That statement, however, does nothing to achieve justice for Lilly Ledbetter, and Goldfarb went on to make that clear:
The one question I am most often asked is will Mrs. Ledbetter finally be able to receive any of the 3.8 million dollars the jury awarded her six years ago.
Unfortunately, although Congress and the President can fix the law, they can't give that Jury
award back to Mrs. Ledbetter that the Appeals Courts took away. However, by not giving up and taking her cause to Washington, Mrs. Ledbetter has made sure that others can take action to fight pay discrimination Â- and Mrs. Ledbetter will tell you that is an even a richer reward.
Lilly Ledbetter has become famous, and news reports indicate she might wind up with a book and/or movie deal. But in terms of justice at the courthouse steps, she was left holding the bag. And public documents indicate her own lawyers had something to do with that.
How might the lawyers from Wiggins Childs have screwed up the Ledbetter case? Our research points to three possible areas:
* They failed to question the sufficiency of evidence on two paychecks that fell within the 180-day statutory deadline--The U.S. Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals found that most of Ledbetter's paychecks fell outside the statutory deadline, even though she did not know for years that she was receiving discriminatory pay compared to her male counterparts. The U.S. Supreme Court agreed with the Eleventh Circuit's finding, forming the crux of a heated debate on the Ledbetter case. Aside from that debate, the high courts acknowledged that two paychecks did fall within the 180-day period, and Ledbetter's lawyers could have questioned the sufficiency of the evidence on those--but they failed to do it. From the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling:
The Court of Appeals then concluded that there was insufficient evidence to prove that Goodyear had acted with discriminatory intent in making the only two pay decisions that occurred within that time span, namely, a decision made in 1997 to deny Ledbetter a raise and a similar decision made in 1998. Id., at 1186Â-1187.
Ledbetter filed a petition for a writ of certiorari but did not seek review of the Court of Appeals' holdings regarding the sufficiency of the evidence in relation to the 1997 and 1998 pay decisions. Rather, she sought review of the following question:
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
1
1
1
