Woke politics and a functioning society and government are simply not compatible.
Wherever the far-Left gets a chance to implement their wild-eyed ideas, a total breakdown of law and order ensues.
Now, this blue state court decision will completely undermine the justice system.
The Washington State Supreme Court has ruled that if a party to a civil lawsuit accuses his opponent’s lawyers of any sort of racial stereotyping, judges must order a retrial.
In a unanimous opinion state justice Raquel Montoya-Lewis wrote that when litigants claim that racial bias affected a trial verdict the opposing party “must prove how it did not” and further show that nothing said at trial played on the jury’s “unconscious biases.”
Lawyers say that this kind of proof is often impossible to produce, but without it the court’s action now says that a new trial must be granted.
If that sounds crazy it’s because it is.
“batsh-t crazy”
Lawyers aren’t holding back and are calling this idiocy out for what it is.
David Bernstein, a professor of constitutional law at George Mason University says, “This decision is batshit crazy.”
Even some lawyers who are generally sympathetic to a leftist worldview are taking issue with this.
Samantha Harris is a First Amendment attorney in Philadelphia and says, “Obviously it’s important that jury verdicts not be tainted by racial bias. But if you throw every objective measure and conventional burden of proof out the window, you’re essentially left with the Salem racial witch trials.”
Scott Greenfield, a defense attorney in New York City, discussed the burden now being placed on the accused to show no bias, saying, “I don’t know how anyone could prove a negative. It completely negates the entirety of American jurisprudence.”
The backstory to all this is when Janelle Henderson, a black woman, demanded $3.5 million in damages from a white defendant, Alicia Thompson, who had rear-ended her.
At trial, Thompson’s lawyers called Henderson “combative,” claimed she coached her witnesses, and accused her of exaggerating her injuries for financial gain.
Henderson sued for millions but was only awarded $9200.
She then filed a motion for a new trial, claiming that the defense’s “biased statements” had “influenced the jury’s unconscious bias.”
The Washington Supreme Court agreed, set this new standard, and has since sent the case back to trial court for a retrial.
The implications of this new standard go beyond forcing lawyers to walk on eggshells.
Defendants could now be forced to settle based on the race of the plaintiff because of attorney fees for frivolous lawsuits.
Mark Lamb, a civil litigator in Seattle, says, “If you have to bear the expense of another trial it effectively works as a financial penalty on the party that initially prevailed.”
In the end, this is just one more reason why it doesn’t pay to live, work, or do business where the powers that be have gone crazy.
It’s little wonder that the blue state exodus is only accelerating.
Stay tuned to Blue State Blues for any updates to this ongoing story.
