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Monday, November 19, 2007
Law - "Even as symbolism, legal notice advertising in newspapers smells of another era, of telegrams and carbon paper"
A quote from Adam Liptak's "Sidebar" column today in the NY Times:
Even the lawyer who placed the ad concedes that Ms. Johnson will never see it. No one reads legal notice ads, first of all, and Ms. Johnson, presumably, does not read The Observer, period.More from the column:“I do not think legal notices published in newspapers are an effective way of providing notice to individuals of certain court proceedings,” the lawyer, John R. Eyerman, said in an e-mail message.
“However,” Mr. Eyerman continued, “it may be the ‘best’ alternative or only alternative to providing notice of legal proceedings to individuals we cannot locate through diligent search. Typically these individuals do not have steady residences, may be homeless, do not have roots in the community and do not have a viable address.”
Since the legal system cannot find Ms. Johnson — or Shamieka Deans, or Savita Sindha or Rosie Sabater, for that matter, judging from other ads last week — it will pretend to have tried.
The symbolism is empty and expensive. A spokesman for The Observer said a typical ad cost around $350.
There are only two solutions, she said: “Either make a meaningful attempt to find people where fundamental rights are at stake, or dispense with what is truly form over substance.”Even as symbolism, legal notice advertising in newspapers smells of another era, of telegrams and carbon paper. As far back as 1950, the Supreme Court acknowledged that “chance alone brings to the attention of even a local resident an advertisement in small type inserted in the back pages of a newspaper.”
“We are unable to regard this as more than a feint,” Justice Robert H. Jackson wrote for the majority.
And that was when people still read newspapers. These days there is, of course, a newfangled substitute available. It’s called the Internet.
Last year, the Washington Supreme Court gave the newspaper industry a collective heart attack when it recognized that “posting on a public Web site is at least as likely to provide the community with notice” as an ad in a newspaper.
A dissenting justice said the case represented a turning point. “No case, until this majority, has held Web posting notice sufficient,” the justice wrote.
Newspapers have already lost much of their regular classified advertising to the Internet, but their lobbyists are fighting hard to hang on to legal notice advertising, which is often required by law. That is why all kinds of newspapers, including this one, still carry notices for restaurants seeking liquor licenses, government agencies seeking bids on contracts, zoning board meetings, foreclosure sales and corporate name changes.
In 2006 alone, at least 30 states introduced legislation concerning public notice advertising, according to the Public Notice Resource Center, a newspaper industry group. The industry has so far been largely successful in defeating efforts to move such advertising to the Internet.
Tonda Rush, the National Newspaper Association’s director of public policy, had a list of reasons explaining why putting legal notices in newspapers remained a good idea. Newspapers are reliable, Ms. Rush said. The text they publish is stable and can be found in archives years later. These days, newspapers usually put their print advertisements online as well. And not everyone has Internet access
Posted by Marcia Oddi on November 19, 2007 04:15 PM
Posted to General Law Related