Slashdot Mirror
Sex Offender Gets New Hearing After Hearing Officer Rants Against Arial Font
ericgoldman writes "People often feel passionately about fonts, but government decisions shouldn't depend on what font people choose for their written submissions. In Massachusetts, a sex offender overturned the decision of a hearing officer after it was determined that (among other possible biases) the hearing officer posted to Facebook that he 'can't trust someone who drafts a letter in arial font!' and 'I might be biased. I think arial is inappropriate for most things.' This is just the latest example of how social media rants by government workers are causing problems for the workers — and the people they deal with."
.... most American legal jurisdictions have Rules of Civil and Criminal Procedure, that specify the format legal pleadings are supposed to take. They're usually quite specific on the allowable fonts, font sizes, line spacing, the format they expect for the numbering of paragraphs, and so on. Lawyers and pro-say litigants ignore these rules at their own peril, as doing so is liable to get your case dismissed outright and at the very least will seriously annoy the Judge. Of course, most Judges don't take this annoyance, combine it with a bunch of other rants, then post it on Facebook....
It does amuse me that so-called higher educated professionals just as liable to open mouth and insert foot on Facebook as the immature uneducated brats (I was, like, at work, and like, you know that patient, like, from the other day? He's, like, a total asshole.) I have the misfortune of calling co-workers.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
"a sex offender overturned the decision of a hearing officer"
I'm not sure it's a good idea to let the defendant be in charge of the judicial process.
...now if it were Comic Sans, I would TOTALLY agree.
Koans and fables for the software engineer
Back in the 90s, I had a job teaching MS Office to people. One class I was hired for was to teach a bunch of local judges how to use Word.
While discussing how to change fonts, one of the judges says, "Huh! Anal font, what the hell is an ANAL font!"
Maybe it is the same judge!
Not surprisingly, the submitter grossly misrepresented what was said. In TFA, the Arial font thing was just a couple of lines in a much more troubling string of rants, stuff like:
- "it’s always awkward when I see one of my pervs in the parking lot after a hearing"
- he (the hearing examiner) “likes taking motions under advisement, but gets greater satisfaction denying them”
- On November 20, 2008, the day of the plaintiff’s hearing, the following comment was posted during working hours: “it’s always a mistake when people testify, because they get destroyed in cross examination”
- On that same day, the day of the plaintiff’s hearing, the hearing examiner also posted the following (apparently with reference to a different sex offender): he (the examiner) “hopes this guy doesn’t show up!!” which was followed up with “Tyson Lynch says yay!! He didn’t show up!”
...And so on. This is someone who is supposed to be fair and impartial, and the guy clearly has issues with the people he has a duty to work with.
So yeah, if I had a hearing before the guy that went south, I'd be trying to have it overturned also. I hope that the guy is fired and the people who did have hearings before him get new hearings.
social media rants by government workers are causing problems for the workers
Seems to me more like "social media helps to uncover insane asshats among government workers".
Seriously, this guy apparently prejudiced against someone in a sexual assault case based on a font - he just gave everyone with whose cases he was involved a cause to ask for a retrial.
What are the chances an innocent person went to jail cause he didn't like their font or their hair style?
Once again this just proves that if you give asshats enough rope, they will eventually hang themselves with it.
I say "thumbs up" for the social media.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
What is more disturbing is the thought that there have been and always will be people like this in power and most of them are not stupid enough to post this shit publicly... they just quietly sit there and do a really half assed job and determine the course of peoples lives.
"In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women..." -H. Simpson
That should be a shooting offence. I recall working for a company who had a new director of marketing. She did everything -- everything -- in PPT, even memos. Her preferred font was Comic Sans and the concept of a colour space for documents was basically science fiction to her.
Yeah, the company went under. How did you guess?
I guessed it went under because if the company went on to be wildly successful, then this anecdote wouldn't confirm your belief that the marketing director's memo style was a sign that the company was doomed to fail so you wouldn't have told it.
You should get the opinion of the county serif. *snork*
How can humans be prevented from having power over other humans if there aren't any humans with power over other humans to prevent the humans from having power over other humans?
Replace the humans with turtles.
Everything is better with chainsaws.
By having computers having power over humans, and making them perfect.
This won't work, because some hammy starship captain will show up and talk the computer to death (likely death of a mildly explosive nature). Happens. Every. Time.
So long as starship captains, or the possibility of a starship captain, exists, computers cannot have power over humans.
Yes, all the way down.
.: Semper Absurda