Blog 2

Week two highlighted the highs and lows of shadowing an attorney, who also happens to be your father: preferential access to tag along to a variety of venues, yet no special treatment either--a ten-hour work day with no lunch break! All in all, the fast pace was fun, and even travel time was enlightening, discussing the law and listening to my father on the phone strategizing with other attorneys and adjustors to strike deals.

Wednesday started with an early morning meeting with a proposed conservator for a minor settlement at Maricopa County Superior Court. Driving to the court, my father, the defense attorney in this case, briefed me on the facts. While driving a monster truck, his client took a right turn by the nail salon where she was working and killed a mother of two minors, injuring one with over 70,000 medical expenses and scarring, leaving the other minor with emotional distress. Right away when we arrived at the court, there was a problem--the Arabic interpreter we requested did not appear. Because the plaintiff only spoke Arabic, my father made a motion to the court to make an exception and rule on the pleading without testimony. Fortunately, the judge granted the motion and approved the settlements. Once again, as I am learning the standard procedure, we went to the clerk of the court to get letters of conservatorship issued and then traveled to the bank to set up restricted accounts for the minors.

At the bank, we met with the plaintiff's attorney, who was a new attorney who had only been practicing for two years. He had immigrated from Palestine to the U.S. and attended ASU as an undergrad, graduated law school, and then started as a sole practitioner doing criminal defense, immigration defense, and personal injury law. Engaging with the plaintiff's attorney about his perspective about being a lawyer, I noticed how both he, a new attorney, and my father, an attorney for 29 years, shared an enthusiasm about the law and being an attorney.

Next, we hustled to west Phoenix to meet with clients to get an affidavit of no other insurance signed, so that the plaintiffs could pursue an underinsured motorist claim. We had to hurdle past another language barrier, this time the clients were Spanish speakers so we had the neighbor next door translate. The clients couldn't understand why the insurance company was paying any money when they were not at fault. In short, the answer is that payment protects the clients from a potential huge excess exposure, even if they don't believe they have liability. The risk is winning big or losing big. It wasn't easy, but the affidavit was signed. Afterward, my father and I traveled to the apartment of the client's passenger, where my father did a repeat performance--getting a neighbor to translate Spanish and getting an authorization signed to enable him to gather her medical records and evaluate her claim.  

For a change in pace, my father was going to meet with a plaintiff as a client (generally, he is a defense attorney, but sometimes takes on plaintiffs as clients). The case involved a car accident; causation was the issue--whether her injuries were related. Speaking with the female client, the attorney went over medical records from before and after the accident, developed a theory of recovery based upon these medical records in preparation of the client's deposition, and completed responses to discovery requests made by the defendant's attorney and her initial disclosure statement. 

In this case, the plaintiff was an "egg-shell" plaintiff, a term in tort law referencing plaintiffs who have prior conditions which are aggravated by an injury caused by the defendant. The defendant takes the plaintiff as he finds them; he is liable for all damages to the egg-shell plaintiff even if damages would have been much less to an average plaintiff. Here, the plaintiff alleged that she had prior problems with neck, right shoulder, and right arm, which first occurred in an incident six years before, had been asymptomatic for six years except for a tingling in the right thumb, and then ultimately required carpel-tunnel surgery after the accident. When evaluating a client's claim, an attorney must weigh his client's credibility--how believable he/she appears. We both agreed that the plaintiff appeared very credible.

On Thursday, I finally was stationary. For five hours, I poured over pleadings and case law in preparation for an oral argument on Mesa Public School's motion for summary judgment on a duty issue regarding student crossing guards. I reviewed the school district's motion and accompanying statement of facts in support of the motion, the plaintiff's response and supporting statement of facts, the school district's reply in support of its summary judgment, the plaintiff's objection to the school district's reply, all case law cited in the pleadings, and the Restatement of Torts on this issue. The purpose for all of this reading was to begin preparation of a mock oral argument to question my father, who is representing Mesa Public Schools. Even though I was no longer sitting in class at BASIS, it still loomed in my thoughts. Monroe v. BASIS School, Inc. was used as precedent to support the school district's defense.

Back home, I researched online and discovered that most high school districts in Maricopa, Pinal, and Pima counties have the same policy on student publications in the Arizona School Board Association Manuals. The wording basically provides a standard of prior review for school sponsored publications in line with the Hazelwood decision. However, I also discovered a few high school online newspapers that contain policies declaring the publication to be either a public forum, such as Kofa High School in Yuma, or a limited public forum, such as Valley Vista High School. Consequently, Hazelwood  is the floor for student journalists' right to free expression in Arizona, and each high school can provide more First Amendment protection by adopting an express school policy.  The Governing Board Policy of Mesa Unified School District is particularly intriguing: its language echoes both the "materially disrupts school" test of Tinker and the prior review standard of Hazelwood. I called many school district offices in Maricopa County to contact their superintendents for more detailed information and further contact emails. Presently, I am still waiting for replies, and I plan to make further calls next week.