The Sham of the Nevada Legal System

I don't often link to letters to the editor, but this one at the Reno Gazette-Journal is right on the mark.

It's all a good ol' boy system down there, and nothing is done to attorneys who should be disciplined by the bar but get away with misconduct of varying kinds.

I had to get this dig in the comments, before Heath Morrison and the Board of Trustees could pressure the paper to delete the comment:


This letter should be published on the front page of every newspaper in Nevada. The legal system is a travesty in Nevada. I have thought about reporting a couple of attorneys to the state bar for questionable conduct involving a frivolous lawsuit that I was named in back in 2008 and reported all over the state of Nevada and the west (through AP) and by name by the Reno Gazette-Journal. Longtime readers of the RGJ will know of this civil "case," charges of which were fabricated by a prominent local attorney after the plaintiff could get nowhere in a criminal case since there was nothing to prosecute. Nice, sensational allegations which trashed my reputation and a former colleague's (I was at WCSD at the time the suit was filed although it was filed a month after my railroad job of a termination hearing orchestrated by the now-demoted human resources chief officer and an idiot principal who didn't follow procedure or the law--the hearing had nothing to do with the lawsuit allegations, btw). Thousands upon thousands of northern Nevadans and even people all over the world believed the cynical garbage the plaintiff's attorney was claiming. After all, if the allegations weren't true, the attorney wouldn't take the case to begin with for fear of sanctions, right? Well, no. Judges don't do one cottonpicking thing to these attorneys thanks to the watering down of sanctions. The lawsuit was filed in a cynical attempt to get WCSD's insurance company to settle out of court. It was never intended to go to trial, for the plaintiff had no evidence good enough to go to a jury trial. There was nothing, zip, but the word of a student who had obvious credibility issues. The allegations of "failure to report" were made up by the lawyer in order to extort an insurance settlement from the school district's insurance carrier.

So the suit dragged on for three years, by which time I had represented myself in this matter, but the attorneys for the plaintiff and WCSD last fall decided, without my knowledge, to hold a settlement conference with a mediator. I was not informed of this by either side--the plaintiff's lawyer or the school district's law firm--by mail, as they are SUPPOSED TO DO as per the rules of professional conduct regarding communication (they had scrupulously mailed me ALL court filings and other important documents previously, so I believe the oversight was intentional as they well knew what I thought of this whole thing). They went ahead and agreed to a settlement, the details of which were not made public despite the fact "gag orders" don't really apply when the defendant is a public entity and the school board approves all lawsuit settlements. So I was sent this stipulation to dismiss by the plaintiff's lawyer hot to trot to get the thing filed, and I never should have signed it in retrospect, but I didn't know the suit had been settled out of court. Keeping me in the dark was truly dirty conduct by both sides' attorneys, and worse still was the school board and superintendents' desires to keep the settlement agreement from being reported to the media which they were supposed to do (the previous superintendent actually gave a press conference about this civil claim). MY NAME WAS ON THAT LAWSUIT, AND I HAVE A RIGHT TO KNOW WHAT WAS AGREED TO. Now whether the mother and her kid got a few thousand dollars or a half-million, it doesn't matter. Mom apparently received enough money to treat herself to buying at least a diamond cocktail ring and a manicure with the money, presumably, since she wasn't rolling in wealth previously. The fact was the school district's insurance company capitulated because it didn't want to pay attorneys' fees in a case that would most likely have been thrown out before it could have ever gone to trial.

The only way I found out about the mediation was looking at the US Courts website, a full MONTH after the mediation was held and AFTER the plaintiff's lawyer mailed me the stipulation to dismiss, and found the document the district's lawyers were supposed to have mailed to me.

My point is I thought about reporting the attorneys to the state bar, but knowing how the good ol' boy system in Nevada operates, it is most likely a waste of time. Nobody is held accountable for anything they do, and that includes attorneys.