Commentary: , Identity Theft & Privacy:

Should legal philosophy prevent us from doing what is right?

From a Wired News article on a lawsuit filed against ChoicePoint because of the recent data theft:

In a previous case in South Carolina, an identity theft victim tried to sue Citibank and two credit agencies for negligence for not properly authenticating the identity of someone who applied for credit cards under his name. The case was thrown out of court by judges who concluded that since the victim was not a customer of the bank and credit agencies and they had no business relationship with him, they had no responsibility to protect his personal data or identity.

It is time to rethink our legal theory.

When a victim of identity theft has no recourse in the law against companies who are profiting from his personal information when they mishandle that information or do not properly verify identities and therefore facilitate the crime of identity theft, our legal theory is broken.

Our legal system has become this complex, abstract ethereal construct of philosophical absolutes guarded by a highly educated and exclusive priesthood of lawyers that often results in rulings that while consistent with the legal philosophy fly in the face of common sense and what the common man would regard as right.

Should the law be so complex that one has to attend graduate school for years just to know the exact meaning of the terminology used? Should the law be so rigid that someone who was obviously harmed by corporations has no legal recourse because he had no direct relationship with those corporations?

One would think the position of "judge" is called judge because they are supposed to help provide the balance depicted in the statues of blind justice, not be so beholden to abstract philosophy that obvious harm is not rectified because it conflicts with the theory.

In law, as in science, in theory, there is no difference between theory and practice, but in practice, there is a huge difference.