“The Postman Always Rings Twice,” James M. Cain’s novel that is better known as a 1946 film noir classic starring Lana Turner and John Garfield, has a famous ironic twist. The story’s hapless drifter narrator escapes punishment for a murder he helped commit, but gets executed anyway for a death that was really an accident. Cosmic justice is done, if not legal justice. It turns out that the postman rang twice for ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, too. Continue reading
Law & Law Enforcement
Ethics Dunce: Judge Darrell Russell
Domestic abuse is a crime, a social malady and a sickness, one that frequently afflicts both the batterer and the victim. It is an especially infuriating crime to prosecute, because the couple drawn together in an abusive relationship often form bonds that even the threat of injury and death won’t loosen sufficiently to allow one party to testify against the other. Thus domestic abuse goes unpunished more often than not, and some prosecutors have decided that in the interest of society, these cases need to be prosecuted whether the beating victim likes it or not. They are correct. Violence and battery are crimes against the state, not just one individual. There is not much a prosecutor can do, however, when the judge is an Ethics Dunce, prepared to go the extra mile to free a loving couple for future mayhem. This brings us to the case of Baltimore Judge Darrell Russell,who recently charted new waters in judicial abuse of power, arrogance, incompetence, and irresponsibility. Continue reading
Ethics Quote of the Week
“One of my students this year has a vaguely Hispanic name but is literally the whitest girl you’ve ever met. Her mother straight out asked, ‘If we mark she’s Latino on the application, is that something that they would ever challenge?’ I told her honestly my best guess, which was no. And, if early admissions are any indication, it seemed to work.”
—-A guidance counselor (and former Ivy League admission officer) at a private school in the South, quoted by Kathleen Kingsbury in her report for The Daily Beast on dubious college admission tactics.
This, of course, is completely unethical for both the student and the counselor, who is exactly like a tax attorney or accountant who lets a client know that his fraudulent return will almost certainly not be audited by the I.R.S. Both of those professionals violate their ethics codes by aiding and abetting such conduct, and the quoted counselor is just as bad.
What should the counselor have said? Continue reading
More “The Good Wife” Ethics
The CBS legal drama “The Good Wife” has a good cast, well-scripted stories, and apparently a preference for misleading the American public on attorney ethics. Here’s the setting for its most recent set of gaffes: attorney Alicia Florrick (Julianna Margulies) and her supervising partner are battling an evil insurance company (you didn’t really think Hollywood would stay on the health care reform sidelines, did you? With a big vote coming up? ) that refuses to pay for in utero fetal surgery necessary to save an unborn baby from certain death. The insurance company’s attorney has a strong case, but offers a deal: it will pay for the surgery if Florrick’s firm will drop a class action lawsuit against the company. The partner, Will Gardner, refuses the offer: many other desperate members of the class need to make the insurance company pay for treatment, and besides, the law firm, which is in dire financial straits, needs the income that the class action might generate.
There are three things ethically wrong here: Continue reading
Self-Destruction Ethics Alarms: A Woman’s Unethical Quest For Fat
Yesterday, the world heard about Donna Simpson, a New Jersey woman who weighs in at about 500 pounds. She sasy she wants to be the fattest woman alive, and is managing her diet and exercise to achieve that lofty goal. Of course, all those Twinkies and pork rinds cost a lot of money—her weekly grocery bill averages more than $800—so she earns extra cash by putting herself on Gluttoncam, or whatever she calls it, where freakophiles can watch her gorge herself online for a reasonable fee. Her partner, the news reports say, is completely supportive. “I think he’d like it if I was bigger,” giggles Donna. “He’s a real belly man and completely supports me.”
Okaaaaay….
Obviously this situation is unusual…at least, I hope it is. Still, it raises many difficult ethics questions, some with broad implications:
- We are told that it is cruel, greedy and heartless for insurance companies to withhold coverage for “pre-existing conditions,” and should be compelled to insure everyone without regard to special risks. Does this apply to Donna Simpson? Continue reading
Legal Advertising Ethics: The Public’s Not THAT Gullible, 2nd Circuit Rules
The fact that lawyers are prohibited by their professional ethics standards from engaging in conduct that is misleading or dishonest has caused many state bars to hold the profession to restrictions on advertising that would ban most of the TV commercials we see every day for any other product or service. For example, lawyers cannot engage in self-praising hyperbole and say, for instance, that the Firm of Slash and Burn is “the best real estate law firm in Miami,” because the statement is not objectively true or cannot be proven to be accurate.
While many states have gradually surrendered in the battle to keep lawyer advertising unusually forthright and dignified (you can see what monstrosities this has wrought here) New York actually toughened its lawyer advertising rules a few years ago, decreeing.. Continue reading
John Adams: Conflicted?
John Adams’ heroic defense of the British soldiers accused of murder in the Boston Massacre has moved to the front of the line in the competition for favorite historical comparison to the controversy over the so-called “Al Qaeda 7,” the Justice Dept. attorneys under attack for their former representation of Gitmo prisoners. Over at The Legal Ethics Forum, law professor Richard Painter has posted a fascinating essay on John Adams’ own ethical conflicts in his most famous case, and they were far from minor. You can, and should, read it here.
Nomar, Beantown, and the Legacy Obligation
Organizations have histories, and that means they have debts to pay. Time moves on, and personnel changes, but the organization that neglects the human beings who played major roles in defining their image, goals, achievements and success has breached its integrity, and violated its Legacy Obligation.
For nearly eight seasons, shortstop Nomar Garciaparra was the face, heart, and soul of the Boston Red Sox. A spidery gymnast in the field who completed the Holy Trinity of Hall of Fame-bound shortstops—Jeter, A-Rod and “Nomah” —who lit up the American League in the mid-Nineties, Garciaparra was a home-grown fan idol. He did everything wonderfully and with panache; Ted Williams, the city’s reigning baseball god, pronounced him his official successor.
Then, suddenly, it all unraveled. Continue reading
Hollywood Ethics: Variety’s Conflict of Interest Problem
That show biz media “bible”, Variety, finally seems to have reached the point where it can no longer pretend that its inherent conflicts of interest don’t exist. The magazine is simultaneously in the business of promoting movies, TV and stage shows, accepting expensive ads from producers, and depending on inside access for its reporting, yet it purports to offer objective critical reviews of the output of the very people and companies whose patronage it depends upon to exist. It’s an impossible balancing act, and truth be told, Variety reviews have never had much credibility in Hollywood or anywhere else. But whatever pretense of integrity the publication had came crashing down with a lawsuit by Calibra Pictures, a small independent film company that had signed a $400,000 contract with Variety in which the publication promised to help Calibra’s new release, “Iron Cross,” ( featuring the final performance of the late, great, Roy “We’re gonna need a bigger boat!” Scheider, who died in 2008) find both a distributor and critical acclaim. [ Ethics Violations #1 and #2—Dishonesty and Breach of Integrity: Don’t promise what you can’t deliver, and don’t sell your independence and objectivity] Continue reading
Pit Bulls and Bigotry
Writer Charles Leerhsen has experienced a conversion. After witnessing his best friend being viciously attacked and nearly killed on a city street without provocation, he has embraced bigotry with both hands. Now he writes screeds condemning not the attacker, but all individuals of the attacker’s race. In a passionate and angry essay for The Daily Beast, he denigrates not only those individuals but also anyone who defends them, such as “certain PC urban professionals who long to tell the world that they are super-sensitive and understanding souls.”
It’s an ugly essay, emotional, doctrinaire, and illogical, employing the well-worn racist technique of generalizing from the individual to the group and back again. Why would any respectable media outlet print such bile?
Perhaps it is because Leerhsen’s best friend was Frankie, a Wheaton terrier, and Frankie’s attacker was a pit bull. Continue reading
Ethics Alarms 