|
JUST CAUSE
by Christine Alice Corcos
Pax TV, one of the family networks that specializes in feel good
shows, has launched as part of its Sunday lineup Just Cause,
a "legal drama"featuring an innocent ex-con who earns
her law degree from an "Internet law school" and badgers
an uptight, conservative and conventional Harvard alum and name
partner at a San Francisco law firm into hiring her as a paralegal
and helping her seek a pardon from the governor. Have you read
enough clichés yet? The show actually airs on the WTV
(Women's Television Network) which suggests that while television
may be anti lawyer it isn't anti woman lawyer. Well, perhaps.
 The show's premise is that Alexandra
De Monaco (played by perky newcomer Elizabeth, or Lisa, Lackey)
was framed by her sleazy insurance company lawyer husband who
then absconded with five million dollars and her daughter. Even
after five years of wrongful incarceration, Alex is still perky
about life and the legal system, since she attended law school
over the 'net for five years and graduated "at the top of
her class." She is such a good jailhouse lawyer in fact
that she helps out both the other prisoners and the guards. In
gratitude, one other con gives her a cross, which she wears,
quite prominently, in every episode.
Released on parole, Alex sets
off perkily through San Francisco on a search for a job. Her
parole officer, a non-perky sort, finds her a job with a cleaning
service (this features prominently later in the two hour pilot
episode) but she has bigger plans. She approaches name partner
Hamilton Whitney III (Richard Thomas) for assistance with clearing
her name and eventually convinces him to hire her in a kind of
Erin Brockovich position (in which she mimics Brockovich's tenacity
and smarts, though not her dress or language). Alex then proceeds
to uncover the truth about the death of a corporate officer who
intended to blow the whistle on some shady dealings at his firm
(the name Enron drifts through the dialogue), fend off initial
hostility from one of the senior female lawyers (an Asian-American!)
and attentions from both one of the senior male lawyers and the
defendant corporation's sleazy counsel, and break through Whitney's
reserve by taking him to a diner at the airport (You go, girl!)
Throughout, she obeys only
those rules set out by the parole board, cheerfully ignoring
what Whitney instructs her to do. She breaks into the defendant
corporation's offices with the assistance of her friends from
the cleaning crew and catches employees shredding documents that
should have been turned over during discovery. She races into
the courtroom at the last minute to present the judge with an
incriminating memo written by the deceased corporate officer.
She is the epitome of the renegade
hero who justifies ignoring those rules that get between her
and what she considers to be justice. This notion has been attractive
in fiction, film and history for years, but it makes a mockery
of the law. Alex insists she wants to be a lawyer, but only for
those folks she considers as innocent as herself, and apparently
she is the decision maker with regard to innocence.
Apparently, Whitney has no trouble buying into Alex's crusade
to better mankind and right the wrongs of the universe. In the
second episode, Human Trials, Alex discovers that a drug
company has been illegally using human subjects in clinical trials
for a new medication. She agrees to help one of the victims.
At the same time the company's parent corporation approaches
Whitney offering to hire his firm to handle some extensive and
lucrative deals. Their offer is intended to prevent Whitney and
his colleagues from taking the victim's case, or secondarily
from using information discovered through its representation
of the parent corporation against the drug company.
Through a series of convoluted and confusing discussions the
show presents viewers with the conflict of interest dilemma,
once again casting the legal profession as a whole as the culprit
which has created ethical rules of conduct that prevent victims
from getting justice. How does Whitney get around the problem?
He allows Alex to take the corporation's file from the office
and arranges to have the police tipped off that she has cocaine
in her vehicle. Of course she does not, but the district attorney
conveniently seizes the files and reads them, revealing the depth
of the corporation's evil intent. The episode ends happily with
the victim making good progress toward recovery, the evil corporation
in hot water and Alex ever more securely on the road to possible
bar admission.
The show never suggests the
possibility that, if a conflict exists, that another, equally
competent, firm could handle the victim's case. Such a firm would
certainly eventually discover the problem with the drug trials,
since while Alex may be bound by ethical rules, the other non-lawyers
involved in the case who are not employees of the firm are not.
Nor does it explain why, even if Whitney cannot be charged with
releasing private information about his client (the corporation)
Alex cannot. She has, after all, acted directly in contravention
of the rules binding her firm, and the rules that would bind
her in any case were she an attorney.
But the law is not ultimately the subject of Just Cause.
The series overtly poses some interesting questions about the
possibility of reconciling law and justice, but it does so from
the point of view of religion, philosophy, and ethics rather
than law. Of course it is not the first to do so, nor in its
trite presentation of good and evil is it particularly deft in
its presentation. The quite obvious symbolic casting of John-Boy
Walton as the head of the law firm and the extremely pretty and
lively actress who plays the heroine is intended to draw the
viewer into the notion that the law can and should be used in
the service of good, and that good is something we all agree
on. What the show does not do is consider whether a law firm
that takes only those clients that clearly fall on the side of
the angels will stay solvent. That would be an interesting ethical
dilemma for the show to consider.
But Just Cause is really a fantasy about the battle between
good and evil, not primarily a legal drama. It is a morality
play, with the courtroom as the stage. Since we know that bad
guys often get off and good guys sometimes are convicted, the
law is an excuse to allow the writers to explore larger issues
of natural law and higher morality and ethics. The unspoken message
is that the law is amoral and that some lawyers have no ethics,
not a particularly original notion. If this show succeeds it
will be on the strength of its attractive stars and its simple
moral message, not because of any originality in its concept,
writing, or presentation. It seems determined to miss a wonderful
opportunity to explore more deeply the role of religion and ethics
in the life of the lawyer and the law, the opportunity that a
series like The Practice uses to great advantage. It is,
frankly, Lawyers Lite.
Posted December 5, 2002
|
