Not A Lawyer

In Pennsylvania, a Family Court judge ordered a homeless and drug addicted couple, who had four children in foster care due to their neglect, not to have any more children until they could straighten out their lives and get their kids back. Three of the children were born addicted to cocaine.

While many people, including myself, would applaud the judge’s decision, she was, no doubt, in questionable legal territory.

Stephanie Pendleton, the mother of the four children who are now in foster care, challenged the Family Court judge’s ruling and the state Supreme Court overturned the ruling. I can not imagine who would agree to be her lawyer except maybe the most liberal civil libertarian on the planet? The five judge appeals panel decided that the Family Court judge had no authority to prohibit procreation.

The original ruling by the family court judge ordered Stephanie Pendleton and her boyfriend Rodney Evers to seek family planning services, get parental counseling and treatment for their drug addiction.

The judge wrote, “All babies deserve more than to be born to parents who have proven they cannot possibly raise or parent a child. This neglected existence is an immense burden to place on a child and on society.”

That sounds reasonable, right?

Well, the New York Civil Liberties Union had a cow and filed a friend-of-the-court brief when Pendleton filed her appeal. They argues that the Family Court judge had effectively ordered the couple to abstain from sex, use birth control or be sterilized.

I say: “Yeah. And?”

The Family Court judge had put forth that her ruling to prohibit Pendleton from having more children was allowed by a section of law that allows the court to impose medical treatment.

The appeals panel rejected that and overturned the ruling that Pendleton be prohibited from having more children until she can take care of the ones she has. The did not overturn the finding of the Family Court judge that the children were neglected or the one saying that the parents should be stripped of their parental rights.

So now the beast is free to go out and have more drug addicted children for the state and foster homes to raise. Good for you Stephanie Pendleton, good for you, and God help your children. I hope they find good homes FAR away from you.

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Well, Britney Spears is being sued by her ex-husband, Kevin Federline for more money.. oops.. I mean more custody of their two little boys.

Really, who can blame him? I hope he’s not doing it just to get more money but some people seem to think that’s the case.

Not that tabloid reports are all that reliable, but TMZ does have a video of Britney running into another parked car and then getting out to check her own car.. then leaving without leaving a note for the owner of the other car or trying to contact them in any way. That doesn’t make her a bad mother.

However, there are pictures of her youngest son in a front facing car seat, which isn’t correct for a child of his age. He is supposed to still be in a rear facing car seat.. but hey, at least she’s putting the kids in car seats now.

There are also all the tabloid reports, and again tabloid reports don’t equal evidence, of Britney still out all hours of the night and doing all kinds of crazy things. I don’t know if Federline can prove she’s neglecting the kids but he’s been desperately trying to get in touch with the assistant Britney fired after the trainwreck interview with OK Magazine, and he has served her cousin/assistant with papers to be deposed in the case. I can see the ex-assistant dishing dirt but I’m sure Ali will try to make things seem not so bad.

And maybe they aren’t so bad. It may be true that Britney is out partying all night, but kids are sleeping at that time. I’m sure she leaves them with a responsible nanny. And during the days when she is sleeping it off.. well, I’m sure manny or nanny is keeping an eye on the kids.

When we see pictures of Britney’s kids they don’t look malnourished or dirty. They are well clothed - and apparently have more fashion sense than Britney.

So, I guess we will have to wait and see what a judge says about the Spears-Federline custody dispute. All I can say is that Britney had to have seen this coming a long time ago.

Britney has started playing more of a mommy role in public over the last couple of days. She took her kids out to eat and took them to the restroom with her. When she left she even carried one of the boys to the car and put him in his front-facing car seat. Some assistant or something strapped the other kid in, also in a front-facing car seat.

Lindsay Lohan just can’t catch a break. Is there anyone that doesn’t want to see this girl broke and in jail?

Remember Lohan’s last DUI and drug possession arrest? The SUV she was driving wasn’t hers, the three guys inside it say she basically car-jacked and kidnapped them and took off with them in the car to chase her former assistant and her mother.

Well, there was another girl in the Escalade with Lohan’s ex-assistant and her mother. This girl is now suing Lohan because she was so terrified during and after the chase, especially when police reportedly approached them with guns drawn. She says she was in fear for her life.

The girl is suing Lohan for assault and negligence. She is also claiming that Lindsay inflicted emotional distress on her and wants an unspecified amount of compensation for damages and medical treatment.

This lawsuit has been filed in Los Angeles Superior Court and you can be certain that I will be following the case.

I’ll also be following the Spears and Federline custody battle as well, but since documents are sealed for the time being in that case I think most of the information given to the public will be opinion and speculation rather than concrete facts.

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Predicting human response is a tricky business, yet so many occupations are simply required to predict how people will react in order to be good at what they do. Comedians, advertisers and definitely jury pickers have to be dead on accurate about how their “audiences” will respond to what they say and do. It is crucial.

I don’t know who picked the jury for this case and whether or not they should be fired or if the attorney just didn’t do their job. Perhaps it was just a pretty callous bunch in the jury pool.. but they awarded just $2 to a couple who had their very sick son basically kidnapped from them by Utah Family Services in 1999.

You can read the full story at TotalInjury.com

This family has been through living hell for the past few years battling DCFS and trying to get laws changed so that other families would not have to go through what they have been through.

For all their misery, a jury awarded them just $2, which is exactly $1 per parent. Something apparently went devastatingly wrong somewhere.

Now, the family is petitioning the court to have the state pay over half a million dollars in legal fees that they racked up over the course of this legal battle. Of course the state doesn’t want to pay it and say they have legal reasons not to reimburse this family since they basically lost in court.

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