Washington State Ruling Imposes Race-Based Justice
In America, we are all equal before the law. This is one reason progressives reject America. They would prefer a system where the law applies differently depending on identity group. The kooks running Washington State inflict progress in this regard:
If a party to a civil lawsuit accuses his opponent’s lawyers of any sort of racial stereotyping, judges must order a retrial. That appears to be the implication of an October ruling from the Washington State Supreme Court.
Adherents to the cult of Critical Race Theory have laid a weighty thumb on the scales of justice.
The background indicates that this is as crazy as it sounds:
The ruling came after a black woman, Janelle Henderson, demanded $3.5 million in damages from a white defendant, Alicia Thompson, who had rear-ended her. At the trial, which took place in 2019, Thompson’s lawyers described Henderson as “combative,” suggested she had coached her witnesses, and accused her of exaggerating her injuries for financial gain.
When the jury only awarded Henderson $9,200—not the millions she’d sued for—she filed a motion for a new trial, claiming that the defense’s “biased statements” had “influenced the jury’s unconscious bias.”
The Washington Supreme Court agreed. By calling Henderson “combative,” [state justice Raquel] Montoya-Lewis wrote, the defense evoked “the harmful stereotype of an ‘angry Black woman.’” And by suggesting that she had coached her witnesses, it “alluded to racist stereotypes about Black women as untrustworthy and motivated by the desire to acquire an unearned financial windfall.”
Evidently this means that because she is “oppressed,” Henderson can keep suing until a jury awards her the $3.5 million — if she is still willing to settle for such a paltry sum.
As for how race-based justice works if you have the wrong skin color, ask Derek Chauvin.
Attorneys observe that the ruling…
…could make it next to impossible to defend against civil suits from minority plaintiffs, let alone conduct a normal trial. By definition, trial lawyers must question the opposing party’s credibility, often by implying negative things about them; if any such implication can be recast as a racial trope, litigants will have unlimited ammunition to challenge outcomes they don’t like.
Anything whatsoever can be recast as a racial trope. This is the basis of the racial grievance industry, which has made grifters like Al Sharpton and Ibram X. Kendi rich.
[T]he new standard could encourage defendants to settle based on the race of the plaintiff. Attorneys’ fees are expensive, even for frivolous lawsuits, said Mark Lamb, a civil litigator in Seattle. “If you have to bear the expense of another trial,” Lamb said, “it effectively works as a financial penalty on the party that initially prevailed.”
Facts are irrelevant. If you belong to a preferred racial group, you win. If you are white, you lose. Liberals call this “social justice.”
I’m honored to appoint Judge Raquel Montoya-Lewis to the WA State Supreme Court. She brings 20 years of judicial experience and a commitment to children’s and tribal issues.
She will also be the first Native American Supreme Court justice in WA history.https://t.co/PMv02Pbjmq
— Governor Jay Inslee (@GovInslee) December 4, 2019
On a tip from Dennis G.
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