Replies

Ping. Charles Crist praises Judge George Greer.

Crist is a creep. Now I know.

Aha! The pretty boy poster child governor wanna be has hit his first bump. The more he runs his mouth the more we will see his true colors. Careful Charlie!

Wow, I was going to support Crist for governor. I am really going o have to rethink this.

Judges who order the deliberate starvation of a human being should eventually find themselves in the the same section of Hell as Hitler and Stalin.

They are monsters - not heroes.

"Schiavo killed the Republicans. They've lost the women's vote," said Matt Towery, an ex-Republican legislator who now runs an Atlanta media and polling firm. "It's one of those turning points that you just can't get away from."

These ex-Republicans are very good at reading the minds of women, who evidently like being starved to death.

At the dinner in Miami, Pinellas-Pasco Circuit Judge George Greer and U.S. District Judge James Whittemore of Tampa were honored as jurists of the year by the Florida chapter of ABOTA, the American Board of Trial Advocates. The group champions judicial independence and its members are lawyers who represent both plaintiffs and defendants.

Amazing. Judge Greer clearly committed obstruction of an investigation by Congress, which is a felony, and Judge Whittemore acted completely contrary to the law passed by Congress (and in a most dilatory fashion -- he was quite expert in running out the clock on Mrs. Schiavo's life) yet this group of lawyers throws quite a little shindig for this pair.

Photographs: LuxImages/Freddy Rozentzvaig FLABOTA recently selected Circuit Judge George W. Greer and U. S. Middle District Judge James D. Whittemore, as its Jurists of the Year. Charles H. Baumberger of Miami was selected as its Trial Lawyer of the Year. The three were honored July 15 during FLABOTA’s annual awards banquet at The Biltmore Hotel in Coral Gables, Florida where the keynote address was given by Florida Attorney General Charlie Crist. The prestigious awards are bestowed each year on the individuals who represent the highest standards of protecting the integrity of Florida’s civil trial system.
“Judge Greer, Judge Whittemore and Chuck Baumberger each have made significant contributions to the betterment of Florida’s trial system, not just this year, but throughout their careers,” said Herman Russomanno, president of FLABOTA. “They each have made a profound impact in Florida’s courts, with their peers, and in their respective communities.”
As Jurist of the Year, the Honorable George W. Greer, Circuit Judge in the Sixth Judicial Circuit Court since 1993, was recognized for outstanding service and dedication and integrity as a circuit judge for the citizens of the state of Florida. He was selected because he exemplifies the criteria for the award, not the least of which include following the rule of law and applying it evenhandedly; demanding professionalism from all lawyers; and maintaining open and accessible working relationships with the trial bar.
Judge Greer received his bachelors’ degree from Florida State University (1964) and his J.D. degree from the University of Florida College of Law (1966). He was first elected to the circuit court in 1992 and re-elected in 1998 and 2004. Since taking office, he has served in the Juvenile, Probate and Guardianship, Criminal Law and Family Law Divisions. In 1999-2000, Judge Greer served as Chair of the Florida Conference of Circuit Judges, the statewide organization of more than 500 circuit judges in Florida. In October 1994, Greer was presented the Mary Zeller Award by the Florida Supreme Court and the Florida Guardian ad Litem Program as the child advocate for the Sixth Circuit. He has also received recognition and numerous distinguished jurist awards by the Clearwater, St. Petersburg, West Pasco, and Hillsborough Bar Associations, the Florida State Guardian’s Association, and the Tampa Bay Chapter of the American Red Cross.
Judge Greer also served on the Advisory Board of the Clearwater Salvation Army and is a member of the Clearwater Rotary Club.
The other Jurist of the Year Award recipient, the Honorable James D. Whittemore, United States District Judge, Middle District of Florida, Tampa Division, was nominated for appointment as U. S. District Judge in October 1999 by President Clinton, and was unanimously confirmed by the U. S. Senate to take office in May 2000. Judge Whittemore was first appointed to the circuit court bench in February 1990 by then-Governor Bob Martinez, and was re-elected without opposition in 1991 and 1996. He presided over the General Civil Division “G” of the 13th Judicial Circuit, after previously serving as Administrative Judge in Plant City over general civil, probate, criminal and family law cases.
Judge Whittemore graduated in 1974 from the University of Florida with honors and earned his J.D. degree at Stetson College of Law in 1977. He is a member of The Florida Bar and the Association of Trial Lawyers of America. He is a past president of the William Glenn Terrell Inn of Court, past president of the Hillsborough County Criminal Defense Lawyers Association, former director of the Florida Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and past chair of Florida Bar Grievance Committee 13A. He has received several awards including Outstanding Jurist Awards from the Hillsborough County Bar Young Lawyers Division and The Florida Bar Young Lawyers Division, the 2001 Judicial Achievement Award presented to him by the Academy of Florida Trial Lawyers, and the 2005 Distinguished Alumnus Award from Stetson University College of Law.
“Both Judge Greer and Judge Whittemore, through their efforts in dealing with the Schiavo case, have distinguished themselves as jurists willing to follow the rule of law in the face of unprecedented pressure from sections of the public, the executive, and legislative branches,” said Brad Powers, president of the Tampa Bay Chapter of ABOTA which unanimously nominated the judges as co-Jurists of the Year. “Both jurists are deserving of this award given their professional handling of the Schiavo matter. They have greatly honored the civil justice system that our organization seeks to protect.”
Charles H. (Chuck) Baumberger, recipient of FLABOTA’s 2005 Trial Lawyer of the Year award, was recognized for his superb reputation of high ethics and fair play. He has had a distinguished legal career as an outstanding member of the plaintiffs bar. Baumberger, a founding partner with Rossman, Baumberger, Reboso & Spier, P.A. in Miami, received his bachelor’s degree from Vanderbilt University (1963) and his J.D. degree from the University of Florida College of Law (1966). His experience as a trial advocate began more than 38 years ago in Miami. He has recovered numerous multi-million dollar jury awards and settlements for his clients, including a 7-figure verdict in 1973 at the age of 32, the youngest lawyer in the country to do so. He has won professional distinction for his representation of plaintiffs in medical malpractice, defective products, premises liability, railroad, aviation and other substantial liability cases. He is Board Certified in Civil Trial by The Florida Bar and in Civil Trial Advocacy by the National Board of Trial Advocacy. He is also listed in Who’s Who in American Law. His peers have regularly voted him among South Florida’s top lawyers in the South Florida Legal Guide.
Chuck Baumberger served as President of the Miami Chapter of ABOTA in 1995, the same year that chapter won the National Chapter of the Year Award. In 2000, he served as President of FLABOTA, and turned the Annual Meeting into a “think tank” to discuss the purposes of FLABOTA and its future. As a result of the energy and ideas produced by that session, FLABOTA has grown into the active state organization that it is today. Chuck has served as a National Board Representative for 10 years, including roles as Chair of the Key Person Committee and currently, the Chair of the Legislative Analysis Fund.
Outside the courtroom, Baumberger has distinguished himself through his generosity to both his profession and his community. Chuck has held leadership positions as chair of the Trial Lawyers Section of The Florida Bar; President of the Dade County Bar Association; a founding member of the Dade County Trial Lawyers Association; Fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers; and Fellow of the International Society of Barristers.
“Chuck is a person of excellent character and absolute integrity. He has continually practiced law by exhibiting the highest level of superior skills and recognized ability in trial practice” said Joe Kalbac, President of the Miami chapter of ABOTA which nominated Baumberger for the Trial Lawyer of the Year Award. “Chuck is an outstanding trial lawyer who has served the best interest of the legal profession by continually advocating the right to jury trial and by promoting the highest standards and techniques of trial advocacy. We cannot conceive of a more deserving, dignified and finer example of what a plaintiff’s trial lawyer should be, and therefore, our chapter was honored to nominate Chuck as FLABOTA’s Trial Lawyer of the Year for 2005.”

"I didn't talk about any specific case. ... It's important that those checks and balances exist. Our system of government needs to have that."

Scumbag. Morality is irrelevant as long as the courts acted efficiently!

Buh-bye Charlie.

"I'm proud of those judges. They opened the door for getting rid of all them pesky disabled people!"

Georgie Greer, your soul is black
You pick on girls who can't fight back.
When Terri begged Communion bread,
You pulled her tube and killed her dead.

Some "hero."

The Legal Death of Terri Schiavo

Robert T. Miller

Despite all the public outrage at the horror of an innocent woman being starved to death, despite the desperate and pathetic pleas of her parents, despite even a special act of Congress requiring the federal courts to intervene, those courts have let stand an order that Terri Schiavo die—or so many usually informed commentators have said. Once again, judges have ignored the plain meaning of democratically enacted laws in order to enforce their own moral values—or so we have been told.

Unfortunately, it isn't true. The simple fact is that Terri Schiavo’s legal rights were never once violated. The result in the case was so unjust not because the courts ignored the law but because they followed it. The laws of Florida, like those of most states, specifically allow that, in cases like Schiavo’s, some people may decide that others ought to die.

The special act that Congress passed for Terri Schiavo gave the federal courts jurisdiction over suits concerning her rights “under the Constitution or laws of the United States relating to the withholding or withdrawal of food, fluids, or medical treatment necessary to sustain her life.” Any claim in the federal litigation thus had to relate to an alleged violation of some federal right—and, in fact, all the claims Schiavo’s parents raised were of this kind. Congress could do no more for Schiavo because, under Article III of the Constitution, federal courts may adjudicate only certain enumerated kinds of claims, and federal questions of the kind mentioned in the act were the only ones remotely relevant. (This shows, incidentally, the falsity of the charge that the act violated principles of federalism.)

In bringing suit under the special act, Schiavo’s parents, Bob and Mary Schindler, were petitioning the district court for a preliminary injunction ordering that Schiavo’s feeding tube be restored pending the litigation. The requirements for such injunctions are clear, and they include that the petitioner show “a substantial likelihood of success on the merits.” In a case like Schiavo’s, in which the harm to be prevented by the injunction is especially great, this standard is lowered somewhat, so that the party requesting the injunction need show only a “substantial case on the merits.”

For the court to have issued the requested injunction, therefore, Schiavo’s parents had to make out at least a substantial case that one or more of her rights under either the federal Constitution or a federal statute had been violated. The best potential arguments concerned Schiavo’s rights under the Fourteenth Amendment to various kinds of fair procedures in the state litigation, and so the chief claims in the federal litigation were procedural ones.

Schiavo’s parents thus argued that Schiavo’s right to a fair trial had been violated because, pursuant to Florida law, when a legal guardian (here, Schiavo’s husband) and other family members (here, her parents) cannot agree as to whether an incapacitated person would want to continue life-sustaining measures, the guardian may petition the court to determine, after a hearing, what the incapacitated person’s wishes were. The Schindlers argued that because one and the same individual—the presiding judgeboth as judge and as the decision-maker ascertaining Schiavo’s wishes, the procedure was unfair; the result was comparable to allowing a person to be the judge in his own case.

As a matter of law, this is clearly wrong. The judge was called on to make a finding of fact—“Would Schiavo have wanted to continue life-sustaining measures in her present condition?”—and making such findings is one of the functions of trial judges. The judge’s performing this traditional and commonplace function surely did not make the trial unfair in any manner recognized under the federal Constitution.

The Schindlers also argued that the same Florida procedures violated Schiavo’s equal-protection rights. The argument is obscure in the Schindlers’ complaint, but the idea seems to have been that, since the Florida procedures deny incapacitated persons the right to a fair trial, such persons are being treated worse than other people. But this argument presupposes that the Florida procedures deny incapacitated persons a fair trial, and since that argument failed, this one had to fail as well.

The Schindlers next argued that Schiavo’s rights to due process of law were violated when the Florida court failed to appoint a guardian ad litem for Schiavo, failed to appoint an independent attorney for Schiavo, and failed to grant Schiavo “access to court” by not conducting a face-to-face meeting with her, either in the courtroom or her hospice. None of these claims had any chance of succeeding. Florida courts had, in fact, appointed guardians ad litem for Schiavo three times. Moreover, such guardians are appointed to represent the interests of the incapacitated person in the particular litigation.

Given that the Schindlers themselves were parties to all the relevant litigation, it was hard for them to argue that the interests to be protected were not being fairly presented to the court. As to appointing an independent attorney, such an appointment is made if, among other things, making the appointment will likely decrease the risk of an erroneous determination being made in the case; appointing the attorney, in other words, has to be likely to make a difference to the outcome. The Schindlers were thus arguing that they and their attorneys were somehow unable to advance sufficiently their own legal arguments on Schiavo’s behalf: If only Schiavo had one more lawyer, in other words, the result of the case might have been different.

Since the Schindlers have litigated for seven years—and even succeeded in having Congress pass the special act—this was implausible. As to the claim that the judge had a constitutional obligation to meet Schiavo face-to-face, this would amount to saying that, in any guardianship proceeding, the subject person must, as a matter of federal constitutional law, be physically present in the courtroom or else be visited by the judge wherever the person resides. There is nothing in the Constitution suggesting this.

In their last procedural claim, the Schindlers argued that, under the United States Supreme Court’s decision in Cruzan v. Missouri Department of Health, a state court’s decision authorizing the discontinuance of hydration and nutrition must be supported by clear and convincing evidence (a standard of proof higher than that generally required in civil cases but lower than the reasonable-doubt standard of criminal cases). Although the Florida courts purported to rely on such evidence in determining that Schiavo would have desired the discontinuance of life-sustaining measures, the Schindlers argued that such evidentiary support had not been produced in Schiavo’s case. Cruzan, however, does not say what the Schindlers claimed it does. The case held that a state’s demanding clear and convincing evidence in such proceedings is permitted by the Fourteenth Amendment, not that it is required. Even if the Florida courts had relied on less than clear and convincing evidence in reaching their decisions, this would not have violated the holding in Cruzan.

In addition to these procedural claims, the Schindlers raised several claims based on Schiavo’s substantive rights under federal law. In particular, they alleged violations of her free-exercise rights under the First Amendment, her substantive due process rights under the Fourteenth Amendment, and her rights to be free of cruel and unusual punishments under the Eighth Amendment; they also alleged violations of her rights under various federal statutes, including the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Person Act, the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, and the Americans With Disabilities Act.

None of these claims was remotely meritorious. All of the rights alleged to be violated are rights against actions by the government or its agents, not against private actions by private parties. In the Schiavo case, the removal of Schiavo’s feeding tube was clearly private action because it was the action of her husband and guardian, not the action of the government or any of its agencies. True, the husband had obtained an order from a state court to enforce his will, but it is well-established in the law that private action does not become state action merely because such action is enforced by a court.

All of the Schindlers’ claims were weak, and most were obviously inconsistent with settled law. Since, under the law, the district court could issue a preliminary injunction only if the Schindlers had made out a substantial case, the district court was right to deny the application, and the Eleventh Circuit was right to affirm that decision.

Some have argued that, since the special act provided that the district court “shall determine de novo any claim of a violation of any right of Theresa Marie Schiavo within the scope of this Act, notwithstanding any prior State court determination,” the district court was required to issue the preliminary injunction and to hold a trial on the merits of the Schindlers’ claims. This, too, is wrong. It conflates what the Schindlers had to show to obtain the preliminary injunction with the standard by which the court was to determine whether the Schindlers had shown this. In fact, the Schindlers applied for a preliminary injunction, and the district court determined de novo that they were not entitled to one. Similarly, blaming the federal courts for not inquiring into whether Schiavo is really in a persistent vegetative state misses the point: This issue was not relevant to any of the claims the Schindlers raised in federal court, and even the Schindlers, in their filings with the courts, never suggested otherwise.

In short, the courts followed the law precisely when they decided that none of Terri Schiavo’s rights under the Constitution and laws of the United States had been violated. How then could the result be so unjust? The answer is perfectly simple: The substantive laws of Florida expressly authorize a murderous result. Those laws, like the laws of most states, expressly provide that a guardian may starve to death a ward in a persistent vegetative state, defined in Florida to mean “a permanent and irreversible condition of unconsciousness in which there is (a) the absence of voluntary action of any kind, [and] (b) an inability to communicate or interact purposefully with the environment.” Substantively unjust laws, enforced in accordance with their terms and by due process of law, lead to substantively unjust results.

Laws authorizing a guardian to starve to death a ward are profoundly immoral, even as applied to those who would have wanted to die; we do not accommodate suicides. But in hundreds of cases around the country every year, such laws are enforced, and hundreds of people die like Terri Schiavo. The only extraordinary thing about the Schiavo case is that her parents have done everything in their power to prevent her death, with the result that Schiavo has received much more process and much more publicity than others to whom the same thing has happened. One commentator described the Schiavo case as the “crime of the century.” In fact it is a banal, run-of-the-mill crime of a kind that happens every day in the United States.

And for this, we cannot blame the courts. The fault lies not in our judges but in ourselves, for we have created a society in which the law allows the strong and healthy to determine that some of the weak and infirm have lives not worth living and then to kill them.

Robert T. Miller will begin an appointment as assistant professor of law at the Villanova University School of Law this fall.

http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/articles5/MillerSchiavo.php

Beauseant!

"Schiavo killed the Republicans."

Sad but true. And now Senator Frist is spitting in our faces by endorsing embryonic stem cell research. Republicans MAKE ME SICK!! I re-registered Decline To State.

Why shouldn't he praise Greer? Judge Greer did precisely what a judge in his position, a civil court jurist, should do! He judged based on a preponderance of the evidence, not the beyond a reasonable doubt standard of criminal courts.

For crying out loud, stop pounding on Judge Greer for following the law as it is written. That's what judges are supposed to do!

Haven't we bashed liberal activist judges for years for doing what many here would have liked Greer to do: Create law from whole cloth??

Bah da boom, bad da bing...

5.56mm

Some say tomato and some say tomahto
Some say potato and some say potahto
Tomato, tomahto, potato, potahto
Oh, let's call the whole thing off

Some say Frist and some say Crist
Some say Crist and some say Frist
Frist, Crist, Crist, Frist
Oh, let's call them both off, too

Leni

What the Crist is he trying to do?

Christ just eliminated hiself from any chance of winning,

Uh-oh!

Can't believe this came from a Republican. Is someone running against him?

Ping!