Judge William Walls of the District Court of New Jersey.
Notice how close his name is to William Wallace? His treasonous nature is little different. With the security of lifetime tenure, Judge Walls has renounced the needs of his peers at the state level, as well as those who have chosen to serve legal education and America's largest law firms, and denied a motion to dismiss a fraud suit brought by graduates against the esteemed Widener University School of Law.
Your reactions to this news likely range from "Oh, no he di'n't!" to "crap, NOW how is Steve Diamond going to argue these points?" We understand your anger and concern. His actions are unacceptable and alarming and he we assure you he will NOT be getting his first choice of sandwich and cookies at the next banquet. Oh, how he'll regret his callous and thoughtless actions when he's stuck with turkey salad and oatmeal raisin. And his choices at the cocktail hour shall be limited to domestic beer and the cheap house white.
Here is a link to the opinion. It's full of half-truths and hippie liberal legal analysis, so tread carefully. Do not - I repeat, DO NOT - engage in discussion of this opinion with law students who resist outright indoctrination. For example, this is how the court rejected the reasoning of the New York courts:
Perception is often affected by location of the object. Here, we have data displayed above the category of “Full Time Legal Employers.” Why should a reasonable student looking to go to law school consider that data to include non law-related and part-time employment? Should that student think that going to Widener Law School would open employment as a public school teacher, full or part-time, or an administrative assistant, or a sales clerk, or a medical assistant?
The study of law is the learning of a profession. Widener’s website promotes a professional school. Its function is to persuade a prospective law student to attend Widener in order to receive a degree in law. The employment rate was disseminated to third-party evaluators to establish Widener’s standing among law schools. Within this context, it is not implausible that a prospective law student making the choice of whether or which law school to attend, would believe that the employment rate referred to law related employment.
Someone who is completely gullible and untrained in skilled legal analysis might read this and say "why, that's plausible." Of course, it's bogus sophistry. When a law school says "Full Time Legal Employers" they mean in its literal terms using common sense language: employers who comply with the law all the time. "Legal" is an adjective that modifies "Employers" to distinguish "legal employers" from "illegal employers." "Full time" is a modifying adjectival phrase of "legal" indicating the time of compliance. "Full time" doesn't modify "employers." That's word-hopping. Otherwise, there'd be a comma (that's this thing: ,).
This is basic textualism and for the court to go reading into the subjective mindset of the reader would surely infuriate Scalia and Garner. If Widener meant to imply "people working as lawyers," it would have said "people working as lawyers." Duh. The Law School Truth Center WILL be drafting an amicus brief to the Court of Appeals.
The judge also completely missed last year's memorandum on several other points:
Widener claims Plaintiffs allege their ascertainable loss is an “inability to obtain a fulltime legal job having their benchmark salary of $92,000.” Mot. to Dismiss 30. But this is a mischaracterization.
No it isn't! I mean, I know their complaint pleads the loss is the difference in tuition paid due to the fraud, but clearly the damage is the unemployment. I mean, those judges in New York and Chicago understood this, why couldn't he and his feeble federal court mind? He continued the lunacy on causation:
Again Widener mischaracterizes Plaintiffs’ Amended Complaint. The claimed causal connection is between the allegedly misleading statements and Plaintiffs’ inducement to buy legal education from Widener, not whether Plaintiffs received a legal job.
This is tremendously unfair, as it clearly skews the complaint in complainants' favor by giving them credit for what they're actually arguing instead of what everyone in on the law school scam is claiming they're whining about. I mean, if these people had jobs, they wouldn't be filing these suits, right? I mean, can we all agree on that one, at least? Did they look for jobs? Did they broaden their horizons to pick themselves up by their bootstraps and pay their dues?
Okay, who would you rather listen to, some bozo federal judge in New Jersey (a lousy state), OR prestigious judges in New York City and Chicago (world-class cities)??!!????!!!?!??1111
I know who I'm listening to.
For attempting to charitably construe whiners' claims, for ignoring the many virtues of the current legal education system, and for applying sound legal principles in a manner that doesn't help my interests, you're a dick, Judge Walls. Like an IRS investigator dick. Like a cock-blocking girlfriend's dad dick. Like a deserving of Leiter treamtment dick.
Damn Clinton appointees.
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