Posted on 11/27/2002 2:04:01 PM PST by Saundra Duffy
How would you like to go to your mail box and receive a legal document that says you owe Planned Parenthood $77,000? As some of you may recall, three of us plaintiffs sued Planned Parenthood with the hope we could force them to tell the truth about the link between abortion and breast cancer. Go to www.AbortionBreastCancer.com for more info about the ABC Link. The press release announcing the lawsuit is below. Legal expertise for our case was provided by Thomas More Law Center, Ann Arbor, Michigan. The first round was lost by us and the Judge ordered us three poor women to pay PP legal fees, hence this disgusting "bill" from Planned Parenthood. Good news is that our attorneys are appealing. That's where we are now. Here's the news release about the lawsuit:
Women's Group Lauds Abortion-Breast Cancer Suit Against Planned Parenthood August 17, 2001
The Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer announced that a lawsuit was filed yesterday in a San Diego court by three California women against Planned Parenthood Federation of America and its affiliate, Planned Parenthood of San Diego and Riverside Counties. The suit accuses Planned Parenthood of having mislead women about the safety of abortion. Research published over nearly a half of a century has linked the procedure with increased breast cancer risk. The incidence of breast cancer among American women has climbed 40% in the last quarter of a century since the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion. The incidence of all other cancers has declined in the U.S. over the same period.
The plaintiffs, Agnes Bernardo of Chula Vista, Pamela Colip of Loma Linda, and Sandra Duffy-Hawkins of Sacramento, are not demanding monetary damages, but they are demanding Planned Parenthood to provide women with accurate information about the overwhelming evidence that abortion raises breast cancer risk. The plaintiffs are represented by the Thomas More Law Center located in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
A 1996 review and meta-analysis of the studies found that induced abortion raises a womans breast cancer risk by 30%. The leading author of that paper written in collaboration with scientists from Penn State College of Medicine, Professor Joel Brind of Baruch College of the City University of New York, has written extensively about an ongoing effort by scientists to cover-up the research. [Brind et al. (1996) J Epidemiol Community Health 50:481-96]
In the only study specifically commissioned by the National Cancer Institute, Dr. Janet Daling and her colleagues at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center reported that Among women who had been pregnant at least once, the risk of breast cancer in those who had experienced an induced abortion was 50% higher than among other women. [Daling et al. (1994) J Natl Cancer Inst 86:1584-92]
The only statistically significant prospective study (one based on medical records, not interviews and which, therefore, rules out any possibility of recall bias) was conducted in New York and found a 90% increased risk. [Howe et al. (1989) Int J Epidemiol 18:300-4]
The Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer provides a wealth of information about the research, public policy and womens legal rights at www.abortionbreastcancer.com.
Karen Malec, president of the Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer, reported that Twenty-eight out of 37 studies published since 1957 have associated this elective surgical procedure with breast cancer. We applaud the efforts of the Thomas More Law Center to assist women. Women have a right to make fully informed decisions concerning their own health. If a women are denied crucial information about the risks of a procedure, can it really be said that a choice ever belonged to them? Accurate information about the research has been censored by Planned Parenthood and its supporters since abortion was legalized in the U.S. nearly three decades ago. It was censored by the same people who ardently professed that they cared about womens health. Planned Parenthoods greed will cost women their lives and devastate families. This is a travesty of justice.
The Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer is an international womens organization founded to protect the health and save the lives of women by educating and providing information on abortion as a risk factor for breast cancer.
Any chance that you could post the complete actual ruling? Possibly with the motions from both sides leading up to it? I know it's probably a bit long, but you could excerpt the minor ones and post the ones the Judge referenced.
I sure hope you don't lose ---planned parenthood shouldn't benefit in any way from this. They need to be sued for many things including botched abortions.
I, for one, am really getting a chuckle out of your postings.
I wonder if any of the advocates that encouraged Sandra along this path ever raised the possibility of personal responsibility for PP legal bills if they lost. The lawyers that helped to file the suit may be working pro-bono, but your opponents lawyers are not. That would sure as hell dissuade me from filing a weak case against a much better prepared foe.
That's true, but probably not exactly the way you mean it.
It's more about the politics and opinions of the opposing parties than of the court. Try thinking of the courts being a battlefield on which two warring armies engage each other. It has terrain and other features (laws, rulings, precedents, bias, etc.) which each army tries to use to it's own advantage to defeat the other. The most money usually buys the best generals and strategies.
If you're planning to go to war, it is important to study both the defeats and victories of others who have engaged on the same battlefield you are to be warring on. This way you gain the experience of the other generals and strategists that have battled before you. Studying the details of both winning and loosing cases that are the same, or similar, to yours is gaining experience without risk.
Remember that a war is seldom won or lost in a single battle. Every case should be set up to win on appeal if lost at trial.
Real bad strategy. Sure to be ruled frivoulous (without legal foundation in fact or law) and almost gauranteed to get legal fees awarded to the defendant.
Good point. If conducting a lawsuit always expect the other party to put up a motion to dismiss based on your case being frivolous. Be prepared (with lots of law, precedent and fact) to counter this. You must force the court to rule on your case based on it's merit and not let it be declared it frivolous. This is not legal advice (consult a lawyer for that), just my strategical observation.
Yeah, and it should be ruled frivolous with legal fees awarded to Mcdonalds. But, what do you think the chances of collecting those fees would be? The attorneys are representing the plaintif and wouldn't responsible for the fees. The plaintif would be.
Can't get blood from a turnip ... or money from a lowlife.
And you are able to determine this without reading the suit and all related motions, the ruling, and the appellate brief? Fill us in, you could be helpful to to those who might follow a similar action.
I agree with you on this. The law is a weapon. And both parties are armed. Don't take a knife to a gunfight. I get tired of seeing really good people with even better causes destroyed by the legal system because they don't understand this.
I wholly agree with all of this.
I am just having a hard time understanding how you framed this as a civil cause of action. There are many apparently unjust--even outrageously unjust--matters for which there is no effective remedy in the courts.
It isn't enough to allege that misinformation is being spewed and some person and organization is getting rich and powerful off it--or even that people are dying because of it. Standing must be shown (did you allege direct and measureable personal impact to you and your fellow plaintiffs?) Beyond that there are issues of actual reliance, materiality etc.
I have no doubt your attorneys addressed all of these issues, but my gut feeling is they had to get quite creative at certain points in the pleadings. It's okay to be creative, and I'm the first to applaud creativity that is designed and employed to address a fundamental wrong. But the law itself is often quite hidebound and unforgiving of creativity. Judges are typically loathe to make new law or causes of action that are more than one tiny step beyond well-established precedent.
Still, if your pleadings were made in good-faith and--even if extremely creative--were well-argued and supported, you should not have been ordered to pay Planned Parenthood's attorney fees by way of sanction (e.g., Rule 11). The only other way the losing side ordinarily gets stuck with the opponent's attorneys fees is if a state statute mandates it for certain proceedings or causes of action. That could be the case here, I suppose.
Let us hope and pray that the appellate court sees fit to lift this quasi-punitive ruling of the trial court. Even if they do, there will still be the matter of your own attorneys' fees.
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