--- On Thu, 6/4/09, Left-Wing Wacko <leftwingwacko at gmail.com> wrote:
From: Left-Wing Wacko <leftwingwacko at gmail.com> Subject: [lbo-talk] Sotomayor, not so empathetic after all To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org Date: Thursday, June 4, 2009, 1:09 AM
This is a pretty interesting article from Glen Greenwald on judge nominee Sotomayor who was the plaintiff's attorney in the case in question., apparently her rich life experience as a Latina didn't do much to help her empathize with a African-American nurse who was injured on the job and then was subsequently fired. I have pasted some of the most relevant passages, but it is well worth reading in its entirety. That is if you all are not too distracted with the MTV awards drama.
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http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/05/28/sotomayor/index.html
Thursday May 28, 2009 07:29 EDT A revealing anecdote about Sonia Sotomayor <snipped a bunch>>
My writing about this issue from the start has not been based on my view that Sotomayor is the best choice for the Court. There is still too much unknown about her to reach a conclusion in that regard (though see this encouraging snippet of her at Oral Argument<http://swampland.blogs.time.com/2009/05/27/why-god-invented-c-span-13/>in a critical case). My interest has been due to the fact that the smears against her were both totally unrecognizable, driven by very ugly sentiments and enabled by reckless "reporting" methods. Along those lines, I want to recount the facts behind a case I had before Judge Sotomayor because it helps to demonstrate just how false and baseless are the attacks thus far against her:
That case, *Norville v. Staten Island University Hospital*, involved one of the most sympathetic plaintiffs I had in my legal career. The plaintiff, Wendy Norville, was a black woman who grew up in poverty in the Caribbean, moved to the U.S., and put herself through nursing school while working as a maid and raising her children as a single mother. After graduating at the age of 44, she went to work at SIU hospital as an R.N. in the neurology unit, where, for the next 12 years, she compiled an exemplary record of uniformly excellent performance reviews.
<snipped a bunch>>
That was the state of the case as it was appealed to a three-judge panel of the Second Circuit. Judge Sotomayor was by far the most active questioner at Oral Argument and it was she who wrote the opinion<http://openjurist.org/196/f3d/89/wendy-norville-v-staten-island-university-hospital>for the unanimous appellate court. Without a trace of sympathy or even interest in the plight of the plaintiff, Sotomayor methodically recounted the evidence of discrimination and, in as cold and legalistic a manner as possible, concluded that Norville "produced insufficient evidence at trial to show that the hospital" discriminated against her. She thus affirmed the trial judge's dismissal of Norville's claims of race and age discrimination.
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