“Why reinstate teachers fired for bad performance?”

An arbitrator has reinstated 75 teachers dismissed by the Washington, D.C. school system during their 2-year probationary period — not after achieving tenure — for such infractions as perennial absence or tardiness, “rude and aggressive” behavior and “sketchy or nonexistent lesson plans.” “[Arbitrator Charles] Feigenbaum said that the teachers had been denied due process because they were not given reasons for their terminations. It’s a mind-boggling decision that essentially affords probationary teachers some of the rights that protect tenured teachers.” [Washington Post editorial] For another indication of the legal constraints on employee selection faced by the D.C. schools, see this 2001 post.

Law schools roundup

  • The first hard copies of Schools for Misrule have arrived from the printer and they look fantastic. You can order here (and benefit me Amazon-commission-wise as well as through royalties) at very favorable pre-publication prices;
  • “Can NY Support Any More Law Schools? Doubts Stall Plans for Three New Campuses” [ABA Journal]
  • Professional rigor without Tiers: how Canada’s law school scene differs from ours [Above the Law]
  • Villanova “knowingly” fiddled scores to improve law school rating [Paul Caron roundup] By creative use of such measures as library seatage, Michigan’s Cooley contrived to name itself nation’s number 2 law school [AtL] Malcolm Gladwell notes that US News rankings “reward Yale-ness” [New Yorker, Ribstein/TotM] A “good way to distinguish yourself from other law schools is to tell the truth to prospective students” and Washington & Lee has shocked competitors with a significant gesture in that direction [AtL] “Applying SOX (or something like it) to law schools” [Tung Yin, PrawfsBlawg] Morriss/Henderson: “law schools have a special moral obligation to tell the truth about themselves.” [Pope Center]
  • Mark Tushnet on academic fads and “mere” doctrinal scholarship [via Boyden, PrawfsBlawg]
  • Some law reviews admit their circulation has plunged, others don’t admit it [Ross Davies, Green Bag via Caron] “Girls under trees” deprecated as element in law school web design [Lowering the Bar]
  • On lawprof interest disclosures [Gerding/Conglomerate, Salmon, Weiser/SALT]
  • Legal academy during World War II mostly silent on government overreach [Sarah Ludington, SSRN via Orin Kerr]

“Polar Bear Plunge” blamed for non-participant’s death, 19 sued

By reader acclaim: the family of a Pennsylvania woman who attended — but did not participate in — a New Jersey “Polar Bear Plunge” charity event has sued the event sponsors and many others. Tracy Hottenstein was last seen alive around 2:15 a.m. on the night of drinking after the festivities, and was later discovered in the bay having, per Cape May County authorities, “died accidentally from hypothermia and acute intoxication.” In addition to the event sponsors, the suit names “the owners of two bars she was at on the night she died and the couple who invited her to dinner at their home that evening. Also named is the hospital where she died and the doctor who pronounced her dead, as well as the Sea Isle City Police Department and individual officers who — the suit claims — did not allow rescue workers to perform lifesaving treatment for hypothermia after they discovered Hottenstein had no pulse.” [AP/NJ.com]

February 13 roundup

“Discourage litigation…. There will still be business enough.”

Via John Steele at Legal Ethics Forum, Abraham Lincoln’s famous Notes for a Law Lecture:

I am not an accomplished lawyer. I find quite as much material for a lecture in those points wherein I have failed, as in those wherein I have been moderately successful. The leading rule for the lawyer, as for the man of every other calling, is diligence. Leave nothing for to-morrow which can be done to-day. Never let your correspondence fall behind. Whatever piece of business you have in hand, before stopping, do all the labor pertaining to it which can then be done. When you bring a common-law suit, if you have the facts for doing so, write the declaration at once. If a law point be involved, examine the books, and note the authority you rely on upon the declaration itself, where you are sure to find it when wanted. The same of defenses and pleas. In business not likely to be litigated, — ordinary collection cases, foreclosures, partitions, and the like, — make all examinations of titles, and note them, and even draft orders and decrees in advance. This course has a triple advantage; it avoids omissions and neglect, saves your labor when once done, performs the labor out of court when you have leisure, rather than in court when you have not. Extemporaneous speaking should be practised and cultivated. It is the lawyer’s avenue to the public. However able and faithful he may be in other respects, people are slow to bring him business if he cannot make a speech. And yet there is not a more fatal error to young lawyers than relying too much on speech-making. If any one, upon his rare powers of speaking, shall claim an exemption from the drudgery of the law, his case is a failure in advance.

Discourage litigation. Persuade your neighbors to compromise whenever you can. Point out to them how the nominal winner is often a real loser — in fees, expenses, and waste of time. As a peacemaker the lawyer has a superior opportunity of being a good man. There will still be business enough.

Never stir up litigation. A worse man can scarcely be found than one who does this. Who can be more nearly a fiend than he who habitually overhauls the register of deeds in search of defects in titles, whereon to stir up strife, and put money in his pocket? A moral tone ought to be infused into the profession which should drive such men out of it.

The matter of fees is important, far beyond the mere question of bread and butter involved. Properly attended to, fuller justice is done to both lawyer and client. An exorbitant fee should never be claimed. As a general rule never take your whole fee in advance, nor any more than a small retainer. When fully paid beforehand, you are more than a common mortal if you can feel the same interest in the case, as if something was still in prospect for you, as well as for your client. And when you lack interest in the case the job will very likely lack skill and diligence in the performance. Settle the amount of fee and take a note in advance. Then you will feel that you are working for something, and you are sure to do your work faithfully and well. Never sell a fee note — at least not before the consideration service is performed. It leads to negligence and dishonesty — negligence by losing interest in the case, and dishonesty in refusing to refund when you have allowed the consideration to fail.

There is a vague popular belief that lawyers are necessarily dishonest. I say vague, because when we consider to what extent confidence and honors are reposed in and conferred upon lawyers by the people, it appears improbable that their impression of dishonesty is very distinct and vivid. Yet the impression is common, almost universal. Let no young man choosing the law for a calling for a moment yield to the popular belief — resolve to be honest at all events; and if in your own judgment you cannot be an honest lawyer, resolve to be honest without being a lawyer. Choose some other occupation, rather than one in the choosing of which you do, in advance, consent to be a knave.

(see also post of four years ago, when we quoted excerpts)

Suit charges slow evacuation of broken Disneyland ride

A quadriplegic man says Disney took 40 minutes to evacuate him from a stalled ride at its California theme park, prompting dangerous high blood pressure, and that had it followed Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) standards it would have gotten his wheelchair out more quickly. The pain and suffering were exacerbated, the plaintiff says, by “the continuous, ‘small world’ music in the background.” [Orange County Register]

“Toyota: The Media Owe You an Apology”

Ed Wallace at Bloomberg Business Week tells why the Toyota sudden-acceleration debacle merely replays a long and sad history:

I don’t mean to single out CBS for criticism. Plenty of other media outlets share the blame. For 30 years they have treated us to Jeep, Suzuki, and Isuzu Trooper rollovers, Audi unintended acceleration, side-saddle gas tanks exploding, police cars catching on fire, Firestone tires blowing out, and then the Toyota case. And each time the media took the word of those with a vested financial interest in the outcome—and every time they got burned for doing so.

I wrote about this in my article “It Didn’t Start With Dateline NBC” and in the chapter “Trial Lawyer TV” of my book The Rule of Lawyers.

Plus: For comic relief, here’s a New York Times editorial claiming the findings “did nothing to dispel concerns” about safety. And welcome listeners of Ray Dunaway’s morning show on WTIC (Hartford).