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Silly, Baseless Lawsuits
Special to Law.com
August 24, 2009
Stroock & Stroock's Joel Cohen
Katherine A. Helm
Every now and again, one encounters a lawsuit so silly on its face -- so transparently ridiculous -- it makes one wonder if the justice system fails us by allowing it to even get filed, let alone litigated.
After casually reading the complaint, you want to step into the shoes of Judge Judy or one of her irascible TV counterparts, and shake the plaintiff's attorney by his lapels and tell him, as he passionately goes through his advocacy paces, to "Just Shut Up!" -- to take his piece of drivel to a prime time appellate show and "let them deal with your client's lunacy." No one gets to dish out comeuppance like Judge Judy!
Now consider these "facts." By most accounts, the late President John F. Kennedy was exceedingly promiscuous outside his marriage. The archives of prurient interests have it on good, or at least tabloid-based, authority that one of his paramours was Marilyn Monroe. Given the considerable writing on that heralded relationship, even a risk-averse person would probably feel comfortable wagering that those two knew each other in the biblical sense. Next enter a straight-faced plaintiff in the Southern District of New York with the improbable name of "John Fitzgerald Kennedy" (nee John Ruben Burton, not to be confused with JFK Jr., who died in a plane crash in 1999). This self-anointed JFK claims, first in a 1994 Los Angeles petition for name change, now in a 2008 complaint, that he is the "legitimate offspring" of President Kennedy and Monroe -- without offering even any threadbare reasoning for how that could be, as Jackie was already the president's wife when the plaintiff was born, allegedly out of wedlock.
In support, the plaintiff attaches to his complaint personal photographs that span his life which, to the layman's eye, bear as much resemblance to Jerry Seinfeld's neighbor Kramer as they do to the famously handsome late president. With this, plaintiff Kennedy ponies up a $350 filing fee, snags a brazen attorney and thereby invokes the majesty of the federal courts?!
How would Judge Judy have handled this piece of litigation? She would throw it out faster than you can say "unwarranted deductions of fact" (which she wouldn't say, of course; such a phrase doesn't quite have the chutzpah to carry her show). Surely, the word perjury might have begun her tirade, not to mention her ordering the TV equivalent of Rule 11 sanctions for a lawsuit that didn't deserve to get off the ground. She also would have some wryly entertaining, choice words for Mr. Kennedy's demand for DNA samples from President Kennedy's nephews Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Congressman Patrick Joseph Kennedy to evidence his genetic relationship.
The seen-it-all TV judge would have finished by caustically calling Kennedy out for what he is: not someone seeking to share the pride of being a Kennedy, as the offspring of the iconic, martyred 35th president but as someone who's all about the Benjamins. His suit claims breach by the executors/trustees of fiduciary duty to explore his paternity claim and, ultimately, for his share of the Kennedy estate. With that request serving as a punch line to the joke of a lawsuit, it would be over.
So what did the real-life judge do? The distinguished District Judge William H. Pauley dismissed Kennedy's lawsuit, not in as swift or as blunt terms as daytime TV allows for, but with careful and systematic consideration of the issues raised and facts as alleged after full briefing on fiduciary defendants' motion to dismiss.
The court's order addressed the grounds for dismissal under Federal Rules 12(b)(1) and 12(b)(6), involving diversity jurisdiction, the "probate exception" to diversity jurisdiction, and both choice of law and substantive law issues on a breach of fiduciary duty claim. Indeed, isn't that what we want from a court, instilled with a sense of institutional accountability, to let the parties and any interested citizens know that a court considers all cases that come before it?
No doubt, eyes probably rolled in Judge Pauley's chambers when he and his clerks studied the sparse complaint, and maybe even at the hearing as plaintiff's counsel sought to establish its bona fides. In court before the robed judge, plaintiff's attorney presumably argued, as he later told this column (here paraphrasing) "that Marilyn's confidantes Jane Russell and Tony Curtis will acknowledge Kennedy's fatherhood (and Marilyn's motherhood) under oath, if I can only get them across from me at a deposition table."
