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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (Aug. 21, 1995)
VIEWPOINTS EDITORIALS, OPINIONS. LETTERS TO THE EOITOR U.S. gives $3.1 million to prevent lengthy trial ■ OUR OPINION » ’ ■ • awards illustrate legal system problems The U.S. government agreed to pay $3.t million to a while separatist and his family last week for the shooting death of his wife and son The financial settlement of the now infamous Ruby Kidge incident pits eded hearings set to determine whether federal agents' at tions during the Idaho mountain stand-off were negligent As sue h. a signifi cant sum of taxpayers' money will now he trans ferred to a man who just two years ago the govern merit sought to i onvit t in the death of a federal mar shal. 1 ,aw\ers for the l tnitnd Stales have said the settle ment prevented a trial and possibly larger award if the government pursued the matter in court and lost Randall Weaver had sought $200 million In damages It is, however. ( uses such as tins that shine a bright light on the dark holes in our legal system. Weaver who has been living on social security, and his daughters will now be able to live in comfort for the rest of their fixes not !>ei ause of any proven neg ligence on the part of feder al agents, but bei ause the Federal bureau of Investigation had more to lose by trying to prove its innocence than by giving in to Weaver's demands As the FBI far es more ( barges her arise of its actions during the siege on the Branch Davidian com pound ill \V,e o. Texas, it would appear that the agem \ was simply trying to get a rather ugly monkey off its bar k in preparation for what could he rougher times ahead. But tin* financial settle ment will not prevent a full inquiry into the at tions of federal agents in the Idaho incident, As sue h. not only h.ivu Americans forfeited millions of dollars !o a whito separatist, but they will still have to endure weeks, if not months, of hearings before the end of the year II federal agents were neg ligent in the shooting death of Weaver's wife and son, it would be difficult to deny the Weaver family monetary compensation for its loss 1 hat. however, hns yet to be proved The government has ele< t ed to compensate the Weavers for a loss that may. in fact, have been caused by Weaver's actions rather than those of federal agents Weaver initiated the stand off by refusing to leave hts home when feder al agents arrived to arrest him tor illegal weapons sales. While it has yet to lie determined who fired the first shots, it is Weaver's criminal activity that initiat ed federal intervention. Americans have just paid $:t 1 million to a com ic ted criminal because it was i heaper than fori ing him to prove his case If we continue to dole out money to plaintiffs for no other reason than to prevent the expense of a trial or a potential loss. Americans will continue to slide into the depths of a sue-bappv culture If we still hold to the tenets of innocent until proven guilty, plaintiffs should not be an arded damages until they have proved the guilt of the defendant. Without that foundation, defendants, whether indi v iduals or federal agenc ies, become vic tims of legal blai kmail We will live within a system of "justice' that rewards plaintiffs for the inconvenience they c ause would be defendants rather than for their abil ity to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. The Oogon f m#ra*d <t pubu-Wsd ctotfy Monday through Frtdtey dunrig |h# ****>1 »«*w and Tuesday and Thuftday (kmr>Q the lurnme* t»y the Oregon D&fy t mania Pub&*hmg Co l#K . a* the UfwvfKvty of Oegen. T ugene. 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Cl/r N€ 6okD>AM KN01 HAV( you i GOUOiANS Adt mtv \ o« «£B£ » OPINION Behold a new world: laptops and legalese Law school Two simple word* that moan *o many different things to different people To some, it means a training ground for unethical dtiibags who live to suck the lifeblood of true humans Toothers, it symbolizes what makes our country great the notion that wo are a nation of laws, not of men. and that all people art* ( mated equal, blah. blah, blah Hot to law students it is something else It is a way of life l or most, it's the begin - ning of a career For all. it’s the fieginning of a new, unique way of approaching life For ma, it was the beginning of on enormous mountain of debt I remember two years ago, that first day of registration, feel ing. not so much like a bug, hut more like a spot k o! dust on a hug. I couldn't help hut wonder, was I the admission i ommittee's mistake' I remember looking at the third-year students in silent awe, and 1 swore I saw a halo of light surrounding them. Now of course 1 know better The halo was simply exi ess beer fumes wafting out of their bodies Two years ago I was told that I would leant to think dif ferently, learn to w rite more clearly and coni isely Actual ly, I've learned that common sense has no place in the law . The clear, obviously lair and equitable answer is typically wrong, unless someone lias first written a t.ooo-word chapter in the Oregon Res ised Statutes to make sure that, if you do the right thing, you don't get t arried away and do to much of it Law school has obliterated my communications skills See, e g., this column A few years back 1 was an award winning editorial writer and columnist for the t'nwmld. Today 1 couldn't write my way out of a cardboard hoc i used iii (>!• abl* to show my mi}«• drafts of ray columns and got some useful feedback Today, 1 show her drafts of rescan h memos that might as well he written in Russian Imagine trying to decipher writing w here every other sentence reads “O R S. 2r>-t.(M3(b)(i) (1903). See also State s Dumb Guy. 2H7 Or 843. H4<». 13(1 Sftir tin I i - ht i 1 dissenting) (holding dumb people Min t be held to a reason able person standard)." Sometimes I think I am now capable of having more mean ingful * onver vttions wttn mv (week-old daughter than with adults ()gt hi ih>- great experieniat m lavs m hoti] ts discovering that there is someone in your class who has had more tin pe nances in one lifetime than any other person on the plan et Invariably, a class discus sion will get sidetnu ked hy the person who had a similar incident happen to their cousin, occasionally leading to an impromptu version of Oprah. At first, l thought it was annoying, considering how much I was paying to sit there Did I t are that a contrai - tor had once put a lien on someone's toilets, or that a train/auto accident couldn't have happened the way it was desi ribed by the court because someone had seen similar accidents on Hrscuv 911, and, well, they just don't happen that wav' Eventually. I began to appre ciate the entertainment factor. Bui somehow 1 don't think my professor had prepared his dis cussion around the question of how to avoid execution of a lien against one's toilets Fortunately, just when I'm near being overwhelmed by tile enormity of it all. I'm brought bai k to reality by the following conversation - Per son "So. what do you do?" Me "I’m in law s< bool." Per son 'Oh That's great. What do you think about the O.J Simpson trial?" Me "I pre ferred Marcia Clark’s old hair style." Person: "1 see.” Perhaps the greatest sanity saving devn e I've had in law school is my PowerBook Sure, it's great for taking notes and all. But when the lecture gets too far off base (see Liens. Toi lets, supra), I can fall hack on my games At any given moment, you can stand in back of n law class and watch myriad computer games being played, proving that te< hnolo gy can lie a curse ns well as a blessing This year's entering law stu dents are required to purchase a laptop computer for use in class 1 can't fathom what it will lie like to sit in a room of BO-plus people clacking away at their keyboards and listen ing to the various dings and dongs reverberating from the computers of people who haven’t figured out how to turn the sound off yet. Today. Pll watt h as new law students enter their classes for the first time and learn that college is over. In law school, we have seating charts and attendance. Apparently, the idea that students might pass a class without actually attend ing frightens some people. Sure, I used to find the manda tory attendance ritual annoy ing Hut after two years. I've come to appreciate what it's done for me As 1 begin my third year of law school. I can hold m\ head high look ; • > pie straight in the eye and be confident that l could probably beat them at solitaire Martin Fishtir is a third-year law student at the l 'mversih
