Len Simon: Husband and wife debate the seals issue

(Photo courtesy by San Diego 6 CW)

OK, here’s your public affairs quiz for the day. What public controversy is taking up the time of a federal judge, a state judge, a state legislature, a city council, and threatens to involve a governor, a mayor, and the federal and state appeals courts? The collapse of GM? Nope. Guantanamo? Nope. The banking mess, or our economy in general? Iraq? Afghanistan? Nope, nope, nope, nope.

The answer, of course, is the seals in La Jolla. Federal district court judge William Hayes, who has plenty of other things to do, is deciding whether to extend an injunction blocking removal of the seals. State Superior Court Judge Yuri Hoffman, who also has plenty of other things to do, is reviewing the details of plans to remove the seals. The California legislature, which should be spending full time solving our state budget crisis, is considering a bill to empower the City of San Diego to resolve the seal problem. If the legislation passes, the Governor will have to decide whether to sign or veto it. And if, as most people expect, the legislature and governor pass a new state law turning the problem over to San Diego, the City Council and Mayor Sanders, who still have a pension problem to solve (yeah, remember that?), among many others things, will be in the driver’s seat. Unless the federal or state courts stop them.

Read Len Simon’s wife, Candace Carroll’s counterpoint

Indeed, the only governmental body not (yet) involved is Congress. Of course, Senators Feinstein and Boxer might want to consider that maybe, since the matter is in two courts and the losers seems quite likely to be sore and to appeal forever, they should ask Judge Sotomayor what she thinks about seals in her upcoming Supreme Court confirmation hearings. She could be the swing vote. Do empathetic Latinas like seals or kids?

So, you are probably wondering, what is my position on the seals and the kids? Many people feel very strongly about it, on both sides. I feel strongly as well, but on my own “side.”

I feel quite strongly that THIS IS INSANE!

Len Simon is an SDNN columnist.

It is one thing to have most of America debating whether the right guy won American Idol, but at least they are just ordinary Americans. Yeah, they could be working, or raising their kids, or playing golf, or reading a good book, but what the heck, if they are upset that Adam [Lambert] lost, let them vent. But to have all these judges and legislators focused on this rather small issue is beyond inefficient. It is downright CRAZY.

Seals are nice, I like them. Children are nice, I like them too. Beaches are nice, and beaches in La Jolla are very nice. There should be places for the seals, and for the children, at beaches, hopefully in La Jolla. But a cage fight to the death over one small piece of beach is NUTS. Yes, I know, there’s a trust that seems to favor the kids. And yes, I know, the seals can’t read trusts, came there in good faith, and make a lot of tourists happy. There is no simple answer to this question, and no reason to go to war over it. This is not the last beach left in the world after a nuclear holocaust. It will not set a precedent for anything, because the situation is unique. The seals will enjoy life somewhere, as will the kids. I know that kids are adaptable, and I think seals must be too. We need a solution, but the result, whatever it is, will not change the world that much.

So, you say, what is your solution? If the case has two good sides, shouldn’t we let the courts and legislatures duke it out? No, no a thousand times no! It is simply not worth the trouble, the appeals, the expense, the outrage, the future political campaigns against City Council people on the “wrong” side of the issue. Isn’t more than a decade of fighting over this little beach enough? And the ultimate resolution will not be “right,” it will just be the ultimate resolution.

So here is my solution. Remember, I’m a lawyer and law professor, and my ideas tend to be very complex, so be prepared for a sophisticated solution to this insoluble problem:

Flip a coin.

Get all the combatants into La Jolla Cove, get each side to agree to my solution, get them to choose a captain. Let the captain of one team choose heads or tails, let Mayor Sanders flip the coin in the air, and let the two judges decide if it’s heads or tails. (I know two is an even number, but they’re not likely to disagree on that.) That’s it. No appeal, no legislation, no BS. Heads, the seals win, they get to stay. It can’t be unthinkable, it’s what the Legislature and the Council are likely to do in a few months anyway. Tails, the kids win. It’s not so bad, its what the courts originally ruled based on the language of the trust document.

And then we move on. The judges can return to their cocaine conspiracies and tort cases. The state legislature can return to trying to add one plus one and getting seven. The City Council can continue to try to solve the pension problem, and maybe even talk about trash pickup or the Chargers.

Would it work? Sure. Would everybody go away happy? No, but there is no solution that guarantees that. But at least we could move on to something else, knowing we had resolved the seal controversy in a fair and efficient manner.

Len Simon is a columnist for SDNN.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, June 4th, 2009 at 7:07 am and is filed under Business, Columns, Lifestyle, Local News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.