Milking It
Ah, lawsuits America is famous for:
Judge Robert Bork, one of the fathers of the modern judicial conservative movement whose nomination to the Supreme Court was rejected by the Senate, is seeking $1,000,000 in compensatory damages, plus punitive damages, after he slipped and fell at the Yale Club of New York City. Judge Bork was scheduled to give a speech at the club, but he fell when mounting the dais, and injured his head and left leg. He alleges that the Yale Club is liable for the $1m plus punitive damages because they “wantonly, willfully, and recklessly” failed to provide staging which he could climb safely.
Ironically:
Judge Bork has been a leading advocate of restricting plaintiffs’ ability to recover through tort law. In a 2002 article published in the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy–the official journal of the Federalist Society–Bork argued that frivolous claims and excessive punitive damage awards have caused the Constitution to evolve into a document which would allow Congress to enact tort reforms that would have been unconstitutional at the framing…
It is sad that he has been injured, but it is even sadder that he wants Yale to pay $1 million punitive damages for something this silly.
I wonder – lets say I go to America next year. I ‘accidentally’ trip and fall in, say, the Hilton Hotel.
Will I go to America broke, will I leave America as a millionaire?
Sweet.
So that’s what the American Dream is all about!
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17 Responses to “Milking It”
Bork should go all the way and hire John Edwards to be his personal-injury lawyer.
The conservatives are really showing their true stripes these days. The rules that they expect everyone else to live by, somehow don’t apply to them. Victimhood has triumphed over principle, when it became obvious that immediate gain would result from it.
Recent examples of this phenomena include Bork’s lawsuit, the conservative’s movement to pardon Scooter Libby, the outing of Valerie Plame-while claiming to worry about Saddam’s WMD’s, Tom DeLay’s championing of Clinton’s impeachment- yet calling his own legal troubles prosecutorial misconduct, etc etc.
Well, Mike wasn’t kidding:
Bork Suit 06/06/07
Bork’s “Tempting of America” was outstanding and I would prefer to remember him from that time. In later years he had demonstrated a non-libertarian, truly social-conservative side to him (referring to “the criminal class,” for example) and this is just plain sick.
OK, lefties, don’t expect as many references any more to Bork from me — not after this.
I like the Edwards idea. That might charm more than a mere $1 out of a jury.
Of what use is an ideology if you are willing to abandon its principles for the prospect of the almighty dollar? Bork is no better than the guy who sues for whiplash when they’re rear-ended by someone driving 5 miles an hour.
DLS The lawsuit only mentions a hematoma on his leg. The lawsuit ignores his head injury, I guess nothing is going on up there. This is just as good as the Washington Republican judge suing the Korean dry cleaners. Now, who is the activists and filing frivolous suits?
Bork could have asked for assistance getting on the dais. What we have here is someone trying to avoid personal responsibility and blame others for one’s own poor judgement!
Kim Ritter:
The “ideology” may still be valuable and what Bork said in the past remains valid even though he’s hypocritical now. In the case of “Tempting of America,” it wasn’t ideology, but true respect for law and rule of law, while the many liberal and few current conservative activists in the legal world are substituting their ideology and plain wishes for law or “legal theory” [sic]. (The word “green” “should” now mean red rather than “outmoded” green, etc.)
Bork is at fault here, not what was written in “The Tempting of America: The Political Seduction of the Law.”
Bork Quotes
The Tempting of America -Michael Starkman’s site
The Tempting of America – Daniel Young review
The Tempting of America – National Review
Arguments against originalism fall short every time.
Theories of Constituational Interpretation
The Tempting of Richard Posner – Richard Boston
The whole system of courts with impartial judges and juries are supposed to guard against excessive punishment. That’s why we don’t need tort reform to limit liability (which in the end, only really benefits large corporations and the government).
What we need, is judges willing to throw frivelous cases out before they even start to waste taxpayer money.
They are supposed to, Chris, but they don’t, especially juries who perpetuate the LegaLottO presumably so if they get their turn as plaintiffs someday, it’s likely they’ll strike it rich, too. And of course plenty of resentful losers on juries are ever willing to “punish” the “big, bad, evil corporations” no matter what the facts are, simply because they have deep pockets.
They are supposed to, but they don’t. That is why we need tort reform. That’s also why I am not solidly opposed to government taxation of punitive damages. (I just would prefer juries wouldn’t start thinking of the courts as an alternative tax revenue mechanism.)
Hey Rudi,
How do you come to the conclusion that
Roy L. Pearson Jr. is a Republican.
Rudi:
Rudi:
It makes you wonder, since he was making a living with his mind.
How do you know he’s Republican? He’s black, so there’s a greater than 90 per cent chance (especially in DC) that he’s a Democrat.
DLS,
I don’t trust the government, or the corporations who have recently been writing our laws, to fairly craft limits on monetary damages.
Rudi,
The lawyer suing the Korean dry cleaners in DC is more than likely a Democrat. He is an administrative judge for the District of Columbia, lives in northeast DC, and is black. Finding a black Republican in DC who is a lawyer is very unlikely.
Bork has probbably entered teh curmudgeon stages when he just needs to go away.
Well, there are black Republicans in DC- so I wouldn’t assume Pearson is a Democrat. Wiki doesn’t cite any political affiliations for him at all. But there was this update:
“Judge Pearson is now facing professional misconduct charges growing out of the incident and the Chungs are going to Bankruptcy court. Americans for the Enforcement of Judicial Ethics AEJE is a judicial watch dog group located in Chicago that has for over 25 years advocated the strict enforcement of judicial ethics.”
DLS- If you don’t live by it, as far as I’m concerned its self-righteous BS for everyone else, LOL.
LOL I made the Republican claim up. Seems others Brought up race and politics. It is a trial lawyers group(like Edwards) that is bringing up ethics charges.
http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1179260861714
The judges handling the case haven’t been kind to Pearson.
http://www.capitalcommunitynews.com/publications/dcnAre you saying Clarence Thomas must be a Democrat?
“If you don’t live by it, as far as I’m concerned its self-righteous BS”
Only for those who don’t live by it.