Unit 3 Discussion Points

Task 1. Discuss the following points with your fellow students:

1. Reasons for too many laws, too many lawsuits and too many lawyers in America

2. Unpopularity of lawyers

3. Soundness of some decisions of judges

4. Precedent: for and against

Task 2. Give a short newspaper review on problems a lawyer faces in dealing with clients, presenting a case in the court and so on. Remember that your interview should appeal to the interests of the interested readers. It can be neutral, emotional , and descriptive. Prove your point of view.

Task 3. Work in pairs. Discuss any of legal problems of today. You may speak about

• advantages and disadvantages of lawyers’ work

• difficulties in judges’ work

• difficulties in interpreting laws

• punitive damages

One of the students is supposed to introduce a subject of mutual interest; the other student disagrees or agrees with his partner’s point of view.

Task 4. Speak on the topic: “I’ve chosen law as a career because…”

Task 6. Team work. Case Study: The following situations are based on real cases from the federal courts. Consider the arguments, then decide how you would rule. Compare your answers with actual case results.

Charlie took his wife, Alice, to a restaurant for their anniversary. While they were drink­ing their wine, Alice's glass broke and cut her hand. Charlie drove Alice to a hospital emergency room, where the doctor told her she had severed a tendon and would never be able to move her right index finger again. Alice and Charlie filed suit against the restaurant claiming $100,000 for permanent injury.

"Judge," said the restaurant owner, "we shouldn't have to pay a penny. We sold the wine, but we didn't sell the glass."

Would you make the restaurant pay for Alice's injury?

Chapter 5. The Witness: Forgotten Man unit 1. Giving the summary of the text t ext 1

Task 1. Answer the questions:

1. Do you know what a witness is supposed to do?

2. How do people become witnesses?

3. Would you cooperate if you happened to witness a crime?

Task 2. Read the text to get the main idea paying special attention to the underlined parts of the text (key words and word combinations).

A few years ago, Archie Bunker saw a mugging in an "All in the Family" episode. His son-in-law urged him to be a witness when the case went to court. Not Archie:

"Do you know what you gotta go through if you're a witness? I'm a working man; I don't get paid if I show up absent. To go to court, you gotta put on a shirt and tie, drag yourself downtown and hang around till the case comes up, which you never know when. And by the time it does, you forget what you was gonna say, and the other lawyer makes a monkey outta you!"

For once Archie has a lot of company among both liberals and conservatives. There is increasing agreement that the witness is the Forgotten man of our judicial system. In fact, things are much worse for him than even Archie, that perennial cynic, suspects.

Consider:

• On August 26, 1971, Mrs. Patricia Finck, a Philadelphia A & P supermarket cashier, was held up at gunpoint in the store where she worked. The robbers took $500. During the next 28 months, she had to go to court 45 times as a witness against two suspects. Each time, the case was delayed or continued for one reason or another. On December 12, 1973 — Mrs. Finck's 46th visit — the suspects were found guilty. "The store paid me for all the time I was in court." Mrs. Finck said, "But that means it lost much more in my time than the amount originally stolen. It was a pretty disgusting experience."

• In a New York City holdup-conspiracy case, a material witness (one whose testimony is vital) was jailed for 114 days because he was unable to post a $25,000 bond to assure his appearance at the trial. His family had to go on welfare. During all that time, the four defendants were out on $10,000 bail each.

• A California Highway Patrol study showed that 60 percent of its officers' time in court is spent waiting to testify. In one recent year, more than 400.000 police hours were wasted in this way. (And since police time costs about $10 an hour the loss in California alone was about $4 million that year.) In some parts of the country, police witnesses are required to attend court proceedings on their days off — and receive no compensation. As a result, says James L. Lacy, in a paper prepared for the Bureau of Criminal Justice, "officers with a number of cases pending may be tempted to avoid making less serious arrests."

• Until quite recently, many private hospitals in the District of Columbia would not admit sexual- assault victims. Reason: the tremendous loss of time by high-priced medical personnel who were called endlessly to court to testify.

“The typical experience of a witness”, sums up Donald Santarelli who until recently headed the Department of Justice's Law Enforcement Assistance Administration (LEAA), "is to be abused, ignored, attacked. At the end of a day in court, he is likely to feel that he is the accused. So he tunes out; he doesn't come forward as a witness when he should."