In The Witness Stand

The Janet Nguyen-Trung Nguyen recount court battle was the first I had ever watched a trial in person.

Last Monday I had my second opportunity to see a trial first-hand --and this time from the witness stand.

The back story: Garden Grove Councilman Mark Rosen is representing an employee of the Division of Labor Standards Enforcement named Christopher Lotts. The DLSE is a division of the California Department of Industrial Relations.

Mr. Lotts works in the DLSE's Santa Ana office and beginning in 2003 has anonymously published a blog called "No Labor Standards" which is, in Mr. Lotts's words, "An unofficial site highlighting inefficient & incompetent service that Californians receive as a result of DLSE decisions, actions, and service. The opinions here are the authors and should not be read by anyone, including the author."

Lott's tone is pretty caustic and is unsparing in his criticism of the top leadership of the DLSE, but from reading the blog it's clear his intent is not simply being destructive but to spotlight inefficiency, incompetence and worse. Lott backs up his contentions and invites skeptics to file Public Records Act requests if they doubt his claims.

Lott's superiors scheduled a job performance interview for June 2006. Lott suspected the true purpose of the meeting was his blog and he retained Mark Rosen as his attorney and brought Rosen along to the interview.

DLSE supervisors got around to the subject of Lott's blog and hauled out a stack of paper that turned out to be a print-out of his many posts. In his posts, Lott references anonymous sources, as well as private journals in which he keeps notes. In the interview, his supervisors demanded to know who his sources were, and also demanded to see his journals.

Lott refuses to give those up to his superiors at the DLSE, and ultimately filed a writ of mandate, seeking to have a judge order the DLSE to cease its efforts to get Lott's to give up his sources and his journals.

How do I fit into all this?

Mark Rosen contacted me this spring and said he wanted to call me as an expert witness on blogging: how it works, what's involved in the creative process of blogging, its role in public affairs and open government, etc.

Sure, I thought: why not?

So there I was last Monday afternoon: being sworn in and talking a sit in the witness stand, where I remained for the next 90 minutes or so.

My cross-examination by the DLSE attorney was the most interesting part. He tried very hard to discredit me and continually stated that he didn't think I had any expertise on blogging. The incongruity of his questions illustrated how new blogging still is. It's not a "profession" so to speak, which made the DLSE attorney's question sound odd.

For example:

DLSE attorney: Have you taken any courses in blogging?

Me: They don't have courses in blogging.

DLSE attorney: When did you graduate from college?

Me: 1986.

DLSE Attorney: What did receive a degree in?

Me: International Affairs?

DLSE: Did you take any courses in blogging?

Me: They didn't have blogging in 1986. They didn't have the Internet in 1986?

DLSE: So, is it correct to say your only expertise in blogging comes from the practice of blogging?

Me: Yes, much like a doctor's medical expertise comes from practicing medicine.

DLSE Attorney: I object to the witness' answer!

Judge Sheila Fell: Objection sustained.

Quite a feat: I managed to elicit on objection to the very first time I took the stand!

This Tuesday morning will be the final day of "live action" in the trial. After that, both sides will submit written final arguments and Judge Fell should issue a ruling within a month.

Stay tuned...

Comments

[Curious]

I wonder if the DLSE attorney is truly the idiot his questions make him appear to be or was he doing his best to grasp at straws when he had nothing else to go with.

[Dan Chmielewski]

Actually, they did have the Internet in 1986 (ARPANET); the World Wide Web can into view in the mid 90s with federal funding secured by Al Gore (look up Vint Cerf+Al Gore on "The Goggle")

[Tylerh]

What you say is accurate Dan, but since most people don't understand the difference between a search engine and browser[*], I think Jubal's point, that blogging in it's modern form didn't exist in 1986, stands firm.

[*] I kid you not. I asked someone "what browser do you use" and she replied "google."

And now for some joyfully irrelevant nit picking.

1. While it is true that the pieces that became the internet were largely in place in 1986, the concept of "the internet" wasn't. Arpanet was for defense, academics has BITNET, consumers such as me had GEnie, hard core bitheads had BBS's and FIDOnet. The, "Internet Protocol," the IP of TCP/IP, was the standard for Arpanet as of 1983, but people rarely if ever talked about "THE internet" in that era. The 1982 sci-fi neologism "cyberspace" was more common.

2. That said, Blogging has around since at least the time of Pepys: those early blogs were called "Diaries" and used a physical packet representation known as "paper." Wikipedia has more if you didn't know about these primitive technologies

3. Interestingly, blogging did exists in something close to its current form on the BBSs of the era, but only for the rarefied few who could debug their connection usig the sounds their acoustic modem made. Ahhh, sweet nostalgia.....

[Patricia]

The lawyer is trying to plant the idea in the juror's mind that Jubal has no expertise since there is no "professional" training or certification for blogging so as to give his testimony very little weight.

[Jubal]

Patricia:

I should have mentioned this is not a jury trial, but what is (I think) called a bench trial. I did get the impression he was trying to plant that idea Judge Fell's mind -- and also that he wasn't succeeding.

[Slashdotter]

I love it: A slashdot style debate on OC Blog.

TylerH is essentially correct and Dan is somewhat off base.

In technical terms, ARPANET is a precurrsor the Internet. In common terms, the two are completely different.

While ARPANET goes back to the '60s, HTTP as a protocol wasn't even invented until 1989. The "world wide web" (definately a common term that really bugs me) didn't really start to existing until '96 or so.

ARPANET is only similar to the "INTERNET" in terms of topography and the way various systems interconnect but the use of these connections between now and then is infinitely different.

[Patricia]

"...but what is (I think) called a bench trial. I did get the impression he was trying to plant that idea Judge Fell's mind -- and also that he wasn't succeeding."

Yes, a bench trial, or court trial. Of course he wasn't succeeding--everyone reads Red County.

And, guys, you're all wrong--everyone knows Al Gore invented the Internet. :)