Anatomy of a Bankruptcy: How a debt collector’s defense attorney dug himself in so deep.
It is difficult to listen to Portfolio Recovery Associate’s lead attorney, James K. Trefil of Troutman Pepper spew lies, downplay the spoliation of evidence and insinuate that I owed a debt of $2,297.63 to Capital One, when I know he got himself deep in debt and then filed for bankruptcy while bringing in an $11,000 per month income. It seems like a somewhat sociopathic case of transference.
Ironically, as you can see in the claims register found on PACER, $10,437.91 of Mr. and Mrs. Trefil’s debt was owed to Capital One. It would be a hoot if the same debt that was extinguished in bankruptcy also appeared on one of the portfolios the bank sold to Mr. Trefil’s client. The portfolios purchased by PRA are known to be riddled with errors, according to the CFPB (Consumer Financial Protection Bureau).
Hopefully you find looking at a bankruptcy case novel and interesting. I cannot afford to pull up all the documents on PACER. If you have an account and don’t usually hit your $30 per quarter worth of free docs limit, please download more of this case and send copies to me. I’ll share with the class.
(If corrupt judicial officers keep ruling against me, and the appellate courts fail to correct them, I may need to file for bankruptcy myself. The Trefil case is probably a good template to learn from. It was filed by an attorney on behalf of an attorney.)
From what I posted below for you to download FREE, there is a picture of a lawyer living beyond his means. Imagine that. If you are an ordinary person, you probably wonder how a couple earning six figures with one child can spend all that money, and then some.
To start, their mortgage for a townhouse was $4,875 per month. In 2006.
Geez! In 2006 I lived in a cool old beach house in California with a whitewater view and paid $1,600 per month. That place was big enough to work from home and give two kids their own rooms.
Sometimes it is better to rent than to buy, like in the overheated market early this century.
The Trefils also carried $70,000 worth of credit card debt and line of credit of $47,981.
Oddly, the value of their consumer goods owned was less than $17,000 and they drove a Honda Accord worth $6,150.
Sadly, they paid over $700 per month for health insurance and still had medical bills they were responsible for of almost $35,000.
Still, that just does not add up. I have similar personal property, and less than 1/10th the income. My trick is buying everything I can find at yard sales.
What caused me to go into this lawyer’s bankruptcy with you, my friends? Well, his team is now claiming that I should pay the costs of litigation for the billion-dollar company (that has a $2.6B credit line available) because, even though my only income last year was a $630 per month pension, I have debilitating illnesses, lost $500,000 of my own working capital in the COVID-Crash and had to fight a dozen court cases pro se, I undoubtedly have enough assets left over to pick up the bill.
After James Trefil filed for bankruptcy, he had at least 17 more years to earn income and has a healthy social security account built up.
Screenshot of the Author’s FICO score today.
The Chevron Doctrine and the Hypocrisy of Federal District Judge Lee P. Rudofsky
The Doc of the Day is a link to an article posted on Defense firm Taft/’s website and reprinted on Lexology. If you are going to fight for your rights and be part of the movement to give access to our courts to the ordinary working person, you should sign up for daily emails from Lexology. It is free.
It is important when debating to understand your opponent’s argument, even before your opponent makes that argument. (I was on debate team throughout college and while at Taft High School, coincidentally named, which had one of the finest academic records for a public school in the nation.)
You don’t need to agree with your opponents to listen to what they have to say.
The Taft/ author, Sohan Dasgupta, Ph.D., got it all wrong. Judge Lee P. Rudofsky makes the same mistake.
Dasgupta claimed the defenders of Chevron U.S.A. Inc. v. NRDC “maintain that the federal agency in question knows best what the statute it routinely applies means. Unsurprisingly, that assurance does not satisfy Chevron’s detractors. Even if that is an accurate understanding of administrative practice, Chevron’s critics contend, this abdication of the judicial role allows the executive to color outside its lane and to set aside any concern about democratic accountability.”
First, I must edit the Doctor of Philosophy’s prose. He mixed metaphors. Either the executive colors outside the lines or drives outside his lane, not both.
Back to the legal principals behind the Chevron Doctrine. Critics like Judge Rudofsky don’t really want the executive to stay in his lane; The supposedly “Federalist” judges want exclusive use of the road.
As explained by Dr. Dasgupta, the Chevron “doctrine stands for the overall proposition that unless a federal agency’s interpretation of a statute is unreasonable, the agency effectively gets to decide what an ambiguous statute means. Federal judges must, in those circumstances, heed the determinations of executive branch bureaucrats, both in executive agencies and independent ones.”
He continues that Chevron’s critics “sometimes also believe that the executive branch has its own tendentious view of the law, which will affect its interpretation — a deficiency from which neutral federal judges do not ordinarily suffer. While presidential control of the political appointees in executive agencies is, of course, direct — career civil servants, on the other hand, enjoy insulation from removal by the president, who is the head of the executive branch — independent agency co-heads often are removable only for good cause.”
Herein lies the fallacy. Judge Rudofsky and his ilk claim it is not Constitutional to have appointed agency heads who cannot be removed, barring an act of God. Have you ever tried to have a federal judge removed? People have tried to have Judge Rudofsky removed, not from the bench, only from a single case. It is a daunting task.
Rudofsky not only interprets the legislature’s unambiguous language improperly, he reinvents the meaning of litigants’ rendition of the facts of the case. Then he dares the litigant, take it to appeal (which translates into the judge’s native New Yorkese as “so sue me”).
Adding insult to injury, judges invented the doctrine of Absolute Judicial Immunity, which makes it impossible to sue a judge in civil court for running all over your rights, no matter how malicious his motivations. (The executive branch enjoys the slightly lower protection of the doctrine of Qualified Immunity.)
The Rudofskys roll right over the legislature, then back up to run over litigants, then speed away spreading a bed of roofing nails behind them that are sure to disable law enforcement’s pursuit. This is the road they want our nation to be on.
Stanley Mosk and William Spiller Sr. and Jr. Take One Step Forward, Two Steps Back: Short Story
“Thus saith the Lord; A voice was heard in Ramah, lamentation, and bitter weeping; Rahel weeping for her children refused to be comforted for her children, because they were not.” Jeremiah 31:15 (KJV)
Blacks brought to this country on slave ships suffered the most heinous crimes against humanity, separation from family, rape, torture and sanctioned murder. Blacks continued to suffer these injustices long after the statutory abolition of slavery.
There were lesser insults to African-American people, not as dramatic, but disturbing and soul shaping none-the-less. It destroys self-esteem to be excluded from playing with other kids (or grown-ups) because of the color of your skin. That kind of exclusion is heartbreaking. But it is obviously not as abhorrent as having your baby torn from your arms and given to your oppressors.
This is the story of two black men, a father and a son. The father suffered indignity and was denied the opportunity of making big money playing professional golf, because of his skin color. The son uses other arbitrary and capricious criteria to determine which children he will separate from their loving parents.
The longest serving justice on the California Supreme Court, Stanley Mosk, was a friend to these two men, and to the African-American Community as a whole. Along with other works protecting the Constitution and equality, he is credited with convincing the PGA to drop its unconstitutional rule of excluding non-Caucasians from its professional golf tournaments in 1961.
Most of the articles I found about Stanley Mosk and his efforts to desegregate golf attribute his success to a collaboration with an African-American man, golf great Charlie Sifford. But their work built upon that of another Black man named William Spiller, Sr. The elder Spiller was a vocal crusader for the right of Black people to play in the PGA. Sadly, by the time the restriction was lifted, Spiller Sr. was past his prime and did not compete in the PGA.
The Los Angeles Times wrote an article about Spiller Senior at Spiller Junior’s urging: (excerpted)
“Decades after golf tournaments threw him out because he was black, Spiller would jolt awake, sit up in his bed, shout the names of the long-deceased people who ran those tournaments.
“Sometimes he would grab his gun, stalk into the living room, wave the pistol, promise 3 a.m. revenge.
“’I’ll get them for this, you’ll see! I’ll get them!’”
Still, Stanley Mosk and William Spiller, Sr. forged a friendship in the struggle for racial justice.
Spiller Senior’s son, William Spiller, Jr. did not take up golf. He became an attorney though and continued his father’s friendship with Stanley Mosk. He became the darling of the Superior Court because of that legacy.
Spiller Junior got into the “club” of clickish attorneys in Los Angeles due to Mosk’s involvement in the Civil Rights movement alongside Spiller Senior.
Junior hit a seven-figure income by being appointed to represent minors in contentious custody cases.
It is ironic that Attorney Spiller is reputed to do the dirty work for judges who have chosen favorites in many of these cases for reasons that don’t include serving justice. Spiller’s victims are predominately Black women, though he is also known as an equal opportunity hater.
One Spiller case in the news right now is the struggle of Tanisha Foster who conceived a child with late rapper Nipsey Hussle. Foster wants to be reunited with her daughter, but Spiller is favoring Hussle’s family who control his daughter’s impressive inheritance. Follow the money.
There are many cases that don’t involve celebrities… the plight of Donicia Augustus, Maria Chiarello, schoolteachers, women of faith, and probably many who are not seen due to poverty and lack of education.
One motivation for these separations is money. Appointed minor’s counselors like Spiller make big bucks, much of it taxpayer dollars, by fanning the flames in contentious divorces. There is little oversight in the disbursements to the selected attorneys, including Spiller, who monopolize the appointed court collateral cottage industry.
The judges are the slave owners in the scenario of these unjust family law rulings. William Spiller is an overseer. With harsh indifference, he rips mothers and children apart.
This tale is perplexing and needs to be told, because instead of looking on Spiller with disdain, the legal community in L.A. embraces him and holds him in high esteem. Should we puke or should we laugh at the stupidity of these “learned” men and women, who make Spiller the keynote speaker at a conference entitled Cultural Competency in Family Law Practice?
Did none of them research Spiller’s record of discipline with the Bar for an act of moral turpitude? Can none of them hear the deep anguish and bitter weeping of Rachel for her children in Ramah?
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Doc of the Day
A bit of scripture.
“Thus saith the Lord; A voice was heard in Ramah, lamentation, and bitter weeping; Rahel weeping for her children refused to be comforted for her children, because they were not.” Jeremiah 31:15 (KJV)
Attorney William Spiller, Jr Still At It After All These Years – Do You Have the Docs?
This story from Radar Online talks about the infamous attorney’s latest exploits.
Over a decade ago, court appointed minor’s counsel William Spiller, Jr. lied bold faced to a judge. He asked for a journalist, me, to be removed from a custody hearing because he claimed the journalist was a potential witness. That was the first day I ever met the mother who was fighting for any time with her child.
The latest case Spiller is embroiled in is not a custody case, per se. He is going straight for the money. It is a probate case for the substantial estate of the late Nipsey Hussle. Spiller supposedly “represents” the rapper’s 14-year-old daughter, Emani.
According to Spiller, Emani’s mother made a surreptitious recording of the attorney and his client talking, then played it for the judge. Spiller is asking the court to make the mother turn over the tape, the device it was made on and $25,000 for his fees to get the tape back.
Why is Spiller concerned that others will hear what was said?
Emani did not hire Spiller. She had no input into who would represent her. To whom does the attorney client privilege belong? The minor? Her guardians who are trying to keep custody and control of a fortune? Or the People, since it is the government that appointed the minor’s counsel? What does Emani say about whether the recording should be published or not?
Another minor once said he had a discussion with his appointed minor’s counsel, Kenneth P. Sherman. Attorney Sherman told the then 16-year-old boy that he could live anywhere he wanted except for with his mother. The boy chose to live on the roof of the Oceanside Public Library.
It does not appear these minor’s counsel are taking the best interests of the children into account. It seems that they are more interested in wasting judicial resources and padding their own pockets. It seems like there should be some transparency about how these attorneys practice law, especially when you and I often foot the bill.
If you have access to any of the documents in the Nipsey Hussle probate case, please email a copy to bohemian_books@yahoo.com. They would make good Docs of the Day.
I am busy for two months working on an appeal. If I had the resources (time and money), I would file as an intervenor in the case and ask that the recording be unsealed (presuming it is sealed already.) Is there another parent out there who is having trouble caused by William Spiller, who might benefit from hearing the recording between William Spiller and one of his clients?
Here is a FREE Doc of the Day to get you thinking. Posted by permission of the copyright holder, Thomson Reuters.
DOJ Handles “Threats” Against Judges Differently Than Threats Against Journalists
Provocative.
Back in 2009, I was writing about an evil California Court Commissioner, Alan Friedenthal (deceased). Al was married to another commissioner, Steff Padilla. Steff commonly complained about me in court hearings on other non-related cases, I’m told, and on Facebook.
An Arkansas Attorney, Walter Riddick (deceased) wrote a similar reply on Steff Padilla’s Facebook to the Twitter posts of Attorney John M. Pierce. Only Mr. Riddick was making a threat toward me and my colleagues.
Walter Riddick offered “arranging something permanently disabling” as an option against me. Mr. Pierce seemed to threaten to attack judges by destroying careers and making it his “mission in life” to make sure those he disagreed with “live in infamy”.
Mr. Riddick was a total stranger to me and I had not stepped foot in Arkansas at that point. One of my readers sent a screenshot of Steff’s page to me.
Mr. Riddick’s Profile Picture had him dressed in army garb and holding a weapon. (I wrote an email to a reader-friend-colleague in 2009 that said the gun picture was replaced by a “hippy” picture.)
There was a Walter G. Riddick who was a Justice on the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals from 1941 to 1953. Maybe Walter Riddick’s grand-daddy.
Maybe that was a connection that caused the unexplainable bias against me by Arkansas Circuit Court Judge Susan Weaver. Weaver and Riddick have opposing political and legal views, but there is something about Old Arkansas Lineage that seems to help people cross the aisle when it comes to forming prejudices and alliances.
I reported the Padilla-Riddick apparent threat to the FBI. There was no action taken of which I am aware.
Journalists’ lives must not matter. Just Judges’ Lives Matter.
You can reach me at bohemian_books@yahoo.com or donate.
A Higher Law 