Cuccinelli goes down, but likely escapes the ethics investigation he deserves
(A representative of The Future has an opinion about Cuccinelli's activities.)
Eli refers below to the Virginia Supreme Court shooting down the fishing expedition that the denialist VA Attorney General attempted against Mike Mann's entire history (background here, court opinion here). The Court ruled on a narrow technical issue of whether Cucc could even go after the University of Virginia, ignoring the broader issue that the lower court found no basis was given for issuing the CID/subpoenas. A Supreme Court dissenter disagreed on the technical issue and therefore went on to the substantive issue, and mostly agreed with the lower court.
It's that broader issue - no basis for issuing the CIDs to begin with - that constitutes Cuccinelli's ethical violation of using his state office to threaten supporters of opposing political viewpoints. Without a definitive resolution of that issue, it becomes harder to make the claim to the state bar association that they need to discipline him. They should anyway.
I argued earlier that they should at least try to make Cucc pay their attorney fees because his argument was frivolous. Also somewhat harder given the narrow ruling, but not impossible.
UPDATE: per dbostrom's patient suggestion, one might consider donating to the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund. This stuff is going to be happening a lot, and we'd rather have scientists worry about the science instead of fighting frivolous lawsuits.
Also going to recopy something I wrote in the comments:
The general American legal rule, for those who don't follow this stuff, is that the party who wins a lawsuit still has to pay its own attorney fees. It's easier for the winning party to get court costs of filing lawsuits covered by losers, but those are trivial compared to attorney fees.
Various exceptions to rules apply, one is that if one party files a frivolous claim or does something unethical, then the other party may be able to recover attorney fees expended in response to the action.
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14 comments:
Not to be annoyingly repetitious, but...
The Climate Science Legal Defense Fund.
In fact, we should always refer to "Cuccinelli" as Cuccinnelli.
I would have thought the dismissal with prejudice, however narrow the basis, gives them a good case for recovering costs.
Probably sufficient to recover court costs like filing fees etc, but those are usually trivial.
But how much VA tax money did Cuccinelli spend on this?
That's a more interesting number.
I also still would like to know which of the the VA possibles helped them out on the complaint.
John - the attorney work product privilege against disclosure under whatever Virginia's FOIA law is, shouldn't apply to documents received from third party lawyers, or to anything sent back to third party lawyers.
I wonder if Cucc et al. would try to claim the third party lawyers were volunteers and therefore covered. Bit of a stretch.
There may be other limits to a FOIA type request in VA against its Atty General.
If outside parties were super careful, they'd sit down in person and provide only oral advice.
If the case got dismissed, isn't that in and of itself enough to at least make an effort to recover attorneys fees? More to the point, this disgusting man looks like he is maneuvering to be the Republican nominee for Governor. If he gets the nomination, this will be rich fodder for the Democrats to use against Cucc.
Brian: the parts I wonder about are the paleo details unlikely to be found in most law curricula. :-)
I can think of several VA residents who might have supplied such material, plus one lawyer.
Note: my comment was not of the form of "We should be able to get X" but of the form "I'd really love to know X, although only a magic tooth fairy may provide it."
Having just ruled that the State can't force the State to produce documents, the Court will not force the State to pay the State's legal costs. IEHO of course
The statement "Cuccinelli's ethical violation of using his state office to threaten supporters of opposing political viewpoints" seems to equate elements of ACC science with political viewpoints.
Is that the intent?
John Puma
EliRabett said...
Having just ruled that the State can't force the State to produce documents, the Court will not force the State to pay the State's legal costs.
It's a different question - the SCOVA ruling was made under the terms of FATA. But as I recall, the UVa case was funded by donors. And UCS, AAUP also joined the case.
Nick,
The court costs of this case are being born solely by UVa as far as I can tell. A second case involving the "American Tradition Institute" and the FOIA is the one the legal defense fund is supporting since all UVa did was roll over and say "yessir" to that one.
I agree with Eli though, it's unlikely UVa could attorneys' fees. In addition to the general oddness of the state suing the state (although to be honest, UVa is barely a state institution), there are sovereign immunity laws applicable to most state actions....
----Paul from VA
The general American legal rule, for those who don't follow this stuff, is that the party who wins a lawsuit still has to pay its own attorney fees. It's easier for the winning party to get court costs of filing lawsuits covered by losers, but those are trivial compared to attorney fees.
Various exceptions to rules apply, one is that if one party files a frivolous claim or does something unethical, then the other party may be able to recover attorney fees expended in response to the action.
"how much VA tax money did Cuccinelli spend on this?"
If Willie Dixon and Muddy Waters (and Horatio's inteprertation of them) were correct, whatever it is, it's most prolly a multiple of 7.
~@:>
John Mashey,
Who supplied Cuccinelli with the "science" part of his legal argument?
S. F. Singer wrote 2 or 3 letters to the Richmond Times-Dispatch defending Cucc's suit.
I couldn't bear to wade through enough S.F. writing to see if there's a match. Reading Cucc's pathetic brief was enough for one decade.
I'm not a lawyer but I predicted the brief couldn't pass any judge. As the minority opinion said, Cucc presented no reason to suspect civil fraud.
Regards,
Snow Bunny
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