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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: willcousa who wrote (330899)	12/19/2002 11:42:05 AM
From: Thomas A Watson	Respond to of 769670

All racism is evil. All racism should be rebuked. If one supports continued segregation, donate to the United Negro College Fund. Or whatever racist selective organization you chose. In that I believe all men are created equal, I donot classify people by race or ethnic background or religion. I treat them all equally.

To: willcousa who wrote (330899)	12/19/2002 12:27:48 PM
From: goldworldnet	Respond to of 769670

I can see the shortcomings of this kind of thinking, but my primary focus was how do you get the American Black to move forward. * * *

To: willcousa who wrote (330899)	12/19/2002 3:31:08 PM
From: Gordon A. Langston	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

As long as shakedown artists can make a living at it....never. A CA Affirmative Action Program for Lawyers..UCL-Unfair Competition Law What is this law? For starters, UCL lets a lawyer in private practice, without a client and without tangible evidence of harm, sue a defendant for virtually whatever the lawyer asserts is "unfair." It's the kind of law that, as one corporate attorney put it, lets you proceed with any claim as long as you can state it with a straight face. It didn't start that way. Enacted to give district attorneys a state tool like the Federal Trade Commission Act, the law long ago was amended to let any person bring a UCL action. Later rulings have given us what the California Law Revision Commission has called "probably the broadest such statute in the country." Fred Hiestand, general counsel of the Civil Justice Association of California, has watched the law evolve in the courts and now describes it as "a bounty hunter-type regulatory mechanism of enormous elasticity." Found in Section 17200 of the California Business and Professions Code, the UCL's magic phrase "any unlawful, unfair, or fraudulent business act" lets private lawyers file suits like those launched in the latter 1990s against software companies across the state for selling products in packages that were "too large" for the disks they contained. While this episode led the Legislature to rewrite packaging law, it left the UCL untouched. Today the law remains everything from a tool for lawyers looking for a way to evade statutes of limitation to a boon for attorneys hoping to win a class action-type case and collect attorney fees without having to get a court to grant class-action status. The California Supreme Court is about to decide a case (Kraus v. Trinity Management Inc.) demonstrating the latter. In a dispute over rental deposits, a lawyer suing on behalf of four tenants also claimed to be representing another 4,500 current and former tenants. Even though the lawsuit was never officially certified as class action, the court awarded $1 million in restitution. Because no "class" was ever certified, each of the other 4,500 tenants still can sue the same landlord over the same issue. The law also can provide a second chance for plaintiffs' lawyers whose class-action suits have failed. In Alameda County, lawyers claiming Ford Motor Co. sold cars with defective ignition systems lost their attempt to get damages awarded by a jury in a class-action suit but are pressing ahead with a UCL case on the same issues. The lawyers are trying to convince the judge to order a recall of millions of cars or to force Ford to "disgorge" (presumably to them) the money it saved by not making a recall. Thus, the UCL is being used to put a trial court judge in the position of second-guessing the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), which studied the ignition question on four separate occasions and found no recall was necessary. The judge, unlike NHTSA, has no power to perform a full investigation of the matter. He only can react to the narrow information presented by the plaintiffs' lawyers and the rebuttal by Ford. Golden goose Unfair outcomes cannot be a surprise when the courts and the Legislature continue to permit bizarre uses of an outwardly beneficial law. University of San Diego Law School Professor Robert C. Fellmeth, in a Law Revision Commission study, observed: "The survey of cases and practitioners involved in Unfair Competition Law litigation indicates that the statute's dilemma is no longer theoretical, it is currently functioning in a number of cases to frustrate the just and expeditious resolution of disputes." The result? As commission assistant executive director Stan Ulrich said late last year, "Although I can't prove it, I believe there's a huge underground economy in 17200 claims." Until the lawyers fighting "17200 abuse" come forward en masse with their clients and complain loudly, this new economy will remain underground and out of control -- a huge goose laying golden eggs for the plaintiffs' lawyers. Ms. Wheeler is vice president-legislation of the Civil Justice Association of California in Sacramento. Contact her at bwheeler@cjac.org