid your condition from your coworkers and bosses without any explanation.

ANDY: Counselor, I had the ability to hide the condition to avoid gossip and kept personal care to avoid danger(s)!

AMLAN: Well, I've never tried a case like this, Andy, honestly.

ANDY: I think you're refusing to represent me in court, Amlan, because of a personal fear...or humiliation.

AMLAN: Let me give it thought...I may be 'small-time' like you suggested, but I'm a great lawyer.

After some deep-thinking, the 'small-time' Philadelphia lawyer agreed to take Andy's difficult/controversial legal case involving being fired summarily from the respected law-firm because of his AIDS condition which was kept secret from his bosses. The law firm was being represented by another prominent firm/lawyer and their side insisted this was a simple case of failure to keep office-place disclosure responsibilities.

AMLAN: Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, Andy kept a dark secret out of worry, and he kept great personal care, and he was fired because of our modern 'unnatural' fear of interacting with people afflicted with deep illness, and this is a case of bigotry and selective execution and not a 'simple' case of Andy's law firm 'earnestly' seeking roads to offer this poor ill man a plan for honorable discharge and paid retirement because of his condition, which I will prove beyond doubts.

Amlan's girlfriend, a UPenn football cheerleader named Sandy, had recently graduated and began work at a Philadelphia fashion-house designing sunglass-and-daywear fashions for women to be featured in a popular magazine in the great City of Brotherly Love. She laughed at her 'beau' Amlan who'd been clearly 'shaken' and humbled by this symbolically 'political' case, since he'd been used to 'small-time' cases involving personal suits on behalf of the relatively unaffluent (in comparison to the rather wealthy young African-American fired-lawyer client Andy!). Sandy joked to Amlan that perhaps she'd need to 'coach' Amlan about the 'ins-and-outs' of modern city fashion/customs vanities.

DEREK (Law-Firm Lawyer): Ladies and gentlemen, the fact that Andy kept his condition a secret is not a small fact, because it forms the basis of his orderly dismissal, since it's his sole duty to report such a life-condition upon being 'considered' for labor-intensive legal cases in our fair city's industrious courthouses, and I shall prove to you this was no case of 'media' driven bigotry reflective of a modern 'social' vanity.

JUDGE: This case has tried everyone's patience, and surely, what we've all somewhat been 'uneasy' about during this procedure in Philadelphia is the glaring fact that it's a rather suffering African-American professional man, a successful lawyer, who's on the stand to uphold his assertion(s) that he kept 'great personal diligent hygiene-care' during his condition-awareness and simply kept his condition a 'dark secret' to avoid 'unnecessary' gossip and hence sought to please all parties, but during these proceedings, the jury-members have no doubt endured the human emotional stresses of enduring the sensitive nature of a simply 'demonstrative' legal (and arguably landmark) case.

AMLAN: I know counsel for the law-firm under inquiry has been adequately prepared for this argument regarding the 'failures' of my client, Andy, in reporting his malady responsibly/openly to his co-workers/bosses, but I am here to remind you that the ardent claims (that my client sought 'responsible' personal-care for his 'secret' condition and never avoided any scheduled check-up or medical attention activity while avoiding simple officeplace gossip) are 'summarily' defended by clear evidence that Andy simply tended to every feature of his condition and all the ramifications of dollars it may bring, even in this City of Brotherly Love and blind justice.

JURY: We award the plaintiff Andy with a handsome monetary payment required to be given by the respected law-firm which 'summarily' dismissed him, clearly because it opted not to 'sort out' the inconvenient 'details' of his scarring condition and chose instead to cast him aside as a 'diplomat' of disclosure defamation, and we believe this was a success in Philadelphia's legal history.