So, some of you may be aware of
this: And the newspaper sourceA lot of people are offended by the city's tone expressed in legal documents that blame a 12 year old for police shooting him: "The city's response stated that Tamir's death and all of the injuries his family claims in the suit 'were directly and proximately caused by their own acts, not this Defendant.'" This isn't the only offensive language in the papers.
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People are pointing to this as racism and in fact it's far worse than racism; it's being completely and utterly out of touch with the human race. This isn't racism, it's legalese B.S. demanded by completely hyper-technical out of touch senior attorneys. And the city says as much right here, "The lawyer who wrote the document was using a
routine defense against such claims, Langhenry said, adding that the city will continue to aggressively defend itself in the case, while exercising greater sensitivity from now on."
Let me try an example with you. What's the difference between these two:
A.)
One two.B.)
One two.
Give up? The insane senior lawyers and law school professors will say "A" is correct and "B" is wrong. Why? Because While both are italicized, the invisible space between the words "One" and "two" is not italicized in "B." And, "B" is also incorrect because the period, as a punctuation at the end, is not italicized.... These are invisible to the eye, and the only way you could see that is to either look at it through a computer program like Microsoft Word (or examining the tags in this post).
If you are in law school, this will mean your grade will drop for each such insane, invisible thing, and your law school professor will think less of you as a person while lowering your GPA (knowing that will lower your chances of finding a job and condemning you to poverty after law school). I'm not joking in the slightest, but I wish I were. Please keep in mind that these same professors NEVER taught me how to get bail for my client or how to file a garnishment to get paid for any lawsuits I might win, but they sure took the time to do this. I learned that on my own.
If you are an associate attorney under some insane senior attorney, then God help you. I have had a Senior Attorney actually throw a red ink stained 50 page motion packet at my head and from 4 inches away from my face, scream at the top of their lungs that I am incompetent and should never have been a lawyer! They will also shout other demeaning, unprofessional, illegal, harassing, soul crushing things that are not repeatable in polite company, because you had the audacity to make a mistake that was literally invisible and in real life completely inconsequential. To these insane senior attorneys, it is important enough to threaten your career, sometimes your physical safety, and destroy their opinion of you as a person who deserves to breathe or even think of being paid. I'm. Not. Joking. In. The. Slightest.
This hyper-technicality happens all the time.
The clothing company "North Face" sued a parody of their brand called "South Butt," and "settled" out of court.... I take that to mean they either bugged the other guy so much they forced some relatively small amount out of it or just effectively dropped the suit. In it's court papers, North Face said that South Butt, "Created confusion in the marketplace." South Butt answered this beautifully by saying,
"the consuming public is well aware of the difference between a face and a butt ..." You can bet some nutjob senior intellectual property attorney demanded that boilerplate language be used, "created confusion in the marketplace," and heaven help you if you dared think this was absurd (it is) if you work under him. This is sadly the norm.
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So back to our example of the police killing the 12 year old in Cleveland. I bet you there was honestly no racial intent on the part of the senior attorney filing that court paperwork. In the same breath, I bet you that senior attorney DEMANDED that language be put in there exactly as it was put in there after several revisions and screaming at younger attorneys, law clerks and secretaries under their supervision who may have dared to point out the insensitivity. By some hyper-technical legal measuring stick, the senior attorney will swear up and down that language is required and they did their job completely as it should have been done.
The rest of us know better--that said attorney has their head up their butt.
Now, because of the sheer extent to which said attorney self righteously had their head up their butt, the Mayor is scrambling to fix this mistake that said attorney swore was not a mistake. This hyper-technical insanity is the best thing that ever happened to the lawyer representing Tamir Rice, the 12 year old who the police shot, and his family. That senior lawyer, is opposing counsel's ace in the hole, because they are going to keep planting their foot squarely in their mouth while demanding to know why everybody keeps asking them how toes taste.
They could've worded this much better while preserving their legal defenses, but something tells me the senior attorney wouldn't hear of it while obsessing over everything. They could've avoided this strategic blunder by incorporating some of the facts into the pleadings and instead of:
Tamir's death and all of the injuries his family claims in the suit 'were directly and proximately caused by their own acts, not this Defendant.'"
Try:
Tamir's
tragic death and all the injuries his family claims were not directly and proximately caused by this defendant, but rather other persons, individuals, and circumstances (to be detailed in the course of discovery) outside defendant's control. These include but are not limited to making the toy gun appear to be a real firearm by removing the orange safety cap, encouraging the child to point what appeared to be a real firearm at members of the public, and individuals calling the police to report a "black male" pointing a gun.
No, there's no good way to do this, but there are better ways and worse ways, and if you're the city's attorney you have to say SOMETHING, if the city wanted to just cut a check, they wouldn't have bothered to hire you, now would they? Even then, the question becomes the size of the check the city cuts and what happens to keep this from happening again.
Same deal when you defend a criminal defendant who murdered somebody. Jesus, you can't just say, "yup, he did it," even and especially if he did. Christ, you have to say SOMETHING, and you can list some defenses/mitigations, but flat out blaming the victim rarely works. You'd get disbarred, sued and probably punched in the face by the guy if he could manage that. Sacrilege!:There are law professors and lawyers out there who think what I said about not marking off for literally invisible mistakes, hyper-technical formatting B.S. and other things are complete insanity upon my part. Some are screaming in rage that I would suggest such a thing, because they've built an unhealthy life upon exactly that. They would say that I'm wrong because facts should
never go in the section of the papers for pleading defenses, and to them I say this is a strategic and stupid mistake on their part. On behalf of the rest of us, this kind of insane hyper-technicality has no place anywhere. It is highly inappropriate to say the least in this case and if it is required, then whatever rules require it need to be changed or at least relaxed a little.
A child died, and there are people who think this hyper-technical stuff matters.... How out of touch can you be?
I truly believe the attorney who filed that isn't a racist. They have an excellent view of their rectum though. This is one of many reasons nobody likes lawyers and why the legal profession is in SO much trouble. It's also one of the reasons I want out of it so damn bad.
TL;DR: Cleveland Police shot some 12 year old kid, thought his toy gun was real. Looked real; it wasn't. Some grumpy old lawyer insisted on using hyper-technical legalese B.S. language and was totally insensitive, and this is a widespread problem Why is the lawyer more interested in stupid hyper-technical crap like this instead of what really happened and how to keep it from happening again? A kid died and the lawyers are obsessed about stupid word structure. Wow.