American courts regularly are debased and denounced by political critics as too soft, too liberal.
Perhaps the worm, in the vernacular, should turn and dish out a dose of toughness to attorneys who turned the Terri Schiavo tragicomedy into a carnival of disrespect for judges and law with their blizzard of repetitious pleadings.
The instrument for dealing with them is Rule 11, which requires that lawyers' court filings are "not being presented for any improper purpose, such as to harass or to cause unnecessary delay or needless increase in the cost of litigation; that claims, defenses and other legal contentions therein are warranted by existing law or by a nonfrivolous argument ...; that allegations and other factual contentions have evidentiary support ..."
Those standards were flaunted by attorneys from the faith-based Christian Law Association that provided virtually cost-free legal services to Terri's parents. They raced in and out of federal and Florida state courts more than two dozen times with claims repeatedly rejected as groundless, unbelievable or plain bad law. Even dour justices of the U.S. Supreme Court said "No!" five times.
One 11th hour claim included a lawyer's absurd affidavit she heard Terri asking to live. Another included a man offering to wire Terri's head so she could speak through a loudspeaker.
This farce was encouraged by a willing ensemble of opportunists posing as messengers of God—President Bush, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, Congress, career religious protesters trying to storm the Florida hospice to "save" Terri and, of course, Congress' premier sleaze, Rep. Tom DeLay, now unmasked as denying his own comatose, vegetative father life support in 1988.
Terri's parents, the Schindlers, unhappy over a $1 million negligence settlement Michael Schiavo wouldn't split, fueled hysteria with reckless claims the hospice would "murder" Terri with morphine.
Stiffing the Schindler attorneys with a stinging fine and public reproach would remind them—and others inclined to trifle with judicial patience—that courts aren't stage settings for freewheeling jesters performing for a mindless street mob.
Despite the spectacle, some good has emerged from the Schiavo case.
Americans have experienced a reawakened recognition that living wills are essential to avoid end-of-life disputes such as being fought around Terri Schiavo.
To that end, the Idaho Legislature passed and Gov. Dirk Kempthorne signed last Wednesday the "Medical Consent and Natural Death Act" ensuring proper legal respect for the dying who elect not to be kept alive by heroic measures with life support systems.
