Monday, November 1, 2010

Young Lawyer Goes to Jail, 6-18 Mos for DUI Fatality

Young Stroudsburg lawyer, Robert Kidwell (pic) drove drunk and killed a Bushkill, Pennsylvania man in the early hours of January 10, 2009.  This afternoon it is reported that Kidwell was sentenced to 6-18 months in the Monroe County Correctional facility.  His blood alcohol was .13 at the time that he cut down twenty-two year old Daniel Gallagher. 

This is the link to the story at the Poconos Record.  Presumably, Mr. Kidwell who was a 2007 graudate of Villanova Law School will sustain a significant disciplinary sanction in conjunction with his vehicular homicide conviction.   

I was at an AA meeting over the weekend at which the discussion centered on the suggestion sometimes heard that if the prospective AA participant doesn't truly believe he or she "qualifies" for AA membership they should go back out and try some "controlled social drinking."  A very wise person at theis AA meeting (not me) observed that outcomes such as the one reported concerning Mr. Kidwell and his victim Mr. Gallagher, are often the tragic consequence of just such experiments in "controlled drinking."  An article at the Lancet that I read in summary this AM analyzes research that demonstrates that alcohol is by far the most dangerous of all recreational drugs (exceeding cocaine, heroin, ecstasy, meth) in terms of every parameter of individual and social costs.  Career, lives, health, crime, safety,  .  .  .

4 comments:

  1. Could you post more information about the Lancet study, maybe a link to the abstract?

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  2. Sure, the summary I read was at the UK Guardian website--I'll try to incorporate more from the Lancet study in a post tomorrow.

    BL

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  3. TJ

    I was able to link to the webMD summary which I embedded in the post.
    BL

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  4. This gentle kind young lawyer continued to practice law while waiting to be sentenced but didn't bother to advise his clients that he might not be around when the time came to represent them. He neither his law firm told us about his charges so we could decide whether to contract with them for a legal matter. After a year of fooling around and several thousand dollars paid by us Kidwell suddenly wasn't around (he was in jail) and his law firm dropped us because they did not "have time." They never told us he went to jail. We found out the day of our hearing and had no representation. There's more here than meets the eye involving poor character and ethics. We are still trying to resolve our issue but the judge will not hear our case after everythign we have been through. Maybe Monroe County needs some looking into.

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