[Ed: This is not a real case. It must not be taken as legal advice.
It was not prepared by a lawyer, but only by a mouthy kid with a typewriter. It is presented for your amusement and speculation.]
Ralph P. Citizen, in propria persona
Box 85 / GradeCurve, Attendance 12345-0085
Telephone 555-2345
IN THE SUPERIOR COURT
COUNTY OF PALMER, STATE OF ATTENDANCE
The Honorable Ed U. Cation, Presiding Judge
Ralph P. and Mary Citizen, ) Case No. ___________________
Plaintiffs, )
vs. ) CIVIL SUIT FOR
John H. Schoolman, ) NON-FEASANCE OF
____________Defendant. ______________ ) A PUBLIC OFFICIAL
Now come Ralph P. Citizen and Mary Citizen, of GradeCurve, County of Palmer, State of Attendance, complaining that John H. Schoolman, who has a statutory duty to protect their minor son, Tommy G. Citizen, over whom the said Schoolman claims to stand in loco parentis; repeatedly, often and consistently fails in said protective duty, to the said child’s great disadvantage, physical injury, pain and humiliation.
JURISDICTION:
This court has jurisdiction to decide this case.
STATEMENT OF FACTS:
John Lifton, also known as “Little John;” and Don McQuellard, who likes to call himself “Mafia Don,” are enrolled in GradeCurve Elementary School. They are large for their age, over-age for their grade, mean, foul-smelling, foul-speaking, ignorant, dishonest, ugly, evil, cruel, thieving, lying bullies (and those are their good points). They have cursed, swindled, robbed, hit, kicked, slapped, tripped, shoved, pinched, punched, pantsed, poked and/or slugged nearly every child at GradeCurve, “just for the fun of it”.
Tommy G. Citizen is a minor child enrolled at GradeCurve Elementary School. He has been on the receiving end of the torments dished out by the aforementioned bullies on at least twenty occasions during this school year. He has suffered bruises, lacerations, pain and fear. They have forcibly robbed him of his lunch money on at least half a dozen occasions. They have thrown his schoolbooks in the toilet. They have pantsed him in public. The worst part is the continuing humiliation of it all.
John H. Schoolman is the Principal of GradeCurve Elementary School. All of the above facts have been reported to him many times, verbally and in writing. In fact, he is so tired of having this sort of facts reported to him that he has quit returning phone calls from irate parents. In spite of all this, he has not done a thing to reduce bullying at his school. He has not disciplined the bullies. He has not asked the school board to expel them. He has not called the police in on this issue. He has not filed criminal charges against the bullies. (Oh, he did call their parents once, but they said he was just picking on their boys, and hung up. That was the end of that.)
The Plaintiffs are not suing the School. The School did not fail to protect the child. They are not suing the School District. The School district has strict policies that require bullies to be kept in line. They are not suing the School Board. The School Board wrote and voted those policies. The Plaintiffs are suing the school Principal, John H. Schoolman, personally, only, solely, in his own personal capacity, for so signally failing to do his statutory duty to protect his charges from one another.
RELIEF REQUESTED:
The Plaintiffs request that Principal Schoolman be ordered to pay a thousand dollars in actual, general and punitive damages, out of his own pocket, so as to make him a fit example to all other in loco parentis school officials not to ignore their statutory duty to protect their students from one another.
_________________________________ ________________________________
(Ralph P. Citizen) (Mary Citizen)
Signed and submitted with all due respect this ____ day of _______, 20__.
A second original of this document is submitted to the Court for service to:
John H. Schoolman, Principal of GradeCurve Elementary School
422 Liberal Education Avenue / GradeCurve, Attendance 12345.
(A courtesy copy has already been mailed to him.)
Sunday, May 25, 2008
Who should have guns at school?
Protect the children
Letter to the editor;
Let’s say the worst has happened: A school-shooter is killing children one after another. School employees with cell-phones have called the police.
The police are responding in strength; the lead car is already in sight, with lights and sirens. They have practiced for this call and expect to arrive in record time.
Also in our favor is the fact that the shooter is so hopping mad that he screams imprecations between shots: He can only kill one every two seconds, instead of one a second. BAM! (expletive) BAM! (expletive) BAM! (expletive) BAM!
(Getting back to root causes, maybe he would not have gone off like that if the school administration had protected him from humiliation by school bullies.)
Now, what everyone at the school wants, is lots of responsible adults with handguns.
The lead police car rams the chain-link fence, knocks it down, and drives right over the top of the wreckage. (expletive) BAM! (expletive) BAM! (expletive) BAM!
The officers are jumping out of the cars with their guns in their hands. The shooter surrenders. As we surmised, all anyone at school wanted was lots and lots of responsible adults with firearms.
WRONG! There was one thing more everyone at the school wanted: They wanted those people with guns RIGHT NOW!
There is a way for schools to have armed adults respond in ONE SECOND. That is to have some school employees carrying concealed weapons.
The man who clips the hedges and the lady who washes the windows, with guns, RIGHT NOW, is lots better than the entire police force thirty seconds from now.
I propose that schools be encouraged to honor State Concealed Carry permits – especially those held by their own employees.
Glenn Jacobs
Eagar, Arizona
Letter to the editor;
Let’s say the worst has happened: A school-shooter is killing children one after another. School employees with cell-phones have called the police.
The police are responding in strength; the lead car is already in sight, with lights and sirens. They have practiced for this call and expect to arrive in record time.
Also in our favor is the fact that the shooter is so hopping mad that he screams imprecations between shots: He can only kill one every two seconds, instead of one a second. BAM! (expletive) BAM! (expletive) BAM! (expletive) BAM!
(Getting back to root causes, maybe he would not have gone off like that if the school administration had protected him from humiliation by school bullies.)
Now, what everyone at the school wants, is lots of responsible adults with handguns.
The lead police car rams the chain-link fence, knocks it down, and drives right over the top of the wreckage. (expletive) BAM! (expletive) BAM! (expletive) BAM!
The officers are jumping out of the cars with their guns in their hands. The shooter surrenders. As we surmised, all anyone at school wanted was lots and lots of responsible adults with firearms.
WRONG! There was one thing more everyone at the school wanted: They wanted those people with guns RIGHT NOW!
There is a way for schools to have armed adults respond in ONE SECOND. That is to have some school employees carrying concealed weapons.
The man who clips the hedges and the lady who washes the windows, with guns, RIGHT NOW, is lots better than the entire police force thirty seconds from now.
I propose that schools be encouraged to honor State Concealed Carry permits – especially those held by their own employees.
Glenn Jacobs
Eagar, Arizona
The Big Bang and all that
The origin of everything
Letter to the editor;
PLAN A: In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth (and life) from available materials. The evidence in the rocks shows that this started about forty five hundred million years ago and continues to this day.
PLAN B: In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth (and life) out of nothing, starting just over six thousand years ago. (Just ignore the evidence in the rocks.
PLAN C: Random movement of subatomic particles brought forth great numbers of stars, which fusion-cooked them over billions of years into atoms of iron, hydrogen, carbon and so on, to fill up the Periodic Table of Elements. Random combinations of certain of these atoms brought forth all of the amino acids – and therefore eventually proteins – so that life was inevitably originated.
PLAN D: We don’t care how it all started. We are satisfied to eat, drink and party.
PLAN E: (other) specify: _________________________________________________
There are advantages to Plans C and D; No God to worship. No Commandments to obey. No meetings. No responsibilities. No prayers to pray nor psalms to sing. We get to make up our own rules as we go along.
However, if either A or B is true, then we are responsible to Our Heavenly Father for our treatment of each other. Jesus told us, “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of these My brethren, ye have done it unto Me.” Whether you believe that Jesus is God-in-the-flesh, you have to know that He told us that principle correctly. (Atheists also believe we ought to be decent to one another.)
Glenn Jacobs
Eagar, Arizona
Letter to the editor;
PLAN A: In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth (and life) from available materials. The evidence in the rocks shows that this started about forty five hundred million years ago and continues to this day.
PLAN B: In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth (and life) out of nothing, starting just over six thousand years ago. (Just ignore the evidence in the rocks.
PLAN C: Random movement of subatomic particles brought forth great numbers of stars, which fusion-cooked them over billions of years into atoms of iron, hydrogen, carbon and so on, to fill up the Periodic Table of Elements. Random combinations of certain of these atoms brought forth all of the amino acids – and therefore eventually proteins – so that life was inevitably originated.
PLAN D: We don’t care how it all started. We are satisfied to eat, drink and party.
PLAN E: (other) specify: _________________________________________________
There are advantages to Plans C and D; No God to worship. No Commandments to obey. No meetings. No responsibilities. No prayers to pray nor psalms to sing. We get to make up our own rules as we go along.
However, if either A or B is true, then we are responsible to Our Heavenly Father for our treatment of each other. Jesus told us, “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of these My brethren, ye have done it unto Me.” Whether you believe that Jesus is God-in-the-flesh, you have to know that He told us that principle correctly. (Atheists also believe we ought to be decent to one another.)
Glenn Jacobs
Eagar, Arizona
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
Coaching the witness
Children don’t lie
Letter to the editor;
A little child sits on the witness chair and answers the prosecutor.
Yes, her uncle took off her panties and handled her genitals.
Yes, he did this more than once.
The uncle is found guilty and sentenced to two hundred years in prison.
He claims he was taking care of the little girl and was merely cleaning her up
after an “accident” in her pants.
But since a child would not lie, off to prison with him.
The little girl did not lie. She told what she believed.
But after being in the custody of experts for days on end and being
interrogated (“brain-washed”), she came to believe the clumsy clean-up
was actually a sexual assault – and that it was repeated.
Groups of prisoners of war have been “brain-washed” by the rigors of imprisonment -- combined with multiple repetitions of reasonable-sounding explanations of the beatific
intentions of their captors.
How much more will a lone child kept in strange surroundings yield to the words of
expert child-psychologists? “Gloria, we are almost finished here. You can go home
to your Momma and your Poppa just as soon as you clear up a few details for us.”
(Translation: “You’re staying right here until you tell us what we want to hear.”)
After enough repetitions, the child starts to “remember” things in a way that does not correspond with reality – and to “remember” things that did not happen at all.
You can check this out for yourself: When you are talking with your brother or sister about something that happened ten or twenty years ago, suddenly you realize that one of you remembers it happened on a bus in Denver and the other says it was on a passenger train crossing Kansas.
Given time and pressure, a good prosecution psychologist might have you both “remembering” that it was actually on a New York subway – even though neither one of you ever went to New York as a child.
There is more to the science of memory than we know at this time. Meanwhile, untold thousands of men and women grind out their lives in prison based on false memories; deliberately implanted memories; casually-acquired untrue memories.
Glenn Jacobs / Eagar, Arizona
Letter to the editor;
A little child sits on the witness chair and answers the prosecutor.
Yes, her uncle took off her panties and handled her genitals.
Yes, he did this more than once.
The uncle is found guilty and sentenced to two hundred years in prison.
He claims he was taking care of the little girl and was merely cleaning her up
after an “accident” in her pants.
But since a child would not lie, off to prison with him.
The little girl did not lie. She told what she believed.
But after being in the custody of experts for days on end and being
interrogated (“brain-washed”), she came to believe the clumsy clean-up
was actually a sexual assault – and that it was repeated.
Groups of prisoners of war have been “brain-washed” by the rigors of imprisonment -- combined with multiple repetitions of reasonable-sounding explanations of the beatific
intentions of their captors.
How much more will a lone child kept in strange surroundings yield to the words of
expert child-psychologists? “Gloria, we are almost finished here. You can go home
to your Momma and your Poppa just as soon as you clear up a few details for us.”
(Translation: “You’re staying right here until you tell us what we want to hear.”)
After enough repetitions, the child starts to “remember” things in a way that does not correspond with reality – and to “remember” things that did not happen at all.
You can check this out for yourself: When you are talking with your brother or sister about something that happened ten or twenty years ago, suddenly you realize that one of you remembers it happened on a bus in Denver and the other says it was on a passenger train crossing Kansas.
Given time and pressure, a good prosecution psychologist might have you both “remembering” that it was actually on a New York subway – even though neither one of you ever went to New York as a child.
There is more to the science of memory than we know at this time. Meanwhile, untold thousands of men and women grind out their lives in prison based on false memories; deliberately implanted memories; casually-acquired untrue memories.
Glenn Jacobs / Eagar, Arizona
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