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Journalism Clips | Some time ago I filed a class action lawsuit on behalf of taxi drivers who had their licenses illegally revoked under a Giuliani-backed, TLC-enforced scheme known as Operation Refusal. Hundreds of drivers have been thrown out of work. (For more on, Padberg v. McGrath-McKechnie, see the Case File.) Along the way, I also filed an individual action on behalf of Richard Travers Smith. Mr. Smith was caught up in Operation Refusal, as well, and the facts of his case were stark: One day, he arrived at the Marriott Marquis hotel and joined a line of taxis waiting at the cabstand. The doorman whistled him forward. But before he could reach the carriage entrance, a would-be passenger rapped on his rear window. Mr. Smith gestured that he was already responding to the doorman’s hail. The man nodded and backed away. A moment later, another man banged on his window. This one carried a badge: he was a T.L.C. inspector named Gernon. Inspector Gernon demanded Smith’s hack license and confiscated his taxi. He said Smith had “refused” the first passenger. Based on his accusation, Gernon suspended Mr. Smith on the spot, and started the process for revoking his license altogether. We went to federal court and got Judge Raymond Dearie to issue a temporary restraining order that required the TLC to reinstate Mr. Smith's license. Then the case got truly bizarre and entered into the TLC's netherworld. Even as Judge Dearie called their conduct “outrageous,” T.L.C. officials announced they would withdraw their refusal claim and, with the same breath, that they had reviewed Smith’s record and determined that they should have revoked his license months before. Somehow, though, they forgot! According to T.L.C. lawyers, Smith had accumulated an excess of “points” by committing previous offenses. What had Mr. Smith done? On two prior occasions, T.L.C. inspectors had stopped him at checkpoints. Finding nothing else, they cited him for failure to make proper entries on his “trip sheet." This failure to fill out every line on his trip sheet led, by the TLC's logic, to his license being revoked. (For more details on the Smith case, see: The TLC Meets Kafka ) After some sturm and drang, the TLC agreed to settle the case by giving Mr. Smith his license back and compensating him for his lost wages. Then a new sticking point: attorney's fees. Smith's case was based on a civil rights statute that provides that attorneys who win such cases are entitled to fees pad by the losing side, in this case, the TLC and the city. This rule permits private attorneys to prosecute civil rights cases even when there is not a lot of money involved. But the city's settlement offer wasn't enough to cover the statutory fees-- it was something like a third of the total. We rejected it. Enter Magistrate Judge Steven Gold. Magistrate Gold, who has authority to decide discovery disputes, has denied us all reasonable discovery requests at every turn. Judge Gold decided that we had a conflict of interest and ordered the lawyers to appear before him with their client, so he could question Smith personally about what he really wanted. Never mind that Gold, as a magistrate, has no authority over settlement matters. At the conference, Gold did not merely question Smith. He told him that in his many years on the bench, he had never seen an attorney block a fair settlement in order to secure a fee! He wondered if we really represented Smith's interests. But Smith told him in no uncertain terms, during a private conference in chambers that he wanted his money-- who doesn't?-- but believed his lawyers deserved to be paid in full. Smith told Gold that there was a principle at stake, and that by low-balling the attorney's fees, the TLC was, in his view, trying to discourage anyone else from suing the TLC. At this point there was no denying that our interests were in line, but Gold was not done. From the bench he said, "I don't mean to denigrate your case, or what you said," Gold allowed. Despite himself, he proceeded to do just that, and at length. Gold told Smith that in his experience as a judge, very few cases really involve principle or effect institutional change. Sure there are rare exceptions-- I think he mentioned Brown v. Board and Roe v. Wade-- but the vast majority of cases were just about individual grievances. Most litigants just want to be compensated and are happy with that, Gold said. Moreover, as cases go towards trial, issues that seemed black and white turn out to be in shade of gray. He continued: the few cases that do involve principles involve important principles, such as racial discrimination or police brutality. These kind of cases, if I may say so, involve issues more significant than the rights of taxi drivers, Gold opined. He advised Smith to think about what he said: that his case wasn't very significant, that there was not much money involved, that he should be happy with what he could get, that he shouldn't fight city hall, that lawsuits really don't involve rights. With that advice, Magistrate Gold was finally done, and he watched the taxi driver stand up. Richard Travers Smith, ever so gently-- and more politely than I ever could-- told Magistrate Gold "no." |