Oregon Legal Research Blog
California appellate court’s Justice Bedsworth lets loose on people who don’t know the value of a dollar.
Given that the U.S. Congress is once again rehashing what the bipartisan National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform did last year (and their Commission’s Final Report is on their website), I don’t blame the Justice for his testiness.
See his monthly column, “Criminal Waste of Space,” in the Orange County Bar Association’s monthly magazine, July 2011 OC Lawyer:
“… Voodoo economics has become a redundancy.
And it’s affecting our judicial system. I heard a lawyer a few weeks ago lamenting the fact he was being “dragged back into court time after time over a $30,000 fee award.”
The implication was clear: he couldn’t believe anyone was expending so much effort over such a trifling amount.
I’m sorry. Thirty thousand dollars is—to borrow from Ev Dirksen—real money to me, and I think it should be to our profession.
I’ve been blessed both to have grown up blue-collar and to have worked with and before generations of lawyers and judges who appreciated zeroes. Men and women who had been through a Great Depression and a war that required rationing took decimal points seriously and taught me to.
I got hit with a three thousand dollar dental bill last week and I’ll probably be in a blue funk about it until the Cal-Fresno State game.6 Three thousand dollars isn’t going to delay my retirement or cause my kid to drop out of law school. But it’s a big chunk of change….” [Link to full article.]