Author Archives: Lawyer Team

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This blog scans breaking news to find significant and interesting legal settlements. Lawyer.com is a directory website for lawyers. Featuring the best search in its field, lawyer.com connects people who need legal advice to the most qualified professionals who can provide it.

$1.5 Million to Family of Biker Slain by Drunk Policeman

Motorcycle

In Indianapolis’s second-largest legal settlement to date, the family of Eric Wells, a motorcyclist killed by a speeding police car two years ago, has received $1.5 million from the municipal government.  While stopped at a red light with some other motorcycle enthusiasts, Wells was struck from behind and killed by a policeman driving a city police vehicle.  Officer David Bisard’s actions at the time of the crash are a triumvirate of dangerous driving practices: he was drunk (technically only allegedly — see suspicious circumstances below), he was speeding towards a non-emergency he was not dispatched to, and to top it all off, he was using his in-car police computer for non-police purposes while driving.  Any one of those details on their own would be enough for a hefty civil case.  Combined, it seems to any observer that the man is justly doomed to a life in jail.  In fact, a criminal trial for reckless homicide and criminal recklessness are still pending, along with two more civil cases for the two motorcyclists he only injured.  So what’s the hold up?

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Melissa Etheridge Gives Up Half Her Royalties in Divorce Settlement

Love hurts

Turns out gay divorce is pretty much just as acrimonious as straight divorce.  In 2010, Melissa Etheridge, a singer/songwriter, split from her longtime actress wife Tammy Lynn Michaels.  The two married in 2003, though not explicitly legally.  It was a “commitment ceremony”, which is really more like a party and doesn’t set any legal claim to marriage.  The two registered themselves in a domestic partnership with the state of California, which carries a different set of rights and obligations than marriage.  Michaels gave birth to a set of twins in 2006, further cementing their bond.  They unfortunately missed the deadline to get married legally in the short period of time when California permitted gay marriage in 2008, which would have made this much less business-like.  However, since their breakup in 2010, the two have been in a contentious divorce-like fight about the dissolution of their partnership, which was finally resolved yesterday.  And if you thought business partnerships were rough, just imagine it when children and spite are involved.

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NYC Transit Workers Allowed to Wear Religious Head Coverings

En route to better days

Fear is a powerful motivator, and as such the government sometimes responds poorly to the irrational fear of its citizens.  In 1942, due to a fear of all things Japanese during WWII, the federal government rounded up all the Japanese people they could, including native-born citizens, and placed them in destitute internment camps.  Before rounding up Jews and other minorities in concentration camps, the Nazis forced them to identify with yellow badges in the shape of a star, claiming that they were responsible for their country’s problems.  Through these events, we learned the hard way that fear and blame, however unfounded, can lead to atrocity.

Comparisons to such human rights abuses are a stretch in today’s case, of course, and perhaps somewhat unfair, and yet the parallels are striking.  After 9/11, the Metropolitan Transit Authority of New York City started enforcing a rule known as “brand or segregate”, in which Sikh and Muslim workers were forced to either mark their turbans with an MTA logo or work out of the sight of the general public.  See the similarities?  Fueled by xenophobic sentiment after the 9/11 tragedy, the MTA responded to American fear by taking steps to appease it: hide all the scary foreigners, or at least mark them so the good red-blooded Americans know to stay away.

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Snitches Get Riches

Justice

Remember the landmark $25 billion federal foreclosure settlement from February?  The one which has provisions to help prevent foreclosure on homeowners, provisions most states are ignoring?  Which doesn’t yet seem to be doing much for foreclosure victims at all?  Well, at least one person has benefited from the settlement: the whistleblower who drew the curtains back on the wizards at Countrywide Financial to kick off the case in the first place.  Kyle Lagow, who was fired for pointing out illegalities in Countrywide’s foreclosure appraisal business, first brought the situation to the government’s attention with a lawsuit in 2008.  That particular lawsuit, which rolled into one huge suit with a bunch of similar ones, was eventually settled for $1 billion.  Whistleblower laws entitle a citizen who first brings up a case and turns over evidence to a certain percentage of the money eventually won in that case.  In Lagow’s case, that amount is $14.5 million.  Not bad for a lowly house appraiser.

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Handcuffs No Longer an Acceptable Punishment for Misbehavior in Mississippi Schools

The right to remain silent

One day in fourth grade, a kid in my class was misbehaving so atrociously that the teacher, in an act of desperation, enclosed him in a cardboard box on the ground for the rest of the afternoon.  At the time, it was hilarious, and it became a sort of mythical story that he and everyone else would tell well into high school and beyond.  You know, one of those jokes or memories that come up at a reunion.  Thinking about it, it was probably not the best way to treat a child, but he was being downright unruly.  I can understand that sometimes teachers just become so exasperated that they decide to break rules/morality to restore some order.  Not so in Mississippi, where, in a certain school district, it was all but encouraged to simply incapacitate out-of-line students as a first resort.

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