Friday, July 4, 2008

Unsealing Court Records

Last year, an award-winning Review-Journal investigative series, UNDER WRAPS: The case of the missing suits - Nevada judges claim the right to seal lawsuits from view, leaving public in the dark found that judges had hidden more than 100 cases from the public. Judges also sealed their own identities. The newspaper's investigation determined that most of the cases were sealed solely to spare the wealthy and well-known, many of them lawyers, from perceived embarrassment.

Some of the cases include:

* The State Bar of Nevada named as a co-defendant in a lawsuit filed by a man serving a life sentence in prison. The bar had requested that the case be sealed.

*A lawsuit that accused a Catholic priest of bilking more than $200,000 from an elderly parishioner alleged that a second priest coached the victim before her testimony was taken in a deposition, and that the accused priest was allowed to be present during her deposition. The Diocese of Las Vegas requested that the lawsuit be sealed.

In response to the articles, the Nevada Supreme Court took less than a year to enact new rules limiting the sealing of civil cases.

Previously, District Court judges exercised unlimited discretion in sealing lawsuits. The new standards require jurists to hear a compelling public argument for privacy and enter a record of the justification for sealing a case, including all parties involved.

Full Article and Source:
EDITORIAL: Opening sealed lawsuits

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

When our Founding Fathers set up the U.S. Constitution over 200 years ago, they set about developing a new system of government that would ensure this nation’s recently hard-won freedoms would not be usurped by its ruling body.

To that end, realizing that the power of all governments ultimately comes from the people, the framers of the Constitution established a system of self-rule for the U.S. in which its citizens would make the laws and see to their own protection, as opposed to an elite ruling body and/or monarch.

Our Constitution starts out with three words:

“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

The words “We the People,” declared to the nation and the rest of the world that it was the people who were ruling the country.

Throughout its history, it is the people who have made and enforced the laws of the U.S., and it is the people who see to this country’s welfare; and it is the people who decide in which direction it should go.

Could our founding fathers have known that We the People would become We, the "little people" with no voice in our court system.

Could they have known that our court system would become an unjust, unfair, elite monarchy, ruled by unethical, corrupt judges supported by the local State Bar Associations and the ABA?

Were these particular NV judges compensated, paid money and/or favors, in any manner when they sealed specific cases to spare the elite the "wealthy and well known, many of them lawyers, from perceived embarrassment"?

Or, did the judges wake up one day and say "hey, you know what, I think I'll seal John Doe's file, today".

Could our founding fathers have known that investigative reporters would take on the responsibility and activities of audits, reviews and investigating that should be done by law enforcement at the highest levels?