Slashdot Mirror
Jury Awards $11 Million for Internet Defamation
dptalia writes "A woman in Florida has been awarded $11.3 million dollars in a defamation case. Apparently the defendant was unhappy with the plaintiff's referral service and posted complaints all over the internet. In a chilling slap at free speech, the jury decided that not only was this illegal, but that it was worth over $11 million. The defendant can't pay the judgement — she can't even pay for an attorney. The plaintiff says she doesn't care, but sued for the principle of the thing."
Now both sides have lost. First the defendant who has to go into bankruptcy and the plaintiff who now because of the trial got national attention for being a litigious bastard. Who most people will be afraid to do work with because she will take any negative comments towards her and sue the pant off people. If she just sucked it up, explained her side on the net as well anyone the damage will be limited to a couple of Blogs which no one reads. But new with USA Today coverage now the rest of the US can hear about it. So in the end the only person who won is the lawyer. The Defendant can't afford to pay the Plaintiff, but the Plaintiff needs to pay the lawyer.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
What's always been confusing to me is what needs to be true in publishing. Books have always seemed to be protected from people 'publishing whatever they want.' But the more I think about it, the more I realize that politicians usually have to put up with books containing allegations that aren't entirely provable. So, for the most part, I think that books are safe from large postings of defamation.
The same can be said about magazines & newspapers (usually) though--with the National Enquirer and tabloids--it certainly does have examples of blatant slander.
But anyone can say anything on the internet and get away with it--or so I thought. Considering what I read online, I'm certainly surprised there aren't more cases like this.
It seems the more volatile the medium is, the more 'free' you are to do whatever you want.
I haven't read the actual comments online that this woman posted but I would suggest that the defendant appeal to a higher court on the grounds of free speech and try to get her story out through the media. I mean, it looks like she's boned either way so she might as well appeal and represent herself if she has to. I'm pretty certain that this could be dismissed in a higher court. After all, it sounds like she was dissatisfied with the person's service so she is more than qualified to comment on the woman's business--unless she was telling explicit lies.
My work here is dung.
It's called libel. It's against the law and has never been protected speech.
I'm betting there's going to be a lot of very polite and respectful replies in this story's thread.
Maybe 11.x some million is a little steep but you can't go out and slander someone. It would be different if the defendant went out and said she doesn't trust the person or like the person, that doesn't necessary deflamate the character.
That which does not kill me only postpones the inevitable.
Today's Lesson: If you can sue someone in your home state, who can't even afford a lawyer and is out of reach due to natural disaster, you too can win really big judgements!
Seems Ms. Sheff is no stranger to trashing others on web sites.
if you can't say something nice... sue.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
The plaintiff's motive is:
But I guess people using the courts to destroy people they don't like is is just fine with her...
Freedom of Speech is the right to speak freely. It is NOT the right to speak without repercussion. Every time you make a public statement, you are responsible for the content of that statement as well as the veracity of that content. The typical example of this is shouting "Fire!" in a crowded theater. If there's no fire, then you can expect that your actions will have serious conseqences.
TFA is light on the actual details of this case. So it's difficult to judge who was really "right" and who was really "wrong". (Especially since the defendent wasn't able to defend herself.) However, you need to pay attention to the fact that the defendent DID find an open forum for her speech. She posted her opinions (apparently to the point of persecuting the plantiff) and was thus able to exercise her right to free speech. The fact that a court decided that this speech was libelous does nothing to impinge on those statements being fully accessable in a public forum.
When we talk about the lack of Free Speech, we mean that the statements can't be made in the first place. As in, the controlling entity (usually the government) can prevent dissenting opinions from being published in newspapers, books, or webpages. China even goes as far as to deny the right to blog, and filters out all incoming media for any speech they might find distateful.
Contrast that with a court case seeking to recover damages for statements made in public forums and accessible to millions. Presumably, those statements are still available. There is no "chill" here people. Move on.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
While loosed lawyers are much more powerful than chained ones, the chained ones are safer.
Even if the other side looses their lawyer, like the parent says - the lawyers are the only ones who win if they're loosed.
If you keep control of them, they won't be able to bite you, and you stand a chance of coming out ahead. It may even be possible to win even if the other side has loosed their lawyers.
Another good tip is to remember to spade or neuter your lawyer to help reduce the number of strays.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
People in the public eye don't get applied to the same standards as private citizens.
Claiming that you did business with someone and that they ripped you off is not "expressing your opinion", it is deliberately trying to hurt someone's livelihood. Civil court is the proper place to defend oneself against that sort of attack. In the US, if you're telling the truth, you can certainly say it, but you may have to defend yourself in court.
Although the reward is certainly far in excess of any real damage that could have been done, the principle is sound. If you mouth off about someone, you had better make sure you can prove you're telling the truth and be prepared to do so in a court of law.
It could be worse. In many other countries (including my own) you can be successfully sued for defaming someone even if you can prove that what you said is the truth. Now that stifles free speech.
If you are sued and do not bother to show up for the trial, you should be amazed if you don't find yourself owing a large sum of money. This is not the first time I have heard of a plaintiff suing in a jurisdiction chosen to prevent the defendant from showing up. It is entirely possible that the plaintiff has an ethics problem and her treatment of the defendant would make the allegations of crook and fraud accurate. But the defendant did not provide any evidence to justify her allegations so the court had to find for the plaintiff. If you are ever sued for any reason, do whatever you can to defend yourself. If you cannot hire an attorney, look for one to take your case pro bono. Alternatively do research on your own and try to defend yourself. Do not be foolish enough to be quoted in the paper saying, "I don't feel like I can express my opinions. Only one side of the story was told in court. Nobody heard my side."
Just because it's free to post information on the intranet doesn't make it any different from any other publishing medium - were this a newspaper or television related case, I'm sure most /.'ers would agree that the law is clear; to publicly accuse someone of a crime, you'd better have a little thing called proof first. Print and television journalists know this. Nothing in the US Constitution/Bill of Rights guarantees anybody the right to make defamatory or libelous statements anywhere in public - when you speak of another, either be nice or have the goods to back up your statements.
As for Ms. Bock's assertion that "nobody heard my side of the case" - obviously not true, as it's plainly evident that some number of web-surfers did hear her case. If she wanted to have her case heard in court she should probably have considered showing up in court. I'm sure that the civil trial wasn't held in secret. Perhaps next time, Ms. Bock will deign to favor the court with her presence when she is being sued.
If 'dptalia' insists on posting this article with commentary that indicates he sympathizes with Ms. Bock, that's certainly a constitutionally protected right. ScuttleMonkey's lack of editorial judgement in permitting the article to be posted as is, while also constitutionally protected is nonetheless unimpressive (but not unexpected).
IANAL, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night!
While it's true that slander/libel are not protected by the 1st Amendment, that's pretty irrelevant to what happened here. According to TFA, the defendant never showed up to offer a defense. The judge, without any other way to go, found a default judgment for the plaintiff. Only at this point was a jury called, and then only to determine damages. If you're a juror, and one attorney tells you, "In my long experience, this sort of pain and suffering (or whatever) is worth $11 million", and no one is there to tell you otherwise, there's a good chance you'll find $11 million in damages. Whether it actually was slander or libel doesn't matter. If there's no defense, the defense loses, regardless of the actual facts. Damned inactivist judges...
It turns out the defendant had her house flooded by Hurricane Katrina and had to leave... the legal notices that the plaintiff was required to send bounced back to the plaintiff and were never received. The defendant didn't show because she wasn't aware of when the trial was. Nor did she have enough money to hire a lawyer. So, odds are, had the case actually been defended, this thing would've either been thrown out or reached a defense verdict.
I'm just suprised that the judge didn't reduce the jury's damages... that said, because the defendant had no money for an attorney, it seems unlikely that this will be appealed (which it should be).
This seems to all have come out of a set of disputes over how to deal with troubled kids that led to them being placed in a school that is part of a group that has a long trail of allegations and convictions for child abuse.
Sue Scheff's site is here: http://www.helpyourteens.com/index.html
A google for "WWASP" and "PURE" "Sue Scheff" gives interesting information.
The original thread and allegations are here.
Members of that board don't have anything particularly nice to say about this event.
From TFA:
"Bock says that when she moved back to her repaired house over the summer, she knew the trial was approaching but did not know the date. She says she doesn't have the money to pay the judgment or hire a lawyer to appeal it. She adds that if the goal of Scheff's lawsuit was to stifle what Bock says online, it worked."
Bock is the Defendant and Scheff is the plaintiff. Bock basically was in Louisiana when Katrina hit and had to evacuate. When she got some of her lift back on track, it looks like she just say "awww fuck it, my life is turned upside-down, I can't deal with this" and simply let it go. Bock didn't even show up for the trial and had to let go of her lawyer!
If you make no effort to show up for a trial in order to present a defense, then you will lose by default. Scheff won essentially on a technicality, not the facts of the case. I took a prior landlord to court once and he lost because he didn't show up for trial. The Judge ruled in favor of him simply because he didn't show up, and didn't even bother to look at the facts of the case. You have to show up to defend yourself or you are in contempt of court. The reason why the judgement was so large was probably because that was the maximum Scheff asked for or could get, and with no one to defend the outcome, no one was there to defend the penalty either!
Here's more details from the article:
Scheff, who operates a referral service called Parents Universal Resource Experts, says she referred Bock to a consultant who helped Bock retrieve her sons. Afterward, Bock became critical of Scheff and posted negative messages about her on the Internet site Fornits.com, where parents with children in boarding schools for troubled teens confer with one another.
Basically we make a jump from Scheff providing services to help Bock to Bock becoming critical of Scheff, with no facts in between as to why. I can't blame the author of the article because she's not reporting on a violation of free speech, jus the facts of the case. I also can't judge if she was able to obtain why Bock was critical and what comments she made and where. Obviously the submitter of this article wanted to stir up he "Slander is not free speech" crowd, and succeeded in doing so, but you can't go that far unless you know more about what Bock said and what Scheff did to make Bock say those things.
Scheff won on a technicality due to natural disaster. Winning on a technicality is not news, except for USA today, which never has any decent articles. This is one of the biggest stretches I've ever seen on slashdot. Maybe I should sue the editors and submitter for letting bullshit like this get on slashdot.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
Under CAN-SPAM, spamming can be a criminal offense.
And you can't sue as a private citizen. You have to be an ISP or the government.
From the Wikipedia article:
"The legislation does not allow e-mail recipients to sue spammers or class-action lawsuits, but allows enforcement by the FTC, State Attorneys General, Internet service providers, and other federal agencies for special categories of spammers (such as banks). An individual could still sue as an ISP if (s)he ran a mail server, but this would likely be cost-prohibitive."
So no, I can't file a lawsuit.
i am a soviet space shuttle
This is even better than performing an operation on them to prevent them from reproducing! I think we should spade all lawyers immediately.
I'll form my OWN solar system! With blackjack! And hookers!
I know it sucks to have to get a lawyer and show up in court, but when a defendant doesn't even show up, it sends a message to a jury who doesn't know the back story. If she showed up and talked about her Katrina issues the ruling could have gone a different way. Most times when a defendant doesn't even show up for court, juries interpret that as guilt.
well, she never got the summons (they were returned to the plaintiff's legal firm), so how in hell was she supposed to know that she was supposed to be in court?
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
Apparently Mrs. Sheff gets paid to refer people to specific schools... and it has been alleged in the past that she does so under false pretenses. If this is true, Mrs. Sheff is indeed the liar, con artist and crook the defendent claims she is. If it's true, it isn't libel.
You are reading a copy of my copyrighted post.
Even if she found out too late to appear in person, I've never heard of a court that won't let you appear in writing. Even a simple letter to the court explaining your side is better than just blowing the whole thing off.
To me this looks like the lady knew she was going to (and deserved to) lose, and tried to take an easy out when a hurricane forced her to relocate. She got hit with a bigger judgement than I would have expected, but I can't say I feel too much sympathy for her even so. The jury was probably punishing her for wasting their time as much as anything else.
-- Old Man Kensey
That will be quite a challenge on your part, seeing as how you don't know who I am.
Proud neuron in the Slashdot hivemind since 2002.
And I wager you'd care when it started affecting your ability to earn a living or live your life free of unwarranted accusations.
Enjoy your hallucination, buddy. The reality is that what Bock did was wrong, an assertion which the court has confirmed. The fact that she got caught is a good thing.
mod me redundant, but I will NEVER install a program on my computer that will possably lead to child pornography getting on my computer. Give me an option to restrict what is on my hard drive, and then I will use FreeNet.
I know the philosophical argument for FreeNet, but in modern American politics that does not matter one wit. If you are found with child pornography on your computer you mine as well kill yourself because you will be a marked person for the rest of your life, and NEVER be able to make anything of your life.
She knew she was being sued LONG before Katrina ever hit -- at *LEAST* 1 year & 8 months, assuming the case was filed at the end of December 2003. While I certainly am sorry for her plight, did it ever occur to her at some point after relocating to call the court, or the plaintiff's lawyers, or a lawyer who might be willing to do some pro bono work to help her out? I'm sure that she could have filed for a continuance pretty easily if she had bothered to explain her situation to the court, and try to provide a forwarding address, or at least communicate her whereabouts...
... you can use lawyers. From the linked story (emphasis added):
"What's interesting about this case is that (Scheff) was so vested in being vindicated, she was willing to pay court costs," Lidsky says. "They knew before trial that the defendant couldn't pay, so what's the point in going to the jury?"
...
Scheff says she wanted to make a point to those who unfairly criticize others on the Internet. "I'm sure (Bock) doesn't have $1 million, let alone $11 million, but the message is strong and clear," Scheff says. "People are using the Internet to destroy people they don't like, and you can't do that."
That's the part I find appalling. Given that the defendant did not appear in court (either because the summons was not delivered, or she couldn't afford it after having house destroyed by flood, or whatever), I find it pretty unlikely "fairness" (or lack thereof) of the comments could have been established. Even if she used the words "fraud" and "con artist", doesn't necessarily mean its libel. You can say that about someone if its true, but you have to be able to back it up. And we have know way of knowing, since defendant was unable to tell her side in court, and is unlikely to do so in the future
Whether or not the original accusations were true, IMO instead of salvaging her reputation by seeking this judgment, she has destroyed it. I personally would not want to seek help from someone who has been known to sue her dissatisfied customers into oblivion. I hope it was worth it.
How many people are going to push the envelope if they know they may end up having a million dollar judgement dropped on them? Shoot, I'm wondering if I rate someone badly on ebay if I'll get sued!
Genius is one percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration, which is why engineers sometimes smell really bad.
Damages are the issue here. I know I've hit the backspace a few times to back off what I was really going to say.
Free speech is great, but when it causes financially damaging results to another person or business, that is grounds for litigation in any society. It's a crime. And should be punished.
I think people forget about these rules when they sitdown at the keyboard to blog or post about their experiences with certain businesses, or persons. It's a judgement call. "Is what I am writing here going to cause damages (financially especailly) to the entity I'm writing this about?" And if it will, at least explain your experiences in full detail, and do it in a place where the other party can respond to your claims.
Bombthrowing bloggers and forums are a big problem.
Think twice before you press the "Submit" button.
People here are saying that free speech is not freedom to libel... which may be true, but we don't even know if this was libel... the accusations could be completely true! One affect this will have is that it will stop people from voicing negative opinions on the internet in fear of getting sued. Is this a slap to free speech? I think so.
Meh.
You seem to have missed that part.
No I didn't. That's the cause of a default judgement. I didn't even address that particular issue because it wasn't relevant to the point.
No matter if she was right or not, she gave the middle finger to the judicial system and they broke it off for her.
She was in disaster survivor housing in Texas when the summons was returned from her effectively nonexistant house in Louisiana. The case was heard in Florida. She had already spent what little money she had attempting to answer the claim. Even if she had known the trial date she had no means to travel to Florida to answer the complaint, let alone the means to do so effectively.
She did not "give her finger" to the judicial system, she didn't have the power to do so.
Was the default judgement legally sound? Under the circumstances, given the knowledge available to the judge, yes. He really had no option.
Did the jury find the defendent guilty of libel, the issue to which I responded? No, they did not. Nobody did.
She was found liable by default. There was no opinion on the validity of the claim.
KFG
I don't think defending yourself and business against defamatory comments counts as a personal obsession.
Don't instantly jump to the defense of the underdog here, money or no money, hurricane victim or not, it's entirely possible that she has been rightly punished here.
Wow. That was interesting reading. I've now had my helping of emotional turmoil for the year.
Let's recap. Parents who can't control their kids send them to camps/schools where they fear their children are abused. The parents are very upset about this perceived abuse.
You'll have to excuse me now, I have to go have a vasectomy. AGAIN!!!!
It is astonishing that anybody could think that the centuries of libel laws are irrelavant. It is simply not permissible to libel or slander someone out of spite. People think that just because of the volume of communications on the Internet that everything ought to be free because, hey, it's not as if all of a person's customers are going to read a few blog comments about a specific person. Unless they use Google.
It is one thing to state an opinion that you THINK someone is incompetent or that the services she rendered were poor, or even that you wouldn't recommend that anybody engage with this person. However, calling someone a con-artist, criminal, or thief crosses a line.
I mean, if I felt that Tim Spengler ripped me off when he supposedly "refinished" my floors, I couldn't go out and say to everone "Tim Spengler is a bloody thief! He stole my money and swindled my through his con!" A more appropriate reaction would be to follow whatever legal recourse there was and word any comments appropriately, like "I feel as though Tim Spengler ripped me off. He promised, in writing, that the job would be done in 3 days, did not show up on time, did not complete work on the last day, and has left me with floors that are only half finished. Before you hire this man, I would strongly recommend that you check his references, because he certainly was no good for me."
Do you see the difference.
My apologies to any real Tim Spenglers, I just grabbed htat name out of a hat. Except for you, Tim Spengler!
It seems to me the problem is calling someone a "crook," a "con artist" and a "fraud." is the problem.
If it had simply been a reasoned explaination of why the services didn't work out in that particular case, or why she was unhappy, them's facts, and not libel.
I have left "negative" feedback on Amazon and eBay, that is legally definsible; E.g. "Seller delivered DVD set meant for the Chinese market. Trouble with playback on some players and has inferior packaging". I didn't leave feedback saying "Seller is a crook and a fraud!".
I think my feedback is more useful than the later example.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
The defendant could've showed up. Looks to me like justice won the day.
Oh god, here we go again. A) how do you know the lawyer won anything? If the plaintiff's attorney was working on contingency they don't get a damn thing. B) Do you have any evidence that the defendant now has to go into bankruptcy? People have judgments against them all the time that they can't afford to pay, if they don't have the assets then generally the plaintiff won't go after them, because then they WILL have to go into bankruptcy and the plaintiff will not only not collect but will have to go to the extra expense of seeking an attachment of assets. C) This woman didn't defend herself, which was foolish. If someone's suing you you make it a point of finding out the details; if only one side is willing to come to court, guess who's going to win? D) I work in the legal field in south Florida; Broward county has a perfectly good legal aid service who exists precisely for these types of situations, she should have gone to them. She can even go to them now and they might help her with the appeal. Hell, if she had showed up in court she could have defended herself, judges are obligated to cut pro se litigants a lot of slack because they don't have legal training, but they're supposed to be neutral arbiters so they can't just take over one side's duties. E) Lawyers generally do what their clients tell them; I guarantee you the lawyer didn't see this woman's online postings and run to the plaintiff and offer his services; the plaintiff undoubtedly came to the lawyer instead. F) If someone is libeling you online and adversely affecting your business, what is your recourse going to be if not the legal system? Maybe, just maybe, the judgment was fair. What, exactly, is your problem SPECIFICALLY with the whole process? That the lawyer got paid for doing their job? The implication seems to be that there was a moral lapse on the part of the plaintiff's lawyer; what was it? The only person who I think didn't act properly was defendant's lawyer, but lawyers can't abandon their clients mid-litigation without permission from the judge and a show of cause, so even in that case they might have had a legitimate reason to be released.
None of which has any bearing on whether or not she actually libeled the plaintiff, the only issue to which I responded in my original post.
But if those damned poor people weren't guilty they wouldn't be poor, now would they? There's actually a slang legal term for people in her position. That term is "judgement proof."
If they don't have the means to respond, they don't have the means to pay either.
Plaintif claims a "moral" victory, but there has been no finding that she was libeled. She has only been found to have more available resources to spread around her home court against a visiting team; who doesn't have money to put gas in the bus. A default "moral" victory.
And for puroposes of bias I will point out that I am inclined to favor the work done by the plainiff. Anyone who reads my posts on some sort of regular basis will know that children's rights are one of my "issues" and I am not keen on the current in loco parentis powers of the state.
Anyone who takes a stand for the rights of children in their own right is going to draw some pretty heavy fire; as I have in this very forum.
I am socially unacceptable to many people because of my views. I can live with that. If, however, I choose to view your responses to me as libelous and sued you here in the NY court system that would make me an asshole, something I try, admitedly not always successfually, to avoid.
If you chose not to abandon your life in Florida to spend weeks, perhaps years, of crippling legal expenses here in NY, that is what I would expect, and claiming a "moral" victory against you would just make me a fucking asshole.
KFG
RTFA; she posted on community websites where the plaintiff contacts her customers. This isn't 'random' places on the internet, it's like she bought a billboard outside a store saying the store is a ripoff joint because she bought what she wanted but didn't like it when she got it home.
O~ Him that studies revenge keeps his own wounds green. -- Francis Bacon
In 2003, Scheff sued Bock for defamation. Bock hired a lawyer, but he left the case when she no longer could afford to pay him.
...she knew the trial was approaching but did not know the date. She says she doesn't have the money to pay the judgment or hire a lawyer to appeal it.
When Katrina hit in August 2005, Bock's house was flooded and she moved temporarily to Texas before returning to Louisiana last June.
Maybe it was wouldn't, because she was getting sued into submission by someone with more money. I guess you've never been in any situation where the shit was piled so high, that you just didn't care about proper procedure anymore. That is not justice any way you slice it, proper procedure maybe, Scheff never broke any law, sure. But 11 million default judgment != a single private citizens' complaints strewn across a few pages of internet. Period.
Whatever, I just hope everyone is prepared to walk on eggshells the next time someone on eBay or Amazon screws someone them over.
A libertarian shat on my carpet once. Claimed the free market would sort it out. -Ford Prefect(8777)
Let's say I help a neighbor out in some sense or other, but they freak out and start putting up posters that I'm a child molester on all the phone poles in the neighborhood. Is that fine with you idiots?
Fine by me.
After all, in most jurisdictions it's not libel if it's true.
No, I kid. You're right. If the facts of the case bear out as it seems (defamatory and untruthful statements online by one person against another), there should be no meaningful difference between online publication and other older forms.
I guess that's what puzzles me. Why is teh Intarweb different than my local newspaper or flybills stuck in windshield wipers and pamphlets handed out on the corner?
The other subtext in the story is how the respondent (the alleged libeler) ran out of money trying to put on an ineffectual defense. Sad. But maybe her attorney left not just because the money ran out but also because the case was fundamentally unwinnable? What defense did the respondent have? "I was really pissed off!"?
Doesn't matter how mad you are. Deliberately publishing hurtful and untrue statements about another person is libel, regardless of medium. The only "chilling effect" (oooh, nice one, editor) is that maybe dumbassess will learn to keep their lying flaptraps shut. If you're gonna get even, at least be slightly clever about it.
Lawyers (and some plaintiffs) merely take advantage of the situation. And as a result, we get fun little brochures in everything we buy clearly outlining things a village idiot aught to be able to figure out.
WARNING: A risk of fire and electrical shock exists in all electrical appliances and may cause personal injury or death
Do not use appliance except as intended.
Do not place on or near hot gas or electric burner, or in a heated oven.
Do not place any part of this toaster under water or other liquid.
Unplug from outlet when not in use.
Unplug before cleaning.
Do not insert over-sized foods, metal foil packages, or metal utensils into the toaster.
Do not immerse in water
Do not physically hold down the toast lever.
and that's just the digest version...
Just nitpicking. Otherwise a argument.
you said you read the article, you had to have read this then;
"I don't feel like I can express my opinions," Bock says. "Only one side of the story was told in court. Nobody heard my side."
You can't say that the plaintiff in this case is in the right without knowing any of the reasoning behind what was said about her and her practice.
yes, the defendant could have gotten her sons back, but the plaintiff could have dragged this process out for a very long time and citing more and more fees due to "unexpected issues" or whatever.
I don't think that the real issue here is about free speech, what we should be worried about is the fact that the judge didnt STOP the jurys decision or the stayed the trial KNOWING that the defendant had no council or means to defend herself. This alone is a violation of the constitution where you (the defendant) are granted an explicit right to a fair trial with representation.
In most law situations, if the defendant shows up to court and the plaintiff is MIA, the defendant could have a mistrial and go free. If the defendant does show up for the case, the case is usually stayed and a warrent issue for appearence. The law says the defendant and/or council MUST be present for judgement.
I follow the SDK and GDN principles.. Spelling Dont Kount, Grammer Dont Neither
In most law situations, if the defendant shows up to court and the plaintiff is MIA, the defendant could have a mistrial and go free. If the defendant does show up for the case, the case is usually stayed and a warrent issue for appearence. The law says the defendant and/or council MUST be present for judgement.
There was recently a series of articles in the Boston Globe about debt-collection agencies. It seems that one of the favorite tactics of the sleazier agencies around here is to have the papers sent to an outdated address, since there is no requirement in MA to use certified mail(?!). The papers get returned, everybody shrugs, the proceedings happen as scheduled, and the agency wins a default judgment. Armed with this, they then go to the correct address, and demand payment or seize their car. As a result of these articles, various officials are promising to look into the problem, but the current status apparently remains the same. They did do a follow-up article the other day, and a couple of the worst offenders have abruptly closed down their operations in MA, so hopefully things will get better.
So, in MA, at least, there apparently is no requirement that both parties (or their lawyers) be present before a judgment is handed down. It's wrong, but it appears to be the case. So maybe that's true of this particular case, as well.
-Mike
I'm sorry; I don't know what I was thinking!
IAAL, and I can tell you with certainty that most of the people on this site will never accept your key point.
./ we get the same tired old nonsense about it being "a field day for lawyers" - but when the EFF actually wins something, or the Supreme Court says torture is illegal, or any number of other 'good' judgments are discussed then nobody, nobody acknowledges that some *lawyer* (shock, horror) must have fought that case and won.
There are shady lawyers, just like there are dubious characters in nearly every industry. However, in my experience, good lawyers spend a large amount of their time trying to convince litigious clients NOT to sue anybody, and there are plenty of good lawyers. It may also interest some of you to know that the percentage of legal actions filed that actually make it to trial (i.e. that don't settle) is absolutely miniscule, usually because the lawyers are telling their clients to avoid court at all costs - it's expensive, and it leads to a win-lose situation rather than a compromise, so is inherently very risky.
And let's not forget the endless string of cases where those awful lawyers (yes, people with the same basic training as those representing the plaintiff in this case) protect your rights, take down the bad guys, hold the government accountable, allow the little guys to stand up to the huge corporate monoliths, and so on. I love how every time there's an article about a 'bad' judgment on
But don't worry. Every time some idiot sues some other idiot over something, and the laws made by the politicians YOU elect are enforced by a judge appointed by the same politicians, with the result that idiot A beats idiot B and is awarded a huge payout by a jury of your peers (and lawyers CAN'T be on juries, fyi) that causes you to just clench your little fists up in rage, lawyers will be there for you to blame. Hey, it's a lot easier than learning about tort law, developing your own political movement, pressuring politicians, raising awareness and actually *changing* the law if you think it's so terrible.
Read Pynchon.