Petrolia resident David Simpson has been down in Texas attending the Palco bankruptcy hearings. This week he started a Community Forest Team blog titled, Dispatches from David . As someone involved in the legal morass , he has an axe to grind -- that said, his first hand accounts are insightful and well worth reading. Take this excerpt from the end of his first post: " Lawyers Gala "

A note on this festival of lawyers- Over 90 people packed in to the relatively small courtroom at peak attendance this morning. There were two security people and a smattering of PL executives, forester Bill Kleiner from Humboldt and I. That’s pretty much it for the non-solicitor presence. There were well over 40 lawyers in the inner court itself and a least another 10 or maybe even 20 more outside.

That makes close to 60 lawyers. Some represented PL, some the note holders or MRC or Marathon—all on the meter, all being compensated at an average rate of maybe $500 an hour. If they clocked in six hours just for their courtroom efforts, it could add up to over $300,000 for the one day in a multi-day event. And it all comes out of the trees. Our trees! The lawyers in a bankruptcy, one should remember, get paid first no matter who wins or losses or what happens to the land or our community.