{"id":624,"date":"2007-03-23T17:51:17","date_gmt":"2007-03-23T21:51:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/shlep\/2007\/03\/23\/delso-ghostwriter-update\/"},"modified":"2007-03-23T17:59:51","modified_gmt":"2007-03-23T21:59:51","slug":"delso-ghostwriter-update","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/shlep\/2007\/03\/23\/delso-ghostwriter-update\/","title":{"rendered":"Delso ghostwriter update"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\u00a0<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" height=\"50\" alt=\"ghostProfN\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/shlep\/files\/2007\/03\/GhostProfN.jpg\" width=\"55\" \/>\u00a0\u00a0A week ago,\u00a0we <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/shlep\/2007\/03\/16\/nj-fed-court-bars-undisclosed-ghostwriting\/\">reported<\/a> that a New Jersey federal court had barred the undisclosed use of &#8220;ghostwritten&#8221; pleadings [that is, a pleading filed by a <em>pro se<\/em> litigant, but written in whole or part by a lawyer].\u00a0 <em>Delso v. Trustees for Plan of Merck &amp; Co., Inc<\/em>. (D.N.J. March 5, 2007)\u00a02007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 16643.\u00a0 On March 21, 2007, the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.law.com\/jsp\/article.jsp?id=1174381422949\"><em>New Jersey Law Journal<\/em><\/a>\/<em>Law.com<\/em> had an article focusing on the <em>Delso<\/em> case and U.S. Magistrate Judge Tonianne Bongiovanni, who wrote the decision.\u00a0 &#8220;&#8216;<em>Ghostwriting&#8217; Lawyer Effaced From ERISA Case on Ethics Grounds<\/em>,&#8221; by Charles Toutant.\u00a0 <a href=\"http:\/\/lawprofessors.typepad.com\/legal_profession\/2007\/03\/ghostwriting_in.html\">At <em>Legal Profession Blog<\/em><\/a>, Alan Childress continued his coverage of <em>Delso<\/em>, getting to the nub of the <em>NJLJ<\/em> article:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;Notice that the N.J. decision seems to rest on the lack of authorization in N.J. rules for such discrete-task or &#8216;limited&#8217; representations, and thus may extend beyond undisclosed ghostwriting.\u00a0 The judge wrote, &#8216;This is not to say that this court does not believe that unbundled legal services, in some form, may be beneficial to the equal administration of justice. But, when viewed under the current RPC [in New Jersey], ghostwriting is antithetical to the public interest&#8217; .&#8221;\u00a0<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Alan also pointed to Prof. Andrew Perlman&#8217;s discussion of <em>Delso<\/em> <a href=\"http:\/\/legalethicsforum.typepad.com\/blog\/2007\/03\/more_on_unbundl.html#comment-64193618\">at <em>Legal Ethics Forum<\/em><\/a>. [In our <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/shlep\/2007\/03\/16\/nj-fed-court-bars-undisclosed-ghostwriting\/\">prior post<\/a>, we disagreed with the judge&#8217;s worry about unfairly helping the <em>pro se<\/em> litigant who has undisclosed assistance from a lawyer in drafting a pleading.]<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>A few days ago, we\u00a0collected a number of\u00a0major resources on the topic of the judicial treatment of the <em>pro se<\/em> litigant.\u00a0 See <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/shlep\/2007\/03\/21\/california-judges-get-benchbook-for-handling-pro-se-litigants\/\">Californa judges get benchbook for handling pro se litigants<\/a> (March 23, 2007)\u00a0\u00a0<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" height=\"50\" alt=\"ghostProf\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/shlep\/files\/2007\/03\/GhostProf.jpg\" width=\"55\" \/>\u00a0On an unrelated\u00a0but haunting topic, a couple days ago, I noticed an excellent example of the <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/shlep\/2006\/11\/02\/the-pro-se-nomenclature-problem\/\">problems with <em>pro se<\/em> nomenclature<\/a>\u00a0that I fretted over last November.\u00a0\u00a0 After coining a rule of thumb in the body of the post:\u00a0 &#8220;If it&#8217;s Latin, it&#8217;s probably\u00a0not Plain English,&#8221; I added a <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/shlep\/2006\/11\/02\/the-pro-se-nomenclature-problem\/#comment-199\">Comment<\/a> explaining: <!--more--><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;Foreign terms are fine when they are already well-understand and long-standing \u2014 or when used among specialists. But, when the general public is involved, real English seems like a worthy goal. That\u2019s especially true when a term like \u201c<em>pro se<\/em>\u201d can so easily be confused with the far-better known (but often also misunderstood) \u201c<em>per se<\/em>.\u201d\u00a0<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>This concern was substantiated in the article &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.timesargus.com\/apps\/pbcs.dll\/article?AID=\/20070321\/NEWS01\/703210351\/1002\/NEWS01\">Police see rise in drugged driving<\/a>,&#8221; <em>Times-Argus<\/em> [Montpelier, VT], by Peter Hirschfeld, March 21, 2007.\u00a0 The piece concerned\u00a0a recently proposed Bill, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.leg.state.vt.us\/database\/status\/summary.cfm?Bill=S%2E0168&amp;Session=2008\">S.168<\/a>, that would strengthen laws against driving under the influence of any drug.\u00a0 Stuart Schurr, traffic safety resource prosecutor for the Department of State&#8217;s Attorneys and Sheriffs,\u00a0explained the Bill to the Times-Argus:\u00a0<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The new law, he says, &#8220;would go a long way toward helping us prosecute cases we&#8217;re not able to do now.&#8221; The law would also set a <em>&#8220;pro se&#8221; standard<\/em> for intoxication, which would establish a toxicity threshold a driver couldn&#8217;t legally exceed.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>It seems to me that a &#8220;<em>pro se<\/em> standard for intoxication&#8221; must have something to do with the driver setting his or her own intoxication standard.\u00a0 Surely,\u00a0<em>prosecutor <\/em>Schurr\u00a0(who I am assuming is a lawyer) meant &#8220;<em>per se<\/em> standard of intoxication.&#8221;\u00a0 Of course, it is possible that he was misquoted.\u00a0 But, that would\u00a0mean that the <em>Times-Argus<\/em> reporter who covers the legal beat can&#8217;t distinguish between <em>pro<\/em> and <em>per<\/em> se.\u00a0 Either way, my point is made.\u00a0 <em>Latin is seldom\u00a0Plain English<\/em>.\u00a0 Now, there&#8217;s a self-made,\u00a0<em>per se<\/em>\u00a0linguistics rule we can all agree with.\u00a0<br \/>\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0A week ago,\u00a0we reported that a New Jersey federal court had barred the undisclosed use of &#8220;ghostwritten&#8221; pleadings [that is, a pleading filed by a pro se litigant, but written in whole or part by a lawyer].\u00a0 Delso v. Trustees for Plan of Merck &amp; Co., Inc. (D.N.J. March 5, 2007)\u00a02007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 16643.\u00a0 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":437,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[991],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-624","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-items"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/shlep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/624","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/shlep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/shlep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/shlep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/437"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/shlep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=624"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/shlep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/624\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/shlep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=624"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/shlep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=624"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/shlep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=624"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}