The school laptop spying case has been settled

[werepossum]

and the winner is - the lawyer!

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-1011-laptop-ap-story,0,2746834.story

Cliff notes: The 15 year old student who was secretly photographed 400 times received $175,000 in a trust fund. A second student who sued received $10,000.

The lawyer received $425,000 for his work on the case.

If you've ever wondered for whose benefit our legal system (NOT justice system) is being run, this is a powerful clue.

Edit: Just to recap, remember that no criminal charges were ever brought. Evidently while the government has no problem seeing horrible societal threats in filming a government policeman in public engaged in doing his job or in teenagers sexting pictures of other teenagers, other branches of government surreptitiously filming the same teenager in his own bedroom - not so much of a problem.

 

[her209]

Yep. Its disgusting.

 

[highland145]

71%

 

[Thump553]

Your anger is misplaced. This was a civil rights case, one of a very few categories where American law allows recovery of actual attorney fees to a successful party-as specifically provided by statute. This statute specifically provided for actual attorney fees because otherwise such cases have so little monetary damages that attorneys would be discouraged from enforcing the law.

Your beef is with Congress and the President back when this statute was adopted, or the Congresses and Presidents since then for their failure to modify the law.

I note the school district's insurer paid out over 1.2 million in this case, and the plaintiff is receiving $175,000-purely for invasion of privacy. Pretty substantial in my book-you conservatives usually reject the entire concept of such compensatory damages, especially without a missing arm, etc.

Whether or not to charge a crime is up to the local district attorney, usually. Availability of evidence to prove a charge against a specifc person may have been a factor, but I'm speculating. If you have a better system I'd like to hear about it.

 

[werepossum]

Your anger is misplaced. This was a civil rights case, one of a very few categories where American law allows recovery of actual attorney fees to a successful party-as specifically provided by statute. This statute specifically provided for actual attorney fees because otherwise such cases have so little monetary damages that attorneys would be discouraged from enforcing the law.

Your beef is with Congress and the President back when this statute was adopted, or the Congresses and Presidents since then for their failure to modify the law.

I note the school district's insurer paid out over 1.2 million in this case, and the plaintiff is receiving $175,000-purely for invasion of privacy. Pretty substantial in my book-you conservatives usually reject the entire concept of such compensatory damages, especially without a missing arm, etc.

Whether or not to charge a crime is up to the local district attorney, usually. Availability of evidence to prove a charge against a specifc person may have been a factor, but I'm speculating. If you have a better system I'd like to hear about it.

My main anger is that no one has yet gone to jail or at least been charged.

Whichever mod is on duty, it's probably a good idea to close this thread and roll it into the pre-existing and now resurrected thread on the case (which I would have done had I not been too trifling to search it out.)

 

[alkemyst]

Almost all cases today for damages has the attorney behind the case the real winner and some poor sod the big loser. Also like the case in a public school the loser ends up being the tax payers.

The lawyers have set themselves up to get more and more of the pie over time. After it hit 30% pre-trial and 40% going to trial, they really couldn't play more there. No one is going to buy a 50/50 split.

So what they started doing is passing on all costs to the client. Copies at 0.20 (and of course everything needs to be copied in 10's so you are looking at $2 a page), clerks at $75/hr (making your copies pretty much all day), Juniors at $125/hr (firing off at least a letter per day), seniors/partners at $225/hr+.

I have been involved in some lawsuits. The end cuts have always been slightly over 50% and most of those fees bullshit.

One of the cases I was getting raped (I think the original percentage was about 76% of the total award and the case was settled out of court within the month we started.) We took it to mediation and the attorney cried about his 'hard costs' but took 50% total.

Most companies will simply pay out $10-20k claims if there is even a chance of it going beyond a few months of going back and forth. With computers and databases catching the people doing lawsuit after lawsuit is easier, but still you have to prove they are truly milking the system.

 

[mizzou]

I suppose instead of civil remedies we could just have criminal remedies only, and just send people to jail instead of paying out orders.

May end up being cheaper that way, bunch of minimum security prisons.

 

[WhipperSnapper]

What's really interesting is that our nation actually has a huge oversupply of lawyers, a great many of whom cannot find jobs in the legal profession or only scrounge up small amounts of compensation. You would think that this huge oversupply would result in increased access for the poor and lower legal fees, but it hasn't.

One reason might be that people would rather hire an experienced attorney rather than a starving solo who's only one or two years out of law school and charging low rates. Uh...guys...less expensive attorneys are out there if only the people would consider hiring some of these starving solos and smaller shops. It's the (understandable) premium that people place on experience that drives up the cost of legal work.

The other problem is that being a lawyer can be very expensive. It can cost as much as $185,000 (tuition plus living costs) to go to law school these days. Also, after you graduate you have to pay bar dues and continuing legal education fees. Then a lawyer has to buy malpractice insurance, advertising, and pay to rent an office, etc. The costs add up and ultimately clients have to foot the bill. (For that $300/hour you are charged the lawyer might have actually worked for 4 hours with three of those hours constituting non-billable time.)

 

[PingSpike]

If some one wants to take 400 pictures of my balls in exchange for $175,000 I'll gladly take that offer. I'll even look the other way on a lawyer getting twice as much in the process!

 

[owensdj]

Won't this settlement lure more families into demanding money from the school over the laptop spying? Seems like anyone who had their picture taken at home would get something.

 

[werepossum]

If some one wants to take 400 pictures of my balls in exchange for $175,000 I'll gladly take that offer. I'll even look the other way on a lawyer getting twice as much in the process!

LOL Never thought of it like that, but sign me up. Can we start a class action lawsuit to demand that our balls be photographed?

 

[Wreckem]

Won't this settlement lure more families into demanding money from the school over the laptop spying? Seems like anyone who had their picture taken at home would get something.

They didn't do it to everyone. And the kid who got $10k, only got $10k because his case was weak.

 

[owensdj]

They didn't do it to everyone. And the kid who got $10k, only got $10k because his case was weak.

Right, but they did secretly take pictures of many more students at home than those two. Wouldn't the others get say $1000 if they threatened to sue?