What Is It Like To Be Sued For $1,000,000?

     Back in the 60's there were demonstrations by pot smokers, women against men, street poets reciting or singing bawdy lyrics, rock bands trying to sell more records than the Beatles and soap box lecturers everywhere.
     I made one trip to Speakers' Corner in London's Hyde Park, protesting the Six Day Middle East War and claiming it was only a J. Arthur Rank movie with real soldiers with real guns and real bullets, opening soon at a theater near you.
     There were several hundred people around me, shouting and making threats. Two Bobbies stood by to protect me if necessary. I enjoyed the banter with the crowd: "Go home Yankee" one streetcar conductor yelled. I responded,  "Yes, and take you with me?"  There were more threats and epithets until the Bobbies decided to escort me to the safety of my hotel several blocks away.
     All this banter in London was being surreptitiously filmed by a Canadian Broadcasting Company crew for later on the CBC-TV in Canada. It became a half-hour special that aired many times, and was well received.
     Then one day back in New York City I was served by the Marshall with papers saying my faux organization, SINA, (Society for Indecency to Naked Animals), had been sued by ad agency BBD&O for one million dollars and a Default Judgment obtained for that amount against SINA'S bank acount with Bankers Trust.
     Wow. What a shocker. But then I had to laugh. The Bill of Particulars for this judgment stated that the ad agency was defamed for its campaign to promote A. T. & T. with nude rabbits in a store window; and SINA had picketed the ad agency for rabbit nudity.
     The second shocker was when the ad agency served Bankers Trust with its Default Judgment and found only $1 in the SINA accoun! That's all I ever kept in that account. No activity.
     To make a longer story shorter, I met with the CEO of the ad agency on Madison Avenue in his gigantic board room that could seat 100. Just he and I. Mr. Osborn wanted to know where the money was. I said he had been pranked. No money. Nothing.
     I had him call my accountant, CPA David Chase and my attorney Robert Schwartz. Both corroborated that I was a media provocateur and a hoaxer of some magnitude. He blushed and then laughed.
     We went to lunch at the New York Athletic Club and of course he paid.