Year: 2011

Love Your Lawyer? Bad Idea. Love Your Client? Even Worse.

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

This is all your fault, Arnie!

A Connecticut lawyer under fire for commencing a lawyer-client relationship with a woman with whom he was romantically involved made the novel argument that it is good to be in love with your client.  This indicates a profound misunderstanding of human nature and the nature of a lawyer’s duties.

Almost ten years ago, the American Bar Association recommended that state bars include a direct prohibition against lawyers having sexual relations with their clients, and the majority of the states did so. As I have mentioned before, it’s a dumb rule, too broad and too narrow simultaneously, a classic example of how some kinds of unethical conduct do not lend themselves to precise rule-making.  The main problem with the no-sex rules is that they are unnecessary. The legal ethics rules are replete with exhortations to maintain objectivity, independent judgment and to avoid conflicts of interest. Common sense suggests that it is irresponsible to confuse one relationship by adding another; professional standards dictate that combining a professional relationship of independence and with romantic relationships is wrong.  As the D.C. Bar’s Rules of Professional Conduct point out in its comments to Rule 1.7, Conflicts of Interest: Continue reading →

Unethical Website: NewtGingrich.com…But Not In The Way You Think

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

Ah, Dick, what might have been! If only your burglars had broken into Gingrich headquarters!

The pro-Democratic super PAC “American Bridge” bought the domain name http://www.NewtGingrich.com and now uses it to redirect anyone who reaches the site to various Web sites that highlight the ex-Speaker’s many failings, perceived flaws, or the attacks of critics. Among the places it hijacks users to are Freddie Mac’s Web site (a reference to Newt’s high-paid duty as “a historian”), Tiffany’s (where Newt infamously had a rather large bill, as if that has any significance whatsoever except to class-bashers), information about Greek cruises ( as Newt abandoned his campaign earlier this year for a cruise, while his staff labored away), or to the ad Gingrich filmed  with former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in favor of addressing climate change (because being open-minded about climate change isn’t permitted in the GOP).

The Washington Post termed the stunt “clever.” Well, I no longer expect the Post to know the difference between bad ethics and applesauce. Of course the website trick is unethical, deceiving web users and misappropriating a domain that Gingrich himself, and only Gingrich, should be able to employ. Yes, it’s legal. It is still unfair, deceptive and dishonest—wrong. When Richard Nixon’s gang used dirty tricks to upset Democratic rivals in 1968, the Post condemned the conduct as proof of “Tricky Dick’s” willingness to distort the democratic process and win by schemes rather than merit. When a Democratic group uses dirty tricks on a Republican presidential candidate, however, it’s “clever.”

The Post, as well as many of the commenters on its reporting on the faux Gingrich website, embraces the concept of ethics that holds that harmful acts performed against someone it likes is unethical, while the same act taken against someone it opposes is ethical.

There is a word for this delusion.

It’s called bias.

Alek and the Amazing Controllable Christmas Lights

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

I haven’t plugged my friend Alek O. Komarnitsky in quite a while, and since I’m having a hard time keeping up with all the abuse ( and repetitious rationalizations) from the NORML  crowd over on the “Distracted Driving…” thread, this is a good time to re-introduce him.

Back in 2004, Alek received national attention for his whimsical holiday website that allowed people all over the world to turn his elaborate Christmas lights on from their home computers. Everyone had fun, which was clearly Alek’s design. Still, when it became known that his site was a hoax and that the lights going on and off were only an illusion, I weighed in (on The Ethics Scoreboard) with the opinion that perpetrating such a large-scale deception was wrong, no matter how well-intentioned. Alek objected to my criticism, and we had a spirited e-mail debate.

Then, at a significant cost in time and money, Alek devised a way to really let people all over the world turn on his lights. He has done this ever since, and uses the site to raise money to cure Celiac disease. This year, he writes: Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce:The Baseball Writers Association of America

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

"Well, yes, there was THAT, but what really matters is that he was one hell of an assistant coach!"

The high-profile Sandusky/Paterno/Penn State child molestation scandal has shaken the foundation of the sports world, and in the process, given resolve to past victims of child abuse to identify their molesters. The most recent example is veteran Philadelphia sportswriter Bill Conlin, who abruptly resigned from his job as a columnist for the Philadelphia Daily News when he learned that four adults had come forward to accuse him of molesting them when they were children in the 1970s. This created am immediate crisis for the Baseball Writers Association of America, who had this year bestowed its highest honor on Conlin, the J.G. Spink Award. It never looks good when the person you have declared to represent the best of your profession is revealed as drug-dealer, a serial killer, a foreign agent, or a child molester.

Here’s how the BBWAA dealt with the matter on its website, in this “official statement”: Continue reading →

Why Would Anyone Trust A Company That Tricks Them Into Opening Its Junk Mail?

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

" Disclaimer: This document isn't intended to be as misleading as it obviously is."

The firm is Ideal Tax Solutions, and I’m sure, really I am, that the people who run it, which include lawyers bound by the professional ethics rules prohibiting them from engaging in misrepresentation, dishonesty, deceit or fraud, are dedicated and well-intentioned. From an ethics stand-point, however, why anyone would trust a company that markets its services in a blatantly misleading way is beyond my comprehension. Someone must; a lot of someones must. Yet the company introduces itself to potential customers by deceiving them.

The letter arrives in an envelope that works very hard to look like it will contain an official IRS document. The mailing stamp has an elaborate eagle and flag logo; a large 2011 is posted in the lower right-hand column. Also there: a statute number TITLE 18 SEC. 1702 US CODE. There is a window in the envelope, and the address that is visible appears on institutional pink paper.

Oh-oh. Continue reading →

Comments of the Day: “UNICEF’s Unethical War Against International Adoption”

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

A Rumanian child in an orpahanage for "incurables," circa. 1990, enjoys his "heritage."

A post that is a year old recently attracted two important comments, thanks to a link to the essay from another website. The topic is international adoption, an issue that I have a special interest in as the parent of an adopted son who was born in Russia. I have seen first hand the conditions described in these posts, and when I wrote the original article, I was unaware of the substantial movement opposing international adoption, a misguided effort with tragic consequences to the children these people supposedly want to protect. I am aware of it now. It is an especially tragic example of what happens  when tunnel vision and ideology causes individuals to lose perspective and objectivity.

I am taking the unusual step of pairing two comments as the Comment of the Day.  They arrived together, and compliment each other well. You might want to read the original post, “UNICEF’s Unethical War Against International Adoption.”

Here are the Comments of the Day, by Mel and Holly F. Continue reading →

Unethical Quote of the Month: Attorney General Eric Holder

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

“This is a way to get at the president because of the way I can be identified with him, both due to the nature of our relationship and, you know, the fact that we’re both African-American.”

—-Attorney General Eric Holder, explaining what he believes to be the motives of “extreme factions” in their efforts to hold him accountable for the Justice Department’s “Fast and Furious” debacle in an interview with the New York Times.

That's right, Eric. It's not because you've been a pathetic Attorney General---heck, aren't they all?

Ah, the race card! What a versatile, powerful weapon in the arsenal of public figures under scrutiny, criticism and attack who happen to be African-American! How comforting it must be to know that when it gets really difficult, even impossible, to talk your way out of a mess of your own making, there us always this last ditch, accountability-ducking tactic that will cause reporters to recoil, accusers to quail, public sympathy to shift, and Al Sharpton and Tavis Smiley to leap to attention. Play the race card! Jesse and Al have made a career doing it. Clarence Thomas, Barry Bonds, Marion Barry, Armstrong Williams, Herman Cain, and so many others resorted to it. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, but it’s always worth a try…unless, of course, you have sufficient dignity, honesty and integrity to resist the impulse. Say what you will about Charlie Rangel, and I’ve said plenty, but he never claimed that his ethics problems were due to his race. It’s strange to praise someone for not resorting to dishonest and unconscionable tactics, but so automatic is the race card ploy among prominent African Americans in peril that I think Rangel deserves more credit than I gave him. Continue reading →

More Unethical Fun With Twins: It’s Not Nice To Fool The Judge

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

You'll doubtless recall that the same tactic was used in the infamous "Parent Trap" murder trial....

Way back in May of 2010, I wrote about a lawyer who suspected that his criminal defendant had pulled a switcheroo, substituting his identical twin brother for himself in his trial. (He had, too.) That was bad enough, but when a lawyer pulls the same stunt, she has crossed some significant ethical lines that will land her in serious trouble with the judge and probably the bar. Thus when Dorothy Savory, a Kansas City defense attorney, placed her client’s identical twin at the counsel’s table just in time for him to be identified by a witness as the man who had snatched her purse, the judge was furious.

This sleazy tactic is older than Abe Lincoln, and has the theoretical purpose of establishing inherent reasonable doubt by showing that an eye witness has identified the wrong person. It has been long established, however, that doing this is a fraud on the court–deceiving not merely the witness, but the jury and, most important of all, the judge, unless a defense attorney alerts the judge to her intention and gets advance permission to try to fool the witness by seating a fake defendant where the real defendant would normally sit.  There were three things that made what Savory did unethical: Continue reading →

Distracted Driving, Pot, and “The Great Debate”

/ Jack Marshall / 175 Comments

As balm for Christiane Amanpour’s bruises from being kicked off her ABC Sunday show back to CNN, the network honchos let her try a different format this weekend (since nobody was watching anyway.) Styled “the Great Debate,” it pitted conservatives Paul Ryan, the GOP House intellectual, and columnist George Will against soon-to-be-retired Democratic Congressman Barney Frank and Clinton’s former Labor Secretary and perpetual Munchkin Robert Reich for the full hour, exchanging familiar talking points on the usual suspect national issues. The debate wasn’t so great, for several reasons, prime among them being the natural motor-mouth tendencies of Reich and Frank, who, I would guess, took up approximately twice the air time as the conservative pair. The teams were similarly unbalanced in cheer, with Reich as perky as his Lollipop Guild training would suggest, and Frank full of his trademark wisecracks, while Will was dour as ever (when faced with liberal cant, the columnist always looks like my high school Latin teacher did when I was botching the day’s translation) and Ryan radiated the charisma of a certified public accountant.

The most interesting exchange was when George Will derided proposed federal regulations against “distracted driving” as the latest installment of the nanny state encroachment on personal rights, saying that individual freedom should trump the government’s concern for public safety except in the most extreme circumstances. One of the good uses of absolutist reasoning is that it raises a very high bar before breaching a valid principle can even be considered, since it has to be considered as an exception if it is to be contemplated at all. Barring unsafe conduct that increases the likelihood of automobile accidents, however, is not the place for absolutism, but for utilitarianism—rational balancing. Continue reading →

The Hard-Working Mr. McLaughlin

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Michael E. McLaughlin resigned as Chelsea, Massachusetts housing director last month, after it was revealed that he had manipulated his way into a $360,000 salary. Now it is being discovered, thanks to some investigative reporting by the Boston Globe, that McLaughlin wasn’t merely overpaid as perhaps the highest compensated state housing official in the nation. He apparently worked only 15 full days in Chelsea for the entire year, in an epic example of official deception and sloth at taxpayer expense.

The Globe’s smoking gun evidence consists of interviews and phone records, which clearly show that McLaughlin went to extraordinary lengths to avoid performing much work related to his job managing low-income housing in Chelsea. He didn’t appear in Chelsea for half the working days in 2011, choosing to spend 47 weekdays in Maine and Florida with his top assistant and “close personal friend” (ahem!), Linda Thibodeau. Then there were another 21 work days spent at conferences in warm cities like Phoenix to Miami, also usually with the comely Thibodeau to keep him company. Continue reading →