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Legal Briefs
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Business New Haven
11/30/1998
By: BNH
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Order in the Court!
Until recently, local courthouses were not thought of as being particularly user-friendly; publicity about them focused on inadequate staffing (court clerks were unavailable between the hours of 1 and 2:30 p.m. and after 4 p.m.), shootings that occurred on their grounds (New Haven and Bridgeport courthouses, the latter resulting in a fatality) and unsafe health conditions (sewage flooding in New Haven).
Now, though, these problems are being addressed: The lunch-time clerk limitation was rescinded in February, and October saw reinstitution of late afternoon hours. Court information centers (CICs), which provide information on forms for use in court, daily docket information and computer access for pro se litigants as well as attorneys, are open in several local courthouses: Waterbury (GA4 and the judicial district courthouses), Stamford (GA1 and the judicial district courthouse) currently have them, and one is scheduled for Bridgeport's judicial district courthouse by year's end.
Finally, Bridgeport and/or New Haven - whose existing facilities are inadequate or downright dangerous - will be the site for a new court facility before the end of the century. There are still several political and funding issues to be addressed before ground can be broken on either site, and the enormous costs involved ($70 million for New Haven; $59 million for Bridgeport) have led to speculation that only one site will be eventually approved.
No One Ever Said
They Were Perfect
Failure to exercise diligence on a client's behalf and failure to adequately communicate with a client have landed three local attorneys in trouble with the Statewide Grievance Committee. In a Waterbury matter, the attorney failed to file an appeal of an adverse immigration ruling, resulting in a client's deportation. In Stamford, the attorney was hired to review an insurance policy and failed to fully inform the clients of the results of his review, while in Orange, the attorney accepted a $2,500 retainer and then failed to respond to letters and phone calls from the client for three months. Each lawyer was given a reprimand - in essence, an unfavorable mark on the barrister's record, but not an impediment to his ability to practice law in the state.
Don't They Read the Newspapers?
Remember the outrage expressed in the news when a young resident of a state-run facility was suffocated by a worker sitting on the child in order to “restrain” him? Apparently, the state attorney general's office did not take it as a sign of public opinion, and recently lost a jury trial in Bridgeport to the tune of more than $1 million as a result. In Carpenter v. Johnson, the decedent was a resident of a state-run facility for persons with severe physical and mental limitations. Despite the fact that she had profound mental retardation and spastic quadriplegia (as a result of cerebral palsy), the defendants (workers at the facility) put a plastic bag on the decedent's head before putting her to bed, presumably to protect the state's linens from the hair treatment they had administered to her. She died as a result of suffocating on the bag. The state's highest settlement offer had been $350,000; the jury deliberated for only nine hours before making the seven figure award. Mistakes seem to come in multiples when the state is involved.
What's New(s)
Citing customer service and the certainty of getting paid, a number of area law firms and solo practitioners are now accepting payment via credit card, according to America Lawyer Media. The results vary greatly, with some practitioners saying that it's an effective marketing tool and useful when a case requires a substantial retainer, while others have tried and dropped the practice as non-beneficial. And, as might be expected, larger firms or those with a corporate practice haven't even considered the practice. No comment was available at press time to substantiate the growing rumor that free cell-phones will be offered to existing clients bringing in new business...
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