April 24, 2026 – 10:32 am
Last summer, a midnight flood struck a girls’ camp in central Texas, and 25 young girls died. The parents of some of the girls are suing the camp, Camp Mystic, accusing the camp directors of gross negligence in ignoring flood warnings and not having a clear evacuation plan.
One of the plaintiffs is Carrie Hanna, mother of Hadley, who was 8 when she died in the flood. A Camp Mystic alumna herself, Carrie Hanna told the Wall Street Journal last week (“Camp Mystic Is Still a Crime Scene,” Wall Street Journal, April 18-19, 2026), “If they had said, ‘We’re so sorry, we messed up’ – if there had been some accountability – we wouldn’t be where we are today. I didn’t want to sue them. This is not how I want to live.”
Ms. Hanna’s comment illustrates the value of an apology. People may withhold an apology for fear that they’ll end up paying dearly, but sometimes the opposite is true: the victim just wants to hear that the offender is willing to take responsibility for the offense, which enables the victim to let go. The victim who doesn’t hear that, feels more justified in suing. Ironically, the camp directors’ attorney may have warned them not to apologize – the very thing that, according to Ms. Hanna, would have prevented the lawsuit.
Of course, the camp directors may not feel any responsibility for what happened, in which case they of course should not say that they do. And victims who think that all they want is an apology may hear it and still end up feeling dissatisfied enough to file a lawsuit. But in some cases an apology can stave off a lawsuit and bring some measure of peace to parties in conflict.
Kudos to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor for issuing a public apology this week regarding her comments about her colleague Justice Brett Kavanagh. During a discussion at the University of Kansas last week, she had criticized Justice Kavanagh’s reasoning in a case last year involving ICE agent stops (without naming him). She believes the stops are unconstitutionally intrusive, as explained in her dissent, but Justice Kavanagh had approved them as “temporary stops.”
“This is from a man whose parents were professionals. And probably doesn’t really know any person who works by the hour,” Justice Sotomayor said of Justice Kavanagh.
This week, Justice Sotomayor said in a statement issued by the court, “At a recent appearance at the University of Kansas School of Law, I referred to a disagreement with one of my colleagues in a prior case, but I made remarks that were inappropriate. I regret my hurtful comments. I have apologized to my colleague.”
It’s rare for a Supreme Court justice to publicly criticize a fellow justice personally, but rarer still for one to apologize for doing so.
It’s a good apology. It doesn’t go into detail – it doesn’t even name Justice Kavanagh–, but we the public aren’t entitled to that. She acknowledges that she had hurt a colleague, and expresses regret. Perhaps most significantly, she says she has already apologized personally to him, which indicates that she understands that this was both a public and a private offense. Well done.
I might like to hear her apologize for something else: whether any of the justices personally know any hourly workers should be irrelevant when determining the constitutionality of government actions. As long as she construes the Constitution as a jurist, no apology needed.
February 26, 2026 – 4:01 pm
Bill Gates apologized this week for his involvement with Jeffrey Epstein.
“It was a huge mistake to spend time with Epstein,” he said. “I apologize to other people who are drawn into this because of the mistake that I made.” Mr. Gates directed his apology to the staff of the Gates Foundation; part of his apology was for bringing Gates Foundation executives into meetings with Epstein.
A lengthy article in the Wall Street Journal details Mr. Gates’s speech, based on a recording of it. He describes his various contacts with Jeffrey Epstein over a period of years, but draws lines regarding some behavior: although he traveled with Epstein, “I never stayed overnight,” or visited Epstein’s island. “I never spent any time with victims, the women around him.”
It seems like a fairly honest apology. He even discloses that he had two extra-marital affairs, that Epstein knew about and tried to use against him. It takes some humility to admit publicly to two extra-marital affairs.
One aspect of a good apology is acknowledging the impact that the offender’s behavior had on the victim. In this case, that would be the Foundation, and Mr. Gates acknowledged that his behavior had a negative impact on the Foundation, which relies on its good reputation to partner with other organizations.
So this seems like a pretty good apology.
This apology was to the Gates Foundation, so he was right to limit his comments to that audience. But it is a little upsetting to read his efforts in the apology to distance himself from the women who were always around Jeffrey Epstein. “To be clear I never spent any time with victims, the women around him,” Gates said. Why not? Does he regret now that he didn’t ask more questions to find out who these women were, what their stories were? He was willing to be photographed with them, but apparently didn’t inquire further, even though it must have seemed strange to have these young beautiful women sitting in quietly on meetings among middle-aged male billionaires. Does Bill Gates also owe an apology to the women who were Epstein’s victims, for his inaction?
February 21, 2026 – 1:30 pm
This shouldn’t be a surprise, right? We’re turning to AI for help with all kinds of things these days, so why not for drafting an apology? Indeed, I found two websites that offer this service for free, one called Wrizzle, another called CelebrateAlly. And the results aren’t bad. If you find yourself stuck trying to come up with the right words, this is a good place to start.
But don’t stop with the AI results. An insincere apology is worse than saying nothing, so be sure to personalize it before delivering it. A judge recently questioned the sincerity of an apology letter submitted by a criminal defendant who used AI to draft the letter. The judge commented, “when one is considering the genuineness of an individual’s remorse, simply producing a computer-generated letter does not really take me anywhere as far as I am concerned.”
Still, if AI makes it easier for us to come up with the right words for good apologies, perhaps we will apologize more often — and it seems like that would be a good thing.
January 7, 2026 – 3:11 pm
Is there a deal, or not?
Ideally, lawsuit settlement negotiations result in a written agreement that all parties sign as final. But occasionally there are problems, as in the lawsuit between Bethany Christian Services and the State of Michigan. Bethany sued the State in 2024, claiming religious discrimination when the State failed to renew its contract with Bethany for refugee services. This past fall, as reported by mLive, the parties negotiated a settlement via email: Bethany’s attorney reportedly sent the assistant attorney general (AAG) a settlement proposal, the AAG “very gently modified” it and sent it back, and Bethany accepted the modified proposal. But the AG’s office claims that the case could be finally settled only after the Attorney General herself approved it, and she has not. So when Bethany went back to court last month to enforce the agreement, the judge determined that there ultimately was no settlement, and ordered the parties back to the negotiating table.
Negotiating with governmental entities usually involves seeking approval from parties who are not at the negotiating table. Although the negotiators may be elated with their deal, it’s not final until all the key parties have approved it.
An interesting side-note in this case is that the terms of the settlement were reported, because they were included in one of Bethany’s filings. Settlement terms are typically confidential.
