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Feb

5

Judges Gone Mad!

Posted By: 'Okie' | 9:19 am — 2/5/2005 | Comments Off See comments below:

Two quick signs that the activist-judicial-apocalypse is near.

1) In Colorado a judge actually awards hospital costs to a woman that was frightened after receiving an anonymous gift of cookies from two teenage rural neighbors. As told by Reuters:

Durango, Colorado – A Colorado judge ordered two teen-aged girls to pay about $900 (about R4 000) for the distress a neighbour said they caused by giving her home-made cookies adorned with paper hearts.

The pair were ordered to pay $871,70 plus $39 in court costs after neighbour Wanita Renea Young, 49, filed a lawsuit complaining that the unsolicited cookies, left at her house after the girls knocked on her door, had triggered an anxiety attack that sent her to the hospital the next day.

Taylor Ostergaard, then 17, and Lindsey Jo Zellitte, 18, paid the judgment on Thursday after a small claims court ruling by La Plata County Court Judge Doug Walker, a court clerk said on Friday.

The girls baked cookies as a surprise for several of their rural Colorado neighbours on July 31 and dropped off small batches on their porches, accompanied by red or pink paper hearts and the message: “Have a great night.”

The Denver Post newspaper reported on Friday that the girls had decided to stay home and bake the cookies rather than go to a dance where there might be cursing and drinking.

It reported that six neighbours wrote letters entered as evidence in the case thanking the girls for the cookies.

But Young said she was frightened because the two had knocked on her door at about 10.30pm and run off after leaving the cookies.

She went to a hospital emergency room the next day, fearing that she had suffered a heart attack, court records said.

The judge awarded Young her medical costs, but did not award punitive damages. He said he did not think the girls had acted maliciously but that 10.30pm was fairly late at night for them to be out.”

Man, I’ve been away from the farm too long! Back in the day you had to beat mailboxes with ball bats, or set paper bags of manure on fire in order to irritate, let along scare someone in the country. Gosh, can’t have any of those drive-by cookie drops. No siree! It’s stories like this that makes me ask, “what does it take to become a judge?”, but then I remember someone from our town that was a teenage hop-head with a 3-legged dog, and he became a county-circuit judge. Go figure. I guess justice isn’t just blind, sometimes it’s also stupid.

2) Yesterday, a trial judge in New York City ruled that the state law banning same-sex marriage is unconstitutional. The Village Voice reports:

Today, a New York trial judge handed down an unprecedented ruling that says the state must grant gay and lesbian couples the right to marriage. The court’s decision, stemming from a case filed by Lambda Legal, a national LGBT civil rights organization, on behalf of five plaintiff couples, says that the state’s constitution guarantees gay men and lesbians the same basic freedoms available to straight couples.

“When a trial judge rules in our favor, it confirms that there may be a new course of action than we’ve seen in the past,” says David Buckel, a Lambda attorney who argued the case and heads its marriage project. … “

You would like to think that everyone in a democratic republic would want their laws enacted by their lawmakers and not those that are supposed to administer those very laws. Allowing activist judges to continually circumvent the will-of-the-people negates the checks and balances provided by our Founding Fathers. Last November on election day, voters in 11 states approved constitutional amendments banning same-sex marriage. As MSNBC reported on Nov. 3rd:

Oregon represented gay-rights groups’ best hope for victory, but an amendment banning same-sex marriage prevailed there with 57 percent of the votes, leaving some activists in tears. Similar bans won by larger margins in Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Michigan, Mississippi, Montana, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Ohio and Utah.

More than 20 million Americans voted on the measures, which triumphed overall by a 2-to-1 ratio. In the four Southern states, the amendments received at least three-quarters of the votes, including 86 percent in Mississippi; the closest outcome besides Oregon was in Michigan, where the ban got 59 percent. … “

So one city trial judge can negate the overwhelming intent of the “people”? As an old farm neighbor of mine would have said, “That ain’t right!” (db)

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