Does your child or family member with Autism or Asperger’s appreciate reminders? Does he like repetition of social cues, like “make eye contact”? My brother has a list of things he likes to be reminded of in particular situations. For example, when he’s at the airport, he likes to be reminded, repeatedly, not to make jokes about hijacking. He gets very worried that he might say something inappropriate.

My parents and I have always acted as his reminder system. We all know the scripts. When he asks about an imponderable, like why he gets upset by barking dogs, he wants the answer “Why does Scott hit?” (Scott was a classmate who, much to Nathan’s distress, could not seem to control his hitting.)

Unfortunately for Nathan, we are not always with him. This must be one of the reasons he is unwilling to be in stressful situations without family present.

The Boston Globe has written an article on a new technology that helps people with Asperger’s and Autism to remember the social cues and scripts using a hand-held PDA. I think it can be applied to all sorts of reminders. To read the story, Click Here . To check out the technology company’s website, go to Symtrend.

Los Angeles is the worst jurisdiction in the entire United States for legal fairness. What’s more, the entire state of California is unfair to litigants.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Institute for Legal Reform found that California, West Virginia, Louisiana, Illinois and Texas are the worst states in the country for legal fairness. This is a drop from our position as the fifth worst state in 2005 and the sixth worst in 2004.

But the really striking news is that ahead of Metropolitian New York and Jefferson County (the class action capital of the country), Los Angeles was rated as the absolutely most unfair place to get sued in the country. One in five attorneys surveyed nationwide felt the Los Angeles legal system is unfair, primarily due to “biased judgment.”

California ranked particularly poorly in non-economic damages (pain and suffering, punitive, that sort of thing) and jury predictibility.

Read on to see how the states and cities were measured.

Corporate litigators (generally defense counsel) rated the states on technical but important measures:

• having and enforcing meaningul venue requirements
• overall treatment of tort and contract litigation
• treatment of class action suits and mass consolidation suits
• punitive damages
• timeliness of summary judgment or dismissal
• discovery
• scientific and technical evidence
• non-economic damages
• judges’ impartiality and competence
• juries’ predicability and fairness

If you don’t want to move, put your assets in a state that treats litigants more fairly. One of my favorites, Wyoming, rated 16 out of 50.