Law And More

Planet Lead Paint - Shift from Advocacy to (Big) Money

When I was blogging the iconic Rhode Island lead paint public nuisance class action trial, the formal public relations focused on advocacy. That was November 1, 2005 until February 22, 2006. 

The defendants promoted public policies such that the landlords were responsible for making the residue of lead paint safe. Another was that federal and state initiatives had already addressed most of the hazard.

The plaintiff and the child activists supporting them argued that children were not safe where they should be: their own homes.

When I interviewed jurors after the verdict went against three of the defendants, including Sherwin-Williams, one woman hammered that stance. She felt so strongly that children must be safe where they live. 

Years later, the RI Supreme Court threw the whole case out. 

That was then.

More recently, both the California Supreme Court and the U.S. Supreme Court refused to review the conviction of the defendants, including Sherwin-Williams, in the west coast version of a lead paint public nuisance class action lawsuit.

As expected, that has opened the door to other municipalities and plaintiff lawyers working on contingency filing similar lawsuits. Currently two have been filed in counties in eastern Pennsylvania. Here are details. More are anticipated, not only in PA but in other states.

This time the rhetoric, on both sides, seems to have a lot to do with money.

For instance Jones Day, representing Sherwin-Williams, contends that lawyers are motivating county officials to file the lawsuits because of the contingency fees. Those can reach one-third of the verdict or settlement. Here those statements, part of Sherwin-Williams' lawsuit to halt those two PA lawsuits, are quoted in Forbes. 

Meanwhile, municipalities can certainly use the lead-paint abatement funds from litigation to fix that problem in older stock housing. Otherwise, homelessness can increase, which can hurt the economy of those counties. In San Francisco, the homelessness situation has discouraged conferences from choosing that city. 

Money will become even more prominent if there is an international economic recession. Today, a headline in The Wall Street Journal reads: Global economic slowdown deepens. That, the article goes on to assert, can put U.S. robust growth at risk. The current stock market is hurting the portfolios of too many. 

As for money and the lead paint defendants, such as Sherwin-Williams, they will require a great deal of it for legal expenses as well as verdicts against them and any settlements. Currently Sherwin-Williams is among the CA trial losers which has to collectively pony up $400 million. 

Those public relations firms officially handling the positioning and packaging of the lead paint defendants will have to transcend platitudes. Money as money has a crass image. 

This is Phase Three of the lead paint public nuisance class action litigation. Together the lawyers and the public affairs experts have to prevent it from mutating into "Another Tobacco" or "Another Asbestos." Yes, the courts of law and the courts of public opinion intersect. 

Litigation Communications

Making points of law, policy issues, and politics accessible and engaging for the public, media, investors, and more. Complimentary consultation. Please contact janegenova374@gmail.com.

 

21st Century, Campus Gun Violence - 20th Century, Verbal Violence in Colleges/Universities

iGens have been socialized how to manage a threat of or an actual gun attack in college.

Of course, many of them won't be able to shake off the memory of lock-ins as standard and losing classmates who had been at the wrong place at the wrong time. In The Atlantic, Ashley Fetters describes that current ethos. 

However, higher education, just like many other institutions in society, was never really a safe setting.

Baby Boomers such as myself vividly recall the verbal violence that faculty, administration, and upper classmen could and gleefully did inflict on us. I don't recall any instance in which we had even tried to push back. 

The time was before students had pounded into them that they had rights.

Unless a parent had been a lawyer - rare, since many of us were first-generation college - we didn't even know the legal language to associate with that kind of abusive behavior.  One is: the deliberate infliction of emotional abuse. 

Of curse, lawsuits against the miscreants and the institution itself for negligence in allowing that were unthinkable. We assumed that kind action would imprint a black mark on our credentials - and soul.

In addition, as yet, there wasn't the assertiveness industry to provide us with set phrases, facial expressions, and body language for responding to the abuse. No one had tutored us to use expressions like "That was unnecessary" when authority figures were inappropriately critical or just going about happily doing random target practice. 

The attacks, so routine, left their marks on our psyches.

It wasn't until I was in cognitive therapy in 2003 that I got it how many bits of trauma had become embedded in my sense of self. Their large number was due, in part, to the blind faith in higher education. We were told: The more education the better. So, we piled up the degrees - and absorbed the verbal violence. 

When an institution, as with education, is so critical to one's success, those needing it will probably always be at high risk. People have to continue going to school, even through it's marked as a setting for copycat mass shootings which transform the troubled into celebrities. Years ago, we got it the first week of college that tongue lashings and put-downs were part of the curriculum. 

Litigation Communications

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"Bad Times at the El Royale" - Gene Grabowski Type Crisis Communications Provides Emotionally/Morally Satisfying Resolution

A PTSD Vietnam veteran dies in peace.

The film tape FBI agent Laramie Sullivan (played by "Mad Men" Jon Hamn) is burned, remaining secret forever.

A cult leader is terminated. 

Suffering human beings take that shot at redemption. 

And, two underdogs get to enjoy funding for a whole new life.

That's the emotionally and morally satisfying ending for film noir "Bad Times at the El Royale."

Set in 1968, when California was full of infinite promise and Nevada was the only BigCasino game around, the movie focuses on seven strangers who arrive at the lodging which has seen better days.

Only two will get out alive.

And those two have been able to snatch redemption from a lifetime of suffering. Salvation includes the money from a 1956 bank robbery to start their lives over, this time on their terms.

Those two blessed humans are make-believe Roman Catholic priest Daniel Flynn (played by Jeff Bridges) and striving African American singer Darlene Sweet (payed by Cynthia Erivo). Since the counterculture was just getting off the ground then Sweet experiences extreme racial abuse and bias.

But it is Sweet who provides the exit strategy. She does this through the kind of wise crisis communications made iconic by kglobal partner Gene Grabowski. As Grabowski hammers, communication represents 80 percent of the manager's job. Sweet proves herself a brilliant manager. Here is one of Grabowski's thought leadership essays on the transformational power of communications Download CommunicationTrainingGeneGrabowski. 

It is Sweet who provides the template when to hold and when to hold with the strongman cult leader.

She overlooks Flynn's shady past, enlisting him as an ally.

She rallies the tormented veteran Miles Miller (played by Lewis Pullman) to kill once again.

Later when he is wounded, she convinces the fake priest Flynn to help Miller's passage by facilitating the final confession.

With his death Miller finds peace for having slaughtered 120 in his past.

She makes legit taking the bank robbery money.

It is her decision to burn the tape which could have undone faith in a deceased former leader. 

And, it's clear that Flynn will have human caring as he continues to slip into that horrific abyss of dementia.

Before arriving at El Royale, he had spent 12 years in prison for the robbery and had lost a brother as the result of it. The odd morality of the noir film makes audiences cheer that he has not only found a friend. He is freed from financial angst.

All the flashpoints in "Bad Times at El Royale" should get those on the front lines of community, business, and personal crisis to reflect on how they communicate. In his new series "FBI," Dick Wolf might incorporate some of kind of communication training Grabowski recommends for those accountable for managing a world which no longer has absolutes. 

Litigation Communications

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Chris Christie Is Back - This Time, With Buttoned-Down Persona

Those watching election return coverage on ABC noticed this: Chris Christie was a panel member.

His persona lacked the rawness and combativeness of his days as a politico. Those attributes were replaced with a buttoned-down image. 

Will his next be in media? His presentation of self on ABC was that of a well-informed commentator. Easily he could slip into the role of a public interest talk show host or be a permanent member of panels on such broadcasts. 

Meanwhile, the kind of image he used to nurture has been usurped by Donald J. Trump. There is the old saying that only one kind of person can inhabit space at one time. 

Litigation Communications

Making points of law, policy issues, and politics accessible and engaging for the public, media, investors, and more. Complimentary consultation. Please contact janegenova374@gmail.com.

 

Courage - Nowhere Near Getting Our Values Around It in 2018

Are those female law firm partners, ranging from Kerrie Campbell to Dawn Knepper, courageous for suing BigLaw for alleged gender discrimination?

Or, are they simply piggybacking on third-wave feminism which, in turn, has become a platform for #MeToo?

Or, horrors, are they reckless? 

In these unusual times it's a struggle to get our heads around what is "courage."

On Twitter, public affairs thought leader Richard Levick praised an instance of courage.

In coaching a 40-year-old woman in her personal essay for law school I am having her dig deep to describe how her unique version of courage listened, looked, walked, and talked.

And, among those in a recovery group in central Connecticut there had been an undertow of criticism that a lawyer shot himself in the head instead of having the "courage" to embrace the consequences of his third DUI.

There, of course, is no shortage of templates of courage.

President John Kennedy published his book "Profiles in Courage."

Mr. Smith went to Washington.

And, in "Stuart: A Life Backwards," there is the real life character alcoholic who chooses to live his life on the streets. 

There are also templates of downright stupidity.

The classic example is the teacher in "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie" who encourages little girls to become political heroes. 

In between, there are so many questions. Unfortunately, most of the answers have been filled with 20th-century platitudes. 

Where can we find insight to help sort out even some of this?

Litigation Communications

Making points of law, policy issues, and politics accessible and engaging for the public, media, investors, and more. Complimentary consultation. Please contact janegenova374@gmail.com.

 

Impeachment - More Political Tool Than Process

The message makes a nice tidy package.

That is: Get out and vote next Tuesday. The Democrats can re-take the U.S. House. Then, the impeachment of the current president can begin. 

The promise of being able to start the impeachment process against Donald Trump is what counts. Not the process itself. And not if it is effective and the president loses his job.  

Probably from the get-go with the election of the first president of the U.S. - George Washington - the concept of impeachment has been more a political tool than an actual course of action politicos or a private citizens intended to put in play. So radical is that notion that it packs a power punch.

That's what Laurence Tribe and Joshua Matz explain in their May 2018 book "To End A Presidency: Power of Impeachment." Here it can be ordered from Amazon.

The reality is that impeachment, by constitutional design, is a complex, cumbersome process. Rarely does it proceed from start to finish.

But the threat of it, as happened with Harry Truman, can hobble the credibility of a president to the point that he can become a kind of lame duck. That threat was used against Truman for firing war hero Douglas MacArthur. 

Clearly, that same threat against Trump serves myriad political uses. Getting out the Democratic vote is just one. Another is that the term has become a popular buzzword which calls attention to what Trump's critics contend he is doing wrong. Also, if the target takes the threat seriously, it can be a distraction. Likely, the president will begin to make mistakes.

The leverage of this kind of tool is not, of course, unique to politics. Those in business use it all the time to motivate anyone, be it an executive or rank and file, to resign. The threat of being forced out is clear. Others distance themselves from the one targeted. And, soon enough, what is supposed to happen happens: That alleged misfit in the organization leaves on his or her own.

"To End A Presidency" is a well-written book. It breaks down legalities into what laypeople can understand and makes the ins and outs of the constitution a riveting narrative.

Litigation Communications

Making points of law, policy issues, and politics accessible and engaging for the public, media, investors, and more. Complimentary consultation. Please contact janegenova374@gmail.com.

 

 

Section 230 of Telecommunications Act of 1996 - Push to Repeal

There was really a time - it seems light years ago - when idealism was high about social networks.

The assumption was that those digital platforms for self-expression and connecting could and would regulate themselves. In the worse-case scenarios, if posters proved to be rhetorical miscreants, the network's powers that be would remove the content.

Yes, the bad guys would be banned temporarily or even permanently. If the members of the media covered that banishing from Paradise, there would be public shaming. Not only branding but actual business revenues could be hurt.

That mindset shaped Section 230 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996. Essentially, social networks were not responsible for what was posted. However, if they observed material which threatened violence and so on, they was accountable for taking appropriate legal action.

Post the Synagogue shooting, there is a growing outcry for repealing Section 230. The assumption is that networks are unable to self-regulate and/or if they do it is too little too late. 

In addition, just about everyone in the loop of facilitating those platforms is being put under a public relations and legal microscope.

For example, should payment processors such as PayPal and Stripe had acted sooner in suspending extreme network Gab?

Should GoDaddy had ended its domain registration as soon as the tone and content of Gab were documented as standard fare.

The world knows that alleged synagogue murderer Robert Bowers had been a "regular" on Gab. Here are more details from Phillip Bantz at Law.com.

The ugly underbelly for all this is the fragile right to freedom of speech, both personal and commercial. That is not an abstract matter. Progress in a society - cultural, social, technical, and economic - depends on being able to put out there all kinds of ideas. 

Litigation Communications

Making points of law, policy issues, and politics accessible and engaging for the public, media, investors, and more. Complimentary consultation. Please contact janegenova374@gmail.com.

 

Gab Goes Dark - GoDaddy Tells It to Find New Domain Provider

Smart media and business guidance could have kept social network Gab in the safe-content box.

However, the newbie, launched in 2016, allowed its posters to stray too far out of the box with rhetoric that was assessed to encourage violence.

Now, reports TechCrunch, Gab is over. At least for now. Its domain provider GoDaddy told it to find another registrar. Since then, Gab is offline. 

Part of this GoDaddy action is in response to the worldwide news that alleged mass murderer Robert Bowers posted hate speech on Gab. But even before that, alt-right Gab got on the wrong side of the tech community. For example, Apple and Google banned it from its App stores. 

More recently, though, PayPal and Stripe suspended its payment accounts. And cloud hosting service Joyent parted ways. 

Underlying this push-back against a social network which is perceived to be extremist is the age-old issue: Can there be a direct correlation between words and action? 

In short, how much influence and power does language really have? Is the pen really more mighty than the sword?

In the era when the medium of published books dominated, academics frequently raised the question if language products such as "Uncle Tom's Cabin" helped end slavery.

Further back in history, did the satire on religion Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales" prompt Roman Catholics to push for reform? 

Although we are in a post-book time, there are still those questions on applications for content assignments or even jobs about what books changed one's thinking or had a great influence on us.

Not long ago, for instance, I applied to research and create equities analysis for Motley Fool again. Years ago, more than 140 of my writeups had been published on Yahoo Finance under the umbrella of Motley Fool.

On the application was that question about books. My answer was that Scott Galloway's "The Four" had reinforced my questioning about the power of branding. The system of brand management had been invented by P&G in the 1930s. In my current purchasing patterns, I am post-branding. 

Will it be up to the lawyers to duke out if social network language can be held accountable for behavior?

Meanwhile, those socializing youth should explain how misleading the nursery tune can be: Sticks and stones can break my bones but words can never hurt me. On an emotional level, for many of us the damage has been profound. 

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Gab Was Robert Bowers' Social Network - Tech World Pushed Back Even Before Squirrel Hill Carnage

Social network Gab, its leadership contends, prevents violence through free speech. 

Maybe.

However, Gab now has to deal with the reality that one of its posters - Robert Bowers - allegedly fatally gunned down 11 and injured six in a Jewish house of worship. 

But even before that carnage in the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania neighborhood of Squirrel Hill, the tech world was pushing back on that alt-right platform. Some call its rhetoric and content "extremist." After the massacre, more tech enterprises parted ways with Gab.

For example, as Fortune reports, payment processors Stripe and PayPal suspended Gab's account. So did cloud hosting company Joyent. Apple and Google won't let Gab into their app stores. And Microsoft also isolated Gab.

Will these actions eventually shut down Gab?

No one knows.

It could also fundraise from wealthy alt-right players to continue to operate. And, it's possible it could exist financially via advertising. 

Meanwhile, the legal sector can anticipate more lawsuits about what is protected speech, both personal and commercial.

Do ordinary citizens, for example, have a perfect legal right to praise Nazi ideology? 

As a scriptwriter, I am fully aware of Hitler's rhetorical talents. He both wrote his own speeches and delivered them in a way that mesmerized audiences. That's documented in Thomas Childers' 2017 book "The Third Reich." Here it can ordered from Amazon.

But, come on, we can't come to praise Hitler. We have to come to bury everything he represented, including what public speakers might be able to learn from his mode of presentation.

The best socialization for getting the hang of being circumspect in politically charged times is to bunk in the Midwest. Instinctively, as soon as I blew into eastern Ohio I knew to listen, not speak.

The neighbors and I get along just fine.

That hasn't been the situation since I had fled the Hudson County, New Jersey Frank Hague Machine and began to connect the dots about the system - out-loud.

Now, I restrict my opining to digital platforms. No one here reads mine. It seems they assume I write cute little articles for newspapers on their last leg. I don't discourage that.

In person, I am mute, just as I was my first 18 years of life navigating the Jersey City, NJ version of the Hague Machine. 

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Megyn Kelly - Like Roseanne Barr, She Might Not Be Able to Stop Her Compulsion to Verbally Self-Destruct

Some, especially in the communications business, might explain Megyn Kelly's series of offensive comments over the years as simply a tactic to get, hold, and grow attention. After all, controversy is proven to sell. 

Among the rhetorical grenades she threw out there into audiences have been:

• Jesus was white
• Santa is white
• Confronting Jane Fonda about alleged plastic surgery
• Confronting a fan of "Will and Grace" about gayness
• Defending blackface.

Until now, such controversial statements might have helped Kelly's upward trajectory. She did get noticed. They may still be helping. Tomorrow she could walk away with $100 million exit package. Not too shabby for shooting off your mouth now and then. Here are more details from Fortune.

So, sure, there could be solid arguments that big-mouthed Kelly was making all the right moves. Indeed, Kelly might even be telling herself that she took smart rhetorical risks on the road to Professional Paradise.

In addition, as a former practicing lawyer, including being an associate at Jones Day law firm, she surely  was and is sensitive to language use. Clearly, then, she knew and knows what she was and is doing.

Or, did she? And does she?

Maybe on a conscious level. But she may be totally unaware of the inner forces driving her. 

Those with an interest in compulsions, especially the self-destructive kind, might argue that, nonono, Kelly really didn't know what was making her do what she had been doing. And probably will continue to do.

What has been really going on, at least inside Kelly, might have been the same dynamics which finally took down Roseanne Barr. The establishment likely won't let Barr back in because they get it that she can't be stopped. They are convinced that she will verbally self-destruct again. 

The raw tragedy about many dark compulsions is that they can't be controlled, at least not without some intervention or a blessed moment of clarity. Eventually many of those with them cross the line. And that's that. 

A more obvious example than Kelly and Barr of the inability to stop oneself had been serial killer Ted Bundy.

As Ann Rule chronicles in the biography of Bundy - "The Stranger Beside Me" - when he was in police custody in the west for murder, he managed to escape.

He wound up in Florida. There he blended in, could have established a new identity, and eluded law enforcement forever. But, the compulsion surfaced. He couldn't control himself. He resumed murdering young women.

That same syndrome often characterizes severe cases of addiction. The compulsion to drink alcoholically, snort drugs, sexually act out, and/or gamble is stronger than the survival instinct. I've observed that in my family. The alcoholic and the gambler only found release in suicides.

As everyone who's had effective psychotherapy knows, though, the unconscious can be made conscious. It's also accessible through meditation, prayer, and even talking frankly with a trusted friend - or an enemy.

Had there been no death penalty, in prison Bundy have received treatment. He could have had the epiphany about the darkness within and, with help, developed strategies to manage it.

If Kelly and Barr are also "victims" of compulsion, they too can struggle to free themselves. 

In 2003, after my business crashed, I had no where to turn for financial help but to a family member who hated me. She refused, chastising me for being "so self-destructive." She was on the money. It's taking hard and sustained effort but I have acquired the upper hand on that inner monster. 

Attention is the currency of the 21^st century. Jane Genova helps you get it for products, services, points of view, causes, branding, careers after-50, and college admission.

In addition, this blog welcomes sponsored content.

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