Will Judge Lee P. Rudofsky Uphold the Constitution? Doubtful, But One Must Hope
FREE Doc of the Day, available for download at the end, is the file stamped copy of this motion.
Plaintiff Laura Lynn Hammett’s Motion to Revive the Subpoena to Court Reporter Jana Perry due to PRA Reviving the Relevancy; Brief in Support
In support of the above titled motion, I, Laura Lynn Hammett, Plaintiff in pro se, state:
- PRA added a prejudicial and false statement (“Footnote 1”) in its opposition to my motion to settle the record [Doc. 267 and 276] that can be contradicted by playing the recordings sought in the subpoena to Court Reporter Jana Perry discussed in Doc. 133 to 139.
- Footnote 1 in full: “This effort appears to be part of Ms. Hammett’s litigation playbook, as it is not the first time she has claimed that a transcript did not accurately reflect proceedings in a trial court and made significant efforts to change the content of that transcript in anticipation of appellate proceedings. See Dkt. Nos. 133-134, 136 ¶¶ 4, 11, 18-19, 22.”
- First, my motivation for making an accurate record is that I want an accurate record. Our Courts can only function if the People perceive the Courts have integrity. When transcripts are edited to comport with what a judge and one party wish had been said or know should have or have not been said, our system will no longer work and we will have anarchy or fascism.
- Second, there is a reasonable inference in Footnote 1 that there is something unethical about preserving one’s right to appeal based on an accurate record. To the contrary, it is the fictionalization of the record that is unethical, as well as illegal.
- PRA implied that my claim that Ms. Perry fictionalized the record in Pietrczak was not completely true. The Pietrczak Court was adamant that the recording should not be played. That gives an appearance that the Pietrczak Court is hiding something.
- What would Solomon say? One party wants transparency; the other party demands secrecy. The party that wants transparency loves the truth. The other party is fine with letting the truth die.
- The Court mooted the motion to quash the subpoena, Doc. 133, on June 14, 2023, Doc. 232. That was probably a mistake. There is scant caselaw out of the Eighth Circuit. (See Brief below)
- This motion and brief are written in haste, as the outcome of the dispute on this issue will affect the pending appeal and the Eighth Circuit limited the extension to file the opening brief to November 5, 2023. Ideally the Court will make an expedited schedule to avoid motions for reconsideration at the Eighth Circuit after the recordings are made available to the public.
- I cannot afford a Westlaw subscription and it was too difficult to make it to the law library, my health appointments and perform my duties as caregiver to my granddaughter when both her parents are unavailable, and still file this motion by September 21, 2023, the day I had scheduled other activities in Little Rock.[1] Therefore, I hope the Court will forgive me for not having as robust a selection of authorities as I might have if I could afford Westlaw.
- I request an order granting leave to revive or reissue the subpoena and allow Ms. Perry a short time to renew her motion to quash, amended to reflect the effect of Footnote 1. Or, I ask the Court to order another just mechanism to make the subpoena live and mandate production of the recording. Perhaps the most expeditious is to issue an order to Ms. Perry’s counsel at the Attorney General’s Office. Because the subpoena was not quashed or mooted, this Court maintained jurisdiction. The recordings will prove that my motion in Pietrczak to settle the record was with good cause and that I did not invent dialogue that was left out of those transcripts, which would tend to give credibility to my claim that dialogue was left out of the December 1, 2021 transcript in this case also.
Brief
The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure “should be construed, administered, and employed by the court and the parties to secure the just, speedy, and inexpensive determination of every action and proceeding.” Fed. R. Civ. Pro. Rule 1
The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press (“RCFP”) discusses third party subpoenas issued to reporters, rather than to court reporters. Journalists are private citizens who have work product privilege and a need to protect their sources. Court reporters are public servants tasked with protecting transparency of court proceedings. A subpoena to a court reporter should carry more weight than one to a journalist.
Still, regarding subpoenas to journalists and mootness of contempt charges after the case in controversy is closed, but before appeal, the RCFP had this to say. In the Eighth Circuit, “[n]o Eighth circuit case law addresses this issue in the context of the reporter’s privilege.” But, the Fourth Circuit said, “’[t]he Fourth Circuit permits appeal of a contempt order even if the trial or grand jury for which the reporter was subpoenaed has concluded, on the grounds that such a controversy is “capable of repetition but evading review.’ Nebraska Press Ass’n v. Stuart, 427 U.S. 539 (1976); see United States v. Steelhammer, 539 F.2d 373, 378 (4th Cir. 1976) (Winters, J., dissenting), adopted in 539 F.2d 539 (4th Cir. 1977) (review en banc) (‘While the case is thus moot in the sense that the reporters have lost the ability to purge themselves, their contentions raise an important point difficult to advance at the appellate level before mootness ensues and likely to arise again in continuing litigation’).” They continued: “Contempt orders can also be appealed even if the underlying controversy has been resolved if there is a chance of further proceedings. See Shain, 978 F.2d at 853 n.2 (appeal remains live controversy because defendant has been granted a new trial and government has indicated if case is retried it intends to subpoena reporters again).” Addressing mootness questions Archives – The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press (https://www.rcfp.org/privilege-sections/5-addressing-mootness-questions/)
This case law is not exactly on point because they are discussing contempt charges for failing to comply with the subpoena, and in this case, we are discussing failure to comply with a subpoena while a motion to quash the subpoena was pending. The case law does inform us that as long as there was a chance that the need for a subpoena would be revived and complying with the subpoena would still be a mandate, the subpoena should not be moot.
Seventh Circuit case law discussed, id.: “Generally, courts have found that appeals concerning motions to quash subpoenas are not moot. Socialist Workers Party v. Grubisic, 604 F.2d 1005, 1008 (7th Cir. 1979) (holding that appeal of trial court’s denial motion to quash subpoena is not moot when trial court can release documents to parties at any time). Matter of Special April 1977 Grand Jury, 581 F.2d 589, 591 (7th Cir. 1978) (appeal not moot if the issue could not be fully litigated and is such that the party seeking to quash the motion would be subject to the same action again).”
Ninth Circuit case law discussed, id.: “In cases that present ‘federal constitutional questions affecting fundamental personal liberties,’ ‘[a]djudication of those issues should not be thwarted by resort to narrow interpretations of the doctrines of mootness and justiciability.’ Bursey v. United States, 466 F.2d 1059, 1088-89 (9th Cir. 1972) (reversing a contempt order against members of the Black Panther Party who refused to answer questions during a grand jury proceeding, holding that the reporter’s privilege issues were not moot even though the term of the grand jury had expired during the pendency of the appeal). ‘Postponement of the decisions of the[se] important constitutional issues . . . is not in the interests of the public, the Government, or the witnesses.’ Id. at 1089.”
In Arkansas, id.: “The Arkansas Supreme Court has stated numerous times that it will not address moot issues except under limited circumstances. The Court has stated that its duty is to decide actual controversies and that an issue is moot when it has no legal effect on an existing controversy. Killam v. Texas Oil & Gas Corp., 303 Ark. 547, 798 S.W.2d 419 (1990). The Court will accept an appeal of a moot issue if the issues raised are likely to recur. See Camden Community Dev. Corp. v. Sutton, 339 Ark. 368, 5 S.W.3d 439 (1999). The instances in which the Court has accepted such cases, however, are rare. There are no reported cases specifically addressing a reporter’s privilege once the matter in which the privilege was asserted is concluded.” Bold added.
I raised this argument, though with the hesitancy of a non-attorney who had not researched the issue, at the hearing of June 14, 2023. “I have a question, just because I’m not an attorney and this is all new to me. So if you moot something but then the appellate court says, come back, and, you know, we’re going to redo this, then do I have to — do I have to do those motions all over again?” (Doc. 261, p. 111, line 6-11)
The Court gave an explanation. He was much less thorough than when he quelled my hesitancy about the confidentiality designations, two years earlier. But my inquisitiveness and jealous protection of my rights were still apparent.
“THE COURT: You do. You do.
MS. HAMMETT: Or do we take the moot out?
THE COURT: No. You’ll need to do them all over again. I mean —
MS. HAMMETT: Oh.
THE COURT: That’s — that’s just the way those things go.
MS. HAMMETT: Oh. Then I’d have to consider for a moment whether that is actually good for either the Perry — Perry quashing that, because I don’t want to
quash it and I don’t know what the next statute of limitations are and —
THE COURT: Well, really right — really right now I just want you — I just want to give you the ability to give me your thoughts on whether these are mooted or not and then I’m going to decide.
MS. HAMMETT: Oh, okay. Then I’ll let you do that research because I don’t know the answer to that, but that — I would hate to —
THE COURT: I understand you don’t — I got it. You don’t want to concede that they’re mooted. That’s fine. I under — I understand that. I — I believe they are both mooted in this situation so I am going to moot both of — both of those motions.”
In actuality, it was the motion to quash that was mooted, not the subpoena itself, so technically, the subpoena is still live. I hope the Court will issue an order that produces a just outcome, that the Court Reporter Jana Perry be given an opportunity to renew her motion to quash the subpoena amended to address Footnote 1, I be able to renew my opposition with an appropriate amendment and the Court deny the motion to quash, compelling the production of the recordings of all hearings in the Pietrczak case.
Respectfully submitted,
Dated September 21, 2023 _______________________
Laura Lynn Hammett
16 Gold Lake Club Road
Conway, Arkansas 72032
760-966-6000
thenext55years@gmail.com
Plaintiff Pro Se
[1] The denial of electronic filing to non-attorneys creates an unconstitutional barrier to a level playing field for persons who cannot afford transportation to the court clerk’s office.
Defense Attorneys Troutman Pepper and Rose Law Firm Step Right in It.
“This effort appears to be part of Ms. Hammett’s litigation playbook, as it is not the first time she has claimed that a transcript did not accurately reflect proceedings in a trial court and made significant efforts to change the content of that transcript in anticipation of appellate proceedings. See Dkt. Nos. 133-134, 136 ¶¶ 4, 11, 18-19, 22.” – Attorneys with Rose Law Firm and Troutman Pepper Hamilton Sanders, LLP.
The attorneys for Mega Debt Buyer Portfolio Recovery Associates were opposing a motion to settle the record. My claim is that I asked Judge Lee P. Rudofsky to explain the limits of what PRA was allowed to designate as confidential if I stipulated to what I contended was an overbroad protective order. He gave a thorough answer that gained my confidence, so much so that I wrote about what an honorable man he was soon after the hearing.
Chuckle.
Fast forward to when I receive the transcript of the hearing in order to quote the judge directly and the dialogue is non-existent. There is no oral argument against approving the protective order from me at all, in contrast to my adamant written objection to turning this case into a “star chamber”.
It took little imagination to expect PRA to try to make me sound like a whack job, instead of a person who excels on comprehension exams, but suffers from traumatic and chronic stress. That is right out of the Defense Attorney Playbook. The best defense is a good offense. And, if you have nothing bad to say, say anything at all.
I made a pre-emptive strike and subpoenaed the recording of hearings in the case PRA referred to that were also fictionalized. The judge on that case, the dishonorable Susan Weaver, refused to settle the record and denied my FOIA request for one recording. (I will FOIA the other two recordings if the Arkansas Court of Appeals does not reverse Weaver’s decision and ensure the return of my property rights to me.)
I subpoenaed the recordings in the PRA case to use as evidence of the stressful position I was in when PRA made hundreds of calls to me. There are few things more stressful than having a corrupt judge and corrupt court reporter changing up the record against your interests.
Judge Lee P. Rudofsky said Court Reporter Jana Perry would not be ordered to produce the recordings because he dismissed my case on summary judgment.
PRA did not need to use the argument to convince Judge Rudofsky to rule against me. They could probably cry “she’s a witch, burn her” and he would agree.
All they accomplished was to give me another chance to ask for the recordings to be played and let Judge Rudofsky show his true colors. Again.
What does it say to you when someone refuses to hand over the tapes? Too bad we can’t throw the red instant replay flag like on the commercials on Sunday Night Football.
Where this is headed is to a Constitutional Challenge of the court rule disallowing litigants to record their own hearings. The methods used by the courts to capture a verbatim record are antiquated. The courts consistently strike down rules and statutes that prohibit videotaping arrests and other police interactions. Why not let us video interactions in the courthouse? What are they trying to hide?
It is a sad day, but the courts have brought ill repute upon themselves, and the common person has had enough!
FREE Doc of the Day
Guide to Filing a Pro Se Appeal in the Ninth Circuit Court – FREE Doc of the Day
This is a guide that gets sent to self-represented appellants after they file an appeal.
If you are in a District Court case, you should download and read this booklet now.
It is helpful to know what comes next, so you can prepare for it.
The Ninth Circuit is pro se friendly, procedurally. I don’t know yet if they treat the self-represented fairly on substantive law – in other words, do the right thing, and correct the District Court’s errors.
A pro se appellant in the Ninth Circuit gets to write an informal brief, does not need to create an appendix and is not required to include caselaw. It doesn’t hurt to include authorities, just in case the justices don’t feel so friendly toward you and overlook cases that support your position.
Call me cynical, but it seems like if a court wants to rule against you, it will, regardless of the facts and brilliant argument you present. Still, you must keep hope and do what you can to cause change for the better. Make your documents look like a million bucks, even if you expect half that when the jury returns.
If you need a professional writer, editor or researcher, please contact me at bohemian_books@yahoo.com or (760) 966-6000 (text and voice). Let me add impact to your documents. My rates are negotiable.
I am not an attorney. I cannot give legal advice.
Courts that Tax the Poor and Middleclass
You have a dispute with a corporation like ZIPS Car Wash, First American Home Warranty or Portfolio Recovery Group.
The company took money from you that you did not owe, did not provide the service you paid for or tried to extort money from you.
You tried writing “letters”, poor reviews on the internet, and begged by telephone for the company to correct itself. All to no avail.
So, you decide to take them to court.
In my experience, the courts often discourage non-attorneys from filing a suit.
In the small claims division in Faulkner County Arkansas, I filed a suit against Goodman Manufacturing for selling a faulty HVAC to me. The court charged me $12.55 on top of the filing fee, supposedly to serve the suit on Goodman by certified mail.
Eventually, Goodman wrote a motion to dismiss based on improper service and showed a copy of the service envelope with a regular stamp on it. The court is collecting over $10 extra per plaintiff, and if the plaintiff has a good case that concerns a company that has lawyered up, the case can be thrown out on a technicality. (One of the other defendants settled with me, so I know it was a good case.) See the FREE Doc of the Day at the end of the post.
In a case in the Federal District Court of Southern California, five of the defendants were attorneys who were accused of committing malpractice on a company that I was a shareholder in. There were other harms against me claimed in the same lawsuit. The malpractice claim is what is called “derivative”. A derivative suit cannot be filed by a non-attorney. Who knew?
The court allowed me to proceed on the derivative suit and denied me leave to hire an attorney to explain what a derivative suit was unless I hired the attorney to represent me in the entire case. That might have cost more than I would recover. There was no fee shifting provision that would allow me to recover the costs of the lawsuit.
When I discovered on my own that by proceeding on the derivative suit I might be charged with practicing law without a license, I brought it to the Court’s attention as a voluntary dismissal. Judge Sammartino decided that I dismissed because the attorneys were going to prevail and ordered me to pay their attorney fees on an anti-SLAPP motion. Never mind that malpractice and conversion claims are not subject to the fee shifting anti-SLAPP statute.
In the Federal Court in the Eastern District of Arkansas, there are conflicting rules about non-attorneys using electronic filing. One says non-attorneys cannot use electronic filing. Period. That is the rule Judge Lee P. Rudofsky enforced against me. There is another rule that says a person can gain permission to use electronic filing by filing a motion. I tried that, to no avail.
“Conventional” paper filing taxes the pro se litigant. Instead of filing whenever convenient, the non-attorney must drive to the courthouse during business hours or mail the documents and cross her fingers.
I went into an important hearing on the case once and learned that my adversary’s attorneys received an order by electronic service the day before that I did not get in the mail yet. They had an opportunity to research the law before we discussed it, and I did not.
Each of the approximately 100 documents I filed in the case cost me about $100 extra to copy four times and using the GSA mileage expense to drive to the courthouse and home. That is $10,000 I could not spend on discovery, like depositions and subpoenas. I have an autoimmune disease and was forced to go into public to file. (Once I went to the courthouse on the last day to file. I was feeling a little more lousy than usual, so I went to an urgent care after and found out I had COVID. If I had electronic filing, I would not have exposed others to the disease.)
What can be done about this taxation of the poor and middleclass that can’t afford to pay an attorney hundreds of dollars an hour for representation?
It will probably take a Constitutional challenge to the laws that discriminate against the majority class. Where judges like Janis L. Sammartino, Lee P. Rudofsky or the Clerk of the Court are misapplying the law or ignoring the law, it means filing an appeal and prevailing.
Good luck.
If you have a story about systemic bias in the courts, please shoot an email to bohemian_books@yahoo.com.
Doc of the Day
Testaliars. What should be the penalty for spoliation and perjury in a civil suit?
“Testaliars” is what Consumer Attorney Jerry Jarzombek calls agents and attorneys representing creditors who frequently falsify affidavits or present erroneous legal documents to the court, according to an article by Deborah L. Cohen published in the ABA Journal called “Pennies on the Dollar”.
“They are scavengers, buzzards picking at the decaying carcass of a debt,” Mr. Jarzombek was quoted as saying.
My appellate brief in a case against Portfolio Recovery Associates, LLC, is due on November 6th. You can read about some of PRA’s dishonesty when it is complete. Unfortunately, the presiding judge, Trump appointee Lee P. Rudofsky, was less than honest in his opinions, as well.
Some of the dishonest statements require discussion of documents that are filed under seal. So, I am working on a motion to unseal those records.
Any brave attorney who wants to help on the case, please contact me at bohemian_books@yahoo.com. You can probably get this case turned around on appeal, and there is a fee shifting provision in the FDCPA. PRA settled with the CFPB with $12M in a fine for doing some of the things I claimed PRA did to me. PRA settled a case similar to mine where the jury awarded $82M in punitive damages.
The sanctions for spoliation of evidence and perjury should be enough to make taking this case worthwhile for an attorney who is ready to retire.
Get 100 FREE Law Articles Per Month from the American Bar Association
Students, lawyers and researchers are allowed to sign up for 100 free articles per month from the American Bar Association. It is easy. Go to http://www.jstor.org.
My first free read was an article about debt buyers’ bad practices, including specific problems with Portfolio Recovery Associates, LLC.
The Debt Buyers: Lax Court Review and a Ravenous Industry are Burying Defendants in Defaults. Terry Carter, ABA Journal, Vol. 101, No. 11 (November 2015), pp. 54 – 61.
One of my key takeaways pertained to a default judgment against a trust that was sued as a common defense doctrine defendant with me. I prevailed on that case, being dismissed with prejudice by the plaintiff, after the plaintiff’s attorney produced a handwritten and signed letter that described how the plaintiff and his attorney intended to file a fraudulent lawsuit against me and the trust.
Judge Susan Weaver in Searcy County Arkansas saw the letter and granted default judgment against the unrepresented trust anyhow.
In the ABA article, Judge Lisa Mayne is quoted. “The law is clear that a judge can’t grant a default when there’s no valid claim.”
The Arkansas Court of Appeals has had an appeal of the default judgment against the trust sitting on their collective desk for almost a year.
Hopefully you will also find informative and useful information from the free treasure trove of articles at http://www.jstor.org.
Pro Se Litigants Wanted for Plan to Take Down the Man, lol
Thank you to my muse who put my purpose so succinctly. She said I want to “take down the man.”
Chat GBT defined the phrase “take down the man” for me.
“The saying ‘take down the man’ is a colloquial expression that is often used in a figurative or metaphorical sense. It generally means to challenge or oppose those in positions of authority, power, or control, typically with the goal of bringing about change or addressing perceived injustices. ‘The man’ in this context typically refers to the establishment, the government, corporations, or any authority figures or entities that are seen as oppressive, corrupt, or responsible for social, political, or economic problems.
“People who use this phrase often advocate for social activism, protest, or some form of resistance to challenge and disrupt the status quo in pursuit of a more equitable or just society. It can be associated with movements for social justice, civil rights, and political change. However, the exact meaning and connotations of the phrase can vary depending on the context in which it is used and the specific goals of the individuals or groups employing it.”
Here is the beginning of a plan to move toward more social justice and civil rights by challenging and opposing those in a position of control of our economic system and judiciary, particularly corporations that rip off the common person with impunity.
If you are in the class of the bottom 98%, you have fallen victim to the abusive practices of the moneyed elite.
Sometimes the wrong is subtle. Sometimes it is slight. The man will invade your privacy or put something in the fine print on a contract of adhesion, or even change a business document using the delete button or Adobe Acrobat, and rip you off for an amount that is hardly worth the effort to fight about.
If you try to get a lawyer to recover damages for you for the small stuff, chances are the attorney will only take the case as a class action. Class actions often result in recovery of less than a dollar for each victim and millions of dollars in fees for the attorneys.
Why not cut the attorneys out? Because attorneys write the rules and attorneys say that only they can help another person or a fictitious person (a company or trust) with legal work. One class member assisting another class member is deemed the “unauthorized practice of law”.
What about this idea? Pro se litigants who were harmed by the same company, like the millions who were mentioned in the Stipulated Order between the CFPB and debt buyer Portfolio Recovery Associates, file individual suits, then petition the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation to consolidate proceedings as MDL, pursuant to 28 U.S.C. sec. 1407.
According to a lawyer from Robins – Kaplan, PC: “The goal of MDLs is to avoid discovery duplication, to prevent inconsistent pretrial rulings, and to conserve the resources of the parties and the judiciary in similar cases.”
In other words, if the cases of millions or even hundreds of the company’s victims were treated as related, the victims would be allowed to pool their resources to depose company employees, high level and low level, demand production of documents and move the Court for assistance in compelling compliance with discovery requests.
The cases would remain separate. I have personally done something like this by joining with one other person as plaintiffs to a suit. We won six figures.
Here, as Doc of the Day is the complete language of 28 U.S.C. sec. 1407:
(a)
When civil actions involving one or more common questions of fact are pending in different districts, such actions may be transferred to any district for coordinated or consolidated pretrial proceedings. Such transfers shall be made by the judicial panel on multidistrict litigation authorized by this section upon its determination that transfers for such proceedings will be for the convenience of parties and witnesses and will promote the just and efficient conduct of such actions. Each action so transferred shall be remanded by the panel at or before the conclusion of such pretrial proceedings to the district from which it was transferred unless it shall have been previously terminated: Provided, however, That the panel may separate any claim, cross-claim, counter-claim, or third-party claim and remand any of such claims before the remainder of the action is remanded.
Such coordinated or consolidated pretrial proceedings shall be conducted by a judge or judges to whom such actions are assigned by the judicial panel on multidistrict litigation. For this purpose, upon request of the panel, a circuit judge or a district judge may be designated and assigned temporarily for service in the transferee district by the Chief Justice of the United States or the chief judge of the circuit, as may be required, in accordance with the provisions of chapter 13 of this title. With the consent of the transferee district court, such actions may be assigned by the panel to a judge or judges of such district. The judge or judges to whom such actions are assigned, the members of the judicial panel on multidistrict litigation, and other circuit and district judges designated when needed by the panel may exercise the powers of a district judge in any district for the purpose of conducting pretrial depositions in such coordinated or consolidated pretrial proceedings.
(c)Proceedings for the transfer of an action under this section may be initiated by—
the judicial panel on multidistrict litigation upon its own initiative, or
motion filed with the panel by a party in any action in which transfer for coordinated or consolidated pretrial proceedings under this section may be appropriate. A copy of such motion shall be filed in the district court in which the moving party’s action is pending.
The panel shall give notice to the parties in all actions in which transfers for coordinated or consolidated pretrial proceedings are contemplated, and such notice shall specify the time and place of any hearing to determine whether such transfer shall be made. Orders of the panel to set a hearing and other orders of the panel issued prior to the order either directing or denying transfer shall be filed in the office of the clerk of the district court in which a transfer hearing is to be or has been held. The panel’s order of transfer shall be based upon a record of such hearing at which material evidence may be offered by any party to an action pending in any district that would be affected by the proceedings under this section, and shall be supported by findings of fact and conclusions of law based upon such record. Orders of transfer and such other orders as the panel may make thereafter shall be filed in the office of the clerk of the district court of the transferee district and shall be effective when thus filed. The clerk of the transferee district court shall forthwith transmit a certified copy of the panel’s order to transfer to the clerk of the district court from which the action is being transferred. An order denying transfer shall be filed in each district wherein there is a case pending in which the motion for transfer has been made.
The judicial panel on multidistrict litigation shall consist of seven circuit and district judges designated from time to time by the Chief Justice of the United States, no two of whom shall be from the same circuit. The concurrence of four members shall be necessary to any action by the panel.
No proceedings for review of any order of the panel may be permitted except by extraordinary writ pursuant to the provisions of title 28, section 1651, United States Code. Petitions for an extraordinary writ to review an order of the panel to set a transfer hearing and other orders of the panel issued prior to the order either directing or denying transfer shall be filed only in the court of appeals having jurisdiction over the district in which a hearing is to be or has been held. Petitions for an extraordinary writ to review an order to transfer or orders subsequent to transfer shall be filed only in the court of appeals having jurisdiction over the transferee district. There shall be no appeal or review of an order of the panel denying a motion to transfer for consolidated or coordinated proceedings.
The panel may prescribe rules for the conduct of its business not inconsistent with Acts of Congress and the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.
Nothing in this section shall apply to any action in which the United States or a State is a complainant arising under the antitrust laws. “Antitrust laws” [omitted]
*************
Think of MDL as a Class Action Lite.
To be continued…
How Lenders Prey on the Poor, Elderly
Press Release from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau with FREE downloadable Doc of the Day
CFPB Sues Installment Lending Conglomerate for Illegally Churning Loans to Harvest Hundreds of Millions in Loan Costs and Fees
A CURO Group Holdings Company, Heights Finance, formerly known as Southern Management Corporation, induced struggling customers into a fee-harvesting and loan-churning scheme.
AUG 22, 2023
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) sued Heights Finance Holding Company, formerly known as Southern Management Corporation, a high-cost installment lender, as well as several of Heights’s subsidiaries (collectively, Southern), for illegal loan-churning practices that harvested hundreds of millions in loan costs and fees. The CFPB alleges that the company – which operates under a variety of trade names, including Covington Credit, Southern Finance, and Quick Credit – identifies borrowers who are struggling to repay their existing loans, and then aggressively pushes them to refinance. Borrowers become trapped in the loan churning scheme and often are forced to refinance multiple times. The CFPB is seeking to end Southern’s unlawful loan-churning practices, to gain redress for harmed consumers, and to require Southern to pay a civil money penalty.
“The CFPB is suing the Southern lending conglomerate for illegally churning loans and harvesting fees from their customers,” said CFPB Director Rohit Chopra. “What Southern sold as a financial lifeline was, in reality, pushing customers into financial quicksand.”
Southern is a nonbank, high-cost installment lender with its principal place of business in Greenville, South Carolina. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of CURO Group Holdings Corporation (NYSE:CURO), and operates more than 250 brick-and-mortar storefronts in the states of Texas, Oklahoma, Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, and South Carolina. Southern’s borrowers typically have low or fixed incomes and impaired credit. The company’s typical borrower earns less than $25,000 annually. Many of its borrowers are either older Americans living on fixed incomes or are single-parent wage earners.
CURO Group Holdings operates in the United States and Canada. The company reported total revenue of $209.2 million at the end of the second quarter for 2023. The company has steadily increased its market presence since its founding in 1997 through a series of acquisitions. It acquired Heights Finance, formerly known as Southern Management Corporation, in 2021. Southern exercised complete control over all the subsidiaries identified in the CFPB’s complaint and directed all activities, including lending activities.
Refinanced loans comprise the bulk of Southern’s loan origination volume every year. More than 70 percent of the roughly $250 million in loans that Southern makes each year are refinanced loans with the company. In fact, between 2013 and 2020, Southern held nearly 10,000 consumers in continuous, uninterrupted debt, despite predominantly offering loans of just a few months in length.
Southern strives to maximize its profits from customers who must refinance to avoid delinquency and default. Nearly 10 percent of Southern’s borrowers refinance their loans with the company a dozen times or more. While these borrowers make up just under 10 percent of Southern’s total borrower population, their refinances generate 40 percent of the company’s net revenue.
The CFPB’s lawsuit alleges that the company harms consumers by:
- Coercing distressed customers into fee-laden cycles of reborrowing: Southern’s business strategy centers on getting customers to refinance loans as early and as often as possible. The company uses an array of coercive practices to drive delinquent borrowers into fee-laden refinancing cycles. In addition to fees, these loans decrease the amount of money that borrowers can cash out and increases their total cost of borrowing with each successive refinance.
- Incentivizing employees to push refinances: Southern’s incentive-compensation programs reinforce its coercive tactics by rewarding employees who are the most successful in driving payment-stressed borrowers into refinancing and punishing those employees who do not. According to Southern’s executive leadership, “our focus when interacting with delinquent customers has not changed,” and lists refinancing as the top priority when interacting with borrowers. Refinancing is ahead of even collecting the full past-due balances on loans.
- Targeting customers for their likelihood to refinance: Southern positively weights past, repeated refinancing in their refinance-approval process. As a result, the company routinely lends to borrowers who have refinanced multiple times even if they clearly cannot afford to service their debt to Southern without refinancing.
- Falsely marketing refinances as fresh starts: Southern markets refinances as solutions, fresh starts, and best options for customers who are struggling to repay. However, for many of these customers, refinancing serves only to prolong indebtedness, to increase total borrowing costs, and to offer no long-term solution to financial distress.
Enforcement Action
Under the Consumer Financial Protection Act, the CFPB has the authority to take action against institutions violating consumer financial protection laws, including engaging in unfair, deceptive, or abusive acts or practices. The CFPB alleges that Southern’s steering practices are unfair and abusive, and is taking action to address its wrongful practices.
Consumers can submit complaints about financial products and services by visiting the CFPB’s website or by calling (855) 411-CFPB (2372).
Employees who believe their companies have violated federal consumer financial protection laws are encouraged to send information about what they know to whistleblower@cfpb.gov. To learn more about reporting potential industry misconduct, visit the CFPB’s website.###
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is a 21st century agency that implements and enforces Federal consumer financial law and ensures that markets for consumer financial products are fair, transparent, and competitive. For more information, visit consumerfinance.gov.
The Courts Fail to Treat the Non-Elite Fairly, Equally; Bar Poor and Middleclass from Success
A therapist sent this Doc of the Day, an exercise in satisfying unmet needs. I am sorry, there was no attribution.
Let’s focus on No. 16: “To be treated fairly, equally, and given an opportunity to succeed.”
The vast majority of people who represent themselves in court feel that they are treated unfairly, unequally and are doomed to failure.
The number one rule of court is that the rules “should be construed, administered, and employed by the court and the parties to secure the just, speedy, and inexpensive determination of every action and proceeding.”
Ha! That never happens!
Let’s look at one way the plebians are mistreated.
In the Federal District Court of Eastern Arkansas, attorneys are allowed to file electronically. The self-represented must print four copies of their documents, and either drive to Little Rock to file or mail the documents and hope they are received timely.
Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 5(d)(2) states:
Nonelectronic Filing. A paper not filed electronically is filed by delivering it:
(A) to the clerk; or
(B) to a judge who agrees to accept it for filing, and who must then note the filing date on the paper and promptly send it to the clerk.
There is no definition of “delivering” in this section. Some jurisdictions specify that delivery for filing is the postmark date. It seems like a big risk to assume the postmark will be the date of filing where there is no specific rule. What if the mail never arrives? There will be no proof of the postmark. You might take a picture of the postmarked envelope at the post office. Why deal with the extra stress? It is prudent to hand deliver.
When I hand delivered last time, the clerk accidentally handed three copies of a document back to me. I called the clerk and sent an email to the judge’s clerk. Both said no need to bring the copies back to them.
One copy is used for the public box. These copies can be read by the press and other public by visiting the clerk’s office. That is a good idea, but why don’t the electronic filing attorneys need to bring in an extra paper copy?
Filing conventionally increased the costs on my case against Portfolio Recovery Associates by about $8,000, so far. PRA claims they spent about $8,000 on costs of deposing me, having transcripts printed, and copying the thousands of documents they demanded that I produce in discovery.
$8,000 is more than my total yearly pension.
As a low-income litigant, I had to choose between filing my documents or holding depositions and doing other discovery. Well, that is not really a “choice”. I am required to file the documents, or I lose.
King Antoinette Rudofsky (AKA Judge Lee P. Rudofsky) has a solution for the high costs of litigation for the commoners. He said that filing a lawsuit is the plaintiff’s “choice”. If you don’t want the high cost of litigation, just let the people who control the money walk all over you.
If you do choose to fight for your rights in court, beware! A judge like Rudofsky or Linda Lopez will do mental gymnastics to twist the facts to feign some reasonableness in forcing the poor or middle-class pro se litigant to pay the represented litigant’s costs and attorney fees.
Basically, if you choose to try to correct a wrong in court, expect to face bankruptcy.
(I have won several lawsuits against represented adversaries, but it is not easy, and most people don’t have my tenacity and aptitude for reading rules.)
Back to the purpose of this post. What can a person do to help himself move closer to getting his needs met when wronged by the moneyed elite?
Bombings and going postal are not viable options.
File a lawsuit? Not in Lee Rudofsky’s court. Not in Linda Lopez’ court. Not in Susy Weaver’s court.
(Yes, I know the courts are supposed to belong to the People, but let’s live in reality.)
Do you want to know the answer?
…to be continued
Does Black’s Law Dictionary Define “Bitch”?
Don’t expect too much from this post.
I slept a whopping 5 hours last night. This federal judge in California, Linda Lopez, gave me more needless work and I know if I didn’t spend the entire morning writing, she would order me to pay another $60,000 or so in attorney fees to my adversaries who hired $450 per hour attorneys to take on a self-represented litigant.
Really, with the idiotic rulings issued by the likes of Judge Linda Lopez and her blond twin Judge Susan Kaye Weaver in Arkansas, a sleazy litigant could get away with hiring a bozo like William Zac White and still win.
Lopez and Weaver are flip sides of the same coin… A Democrat and a Republican hypocrite.
Both are evil, unethical, conniving. Both will steal from the poor to give to their friends. I haven’t looked it up, but figure that to be the definition in Black’s Law of —-
Oh, do you want to read the documents I wrote while in a zombie like state? Here they are, your FREE Docs of the Day.
A Higher Law 