So sue me

It will come as no surprise to my readers that we reporters develop distinct opinions about the people we encounter at municipal meetings month after month. A reporter colleague was telling me the other day about a gadfly he deals with regularly on his "beat," and I was immediately reminded of Mr. Frankland from Arthur Conan Doyle's classic Sherlock Holmes tale "The Hound of the Baskervilles." Apparently litigiousness is nothing new:
"His passion is for the British law, and he has spent a large fortune in litigation. He fights for the mere pleasure of fighting, and is equally ready to take up either side of a question, so that it is no wonder that he has found it a costly amusement Sometimes he will shut up a right of way and defy the parish to make him open it. At others he will with his own hands tear down some other man's gate and declare that a path has existed there from time immemorial, defying the owner to prosecute him for trespass ... He applies his knowledge sometimes in favour of the villagers of Fernworthy and sometimes against them, so that he is periodically either carried in triumph down the village street or else burned in effigy, according to his latest exploit."