Kevin M. Costello Named to The American Trial Lawyers' Association "Top 100 Trial Lawyers" for 2010

"I never throw my hat into the ring for things like this," Kevin says, "so I guess I'm always a little surprised when things like this happen, such as when I first made the "Super Lawyer" list a number of years ago."

"The ATLA" is a national trial lawyer group which names the top 100 trial lawyers in each state, each year. This year, though the selection process details are unknown - indeed, Kevin doesn't know how he became eligible for consideration - he made the list.

"I appreciate that I was named," Kevin says, and promises to uphold the commitment to justice and solid court room advocacy which he hopes formed the basis for the distinction.

Costello & Mains Partners Speak at New Jersey Association for Justice's Meadowlands Seminar

Costello & Mains partners Deborah Mains and Kevin Costello served as faculty for the Employment Program of the New Jersey Association for Justice's 'Meadowlands' CLE event, attended by a record number of attendees for 2010, which included record attendance at the Employment program.

"It was a huge success," partner Deborah Mains says. "All the feedback we're getting has been very positive. It's always a pleasure and honor to share knowledge with fellow employment and civil rights lawyers, since we always feel we teach and learn at the same time. We had great speakers."

California Elects its First Transgendered Judge

I'm not much for talking about what other states do, because I'm a New Jersey practitioner and because I, for the most part, work with New Jersey laws. But when something happens that affects what I do even indirectly, from across the country, I think it's pretty noteworthy.

It's no secret that I'm a progressive and forward thinking person who believes that change is the essential essence of life. As a science-minded person, I know that every physicist, chemist and biologist will tell you that it is an axiom for their fields of endeavor that change is the absolute and unalterable state of the universe. Nothing ever stays the same. Things always move forward. Since there is no ability to move backward because time only flows in one direction, all change is forward and therefore, all change is progressive.

I don't mean this to sound like I'm founding a new religion. For me, it's all just basic common sense. In order to make things better, you have to move forward. Sometimes, people will get it wrong, but mostly, I think if everyone has an open heart and an open mind, change is a good thing.

Take California, for example, which just elected its first transgendered judge. On one level, that sounds momentous. It is momentous. Of course, it's sad why it's momentous, the answer of course being that there is a tremendous amount of prejudice against sexual minorities. Transgendered people, in turn, are often the red-headed stepchildren of the sexual minority community. As openly permissible as it is for the most bigoted conservatives to publicly lambast sexual minorities today, it is even more acceptable to do so with regard to transgendered people, because to the ignorant, uninformed and afraid, transgendered people are abominations, barely even human. So it is momentous that California, usually at the front of the march, has
finally broken another glass ceiling for sexual minorities.

Judge Victoria Kolakowski declared victory Monday night in a race for the Alameda County Superior Court, she having won by a fifty-one to forty-eight percent vote. Hardly a mandate, but then again, today, mandates are becoming increasingly rare.

Did some people vote for her because she is transgendered? Perhaps, though probably a minority. In fact, I'm sure that that minority percentage was probably matched by the number of people that voted against her for the same reason.

So yes, it's "momentous." On the other hand, why should it be so? Why couldn't people have simply looked at Judge Kolakowski's credentials, compared them favorably against her opponent's, and selected the best judicial candidate for the job? The belief that gives me hope is that, in all likelihood, most of the people who did the voting probably did just that, just as I'm sure that most of the people that voted in the last presidential election voted based on party affiliation, beliefs in certain policy positions, etc., rather than on the race of the candidates.

No doubt, there will be people, usually of an extreme religious or socially conservative bent, who feel that a transgendered person is, by her nature, deficient in some moral quality or some other character trait simply because she is a transgendered person. These are the people whose minds have to change, and if they can't change, then those attitudes need to die out. I'm actually hopeful that they will. The new generation that seems to be emerging is so technologically inclined, and so communicatively inclined, and so desperately dependent on the march of science forward to give them the gadgets and conveniences they so love, that I do believe there will come a day when religion worldwide will simply have to adapt itself to a more modern, gentle and non-judgmental progressive planetary culture. Is that an
article of faith for me? Almost certainly. I can't see the future. Then again, however, most successful bookies do make a living by predicting it. As a student of the law, and as a student of the culture in which I must serve the law, I keep a keen eye on these things. My vision is certainly lengthening (I just started using reading glasses for the first time), but from what I see, Judge Kolakowski's victory is the shape of things to come more than it's a shout in the darkness.

I applaud Judge Kolakowski and hope that she always, as all judges must, tempers justice with mercy, while protecting the vision of the law, rather than the letter of the law.

I also say to all people who feel as if they are, from time to time, a member of a minority (no matter what the nature of the minority), and all people who feel themselves to be "different" (because at some point, we all are), that, in America, it seems that anything is still possible if you want it badly enough and if you work hard enough.

Congratulations, Judge Kolakowski. I hope you're the first of more to come.

P.S. - After editing this Blog for posting, I learned that another Transgendered judge also took the bench in Texas...in TEXAS. Truly, there is hope for us all.

Happy Holidays.

Costello & Mains Partners Speak at NJ Transgender Remembrance Day and are Interviewed by NEWS 12 New Jersey

Kevin Costello and Deborah Mains attended the Garden State Equality Advocacy group's 'Transgender Remembrance Day,' when trans people murdered simply for who they were are remembered, their names read during a candlelight vigil. Kevin Costello also addressed the gathering to discuss Discrimination claims currently in progress at the firm which advocate for the rights of trans people.

"All children are born without hate in their hearts," Kevin told the crowd. "Hate has to be learned." Kevin spoke about the firm's commitment to the civil rights of all people, including members of the GLBT community.

"Often," Kevin told said during a NEWS 12 interview at the event, "GLBT people are considered to be the last underclass that it's ok to publicly bash. In that group, trans people are seen as the least of the least. That has to change. People have to learn to look into a heart of a human being and judge him or her on the merits, not on their religion, culture, ethnicity or gender... or gender identity or expression."

Costello & Mains Files Groundbreaking Suit for a Transgendered Woman

New Jersey employment law firm Costello & Mains, P.C. has filed a lawsuit on behalf of April Murdoch, a male to female transsexual who was viciously tormented by her employer when her landlord, who entered her apartment without her permission and discovered paperwork pertaining to her transition, informed her employer of his find.


"This is one of the more egregious and profound examples of hostility to transgendered persons," says partner Kevin Costello. "We hope not only that justice will be done," Kevin says, "but also that by continuing to expose the sort of hate transgendered people endure for having the courage to be who they are, we can start to reverse the societal bias and ignorance that so often infects the lives of transgendered people."

No Compelled Defense Medical Exams in New Jersey Discrimination Cases

Finally, a win for Plaintiffs.

Judge Kane in Atlantic County recently ruled that a worker who brings claims for emotional distress damages as part of a job discrimination suit under the Law Against Discrimination can't be made to undergo a Defense Psychological examination.

Usually, in any tort based physical injury or even psychological injury case, a Defendant can often compel exams of Plaintiffs. These exams are most often conducted by doctors who are loyal to defense, insurance and corporate interests, and who rarely, if ever, give fair reports.

More specifically, in emotional distress environments in discrimination cases, Defense psychological exams are most often used to harass, intimidate and bully the Plaintiff into feeling that the process of litigation is so daunting that he or she might as well give up now and go home, rather than submit to an abusive, one sided examination.

Just as commonly, the results of these examinations are questionable at best but often used to deceive and trick juries. Defense lawyers may urge their experts to castigate the Plaintiff for possessing personality disorders or other psychological ailments that made the Plaintiff difficult to work with or which otherwise undermine the Plaintiff's credibility and/or undermine their Civil Rights.

I applaud Judge Kane's decision because it's the right decision. I don't begrudge my Defense colleagues the opportunity to conduct a true and fair defense medical examination.

But in Law Against Discrimination cases - in other words, cases brought under our Civil Rights statutes - Judge Kane has drawn the line against an often abused discovery tool.

I support his decision and I think it was the right one.

Everyone vs. Everyone: Why South Park’s Treatment of Sexual Harassment in Schools is no Joke

First of all, let me just say this: I’m not a stick in the mud. I get what the creators of South Park are all about. They’re making fun of ‘normal’ points of view taken to silly extremes. Their brand of satire requires several pieces to work. First, the issue has to be one that involves two sides or more. Second, both sides of the issue have to have something valid to say, when expressed rationally. Finally, and most importantly, for their brand of humor to hit the target, both sides have to have gotten out of hand – silly.

When they make fun of both sides – with the kids usually being the voice of question and moderation (I’ve learned something today…’) – that’s funy. But what about when SP’s writers make fun of only one side – in this case, the victims of a pernicious and dangerous course of conduct – when that side hasn’t expressed any extreme or silly points of view? Still funny? Still fair game?

Not so much.

I watched a recent episode addressing sexual harassment in schools. I don’t know how old the episode is, because in it, Mr. Garrison is still “Mr.” Garrison. But now is when I saw it, so now is when I’m having this reaction.

I get making fun of political figures and celebrities and their causes – they have resources, they have thick skin (or they should) and they’re no strangers to criticism and lampooning. I get extending this concept to movements and causes even without political or celebrity backing when the movements get silly or extreme.

But helpless kids? Kids being abused in schools by their peers using wolfpack tactics, physical violence and damaging psychological attacks? Kids falsely depicted as performing sex acts using technology available at the public school level? Kids who all too often think violence or suicide is the only way out?

Really? That’s funny? I guess I’m getting old. I don’t think it’s so funny. I suggest that the writers of South Park have crossed out of acceptable bad taste into unacceptable stupidity.

Kids commit suicide over this. I doubt very much whether the South Park writers know any of these kids personally or their families, or they wouldn’ t have written this episode.

Really what this was, was yet another attack on the use of litigation to address wrongs, as if the founding fathers, were they brought back to answer for how they drafted our Constitution, would have to apologize for creating Courts at all.

The episode suggested that any attempt to hold school officials responsible for failing to prevent or stop this conduct is somehow stealing from schools and students.

I shouldn’t have to keep saying this: As long as people have no fear of being held accountable in Court, they will not work harder, spend more, or otherwise go the extra mile to do the right thing. Sorry, but I don’t trust the inherent goodness of school administrators and board of education officials to do the right thing in the face of sexual harassment without the threat of being called to account in Court.

In fact, there are not nearly enough law suits holding school administrators, school boards and school professionals responsible for sexual harassment of which they are aware and which they fail to stop. Teachers and administrators take the view that it’s just “kids stuff.” Because kids are doing it to other kids, it’s not to be taken seriously.

Every study to which we have access suggest that the vast majority of kids who suffer damaging sexual and same sex sexual harassment at school don’t report it. Of the small minority of students who do report it, most suffer retaliation from other students such as being labeled as “rats.” They often find that the harassment is increased in intensity or even that administrators and teachers simply side with harassers who might be better students or have more social pull at the school.

I sincerely hope that the South Park guys don’t know kids whose lives are altered or damaged as a result of what happens to them at this vulnerable period in their lives.

I won’t suggest that they need to apologize, because they never admit they’ve gone too far, but I will suggest that they’ve made fools of themselves. As long as Courts are there to hold people accountable, our society will endure without resorting to violence to settle disputes. If access to Courts to sue for damages is taken away, any way that happens, you’re left to trust bureaucrats, corporate types and others to do the right thing without fear they’ll be held accountable if they don’t.

Do you think they will?

We’ve had Courts of one kind or another since civilization began. We cannot go on without them. Don’t let politicos – or irony – sell you on the idea that going to Court is anti-American. Oppression is anti-American.