Clerkships, Social Media

Law Clerk Gets Burned By Facebook Post

Be careful before you post your "hot take" online...

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Attention world: Facebook is a public forum, and posts on the social network will, inevitably, have an effect IRL.

That’s a lesson that Leslie Anderson, a law clerk for Middlesex County (New Jersey) Superior Court Judge Travis L. Francis, is learning the hard way. You see, Anderson decided to wade into an online debate — which I can say from personal experience is rarely productive — this time about the death of a NJ State trooper. Trooper Anthony Raspa was killed this past weekend in an on-duty crash… with a deer. The less-than-ideal circumstances surrounding Raspa’s death have led to the aforementioned debate harkening back to your high school AP Literature class days about the meaning of heroism and tragedy.

Anderson had a “hot take” that Raspa’s death wasn’t tragic, or even all that sad, as reported by NJ.com:

Anderson’s comments have since been removed. One of her comments, however, was captured on screenshot and posted on Facebook.

“Not that sad, and certainly not ‘tragic,'” Anderson wrote. “Troopers were probably traveling at a dangerously high speed as per usual. Totally preventable. At least they didn’t take any of the citizens they were sworn to serve and protect with them.”

Not content with a single post, Anderson went on:

“The ‘victim’s’ employment as a state trooper is irrelevant to the circumstances, other than the fact that he injured a fellow trooper and destroyed state property as a result of his recklessness. He wasn’t running into a burning building or otherwise acting within the course of his employment at the time of the accident. The outcry and ‘thank yous’ are absurd, nonsensical, and completely unwarranted. There are people in this country and around the world dying for much less. There is nothing ‘tragic’ about this. Get over yourselves and your sense of entitlement, people,” Anderson said.

Then the pièce de résistance, or at least pièce de sarcasm:

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“Nonetheless, I agree that it is sad and heart wrenching for the family members left to suffer the consequences of the Trooper’s recklessness — especially for the deer family who lost a mommy or daddy or baby deer,” Anderson wrote.

The result of these posts was a two-week (paid) suspension for Anderson while the powers-that-be do an “investigation.” Which is a fancy way of saying wait until the media attention gets diverted by the next Kardashian “update” like a goldfish swimming through a sunken treasure.

I’m not going to debate the nuance (nuance not being the forte of social media) of what constitutes a “tragic” event, or any of the substance of Anderson’s comments. The key takeaway from this (and all the Facebook-related gaffes that seem to pop up on the regular) is to assume every Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, whatever-the-latest-social-network-is post will be seen by your boss. So if you wouldn’t say it in a staff meeting, don’t say it online, especially if your job has a “public service” component.

UPDATE (6/04/15, 1:04 p.m.): The law clerk at the center of this controversy, Leslie Anderson, has now resigned, one day before the deceased state trooper’s funeral. Per the New York Daily News:

Anderson resigned Wednesday after initially being suspended with pay for two weeks pending an internal probe, a New Jersey Judiciary spokeswoman said. She was hired in August 2014.

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Law clerk who said trooper’s death was ‘not that sad’ on Facebook suspended with pay [NJ.com]
Law clerk who mourned deer after trooper’s deadly crash suspended [Press of Atlantic City]
NJ law clerk resigns after saying trooper’s death was ‘not sad,’ mourning dead deer [New York Daily News]

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