THE LAW DAWG – UNLEASHED
Always read the footnotes
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One source for all learners.
by Jim Walsh
hen lawyers advise their clients about giving testimony, there are a couple of things you can count on. The lawyer will always emphasize three things. First, listen carefully to the question. Second, tell the truth. Third, don’t provide more information than what is asked for. If you can answer the question with a “yes” or “no,” then do so. The example sometimes given is that if someone asks you if you know what time it is, you look at your watch and say, “Yes.” And leave it at that. The problem is that clients rarely comply with that “yes” or “no” suggestion. People want to tell their story, and it’s very difficult to stick to a short answer. So, I took particular note of Footnote 10 in a court case that I read recently. It involves a former teacher in El Paso ISD, suing the district over her termination. Footnote 10 contains an exchange from the teacher’s deposition testimony. The school district’s attorney is questioning the teacher about some of the comments she allegedly made in her classroom: Q. OK. And in those classes, you made the statement that Barack Obama was a Muslim, correct? A. Yes. Q. You made the statement that he was an evil man, correct? A. Yes. Q. OK. You made a statement that a hurricane in Haiti had been God’s punishment of the Haitian people, correct? A. Yes. Q. That was because they were voodoo — they practiced voodoo? A. Yes. Q. You talked about the origin of AIDS in Africa, correct? A. Yes. Q. OK. What did you tell your students about the origin of AIDS in Africa?
A. It started with a monkey having sex with a person. Q. OK. You told this to your sixth grade tech applications class. (Emphasis added.) A. Yes. Now there’s a witness who knows how to follow instructions. You can probably figure out from that exchange why the district terminated the teacher. Here we have a classroom teacher taking advantage of a captive audience of sixth graders to express her personal religious and political views in a class that has nothing to do with religion or politics. Moreover, the teacher had been warned before about this kind of thing. Here’s part of the reprimand the teacher received in 2009: “During the course of the investigation additional allegations were made by students in your classroom. They alleged that you frequently made comments to them about God, read passages from the Bible, told students that the middle finger meant “you want to have sex,” and the Texas Longhorn sign was satanic. (!!) Finally, students alleged that you made inappropriate comments about President Obama and told them that the world was going to end and everyone was going to die.” (Emphasis added.) Hook ’em Horns is satanic?! As a two-time graduate of UT, that left me speechless. The legal issues in the case involved the Whistleblower Act. The teacher was unsuccessful in her effort to get her termination overturned. But I’m telling you, the Whistleblower stuff is downright boring. Read the footnotes. That’s where the good stuff is, thanks to a witness who knows how to answer the questions directly and without further explanation. (The case is Whitney v. El Paso ISD, decided by the Court of Appeals in El Paso on Aug. 23, 2017. We found it at 2017 WL 3614149.)
JIM WALSH is an attorney with Walsh Gallegos Treviño Russo & Kyle PC. He can be reached at jwalsh@wabsa.com. You can also follow him on Twitter: @jwalshtxlawdawg. Texas School Business NOVEMBER / DECEMBER 2017
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