Posted by
NOTLEGALROADKILLYET on Tuesday, August 22, 2006 11:50:03 PM
I am more than a little leery of the "asset to the community" standard that the commission applied.
When I prepared my input to the commission, I not only provided a series of detailed allegations, I provided almost 200 pages of court documents to support those allegations. I highlighted the passages in those documents that made my points and provided a cover sheet for each court filing or order explaining what it demonstrated. The commissioners could not possibly have been ignorant of the events in my lawsuit I do not believe that anyone on the commission would attempt to defend this judge's execution of his duties in my lawsuit.
I think it is reasonable to assert that most would agree that the judge "messed up" in administering my lawsuit.
I like thought experiments. Let's conduct a thought experiment and change the facts a bit.
Suppose that instead of choosing to be an attorney, this judge had made medicine his life's work. I happen to like DO's, having grown up in Kirksville, MO, (the home of Osteopathy) so we will give our friendly judge an honorary DO degree and put him to work. Most DO's are family doctors. Let's also make him a multi-hour community volunteer. Just for good measure, let's make him the only doctor in a 75 mile radius There can be little doubt that our DO is considered an "asset to the community" by everyone in the community.
Eventually, he is going to "mess up," make a mistake, perhaps a big mistake, a mistake that costs tens of thousands of dollars to correct. His patient will talk to a Trial Lawyer who will happily go after the doctor's insurance company. Once they have a potential lawsuit, no one in the legal community recognizes or even considers the concept of "asset to the community." They won't consider that by winning the lawsuit they drive up the cost of the doctor's insurance, and they won't consider the possibility that he might have to move to a city where he could make enough to both pay his insurance and support his family.
If our thought experiment is extended to all professions, one quickly learns that the only two professions that the legal community applies this "asset to the community" standard to are lawyers and judges.
Care to bet that the four attorneys on our local retention commission argued long and hard to apply the "asset to the community" standard to this judge?
Judges protect attorneys. Attorneys protect judges. No one protects the public.