Blogs Sep 1, 2010 at 10:20 am

Comments

1
"[her husband claims that his wife didn't know he posted the pictures online]"

And this somehow makes HER the internet whore. Okaaaay...
2
I think the key word in your article is "Manitoba".
3
I don't care if the judge presiding over my case has kinks, and dirty pictures posted over the Internet. In fact, if they stopped and thought about it for a second, people might realize that they're better off if their lawyer's and judge's kinks are public rather than private. Public is fodder for tabloids; private is fodder for blackmailers and the like. At which point you never know which decisions were made under demands. "Judge in my favor, or I make these photos public."
4
Links to pictures?
5
A lawyer should proposition a client. After they've wrapped up the case that's OK, but not on the job.

Also, posting pics without consent? If true: Crucify.
6
It's hard to tell based on that one photo, but I'm pretty sure I have copies of those pics.
7
Chapman sounds more American than Canadian.
8
Propositioning a client is a big old ethics violation. Especially when the client is in a emotionally vulnerable position like a divorce. Its expressly prohibited in Washington unless you were fucking them before. Not sure on Manitoba.

So if she was complicit in that, then thats something questionable, but the rest is no big deal. Well except that he's an ass if he posted them without her permission.
9
"Jack King"? Really? Not Holden Magroin, not Hugh G. Rection?
10
The next video in the "Editor's Picks" is of underwear models riding roller coasters. Nice juxtaposition!

http://video.ca.msn.com/watch/video/roll…

So in Canada (and the US, I imagine) it is wrong to have *private* nude photos, yet perfectly fine to have public professionally produced videos with jiggling breasts, available for ALL the world to see. Personally, I think both are acceptable and should be encouraged.
11
#2 HAHA
12
I'm going to have to agree with both @1 and @2.

Judges are appointed in Canada, by the way.
13
If I were applying to be a judge, as she did, I too would have stumbled over the application question, "Is there anything in your past or present which could reflect negatively on yourself or the judiciary and which should be disclosed?"

In my case "failed at shoplifting Missoni sweater" and "accidentally blew Mark Finley" would be the tip of the iceberg - I'd just walk away once I saw that question.

But for the wannabe judge, it's that damn "could" in the question. "Could" it reflect negatively on the judiciary that I let my white husband put porn photos of me online to seduce his black immigration clients into fucking me while he lends a hand?

Could that reflect negatively on the judiciary in a country that prides itself on paying very close attention to avoiding mistreatment of immigrants? Ya think?

Well, she left it out, thinking it would never come up. That none of the black immigrant clients her husband tried to seduce with her online photos would speak up.

If I had something before a court, I sure hope I get someone deciding the case with judgment a wee bit better than that.
14
I dunno, I don't think the "they're only human" line works for judges. A judge's job is to, you know, have good judgment. Propositioning a client (assuming she was involved in that) and/or posting nudie pictures of oneself online does not show good judgment. I don't know if it's something that should automatically disqualify a judge, but it's definitely something to take into consideration.

To make an analogy, I don't give a shit if my lawyer, accountant, or mechanic believes in faith healing, but my doctor sure as hell better not.
15
Yeah, call me a sex-panicked Canadian, but I gotta agree with gloomy gus @13. And the video was silly, but as to this:
I would put the odds that most or all of the twenty- and thirty-something reporters clucking their tongues at Lori Douglas have posed for dirty pictures and taken out personal ads at somewhere close to 100%.

I doubt that "most or all" of the staff of the Stranger has posed for dirty pictures online. Am I wrong, or is the CBC really that much more wild and crazy than you are?
16
@14 HOW does posting nudes show bad judgment?
17
@16 actually that's a good question. As we all know, most judicial review boards are in Ottawa, which is filled with houses of ill repute given to Canada as a reward for liberating the Netherlands.
18
Wow. Glad you guys aren’t rushing to judgment here on sex positive Slog. A few points of clarification may be necessary.

No one, not even the douchebag blackmailer, has suggested that King propositioned any other “black immigration clients”. Possibly because King was a family lawyer and Chapman was a divorce client. WTF does his immigration status have to do with anything? There is no evidence whatsoever that Douglas had any knowledge of or participation in the propositioning of Chapman except the unsupported assertion that he once ate lunch with the judge and her husband and it “felt like a date”.

King apologized for his professional misconduct, paid a settlement and gave up his practice for a year. The Manitoba Law Society was apparently aware of this and allowed him to return to practicing law. The legal community in Manitoba was aware of the complaint and still saw fit to appoint Douglas to the bench were she has ably served for 5 years.

Contrary to Dan’s impression, the Canadian lawyers I’ve spoken with today seem much more sympathetic to the Judge’s situation than you people.
19
@18, that helps a lot! Thank you.
20
@14 HOW does posting nudes show bad judgment?

Are you kidding? Because other people will make a big deal about it, which means you'll have to waste time defending it. Getting appointed or elected as a judge is a political process, and there is only so much political capital lying around. You gotta save it for things that matter.

Yes, consenting adults should be able to do whatever they want, it's none of our business, blah blah blah. But we live in the reality where many people think private conduct matters-- which means it matters.

For example, I would be pissed off at Obama if he got caught receiving a blowjob from an intern in the Oval Office, even if he did so with Michelle's blessing. We know the GOP would make a big deal about it, which means Obama would need to defend it, which would waste resources he could be spending on other things. Knowing all of that, Obama would be showing poor judgment getting blown by an intern, even though such conduct is private and not really any of our business. Make sense?
21
Other than the lawyer/client relationship, I would expect what the husband did is exactly how you try find someone to join in a threeway. A little dirty talk: "here is some porn I like, doesn't that look like fun" nudge nudge wink wink

That Chapman hasn't let it go for 8 years that swingers hit on him seems excessive.
22
Why is everyone against the judge, when it is really the husbands fault? He himself admitted that he posted those pictures of her without her knowledge and the one that propositioned the client. He is the piece of shit. I don't think she should be punished for being kinky and then her husband going to far "out of grief." I also think that ex-client of theirs is just looking for more money.

@18 is right. Would you guys feel differently if it was naked photos of the husband? I feel a little unnecessary slut-shaming going on here.
23
@20 So homosexuals who are out of the closet are showing bad judgment? What about people who are openly members of non-mainstream religions or atheists? It seems that for something to be bad judgment it should require something more than asshole will be upset by it.
24
I wish I could edit posts after they're made so I could properly pluralize assholes.
25
This does not appear to be a civil action seeking any kind of compensation - it's a complaint to the judicial council on the judge and a complaint to the fitness council on the lawyer. My thoughts on motive? He is bitter that he received "only" $25K now that the woman has become a judge since the settlement, and he has decided to breach the release agreement. Maybe he thinks the resultant notoriety will land him a few bucks, somehow....
26
@20

So, the only people who should ever be elected or appointed to public office are people who have never done anything in their personal lives that would offend social conservatives? What a glorious world that would be.
27
People have sex in Manitoba?

Also, that Chapman guy is going to get sued. And he's gonna lose a lot more than 25 000$.
28
#2 HAHA
29
@23 and 26: you must be students, or at least have a lot of free time. Try to avoid having such a black-and-white view of the world.

Look, there are only a certain number of hours per day, and there's only so much time you can spend fighting off other people and still get shit done. That doesn't mean you roll over on every issue, but it does mean you need to pick your battles.

By posting nudie pictures in which you can be identified (assuming that's the case here), you either 1) decided that standing up for sexual kinksters was a good use of your time, or 2) somehow believed that those pictures would not be used against you. Neither of those shows good judgment.

Not all battles against social conservatives are equally important. Around the top of the list would be equal rights for gays and lesbians, promoting reasonable teen sex education, funding stem cell research, preserving a woman's right to choose, etc. These are areas where conservatives are doing actual harm to lots of people, and if the judge wanted to out herself as bi or make statements about the importance of stem cells, those would be battles worth fighting.

Around the bottom of the list is getting conservatives to loosen up about people's private conduct. Conservative attitudes are annoying, but kinksters continue to enjoy good kinky fun despite that, not to mention marry, adopt, etc. In other words, there isn't the same scale of harm being done by conservatives here, making this a much lower priority battle.

But this is all beside the point. I think it highly unlikely that the judge decided to march for the rights of kinksters everywhere; I think she just put nudie pictures of herself up and assumed that they wouldn't be traced back to her. Which in this day and age, again, shows poor judgment.
30
I don’t know if she’ll have to take a couple of personal days to appear before a disciplinary committee or if she can just send her lawyer to represent her. It is not as if the justice system of Manitoba will grind to a halt while she deals with this.

You seem convinced that she posted the photos herself. There is no evidence at all that she posted the photos. Her husband claims he did it without her knowledge. Unless you know something we don’t, you should probably stop arguing based on that assumption.

These worthy causes you cite barely exist in Canada. Even if there were an ongoing struggle for marriage equality in Canada, it would be wildly inappropriate for a sitting judge to comment on such an issue. Judges are not politicians. They are meant to appear as impartial as humanly possible. They don’t comment on issues which may appear before them.

I’m not comparing the amount of harm done to Justice Douglas to the harm done to any other individual or group. I don’t see the point. The harm that has been done to her professionally and to her career by a greedy douchebag and a complicit media is simply revolting. Personally, as a lawyer in Canada with a personal life, I find it terrifying.
31
The problem, IHSN & Gus, as I see it, is that the "showed poor judgment." argument is essentially circular and self-defeating. It's one thing to acknowledge, and to expect a sane adult to recognize, that most people (at least when there's a microphone in their face) are sex-negative hysterical douchebags. But to go further and say that all even peripherally 'public' figures forfeit their right to sympathy and support unless they restrict their own sex lives considerably more than 'private' citizens... well, that's really caving in to the douchebags too much. I don't know who's lying at this point and about exactly what, but I do know that Chapman guy is a blackmailing asshole, and the reporters, etc. who automatically pathologize all kink are being probably hypocritical, and certainly sex-negative, jerks. Let's not lose site of what's right and wrong here.
32
@30: Perhaps the practice of law is considerably more collegial in Canada than in the U.S. Here, we hire private investigators to dig up dirt on opposing parties. If we find anything incriminating, we try to get it in front of the jury. A lot of times the evidence will be excluded on relevance or prejudice grounds, but even then we can use it to impeach the witness.

Knowing that, a big part of being a lawyer is anticipating how a hostile party might use information against you, and thus controlling the information you put out there. At the very least, the judge exhibited poor judgment in even allowing her husband to take nudie pictures of her (or at least not keeping custody of the pics)-- people divorce all the time, and a lot of those proceedings turn nasty. If you don't like having to monitor your conduct accordingly, then perhaps working within an adversarial system is not for you. Or perhaps Canada's collegial legal system is yet another advantage y'all have over us.

@31: I'm not suggesting she forgo her kinky sex life; I'm suggesting she be discrete about it. I agree that she is not the principal party to blame here-- I'm not blaming the victim. I'm merely suggesting that the fact she allowed herself to get into that situation in the first place does not speak well of her judgment. I haven't heard anyone show otherwise.
33
Dorfman Sweatman?
34
@32 You are a slut-shaming misogynist who obviously believes that the private sex life of women is something that they should be ashamed of. You're a worthless piece of human trash every bit as foula s the reporters covering this story and people like SĂ©bastien Grammond (I think we should really be making life miserable for those people who are willing to publicly expose themselves as sex-negative) who has been quoted as saying that "If pictures of you naked end up on an internet site, it's quite difficult to say you have the credibility to be a judge". This is the same sort of anti-woman anti-sex garbage that got trotted out when Kim Campbell ran for re-election.

A person's private, consensual, sex-life is irrelevant and is not fodder for the media to humiliate you. Or are you so squeaky clean that you'd be willing to disclose every single sexual fantasy you've ever had in the international media.
35
@34 Hush, dear, the grown-ups are talking.
36
Let's try my argument this way:

Suppose you have two candidates for a job who are pretty evenly matched. As most employers do these days, you Facebook both people to see what comes up. One of them has a whole bunch of pictures with his or her friends, drunk out of their minds and doing various silly things. The other has either an entirely locked-down profile, or a handful of professional or otherwise boring pictures. Whom do you hire, and why?

I think most hiring managers would go for the guy or gal with the locked-down profile. The fact that the other person had all these photographs up reflects poorly on his or her judgment, even though most people do not disapprove of the activities themselves. That's really my point.

Now should finding compromising Facebook pics of a current employee merit a firing? Probably not, assuming they aren't the company spokeperson or something. But it wasn't the best of decisions to post those pics, or to not adjust your privacy settings to prevent the Facebook search. And if that employee's job is to have good judgment, then it's something I may consider in a performance review.
37
wow.

who knew skipping to gommorah would be sooo damn boring and tedious?

Danny's straw men get lamer and lamer.....
38
The judge has voluntarily stepped aside. Douchebag blackmailer has launched a suit for 67 million. The CBC has a pretentious ass blog justifying its decision to ruin this woman’s career while claiming its “Nude Photos of Judge” headline had nothing to do with prurient interests. I’m disgusted.
39
@36 Not being a complete ass I wouldn't have gone snooping into a potential employees private life in the first place.
40
@39 Clearly, you've never hired anyone. An employer takes on risks and a substantial investment every time they make a new hire, and it's completely understandable that they would try to gather as much information as possible beforehand. Which is why they do.

You can stamp you feet and whine about unfairness, or you can deal with the realities of today's economy. One of those approaches is much more productive than the other.
41
@40: I've hired people. I wouldn't go Facebook snooping either.

I don't give a rat's ass what my potential employees did in college, or five years ago - or last week, for that matter. I judge them based on their experience and their competence to do the job that I am hiring them to do. They can spend all weekend drinking vodka and Red Bull and snorting cocaine off the back of the goat that they are sodomizing while uploading it all on a live feed to XTube. As long as they aren't doing it in the office, and as long as they show up Monday morning ready to get the job done, it is none of my damn business.
42
@41: I assure you that you would be in the minority in the legal industry. I also can't help wondering: do your employees have client interactions? Back when I was hiring engineers, I didn't give a shit what they did on their own time or how socially maladjusted they might be. Now that I'm hiring legal professionals who need to build trust with clients, I care a lot more about those things.

Anyway, fighting the hypothetical is a pretty clear signal that the hypo compels a conclusion opposed to your position. So I believe my point has been made.
43
Canada didn't use to be this uptight. Barely anyone was upset when Maggie Trudeau was running around with Ted Kennedy & Mick Jagger.

I don't know why we're sliding to the right, but I hope it ends soon. CBC used to be much less trashy, as well. I miss when our national broadcaster had dignity.
44
@42: Some of my hires have to have police records checks as they work with youth. This is part of the job posting and people either consent to it or not. I don't have an issue with that - it is directly related to the job at hand.

Facebook snooping... not so much.

But hey, you already decided that you won the argument. Restate your point, throw around a little law school in-jargon, and declare victory. No need to worry about the assumptions underlying your hypothetical.

Like the assumption that having naked pictures taken of onesself is always evidence of poor judgement. And why is that? Because when people find out about the pictures, they will think less of you. And why is that? Because you showed poor judgement by allowing the pictures to be taken...

45
@36 "But it wasn't the best of decisions to post those pics, or to not adjust your privacy settings to prevent the Facebook search"

Well the "privacy settings" in this case were certainly "secure" enough to prevent the photos showing up when Googled, and of course the photos weren't on Facebook at all. They were on a swinger's site that (I think?) required a credit card to access and if the couple had any sense at all their names wouldn't have been on the ad. A potential employer wouldn't have found the photos on a search: do you pay for subscriptions to many kinky/swingers' dating sites (e.g. starting with alt.com), and do you start scrolling through the ads on all of those sites every time you consider hiring someone on the off-chance you see a photo of that person?

It was a bad idea for the husband (at least) to approach a client: that's the problem rather than the photos per se. (Chapman allegedly got the photos because the husband allegedly gave him a password to the site and allegedly said something to the effect of "go look at ad ####, that's us.") According to the most recent news report on it, Chapman is claiming that the wife knew and the husband is claiming that she didn't.
46
Chapman has got to be the dumbest dude on the face of the earth. He publicly admitted that he signed the release, took the money, but kept the photos anyway.

Douglas won't be removed over this--no Canadian judge has ever been removed, and this is in no way a big enough deal for Parliament to intervene--but I fear she may have to step down in embarrassment.

If that happens, Chapman is going to be liable for the loss of her career and her huge judge's salary. He's going to get sued into bankruptcy and back again. Not to mention the fact that his $67 million lawsuit will get dismissed with huge legal costs against him. Statute of limitations, anyone?

What a dumbass!

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