Friday, September 30, 2011

Proliferation Of Attorneys And Their Fees Are Gravest Concern-By Harsha Sankar



Dear Citizen, January 2006



As some constantly cry out for more regulations, consideration should be given to the federal Fair Labor Standards Act that governs all aspects of wage and hour workplace regulation.


Attorneys are filing claims for small sums under this provision that requires little work beyond the initial filing, and then claiming fees some times in the tens of thousands of dollars.


Many protract the litigation because the law allows them to also collect their fees from the defendants. Most use the same form for every client and are doing cut and paste jobs.


Their fee, in a quickly settled case, is often more than 10 times the amount paid to the plaintiff.


As the federal government continues to target other nations for weapons of mass destruction, the real proliferation of much graver concern is the explosion of lawyers and their fees.


This silent social revolution has caused the geometric increase of bureaucracy in health care and government, in financial capital, in education and in corporate circles.


Avarice and standard less behavior will never stay confined in the legal circle. It will metastasize infecting critical fields and, ultimately, render society helpless to its stranglehold.

Very Truly Yours,

Harsha Sankar
908 Valley Ridge Road
Covington,Virginia 24426

Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Attorneys See Slavery As A Pot Of Gold-By Harsha Sankar

January 2001

The corporate media are ignoring an important issue. Harvard law professor Charles Ogletree is leading a group of lawyers who are seeking to make even more riches for themselves off Black slavery that occurred 140 years ago. They are called the Reparations Assessment Group and seek to obtain compensation for Blacks.


The professor and his greedy colleagues aren’t concerned that there are thousands of slaves in Africa because there is no money to be made off of them. Richard Scruggs (his lawyer team was awarded $92 billion in the $368 billion tobacco settlement),Dennis Sweet (whose firm received one quarter of the $400 million judgment granted against “phen-fen”) and Johnnie Cochran are co-conspirators in the effort to convert American democracy into lootocracy.


What about the thousands of black slave-owners in the South? Who is going to trace their descendants? How about studies that reveal 90 percent of Black Americans are of mixed ancestry? Will each person receive a prorated amount based on his or her lineage?


One question that will be easy to answer is which lawyers receive a fee. The private bar associations control society as much as the Nazis did in Germany and the communists do in China.



Very Truly Yours,


Harsha Sankar
908 Valley Ridge Road

Covington,Virginia 24426

Monday, September 26, 2011

Open the Judiciary To Scrutiny-By Harsha Sankar

Open the Judiciary To Scrutiny-By Harsha Sankar April 2001


Totalitarian and authoritarian societies operate in secret. Only free democratic nations have their governments readily transparent to the people they serve and protect.


Nearly every day, The Roanoke Times publishes articles about lawsuits being settled out of court for an undisclosed and confidential monetary amount. This goes against the principle of Government For,By,And Of The People.


Once public authority is involved, then all matters need to be made public record. The people’s courts aren’t private arbitration centers.


All information about complaints against lawyers, judges, prosecutors and public officials needs to be available to the public and press. There should be no secret meetings in judges’ chambers. Closed-court sessions should be outlawed. Secretive plea bargaining and grand-jury deliberations should be banned.


This needed exposure will not happen until bar associations are de-licensed and removed from the judge-selection process. Repeal of laws governing the unauthorized practice of law (a blatant infringement of free speech) is of vital essence too.


Harsha Sankar

908 Valley Ridge Road

Covington,Virginia 24426

Sunday, September 25, 2011

Federal Judge Decries Legal System Corrupted Beyond Recognition

Dear Citizen, August 2003


For anyone who has the opinion that criticisms of the legal system is radical ,not reasonable, and fanatical, not fundamental, read this summary by the president’s nominee for the U.S Supreme Court and Bar Association attorney.


The American legal system has been corrupted almost beyond recognition, Federal Judge Edith Jones told Harvard Law School in February. “The Framers created a government of limited power with this understanding of the rule of law that it was dependent on transcendent religious obligation,” said Jones. She said that the business about all of the Founding Fathers being deists is ‘just wrong,’ She says they believed in ‘faith and reason’. “This is not a prescription for intolerance or narrow sectarianism,” she continued, “for unalienable rights were given by God to all our fellow citizens. Having lost sight of the moral and religious foundations of the rule of law, we are vulnerable to the destruction of our freedoms and our equality before the law and our self-respect.”


According to the judge, the first contemporary threat to the rule of law comes from within the legal system itself. “The legal aristocracy have shed their professional independence for the temptations and materialism associated with becoming businessmen. Because law has become a self-avowed business, pressure mounts to give clients the advice they want to hear and to pander to the clients’ goal through deft manipulation of the law. Adverse effects include advertising and shameless self-promotion. The legal system has also been wounded by lawyers who themselves no longer respect the rule of law. An increasingly visible and vocal number of people apparently believe that the strategic use of anger and incivility will achieve their aims. Others seem uninhibited about making misstatements to the court or their opponents or destroying or falsifying evidence,” she claimed. “When lawyers cannot be trusted to observe the fair processes essential to maintaining the rule of law, how can we expect the public to respect the process?”


Another pernicious development within the legal system is the misuse of lawsuits, according to her. “We see lawsuits wielded as weapons of revenge,” she says. “Lawsuits are brought that ultimately line the pockets of lawyers rather than their clients. The lawsuit is not the best way to achieve social justice and to think it is a seriously flawed hypothesis. There are better ways to achieve social goals than by going into court.”


Jones said that employment litigation is a particularly fertile field for this kind of abuse. Recrimination, second guessing, and suspicion plague the workplace when tenuous discrimination suits are filed creating an atmosphere in which many corporate defendants are forced into costly settlements because they simply cannot afford to vindicate their positions. “While the historical purpose of the common law was to compensate for individual injuries, this new litigation instead purports to achieve redistributive social justice. Scratch the surface of the attorneys’ self-serving press releases, however, and one finds how enormously profitable social redistribution is for those lawyers who call themselves “agents of change”. Jon wonders, “What social goal is achieved by transferring millions of dollars to the lawyers, while their clients obtain coupons or token rebates?”


The second threat to the rule of law comes from government, which is encumbered with agencies that have made the law so complicated that it is difficult to decipher and often contradicts itself. “Agencies have an inherent tendency to expand their mandate,” says Jones. “Citizens left at the mercy of a selective and unpredictable agency action have little recourse.”


The Judge said ruefully, “There has been no Great Awakening in the law school classroom since those words were written.” She maintained that now it is even worse because faith and democratic processes are breaking down. The law itself is becoming more fragmented, more subjective geared more to expediency and less to morality. The historical soil of the western legal tradition is being washed away and the tradition itself is threatened with collapse.


“Our legal system is way out of kilter,” she said. “The tort litigating system is wreaking havoc. Look at any trials that have been conducted on TV. These lawyers are willing to say anything.”


Very Truly Yours,


Harsha Sankar

908 Valley Ridge Road

Covington,Virginia 24426

Thursday, September 01, 2011

Limit taxpayers' money to lawyers-By Harsha Sankar

Dear Citizen, October 2002

Since Governor Warner(Virginia) announced severe yet necessary budget cuts,one issue he must examine are lawsuits against "government".Because of Gary Taylor's of Blacksburg's tragic death,taxpayers are at least $500,000.00 poorer and his family's attorney is at least probably $150,000.00 richer. Yet the bureaucrat(s) responsible for this tragedy will never be prosecuted for criminal negligence and/or possibly involuntary manslaughter. So much for justice and deterrence.

Governor Warner also needs to review lawyer fees for all the Commonwealth's transactions and contracts, much of which is exorbitant. Since the Governor had no choice but to cut into the muscle, he must trim the fat too. This is a must alternative to tax increases, revenue enhancers,and bond referendums.

Very Truly Yours,
Harsha Sankar
908 Valley Ridge
Covington,Virginia 24426

Description Of America's Difficulties In Three Words-Lack Of Restraint

Dear Citizen, January 2007

America's healthcare system is rife with fee-gouging, fraud, concealment, and endangerment. 20 million unnecessary antibiotics are prescribed annually for viral infections,
7.5 million unnecessary medical procedures are performed, 8.9 million people are
unnecessarily hospitalized, and 800,000 iatrogenic deaths occur annually.

More than 400 billion dollars is not accounted for in the U.S. Treasury in regards to the massive lootings of US Banks and Savings and Loans(both the Bushes and Clintons have heavily partaken in this). Hundreds of billions of U.S dollars in HUD (Health and Urban Development) are unaccounted for. The Department of Defense and the Pentagon are
missing two trillion dollars.

In California,The Commission on Judicial Performance has publicly admonished a
retired judge for failing to disclose his chummy relationship with the prevailing plaintiff's attorney in a $94.5 million inverse condemnation suit. This judge also had a prior work relationship with the defendant's counsel.

Co-mingling of powers had led to the rise of an unaccountable superclass, the
Bar Association Attorneys. "Blank Check Syndrome" contagion has taken over the entire nation. Too many healthcare providers, legal professionals, government-paid
contractors, corporate executives, and others are just charging and doing what they
want. Their sole factors of motivation is money and power. There no longer is strict accounting for all work and costs. One cannot cite this without mentioning the tort system. How many times do so many people seek undocumented sums in claims? Lawsuits beat honest work and investment for honest pay.

The crux of this letter can be described in the three words-Lack Of Restraint. This only happens when standards and common sense principles fade into evaporation. Civility, trust, cost-effectiveness are dismissed as relics of another era.

As Wall Street Bankers are collecting $24 billion in annual bonuses for "shuffling paper",
1.2 million New Yorkers must decide between food or rent. At least 35 million Americans
are confronted with that same question.

It is high time both workers and management join hands and address to both politicians and to the people where the real problem lies. If skyrocketing healthcare cost issues are not resolved properly, any settlement and contract reached will only have short-lived benefits. One can mask the symptoms for only so long. The real isuue is not going away. Having Bar Association judges serving as mediators and arbitrators at $500.00 an hour will only poison the problem. Real cures cannot no longer be delayed. Factories can relocate in a lock,stock, and barrel fashion.

Massive deregulation and liberalization must commence in the private sector. Yet government and all its agents must be held to strict account. With 40,000 new lawyers being unleashed on America every year, it will be impossible to restrain the despotism of "blank
check syndrome" unless there are checks and balances.

Co-mingling of powers in the three branches must stop. Absolute control of the judicial branch by a private group must end. This has to be the message jointly expressed by all Americans.

The message to the People. Quit thinking just about the box and start thinking outside
the box.

Harsha Sankar
908 Valley Ridge Road
Covington,Virginia 24426