Updating our Sept. 11 (“Neglect Your Kid Now, Sue for $5M Later” and Sept. 26, 2006 items: Lifeway for Youth, a foster-care training agency, has agreed to pay $200,000 to settle Donna Trevino’s suit seeking $5 million over the death of her 3-year-old son, allegedly at the hands of his foster parents. “Trevino told police in April to take her children; that her son Marcus Fiesel, who was developmentally disabled, and his older brother and infant sister, were not her problem.” The money is supposed to be used on behalf of Marcus’s siblings, who may also be beneficiaries of further lawsuits being pursued against other defendants. (Eileen Kelley, “Birth mother settles lawsuit”, Cincinnati Enquirer, Feb. 10).
Author Archive
“Back to basics, Dr. Frieden”
While the NYC Health Commissioner was squandering the city’s credibility on trans fats (“totally replaceable“, you betcha) and hatching Big Brother schemes for diabetic-watching, the traditional and basic functions of his office, like keeping rats out of restaurants, were going untended, notes an editorial in the Post. “The Taco Bell in question had received a, you should pardon the expression, clean bill of health from one of Frieden’s restaurant inspectors 24 hours before the rats were taped doing their “Happy Feet” impressions last Thursday morning. …Of course, if the Taco Bell rats had been smoking, Frieden would have been there to nail the door shut himself.” Andrew Stuttaford at NRO thinks it’s long past time for Frieden to go. (cross-posted from Point of Law).
RIAA letter to college students
Not only will they sue them up one side of the street and down the other for song-copying, they’ll tell their parents. (Boing Boing, Mar. 2)
Chuck Colson on Miller-Jenkins
I know we’re supposed to give prominent Religious Right figure Chuck Colson a pass because of his compelling life story and the work he’s done with prisoners, but jeepers, does he ever give a misleading account of the Miller-Jenkins case (Vermont-Virginia lesbian custody battle), discussed earlier in this space Aug. 15, 2004, Dec. 16, 2004, Aug. 26, 2006, and Nov. 29, 2006.
Colson begins his column (“Legal Fictions”, syndicated/TownHall, Feb. 28) by announcing that Miller-Jenkins presents “one of the most important legal battles of our time”. In fact, as I noted back in 2004, the case presents the somewhat less epochal issue: can a party dissatisfied with a visitation/custody outcome litigated in one state ignore a resulting court order in order to pursue proceedings in what is expected to be a more favorable state?
Colson cites a recent in-depth story about the case in the Washington Post Magazine (April Witt, “About Isabella”, Feb. 2). Somehow, however, he omits to mention a feature of the case that figured centrally in that account, namely the outstanding court order that Lisa Miller, biological and custodial mom of Isabella, has been defying for years now. Since Colson does not mention that court order, he naturally does not inform readers that it arose after Miller voluntarily submitted to the jurisdiction of a Vermont court dissolving her civil union with Janet Jenkins. Nor do his readers learn that Miller was happy to pocket child support payments from Jenkins, before eventually deciding to blow off the court order, or try to, by cutting off Jenkins’ regular visitations with Isabella.
Nor does Colson describe the current posture of the case. If he did, he would have to acknowledge that both the Vermont Supreme Court and a Virginia appeals panel have ruled unanimously against Miller, who nonetheless continues to defy the court order. There is no indication that Miller’s team of Religious Right litigators is uncomfortable with this posture of hers.
Colson frames the story for dramatic effect as one in which Jenkins, appearing from out of the past, demands custody of Isabella — although the dispute in fact arose over visitation, and although the likely outcome of the case (assuming Miller relents rather than pursuing her contempt of court all the way into a jail cell) is simply going to be the restoration of Jenkins’ visitation rights. Pricelessly, Colson dismisses Jenkins’ legal rights as those of “a woman [Isabella] barely remembers”, without inquiring as to how Miller managed to engineer this state of affairs.
And, no surprise, Colson also fails to mention the relevant federal statute, the Parental Kidnapping Prevention Act, 28 U.S.C. § 1738A, which as Eugene Volokh points out “requires courts [in other states] to adhere to preexisting custody awards generally, not just ones that follow the dissolution of a marriage”.
Probably the most enduring significance of the Miller-Jenkins case will be as an indication of the willingness of many on the Religious Right, even the lawyers among them, to applaud and defend the defiance of court orders when those orders inconvenience the godly or uphold the legal rights of the ungodly. I wonder whether Colson gives a thought to this when he decries, in the column, “our reckless pursuit of getting whatever we want at all costs”.
I also wonder whether the proposition that it’s just fine to violate laws and court orders when one feels impelled by a higher cause — I believe some social conservatives like to label this point of view as antinomian — is a message that Colson is accustomed to spread when he addresses groups of prisoners in the course of his public work. If so, we can only hope the prisoners don’t take the message to heart (& welcome Ed Brayton, MarriageDebate.com, Eugene Volokh readers).
No more overbearing bosses — by law?
A group called the Workplace Bullying Institute says it’s preparing federal legislation that would ban the rather amorphously defined phenomenon of bullying at work. A possible obstacle: Capitol Hill itself is notorious as the stomping (and ranting and paperweight-throwing) grounds of some of the nation’s most vein-poppingly abusive bosses, such as Sen. — well, you’ll just have to follow the link if you want names (Helena Andrews, “Demanding or Downright Mean?”, The Politico, Mar. 1). For an earlier go-round, see Dec. 22, 2004.
Ralph de Toledano, Nader victim
A prominent and much-admired figure in conservative journalism for decades, Ralph de Toledano died last month at the age of 90. (Dave Zincavage, Feb. 6). The Washington Post in its obituary recounts a sequence of events that did much to darken de Toledano’s later years:
In 1975, consumer activist Ralph Nader filed a lawsuit against De Toledano in connection with a De Toledano suggestion — denied by Nader — that Nader had “falsified and distorted” evidence about the Corvair automobile. The case lingered in court for years and cost De Toledano his life savings. Paul Toledano [son of the author] said it was settled out of court.
(Joe Holley, “Ralph de Toledano, 90; author and ‘nonconformist conservative'”, Washington Post/L.A. Times, Feb. 10).
De Toledano in fact had published an entire critical biography of Nader, entitled Hit and Run: The Rise — and Fall? — of Ralph Nader, used copies of which remain available online — even Nader himself can’t prevent that. The entire episode — in which Mr. Litigation, then at the height of his public fame and influence, inflicted vindictive and personal financial ruin on a well-known journalist who’d had the temerity to criticize him — is one that you’d think would have provoked expressions of concern and solidarity from leading writers and civil libertarians of the day, and yet it didn’t (scroll to #8). The episode tends to get no mention these days in accounts of Nader’s life (which, whatever their varying opinions of his actions as a spoiler presidential candidate, tend toward cloying hagiography of his earlier career). And one consequence of its lingering chilling effect (who wants to volunteer to be the next de Toledano?) may be that no one will be willing to write another genuinely unsparing biography of Nader, at least for publication during the subject’s lifetime.
For a sampling of our posts about Nader, see Jun. 13, 2000; Feb. 22, 2004; and this set of 2000-2003 links.
“Card check” unionization
I’ve been discussing this very bad bill (fraudulently labeled the “Employee Free Choice Act”) at Point of Law here, here, and here. The Wall Street Journal editorializes against it today (“Walter Reuther’s Ghost”, Mar. 1) as does the Los Angeles Times (“Keep Union Ballots Secret”, Mar. 1). More: National Review, Investor’s Business Daily.
John Stossel on vaccine scares
It was one of the topics of his prime-time special last Friday:
[Attorney Allen] McDowell is now debating whether to file new lawsuits claiming that vaccines cause autism. I said to him, “You scare people and make money off it!” After a pause, he replied, “True.”
(“The Fear Industrial Complex”, syndicated/RealClearPolitics, Feb. 28; Autism Diva, Feb. 23 and Feb. 24). More: Mar. 8, 2006 and many others.
Pay-for-play, the Gotham way?
New York City Comptroller William Thompson, Jr. regularly hires outside law firms to represent city pension funds in shareholder lawsuits, as with a recent suit against Apple Computer. The New York Sun “[obtained] the names of the nine law firms in the ‘securities litigation pool’ that the city uses to file these shareholder suits” and found that lawyers associated with the firms had donated more than $100,000 to Mr. Thompson’s campaign coffers. (“Thompson’s Trial Lawyers” (editorial), New York Sun, Feb. 27). See Aug. 14-15, 1999 (ABA delegates defeat proposal to ban pay-for-play); Sept. 25-26, 2001. The Committee on Capital Markets Regulation aimed some criticism at the practice: see Point of Law, Dec. 1.
Prince Charles v. McDonald’s
You don’t want to know how many calories are in one of HRH’s Cornish pasties. The authentic Cornish style of pasty always did seem heavy to me, as one raised on the Upper Peninsula Finnish kind. (Rebecca English and Sean Poulter, “The Royal pasty that’s unhealthier than a Big Mac”, Daily Mail (UK), Feb. 28; “Prince Charles says ban McDonald’s food”, AP/Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Feb. 28).