Howard A. Levitt is a busy guy. He's one of Canada's leading employment attorneys, and when he has a case, he never lets his clients down — even when he has to abandon his prized Ferrari California in a flood so he can make it to a hearing.
Yes, Levitt is the owner of the now-famous silver Ferrari California that drowned in a flood amid record rainfall in Toronto on Monday night. Since then we've been inundated with photos of the poor submerged Italian GT from our readers, and the pictures have gone viral across the rest of the Internets.
The folks at the Toronto Star's Wheels traced the California back to Levitt, who was on his way to a hearing in Ottawa when the Ferrari got stuck in the water and he was forced to abandon it.
I don't mean to make it seem like Levitt made this decision lightly. It sounds like got trapped in a pretty scary situation as he entered an underpass, but the water was deeper in the middle of it than he realized thanks to a broken sewer.
“It was really just at tire level at that point. But that’s enough,” he said. “Meanwhile this geyser was coming out, and it started filling up, filling up, filling up. Getting deeper and deeper and deeper. When it got near the bottom of my windows, it was time to leave.”
He tried to call a tow truck, but when he realized it wouldn't get there in time, he gathered up his bags, opened the door and climbed out.
“By the time I left the scene, it was entirely covered with water. It was right over the roof,” he said.
Now, lesser lawyers — lesser men — would call up their client or the judge and say they couldn't make the hearing and ask for it to be postponed. Not Levitt. Wheels says he took a cab to the airport, found all flights had been cancelled, and then headed to Pearson where he caught the last flight of the day to Ottawa.
And yes, Levitt made his hearing and won the motion for his client, which he said made the decision unfortunate but worthwhile. The car was towed and now sits in a municipal lot.
From the interview with Wheels, Levitt seems to have a pretty good attitude about what happened. He's also a gearhead who owns a Viper and has had several Jaguars, but he said the Ferrari was the best car he ever owned. It also sounds like he works pretty hard to own the cars he has.
“I guess that’s what insurance companies are for. But the bottom line was, I had a case to get to,” he said. “You can’t let the client down, no matter what personal exigencies you might have."
[...] “I don’t want to sound cavalier, but at the end of the day you’ve got to see the humour in it and not sweat the small stuff. And it really is all small stuff,” he said. “Nobody’s dying, nobody’s sick. The car gets fixed up and there’s insurance for that. I made it for my case and succeeded on my client’s behalf.”
Now that's dedication. Plus, he's right. Even if it's a Ferrari, a car is just a car, and the good news is that Levitt wasn't injured and that he was able to do right by his client. The outcome could have been much worse.