Blog 3

            I went old-school this week: loads of legwork on the internship front and for letting my fingers do the walking--thumbing through the phone book--on the home front. Even though I toted my laptop along, face-to-face communication and old-fashioned detective work ruled the week.

Monday

            Hunting down James A. Rapp's treatise, Education Law, for my research on the constitutionality of prior review on school-sponsored publications, I stopped in the Maricopa County law library to log onto their computer in an attempt to gain access, but unfortunately, it was not on Westlaw, only on LexisNexis. I already knew from a prior phone call that it wasn't on the shelves at the ASU library, but I called it to determine if they had access to LexisNexis which I could use. Unfortunately, despite my pleading that I was accepted at ASU in the fall and that my father was a practicing attorney, ASU informed me that only current law students could avail themselves of LexisNexis' services. Deflated, but determined, I resolved to return to the county law library after the day's hearings to look for another treatise, Schneider's  Education Law: First Amendment, due process, and discrimination litigation, which I knew was available on Westlaw.

            A short elevator ride took me from the law library to the courtroom. Sitting in the gallery, I listened to other hearings, a co-guardianship for a mentally unstable aunt and an estate case involving creditor's claims, while waiting for my father's hearing regarding approval of three minors' settlements without a conservator being appointed--a case of first impression for the judge. Although both attorneys thought it might be more problematic, the judge agreed to allow the settlements without a conservatorship because none of the minors' settlements were in excess of $10,000. This case introduced me to the issue of consideration, a fundamental concept in contract law. At first, I thought it was odd that one of the minors, an infant, was awarded $1 for a release of her bodily injury claims stemming from a car accident when it was in utero. however, I learned that consideration is essential to prove a bargained-for agreement. A nominal $1 consideration is commonly used to establish something of value given by the parties to promise to perform or refrain from performing something they are legally entitled to do. A contract can be rescindable or unenforceable in the absence of consideration.

            After the hearing, we chatted with county employees in the courtroom. I learned how lawyers are required to attend Continuing Legal Education classes annually as part of their bar membership and that county employees also have similar continuing education requirements.

Thursday

            Well, I didn't catch the 3:10 to Yuma. Instead, I hit the road at 6 a.m. and returned back home 14 hours later at 8 p.m.. Although the signs on the I-8 beckoned me to the beaches of balmy San Diego, I had to exit at the dusty dunes of Yuma and go to a state prison. After swinging by the office to check incoming mail, I headed to the Yuma State prison--not the old western territorial prison, but the Arizona Department of Corrections prison in San Luis, a place so desolate that it made Yuma look like an oasis. Surprisingly, the prison guards did not check our car as we passed through the prison gates this time. However, since I did not have prior clearance, I could not enter the actual buildings. I sat in the car reading a law journal article while looking out the window at the corps of prisoner "trustees"--prisoners allowed to roam around and rake the rocks in the prison yard. Inside, my father met the claimant, a prisoner, to finalize a settlement and sign closing documents on a bodily injury claim.

            Then, we headed to the Yuma courthouse and met with a client and her criminal defense attorney to prepare for a criminal restitution hearing. Subsequently, we attended the criminal restitution hearing, which raised a state constitutional law issue. The court held that it was unconstitutional to reject an Arizona state statute that limits criminal restitution to a 10,000 maximum.  

            Switching gears, we met with a young female client, and her father, another client, regarding the status of the federal district civil case involving huge potential excess exposure over and above the insurance limit and the impact of the recent amendment of the plaintiffs' complaint to allege a fraudulent transfer count. Since I was familiar with the facts of the case, I was amazed how all these legal troubles began with a simple left-turn gone-wrong, which seriously injured four motorcyclists. A sobering scenario to talk over on the ride home, along with listening to my father discuss deals on other cases on the phone.

Friday

            My alarm was not the most welcoming sound on Friday morning after my long haul on Thursday. Nevertheless, I hustled to the Maricopa County Superior Courthouse in downtown Phoenix, where, once again, I detoured into the law library for some more legal sleuthing. This time, I was ferreting out the legislative history of the bill, SB1212-441R, introduced in the Arizona legislature protecting the free expression rights of students in authorized school publications and eradicating prior review by school authorities. Although the AZ Senate read the bill twice in 1999, it was not received in its final disposition. I found a site to search further the details about its defeat.

            Next, I attended the oral argument on a motion for summary judgment made by my father on behalf of his client, Mesa Public Schools. There were three attorneys representing the plaintiffs; only my father represented the defendant. The defense spoke first, asserting no duty to non-students to have student crossing guards at an intersection, relying primarily on Monroe v. BASIS. In Monroe, BASIS prevailed against a lawsuit, in which a student was injured by a car while crossing an intersection on her way home from school; the court held that BASIS had no duty to provide a crossing guard. Two plaintiff attorneys then spoke; one representing the injured plaintiff and the other the wrongful death claimants, alleging that there was a duty, or at least a question of fact.

            A motion for summary judgment pivots upon whether or not a question of fact exists: if not, the judge will grant the motion for summary judgment and there will be no trial; if so, then a jury must decide the question of fact and the motion will be denied by the judge. Listening to both sides present their arguments, I discerned how imperative it is to build an arsenal of case law to support your position. Because there was a death of a minor, emotions could potentially cloud legal precedent, although it is not allowable. The judge took the motion for summary judgment under advisement, meaning he will review the case law and make a decision in the future. Following up, my father reported to Mesa Public Schools on the argument.

Research

            On the days that I did not shadow my father, I took the lead at home. Commandeering the phones, I spent hours individually calling high schools in Arizona to obtain the email address of journalism teachers or the faculty advisers of student newspapers. The prior two weeks have taught me a hard lesson, I should have verified my SRP proposal's assumption that emails for other schools would be as readily available online, as is the case at BASIS. My earlier attempts at calling school district superintendents produced negligible results: transfers to answering machines and no returned calls. To fix this glitch in my research, I committed myself to cold calling each school to ask for journalism teacher's email. Surprisingly, Friday afternoon proved the most profitable, scoring tons of contacts--tedious, yet productive. On Monday, I'll man the phones some more, hoping to amass enough emails to amass a truly representative survey, which I'm hoping to send out by the end of next week.

While the email situation was a little discouraging, my research on the viability of challenging Arizona's laws on student publications was encouraging. A bill introduced in January of 2015 in North Dakota protecting student journalists freedom of speech using Tinker's expansive standard, not Hazelwood restrictions, was likely to be passed. Because a Republican representative had introduced this, it holds hope for Arizona. Moreover, Washington State in 2010 also entertained a school district's proposal that protected both the student free speech without prior review and school districts from liability for that speech. I consider these both good leads for further research.