Illegal Immigrants' Rights in Court

How do you feel about the question of whether an illegal immigrant should have the right to sue? Suits after all cost the county a lot of money. Not only that but the suit would presumably involve seeking an award against a lawful citizen, who would have to bear the expense of defense. We have been informed that the state budget for the courts is already critically low and this would create a further burden on the system. Thankfully, the answer to this question is "yes, they do have this right." In this country there is not a class of residents who can be harmed or abused by others with impunity. To deny a class of people access to the courts is to render members of that class something akin to slaves.

Washington among all the states is very conservative in jury awards. The amount of damages juries parcel out is lower here than many other jurisdictions. Many states have punitive damages for egregious behavior but there is no such thing is Washington. (There is a limited right under the Consumer Protection Act (triple the amount of actual damages up to $10,000) and finally insurance companies that act in bad faith can now be penalized, but nothing is available in the usual lawsuit.) You combine low jury awards with the absence of punitive damages and you have to put Washington on the other end of the spectrum from say California (the land of milk and honey for plaintiffs).

There is another factor at play here. After 9/11 juries, at least in King County, shifted strongly toward the defense in lawsuits. They more frequently found against plaintiffs and tended to award lower amounts. Geography and current events play a large role in jury results.

Right now national security and immigration policy are hot topics and the two overlap. Mention of a party's status as an illegal immigrant is potentially incendiary in the minds of a jury. With many juries this would create a strong bias against the person.

So the legal issue of the day is whether a person's immigration status should be admitted in evidence. This is mainly resolved by determining whether it is relevant and relevance is determined by weighing probative value against prejudicial effect. A person's immigration status is not a necessary element of any normal defense. (You can't get off by saying "Sure I ran over the guy but he didn't have his papers.") All things being equal then a defendant does not have a right to inform the jury that the plaintiff is an illegal immigrant.

But it gets into evidence in other ways. An illegal immigrant in court must be careful about what he asks for. Monday the Washington Court of Appeals, Division I, held in Salas v. Hi-Tech Erectors, that if the plaintiff asks for lost future wages, the defendant can explain that he is an illegal immigrant, even though the admission of this evidence reduces his chance to win anything at all. This is an issue that various states courts are dealing with and one the Washington courts are likely to need to refine.

This decision affects the lives of similarly situated people. The case involved the construction industry which employs a disproportionately large portion of the illegal alien community in part because many will work for less than scale, many will take cash under the table and Mexican illegals are famous in the industry for working in inhospitable conditions and working extremely hard; they are highly valued workers.

Mr. Salas was working under illegally dangerous conditions (the construction company was cited) and was seriously injured. Serious injury to most illegal immigrants means they will not be able to earn a living, either here or anywhere else. If they can no longer work and cannot recover for this lost income, courts do not offer a great deal of help to them.

This creates potential for abuse by employers. Many employers are already giving these people less money than they would have to pay for someone else's work and many are already asking them to work in unsafe conditions. An employer's knowledge that as a practical matter his employees cannot recover lost wages in the event of serious injury may serve as a disincentive to improve those conditions.

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