Order in the Divorce Court

explains. "Options for women
are very limited in slums, in
rural rice villages. Many women
become mail-order brides or live
in abusive situations. I wanted
to help empower women in
these communities; help them
to believe in themselves and
realize they don't have to
become mail-order brides."
She took off for Southeast
Asia, visiting Laos, Vietnam,
and the slums of Ahmedabad,
India. Six months later she
wrote a business plan. The
result is GIANNA (giannafairtrade.com), a fair-trade company that Driver founded in 2005.
Making a fair-trade wage
provides the artisans with
options.
"Too often, what we find is
that women stay in toxic relationships because they feel
financially dependent upon
their spouse or partner," Driver
says. "But when a woman is
earning an income, she is no
longer financially dependent,
and so we're able to work with
her and provide resources and
help her realize that she
doesn't have to accept that."
GIANNA works with local
non-government organizations
to identify villages that would
partner well with the company.
"The NGOs help us identify
different communities who
have a willingness to invest
in us just as much as we're
wanting and willing to invest
in them," Driver explains.
Part of that investment is
education. Driver works with
the NGOs to come up with a
curriculum suited to the
needs of individual villages,
then teaches all the women
of the village, regardless of
whether they are working
with GIANNA.
"I spend a lot of time teaching about fair trade," she says.
"That sounds like a really simple concept in our culture, but
it's actually a very difficult
74
SEPT I OCT 2010
concept for them to grasp
because these are not moneybased economies. They understand rice markets, but they
don't really grasp valuing their
time. We go through this really elaborate, several-day process and come up with a fairtrade wage."
Driver teaches her artisans
to consider the value of their
raw materials and their time,
plus their basic needs.
"It's X amount of money per
hour, and that includes not
only what they need to earn
per hour, but we add additional margin," she says. "We
don't necessarily want to sustain the status quo. We want
to help them improve their
lives. It's a thriving wage."
Driver also educates the
artisans about the dangers
of chemical dyes.
"Many problems in villages
correlate to the introduction
of [toxic] chemicals into these
communities," she explains,
citing increased birth defects
and higher mortality rates.
Driver does not use any
chemical dyes in GIANNA
products, and she works to
educate the artisans so that
they will refuse to use them.
Above all, Driver's goal is to
improve the lives of women so
that they have choices that
her mother never had. "A lot
of times, when they're at home
and they're between cooking
and caring for their kids,
they'll sit down and start
weaving," she says. "They'll
have some friends over; they'll
be gossiping." This kind of
flexibility allows them to connect with other women while
at the same time providing a
sustainable income. And on a
larger scale, she notes, "it
helps keep the skill alive" in a
market that's often driven by
cost to create inferior, massproduced products.-*-Emily Rosenbaum C'95 GEd'g6
THE PENNSYLVANIA G A Z E T T E
Order in the
Divorce Court
CLASS OF '84 I "Mrs. Lucas,
have you lost your mind?"
asked Judge Lynn Toler L'84
sharply in a recent episode
of Divorce Court. "You want
to leave this man because he
cooks too often and too well
and made you gain too
much weight?"
She eyeballed the tearful
complainant sternly before
delivering her verdict: "You
are a self-centered individual
who doesn't appreciate a
man who loves you and
doesn't care what size you
are. You need to grow up."
Toler may have honed her
legal skills in the moot-court
program at Penn Law, but her
commonsense approach to
emotional management came
courtesy of her mother, Toniwho, for the record, is less
than thrilled that her daughter ditched the "serious" side
of law to go to the "dark side"
of a Fox reality show.
"My mom was disappointed
that as the sole municipal
judge [of Cleveland Heights,
Ohio], I didn't go on to become
a state or federal judge,"
explains Toler, whose first
book is titled My Mother's
Rules: A Practical Guide
{Agate Publishing, 2007), a
combination memoir and selfhelp book that dealt with
many of the issues that have
come before her as a judge.
"She said I had the capacity.
Mom thinks [Divorce Court] is
a silly show, and I get it. It's
not Masterpiece Theater, but I
try to end each show with a
nugget of wisdom."
Besides, the role of TV
judge suits Toler well, and
she knows it.
"It's me amped up to full volume," she says. "It's me at a 10."
Infidelity is, not surprisingly, a popular subject on
the show. Last year Toler
interviewed disgraced evangelical pastor Ted Haggard
and his wife in a two-part
show, and her blunt questioning forced him to admit
that he had been treated at a
secular counseling center for
"trauma-induced" homosexual episodes when religious
counseling failed.
In another episode, a
woman admitted having
chased her "dog" of a spouse
down the street with a bat.
"He was running, dodging,
ducking, and diving," she
reported to Toler-who, after
warning that the woman's
anger could land her in jail,
awarded her relocation costs.
The show is taped in a replicated courtroom, and while
the audience reaction energizes the proceedings, it's
not all laughs. In another
Divorce Court episode, Toler,
herself African American,
tore into a young black husband whom she believed was
shirking his parental responsibilities. "Kids need to know
there's a man around providing a stable home environment," she said sharply.
"Mom taught me how to listen to people when they're
agitated and find out how
their emoting gets them into
fights and other problems,"
says Toler, who uses her
legal-discovery tools to probe
for issues "too deep for
daytime"-such as the bride
who slept with the best man
on her wedding night.
While the show has been a
good fit for Toler's talents
and personality, she says
that the greatest positives
for her, at first, were the
short taping schedule (just
20 days a year), the minimal
preparation, the deluxe
treatment (five-star hotels,
limousines), and the fun
atmosphere. To facilitate
commutes to Los Angeles,
Toler moved her family from
Ohio to Mesa, Arizona.
When she first took the
Divorce Court bench in 2006,
some viewers objected,
berating her for replacing
Judge Mablean Ephriam.
"She was well loved," Toler
says of her predecessor.
"The press reported that
producers fired her
because her hair was too
'Afro'-meaning she was
too black-but she was
really fired over a
money dispute."
The subject of
finance is familiar to
Toler, who specialized
in bankruptcy and litigation at two large
Cleveland law firms
after earning her
degree from Penn Law
in 1984. Ten years
after graduation she
was approached to run
on the Republican
ticket for a municipal
judgeship.
"I had a lo-monthold, four stepchildren,
and my law firm wanted 60 billable hours every
week," Toler says. "I was
crazed." She campaigned
door-to-door, and despite
Cleveland Heights' reputation as a Democratic
Caucasian stronghold, wonin a recount, by six votes.
As a city judge, Toler says
she "ran a tight ship and had
few hold-over cases, which is
the gauge of efficiency."
Having ruled on a variety of
misdemeanors-from speeding to negligent homicide—
she says that she "hated traf-
fic court the worst," since
"people get the nastiest" in
that environment.
Eight years of "high-volume
households" and "mega-angry
reactions" took their toll, she
admits. Yet during one low
period, a young woman who
had been a complainant in an
assault case approached her
in a grocery store and told her:
"You talked to us [her boyfriend and her] for a long
time, and that made a
difference. Things
aren't perfect, but
they're better."
Gradually, Toler morphed
into Cleveland Heights' judicial
expert on domestic violence.
"One woman was so fragile and emotionally abused,
she was literally shaking,"
Toler recalls. "Her husband
testified that she refused to
submit to his direction
when he pushed her head to
the dirt."
Realizing that "incarceration without elucidation was
pointless," she introduced
innovative punishments,
such as reading a prescribed
book and writing a report on
it. Toler also tried to steer
young people in the right
direction before they too
made bad decisions. A mentoring program she established for at-risk girls at
Taylor Academy in Cleveland
helped teens define goals
and write contracts.
One evening a student telephoned for advice regarding
a murder confession she was
privy to. "I said, 'Turn him
in,'" Toler recalls.
says Toler, who then negotiated a safety net: If the show
met its demise before the
end of a five-year contract,
she would still receive her
salary for that time period.
Which is exactly what happened. After four months, the
producers pulled the plug. "It
was too expensive to produce,"
Toler says. "They had to pay
me, the attorneys, the plaintiffs, the defendants, even the
small-claims judgments up to
$10,000." No surprise that her
most recent book, which she
co-wrote with Deborah
Hutchinson, is Put It In
Writing: Creating Agreements
between Family and Friends
(Sterling Publishing, 2009).
In addition to appearing
as an expert guest on
shows hosted by the likes
of Dr. Phil, Tyra Banks,
Rachael Ray, Larry King,
and Montel Williams, Toler
has had numerous speaking engagements around
the country on domestic
violence, black youth, and
relationships. She also
writes a column for Divorce
Magazine, which bills
itself as "the Internet's leading divorce
and separation
resource site"; has
been named one of
the Cleveland Bar
Association's Ten Outstanding Women in the Law;
and last year was given the
After a profile of Toler
Freedom Award by the Philadelphia Chapter of the Marappeared in the Cleveland
tin Luther King Association
Plain Dealer, Twentieth
Television offered her the top for Nonviolence.
Having recently served
spot in Power of Attorney,
as executive producer for
a show with former O.J.
Wedlock or Deadlock, a
Simpson prosecutors Chris
Darden and Marcia Clark.
Divorce Court spin-off that
The only problem was, Toler tested well in several cities
had just been re-elected
but never caught on, Toler
judge in Cleveland Heights.
admits that she would like
"It would have been a little to create more TV shows.
So stay tuned.*1
embarrassing to leave the
bench and get cancelled,"
-Janice Arenofsky
THE P E N N S Y L V A N I A G A Z E T T E SEPT | OCT 2010 75