In this thread in General Questions, StarvingButStrong asks a good question, and Billdo, Cliffy and others provide great, on-point, and sound answers. Just what I love to see in GQ, and if the thread ended there, it would be a great example of why I like this place. An honest question asked, a question well answered, and everyone is happy.
But instead of the thread ending, Xema, Drooling Idiot #1 shows up and tells the OP to be evasive, to pretend to be stupid and to lie (yes, Xema saying “Tell each lawyer that his client was hit by the other, but certainly deserved it due to the provocation he gave” is a lie.) Then Balthisar, Drooling Idiot #2, shows up and advocates charging the lawyers for the information, which no ethical lawyer would do.
That quickly, because of two drooling idiots, the thread went from a great example about why I like this place to one about why I hate this place. For every Cliffy and Billdo out there fighting ignorance, there’s a Xema and Balthisar out there flinging even more of it. It certainly is taken longer than we thought.
You are right on, Hamlet. Those kind of answers, painfully idiotic as they are, would maybe have a place in IMHO but certainly not in GQ. The Moderators should be way more strict in that forum and keep out stupid ass answers and lame jokes. It should take someone on the level of handy to be banned for fucking up GQ with stupid crap.
While I agree with you that they weren’t being helpful, how is Xema’s statement a lie, assuming that:
Each man hit the other man?
The part about “deserving” it is a matter of opinion, not a factual statement, right? (If SBS says that each man hit the other man first, that would of course entail one lie).
As for the idea of charging the lawyers, that was ignorant, but clearly not offered as advice from an attorney.
It was noise in the signal-to-noise ratio, no doubt, but I don’t see either piece of advice as actively harmful. Just unhelpful.
The questions were:Do I have to answer questions asked by a lawyer in this situation?
Can I just refuse to talk to him completely?
If I don’t talk…before the trial, he won’t know, will he?
Would the lawyer just give up on using me for a witness eventually?Xema gave an opinion as opposed top a factual answer - but occurs on an hourly basis in General Quesations. The GQ forum description reads: “Got a factual question for the Teeming Millions (and possibly Cecil) to consider? Post it here.” It doesn’t say only factual answers can be posted.
Balthisar’s opinion contained a question that wasn’t a hijack and referred to the questions posed in the OP - so I don’t see how it rised to the level of drooling ignorance.
StarvingButStrong provided an update, thanked everyone who replied to the thread, used her information filtering skills and went along her merry way. If the OP (or the opining attorneys in that thread) showed no outward signs of being perturbed, why the pitting?
Well, i have no particular dog in this fight, but the above statement did intrigue me.
To my knowledge, lawyers pay witnesses all the time. Now, i realise that these people are not generally witnesses to a specific incident, but are generally expert witnesses called to give testimony on a subject within their particular field of professional expertise,
But i am curious as to where the ethics and the legalities of paying witnesses starts and finishes. Does the law, or the legal profession itself, have clear guidelines about which witnesses can and cannot be paid for testimony?
And if i had checked the other thread properly, i would have seen that Gfactor pretty much answered my question already.
And, given that his answer (supported by citations) was that the issue varies from state to state, it seems that Balthisar’s comment was not completely inappropriate.
I gotta’ say, humorous off-the-cuff remarks in ALL of the forums are a big part of what makes the SDMB so great.
The two referenced posters were so far off base that I saw their postings as humor, pure and simple. Most people who are fool enough to take those posts seriously WOULD NOT BE ON THE SDMB.
Wow. I meant to cuss in this pit thread, but forgot. Fuck me.
Well now, I’m not defending them. Balthisar’s remark did not appear to respond to the OP. But then we all hijack threads occasionaly. Just so we are all on the same page, here twoexamples of state bar ethics opinions saying that a lawyer may ethically compensate fact witnesses. So maybe Balthisar can remove the bib.
