Projo 7 to 7 News Blog

She expressed the belief that the victims of The Station nightclub fire and the parties they have sued for money damages might prefer -- if given the choice -- to hammer out damages to be awarded in private instead of the public arena. (That won't happen, however, because the civil cases stemming from the catastrophic nightclub fire, which claimed 100 lives and injured more than 200 others, are in U.S. District Court which is not under the jurisdiction of Rhode Island Supreme Court nor governed by state laws passed by the Rhode Island legislature.

At today's hearing, Goldberg also tried to allay fears expressed by some of those who addressed the court over what type of justice would be meted out behind closed doors. "What difference does it make if a Family Court divorce case is heard in public or private and then comes to this court" on appeal? Goldberg asked Miriam Weizenbaum, a veteran trial lawyer who spoke out against implementing the law. She addressed the court on behalf of the state association of plaintiffs' trial lawyers, now known as the Rhode Island Association for Justice.

She told Weizenbaum that she thought she was "way, way out there" on some of the potential problems she raised with the law. "How are you disadvantaged?" she asked. The Supreme Court, she said, would not handle appeals that flowed from the private trial arena any differently than they handle the ones that currently come from the public trial courts. And she pointed out that the retired justices who would be hearing the trials behind closed doors have many, many years of experience presiding over cases in public and know what to do. "We're not getting these judges out of the phone book," Goldberg said.

Joining Weizenbaum in opposition were lawyer Thomas R. Bender; attorney Carolyn Mannis, for the Rhode Island affiliate of the American Civil Liberties Union, and Barbara Meagher, a journalism professor at the University of Rhode Island and president of ACCESS/RI, the state's freedom of information coalition.

Williams, who is now sitting as an associate justice, said that in states that already provide for retired judges handling private trials for civil cases, no problems have arisen. "There is not one case in our research where there has been found an infirmity with this process. Not one," he said.

But Mannis noted that California, one of the states that provides for private trials heard by retired justices, has a public notice provision. If parties elect to have a private trial, she said, the court clerk in California is required to post notice of that -- before the trial is held -- so that members of the public who are interested may attend.

Justice William P. Robinson III asked those in opposition if their concerns would be addressed if the Rhode Island Supreme Court was to include something in the yet to be drafted rules that would include such a public notice provision. Some of those who spoke said they would feel better about the idea of private justice if public notice was mandated.