[Vision2020] Justice in Alabama

[Ralph Nielsen]

> A promise to keep for Jack Cline
> By Robert Leslie Palmer
> Special to The [Anniston, Alabama] Star
> 01-18-2007

> BIRMINGHAM — When the telephone rang at two o’clock Wednesday  
> morning, I knew that what I would hear would not be good news. On  
> Tuesday I had been told that that my client, Jack Cline, would  
> probably not survive the day. After praying for him several times  
> that day, I had gone to bed thinking — hoping, really — that he was  
> going to beat the odds again, for Jack had miraculously survived  
> almost eight years with acute myelogenous leukemia, all while  
> waiting for justice in his lawsuit against the manufacturers of the  
> benzene products that had caused his fatal illness. But now Mrs.  
> Cline was telling me that her husband’s weary body had finally  
> succumbed to the leukemia that he had battled for so many years.
>
> I made a feeble and awkward attempt to comfort Jack’s widow, but I  
> knew that it was an impossible task, for I could hear the bitter  
> truth in the cracking of her voice. This was new, for during all  
> the time that I had observed this couple, I had seen considerable  
> strength — the kind of strength that comes only from faith in God  
> and faith in each other. Jack’s battle is over, but hers is only  
> beginning.
>
> When I had hung up, I began to think about the last time I had  
> talked to Jack in person. Just one week earlier, I had gone to his  
> hospital room bearing the kind of news no lawyer wants to give to  
> his client, especially a client so close to death. It was my  
> unfortunate duty to tell Jack that the Alabama Supreme Court had  
> determined that his life was of absolutely no value to the court.
>
> The statute of limitations enacted by the Alabama Legislature gave  
> Jack two years within which to file his lawsuit. But the Alabama  
> Supreme Court, in what can only be described as judicial law- 
> making, effectively eliminated that entire two-year period for Jack  
> and for other victims of exposure to hazardous substances. The  
> court accomplished this bit of pro-corporation magic by ruling that  
> the two-year limitations period begins when the victim is last  
> exposed to the hazardous substance, but that the victim cannot  
> bring a lawsuit until the cancer or other dread disease has  
> manifested itself, which usually occurs much more than two years  
> after exposure.
>
> Having thwarted the will of the Legislature, the court then blamed  
> the Legislature, opining that only that institution could fix this  
> problem — a problem the court itself created. Such reasoning is  
> truly diabolical! Then, in sweeping aside the argument that this  
> court-created rule denied Jack Cline due process of law under both  
> the Alabama and United States constitutions, one justice, Harold  
> See, wrote that the constitutional right to due process of law is  
> nothing more than a mere “competing policy” concern. I am sure that  
> his corporate contributors chuckled when they read that line.
>
> Having to tell Jack how little regard Alabama’s highest court has  
> for life or due process made me want to quit the practice of law —  
> or at least move to another state. But Jack, in an incredible  
> display of his own character, comforted me rather than seeking my  
> comfort. He calmly accepted the injustice that had been meted out  
> to him, and smiled agreeably as I discussed plans to take his case  
> to the U.S. Supreme Court. When I finished, Jack took my hand and  
> said, “Bob, I love you.” He then told me to convey his love to my  
> law partner, Greg Cade, and to everyone at my law firm. Then he  
> said, “In the end, all we really have is love.”
>
> I knew then that Jack expected to die, and it started me thinking  
> about my own life. It started me thinking about a promise I needed  
> to make to Jack, a promise I needed to make to all of the Jack  
> Clines in Alabama, a promise I needed to make to God. And so here  
> it is, Jack:
>
> I promise that I will take your case to the U.S. Supreme Court and  
> ask that court for the justice you were denied in Alabama.
>
> I promise that I will pray as the English jurist, William  
> Blackstone, that “Ne’er may my prostituted tongue protect the  
> oppressor in his wrong, nor wrest the spirit of the laws to  
> sanctify the villain’s cause!”
>
> I promise that I will seek to obey the command of Isaiah 1:15-17,  
> to “Seek justice, encourage the oppressed. Defend the cause of the  
> fatherless, plead the case of the widow.”
>
> I promise that I will seek to root out injustice in Alabama law and  
> make the state a place where ordinary people can expect fairness in  
> the courts.
>
> I promise that I will support judicial candidates who believe the  
> Constitution is more than a mere “policy” concern and that those  
> who callously take human life should not be protected by perverted  
> legal reasoning.
>
> And I promise that I will not forget that “in the end, all we  
> really have is love.” It is for the love of you, Jack, that I make  
> this promise.
>
> Robert Palmer is an attorney in Birmingham.
________________________________________________________________________ 
_

> Friends:
>
> This is a letter of mine that was recently published in the  
> Anniston Star. I thought it might interest you.
>
> Bob Collins
>
>
> Dear Editor:
>
> Robert Palmer's January 18 op-ed promised that he would fight  
> against Alabama's political establishment by obeying Isaiah 1:17's  
> command to "defend the cause of the fatherless, plead the case of  
> the widow". Palmer faces a theological uphill battle, because  
> Isaiah also said, "the Lord ... does not have pity on their  
> fatherless or their widows" (Isaiah 9:17), and Jeremiah said that  
> God would deliver some widows "to the sword before their  
> enemies" (Jeremiah 15:9).
>
> In Numbers 31:17, God commanded, "kill every male among the little  
> ones, and kill every woman that has known a man by lying with him".  
> The book of Joshua claims that millions were widowed and orphaned  
> as God's chosen people exterminated their husbands and fathers,  
> then they were smitten with the sword to fulfill God's ethnic  
> cleansing command, "leave alive nothing that breathes" (Deuteronomy  
> 20:16).
>
> Conservative theologians resolve this contradiction by correctly  
> pointing out that the God of the Bible only feels obligated to  
> protect the rights of widows and orphans who have the one correct  
> religion. This reprehensible doctrine explains why Alabama,  
> arguably the most thoroughly Bible-believing state in the nation,  
> practices such callous disdain for injustices suffered by many of  
> its own citizens.
>