March 28th, 2018

In Defense of the Unicorn: Baseball, Peace and a Better Day

An old baseball of mine that I had stitched back together as a kid to keep the leather on. You didn’t buy them by the dozen back then. Every baseball was precious.

It’s in the air. I can smell it. And so can Jay Breakstone, appellate lawyer and wordsmith extraordinaire who, in 2014, penned Baseball, Poetry and Crocuses (Pitchers and Catchers Report Next Week!) for this space.

No stranger to conflict (of which he writes today), Breakstone grew up in East Flatbush, the product of a tumultuous mixed marriage: His mom was a Brooklyn-born die hard Dodger fan and his Dad a Bronx-born Yankee fan.

He survived that experience to emerge as a die hard Mets fan.

Perhaps, if the union of Dodger and Yankee fans can mint something like Jay, there is hope yet for the country:

—————————–By Jay Breakstone———-

America has become such an uncomfortable place to live nowadays. When I say “uncomfortable,” I thoroughly understand that such terms are relative. But being an American has meant that we worry about a lot less than those in other countries and I understand that.

Yet, to wake up every morning to the headache of political soap opera is taking its toll on me. I am more irascible than usual; quicker to yell at the morning news and yell at my family from dawn until dusk. This is not good, for there is a thin line between being a lovable curmudgeon and a raging lunatic. What to do?

And there it is. Shining through the gloom like a landing beacon on a dark runway; like Lady Liberty in the harbor; like Mom’s chicken soup, a Nathan’s hot dog or pastrami on rye from Katz’s Delicatessen. Goodness knows, its done it before; brought hope where there was none and salvation to the depths of hell. Opening Day.

Yes, Virginia, there is a new tomorrow, and sacrilegious as it may be, God lives only 60 feet, 6 inches from home plate. In fact, whether you believe in God or not, you can still believe in baseball.

You can be a Democrat and believe in baseball. You can be a Republican and believe in baseball. You can be a Democrat or a Republican, sit side by side in the same temple, and believe in baseball together. You can speak English, Spanish, Greek, Serbo-Croat, even Pig Latin, and believe in baseball.

You can belong to the N.R.A., the A.C.L.U., the National White People’s Party, the N.A.A.C.P. or the Mickey Mouse Club and believe in baseball. Because, as it says in an oft-forgotten footnote in Genesis: “And G-d saw baseball, and it was good.”

Have you ever noticed those old pictures of men in suits and hats, sitting in ball parks during the business day? Why weren’t they at work? One of them, a young attorney in New York City, nearly lost his job because he kept sneaking out to Giants games at the Polo Grounds.

Nonetheless, the kid made good, but never forgot the magic of baseball. So, when he worked his way up to being President of the United States and the country he led was in the depths of soul-shattering gloom following Pearl Harbor, Franklin Roosevelt knew one thing that would cut through the fog: baseball. He declared that the Axis could do many bad things, but it could never stop baseball, which continued throughout the war.

Time and time again, baseball has been that never changing point in an ever-changing American universe. To those of us who were at Shea Stadium on September 22, 2001, it was much the same thing. Roosevelt’s words to Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis, baseball’s Commissioner in 1942, still rang true: “I honestly feel that it would be best for the country to keep baseball going[.]”

I suggest that we need baseball now more than ever (as if there was ever a time we didn’t.) I think everyone should stay home from work on Opening Day and head to the ballpark instead.

If need be, dig up that old note from your mother, the one that says “Arthur could not be in school today. He has Dengue Fever.” If you can’t find it, I’m sure you can still forge her signature the way you did on the original. Eat a hot dog. Have a beer. Most important, let it go.

Nothing is so bad if it’s Opening Day, where all the past is prologue. Sure, it could turn out lousy, like the 1942 Brooklyn Dodgers, who had a phenomenal season, were in first place until September, only to lose the pennant to St. Louis. But on Opening Day, the Boys from Brooklyn took the opener, 7-5.

Opening Day is all about tomorrow. It always has been.

 

March 14th, 2018

Gunfire in the Classroom is No Accident

The story popped up yesterday that a teacher in California “accidentally” fired his gun in a classroom. He was teaching a class in gun safety at the time.

Headline after headline read that way: Accident. Accident. Accident.

No. No. A thousand times no. ‘Twas no accident. It was negligence. There’s a difference, for this was preventable with the exercise of reasonable care.

I covered this ground in 2013 when the NYPD changed its Accident Investigation Squad to the Collision Investigation Squad. According to then Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly, “In the pqast, the term ‘accident’ has sometimes given the inaccurate impression or connotation that there is no fault or liability associated with a specific event.”

An accident it when a deer bolts into the path of a car. A collision occurs when a second car is following too closely and slams into the first. One may not be avoidable, no matter how much due care you use. The other, very much avoidable.

Accidents do not simply “happen.”

And so it is with guns. Accidents don’t really happen.

As Jim Wright points out at Stonekettle, “there are no accidents with guns.”

For example, if a child picks up a gun to play cops and robbers with a sibling and shoots it, it is not an accident. It was negligence by the gun’s owner for leaving a loaded pistol in an unsecured place.

Part of the problem here is that the use of the word “accident” has been ambiguous. Similar to bimonthly meaning either twice a month or every other month. Or the word “sanction” meaning something has been approved (a sanctioned event) or is a punishment.

Accident has been unfortunately used in both matters where there is fault and matters where there is not. But there is a massive difference in meaning, particularly with news events such as this, where a shot is fired in a classroom.

Media headline writers should recognize this problem. They are, after all, in the word smithing business.

It’s lazy to use the word accident when it doesn’t actually convey the true meaning of what happened. It makes negligent conduct appear as if there was nothing that could be done to stop it.

And that is the media being negligent, for with the use of due care, the persistence of such ambiguous conduct can easily be crippled.

 

 

 

February 26th, 2018

Dumbledore’s Army Comes Alive In Gun Debate

Cameron Kasky, a 17-year-old student at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, confronting Sen. Marco Rubio live on CNN for his support for the NRA.

(We interrupt our regular programming to bring you this off-topic, special message that might affect your life.)

Like many people, I’ve watched in awe as an army of teenagers has taken on the National Rifle Association and the extraordinary proliferation of guns across America. As organic as any movement ever created, it spontaneously erupted from the survivors at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, FL, who were cowering in classrooms and closets as their classmates and teachers were gunned down.

It started with three busloads of kids, some coming straight from funerals, going to Tallahassee to vent their anger at those who are supposed to  represent them.

That awe comes from watching kids use their old playrooms to meet and organize on one of the great political debates of the day. That’s a helluva thing, no matter what your political persuasion. After all, at every graduation I’ve ever attended — and probably every one that you attended too — the mantra has always been that the graduating group are our future leaders. And there they are leading, whether they were prepared for it or not.

To put this into kid-perspective, consider that the Columbine massacre happened in 1999. And many more have taken place since then. That means that today’s high school seniors, born in 2000, have always lived with instructions regarding potential attacks, lock-downs and places to hide.

The objectives list, on our basement chalkboard that my kids have used throughout their lives.

But kids brought up to hide are not hiding now. They’re out there now in force, not only in Florida, but around the country. One of my own teenagers, just days after starting a Facebook group to organize and see how students here in Westchester County can assist, had 500 members in just days.  And that’s for a strictly local group in a place that already has decent gun safety laws. Kids are interested in doing what they can. Big time.

My oldest — soon bound for college — met with some friends in the basement playroom this weekend. An initial objectives list they put together on their old chalkboard is shown here.

In the Harry Potter series, the Hogwarts kids form  Dumbledore’s Army to combat the dark arts. Today’s kids were raised on these books, which  inspired so many to become active readers. That fantasy world of a kid army at Hogwarts, in one sense, seems to be springing to life around us as they mobilize.

Battle, of course, can take many forms. None are so stupid as to believe that a magic wand will suddenly make them safe.

Raised in the era of social media, they know that their weapons of choice will have nothing to do with physical (or magical) arms, but the art of mass movements, protest and persuasion. And voting as they all come of age.

The #BoycottNRA movement has already caused the NRA to lose valuable relationships with car companies, airlines, hotels, banks and insurance companies. One would expect that less money means less financial support for politicians that have been doing its bidding in exchange for contributions.

Decreasing the power of the NRA is already underway. And that is before any nationwide boycotts or walkouts have occurred to help bring yet more attention to the issue. In other words, it is likely that the Florida kids are already making a substantial political difference.

Some have now started pushing their older brothers and sisters to avoid Florida for spring break, to pressure pressure their legislators to act.

As they organize, they will, of course, make mistakes, though none will be as grave as those that allow guns to be purchased willy-nilly, with less regulation than a driver’s license.

Like others who’ve preceded them in the gun debate over the decades, some will allow themselves to get sucked into semantic discussions about what constitutes an assault weapon, and lose sight of the fact that 30,000+ people are killed each year in the U.S. by firearms. It’s the easy access to guns in some states that has had an extraordinary impact on suicides, drunken rages, homicides (of the “regular” kind) and accidents negligence. [updated with link]

Others will get sucked into debates over protecting schools, as if malls, movie theaters, restaurants, and the entrances to sports/music venues (among other places that people gather) couldn’t also be targets for madmen and terrorists alike.

And still others will get sucked into Second Amendment debates. They should not. For it isn’t a question of “supporting” the Second Amendment, but of its (mis)interpretation. Even under the deeply strained logic of D.C. v. Heller that reversed prior law to say that the Second was an individual right instead of a collective one belonging to a well-regulated militia, it didn’t say that all gun safety laws were unconstitutional. It said that an absolute ban was.

Finally, some will try to argue with the gun fetishists, which are the loudest group of opponents to gun safety. This is useless and unproductive. Focus on the politicians, and the responsible gun owners who are, like you, appalled by the epidemic of gun deaths.

Given that many states that have good gun safety laws have withstood legal challenges — and those laws correlate to lower rates of gun deaths that those with lax safety laws — one should not stop arguing for gun safety.

Most folks don’t know that New York has one of the lowest rates of gun deaths in the nation, not just because of our gun safety laws, but because our surrounding states also have them making it less likely that they will be trafficked into New York. The graph you see here is extraordinary, with that grouping states in the lower left corner of NY, CT, MA, NJ and RI.

(Edit: Hours after posting this, an article appeared on the Second Circuit Court of Appeals upholding New York City’s solid gun safety law in the face of Second Amendment challenge.)

If the kids were asking me — and none of them have, though it hasn’t stopped me from offering up my two bits — I’d urge them to do everything possible to maintain the focus on tightly restricting access to guns of all kinds. It’s the big picture of 30,000+ annual gun deaths that counts, and they shouldn’t let anyone try to play small ball with them.

As the kids step forth into politics, they might well be asking how it is that, when an overwhelming majority of America wants gun safety, it hasn’t yet happened. They may find themselves looking for the first time at how the influence of gerrymandering and pubic financing for elections has resulted in radicals being elected to office. The subjects are related.

Hopefully, they will also figure out fast not to overstate their case, giving opponents material to latch on to in order to distract the conversation.

The gun debate is hardly new, and was the subject of an early ’70s All in the Family episode when I was growing up. It’s been fought over long before this generation was born. The question is, will our Twenty-First Century Kids succeed where my generation has failed?

Don’t let anyone tell you “it’s too soon” after a tragedy. It has been going on for decades. It will not magically end on its own.

Go kids, go. Your parents are cheering you on to accomplish something that prior generations have been unable to do.

Go forth into the battle for gun safety laws. All of our lives depend on it.

 

February 16th, 2018

The Lacrosse Ball and the Lawsuit

Addy Tauro head shot, Syracuse University

I’ve got this thing about sports, injuries and lawsuits. And that’s because of two things that seem to be in conflict: First, I bring lawsuits regarding injuries for a living. But second, I am also the race director for a 13-mile trail race.

And you know what? Folks get injured while trying to run fast over rocks, roots and other hazards that include other runners. The risk of wiping out comes with the territory.

So over the past years I’ve written about injuries (and lawsuits) from snowboarding, softball practice, horseback riding, auto racing, and water slides.

With that intro now over, we turn to lacrosse and a decision from last week.

The lacrosse drill at Syracuse University was conceptually simple for the women’s varsity team: Athletes ran down the sidelines while a line of coaches roll balls to them from about 20-25 feet away. The athletes scoop them up and toss them back to the coaches. Then repeat with the next coach.

According to the suit that was ultimately filed, the ground ball part of the drill had never been performed any other way. Except that one coach decided on this one day in the middle of the rolling drill to wing the ball overhand to Addy Tauro as if it were a pass.

Now if Tauro survived said winging of said lacrosse ball without injury, would I be writing about this today?

When one of the coaches whipped it at her head, it was wholly unexpected and she “never even saw it coming,” as she stated in her affidavit.

She suffered a concussion.

She claimed in her suit that throwing a hard rubber lacrosse ball at someone’s head, when she’s not expecting it, is grossly negligent and reckless.

So. Does this case get dismissed under New York’s assumption of risk doctrine because, when engaging in recreational activities, she consented to the commonly appreciated risks of the sport that flow from such participation?

I’ll wait while you ponder. Time’s up.

Rather than answer the lawsuit and go through discovery, Syracuse moved immediately for summary judgment based on the assumption of risk doctrine, and also based on a written waiver that Tauro had signed. They countered her version of events.

And the answer is: Summary judgment for Syracuse was denied on both counts and the case goes forward.

The Appellate Division (Fourth Department) first dispensed with the waiver issue, since such waivers are against public policy for people who act with gross negligence or recklessness. (see Gross v. Sweet and GOL 5-326)

And on the assumption of risk doctrine, the court stated that if the claims by the plaintiff were true (and at this early stage a court must make that assumption) that she did not assume these kinds of risks. This risk was not part of the game, as this was a practice. Nor was it an anticipated risk of a pick-up drill that a ball would be thrown at her head.

The court held that a player will not assume the risks of reckless or intentional conduct, or dangerous conditions that the coach created over and above the usual dangers that are inherent in the activity.

Assumption of risk goes to the anticipated and appreciated risks. Which is why, if one is writing a waiver, it might be wise to educate the participant as to all of the anticipated risks. Thus, while a waiver might not excuse negligence based on public policy grounds, it might be quite useful for assumption of risk grounds.  “Look!,” a defendant could now safely claim, “she knew about this risk!”

You know those sports waivers written in ALL CAPS that appear designed to dissuade the participant from actually reading them? They are for shit, in my opinion, and really don’t serve the purpose of educating to real risks. Because they are not being read. Nobody reads them except for the lawyers that wrote them. And then they hope that the legal mumbo jumbo somehow imparts knowledge of the risks?

The one I wrote for my trail race gets read. And I know that because people will routinely come up to me and tell me so. It was crowd-sourced  years ago, with the idea of doing everything possible to make it readable, and therefore useful for actually educating people on the risks of participating. If anyone decides to create a Waiver Hall of Fame, I’m going to submit it.

The case is Tauro v. Gait and Syracuse University

 

 

February 14th, 2018

Trump’s Lawyer, the Porn Actress, the 130G Payoff and Attorney Ethics

Stephanie Clifford (aka Stormy Daniels)

Yesterday news broke that longtime Donald Trump attorney, Michael D. Cohen, was responsible for paying $130,000 to porn actress Stephanie Clifford (aka Stormy Daniels) on behalf of Trump in 2016, before the election.

“In a private transaction in 2016, I used my own personal funds to facilitate a payment of $130,000 to Ms. Stephanie Clifford,” Michael Cohen said in a statement. “Neither the Trump Organization nor the Trump campaign was a party to the transaction with Ms. Clifford, and neither reimbursed me for the payment, either directly or indirectly.”

When the underlying stories of they payoff started in January, many folks immediately started looking to see if such a payment violated campaign finance laws. And indeed, that is what most of his statement addressed yesterday.

But I’m looking at the New York Rules of Professional Conduct. Those of us in the personal injury bar know, for example, that advancing funds to clients is a big fat no-no. Does the same provision apply here?

The relevant rule reads as follows:

RULE 1.8:

CURRENT CLIENTS:
SPECIFIC CONFLICT OF INTEREST RULES

(e) While representing a client in connection with contemplated or pending litigation, a lawyer shall not advance or guarantee financial assistance to the client…

OK, you see that ellipses and you want to know what comes after, right? There are three exceptions, each of which invite an investigation to see if they apply:

(1) the transaction is fair and reasonable to the client and the terms of the transaction are fully disclosed and transmitted in writing in a manner that can be reasonably understood by the client;

(2) the client is advised in writing of the desirability of seeking, and is given a reasonable opportunity to seek, the advice of independent legal counsel on the transaction; and

(3) the client gives informed consent, in a writing signed by the client, to the essential terms of the transaction and the lawyer’s role in the transaction, including whether the lawyer is representing the client in the transaction.

The full statement is below and you can decide for yourself if you think it looks like an advance or guarantee of financial assistance (not because Trump needs it, but to hide it). (Edit: Whether there was litigation involved — matrimonial or contract? — is impossible for us to know from here.) Another problem may be that, from Trump’s perspective, this isn’t a transaction if he claims not to be repaying the money.

At the very least, it seems that Cohen has invited an investigation from the Disciplinary Committee. I’ve long said that Trump is a one-man bar exam with never-ending legal issues unlike any other person. That pattern continues today.

The statement: