February 4th, 2025

Judge: I Can’t Serve Jury Duty; They are all guilty

I thought that I’d heard all the best excuses for avoiding jury duty. They get repetitious after awhile and you can usually see them coming a mile away as to why they can’t serve.

But a judge saying he can’t be fair, because all the people who are arrested are guilty of something?

As per the Associated Press, regarding Justice Richard T. Snyder, a town justice for 10 years in Petersburgh, New York, as he was being questioned regarding serving on a grand jury:

According to court transcripts, Snyder tried to avoid serving on a jury in 2023 by first identifying himself as a judge and then saying, “I know everybody come in front of me. I know they are guilty. They would not be in front of me.”

And this was not simply a misstatement, because he kept going at the judicial hearing commission:

At a judicial commission hearing the following year, Snyder said he understood that defendants are supposed to be considered innocent until proven guilty but that he still felt that people wouldn’t be in court if they didn’t commit crimes. 

“I meant, that they were guilty because they did something wrong. But they’re not guilty ‘til they come to court. They’re innocent ’til proven guilty,” he told the commission.

Sigh. Even high school kids know that people are presumed innocent — at least the kids who are paying attention.

As Scott Greenfield noted long ago in arguing for the abolishment of non-lawyer judges:

One of New York’s peccadilloes is that you don’t have to be a lawyer to be a judge in our local courts. …It is fundamentally wrong to subject people to a system of justice with the same power as a legitimate system but neither the qualifications nor competence to fulfill its mission. 

But they are still here.

And while it is easy to rail against this judge, the question remains, how many others are out there just like him?

That post from Greenfield was written 19 years ago. Nineteen. Years.

And we still have non-lawyers serving as judges. Except for Snyder, who has resigned.

 

January 20th, 2025

The Qualities a President Needs

President Joe Biden poses for his official portrait Wednesday, March 3, 2021, in the Library of the White House. (Official White House Photo by Adam Schultz)

I posted this when President Obama left office, and then again four years later. And now that Biden has left I think it’s worth posting again.

I don’t think its worth re-posting because I’m some great wordsmith or savvy political commentator that loves his own words. I do it because I think most commentators suck.

A presidency shouldn’t be about non-stop partisan issues, yet that is where the vast majority of commentary on presidents is usually focused. And yes, it often focuses there as a reflection of the conduct of the president, but oft times, it’s merely a reflection of the deep desire of the media for clicks and eyeballs, and they use rage-bait for that. Actual substance falls by the wayside.

But if a president conducts himself well, then at least he can tip the scales of commentary toward public policy, however unsexy the commentariat might believe that to be.

Without further ado, my thoughts on what I believe a president needs to succeed on a public policy basis.

======================

  1. I want  a policy wonk. Fundamental to any leader is an ability to understand that the choices aren’t between good and bad, but between bad and awful. And you want a president with the deep understanding of policy to figure out which is which.
  2. I want someone to appoint qualified people. The vast, vast majority of America has no idea who the head of the EPA, FEMA, Department of Energy, or HUD are. You know why? Because they didn’t become part of any grand screw-up. There’s something to be said for not knowing who they are, as it means they are most likely doing their jobs without conflict.
  3. I want someone that doesn’t make rash decisions.  And that’s because policy is full of nuance. Slow and deliberate is the way to go, so that a president can absorb as much information and as many opinions as possible.
  4. I want someone who can keep his cool under pressure. Every president will face pressure, be it from foreign conflicts, hostage/kidnapping/terrorism or domestic political problems. Being able to take the long view, instead of instantly ranting and raging, is a quality to be admired.
  5. I want a scandal-free administration.  When was the last time a president walked out of the oval office after 8 years without major scandal?
  6. I do not want drama. If there is some sort of drama regarding the White House, it is never, ever good.
  7. I want someone who doesn’t blanch at the prospect of admitting error and reversing course. Every president will make mistakes, and ego often gets in the way of admitting error. But it’s far better than making the situation worse by continuing on, in the desperate hope the bad decision will magically turn good.
  8. I want someone with a fundamental appreciation for the fact that ignorance and arrogance are both awful in a president, and together they can be deadly. And the wisdom to recognize it in themselves.

I put up these qualities, instead of issues, because there are thousands of issues that will cross a president’s desk.  Cherry-picking what I liked (or didn’t like) would miss the point about the human qualities that someone should have to be an effective president.

 

January 10th, 2025

Sam Altman, Lawyers and the Money Shot Fail

Sam Altman is the OpenAI chief honcho, which released ChatGPT. And Ann Atlman is his younger sister. She has sued him for sexually abusing her starting from the age of three. Sam has denied the charge.

But this post isn’t really about that. In fact, I didn’t bother to even read the complaint.

This post instead is about Ann Altman’s lawyer, Ryan Mahoney. What did Mahoney do to raise my ire to write of him? Nothing wrong. He did something that made me applaud.

If people write about lawyers doing crappy things, shouldn’t we take notice when the lawyering is done right?

Some years ago I had screamed into the blogosphere about lawyers that put ginormous monetary claims in their lawsuits here in New York. It’s not allowed anymore, but some do it anyway. (See: Death by Red Bull, An $85M Lawsuit, And The Money Shot; and The $30M Dog Bite)

The lawyers do it because they don’t know the law (unlikely) or because they care more about seeing their names in the paper, to generate more traffic to their firms.

But each time it happens, a couple things occur: First, the headlines lead their stories with the money quotes, so the story is now about the money, not the safety failure that brought on the injury. Second, the headlines are things that jurors remember, making jury selection more difficult than it already is as many people have their minds poisoned by outlier claims that make the headlines.

Now back to the Sam Altman case and Ryan Mahoney. In this New York Times piece I see the following:

Ms. Altman’s lawsuit requests a jury trial and damages in excess of $75,000. Ms. Altman’s lawyer, Ryan Mahoney, said in an interview with The Times that the amount was the minimum required for a federal suit of this kind. He said that if the suit proceeded to a jury trial, he and his client would seek “an amount that fully compensates my client for what happened to her.”

Mahoney was offered the money shot. “Tell us how much you want!,” asked the press. He declined. So the story is now about the issue, and not the money. The money bit is buried in the 10th paragraph of a 12-paragraph article.

I have no idea if the case has merit or not, but for my purposes that doesn’t matter today. I just see a lawyer handling the press the way it is supposed to be done.

 

November 25th, 2024

Musk Puts Another Nail in the Twitter Coffin

Elon Musk has confirmed that, if you put a link in a Twitter post, the post will be throttled. In other words, it is a negative for his algorithm.

Twitter, of course, has had numerous problems since Musk bought it and tried to re-brand it as X. Among those problems was the destruction of its moderation system that held trolls, scammers, harassers and bigots at somewhat at bay. And an algorithm that pushes Musk’s own views on people, in order to make himself the center of attention.

But throttling tweets that include a link is a different kind of problem, and one that goes back to the essence of the web — providing links to outside sources.

When the model user interface came into being, some folks were terrified of outbound links, under the theory that you don’t want to send people away from your own site.

(Some still are. Many publications, for example, will write about a lawsuit but fail to provide a link to the legal filing being discussed.)

But Google rose to great fame (and fortune) by sending people away from its site. It was the very meat of its original business model, to simply give people the bit of information that they sought. And as result it became a trusted (back in the day) website for people to return to and it became the world’s leading site for search.

Bloggers followed suit. We understood that if you provided outbound links to other sites that had interesting information, the reader would trust your site as a value. And return.

Indeed, when I started blogging I did weekly round-ups of personal injury blogs, and hi-lighted what others were writing. Goodbye, adios, and come back soon was the way I thought about it.

And bloggers, for the most part, continue to do just that. See, for example, almost any post on Scott Greenfield’s Simple Justice, Kevin Underhill’s Lowering the Bar, or Michael Dorf’s Dorf on Law. This remains true for any half-decent blog you can find, and there are many.

But Musk is doing the opposite, trying to stop people from posting links by telling folks he will throttle their posts. He is terrified of people leaving and wants to build a walled garden.

So be it. And, perhaps, this is yet another reason that Twitter users will continue to flee. Why, for example, would I bother to post a link to this post on Twitter when I know its algorithm will throttle it?

Bluesky is now exploding popularity, as racing to get more servers to help it along. It will no doubt continue to do so as long as Musk keeps doing his thing.

Unlike Twitter, Bluesky gives tremendous moderation tools to the user. And unlike Facebook’s Threads app, Bluesky doesn’t try to force feed you content that it wants you to get (resulting in tons of garbage posts in your feed, wherein folks desperately farm for engagement by asking dumb questions).

If Musk’s intent was to kill Twitter, he’s continuing to do an excellent job of it.

 

November 11th, 2024

New E-Filing Scam Targets Lawyers

Lawyers have been targeted for scams in the past (Lawyers targeted in check scam). But this one is new: Emails that appear to be messages from a court’s electronic filing system.

Attorneys are sent an alert with an update that requires immediate action. Then then you get an email with a link containing a virus. As per the federal courts:

According to the IT Security Office for the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, the fake Notices of Electronic Filing prompt recipients to reply immediately. Recipients are then sent an email containing a link to access fake case documents that direct users to a malicious website.

You’ve been warned.

According to Law.com:

Some of the messages originate from email addresses with the domain name “uscourts.gov.ecf.digital,” representing themselves as clerks alerting NEF warnings, and indicating that the attorney is required to provide a response.

If you don’t want malicious code mysteriously dropped into your computer, be wary. Always be wary.

Always.