I have no doubt that is is a boilerplate response that was pretty much pulled up and had the girl’s name prepended to the top of it. And I’ll fully support that lawyers must vigorously represent their clients. That doesn’t preclude applying some common sense to their actions. I have trouble with the possibility that no one stopped to consider the shitstorm and PR nightmare that would be stirred up with them asserting that particular defense, boilerplate or not.
I’m also under the impression that the girl/woman made the response public rather than the school district. Without a gag order in place, pretty much anyone not a lawyer with access to the material can publish it.
And as long as there are Youtube commenters and political commenters on FB I’ll be entitled to my internet, thanks.
That’s perfectly reasonable. As it turns out, the School District has withdrawn that defense because of the political shitstorm. And that’s certainly something a lawyer should take into account.
A good lawyer could have preserved the defense for basically the reasons Kimmy_Gibbler lays out while making clear that the district was not suggesting that the girl was responsible for her sexual abuse.
If she was a minor, how could she be considered negligent? If the purpose of this is to advance a possible legal defense/mitigation, I thought minors were legally not responsible for their actions.
Leaving aside the disgusting aspect, how is this going to fly legally? I understand the notion of “throwing everything but the kitchen sink”, but isn’t this the kitchen sink?
In California, the cut-off for responsibility for contributory negligence is 5 years old, I believe. But that’s beside the point, since if the lawsuit claims damages occurring over the ensuing decade, then she could be responsible for her conduct after she turned 18 that contributed to the claimed damages.
… followed by many claims that to not blame the victim would be malpractice! absolute malpractice on the part of the attorney…
Hmmmmm… *If only *someone could have just maybe guessed that blaming the victim would go tits-up in advance…
Perhaps someday we’ll have sophisticated technology that can figure out these things that are too difficult for our esteemed and highly educated attorneys.
You’re conflating the question of what constitutes a reasonable legal position with the question of how to deal with all the people who will offer knee-jerk reactions without knowing the full details. Both are important to being a lawyer. But actions taken to respond to the second problem have no relevance to the first issue.
It looks like the whole thing has gone into mediation and the school’s insurance company is involved. So odds are that there will be a confidentiality agreement involved and we’ll never know how it all works out.
Still. No one realized that this was going to turn into s steaming pot of shit stew when the public became aware? Or were were they deluding themselves that it would never come out?
Yes! A decency simulator for the decency impaired. Some sort of computer program which would help lawyers understand what people with a conscience attatch outrage to. Unfortunately it would require someone with a sense of decency to program it and they would never do so once they discovered its intent.
On a side note can we can it with the term “recreational outrage”? All internet outrage is recreational. The term RO is just used to attempt to diminish the validity of outrage at particularly heinous occurrences anyway. Sure, outrage over bad drivers is somehow better outrage. pffft. Now rage away at my joke about a decency simulator you recreators.
I would actually think that this would not be the case.
A competent team of attorneys could certainly present the following to the client (schoolboard)"
"We could use standard defense boilerplate, and put forward every possible type of defense we can. We certainly want to zealously defend you in this case. We could include as part of your defense an accusation that the 12 year old rape victim was partly responsible for the damages she suffered, so this should mitigate your responsibility.
As your defense team, we strongly advise against this defense. It will make you look like cold-hearted horrible, disgusting evil people, and will probably get into the press, since this is a public trial. Do you want to look like you are blaming a 12 year old rape victim? No you do not. This would not work out well for you. So we will not advance this defense. Agreed?"
It actually looks like the defense attorneys were incompetent by letting this go through into the public domain. They have probably ended up doubling the award that the Schoolboard will end up paying.
