Judge Lee P. Rudofsky and the Eighth Circuit Allowed Debt Buyer to Hide the Evidence

Judge Rudofsky allowed a defendant big business billionaire to designate anything and everything the company wanted to be “CONFIDENTIAL” and filed under seal. Gathering together my copies of the evidence and documents to return to the oligarchs for their shredding party makes me want to puke.

Hopefully someday a media outlet with more legal muscle than I have will file a suit to have the court’s file made public.

I’m not allowed to tell you what is in the redacted and sealed material. There were some redactions which content was never disclosed to me or Judge Rudofsky, so I couldn’t say what was under those blackouts even if I was allowed. I guess the judge was not as curious as me about what the defendant was covering up. (He did make an independent investigation of this blog. Maybe what I have to say is more fascinating than defendant Portfolio Recovery Associates’ top secret stuff.)

I am allowed to say what was not in the secret dossiers. I will get into that in detail another time. Suffice it to say, there was nothing that said what I allegedly purchased on a Capital One card. No indication of where the money was spent. Not if it was online or a brick and mortar store. Nothing.

If there was an indication that the money was allegedly spent at a bar in Texas, I would be able to make a good guess that my former partner stole my card out of the mail and went on one of his drinking and whoring binges. I did not drink alcohol at all during those years, out of sympathy for his addiction. I didn’t want to cause a temptation. But, because there was no document showing where or on what the alleged credit was spent, I was left saying “I don’t know.” Judge Rudofsky turned “I don’t know” into “I spent the money.”

There was no credit card contract. There was not even a charge off statement produced between when Portfolio Recovery wrote that its investigation was complete and the end of discovery.

There was no third party telephone service provider records for PRA. There were records from my service provider and some of the calls I know came from PRA were mentioned nowhere in the secret files.

There is a well settled difference between the discretion to allow discovery productions to be confidential and letting evidence that a dispositive to be sealed. Judge Rudofsky did not make this distinction.

Here is a copy of a typical Portfolio Recovery Associates’ motion to file under seal.

Notice that the attorneys for PRA said “The Protective Order states that any confidential material disclosed in any motion, brief, exhibit, or other filing with the Court should be filed under seal. Id. at. ¶ 13.

Bullshit.

Here is the protective order. Read paragraph 13.

“The parties shall endeavor not to include confidential discovery material as exhibits to filings or in any filed pleading with the Court except as to the extent necessary. To the extent that any confidential discovery material filed with the Court during this Suit is desired by the filing party to be placed under seal, it shall be so filed in compliance with the provisions of the Local Rules of this Court. Specifically, no party shall file a document under seal without first having obtained an order granting leave to file under seal on a showing of particularized need.“

Find some particularized need for confidentiality in the typical motion to file under seal. I dare you! It can’t be done.

I have a great idea. Let’s alert DOGE to the outrageous government waste by Judge Rudofsky and the Eighth Circuit judges. They caused this case to go for petition for writ of cert to the United States Supreme Court. They made outright errors and covered up the evidence by allowing anything and everything the big business billionaire pronounced confidential to be under seal.

This is a travesty of justice that keeps me up late at night and makes me wish for a New America for the People.