Lawyer Gets Fired For Sloppy Work, Blames His Video Game Addiction

A once high profile lawyer is now out of a job and has been handed a three year suspension from the court due to sloppy, "mishandled" work. The reason he did such terrible work? He was addicted to video games.

According to an article from the Associated Press [via PennLive], 43 year old Pennsylvania state lawyer, Matthew Eshelman, reportedly took a hard liking to video games, so much so that it cost him his job and a three year suspension from practicing law in the state of Pennsylvania after Eshelman mishandled 17 different cases. Ouch.

So which games did he get addicted to that prevented him from doing his job? Well, the name of the games weren’t listed but I can bet that it was probably World of Warcraft and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare…remember these were the two games that the Norway shooter used to help him prepare and train for his public massacre and they seem to be the target for most parent, public and religious group outrages against games these days. Well, there’s also Grand Theft Auto but the latest game in the series became a serious crime drama so people ignore it now, and no one is calling it the defiled software devil of society the way they used to since it was no longer a comical open-world shooter and instead bombarded gamers with less offensive content like heroin addiction, illegal immigration, corrupt police officers having people killed, homophobia and mass destruction of public property.

Nevertheless, the article does state that whatever games he played they caused him to become addicted enough to help him cope with the overload of stress from home and work yet at the same time that addiction cost him his job. Was the addiction worth it Matt?

At least if you’re going to lose your job you should lose it to something more respectable like cheating on your wife with a transvestite prostitute or getting nabbed in a text messaging scandal like state representative Anthony Weiner, who got caught with his pants down while trying to score some hot ladies [via NY Times]. But video game addiction is an embarrassing way to lose your job…heck, even 14 year old Call of Duty fanboys know how to balance their FPS addiction and homework, Eshelman should have been capable of doing the same. What a shame.