Posted on 06/17/2007 6:25:09 AM PDT by MindBender26
A group of local lawyers all went to dinner least night.
Topic was Nifong and the damages NC will pay to the accused. There are questions of sovereign immunity, of course, and other issues but we all agreed that this was only the tip of the litigious iceberg.
In the civil litigation that is sure to follow, Nifong is one target, with few dollars, etc. The real targets will be the Duke 88. These are the professors who signed the now infamous letter adjudging the lacrosse players guilty and worse. That letter was then published as a full page ad in local newspapers and reprinted across the country..
These professors acted as individuals, with no corporate protection, insurance or shield. They acted outside their employment by Duke, etc. As such, they can be attacked and picked off, one at a time, with full and unrestricted individual liability, as targets of libel, slander and false light litigation. With no insurance, they wil even have to pay for their own lawyers.
Plaintiffs are well within statute of limitations.
Of course, as soon as one professor is served, he/she will go running to his/her lawyer. Their lawyer will play “let’s make a deal” by implicating others. Then they will sue the most hated professor, which will set the high dollar damages expectation for the rest of the cases. Others will then want to settle fast.
Even better, each of the three plaintiffs cam move separately against all 88 individually. The profs will fold like a house of cards.
Lots of fun. Big dollars.
Ouch. You have my sympathy. But those sorts of professors are few and far between, I think? I have not heard much ranting from the folks here at U.Va. Usually, they are far too busy doing research, teaching students, or working...and I don’t think they care any more.
Jude 24: Got a cite, or just personal attacks
Crickets. Apparently he can't back that up.
Paid for through high taxes on those who actually are productive, like engineers. These "soft science" folks sound like parasites to me.
Great. Everyone of them should have to pay huge amounts of money.
Dude, I hate the lunch mobs! That's why I try to go to lunch early, around 11, or late, 1:30 or 2.
Give them a reason to be socialists for real.
I dares ya to go to Club 88 in Ewing, NJ on Caribbean Fever nights and start saying that!
Ha!I guess they don’t know either!
Hitler’s minions here in the states also have something called”the Fourteen Words”.Brought to us by Robert Matthews and”The Order”,a group that was about as crazy as they come.
Club 88’s been around a few generations, too. Just reopened.
As much as I loathe everything these 88 professors stand for, after reading it I'm really doubtful that it rises to the level of libel or slander. They don't mention the students by name and they never say the students are definitely guilty. In fact, I'm not sure what the heck they are saying, other than that society is to blame for such terrible things. I hate to defend such blithering idiots. I'm sure they hoped to stir up enough ruckus surrounding a high profile trial to guilt Duke University into endowing a few more professorships in Progressive Studies as the only means to attone for the climate of patriarchy that led to this incident. Much as I loathe them, and much as I think the 3 Duke Lacrosse players are owed an awful lot, I'm not sure I want to enrich lawyers and stifle speach by calling this rambling diatribe slanderous.
I wish to offer my personaL encounter with one of the Duke 88 after I sent them a group e mail. It is detailed below.
I was outraged by the arrogant and presumptive proclamation by 88 members of the Duke University after they took out an ad in a campus newspaper connecting the accused Duke La Crosse players with intimidation and racism.
Accordingly, I sent two group emails to the Duke 88. The only response I received was from one Paula McClain, who among her other offices is the Co-Director, Center for the Study of Race, Ethnicity
and Gender in the Social Sciences at Duke. Below is the second iteration of the two messages that I sent.
The Duke Rape case is a crystallization (pardon the pun) of all the corruption to the rule of law, linear reasoning and the presumption of innocence engendered by political correctness and Cultural Marxism (particularly that personified by campus professorial elites) .
It has added a new phrase to the lexicon: To be Nifonged. The egregious conduct of Nifong will be addressed in other venues. As an Illinois state policeman for 28 years, I can say with near complete confidence that a case like this with these facts would never have passed Felony Review with even the WORST State’s Attorney that I ever dealt with.
The most important lesson to be gleaned from this is that Tawana Brawley Syndrome is no substitute for a proper analysis of the objective facts. I LOVE to see liberals like you hoisted on the petard of Political Correctness, racial identity politics, gender determinint feminism and what I have coined as “Tawana Brawley Syndrome”.
TBS exists when one takes a historical reality such as the marginalization of innocent blacks within a once overtly racist criminal justice system or the past subjugation of women or any number of other offenses and attempts to apply that to a contemporary situation wherein the objective facts don’t apply; ala OJ Simpson, Rodney King, Anita Hill etc. In the Brawley case, Al Sharpton was continually referencing the “400 years” of unrequited oppression for black women and their inability to obtain redress within a racist criminal justice system. The fact is that had absolutely nothing to do with the Tawana Brawley case.
None of this would have happened if an unscrupulous DA had not chosen to exploit racial identity politics using an apparently mentally ill woman for his political gain, and if the Duke 88, the Durham black community, the radical feminists, and the racial grievance industry merchants had sifted thru the facts objectively and not attempted to stuff them into lurid post modern meta-narratives of privileged white male elites sexually exploiting black women. But than the attendant historical overtones of plantation sexual abuse were probably too much for them to resist. I have increasingly noted that fact and truth present no barrier to the fanatical Cultural Marxist.
My question now is this: Will all those who stampeded to rush to judge and vilify these innocent men now arrange a meeting with them, ala Imus to apologize and create a genuine aura of “healing”? I hope so but I don’t think so, because often being a liberal means never having to say you’re sorry.
Aside from the fact that petty tyrants like you have turned US college campuses into little ivy covered North Koreas, I suspect that you were seeking to appropriate PC bonus points and obtain instant moral authority by championing the cause of the “other” (marginalized black exotic dancer) against racist male chauvinist members of the privileged white elite. A case of cultural Marxist Class warfare that boomeranged. GOD how I love it so!!!!!
Even though I despise the racial identity politics that mindlessly multicultural cultural Marxists like you have fostered amongst my people to our ultimate detriment, I would like to state that I am a black man living in the heart of Chicago’s South Side ghetto, who values the rule of law and truth as best as it can be objectively and humanly determined.
It would be fitting if they get a pretty penny from you.
I got the response below:
Your continued messages have now moved into the realm of harassment and
I have reported you to your service provider for using abusive and
inappropriate language in your email which was sent through their servers.
Paula D. McClain
Professor of Political Science
Professor of Public Policy
Department of Political Science
Co-Director, Center for the Study of Race, Ethnicity
and Gender in the Social Sciences
Duke University
Accordingly, I responded as follows
I was unaware that the 2 emails that I sent to you had caused you such distress. I wish to tender my apologies and desire to assure you that you shall receive no further messages from me. But since you are a college professor I was acting upon the putative assumption that universities are about the exchange of ideas, and I thought that my admittedly critically gloating message might prompt a suitable rejoinder. My missive was harsh, yes even severe. But it does contain concepts and ideas that however offensive ought to provoke a suitably barbed retort rather than a threat of server censorship.
Alas, I shall have to reconsider the notion that the campus is about the free exchange of ideas. But this is precisely what I was getting at in my email. If you can ever manage to free yourself from leftist dogmatic doctrine maybe you will realize that.
This is the best evidence of the thought policing that must be extant on all too many college campuses. If she can threaten me with this, someone unconnected with Duke University, just imagine the ax that she wields over any dissenting students!!!! Political Correctness is the intellectual scourge of our time and the worst threat to academic freedom that I have ever seen.
There are two elements to a civil matter, and often two types of lawyers two address the elements.
Both are necessary to win a significant verdict at trial. In some ways, they are somewhat akin to the Solicitor and Barrister roles in Her Majesty’s system.
The first need is to be on solid enough legal ground to have the jury and judge BE ABLE to give you the verdict. This requires extensive legal work, research of the case law, precedents, etc. Sometimes you win at this level, on motion, etc. That has never been my area of law.
The second area is to create a situation where the jury (and occasionally the judge) WANTS TO give you the verdict. This is by far the most important of the two elements.
Remember, any decent lawyer can create sound legal reasoning TO ALLOW a verdict either way. Have you not put together legal arguments, and while you do, think of sound legal reasoning that clearly supports the other sides’s LEGAL argument?
So once both sides have “worthy” arguments, the verdict does not go to the lawyer who presents the “worthier” argument, it goes to the lawyer and/or client who creates an environment where the jury WANTS to give them the verdict.
I have never practiced in the sense I hung out a shingle, but have served of counsel numerous times to make arguments for the finders of fact. Before a “Arbiters of Law” (the judge) I’m lousy. Before the “Finders of Fact” (the jury) I’m damn good.
I would leave it to a great “technical” attorney to give me the opportunity (by arguing law) to get me in front of a Durham County jury. But give me that opportunity, we win big.... and any good trial lawyer could too.
Regarding this, I might suggest reading the cases of Richard “Racehorse” Haynes in Texas v. Daniel and Texas v. David, or the little known civil case, “Citizens of Phillips, Texas v. Phillips Petroleum, et al.
“Flea” Bailey (in the old days) was also great. Even better was Bailey’s jury picker, a now-dead crazy lawyer and psychiatrist named William Jennings Bryan, Jr. the great great grand nephew of the “Cross of Gold’ orator.
The best? Jim Bob Brown of Randall County, Texas, Melvin Belli and Morris Overstreet before he was appointed to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. Morris would win cases Monday to Friday, shoot upland geese with us on Saturday and set the congregation on fire when he preached on Sunday. A great lawyer. A great man.
So you're a bulls--er - all about emotion, not law. Gotcha. You're just a salesman with a law degree.
Name one good lawyer who isn't.
Name one good lawyer who isn't.
The one's I know you probably never heard of.
Name one good lawyer who isn't. If some other lawyer tried to get you disbarred, who do you want giving oral argument in your case, someone like me or the technonerd lawyer?
You remember the type. #1 in the class, but didn't get laid once in all four years!
>>>> The ones I know you probably never heard of.
My point exactly.
Be well
:~)
Well, actually, the lawyer I'd call first actually is s bit of a technonerd - he knows his stuff, and has credibility with the prosecutors. That's what matters - not a dynamic personality.
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