FOLLOWUP NJpike litigiousness

FOLLOWUP

Craziness in NJ pike litigation

They’re a cranky crotchety and crazy lot in Joisie, judging from reaction to the article last issue (“New Jersey Pike — Gross behaviors alleged & politics” TRnl#22 Dec 97 p1.) I was thinking I could lighten things up by offering a bit of Xmas holiday cheer about their litigations, and I come back to awfully earnest messages intimating libel suits. One lawyer who demanded a full retraction and apology told me in a fax that it is “painfully evident” from what I write that I am a “white man.” What crazy racist/feminist nonsense!

On the matter of the demand for a retraction, here are some facts. Lockheed, the loser in the $500 million New Jersey electronic toll conversion contract has a track record of funding expensive (and unsuccessful) litigation against the NJ pike, including a law suit purportedly brought by an independent citizen. That record not surprisingly produces speculation that maybe Lockheed is behind the current litigation against CEO Ed Gross by his internal detractors, three senior officers. I wrote that such talk was probably “scurrikous slanderous speculation.” Inexcusable typo, meant “scurrilous.” The attorney (the one who finds it “painful” that I am a white male) and a Lockheed representative both say adamantly they have no connection to one another. I accept that. I never suggested seriously that they did.

What I wrote last issue was written in a jocular send-up style befitting the ridiculous situation that currently prevails at the NJ pike, wherein senior officers are publicly belittling and suing one another while continuing to draw their salaries and pretending to do their jobs as if nothing had changed.

Aunt Jean on harassment: But, sure, harassment can be a genuine issue. After casual mention of these sexual harassment charges during the holiday break at a family get-together, my aunt Jean said: “These feminists seem never to have learned the old female techniques for dealing with randy men.”

A professional horticulturalist who worked in plant nurseries and gardens c1937 to 1982, aunt Jean was often the sole woman working among a bunch of men. She alluded to various kinds of male sexual advances she’d had been subjected to over the years, some playful, others a nuisance and a few potentially nasty.

“You quickly learned to handle them (the unwelcome advances). If quiet words did not work, you proceeded to louder words. If that didn’t work you’d up the ante by stepping on his foot and if he still came on, then sorry, but it was a knee in the balls.”

Maybe aunt Jean has a new career as a consultant on harassment in the Human Resources Division at the Pike’s offices in New Brunswick NJ? Would such an appointment constitute a possible settlement in this case?

Now seriously, the feminist attorney’s clients at the NJ Pike may have a real case, or may not. I don’t reflect at all on the substance of their cases. The truth may be on one side, or the other, or in between. Men do sometimes behave offensively and disgracefully toward women in the workplace and deserve to suffer a severe penalty if real facts can be established. They may deserve to lose their jobs or be prosecuted in such cases. At the other end of the spectrum unscrupulous women can advance their careers and an anti-male feminist agenda by setting up innocent men. They can ruin men’s careers in the US today with totally false allegations of sexual harassment based on nothing but allegations. In the middle may be cases where women make exaggerated claims and wreak disproportionate punishment on men — cases where aunt Jean’s on-the-spot direct methods would be more apt than litigation.

How can any court properly adjudicate such private matters? The alleged events at the NJ pike were one-on-one incidents without independent witnesses. No tape-recordings or pictures are tendered, or third party testimony. It is just one person’s word against another — purported victim vs alleged perpetrator. Without no real evidence, there is huge scope for injustice.

If anything is calculated to cause senior men to deny women jobs that their talents fit them to fill, it is fear of this feminist excess, this crazy ethnic/sexist branding and the willingness of some US courts to collaborate by hearing cases on the basis of allegations alone.