Lawsuits Gone Wild

On yesterday’s edition of The Tim Corrimal Show, during the “What Were You Thinking?” segment, Tim played a “Worst Persons” clip from Countdown With Keith Olbermann regarding one Marie Domond, a woman who filed a lawsuit against the New York Department of Corrections objecting to the use of the term “inmate” to describe her brother, Gerard Domond, who’s a … well … a guest of the state currently residing at the Clinton Correctional Facility while serving a sentence of 25 years to life for murder. As the always decorous New York Post explains, Ms. Domond objects to the use of the term “inmate,” because “[t]he label ‘implies that our brother is locked up for the purpose of mating with other men.’”

So, after having a good chuckle over Ms. Domond’s law suit, I decided to do a bit of additional research. It turns out Ms. Domond filed the lawsuit, captioned Marie Domond v. New York State Department of Corrections, No. 11 CV 02960, pro se in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, sitting in Kings County, on June 20, 2011. It appears as though Ms. Domond simultaneously filed a one-page original Complaint and a one-page Amended Complaint, the essential allegations of which are identical:

I, Marie Domond, the Petitioner, respectfully declare that this civil action is brought against the NYS Dept. of Corrections for physical, emotional and psychological damages caused by falsely identifying and labeling my imprisoned brother as an “inmate”. The suggestive nature of the word is disgraceful because it implies that our brother is locked up for the purpose of mating with other men. This cruel psychological programming has weighed heavily on our emotional and psychological well being. Furthermore, this character assassination is destroying my brother’s nature due to the fact that we are being forced to accept it. This label is imposed on society and [is] being reinforced by its Highest authority The NYS Dept. Of Corrections.

Marie Domond v. New York State Department of Corrections, No. 11-CV-02960, Amended Complaint, ¶ II (emphasis in original). Ms. Domond then alleges that the court’s “jurisdiction … is invoked pursuant to: Civil Rights Law which prohibits Character Defamation/Malicious Negligence/Mental anguish imposed Government entity on its residents” (id., ¶ III), and seeks the following relief:

To correct the abuses we are asking the court to order The NYS Dept. of Corrections to:

{1} Cease immediately from calling or referring to my brother as an “inmate”, [and]

(2) $50,000,000.00 (Fifty Million Dollars} award be granted to petitioner, Ms. Marie M. Domond for Restoration and Rehabilitation.

(Id., ¶ IV, emphasis in original.)

Okay, so, yes, it’s a whacky lawsuit and a funny news story and all that. But having been a lawyer for going on 24 years, I can’t let Ms. Domond’s case without making some observations.

There is, of course, a temptation to view a case like this as an example of a legal system run amok, choked with frivolous lawsuits filed by greedy, litigious cretins looking to extort money from anyone with a deep enough pocket. These kinds of cases, so the conventional wisdom goes, divert scarce resources from the (presumably very few) legitimate cases on the docket, make lawyers rich, and cost taxpayers unreasonable sums of money – especially in a case like Domond’s, where a state agency is the victim of the attempted extortion.

But wait. Before you jump on that particular bandwagon, a little civics lesson is in order. First, it’s important to understand that there is no gatekeeper at the federal courthouse in Kings County, New York, or anywhere else in the country, who stops people on their way to the clerk’s office and reviews lawsuits before they can be filed. That’s just not how the system works. Basically anybody can file a lawsuit in just about any courthouse in the United States so long as he or she has the right paperwork and the requisite filing fee. And that’s because we don’t reserve the justice system in America for the rich and the well-connected. We don’t limit access to the judicial system only to those who can afford high-priced lawyers with years of experience to screen and select the perfect and most meritorious cases (the cases that will generate the biggest verdicts or settlements and the biggest legal fees, of course).

Nope. We let anybody file lawsuits.

Is that a bad thing? Well, it depends on how you define bad. It’s costly and inefficient, to be sure; but a legal system can’t be run like a business. Not if it’s going to serve the function of a legal system – which is to give everyone a place to go to attempt to redress grievances, even against the biggest and most powerful interests in society and even against powerful government agencies and officials.

Which is not to say the legal system has no mechanism for screening and eliminating frivolous cases. It just happens after the lawsuit is filed and the defendants are served with summonses and brought within the court’s jurisdiction. For example, in Ms. Domond’s case, once the New York Department of Corrections has been served and is formally in the case (which, according to the court’s docket, hasn’t happened yet), the Department’s lawyers will likely file a Motion to Dismiss the case pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6) for failure to state a proper legal claim against it. Without belaboring the point, there would seem to be a high likelihood such a motion would be granted … but if, for reasons not altogether apparent to me, that motion were to be denied, or if Ms. Domond were to be given an opportunity to file a Second Amended Complaint, ultimately I would expect the Department of Corrections to file (perhaps after some minimal discovery) a Motion for Summary Judgment under Federal Rule 56, arguing that there are no material issues of fact in dispute and that the Department is entitled to judgment in its favor as a matter of law.

Either way, it is highly unlikely that a case like Domond’s will ever go to trial, and while it will undoubtedly cost the state some money to get rid of it, consider this. What if people like Ms. Domond had no opportunity to file lawsuits in the first place? What if no one who felt aggrieved, rightly or wrongly, had the ability to file lawsuits, other than the select few who could hire attorneys and expend huge amounts of money to research arcane legal claims and craft beautiful, articulate, novel-like complaints? What would everyone else do if they felt genuinely abused by the system but had no outlet, no means to express their anger in a forum that has rules and procedures and might, if possible, provide them some relief?

I’ll tell you what they’d do. They’d get really, really angry. And some might even get violent.

And so what the legal system does, aside from providing relief in appropriate cases, is it acts like a safety valve. It gives people somewhere to got to channel their anger and to try to strike back at whomever they think has done them wrong – without resorting to self-help, without becoming belligerent and disruptive … and possibly violent. And as inefficient and sometimes costly as that can be, I’m not so sure it’s a bad thing.

© 2011 David P. von Ebers. All rights reserved.