Who Has Not Used Facebook? Maybe we Hate It.

Despite the apparent popularity of Facebook, even attorneys and Judges have gotten in trouble from "friending" or sending "like" requests or whatever nonsense has transpired.

For the record, attorney herein does not use Facebook and doesn't know or want to know how to work it, is not interested in learning how to use it, and quite frankly, believes that FB is basically garbage, but that many people like it because they can somehow garner attention, give out overly personal information, and basically, lose their personal rights unknowingly, but being rather naieve or dumb, do not realize what they are really doing. Then, by willingly placing on FB, all the personal information that people don't need to know--such information can easily be gathered by anyone and then likely sold, disseminated, copied or whatever, including using such data for a family law case (or any type of case) and by then, it's way way too late to turn back the hands of time. American people in general, tend to like things like TV and gossip,which suits FB just fine.

The data that can be harvested from such sites as FB for advertisers, is actually probably a goldmine? Attorney has not researched the main companies who harvest data from FB, but we are sure it's very large because the number of people on FB is huge, and it's all in one place?

The other main issue attorney herein has realized with FB is that it's good for one thing--you can simply access the targeted parent online to see if that parent is bragging about misdeeds, posting pics of same, and the like. It's not difficult to find because the client's friends will tell client they saw this data on FB? and we can get that data--normally at no cost? We usually are able to get evidence like this for free, and most people these days could care less about privacy? AI (artificial intelligence) is not exactly something that we should all want, but we knew it was coming and not surprisingly, when the red light cameras that gave out those tickets (by taking your photo at the stoplights, without permission)-- CA finally shut all of them down after legal action was started.

10 SIGNS THAT FACEBOOK IS WRECKING YOUR LIFE
http://facebookhaters.com/

https://youtu.be/TAWyaGN1F1E    (here is a young person with a brain)

1. You spend more time communicating through Facebook than in person.

2. You are on Facebook more than 20 minutes a day. 20 minutes per day adds up to 5.069 days per year of your life that you have completely wasted.

3. Facebook is the first thing you do when you wake up. And then you’re back on 15 other times throughout the day.

4. You completely ignore your child because you are too busy writing a post about how your eggs tasted strange this morning.

5. You’ve finished your nice dinner at a nice restaurant with your spouse, and you realize at the end that you were just Facebooking the entire time.

6. You announce an important change or event in your life on Facebook. “Hey mom and dad, I’m engaged!”

7. You cut off a quality conversation with someone you just met in real life so that you can send them a friend request.

8. You have been the recipient of the real life words “Please get off of Facebook and spend time with me”

9. You reveal something very deep and personal on Facebook which you regret forever.

10. Every time you find yourself with your circle of friends in real life, you catch yourself just reading your Facebook updates rather than actually talking to them.

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Posted in I Hate Facebook | 3 Comments

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Pro Se Litigant Killing Judge's Mother+ Husband Years Ago Still Creates Serious Caution for Judges

IIn the Northern District of Illinois, judges still remember pro se litigant Bart Ross.

Ross was a frequent filer in Chicago federal court, where, the Chicago Tribune says, his filings over a decade often compared doctors, judges and lawyers to Nazis and terrorists. In late 1994, Judge Joan Lefkow dismissed a medical-malpractice suit by Ross against the hospital where he’d been treated for cancer.

Five months later, Lefkow came home to discover her husband, 64-year-old Michael Lefkow, and her mother, 89-year-old Donna Grace Humphrey, shot dead. The case was solved about two weeks after the murders, when a West Allis, Wisconsin, police officer witnessed Ross committing suicide in his van. His suicide note took responsibility for the murders.

That’s one reason that the district takes security very seriously when it comes to pro se litigants, according to Chief Judge Ruben Castillo. Castillo spoke today as the moderator of an ABA Annual Meeting panel sponsored by the association’s Judicial Division, “The Unstable Pro Se Litigant: Strategies for Ethically Dealing with the Difficult Unrepresented Litigant.”

Not every unstable litigant—a person with a mental illness or a borderline personality disorder—is necessarily violent, said Eric Drogin, the first panelist to speak. Drogin is a psychologist at Harvard Medical School, where he’s part of the Program in Psychiatry and the Law. He also has a JD and is a past chair of the ABA’s Section of Science and Technology Law. He listed a variety of mental illness diagnoses and the likely behavior in court of people with those problems. Depressed people and people with substance dependence, he said, might not show up at all, or might be completely unprepared if they do.

But they can still pose serious problems, the panelists agreed. Drogin said filings from people with certain diagnoses “can be measured by the pound” or even the ton. Others may be antagonistic toward the bench, cry a lot or seek the spotlight inappropriately. “Litigation stress” can crank it up.

And those behaviors can pose serious problems for judges, who have to maintain order while respecting the litigant’s rights.

“One of the things we’re doing is trying so hard to make sure the person has access to the courts,” said U.S. District Judge Virginia Kendall of the Northern District of Illinois. “And we also don’t want them to run roughshod over the court.”

Judge Frank J. Bailey of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for Massachusetts said one reason these litigants can be difficult is that their cases are not about money to them, which makes their reactions harder to predict. Often, they resist settling because they lose their forum.

If a litigant seems to need attention, Bailey said, he’ll offer limited opportunities to get it by scheduling hearings that can go long or sending the case to mediation. Castillo added that it’s good to mention summary judgment early on, so attention-seekers realize there may not be a television-style trial.

But the judges agreed that keeping control of the courtroom is vital, and they advised using a firm “judge voice.” They also agreed that it’s vital to identify problem litigants early—perhaps by the volume, frequency or nature of their filings—and plan accordingly. If someone seems dangerous, they said, plan to have security present or reduce their opportunities to show up to court.

Attorney Jadd Masso, a litigator and partner at the firm Strasburger in Dallas who specializes in defending problem cases, said defense lawyers should pick their battles carefully. In one case his firm handled, a litigant who was unruly during a deposition was arrested and brought to court in shackles. That spawned a civil rights case and years of further litigation, including a trip to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals at New Orleans.

A pro se litigant “is sort of a frightened animal,” he said. “You don’t really know [whether they’re harmless], so you have to treat them with kid gloves and be polite and professional and keep it focused on the law.”

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