Posted: Sun Oct 19, 2014 9:27 pmGalloism wrote:Infected Mushroom wrote:
It's just a fact of real life that judges are biased. If they don't like you or if they feel it only makes sense to reach a certain conclusion, they'll try their best to make the facts and the precedents fit where they want to go.
Judgments are always written as though the end result is the objective, comprehensive analysis of all sides of the arguments and all of the key cases, but I've read so many cases where it is clear they just wanted a certain result from the start.
You can think of judges as real life NSG Moderators, they are people without accountability who can do whatever they want so long as they themselves don't break the law. Yes decisions can be appealed but can you remove a lower judge? Not really. Not if he's writing reasoned judgments, no matter how much it might be apparent to a higher court that they just wanted to justify changing the law. Justice Denning was a good example of this, he was on the English appeal court and he introduced a whole bunch of new concepts of law in equity and tried his best to change the common law. No one could get rid of him even though people were frowning and many of his attempts to use ''precedent'' were very transparent...
Lawyering just means that you're applying the letter of the law to reach a result that would offend the common sensibilities of the public (and more likely, of the sitting judge). For example, you CAN technically under the common law sue someone who punched you in the face after you troll him on the bus in front of a large crowd non-stop with verbal abuses that don't invoke the Human Rights tribunals ('ex, you just keep calling him a loser and wave your middle finger at him). Under the common law, he's liable for damages because of assault and battery, you are NOT liable (trash talk is not actionable).
This goes before the sitting judge? He's likely to consider this lawyering. You're just here to make a profit from the lawsuit from your own bad behavior or else draw attention/publicity. You think the court is going to reach a favorable result for you by just applying the letter of the law?
Chances are, you'll ''win'' a nominal damage award of a few pennies.
This is the sort of thing the OP's post falls under, what I mean by lawyering. It's when you don't really have a legitimate claim and your claim, if followed by simply applying the letter of the law, is likely to offend common sensibilities.
Well that's pretty fucking terrible that judges in Canada apparently quietly support assault and battery as an acceptable form of conversation.
Incidentally, "lawyering" means "the work of practicing law". You don't get to make up definitions.
They don't like the person who got punched because he was out there to cause trouble in the first place. And they don't want to encourage frivolous lawsuits in the future.
So the punching will be ''discouraged'' with a judgment officially saying punching people is wrong (it is assault and battery) but they'll use their discretion (pulling out hidden principles from the dark hat of Equity, using a hidden damage calculation system, or citing selective precedents) to make the damage awarded a joke (and basically an insult to the person who sued because they paid so much more to have this hearing in court).
See because courts don't want to encourage a string of people exploiting the legal system and loopholes by filling claims that fit the letter of the law but are really just there to profit from the system, perform publicity stunts, or satirize the system.
And with the common law, there is a ton of discretion.
So I just don't see the point of this employee starting this lawsuit. It's not going to pay off economically and she's not going to get good reference letters in the future...
