Absinthe
Living my life as an exclamation, not an explanation...
It should be noted by readers that Absinthe is not a lawyer,
and anything posted in this blog should not be used as a
substitute for professional advice from a lawyer
I wrote a post over a year ago on how to access court records for any federal lawsuit (civil or criminal) filed in the US. RadioUserland has since "disappeared" that post, so here I am going to give everyone the information again, because if you are fighting a discrimination lawsuit it really helps to be as informed as possible as to:
What kind of cases are out there that are like yours. If you haven't yet filed your own lawsuit, you can get a good idea of how to compose a well written complaint by looking at cases that won, and cases that lost. Cases pretty much never win or settle without a well written complaint that thoughtfully and carefully describes the events that took place. You should be a very active participant in writing your complaint...don't let your attorney write the whole thing for you, and insist on being the final editor.
Look at complaints of succesful lawsuits and note that they are almost always written in point-by-point format with each point giving one small item of information. They also usually have a point-by-point pre-amble of information that introduces the cast of characters and gives background to the events. You'll see once you start looking at various cases that some (many?) complaints are almost incomprehensible and were clearly written by the attorney alone. I asked my attorney if I could try to write my own complaint and he let me. My attorney liked it, and didn't change a word except to add the legal boiler plate to the beginning and end. My case is complicated by the fact that I was based at Fermilab, and the work environment there is extremely unique and hard to explain to someone who is not a particle physicist. Only now, after four years of representing me, is my attorney figuring out exactly how the world of academic particle physics works. There was no way he could have written my complaint for me and made it correct and/or comprehensible.
You can find out if anyone else has filed discrimination lawsuits against your university in recent years. And if so, read the complaints and find out how the plaintiffs were treated by the university (were they retaliated against? did the university ignore their original complaints?), and how their lawsuit progressed (ie; does the university seem to settle early, or always fight to the bitter end)? You can and should try to contact these plaintiffs to talk to them about their experiences. I did, and all of them were happy to hear from me and happy to talk to me about their experiences fighting their own lawsuit. If you can't find the plaintiff via Google or 411 or whatever, try reaching them by writing them a letter via their former attorney. Don't be shy about doing this because the information you will glean is like gold.
Also, if discrimination lawsuits were filed against your university, and were either won by the plaintiff or settled, the name of the attorney representing the plaintiff is also like gold if you have yet to file your own lawsuit and you are in the process of looking for an attorney. I cannot stress this enough. Rare is the employment attorney who is experienced in the world of academic employment and the special laws (like Title IX) that can pertain to it, and even rarer is the attorney who will win such cases for you.
The secret to obtaining all this information is the online Public Access to Court Records system (PACER for short). Lawsuits are public record, therefore the US government has set up this system to allow any member of the general public to browse through the documents associated with any federal lawsuit. Using PACER is pretty easy (ie; I am no genius, and I figured out how to navigate it myself). There is a small charge of 8 cents per page for viewing documents, but I can tell you that the stuff you learn by browsing through PACER is well worth every penny you spend. Over the past 4 years I think I have racked up less than $150 in fees, which is less than the cost of 1/2 an hour of my attorney's time. And I have read and downloaded a lot of documents from PACER.
Getting started with PACER requires you to set up an account giving them your name and a credit card number so that they can charge you for the documents you view. You can do that by going here. They in turn will supply you with a username and password.
Once you get your username and password, you go to the PACER login page here
Once you are logged in, it will take you to a page called the Pacer Service Center. Click on "Civil" under the Search column, and it will take you to a search GUI that will allow you to search for all lawsuits filed in any federal court in the country. There are ways to narrow the search. For instance, there is a box you can fill in to narrow the search to Nature of Suit number 442, which is a civil rights employment lawsuit (see this document for details). You can also narrow your search to lawsuits filed in federal court in northern Illinois (for instance), and also search by date. And of course you can search by party name.
Be creative in spelling when searching by party name if you are trying to find lawsuits filed against a particular university. For instance, lawsuits filed against the University of Texas at Austin might be filed under that name, or the University of Texas, or UTA or UT Austin, or whatever. Try out all kinds of searches if it looks even remotely possible the lawsuit might be filed under any of a variety of names. Lawsuits against Fermilab are particularly hard to track down because they can be against the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, Fermilab, the Universities Research Association (the organization that runs Fermilab), the URA, or even potentially the Department of Energy.
When you search for cases and it comes up with a list, you can click on the link of ones that look promising. It will then provide you with a query list for that lawsuit that includes items like Case Summary and History/Documents. Clicking on the Case Summary link will tell you whether the case is still ongoing, or in appeal, or was dismissed, or was settled (or whatever). It will also give you the contact information for the attorneys for all parties, and also the names of the plaintiff(s) and defendant(s) in the lawsuit. Like I said before, the plaintiff attorney information for cases that successfully won at trial or settled is like gold. That is probably an attorney you want on your side. You can even try to track down the plaintiff and give him/her a call if you want to find out how they felt about their attorney. Finding a good attorney is crucial to a successful resolution to your lawsuit.
If you click on the History/Documents link for a particular lawsuit you will be given a list of all the documents that have been filed in the case. Cases filed after 2002 usually have a complete list of documents available in PDF format. You can click on the links to each document and download the PDF (to save money, I download most files to my computer so that I don't have to pay to read them a second time should I ever need to read the document again). The cost is 8 cents a page to view the documents.
Now you all know as much as I do as to how to go about accessing federal court records. I hope the information is helpful!
6:48:20 PM
A study of school dropout rates is in the news today. The study finds that only 58% of kids from urban areas graduate.
I have been involved with school boards lending free services as a statistical consultant for several years now. I've also recently applied for licensure to teach high school physics and math. I used to volunteer in the firstbook.org charity program. I find the drop out rates heart rending.
From statistical studies I've done, I've found that reading scores in the primary grades are almost 100% correlated to the socioeconomic status of the kids; the correlation is so high it is absolutely stunning. Kids from low income families basically have no chance because nearly all of them are unable to reach basic literacy goals, and literacy is the linchpin for learning everything else. By the time high school rolls around (if they even get that far), these kids are so discouraged that they drop out. Add into the equation that their parent(s) are so desparate to make ends meet that they are constantly moving around from apartments, to living with family members when times are really tough, and then back to some other apartment, and so on and so forth, and these kids' lives suck. In our local school district, the average child comes from a single parent home where the parent works an average of 1.5 jobs to make ends meet, and moves four times a year because of work and economic issues. The average child moves four times a year.I nearly fell off my chair when the school district superintendent told me that.
Oh, and then there is the policy in many US school districts of restricting birth control education to preaching abstinence. When I went to school in Canada we had intensive ongoing schooling in birth control each year starting from puberty (with coed classes as we got older), culminating in classes where we practiced placing condoms on cucumbers, and had diaphragms and iud's being passed around the class for inspection, along with a detailed descriptions of how they are used and their efficacity. And then we were given condoms to take home. The study that came out today doesn't appear to mention it, but the pregnancy rate among teens in the US is the highest of all first world countries. Gee, could that be contributing to the drop out rates?
America spends staggering amounts of money on total crap like the war in Iraq that is supposedly defending our "freedom". How about channeling those billions and billions and billions of dollars into decent health care and subsidized child care and good stable subsidized housing for low income families (including the working poor), along with federal monetary incentives to stay in school and go to college. And don't even get me started on how federal funds should be used to make all schools in the US equal, regardless of the socioeconomic status of the communies in which they lie.
I moved here from Canada where all of these things are done; I come from a very blue collar low income background, but I had excellent schooling despite the fact that I grew up in the middle of nowhere, and I went to college. I worked my own way through and got student loans, but the government had a program where they forgave a large percentage of your student loans upon graduation if you graduated in the top 10% of your class; when I graduated I got a $17,000 gift from the government. That was almost 20 years ago now. I hope that program still exists.
Things aren't perfect in Canada, but they do one hell of a lot better than a 58% graduation rate from high school. Wake up America to the government policies that contribute to the stupid-ification of your population.
And people here wonder why the fraction of foreigners entering the high tech fields in industry and academia in the US is skyrocketing...
