Where Politics And Video Games Collide

I'm not quite sure why everybody's jumping for joy--unless I'm grossly misreading Laddy Jack's e-mail, it would seem that he's neither suspended nor being ordered to submit to psych testing. Sheila Tuma is the attorney representing the Bar in its two cases against Jack; she's NOT the referee overseeing the cases (I beleive the Hon. Joseph Farina is the judge/referee for these two cases). My reading of the e-mail is that Tuma came into the mediation with a firm offer of suspension + psych eval, and Laddy Jack walked (incidentally, I think it was Jack himself who demanded that this case be mediated in the first place).

Basically, the way mediation works is that the judge/referee/mediator acts as a go-between among the parties to a lawsuit. Each party comes in starting at their high or low point (e.g. in a simple car wreck case, the Plaintiff comes in asking for $100,000, and the Defense comes in offering nothing). Then, the mediator goes between the parties and pounds on them to either go up or down (thus, making Plaintiff come down from his $100,000 to a more reasonable number, and making Defendant go up from offering absolutely nothing). If the mediator can't get the parties to meet somewhere in the middle, they walk and go to trial.

So, in Laddy Jack's lil' bar episode, Tuma would theoretically come in on behalf of the bar wanting Jack disbarred. Jack would come in wanting no discipline whatsover plus payments of his attorneys fees & costs for having to deal with these Bar cases. If I remember correctly, a while back Jack came crying to GP with another draft filing for the Florida Supreme Court, saying that the Bar was trying to get him to agree to a suspension (which he didn't). It sounds like the Bar's last offer of settlement was 91 day suspension + psych eval, which Jack obviously refused (it'd be interesting to see what Jack's last offer of settlement was). Jack's pulling the "bad faith" card by saying that, essentially, the Bar has upped its settlement demand when, under the norms of mediation, the Bar should be lowering it (i.e. Plaintiff can't come down from $100,000 to $50,000, then ask for $75,000 in the next back-and-forth with the mediator). I believe that's only true if the Bar actually made the original suspension-only offer in the context of mediation (i.e. if they just called or wrote Jack and said please accept this suspension, and he declined, they could ask for more than just a suspension at a mediation of the case).

Bottom line: I don't think this case is anywhere near settled, Jack's not suspended, he's not been ordered to undergo a psych eval, and this case should probably proceed to a full trial, where Judge Farina could theoretically disbar Jack instead of suspending him. It's always dificult to tell what's going on when we only have Laddy Jack's word to work off of. At any rate, there's your lesson in mediation 101 for today [note: lesson does not constitute legal advice].