Bills Would Ban Liability Lawsuits For Climate Change (insideclimatenews.org) 243
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Inside Climate News: Republican lawmakers in multiple states and Congress are advancing proposals to shield polluters from climate accountability and prevent any type of liability for climate change harms -- even as these harms and their associated costs continue to mount. It's the latest in a counter-offensive that has unfolded on multiple fronts, from the halls of Congress and the White House to courts and state attorneys general offices across the country.
Dozens of local communities, states and individuals are suing major oil and gas companies and their trade associations over rising climate costs and for allegedly lying to consumers about climate change risks and solutions. At the same time, some states are enacting or considering laws modeled after the federal Superfund program that would impose retroactive liability on large fossil fuel producers and levy a one-time charge on them to help fund climate adaptation and resiliency measures. But many of these cases and climate superfund laws could be stopped in their tracks, either by the conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court or by the Republican-controlled Congress.
Last month the court decided to take up a petition lodged by oil companies Suncor and ExxonMobil in a climate-damages case brought against the companies by Boulder, Colorado. The petition argues that Boulder's claims are barred by federal law, and if the justices agree, it could knock out not only Boulder's lawsuit but also many others like it. The court is expected to hear the case during its upcoming term that starts in October. There is also a possibility that Republicans in Congress will take action before then to gift the fossil fuel industry legal immunity, similar to that granted to gun manufacturers with the 2005 Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act. Sixteen Republican attorneys general wrote (PDF) to U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi in June suggesting that the Department of Justice could recommend legislation creating precisely this type of liability shield. And last month, one Republican congresswoman announced that such legislation is indeed in the works. "The ultimate democratic institution in America is the jury," said former Washington Gov. Jay Inslee. Enacting policies that prevent or block climate-related lawsuits against polluters, he said, would effectively shutter "the doors of the courthouse to Americans that have been injured by oil and gas company pollution and by their lies and deceit about that pollution."
"I really think it's an un-American effort to deny Americans the traditional right of access to a jury," Inslee said. Oil and gas executives are "terrified" by the prospect of having to stand before a jury and face evidence of their climate-change lies and deception, he added. "You'll see the steam coming out of the jury's ears when they hear about how they've been lied to for decades. [Oil companies] understand why juries will be outraged by it, and they are shaking in their boots. The day of reckoning is coming, and that's why they're afraid."
Dozens of local communities, states and individuals are suing major oil and gas companies and their trade associations over rising climate costs and for allegedly lying to consumers about climate change risks and solutions. At the same time, some states are enacting or considering laws modeled after the federal Superfund program that would impose retroactive liability on large fossil fuel producers and levy a one-time charge on them to help fund climate adaptation and resiliency measures. But many of these cases and climate superfund laws could be stopped in their tracks, either by the conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court or by the Republican-controlled Congress.
Last month the court decided to take up a petition lodged by oil companies Suncor and ExxonMobil in a climate-damages case brought against the companies by Boulder, Colorado. The petition argues that Boulder's claims are barred by federal law, and if the justices agree, it could knock out not only Boulder's lawsuit but also many others like it. The court is expected to hear the case during its upcoming term that starts in October. There is also a possibility that Republicans in Congress will take action before then to gift the fossil fuel industry legal immunity, similar to that granted to gun manufacturers with the 2005 Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act. Sixteen Republican attorneys general wrote (PDF) to U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi in June suggesting that the Department of Justice could recommend legislation creating precisely this type of liability shield. And last month, one Republican congresswoman announced that such legislation is indeed in the works. "The ultimate democratic institution in America is the jury," said former Washington Gov. Jay Inslee. Enacting policies that prevent or block climate-related lawsuits against polluters, he said, would effectively shutter "the doors of the courthouse to Americans that have been injured by oil and gas company pollution and by their lies and deceit about that pollution."
"I really think it's an un-American effort to deny Americans the traditional right of access to a jury," Inslee said. Oil and gas executives are "terrified" by the prospect of having to stand before a jury and face evidence of their climate-change lies and deception, he added. "You'll see the steam coming out of the jury's ears when they hear about how they've been lied to for decades. [Oil companies] understand why juries will be outraged by it, and they are shaking in their boots. The day of reckoning is coming, and that's why they're afraid."
This is what evil looks like (Score:3, Informative)
About as moral as giving people that poison food and water immunity. Oh, wait...
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The sad part is this could be reversed if someone offered dear leader a bigger more shiny award.
Re:This is what evil looks like (Score:5, Insightful)
The sad part is this could be reversed if someone offered dear leader a bigger more shiny award.
Not sure, he got the FIFA world peace prize and still started WW3
He promised no new wars
He complained a lot about previous wars
Some people can't help it, they just like wars and killing.
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Not sure, he got the FIFA world peace prize and still started WW3
Yes, and we all expected more from a FIFA Peace Prize winner. :-)
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Dream on, the orange shitgibbon has been whining about trumpistan "not getting the oil of Iraq" for years. In fact, that's the only complaint he's ever had about that very successful war.
So, he started one of his own to show everyone how it is done.
We'll see how it will end, it is quite possible the Iraqi catastrophe will be judged as major success next to the trump Iranian war.
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given that the nobel peace prize has traditionally gone to the world's most popular warmonger, it would neither fix anything nor be appropriate
Re:This is what evil looks like - OH PLEASE (Score:5, Insightful)
We all cashed in on fossil fuels together—every last one of us typing on plastic keyboards in climate-controlled rooms, sipping coffee shipped on diesel trucks, while posting our righteous fury on an internet that runs on coal-and-gas-powered servers. That “evil” black gold dragged humanity out of the mud, gave us antibiotics, airplanes, refrigeration, the entire industrial base that lets virtue-signaling peeps even exist at their current living standard instead of hoeing turnips by candlelight.
Now they want a jury to clutch their pearls over “lies and deceit” while the same jury drove to the courthouse in petroleum-powered cars and will fly home on kerosene? The only steam coming out of anyone’s ears should be from the cognitive dissonance.
Day of reckoning? Nah. Day of “thanks for the civilization, now shut up and pass the Superfund bill” is more like it. Spare us the crocodile tears—your iPhone didn’t charge itself on unicorn farts.
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There's a difference in digging something up from the ground, processing it and using it for a long time via either longevity or recycling than just burning it up in smoke and never getting it back.
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Sure, but you can't opt out of consuming fossil fuels by only focusing on materials made with hydrocarbons. You are directly or indirectly consuming fossil fuels every time you ride in a gas car, eat food grown with fertilizer, fly on an airplane, turn on a light switch, or buy something shipped via truck. If we want to file climate lawsuits, every single human being could be named a defendant.
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You seem to be unfamiliar with the law. Lawsuits for climate change essentially need a) a significant individual contribution and b) reasonable alternatives being available but unused. For example, if somebody keeps running a dirty industrial process to maximize their profit while incurring global damage that negates all these gains, they are a target.
But I think you are not interested in facts. You are interested in spreading FUD. Which makes you either an useful idiot or scum that supports the evil done.
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I'm actually a lawyer, but thanks for the lecture.
A lawsuit can be filed by anyone for anything at all. What happens to that lawsuit will depend on meeting procural requirements and the merits under the law in the jurisdiction where it is filed. There are various common law theories or statutes one could file a case for climate change, but the core difficulty is that the harm is extremely diffuse. Any particular oil producer could cease operations tomorrow and it would have zero impact on the climate becaus
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Fossil fuels addicted [bloomberg.com] us, fattened [washingtonpost.com] us, sickened [fullerton.edu] us, endangered [thewalrus.ca] us, imprisoned [medium.com] us, and decimated [reddit.com] our cities [ou.edu].
And the pimp/enslaver/prison guard says, "you never had it so good, you should be more appreciative!"
Re:This is what evil looks like - OH PLEASE (Score:4, Insightful)
Also, there's no justice in it. It's not like they were doing anything illegal. All of us can take some responsibility ourselves for this mess, instead of trying to find an easy target to blame it all on and extract an easy buck from them.
Re:This is what evil looks like - OH PLEASE (Score:5, Insightful)
Even if all of that were true, oil companies are still not solely to blame for it all. And what would be the point in suing them?
Same as the tobacco companies.
Also, there's no justice in it.
Good thing the corporations that totally knew what they were doing have you to stick up for them. Everyone needs a nice throat job once in a while.
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Good thing the corporations that totally knew what they were doing
That's an easy thing to just say, but all evidence pointed to a single corporation being the ones who knew - Exxon, and they kept even their peers in the dark. And in any case by the time that research came to light the world was already very much on an oil diet.
It's so easy to place the blame game once you have the power of hindsight. Dishonest yes, but easy. All the while it's been incredibly public for 36 years now, and yet the majority of people are still huffing on oil while pretending EVs, clever city
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Even if all of that were true, oil companies are still not solely to blame for it all. And what would be the point in suing them?
Same as the tobacco companies.
Imagine what the tobacco settlement would have been like under the current MAGA government. Instead of a deal to essentially heavily tax cigarettes and allow the evil to continue (i.e., a win-win for everyone except for the people that are killed by cigarettes), the tobacco settlement would have been replaced by a government protection law with only a one-time lobbying cost. That would have also resulted in a win-win, where the tobacco companies get to avoid the settlement tax and the politicians get to p
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hat would be the point in suing them?
To make a bunch of lawyers even richer? Instead we have a different school of sharks getting rich passing laws preventing the first school of sharks from gouging their financial benefactors.
And as always, whoever wins we in the general public lose.
Re:This is what evil looks like - OH PLEASE (Score:5, Insightful)
While that may be true it also enriched us, improved the quality of our lives, and all the while many of the downsides were brought about not by those companies, but rather the end user's hunger for the product. Even now we know the incredible dangers and yet people will happily pour oil into their cars, drive excessively instead of walking, buying isolated homes in the suburbs, and we're still flattening cities to make space for parking.
At some point we need to stop pointing at others and except some personal fucking responsibility.
Also sidenote: Many of the problems you list are some how uniquely American despite the group you are criticising being multinational companies that operated literally in every civilized (and several uncivilised) corners of the world. How do you rationalise that?
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At some point we need to stop pointing at others and except some personal fucking responsibility.
I agree but this is very much related to the second point
Many of the problems you list are some how uniquely American
This is American's refusing to take responsibility because, ironically, they keep voting for the self-proclaimed "party of personal responsibility" because to American's that means eschewing any sense of social responsibility. One party gives a permission structure to ignore the issue because that is the "personal responsibility" they sell, only to yourself and nobody else.
Actual personal responsibility would be voting for the party who accepts the p
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Addiction. [bloomberg.com]
That's just typical addict behavior.
That's not so much by choice as because it's illegal in most neighborhoods for developers to build anything but single family homes. That's the opposite of freedom.
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Yes, we did. As an older-than-average person, I've done more of it than average, and I'm still doing it!
What I find most interesting, is that there's a group of people who advocate I shouldn't have to pay for any of the consequences of my decision to cash in, even consequences and costs that are born by other people, who didn't cash in as much as I did.
I am grateful to these advocates, and would like to find one, and take a big, dirty, stinky, mystery-microbe-infeste
Re:This is what evil looks like - OH PLEASE (Score:4, Insightful)
Now they want a jury to clutch their pearls over “lies and deceit” while the same jury drove to the courthouse in petroleum-powered cars and will fly home on kerosene?
This is the exact same argument made by the tobacco industry. Everyone smoked! It was their choice! They could have quit any time!
Except the tobacco companies knew their product caused cancer and was addictive, and actively worked to make it even more addictive.
The oil and gas companies are no different. They sold a product that causes considerable damage to the place we call home, all while seeking to maximize their profit. And they knew the damage their product causes, and worked hard to bury and hide that damage, all while pushing for more and more and more use of their products, even when better alternatives are available.
Sorry, no sympathy at all from me for the oil and gas companies. Where are they going to spend all that profit when most of the world is a desert or under water?
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Big tobacco did not shoved a cigarette into your mouth and make you smoke it. It really was a personal choice. Comparing oil to cigarettes is an apples to oranges comparison. Anyone trying to debate that is arguing in bad faith.
You can EASILY avoid smoking a cigarette. It's basically impossible to avoid oil usage. We are also gradually reducing our dependence on oil though anyone that really understands our civilization realizes even when we stop driving ICEV, oil is still going to be drilled and used for m
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Big tobacco did not shoved a cigarette into your mouth and make you smoke it. It really was a personal choice.
HAHAHAHA
Too funny
No seriously, that's funny.
Tobacco companies obviously can't literally shove a cigarette in your mouth. (But if they could have, they would have.)
They manipulated their products - intentionally - to make them more addictive.
They buried science and as much evidence as they could that even suggested a link between smoking and bad health. They produced their own "research" - often misleading or faked - that intentionally muddied the waters so they could say "the science is inconclusive!"
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I just see you as part of the evil, either via being an useful idiot or being entirely fine with the damage done.
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I think it would be wrong to punish people for supplying the fuels we need to make society work, just because we don't like the side effects of our behavior and don't want to accept the shared responsibility. And
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That is because you are mentally challenged and do not even understand simple things.
Provable, quantifiable damages... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Consider the impact of car exhaust on the climate. Why are we going to punish the oil companies? They aren't the ones turning gasoline into greenhouse gases, it's the motorist that buys the gasoline and turns it into greenhouse gases. Aside from the occasional spill (which oil companies, pipelines, and drilling rigs try very, very hard to avoid due to lost revenue/profit), oil companies aren't the ones polluting the atmosphere.
It reminds me of the cigarette judgement of a few decades ago, the cigarette comp
Re:Provable, quantifiable damages... (Score:5, Insightful)
It takes a lot of energy to refine petroleum, and that generates greenhouse gases. As does the extraction of petroleum products (methane leaks at oil fields are a big problem as methane is a much more climate-affecting greenhouse gas than CO2).
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And on top of that, the fiscal structure of the oil companies make it a social problem once the oil is not profitable to extract anymore. The amount of abandon oil and gas wells all over north America is crazy.
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That's a flaw with the US legal system. In Europe they work well enough. You only have to prove that a company contributed significantly to climate change in a negligent way (i.e. they should reasonably have known what they were doing was causing problems) on the balance of probabilities, i.e. >50% chance they did.
The main benefit so far has been to force governments to accelerate their efforts to address the problem.
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IOUs coming due. (Score:5, Insightful)
Climate change doesn't give a damn what mankind says about it, or the attempts to avoid responsibility. It's coming for us and payback is going to be a bitch regardless of whom.
Re:IOUs coming due. (Score:5, Insightful)
It's coming for us and payback is going to be a bitch regardless of whom.
That may be true, but it would be nice if the jackasses most directly responsible for 1) creating the problem and, 2) actively obstructing all attempts to address it, were made to pay more than other folks.
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If there's blame to be had, it belongs to everyone and no lawsuits will change that.
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So... the people who buy ICE vehicles, attempt to block wind farms, and write HOA requirements that ban solar panels? The problem here is the responsibility is incredibly shared. But it is easier to blame one group rather than take some form of personal responsibility.
Re:IOUs coming due. (Score:4, Informative)
The villain is the driver, but it's easier to sue the supplier.
I'm not trying to absolve consumers' responsibility here, either. That's why I said "most directly responsible" as opposed to "solely responsible". I would, for instance, be in favor of substantially raising gasoline and diesel taxes, which haven't been touched at the federal level since 1993(?!).
We go after drug traffickers - right up and down the supply chain, even taking out complicit heads of state [brave.com] - as well as going after end consumers. Why shouldn't we do the same to the "dealers" of fossil fuels?
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I think this argument fails the moment it can be proven that the oil companies ghost wrote studies and founded propaganda engines against climate change and such.
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Climate change doesn't give a damn what mankind says about it, or the attempts to avoid responsibility. It's coming for us and payback is going to be a bitch regardless of whom.
And moves like this are damning evidence that they know it (the companies doing the polluting and the Republicans supporting them).
Shades of cigarette companies trying for years to use the courts to deny that smoking causes cancer.
They know the damage they're doing, they know that someone will have to pay the piper so they're getting in early to make sure it's not them.
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All you climate alarmists are gonna feel pretty retarded on your death beds when everything looks more or less the same outside as it does now.
Why do you think change is going to stop today? It already doesn't look the same now as it did 20 years ago. Just ask anyone who likes skiing or hiking on glaciers. Just ask anyone who lives in areas with increasingly more severe weather.
The only person who should feel retarded is you, the one who doesn't see the obvious things right in front of them that are actually happening already.
Pointless law (Score:4, Insightful)
There is no man made climate change, so why do we need laws like this? Instead pass a loser pays legal system. Then when these companies prove there is no man made climate change they can get their money back.
It's easy.
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Why companies? They weren't the ones emitting were they? I mean they largely are selling their products and not actively setting them on fire inefficiently.
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Why companies? They weren't the ones emitting were they?
Yeah, why should we hold accountable the corporations which sold us products on a fraudulent basis (already proven) and then lobbied against alternatives (extremely well-known, we have the receipts) to prevent us from reducing our dependence on their product?
Your thought process is facile and inadequate to reality, and "your" (borrowed) arguments are already thoroughly addressed and discredited, so making them is stupid and weak.
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Companies emit loads of greenhouse gas in the process of refining oil. And methane leaks in oil fields is another big problem as methane is a much more potent greenhouse gas than CO2.
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Had to log in to come say this, but looks like you beat me to it.
If climate change, especially man-made of man-aggravated, climate change doesn't exist how can we have a law limiting liability in court?
By proposing this bill the Republicans just stated that is "is" something. Way to shoot yourself in the foot.
Az
"He was convicted by an all-green jury..." (Score:2)
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Look in the mirror (Score:5, Insightful)
I would support such a bill that narrowly focused on irreducible GHG emissions. I do not in any way support deflections of responsibility away from individual consumers who persist in knowingly buying hydrocarbons directly as well as products requiring hydrocarbon inputs knowing full well the pollution they are causing. If it is germane to sue the Exxon's of the world for their contribution to climate change it should be equally germane to sue anyone and everyone for theirs.
Also it is common knowledge ex post facto laws are explicitly unconstitutional. That anyone would even attempt to impose "retroactive liability" is an abuse of the system not far removed from DoJ's inept campaigns of retribution against Donald's political enemies.
I generally oppose all climate change related taxation where 100% of the proceeds are not spent on preventing climate change. These schemes are regressive and most allow proceeds to be placed into the general fund which clearly demonstrates unserious intent.
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True but this doesn't involve that. This is about civil lawsuits, which just need to prove some sort of harm covered by existant definitions of legally sanctionable harm, regardless of whether it's considered criminal. If I build a factory next door to you and spew gunk from my chimneys all over your home completely by accident, you bet you can sue despite there being no criminal activity involved and no explicit law. I've damaged your property.
TFA: "some states are enacting or considering laws modeled after the federal Superfund program that would impose retroactive liability on large fossil fuel producers"
Constitution: "No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed."
Constitution: "nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law"
When you enact a law to retroactively impose liability you are passing an ex post facto law. This isn't about "existent" anything it is about new laws explicit
Good (Score:2)
I bet the same people objecting to these bogus lawsuits -- which are really an attempt to legislate via the civil court system -- are also crying about how the US isn't opening the Strait of Hormuz.
Well the system should be fair. (Score:2)
We can do whatever (Score:2)
We'll piss in the river upstream from you where you get your drinking water, and you can't stop us...
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Fish already piss in it. Get over it.
It's hard to pin down (Score:2)
who's cows were out on the commons at night.
Ban is "wrong", but... (Score:2)
However, for those that disagree, please stop all the natural disasters from happening. TIA
Lies (Score:2)
CO_2 is not a pollutant, hence those who emit it are not "polluters." Whether methane is a pollutant is arguable.
We are indeed living in corporate lawlessness (Score:2)
this is real boring (Score:2)
if captain planet villains are going to be literally real can we at least get the hot lady with the cool hair
legality, knowledge, and liability (Score:3)
If something is legal, then you should be able to do it.
If we know that it causes harm, then we have to decide if it is important enough to do anyway -many things are. If we continue to allow it, then you should pay remediation costs for the harm that is created by the thing that you are doing. Cost of doing business. Charge customers more to cover the remediation costs. Everyone pays the weighted cost -maybe it becomes cost effective to develop an alternative.
If harm occurred before we knew it was likely, then that should not be held against the person/business doing the activity. Unless they acted negligently, or deliberately withheld information about potential harms. If they acted in good faith, they do not deserve to be punished. No ex past facto laws.
If you hide the harm, because you are afraid of the costs of remediation or fearful that we will not allow you to continue to do it, then you should be criminally prosecuted (negligence, willful endangerment, etc.) This prosecution should result in corporate death penalty and seizure of all corporate assets as well as personal criminal liability for executives and decision makers. Reward whistle blowers for speaking out about malfeasance.
I know... should is a fantasy. The real world doesn't work like that.
fake news (Score:2)
Re:People are confused because judges lie (Score:5, Informative)
That's how I got out of jury duty. They asked me several times if I would believe the police if the judge instructed me to. Told them no due to first hand experience with cops lying in court. That ended that.
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Not to mention this has been studied a lot, and... Eyewitness evidence is unreliable, police testimony is even less reliable, and cops themselves coined the term "testilying" for what they do on the stand.
Re: People are confused because judges lie (Score:2)
Why do you want to "get out" of jury duty?
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Why do you want to "get out" of jury duty?
Because it's forced labor which is not punishment for a crime, and therefore unconstitutional? No one should be paid less than minimum wage for serving on a jury. It's one thing to be told you have to do it, it's another to be told that you have to do it for free. That's just a limited-time form of slavery, to which practically every institution in this nation boils down in the end.
Re: People are confused because judges lie (Score:5, Interesting)
Good grief that is warped in terms of your view of civic duty. Nobody can enjoy even really basic rights like a fair trial without jurors. Therefore everyone must have a duty to serve. Sure we could pay them more but with what? oh right more taxes also effectively bills of attainder where the government takes your property (money usually) without having convicted you of a crime.
Really fairness would mean one of two things, either we
A) don't pay jurors at all. Service is simply viewed as the price tag for living in a free society.
That has problems because it means those living hand to mouth could find jury duty ruinous, which strikes me as a bad policy.
B) pay people whatever income they can reasonably demonstrate they are forging while serving. The current system is if anything excessively progressive in that someone making minimum wage at their day job is losing a whole lot less income than someone who might perhaps make three times that. It is really unfair.
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Good grief that is warped in terms of your view of civic duty.
Only if you believe that the court system wasn't designed to rubber stamp fuckery, in which case you're a stupid sucker proving Barnum was right.
Sure we could pay them more but with what?
Not thoughts and prayers.
pay people whatever income they can reasonably demonstrate they are forging while serving. The current system is if anything excessively progressive in that someone making minimum wage at their day job is losing a whole lot less income than someone who might perhaps make three times that. It is really unfair.
The minimum wage should be a living wage, in which case there would be no case for it being unfair for anyone to be paid it for doing jury duty. That someone normally makes more is irrelevant.
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Only if you believe that the court system wasn't designed to rubber stamp fuckery, in which case you're a stupid sucker proving Barnum was right.
By definition if you ended up at a jury trial you're long past rubber stamping anything. Did you pay any attention to anything in school?
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By definition if you ended up at a jury trial you're long past rubber stamping anything.
Tell us you're a deluded simpleton who believes in all of the myths of our society without telling us.
Re: People are confused because judges lie (Score:2)
No, there should actually be no minimum wage, work should pay the market will bear. There is no reason anyone should be entitled to earn living for doing work that isn't worth that much.
Following that logic, there is no reason anyone rich should be entitled to not being stolen from while others are starving. You don't get to cherry-pick the psychopathic rules. I don't care how much you worked for it, you being rich is never more important than poor people having a home and food.
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There is no reason anyone should be entitled to earn living for doing work that isn't worth that much.
If you cared about other people, there would be. Since you don't, GFY psychopath.
Re: People are confused because judges lie (Score:4, Insightful)
It makes zero sense to pay people more then their labor is worth.
IMO the primary difference between a civilised and uncivilised society is how they treat those unable to provide for themselves.
This currently seems to range from:
Throw them to the wolves, to
We'll clothe, feed, and house them, so that they have the opportunity to do the same for themselves and others.
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There is no reason anyone should be entitled to earn living for doing work that isn't worth that much.
True, which is why I propose that we massively slash the wages of CEOs and give raises to the people who are actually doing work to keep companies going on a day to day basis.
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"work should pay the market will bear"
At the low end, labor is not a market since there is no substitute good for subsistence. Therefore, a minimum wage is not distortive of the labor market.
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I always go to jury duty, but then my company pays for the first 3 days. I've never actually got out of the first room. I have coworkers that throw their summons away. For some odd reason, they've been doing this for years with absolutely no repercussions, despite the summons literally saying the punishment.
I find that strange personally, since I'd rather sit in jury duty day 1 reading a book instead of going to my job. At the particular court house I go to, I've never had to stay past lunch and I still get
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But, as you pointed out it is a civic duty, so that there is any compensation at all is a bonus.
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While I haven't gotten past the first room, I some how imagine the court isn't looking for the sharpest and brightest of jurors. Also, the way each side can dismiss "unfavorable" potential jurors just seems like a joke to me.
What it really seems to boil down to is finding the people with the least amount of domain knowledge possible so that lawyers with no domain knowledge can manipulate them into favorable outcomes. It's far easier to convince dumb folks then those with critical thinking skills. That reall
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Sure we could pay them more but with what?
2% of the bloated police budget.
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Good grief that is warped in terms of your view of civic duty. Nobody can enjoy even really basic rights like a fair trial without jurors.
The trial was made unfair the moment I was asked to have my vote influenced by a judge and not the presented evidence.
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C) Pay people for the marginal utility of the income they are forgoing while serving. You could probably end up paying rich people less than poor people!
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Locally, jurors no longer wait in rooms to be called. They call in early in the morning to see if they are assigned to a pool.
Maybe that's how it works where you are. Last time I was called, it took me THREE visits to the jury service office to find out whether or not I would be selected.
We have a questionnaire system where you can tell the court that you will be busy. Mostly they do not bother to look at these. If you call them to call their attention to them, they still do not look at them. I have to transport another person to medical appointments during the week I've been called for. I filled out the form online the day after
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We have none of that. We have one big room with hard chairs, zero diligence done, and zero fucks given.
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Because it's an enormous pain in the ass. I have to take vacation time from work or go unpaid. I have to drive downtown and either pay $40 a day to park in a garage or $15 further away and take public transport or an Uber. Then at the end of the day they give me a whopping $7 and a handful of change for my troubles.
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That's how I got out of jury duty. They asked me several times if I would believe the police if the judge instructed me to. Told them no due to first hand experience with cops lying in court.
Nobody in their right mind would agree to that.
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This is why you NEVER talk to the police.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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"the facts are a certain way, they MUST decide a certain way." That's just restating the law which was transgressed.
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So, the judge is telling the jury, "If you determine that the facts are X,Y,Z, then the law says crime C was committed and thus the logical consequence is that you must find the defendant guilty of it."
Juries can still decide otherwise
So you know it's a lie, but you're still here defending it. The way the courts are designed fucks us and you're here for it. #cuckshit
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Juries are supposed to decide the facts, and judges the law. It's not "lying" to tell the jury that the case will go a certain way if they find certain facts. However, what you hint at is the confused history behind jury nullification. This is mostly a criminal issue, but part of the idea behind the juries was that they could override an authority who was too aggressive. That's something that goes beyond fact. The problem is that judges are loathe to tell juries they can nullify as they don't want juries to
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Yes, my post explicitly discusses jury nullification and the reasons for it. It goes back to the Magna Carta (not the U.S. founders) and probably before. But again, the problem is that there are good reasons not to have juries simply refuse to reach a certain decision every time they don't like a result. It's supposed to be a backstop against rank abuse of the legal system, not a license for juries to ignore the law. This is why a judge can throw out a jury verdict in a civil case under certain circumstance
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A verdict of acquittal is constitutionally final (in the US anyway).
The concept of juries being finders of fact, and not law has never been universally agreed upon, and was contentious even in the time of the Magna Carta, which no more established nullification than the US Constitution or founders. It is a part of the system that you cannot remove while still calling the system impartial.
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The use of the word "MUST" is factually incorrect. You could call it a lie.
Courts have even agreed on this point.
The fact is, the jury is not bound to find a defendant guilty under any circumstances, period. Of course, if every Jury was straight up told that, would justice break down into mob rule?
Nullification is an unfixable problem. And it really is a problem. And it really is unfixable. It's been a stubborn fact of the common law s
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At worst, if a Judge has reason to believe your intent to nullify, they can remove you, if statute and court procedural rules allow for it.
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Climate change is normal... over the course of thousands of years. Climate change occurring within a normal human lifespan is unprecedented.
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