If this lawsuit’s allegations bear up, maybe the NYPD should alter its standards for selecting cops.

The lawyer for the plaintiff, Jazmia Inserillo, is Rae Downes Koshetz. The lawyer for Lt. Jason Margolis, the defendant, is Philip Karasyk.

‘Terribly abused’ female police officer files sexual harassment lawsuit against lieutenant – NY Daily News.

So my friend Jerry Coyne reports on his e-mag Why Evolution Is True.

And I, who maintain this category and who rail against fundamentalist governments, especially because their severe strictures apply mostly to women, must pass this on. Because the Saudi woman went to jail for ten days and is receiving death threats.

Jerry’s post has a ten-minute video of this woman at her TED talk.

Since I once worked on DNA post-exoneration cases, I started to read this article thinking it was about Steven Phillips, a man wrongfully convicted and imprisoned for more than two decades (in Texas, which gives me nightmares) who, once exonerated, filed a civil rights suit against the state.

It is about that, but the lawsuit was filed by his ex-wife against Phillips. After he settled the case, his ex-wife Traci, who had stuck by him and defended him during his trial, felt that she deserved some of that settlement money. And it’s why she sued.

“He was a victim of a wrongful justice system, and his family was also,” Ms. Tucker said.

Mr. Phillips is appealing the decision, and both sides expect the case to make its way to the Texas Supreme Court, the state’s highest civil court, for a decision on whether former spouses of those exonerated are entitled to compensation. It is a question that one legislator who helped write the compensation law said lawmakers had not considered.

“This is an example of the law of unintended consequences,” said State Representative Rafael Anchia, Democrat of Dallas. “We did not think about entitlement by spouses who had become divorced from these innocent men while they were in prison.”

Here’s a case that challenges anyone’s ideas about justice and fairness.

See what you think: A Freed Man, an Ex-Wife and a Lawsuit – NYTimes.com.

So it was that yesterday I read this entire story, about a genuine royal family, the Borgheses, one of whom, the late Principessa Marcella started a cosmetics firm. You’ve all seen those expensive cosmetics selling at the better cosmetics counters. (Full disclosure: I’ve never used them.)

Well — and this story is full of juicy parts, including reality TV, a young handsome prince, et al., and a picture of the poor Borgheses in what appears to be their surprisingly middle-class kitchen — this is a lawsuit. Because the Borgheses sold the cosmetic company and began different ventures on their own, but now Borghese cosmetics is suing the genuine Borgheses for … use of their own name!

If you can’t use your own name, what are you?

It’s enough to make you weep for royalty. (I am personally not sympathetic with the CEO of Borghese cosmetics, Georgette Mosbacher, who herself is sort of royalty, to the Republican Party.)

Here’s the whole Times story, with pictures:  Borghese v. Borghese – Battle for a Royal Name – NYTimes.com.

As the NYT’s Benjamin Weiser writes:

…  although Warner/Chappell claims ownership of “Happy Birthday to You,” the song was “just a public adaptation” of the original song, one of Ms. Nelson’s lawyers, Mark C. Rifkin, said in a phone interview.

“It’s a song created by the public, it belongs to the public, and it needs to go back to the public,” Mr. Rifkin said.

The entire tale makes me wonder whether every time we sing that vapid, irritating little lilt we supposedly owe something to Warner/Chappell. I mean, every time we sing “happy birthday” and videotape it, and maybe put it on YouTube, is Warner/Chappell going to come after us for royalties?

Gee, I’d be happy to ditch “happy” and come up with another tune. Wouldn’t you?

She sued them for age, gender and disability discrimination.

I’m a bit surprised at how cautious I was about her case. I compared her experience to mine, when I had breast cancer, but was concerned that she wouldn’t be able to prove her case. I did cheer her on, hoping she’d kept careful records of everything, and that she’d win, because I thought her case was important to women.

Well, she did prove her case, at least to Proskauer, who should know about these things.  They just settled with her.

I am so glad. And the article about it in the AM Law Daily (linked above) gives you an suggestion of the way these kinds of lawsuits travel, starting with everybody’s “disappointment,” and statements about the case’s merits.

So you get a snapshot of how plaintiff’s and defendant’s lawyers behave at the initiation of a case and during it, up to what happens at the end.

Maybe if you’re suing somebody, this article will reduce your own excitations and anxieties.

One of the plaintiffs, Mary Dandridge, said that “you had to be a member of a certain clique” to be promoted beyond lieutenant, adding that she had been stuck in that rank since 2005, despite seeking out promotions.

Their victory came via a settlement deal with the City which will give them more than $1 million in back wages.

In the meantime, I gathered the information I needed. The court had handed to me a list of New York City Sheriffs, one per borough, and a much longer list of City Marshals. I had to choose whom to use to collect my money.

I decided on the marshal — because there were more of them than there were sheriffs and because several were women — and selected one whose office was near my lawyer’s office.

The Small Claims Court Notice of Judgment I’d received in the mail had put Chaz back onto the case as an individual defendant, along with the co-op as a corporate defendant. I had long since accumulated all the specific information I needed to target every defendant’s monetary base. Chaz worked and I had the information about his employer; the corporation had two bank accounts, and I had the account information for both; and Chaz owned property, i.e., his shares in the co-op. I had his mortgage bank information.

I called the marshal to find out what she needed from me. She told me, first, that I could go after only one defendant at a time. And I needed to write her a letter stating my situation:

• I hadn’t received payment for the debt I was owed;
• I wanted her to collect the judgment for me; and
• I gave her all the information she’d need to collect the judgment.
• I would have to get the letter notarized and then send it to her, with
• A check for $25, as a marshal’s case fee. And
• That letter had to include all my own contact information.

I wrote the letter — at the top I put in what the letter was about, i.e., a Small Claims Court Notice of Judgment in the amount of $2736.99, the index number of the Small Claims Court case, and that it was about a breach of the Stipulation, dated 4/30/13.

I ran down to my lawyer’s office and got the letter notarized (which is why I chose a marshal nearby) and took it with all the supporting documents — the Small Claims Court Notice of Judgment, proof of the individual defendant’s employment, and a check for $25 — personally to the marshal’s office on John Street, a few blocks east of my lawyer’s office.

(In the end, I had to re-do the letter and repeat the entire business to include another check for $12.77, because the marshal’s fee for wage garnishment of an individual defendant is $37.77 [who knows why?], not $25.)

The marshal told me I could mail it. But I said, “No, I like doing things face to face, it’s interesting.” And she smiled a little bit. Only a little bit, though: marshals are very serious people.

So I delivered this corrected package to the marshal and send a copy of the letter to Larry, the co-op’s lawyer. Because I am an honorable person.

Next: How Larry temporarily thwarted me which is why I had to go back to the marshal with a new letter.

When I first became aware of Volokh, I was somewhat suspicious about his politics and, indeed, according to the always questionable Wikipedia (see above link), Volokh (who is a lot younger than I thought and was born in Russia, and that explains a great deal about his politics which anyone who has ever had a political discussion with a Russian cabbie will understand) supported Fred Thompson’s presidential campaign.

Knowing that squeezes lemon directly into my mouth (Fred Thompson!?!? And he was lousy actor, too), but I do like Volokh’s postings. They keep me informed about lawsuit stuff I would not otherwise be aware of.

So occasionally I’ll be giving you sections of the Volokh Report. Here’s one about a lawsuit involving “reasonable accommodation,” in this case concerning a schoolteacher’s requirement for a day off on her own particular Sabbath: Tuesday. The emphasis, the court decided, was on the word “reasonable.” Read on:

When You’re a Schoolteacher Observing a Tuesday Sabbath, You’re Likely to Have Problems

Posted: 13 Jun 2013 09:50 AM PDT

(Eugene Volokh)

From Slocum v. Devezin (E.D. La. June 3, 2013):

Here, Defendants do not challenge the sincerity of Plaintiff’s religious convictions or that part of her religion — her Sabbath [which runs from 10 am Tuesday to 10 am Wednesday each week] — conflicts with her employer’s requirement that she work on Tuesdays…. Assuming for the purposes of the pending motion to dismiss that a prima facie case is established, the burden shifts to Defendants to show that it was unable to reasonably accommodate Plaintiff’s religious needs without undue hardship….

Here, Plaintiff teaches special education at an elementary school. Class is held from Monday through Friday. Accommodating Plaintiff’s request to take off every Tuesday would require Defendants to hire a substitute teacher every week, or a part-time employee to cover every Tuesday, in addition to paying Plaintiff’s salary, or perhaps would require her students to sit with another teacher’s class — overloading the student-teacher ratio. Such accommodations appear even more burdensome than those contemplated in Hardison or Eversley. Therefore, this Court finds that obliging Plaintiff’s request and accommodating her religious practices in this regard would require Defendants to bear more than a de minimus cost, and as such would be an “undue hardship.” Accordingly, on the face of Plaintiff’s complaint, and accepting all of her allegations as true, Plaintiff cannot establish that Defendants were in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by denying Plaintiff her request for time off every Tuesday for her Sabbath, and Plaintiff’s claims for religious discrimination will be dismissed with prejudice.

Sounds correct to me; Title VII requires reasonable accommodation, which courts have interpreted as accommodation that doesn’t impose much of a burden on the employer. In some situations and job categories, requests for time off for religious observance can be accommodated with minimal burden, for instance through shift swaps or rearranging the employee’s schedule. But in other situations, including for Saturday (i.e., Friday sundown to Saturday sundown) or Sunday Sabbatarians, the employee must be on the job for all the hours normally required of the job. That’s especially likely for schoolteachers, where continuity of the teacher-student relationship is important, and doubly so when the time off would come in the middle of the work week.

Thanks to Prof. Howard Friedman (Religion Clause) for the pointer.

This month the Supreme Court will issue raptly awaited decisions about affirmative action and gay marriage. But what’s been foremost in my thoughts isn’t race, sexual orientation or our country’s deeply flawed handling of both.

It’s gender — and all the recent reminders of how often women are still victimized, how potently they’re still resented and how tenaciously a musty male chauvinism endures. On this front even more than the others, I somehow thought we’d be further along by now.

So did I. Although I spend considerable time reading and moaning over the deadly way women are treated in fundamentalist-dominated countries, Bruni’s stand for women in our country goes to the central question: it may be more subtle than it was when I was first trying to develop a career in the 1960′s, but why is this still happening?

Read it all.