"The intellectual honesty of the author makes us share the inner struggle in his mind. It is this that is the mark of the born teacher. Knowledge exists in two forms--lifeless, stored in books, and alive in the consciousness of men. The second form of existence is after all the essential one; the first, indispensable as it may be, occupies only an inferior position."
p.80, IDEAS AND OPINIONS, by Albert Einstein (Three Rivers Press, NY: 1954, 1982)
Wednesday, July 23, 2014
TWO FORMS OF KNOWLEDGE
"The intellectual honesty of the author makes us share the inner struggle in his mind. It is this that is the mark of the born teacher. Knowledge exists in two forms--lifeless, stored in books, and alive in the consciousness of men. The second form of existence is after all the essential one; the first, indispensable as it may be, occupies only an inferior position."
p.80, IDEAS AND OPINIONS, by Albert Einstein (Three Rivers Press, NY: 1954, 1982)
EQUITY: THE DISFAVORED TWIN OF LAW?
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
By Larry Delano Coleman, Esq.
EQUITY: THE DISFAVORED TWIN OF LAW?
The Framers of the U.S. Constitution recognized the providence of
equity by writing in Article III, Section 2, Clause 1, that the "judicial
Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity." http://legaldictionary.
thefreedictionary.com/Equity.
Later, in the 11th Amendment, such broad judicial power was somewhat reined in:
“The judicial power of the United States shall not be construed to
extend to any suit in law or equity, commenced or prosecuted
against one of the United States by Citizens of another State, or by
Citizens or subjects of any Foreign State.”
Viewing “law and equity” in tandem is deceptive. They are not flip
sides of the same coin, called “justice.” They are ancient, historic
antagonists, derived from different sources, serving different ends.
Put bluntly, “law” is man-made, while “equity” is divine amendment.
Law concerns statutes and case law. Equity asks what is morally
right. Law is callous justice. Equity is grace and mercy, applied.
The Old Testament explicates the distinction more fully. After
having defied and disobeyed God by causing the people of Israel
to be numbered, David, through his seer, Gad, is offered three
forms of punishment by God. They are, “Three years’ famine; or
three months to be destroyed before thy foes, while the sword of
thine enemies overtaketh thee; or else three days the sword of the
Lord, even the pestilence in the land, and the angel of the Lord
destroying throughout all the coasts of Israel.” David’s response to
Gad is classic: “I am in a great strait: let me fall now into the hand of
the Lord; for very great are his mercies: but let me not fall into the
hand of man.” 1 Chron.21:12-13.
Though the tendency is to equate the doctrine of “equity” with the
Chancery Courts of England, “equity,” as a notion, is much older
than England as a nation. “Equity,” arguably, prompted King John to
capitulate to the nobility, in assigning to them certain rights under
2
the Magna Charta in 1215 at Runnymede, as a check, albeit
tentative, against the untrammeled abuse of royal prerogatives.
“Equity” has biblical roots.
One of its earliest usages is found in Psalms 98:8-9, “Let the floods
clap their hands: let the hills be joyful together before the Lord; for he
cometh to judge the earth: with righteousness shall he judge the
world, and the people with equity.”
At the outset of the book of Proverbs, we find “equity” also, viz.:
“The proverbs of Solomon the son of David, king of Israel; To know
wisdom and instruction; to perceive the words of understanding; To
receive the instruction of wisdom, justice, and judgment, and equity;
to give subtilty to the simple, to the young man knowledge and
discretion.” (Prov.1:1-4)
“Equity’s” roots, in fact, predate, the Bible, disappearing into the
daunting mists of Ancient Egypt’s prehistory. “Ma’at,” a teleological
value system, appears to be where law and equity originated.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law#cite_note-86.
“Ma’at” is the Ancient Egyptian concept of truth, balance, order, law,
morality, and justice. Maat was also personified as a goddess
regulating the stars, seasons, and the actions of both mortals and the
deities, who set the order of the universe from chaos at the moment of
creation. The earliest surviving records indicating Maat is the norm
for nature and society, in this world and the next, is recorded during
the Old Kingdom in pyramid texts (c. 2780-2250 BCE).”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ma%27at
All the great civil rights victories attained by such legends as
Charles Hamilton Houston, Thurgood Marshall, James Nabrit,
Spotswood Robinson and others involved some form of equity, as
the remedy. No civil rights victory not involving equity comes to
mind. Neither am I aware of any civil rights case in which
monetary damages were either sought as a remedy or awarded.
Jack Greenberg, Esq., in his memoir, Crusaders in the Courts,
Legal Battles of the Civil Rights Movement, (Twelve Tables
3
Press: NY, 2004) states in the concluding chapter, “A Summation:
Victories and Defeats, Imagining The Future”: “The foregoing areas
[‘Ghetto areas…welfare cases…housing’] are within the domain of
what is often termed economic rights. Court action has been
notably unsuccessful in addressing what in large part is an issue of
economic distribution.” (p.553) The “issue of economic
distribution,” is the area wherein Mr. Greenberg, successor to
Thurgood Marshall as Director-Counsel of the NAACP Legal
Defense and Educational Fund, concedes “defeat.”
Equity is defined as “fairness, or equality.” As used herein, it is also
defined as “1 a: justice according to natural law or right; specif:
freedom from bias or favoritism…2 a: a system of law
originating in the English chancery and comprising a settled
and formal body of legal and procedural rules and doctrines
that supplement, aid, or override common and statute law and
are designed to protect rights and enforce duties fixed by
substantive law…” (Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary,
11th ed. 2003) p.423.
In its broadest sense, equity is fairness. As a legal system, it is a body
of law that addresses concerns that fall outside the jurisdiction of
Common Law. Equity is also used to describe the money value of
property in excess of claims, liens, or mortgages on the property.
Equity in U.S. law can be traced to England, where it began as a
response to the rigid procedures of England's law courts. Through
the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the judges in England's
courts developed the common law, a system of accepting and
deciding cases based on principles of law shaped and developed in
preceding cases. Pleading became quite intricate, and only certain
causes of action qualified for legal redress. Aggrieved citizens found
that otherwise valid complaints were being dismissed for failure to
comply with pleading technicalities. If a complaint was not dismissed,
relief was often denied based on little more than the lack of a
controlling statute or precedent.
Frustrated plaintiffs turned to the king, who referred these
extraordinary requests for relief to a royal court called the Chancery.
The Chancery was headed by a chancellor who possessed the power
to settle disputes and order relief according to his conscience. The
decisions of a chancellor were made without regard for the common
4
law, and they became the basis for the law of equity.
Equity and the common law represented opposing values in the
English legal system. The common law was the creation of a judiciary
independent from the Crown. Common-law courts believed in the
strict interpretation of statutes and precedential cases.” http://legaldictionary.
thefreedictionary.com/Equity
Those “opposing values” between “common law” and “equity,”
found a fertile climate in American jurisprudence. On July 21,
2009, in an appeal of an unemployment compensation case, in
Kansas City, Missouri, the Court of Appeals, decried the fact that
under the law the state agency in charge lacked authority “to
consider issues of fairness.” Thus, the court affirmed a decision
authorizing the recoupment of $7280 in unemployment benefits to
the state by the unemployed worker, who did nothing wrong, but be
overpaid.
http://www.courts.mo.gov/page.asp?id=12087&search=Andrea
Harris v. Division Employment Security&dist=Opinions
Western&n=0
In effect, the Missouri Court of Appeals recoiled from the harshness
of its own opinion, and hinted to the legislature that by changing
the word “shall” to “may” it would enable equity in deserving
cases, such as that then under consideration.
The Framers of the U.S. Constitution recognized the providence of
equity by writing in Article III, Section 2, Clause 1, that the "judicial
Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity." http://legaldictionary.
thefreedictionary.com/Equity.
Later, in the 11th Amendment, such broad judicial power was somewhat reined in:
“The judicial power of the United States shall not be construed to
extend to any suit in law or equity, commenced or prosecuted
against one of the United States by Citizens of another State, or by
Citizens or subjects of any Foreign State.”
Viewing “law and equity” in tandem is deceptive. They are not flip
sides of the same coin, called “justice.” They are ancient, historic
antagonists, derived from different sources, serving different ends.
Put bluntly, “law” is man-made, while “equity” is divine amendment.
Law concerns statutes and case law. Equity asks what is morally
right. Law is callous justice. Equity is grace and mercy, applied.
The Old Testament explicates the distinction more fully. After
having defied and disobeyed God by causing the people of Israel
to be numbered, David, through his seer, Gad, is offered three
forms of punishment by God. They are, “Three years’ famine; or
three months to be destroyed before thy foes, while the sword of
thine enemies overtaketh thee; or else three days the sword of the
Lord, even the pestilence in the land, and the angel of the Lord
destroying throughout all the coasts of Israel.” David’s response to
Gad is classic: “I am in a great strait: let me fall now into the hand of
the Lord; for very great are his mercies: but let me not fall into the
hand of man.” 1 Chron.21:12-13.
Though the tendency is to equate the doctrine of “equity” with the
Chancery Courts of England, “equity,” as a notion, is much older
than England as a nation. “Equity,” arguably, prompted King John to
capitulate to the nobility, in assigning to them certain rights under
2
the Magna Charta in 1215 at Runnymede, as a check, albeit
tentative, against the untrammeled abuse of royal prerogatives.
“Equity” has biblical roots.
One of its earliest usages is found in Psalms 98:8-9, “Let the floods
clap their hands: let the hills be joyful together before the Lord; for he
cometh to judge the earth: with righteousness shall he judge the
world, and the people with equity.”
At the outset of the book of Proverbs, we find “equity” also, viz.:
“The proverbs of Solomon the son of David, king of Israel; To know
wisdom and instruction; to perceive the words of understanding; To
receive the instruction of wisdom, justice, and judgment, and equity;
to give subtilty to the simple, to the young man knowledge and
discretion.” (Prov.1:1-4)
“Equity’s” roots, in fact, predate, the Bible, disappearing into the
daunting mists of Ancient Egypt’s prehistory. “Ma’at,” a teleological
value system, appears to be where law and equity originated.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law#cite_note-86.
“Ma’at” is the Ancient Egyptian concept of truth, balance, order, law,
morality, and justice. Maat was also personified as a goddess
regulating the stars, seasons, and the actions of both mortals and the
deities, who set the order of the universe from chaos at the moment of
creation. The earliest surviving records indicating Maat is the norm
for nature and society, in this world and the next, is recorded during
the Old Kingdom in pyramid texts (c. 2780-2250 BCE).”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ma%27at
All the great civil rights victories attained by such legends as
Charles Hamilton Houston, Thurgood Marshall, James Nabrit,
Spotswood Robinson and others involved some form of equity, as
the remedy. No civil rights victory not involving equity comes to
mind. Neither am I aware of any civil rights case in which
monetary damages were either sought as a remedy or awarded.
Jack Greenberg, Esq., in his memoir, Crusaders in the Courts,
Legal Battles of the Civil Rights Movement, (Twelve Tables
3
Press: NY, 2004) states in the concluding chapter, “A Summation:
Victories and Defeats, Imagining The Future”: “The foregoing areas
[‘Ghetto areas…welfare cases…housing’] are within the domain of
what is often termed economic rights. Court action has been
notably unsuccessful in addressing what in large part is an issue of
economic distribution.” (p.553) The “issue of economic
distribution,” is the area wherein Mr. Greenberg, successor to
Thurgood Marshall as Director-Counsel of the NAACP Legal
Defense and Educational Fund, concedes “defeat.”
Equity is defined as “fairness, or equality.” As used herein, it is also
defined as “1 a: justice according to natural law or right; specif:
freedom from bias or favoritism…2 a: a system of law
originating in the English chancery and comprising a settled
and formal body of legal and procedural rules and doctrines
that supplement, aid, or override common and statute law and
are designed to protect rights and enforce duties fixed by
substantive law…” (Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary,
11th ed. 2003) p.423.
In its broadest sense, equity is fairness. As a legal system, it is a body
of law that addresses concerns that fall outside the jurisdiction of
Common Law. Equity is also used to describe the money value of
property in excess of claims, liens, or mortgages on the property.
Equity in U.S. law can be traced to England, where it began as a
response to the rigid procedures of England's law courts. Through
the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the judges in England's
courts developed the common law, a system of accepting and
deciding cases based on principles of law shaped and developed in
preceding cases. Pleading became quite intricate, and only certain
causes of action qualified for legal redress. Aggrieved citizens found
that otherwise valid complaints were being dismissed for failure to
comply with pleading technicalities. If a complaint was not dismissed,
relief was often denied based on little more than the lack of a
controlling statute or precedent.
Frustrated plaintiffs turned to the king, who referred these
extraordinary requests for relief to a royal court called the Chancery.
The Chancery was headed by a chancellor who possessed the power
to settle disputes and order relief according to his conscience. The
decisions of a chancellor were made without regard for the common
4
law, and they became the basis for the law of equity.
Equity and the common law represented opposing values in the
English legal system. The common law was the creation of a judiciary
independent from the Crown. Common-law courts believed in the
strict interpretation of statutes and precedential cases.” http://legaldictionary.
thefreedictionary.com/Equity
Those “opposing values” between “common law” and “equity,”
found a fertile climate in American jurisprudence. On July 21,
2009, in an appeal of an unemployment compensation case, in
Kansas City, Missouri, the Court of Appeals, decried the fact that
under the law the state agency in charge lacked authority “to
consider issues of fairness.” Thus, the court affirmed a decision
authorizing the recoupment of $7280 in unemployment benefits to
the state by the unemployed worker, who did nothing wrong, but be
overpaid.
http://www.courts.mo.gov/page.asp?id=12087&search=Andrea
Harris v. Division Employment Security&dist=Opinions
Western&n=0
In effect, the Missouri Court of Appeals recoiled from the harshness
of its own opinion, and hinted to the legislature that by changing
the word “shall” to “may” it would enable equity in deserving
cases, such as that then under consideration.
LAW IS PROTEAN LIKE GRACE
Law is a protean proposition amenable to any prevailing set of facts, as is grace, whose legal name is 'equity.'
Tuesday, July 22, 2014
THE HOAX OF INDIVIDUALISM
The hoax of individualism
Conception and birth brought us here
Labor love and sacrifice kept us here
All of these things were cooperative
None of these efforts were individual
Whence, then, this disassociation?
This vapid praise for individualism ?
Jesus had twelve disciples .
Ali Baba had forty thieves.
Whence then the vaunting of solo effort over collective work?
John Shaft is a fictional character.
Matt Damon acts on a movie screen.
Horatio Alger is totally made up.
Yet, we are programmed to become John Shaft, Matt Damon, and Alger.
Notice a group of villains are always organized, while the good guys are solo or alone in the movie portrayals.
This hoax serves the ends of the organized, as it disembodies rivals, who might organize and challenge them for power, money, privilege.
Let those hear who have ears.
Monday, July 21, 2014
racists are megalomaniacs
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/megalomaniac
White supremacists are megalomaniacs. Delusional. sick.
ENOUGH TO KILL YOU
By Larry Delano Coleman, Esq.
Enough to kill you: confessions of a solo practitioner
October 15, 2010
Dread tinctured by angst discomfits me, as I write this epitaph on 33 years of professional life as a lawyer. This was not how it was supposed to end, this concluding phase of my private law practice.
I suppose I shall be deemed a failure by some. I was, after all, felled, finally, by an evolving stroke, which started out mildly and which culminated in complete paralysis—hemiplegia- left-sided. The doctors, despite multiple inquiries, have never told me what precisely caused my cardiovascular accident (CVA).
There were, of course, the usual suspects; diabetes, high blood pressure, morbid obesity, a crushing work load, unappreciative and/or non-paying clients, persecution by IRS and the Office of Chief Disciplinary Counsel of the Missouri Supreme Court, swarms of creditors, and no employees to help bear the load. Enough!
It was enough to kill you. It almost did.
But God, in his infinite mercy, spared me. I express my gratitude to him by heeding his word and warning, by returning to my first love: WRITING. This first love has impelled me to read impulsively, compulsively since childhood, and to write impulsively, compulsively from childhood. I have read deeply and yet read: Shakespeare, Dumas, Mark Twain, Richard Wright, Saint Augustine, Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, The Bible, The Koran, Machiavelli, Herodotus, Homer and many, many others. A writer is perforce a reader, and a reader is perforce a writer.
At the end of ninth grade Civics, I initially listed ‚writer‛ as my future vocation, only to change it to ‚lawyer,‛ later. I feared the proverbial, if apocryphal, Greenwich Village table-waiting vocation looming as a less-than-desirable occupation, pre-publication. ‚Lawyer‛ was more emotionally satisfying, more financially promising, and also conformed to my skill sets. One could always do both, right? I rationalized. Along the way, I took a Bachelor of Arts degree in Print Journalism (cum laude) at Howard University in 1973, while serving as Editor in Chief of THE HILLTOP, which was founded by the great writer, and folklorist, Zora Neal Hurston, whom I’ve also read, during her student years at Howard in the 1920’s. http://www.zoranealehurston.com/
While a student in Howard’s School of Communications, my senior year, I took a course in Communications Law, which was taught by then-attorney, now Judge Paul Webber. What amazed me about the class was the fact that although the cases in our textbook were written in pristine English, and although I deemed myself to be a master of the English language, even then, I could not understand what they were saying. The language was too arcane, obtuse. How can something be written in English, and I not understand it? I enrolled in Howard Law School to find out that specific answer.
I obtained my Juris Doctor from the fountainhead of American civil rights law, Howard Law School in Washington, D.C. in 1976, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_University_School_of_Law#cite_note-howard-6 being admitted to the Missouri Bar in 1977. So armed, I set out to conquer the world. Or, at least to mollify it. Along the way, I learned that ‚legalese‛ is a language unto itself, with its own devices, idioms, conventions, and vocabulary; and that what plainly appears may not be as plain as it appears.
Cervantes’ Don Quixote at least had the loyal, if wistful, Sancho Panza, as a sidekick. http://www.online-literature.com/cervantes/don_quixote/ I, however, was utterly alone, having left the District of Columbia where I knew many, and moving to Kansas City, Missouri, where I knew few. Yet, therein, was the vortex of my spirit perfected: in the wilderness of western Missouri, in the land where the Civil War began.
My first job was with the U.S. Department of Labor, Office of the Regional Solicitor in 1976. There, I enforced Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) rules and regulations in a four state region. I also enforced minimum wage and overtime laws. After a 2 ½ year stint, I left to become an Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Missouri in February 1979, the only black AUSA in that office at that time, and until I left in August 1986 to launch my own practice. At the U.S. Justice Department I did exclusively civil litigation, by choice, trial and appellate. I left, because my soul cried out for ‚freedom.‛
No law firm, black or white, to which I applied, would hire me, so I struck out on my own, emulating thereby the Horatio Alger http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horatio_Alger%2C_Jr. legend, which I had not read – although I did read Gerald Singer’s classic, How to go into Private Practice Without Missing A Meal. http://www.amazon.com/Directly-Into-Your-Practice-Succeed/dp/B0006E7XNC/ref=pd_rhf_p_t_1. I’m happy to say I never missed a meal either! Au contraire, I easily gained 100 pounds during my 23 years of private practice!
I could not have chosen a more inauspicious time to launch a solo, largely civil rights, practice in the western district of Missouri. The Western District of Missouri is historically‚conservative,‛a popular and palatable euphemism for racist. Jackson County, which houses Kansas City and Independence, was one of four western Missouri counties which were subject to General Thomas Ewing’s infamous and efficacious General Order # 11, issued four days following Confederate guerilla leader William Quantrill’s fiery raid and massacre at Lawrence, Kansas in August 21,1863. http://www.theamericanmuseum.org/december.09.cover.html That order resulted in the forced evacuation of all rural Confederate sympathizers from the counties of Jackson, Cass, Bates, and Vernon from which Quantrill and others drew comfort and support in the execution of their depredations. The U.S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri, along with its two-mile-distant counterpart, the District of Kansas, across the wide Missouri River in Kansas, were instrumental in aborting post-Civil War civil rights ‚Reconstruction‛efforts, while ushering in ‚Jim Crow,‛separate-but-equal segregation practices, through decisions invalidating the Rights Act of 1875.
http://www.answers.com/topic/civil-rights-cases The U.S. Supreme Court subsequently affirmed these decisions. Civil Rights Cases, 109 U.S. 3 (1883);;; http://www.learner.org/courses/democracyinamerica/dia_5/dia_5_readings.html; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Rights_Cases. This decision, also featured an admonitory dissent by Mr. Justice Harlan, which preceded his more famous dissent in the infamous Plessy v. Ferguson by 13 years.PLESSY v. FERGUSON, 163 U.S. 537 (1896) ; http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=us&vol=163&invol=53 http://www.pbs.org/wnet/jimcrow/stories_events_uncivil.html
I had long been aware of this rancid legacy, and this region’s role in it. From Lloyd Gaines, the honor student from Lincoln University who was purposefully denied admission to the University of Missouri School of Law because of race, Missouri ex rel. Gaines v. Canada, 305 U.S. 337 (1938)[1], which sable hue, doubtless, contributed to his March 19, 1938, sudden and mysterious ‚disappearance‛ in Chicago, Illinois http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lloyd_L._Gaines to Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, which needs no introduction.
An astute student of African American legal history, the historical precedents were well known to me. What I did not know, and could not have known, without honest mentoring and actual experience—both of which I lacked—was the day-to-day situation on the ground, as it related to black solos in light of the legacy. I had heard, for example, that black lawyers, at one time, were prohibited from sitting inside the ‚bar‛ of the court room. It had also been widely reported that certain judges at court en banc meetings would openly, and with impunity, use the epithet, ‚nigger.‛ Black lawyers, in short, were viewed as grasshoppers and saw themselves as grasshoppers. Black clients overwhelmingly patronized white lawyers, perversely believing that would cancel their racial disadvantage, from which there was no escape.
But, hope sprang eternal, until Ronald Reagan was re-elected President of the United States, in 1984. By 1986, when I opened my office, his so-called ‚revolution‛ had imperiously polluted the private practice of law. Unsupported and ubiquitous claims of ‚frivolous‛ lawsuits presaged numerous changes to the form and substance of the law practice. Amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, particularly Rule 11’s ‘sanctions’ provision , would destroy the traditional fiber of collegiality among
plaintiff and defense lawyers. Monetary sanctions in the thousands of dollars were routinely sought and awarded against plaintiffs’ lawyers by federal judges who were appointed during the Reagan era, and Bush eras.
Secondly, insurance companies, the ‚third rail‛ in American litigation tightened their purse strings, so claims adjusters who were formerly content to ‚move along and get along, ‛were now obliged to reject and discard old formulas for dispute resolution. This resulted in more lawsuits being filed, which appreciably increased the costs of civil litigation for plaintiffs’ lawyers, especially solo practitioners. As these ‚costs‛ are often borne, whether voluntarily or involuntarily, by plaintiffs’ lawyers, their income decreased as their expenses increased.
In a similar vein the insurance lobby had blanketed the airwaves with lies about ‚run-away‛ juries, which would award millions of dollars for minimal slights or for manufactured injuries. Their favorite involved the elderly passenger who put the McDonald’s hot coffee cup between her knees, which spilled, scalding her. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liebeck_v._McDonald's_Restaurants
This case became the poster child for frivolous lawsuits to a gullible and non-empathetic public, conditioned by media ads.
A corollary consequence to this was one-sided media hype was that the plaintiffs themselves came to have an exaggerated and distorted views of the value of their own case, based upon media reports about other cases. If that guy got $5 million from a jury, why can’t I ? These expectations belied the reality that well over 90% of civil rights cases are lost in U.S. District Court before they ever get to a jury. This truth is not reported in the media, and is not generally known. Plaintiffs labor under
an illusion of judicial liberality in civil rights litigation, where none exists on the federal level at all.
So, the plaintiff either resents, distrusts, or files a bar complaint against the lawyer, believing the lawyer is breaching his duty of representation. I have had such a complaint filed against me. As a consequence, my license was ‚probated.‛ That means it was suspended and placed on probation for one year, while I completed certain conditions. During this period of probation I was able to practice law, while making quarterly reports to the Office of Chief Disciplinary Counsel. http://www.courts.mo.gov/file.jsp?id=34347
Another corollary consequence of federal judicial hubris is that civil rights defense counsel, aware of their hostile reception in federal courts, routinely ‚remove‛ civil rights cases from state court, where they may have been originally filed, to federal court where they are routinely dismissed, or subjected to ‚summary judgment.‛ Plaintiffs’ lawyers rightfully fear federal court.
Summary Judgment is a procedural mechanism whereby a court can dispose of a case summarily, without hearing any evidence in open court, basing its ruling solely on documents filed and legal inferences. When the court determines there to be no genuine issues of material fact, warranting trial, it can grant judgment for the defendant, without more. Plaintiffs can’t get summary judgment in employment cases, however. So, none ever has.
It’s enough to kill you, if you are a black, plaintiff’s civil rights attorney, and enough to sicken you if you’re white.
All of these factors, and others, have an adverse economic impact from which there is no apparent relief. Tax woes and debt collectors vamp. It’s enough to kill you! It almost did!
#30
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