A Civil Action

On Friday, Nebraska State Senator Ernie Chambers, who is sometimes described as the "angriest black man in Nebraska," or "the maverick Obama," sued God in County Court. The media loves it.

Some arguments in his lawsuit are clever (particularly the observation that Douglas County District Court has jurisdiction because God is omnipresent). But according to the Senator, the suit is actually a calculated political response to an "epidemic of frivolous lawsuits." He intends to show that anyone can be sued, which he thinks is a fault (and not a feature) of our legal system.

My reaction is irritation. It took a while (over a half-dozen articles) to ferret out Chambers' own position on so-called frivolous lawsuits. That made me wonder if his actions were the product of moral outrage, or desire for publicity. Once I was able to figure out what he actually claims he is up to (basically making the point that if he can get away with this, something must be seriously wrong with the system) I still could not see how his suit will actually make anything better. If frivolous suits are so bad, why file another? The "raising awareness of issues" argument doesn't fly with me--an inmate recently "made headlines" by suing Hank Aaron's baseball bat, and that publicity didn't fix much. Further, I do not think a Senator should condone use of the legal system as a publicity mechanism, although I realize it happens all the time.

I hope the Douglas County District court takes the Senator's advice, starting with his own case: I hope the judge slaps him with a giant sanction, and refers both he and his attorneys to the Nebraska bar as examples.