Bahamian development, identity stall between Columbus, Atlantis; tourist dollars seem not to land

Columbus is absent from Government House, Nassau.

Bowen Yang's amusing portrayal of Christopher Columbus on the Saturday Night Live "Weekend Edition" season premiere in mid-October reminded me of an empty pedestal I saw in Nassau, Bahamas, recently: a sight sadly symbolic of stalled development. 

(All photos and video by RJ Peltz-Steele CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.)

I was in Bahamas on the country's National Heroes Day on October 9. Bahamas replaced its Discovery Day, recognizing Christopher Columbus, with Heroes Day in 2013. The idea is to honor homegrown Bahamian heroes and shed the cultural domination of the islands' colonial past.

I've written before on my conflicted feelings about Columbus Day. So I was curious when my Lonely Planet told me that I would find a Columbus statue presiding over the capital at Government House in Nassau. Indeed, my pre-pandemic Planet was outdated. The statue was vandalized just in advance of Heroes Day in 2021 and moved into storage in October 2022. 

I found not only an empty pedestal with a crumbling top, but closed gates at Government House. Neglected surroundings, outside the gates, unfortunately spoke to my overall impression of economic development in the Bahamas.

Two bridges connect Nassau to Paradise Island.

Infrastructure is in a sorry state. Roads are a mess, and signage is almost non-existent. Business outside Nassau and island resorts is minimal. I tried walking to a purported national park on New Providence, and I gave up the effort halfway for the lack of walkways alongside merciless speeding traffic. Later, I drove to the park to find little more than a set-aside green parcel walled by chain link.

K9 Harbour Island Green School subsidizes most students' tuition.

Besides the country's relentlessly cheerful people, little thrives on the islands, economically. There is the tourism sector, the stunning natural beauty of the islands, and expat enclaves such as Harbour Island and Spanish Wells. To walk from grimy downtown Nassau across either bridge to the touristic sector known as "Paradise Island," where the famous Atlantis development is located, is to transport oneself between worlds. 

A Disney ship departs Nassau before dusk.

I wondered what shop workers on Paradise Island think when they leave the artificiality of the plaster-and-paint retail village, with its Ben & Jerry's and Kay's Fine Jewelry, for dilapidated, rat-infested residential buildings in the city's corners. I wondered whether tourists see the contrast when they are whisked through downtown en route from the airport to Paradise.

The heart of the city undergoes an equally striking transformation almost daily. Cruise ships pull into the port and unleash a legion of passengers into the downtown district. Western stores such as Starbucks and Havianas open up alongside overpriced jewelers and T-shirt purveyors.

(Video below: A funeral procession for Obie Wilchombe, Parliamentarian, cabinet minister, and tourism executive, proceeded through the heart of the tourist district while cruise passengers were in port on October 11. I watched, I admit, from the balcony at Starbucks. Tourists who didn't see the coffin must be forgiven for assuming the lively music signified joyful festivity. Embodiment of the tourism-government complex himself, Wilchombe likely would have approved.)

Bahamas declared independence from Britain in 1973.

Then in the late afternoon, the passengers return to their ships, and the downtown becomes a ghost town. I walked the streets at dusk and came across a few port workers commuting by foot, a few teens joking about, and a scarily ranting homeless man who caused me to cross the street. Every business was shuttered. It was hard to believe the same space had been dense with vacationers only hours earlier.

A night street party in Nassau reverberates.

Walking Nassau at night, the relative silence was punctured by a raging street party. A man told me that it was an anniversary celebration of the most popular local radio station, and entry, food, and drink were free. He invited me to join, and I did. It was a raucous party inside with a rapper dancing wildly on a stage, flashing lights, and, he was right, free drinks and heaps of homemade local eats. I felt like I was crashing an after-hours cast party at a Caribbean Disney World. I was having fun, but I must have looked out of place—I couldn't help but attract attention as the only person not of color—as a couple of well meaning partygoers asked if I was all right or needed help finding my way.

Signs all over Eleuthera Island promise happy Disney jobs to come.

Determined as it purports to be to carve out a national identity free of colonialism, there is a painful dearth of evidence that the Bahamanian government is accomplishing that. The government imposes a hefty 12% VAT on goods and services, and I'm sure the port fees are substantial. Where is the money going?

The International Trade Association (ITA) well described what I saw: "The World Bank recognizes The Bahamas as a high-income, developed country with a GDP per capita of $25,194 (2020) and a Gross National Income per capita of $26,070 (2020).  However, the designation belies the country’s extreme income inequality, as statistics are driven by a small percentage of high-net-worth individuals, while most Bahamians earn far less." The only evidence of infrastructure investment I saw was that which directly benefited tourists and expats.

True to form, on a ferry between Eleuthera and Harbour Island, I overheard a couple of Americans in golf outfits discussing the plusses and minuses of potential investment in an island hotel. They seemed oblivious to the fact that the hotel name they bandied about was sewn into the breast of the short-sleeve work shirt of a local commuter sitting right beside them.

The historic "British Colonial" hotel, Nassau, lost its Hilton affiliation,
but is under renovation with plans to reopen under independent operation.

 

The one-two punch of Hurricane Dorian and COVID took a heavy toll, to be sure. And tourism income is not yet back to pre-pandemic levels. Still, that can't fully explain the development stagnancy I saw in and among local communities.

Perhaps naively, I expected to find the Bahamas more a reflection of the western sphere of influence than of the developing world. It's only a 30-minute flight from Miami to Bahamas, and 85% of imports come from the United States. But on the ground on New Providence and Eleuthera Islands, the Bahamas reminded me less of Florida and more of Guinea-Bissau—a country plunged into darkness last week for failure to pay a $17m debt to its exclusive power provider, the offshore ship of a Turkish corporation.

Two years since Columbus was vandalized and one year since he was packed away, the solution to native identity at Government House is a rubble-topped pedestal and closed grounds. The people outside the gates have embraced National Heroes Day. But there is little information in circulation about who the Bahamian heroes are or why they should be celebrated. 

The government owes its people better. And I wouldn't mind seeing American- and British-owned tourism companies taking some corporate social responsibility—if that's still a thing—to ensure that something of what they pay into the country is reaching the people and lands that truly give life to today's Bahamas.

'Sudden emergency' doesn't spare driver from jury trial

Rawpixel CC0

A medical emergency did not necessarily let a driver off the hook for an injury-accident, the Massachusetts Appeals Court ruled yesterday, in a rare appellate appearance of "the sudden emergency doctrine."

The sudden emergency, or "inevitable accident," doctrine is less doctrine and more self-evident application of negligence law. The simple rule is that if a driver has a medical emergency and thus unavoidably causes an accident, that's not negligence. The doctrine requires that the medical emergency be confirmed by expert testimony.

You can get to that conclusion readily enough through the usual negligence analysis. A reasonable person having a heart attack could not have averted the same accident, so there was no negligence. "Sudden emergency" is just a shortcut that sanctions the conclusion and perhaps enhances a judge's confidence in awarding the defense summary judgment without a jury trial.

By the same token, however, the usual rules of negligence still apply. Saliently, the doctrine relieves the defendant of liability only insofar as the emergency is alleged to have been the proximate cause of the accident. If the plaintiff points somewhere else on the timeline, to a different alleged misconduct as proximate cause, then the defendant is not necessarily off the hook.

That's where the lower court erred in the instant cases, according to the Appeals Court. The plaintiff alleged that the defendant should have known of the risk of his medical condition and should not have been driving. That's a negligence allegation, and driving despite risk is not an emergency.

The medical evidence, even if weakly contested, supported the defendant's theory that he lost consciousness because of undiagnosed sleep apnea. As a result, his truck ran into the back of the unmoving bus ahead, which the plaintiff was driving. The loss of consciousness was a proximate cause of the accident. But not necessarily the only proximate cause.

The plaintiff's experts proffered evidence that sleep apnea is not something that attacks acutely out of the blue. Though the defendant denied chronic drowsiness, he had a medical history of difficulty sleeping at night and heavy snoring. He also suffered from comorbid conditions, such as obesity.

A reasonable person in the plaintiff's circumstances would have been on notice of the risk of driving, the plaintiff argued. And the evidence was sufficiently in dispute that the plaintiff was entitled to a jury trial on the question, the court agreed.

The court also reversed and remanded the summary judgment for the defendant's employer, as the employer would be vicariously liable for its employee's on-the-job conduct. But the court affirmed summary judgment for the employer on the direct negligence theories the plaintiff had leveled against it.

The evidence developed pretrial did not bear out plaintiff's allegations that the employer had any knowledge of a medical condition that could have impaired driving. So the jury may not hear theories of negligent hiring or supervision.

The case is Cottrell v. Laidley, No. 21-P-740 (Mass. App. Ct. Oct. 18, 2023). Justice Joseph M. Ditkoff wrote the opinion of the unanimous panel, which also comprised Chief Justice Green and Justice Hodgens.

Educator, law student earns town board appointment

Sullivan in Weymouth Monday.
Used with permission.

A student in my first-year Torts class was appointed this week to the Board of Health of Weymouth, Massachusetts.

Casandra "Casey" Sullivan was voted onto the Weymouth Board of Health at the Budget and Town Council meeting Monday. Her appointment will take hold officially soon, upon swearing in by the town mayor.

Casey currently works as a school psychologist and outplacement liaison for Weymouth Schools. A proud mother of five and former English teacher, Casey also served as a counter-intelligence agent and linguist for the Massachusetts Army National Guard.

In her spare time, Casey is working toward her J.D. She exemplifies the value of non-traditional students in the law classroom, which affords me an opportunity to learn as much as teach. I look forward to what she will accomplish with a law degree added to an already impressive resume.

Pop culture scholars invite Chicago program proposals

The American Culture Association and Popular Culture Association will meet for the ACA/PCA national conference in Chicago on March 27-30, 2024, and a call for proposals (CFP), including law papers in particular, is open now to November 30.

ACA/PCA is multi-disciplinary and interdisciplinary, and its Law Area has issued this CFP:

LAW AREA

Call for Proposals: Sessions, Panels, Papers for ACA/PCA National Conference in Chicago – March 27-30, 2024

We invite papers and presentations on all aspects of law and American culture and law and popular culture, including but not limited to: representations of the Supreme Court, the Constitution, and current cases and controversies; pop culture depictions of civil and criminal law, attorneys, and the judicial process; cinematic representations of law and justice; papers that comparatively examine the way different literary texts, musical genres or works in art history depict law and outlaws; historic preservation law. We welcome submissions on all historical, interdisciplinary, and contemporary topics related to the justice system and legal practice. Submit your paper or presentation proposal to: https://pcaaca.org/page/nationalconference.

The proposal should include an abstract of more than 250 words, and complete contact information (name, presenter’s institutional affiliation, and e-mail address). Proposals must be submitted through the PCA website. Only current, paid members can submit proposals. The submission deadline is November 30.

Area Chair: Patricia Peknik, ppeknik@berklee.edu

The PCA website further articulates submission guidelines.  PCA membership starts at $50 and includes a digital journal subscription. The PCA conference site indicates that there will be sessions dedicated to undergraduate research.

I'm pleased to share this CFP on behalf of my colleague Professor Peknik at the Berklee College of Music in Boston.

Fitness guru calls on Nigerians to build strength, love

I don't expect I have many readers in Ilorin, Nigeria. Still, I want to highlight the great work of my inspiring and entrepreneurial friend Coach Bext in support of health, fitness, and much more.

Coach Bext is organizing a fitness event (poster) for Ilorin on October 21, 2023, promoting health of mind and body. Instructor Bext Fitness is on Facebook and YouTube. 

I visited Coach Bext in Ilorin, in Kwara State, in December 2022 (below, TikTok via YouTube). Sadly, trouble zones in the country's ongoing uprising are not far north from Kwara (UK FCO map). From Ilorin, I had to fly to the Capital Territory of Abuja because the road was not safe at the time.

In that climate of uncertainty, Coach Bext is much more than a self-help sidewalk preacher. His efforts to channel restless public energy into physical well-being alongside a healthful dose of love and public service is the real message of revolution that Nigeria sorely needs and the country's storied peoples deserve.

Bext would be interested in studying sport physio abroad, by the way, to sharpen his skills to serve Nigeria. If you know of a program that would fund and host an inspiring soul, please reach out to me or to him.

'Statute of limitations is a very real thing in this country'

"The statute of limitations is a very real thing in this country," former President and Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump told reporters Monday at the New York court where he faces civil fraud claims.

I say the same thing to my 1L class every fall. Finally, some authority to back me up.

Though I can't help but think that the former President is thinking of the E. Jean Carroll matter.  Carroll filed her defamation and battery claims against the former President under New York's Adult Survivors Act (ASA). The act temporarily suspended the statute of limitations for civil claims arising from alleged sexual abuse, allowing a year-long "look-back window." Carroll filed on the day the act took effect.

The ASA opened look-back to all of a complainant's adult life. The window will close on November 23, 2023. In 2019, New York extended the statute of limitations for adult survivor claims from three to 20 years, but the extension is not retroactive. The N.Y. Law Journal reported 67 ASA lawsuits filed by February 2023; according to Katz Banks Kumin, citing The Wall Street Journal, 106 suits had been filed by May 2023. Though in April 2023, The Appeal reported "nearly 1,000" claims under the ASA by incarcerated or formerly incarcerated women against corrections officers.

The ASA was enacted as a political response to the #MeToo movement and a pointed plank in the platform of New York's first female governor, Kathy Hochul. The ASA was modeled on the New York Child Victims Act of 2019, which was in significant part a response to abuse in the Catholic Church.

The Child Victims Act similarly extended the New York limitations period for child survivors' civil claims to a victim's age 55 and opened a look-back window, one year later extended to two, that expired in 2021. That allowance saw "almost 11,000 cases," according to the N.Y. Law Journal. Jeff Anderson has details and data. Child USA tracks such laws across the country.

'Academia is the fifth circle of hell'

Gage Skidmore CC BY-SA 4.0

 

 

[A]cademia is the fifth circle of hell. It goes babies, musicals, magic, kale, academia.

 —Paul (Harrison Ford) to Gaby (Jessica Williams) in Shrinking, "Moving Forward" (s1e9 aired Mar. 17, 2023), written by Sofi Selig