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Comment by KoftaBob | Hacker News Reader

> Then, an associate in her late twenties stood up. She said there were lawyers at the firm who were “uncomfortable” with Boies representing disgraced movie maker Harvey Weinstein, and she wanted to know whether Boies would pay them severance so they could quit and focus on applying for jobs at other firms.

This is an odd hill to die on, especially for an attorney who knows how the US legal system works. Everyone, no matter how despicable, is entitled to legal representation.

You see a similar "code" in medicine. For instance, when the Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was arrested by SWAT, he was taken to the hospital and treated by doctors for his wounds. The medical staff wouldn't even think of objecting to treating a known terrorist, because their duty is to be physicians.

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This is eroding also. For example, Kathy Hochul ordered that priority be given to patients of "Non-white race or Hispanic/Latino ethnicity" when seeking certain covid therapies, citing "longstanding systemic health and social inequities." The framework operates on a points system, and that affords a point.

See page 3: https://coronavirus.health.ny.gov/system/files/documents/202...

That document is talking about triaging when there is a shortage of monoclonal antibodies and oral antivirals so they can't treat everyone. The goal then is to try to minimize the number of people whose COVID progresses to severe COVID.

Like it or not the fact is that race and ethnicity is in fact a decent indicator of probability that someone's case will progress to severe COVID.

Maybe that is due to "longstanding systemic health and social inequities" or maybe it is due to something else but the why doesn't really matter from a triaging point of view. From a triaging point of view it is not much different than obesity or age or any other observable characteristic or attribute of the patient that experience has shown correlates with outcomes.

Men are significantly more at risk of severe covid than women, if they actually cared about the risk of different demographics they would have also prioritized males. Applying a set of ideals in just the situations that suits you is called hypocrisy.

You left out that those inequities "have contributed to an increased risk of severe illness and death from COVID-19" which is accurate according to the CDC.

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/covid-data/investi...

> Race and ethnicity are risk markers for other underlying conditions that affect health, including socioeconomic status, access to health care, and exposure to the virus related to occupation, e.g., frontline, essential, and critical infrastructure workers.

So the white people who have poor socioeconomic status, access to health care or are exposed as front-line workers are just out of luck, eh?

It's a racist policy prima facia.

This is racist.

Of course Kathy Hochul, a white woman herself, would get platinum care because she's governor.

Disgusting.

Maybe we can extend her logic like depending on one's standing in society their treatment priority will be reversed. So governor as first citizen of the state would be last person to be treated for ailments and so on.

Fat chance of that ever happening. American politicians have shown time and time again they think they're above us rubes. (See ACA exemptions, the lack of effective insider trading laws, 21% pay increases for them and their staff this year, etc).

They made strict covid rules and went dining with friends in complete breach of those rules.

The author is also putting a LOT of stock in a single misguided person asking a question.

> he was taken to the hospital and treated by doctors for his wounds. The medical staff wouldn't even think of objecting to treating a known terrorist, because their duty is to be physicians.

They are the only institution that came out of that looking like anything other than a bunch of idiots.

Feds? Dropped the ball and engaged in witch hunt to make up for it.

Staties? Dropped the ball, endangered the public and violated civil rights left and right.

Courts? Needlessly shoddy kangaroo trial.

Wealthy people don't pay for the most expensive lawyers for mere "legal representation".

They do it in the hopes the most charismatic people in the law profession can actively mislead the judge and jury.

Or in other words they do it in the hope that who ever is best at arguing will win.

People to tend to buy the best they can afford. I don't think this is unique to the legal system

That circles back to the question of Weinstein reputation.

Is a lawyer who has liberty to reject a client because the client can't afford the lawyer's billable hours also at liberty to reject a client because damage to the lawyer's reputation for representing that client is factored into the cost of doing business?

"Representing you will actively damage my future business, so you can't afford me" seems like a consistent position a lawyer could take on why a client must seek representation elsewhere.

And I am suggesting in a moral universe, legal talent would be rationed by the merit of the case, rather than the wealth of the payer.

The most talented lawyers would say "I don't take cases from scumbags like you. Find yourself one of the lower tiered lawyers.". Instead of saying "I work for whoever has the most money."

It's a lot more pernicious when the product is your freedom, rather than your mocha.

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