Spoliation cites

[jamesd at echeque.com]

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On 3 Aug 2001, at 10:07, Sandy Sandfort wrote:
> Apparently, James did not understand the thrust of Aimee's post at all.  The
> important thing to understand about legal precedents is that they may show a
> TREND in the law.  ]

There is a trend to making everything illegal.  Your qualifications to read tea leaves are no better than my own.

By the time "spoilation" reaches the condition that you anticipate, we will not be hiring lawyers for their knowledge of the law, but for their knowledge of connections.

As everything becomes illegal laws to cease to be laws.  Increasingly legislation is not a rule, but merely a desire, rendering lawyers irrelevant.   For example biotech companies usually do not hire lawyers to deal with the FDA, instead they provide FDA bureaucrats with girlfriends, "consultancy 
payments", and the like, because the FDA does not obey any fixed set of rules or principles in dealing with biotech companies.

At the company I work for we have a big problem with a piece of legislation whose meaning is far from clear.  Every few lines of this legislation there is reference to "children", or "the children".    My interpretation of this legislation is "We care very much about children, and we feel so 
deeply we are going to bust some internet company for not caring as deeply as we do."   Our company lawyer has no clear interpretation of this legislation, and suspect we would be a lot safer if we opened direct communications with the bureaucrats charged with intepreting and applying this 
legislation, rather than communicating through someone whose speciality and training is in finding and making trouble.  We need someone whose speciality is being nice, making friends, and trading favors.  Even better would be to do like the biotech companies, and open communication through a 
compliant woman, and throw in a few consultancy fees.

In Mexico, lawyers are fixers, matchmakers that guide your bribes into the right pockets.  The time is coming for American lawyers to stop pontificating about the law and make the same transition.

    --digsig
         James A. Donald
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