Burke's Law?
'Burkle's Law' ping
You gotta give him credit for trying! Seal the records, abolish judicial oversight, and then buy off the judge.
If they don't want their dirty deals aired in public, they shouldn't go to a public court to settle them, imo.
Or, he could try the Kerkorian method: Hire Pellicano for a wiretap to get the goods on his spouse.
Btw...
I wonder who gets the car. (lots of other good background stuff on this thread, too)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1307491/posts?page=4#4
California is certainly not unique in becoming a two-tier state: special highways for those who can afford the tolls, schools for those who can pay the tuition, beaches for those who can pay the mortgage, etc., etc. But the creation of a court system for those who can pay the judges is a particularly insidious development.From the Article:Sealing court records is one way that the wealthy and powerful make the courts their own. If only the litigants know the basis for a judge's rulings, then that judge belongs to them. the case, its particulars, and its lessons are taken out of the flow of history and placed in a safe deposit box forever.
In Re the Marriage of Burkle represents that menace in spades, as well as another element that is unique to California: privately-paid judges with all the authority of the real thing. ...
(snip)
Golden State: Backdoor Bill Would Seal Data on DivorceToo much to post, given excerpt requirements. Worth a read.Reasonable people may differ about the merits of an obscure bill filed last year in Sacramento to shore up the state Office of Homeland Security.
But one question about it legitimately interests all of us: How and why did it become transformed, as though by the touch of a magic wand, into a bill that helps out one of California's wealthiest citizens in his exceedingly ugly divorce?
The apparent beneficiary of this legislative legerdemain is Ronald W. Burkle, a prominent investor and former supermarket magnate who has been trying for more than year to keep the lid on scads of financial details piled up in his divorce case.
(snip)
But meanwhile, state Sen. Kevin Murray (D-Culver City) has come to his aid. On the heels of the appellate ruling, Murray quietly implemented what is known as a "gut-and-amend" job on the homeland security measure, which had been gathering dust on a committee shelf. He struck out the old language and replaced it with a fresh version of the overturned law, much as one might scoop out a cantaloupe and fill it with crab dip.
The new bill would require judges to shroud only the financial details at issue, not the entire document. But because it still would prohibit them from making the customary balance test between privacy and openness at their own discretion and line by line, Janet Burkle and the newspapers still object.
The bill, which is currently in committee, also would allow privately paid judges to seal documents. This is very intriguing. It just happens that one of the issues in Burkle's case is precisely whether such judges — a corps mostly made up of retired Superior Court judges paid by rich litigants to conduct quasi-private trials — can seal public records. (The Burkles' handpicked judge regretfully concluded that he didn't have that authority.)