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Friday, April 15, 2011
Courts - Judicial plagiarism in British Columbia results in $5-million judgment thrown out
How Appealing has the story, plus a link to the ruling of the BC Court of Appeal here. The Vancouver Sun story begins:
A new trial has been ordered and a $5-million judgment thrown out because B.C. Supreme Court Justice Joel Groves plagiarized most of his ruling. In a staggering decision involving an expensive 30-day trial about a brain-damaged baby, the B.C. Court of Appeal said it is only the fourth time in Canadian history a judge has substantially reproduced all of the submissions of a participating party in a lawsuit as reasons for judgment.Thanks to IU-Indy Law Prof Joel Schumm, who sent me this reaction:
Fascinating--but would never happen in Indiana. This from a 2002 death penalty case, Stevens v. State:The ILB has several entries from years back on judicial plagiarism in the U.S. See this one from Aug. 27, 2004.The defendant claims that he was denied a full, fair and unbiased adjudication of his post-conviction claims when the post-conviction court essentially adopted verbatim the proposed findings of fact and conclusions of law submitted by the State. In Prowell v. State, 741 N.E.2d 704 (Ind. 2000), we acknowledged that a trial court's verbatim adoption of a party's proposed findings may have important practical advantages and we expressly declined to prohibit the practice. Id. at 708-09. We noted, however, that the wholesale adoption of one party's findings results in an "inevitable erosion of the confidence of an appellate court that the findings reflect the considered judgment of the trial court." Id. at 709; see also Wrinkles, 749 N.E.2d at 1188.The sixty-five pages of findings and conclusions entered by the post-conviction court are for the most part identical to the proposed findings submitted by the State, but we note several differences. For example, the post-conviction court added two sentences to one issue, a couple of paragraphs to another, and corrected some of the misspellings. It is thus evident that the court carefully considered and purposefully used of the individual findings proposed by the State. The extensive findings of fact and conclusions of law addressed all the claims delineated in his petition. While near verbatim reproductions may appropriately justify cautious appellate scrutiny, we decline to hold that the post- conviction court's utilization of the State's proposed findings in the present case constituted a failure to provide the defendant with a full, fair and unbiased adjudication of his post-conviction claims.
[More] I also asked Prof. Schumm: "So different rules in Indiana for counsel and judges? I recall at least one COA decision admonishing lawyer, I don't remember if it changed the outcome." Schumm's response:
You're probably thinking of Keeney? The difference there, I think, is that counsel plagiarized a court opinion and gave no attribution. Arguably judges who adopt findings verbatim should put them in quotes and cite the proposed findings. But the source is pretty easy to figure out in those cases. From Keeney:Here is the ILB entry on the Sept. 13, 2007 opinion in Keeney v. State. See also this ILB entry from May 12, 2010.The importance of proper attribution cannot be understated. While lawyers and judges regularly borrow reasoning from others, both ethics and the appellate rules require that the source be given credit. Nonetheless, Keeney’s appellate attorney merely transplanted the District Court’s order into her brief as if it were her own work.
Posted by Marcia Oddi on April 15, 2011 08:45 AM
Posted to Courts in general