Plaintiff Lawyer Baltimore
A federal court jury in Baltimore found that an Elkton obstetrician was not liable in a medical malpractice lawsuit. The core of the case is bound to raise moral concerns with at least some jurors. Plaintiff claimed she would have terminated her pregnancy if she had been advised that her child had Down syndrome, claiming the child’s expected future medical care was projected to be as much as $16.4 million.
The plaintiff claimed that her triple screen blood test found that she had a 2.6% chance her daughter would be born with Down syndrome. The case was a classic case of he said/she said. The doctor claimed the patient was told three times of her test results and that she rejected the doctor’s suggestion that she get the more invasive amniocentesis test.
Most likely, the jury believed the doctor’s notes were accurate and made contemporaneously with his discussions with the patient regarding the results. Only the doctor, the Plaintiff, and God know exactly what information was conveyed. But I also wonder the extent to which this federal jury had a problem with the “I would have had an abortion” claim from Plaintiff. Statistically speaking, someone on that jury strongly believed that abortions are immoral.
"Yesterday at LAX, on the way up here, I was going through security. I removed my sunglasses and said, 'I want you to be able to see my beautiful eyes.' The guard said, 'Don't ever say that to another man.'"
--Courage Campaign Chair Rick Jacobs live-blogging the federal Prop 8 trial, Jan. 11.
"Today every gay or lesbian person in the country is on trial. The testimony brings up all of that 'stuff' that I keep pretending I've left behind. I grew up near Knoxville knowing I was gay, but never wanting to be. I dated girls, just like (plaintiff) Jeff did. I hid from myself. I became an Orthodox Jew in LA and almost got married because I did not want to be gay. When (lawyer David) Boies asked Jeff if he'd be in a more loving, stable relationship if he married a woman, it was not a throw-away. That's what the NOM folks want you to believe. They want you to believe that if Jeff or me or so many others of us who were born homosexual would just marry a woman, the world would be a better place."
--Courage Campaign Chair Rick Jacobs live-blogging the federal Prop 8 trial, Jan. 11.
"The proponents of Prop. 8 seek to hide and obfuscate. They did not want their own ad played in court. They did not want documents from their own strategists to become public because the documents show clearly that their entire campaign was built on the decades of prejudice and fear that we heard about in detail yesterday from Prof. Chauncey. As Ted Olson keeps saying, their arguments do not hold up in public or in court. They only win when they can manipulate the media and the public, using scare tactics."
--Courage Campaign Chair Rick Jacobs live-blogging the federal Prop 8 trial, Jan. 13.
"(David) Thompson, the smug attorney for the proponents of Prop 8, is taking the position that gays are not being discriminated against any more and so that cannot be the reason that Prop 8 passed. ... He's mentioning Will and Grace, the movie Philadelphia, and Brokeback Mountain as evidence that LGBT people are not being discriminated against."
--Marriage Equality USA's Davina Kotulski live-blogging the federal Prop 8 trial, Jan. 13.
"I have to confess to a feeling of being in a surreal environment. ... (S)ome of the most skilled attorneys in the nation argued before a federal judge about whether the institution of marriage is somehow illegal. Never did I think I would see the day where God's institution of marriage -- the most stabilizing, pro-family, child-benefiting institution in human history -- would be on trial before a federal judge in the nation whose forefathers founded the country on the premise of 'in God we trust.' But here we are."
--ProtectMarriage.com Executive Director Ron Prentice in a letter to supporters Jan. 11 as the federal Prop 8 trial got under way.
"I got a curt call from someone in the White House wanting to know how the president's voice mail (to me the night I won the election) got up on YouTube. And I said: 'I have no earthly idea how it got up on YouTube. It's not something I would know how to do.' And he said, 'Well, when the president leaves a private communication it should stay private.' And I said, 'Then he shouldn't have left it on my voice mail.'"
--Lesbian Houston Mayor Annise Parker on Sirius XM's Michelangelo Signorile Show, Jan. 11.
"The single biggest reason Obama's hope bubble burst is because of the unintended convergence of left and right opinion-making. The cauldron of opinion that churns incessantly on blogs, Twitter, social networks, and in the elite media generates the storylines that filter across the national and local press, providing the fodder for public opinion. Stalwarts of the left, dedicated to principles not personalities, hammered the administration; couple that with the partisan criticisms from conservatives and libertarians, and the net effect was to alter conventional wisdom and undercut Obama's image and message."
--Former Hillary Clinton adviser Peter Daou writing at Huffington Post, Jan. 20.
"I went in with the beginner's mind. I didn't know what I didn't know. I never imagined 4,036 (same-sex) couples getting married over a month. (Y)ou just couldn't escape from the perception 'he's just a single-issue person.' I remember standing there at the window, and I swear to you, I resigned myself to not even being re-elected mayor. This is a much more conservative town than people give it credit for."
--San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom to The New York Times, Jan. 19.
