I Could Not Say It Better Myself: So I reposted By Permission of the Post Modern Justice Media Project
- Alex Baker
- Dec 16, 2020
- 10 min read
Top Ten Most Corrupt Laws in the United States
10. The Federal Reserve Act
Allowing a central bank to print un-backed paper money in any amount is counterfeiting, by definition. And counterfeiting is a form of theft, because it allows those with the printing press to transfer real wealth away from those who earned it, and into the hands of themselves and their close friends. For a more detailed explanation, please see The Origin of Money and How It Was Stolen From You.
The Fed should be abolished. Money and banking should be returned to the private sector. Among many other cruelties, the Fed can finance Title IV D funding of the kidnapping and extortion racket known as Child Welfare and Dependency Courts. Truly, the Federal Reserve could be #1 on the list, but we’ve pushed it down to # 10 because most everybody already knows about it.
9. Unpublished Appeal Court Opinions
Any time a Court of Appeal rules on a case, its opinion becomes the law. Such “Case law” may be cited in a new case to show how that case is like the earlier one, and why the Court should rule the same way now. Except, nowadays, the vast majority of Appellate Opinions are issued as “unpublished”, meaning we are not allowed to cite the case. Think about it. If the Opinion is valid, then why would we not want it published? And if the Opinion is not valid, why should we allow it to happen in the first place?
All Appeal Court Opinions must be published. If the result is “conflicting” laws, good. It will shine a spotlight on the problems, and hasten needed reform.
8. Contempt of Court is Non-Appealable
Contempt of Court is a finding by a judge that a person “willfully” violated a court order. Some court orders are valid, and should be obeyed. And a court needs a mechanism to enforce them. But there are severe problems with the present system.
It is common for Family Court judges to illegally order parties not to talk about their case on social media, or even to their own children. Restraining orders can issue that say the same thing. Violate that, and you can go to jail. Like Judge Bruce Mills sent Joe Sweeney to jail for posting facts about his divorce from Keri Evilsizor.
On the other hand, judges will turn right around and allow some people to get away with violating court orders, for example raiding a trust fund. Like Judge Gregory Weingart let Clair Marlo get away with taking $225,000 cash from a disputed property in the now-infamous Baker v. Baker case.
Contempt is found when it shouldn’t be, and not found when it should be. Either way there is nothing that can be done, because Contempt orders are non-appealable. Yes, you can file a Writ, but those are almost always denied, and the Appeal Court doesn’t even have to give you a reason why. Writs just come back saying “denied”.
7. “Temporary” Child Custody Orders
The right to family unity is a fundamental constitutional right. Constitutional rights cannot be taken away without due process. Under any sane legal system, a parent has a right to frequent contact with their child unless and until that parent is convicted of committing a crime against that child. Not accused. Convicted.
It is extremely common in Family Court for the judge to award ‘temporary” sole custody to one parent, and either no visitation, or only monitored visitation to the other parent, all upon allegations only. Getting to a “final” custody order often takes years of expensive litigation, and is never final anyway, as custody is always modifiable. The fight is never over. None of this is constitutional, and none of it makes any sense for a society that values family, which ours no longer does.
No judge has any right to make any order besides 50-50 joint custody until there is a trial finding that a parent did something really bad.
6. Domestic Violence Restraining Orders for Non-Threatening Speech
California’s Domestic Violence Prevention Act (“DVPA”), defines “abuse” to include “disturbing the peace”, which case law interprets to mean “any conduct that destroys the mental or emotional calm” of the other person. This has resulted in cases where a 3 -year restraining order issued solely on the basis of man forwarding the wife’s text messages to her parents, or another man winning a copyright infringement case against his ex-wife and discussing it on a blog, or another man posting pictures of visiting his children on Facebook after the Judge ordered him “not to discuss the divorce with the children”.
Non-threatening speech is not violence. These Family Law DVRO are being used as strategic weapons in property and custody disputes. It’s wrong. It’s hurtful, most of all to the children, who are used as both a weapon and a shield. It must stop.
5. “Dispensing with” Notice
Notice is a fundamental part of Due Process. California’s Probate and Family Codes contain rules saying that on a hearing for Temporary Guardianship of a Child, Notice requirement may be done away with for “good cause”. What constitutes “good cause” ? It is simply a checkbox on a standard form, and no explanation is required.
In one case, a judge awarded temporary guardianship of a child at an unnoticed, ex parte hearing. That same day they took the child away from the legally married, biological parents, who had no idea the hearing had taken place. This happened 5 days after DCFS cleared the father of the one (1) vague allegation that he had “inappropriately touched” the child 4 years prior.
Another case involved an estranged husband leaving his wife and son in Canada, and somehow getting a judge in Los Angeles to grant an ex parte custody award based on a provably false allegation that his estranged wife had “kidnapped” the child. In fact, the family had been living in Canada for 3 years. In contradiction to the Hague Convention, the man somehow got U.S. officials to cross the border and seize the child, and mother has never seen him since.
No judge should be allowed to conduct any kind of court proceeding regarding parental rights unless all parties are present.
4. Automatic Hearsay Exception for Child Welfare Reports
California Welfare and Institutions Code § 355 makes Hearsay evidence by “peace officers”, “social workers”, “health care practitioners”, and “teachers” automatically admissible as evidence, as long as it is found in a “social study” or a “report”. Not only is it admissible, but the law literally says that it shall be sufficient evidence for a finding of “jurisdiction” over the children, i.e. to seize and permanently hold the children in the foster care system. This is a very profitable situation, as County agencies receive federal money under Title IV D for each child taken.
Let’s look at the Hearsay Rule and why it is important. Hearsay is an out of court statement offered for its truth. So any time a witness is testifying, and says something like, “…Joe told me Bob hit him…” that is hearsay. The witness has no knowledge of Bob hitting Joe, the Court needs Joe to testify. Wait, it gets worse.
All written declarations and reports are out-of-court statements, thus hearsay by definition. Typical social worker reports contain triple hearsay. One group of social workers writes the report, which is full of out-of-court statements relaying the out-of-court statements of other social workers and peace officers, who assert that the child made certain out-of-court statements that somebody did something wrong. That’s triple hearsay. And yet, it is not possible to cross examine any of these accusers. The Judge, who is acting as jury, will simply accept anything in a report as the truth, and “the law” backs up the judge. If that doesn’t constitute a show trial, I don’t know what does.
The Sixth Amendment Confrontation Clause promises that defendants have a right to cross examine accusers. This is one of the most important protections of all, and this “Accusatory Hearsay Exception” law just does away with it. Seriously.
3. All Non-Jury Court Systems
We inherited our jury trial court system from England, and it worked quite well for a long time. Any kind of case, criminal or civil, consists of a Plaintiff alleging a series of facts about the conduct of the Defendant, which if proven, add up to a violation some a particular law. The parties can dispute the facts, of course. He said, she said. Sometimes, the parties can dispute the law. In essence, the Defendant says to the Plaintiff, “So what? Even if all the facts you allege are true, it doesn’t violate any law.”
According to the system of Anglo-American jurisprudence, the judge is the trier of the law, while the jury is the trier of the facts. When it comes to factual disputes, judges were NEVER supposed to decide cases. The role of the judge is to ensure a fair process, but not to decide the case. It is the jury who decides the winner and loser in a court case. The right to a jury trial in a criminal case is enshrined in the 6th Amendment, while the right to a jury trial in a civil case is found in the 7th Amendment. The fundamental right to petition the government is found in the 1st Amendment.
Over a hundred years ago, they started coming up with ideas like Family Court, Probate Court, and Child Welfare Court systems. In clear violation of the Constitution, they simply decided these would be Judge trials instead of jury trials. Gone are not only the juries, but in criminal matters – like Custody and Child Welfare cases – missing also are a whole set of procedural safeguards such as the right to an attorney, right to confront your accuser, right to see the evidence against you, right remain silent, etc.
2. The Litigation Privilege (aka the Perjury Privilege)
The Litigation Privilege holds that you cannot sue a person based on what they said in a court proceeding. Not even if it is defamatory. Not even if it cost you a fortune and you can prove it. Not even if it was a false statement, under oath about a material issue. Statements made in court are said to be “absolutely privileged”. We might as well call the Litigation Privilege what it really is – the perjury privilege.
The supposed rationale for the Litigation Privilege is that we want to encourage witnesses to come forward and testify in court cases. If every witness was worried about being sued for what they said, then many would be intimidated and afraid to come to court. The Litigation Privilege is said to “preserve the integrity of the court system”.
Do you believe that the Litigation Privilege preserves the integrity of the court system? I think the opposite. Witnesses who are telling the truth do not need to fear being sued, because, well, they are telling the truth. Just like people who tell the truth on their blogs don’t need to worry about being sued. It is liars who would be afraid to come to court and tell lies. Don’t we want liars to be afraid to lie? Why do we invite liars to testify, and how could anyone buy in to the notion that this preserves the integrity of the system? Is it any wonder that every Civil and Family Law case devolves into a cesspool of dishonesty?
1. Judicial Immunity
Judicial Immunity means you can’t sue a judge for damages. Not even if they lied. Not even if they broke the law. Not even if they injured you on purpose with actual, premeditated malice. The leading Supreme Court case on Judicial Immunity is called Stump v. Sparkman, and a review will help illustrate just what the system allows judges to get away with.
In 1971, a woman came to Judge Stump’s courtroom and Petitioned for an Order to sterilize her 15 year old daughter. The woman claimed her daughter was “somewhat retarded”. Judge Stump did not order any evidentiary hearing, and did not appoint any lawyer to represent the teenager. Rather, Judge Stump simply signed the Order. The girl was told she needed an appendectomy, and did not discover she was sterilized until years later when she got married and could not have children.
The case reached the Supreme Court in 1978. By a 5-3 decision, the High Court found that Judge Stump was immune from suit, because issuing Orders of this kind was a judicial function. Stump v. Sparkman is a landmark case that sets out the test to determine whether a judge’s action is “in the complete absence of all jurisdiction”, or merely “in excess of jurisdiction”.
The explanation for Judicial Immunity is much the same as the Litigation Privilege. Supposedly, a judge cannot do his job if he is worried that any decision he makes might be second-guessed, and subject him to liability. To this I say:
BULLSHIT.
Any professional should be subject to liability if they screw up their job badly enough. If an engineer designs a structure that falls apart when the wind blows, shouldn’t they be responsible? If a contractor’s brand new plumbing leaks and causes significant damage, shouldn’t he have to pay for it? Should we not be able to sue a surgeon if she makes a bad mistake and injures you?
Is it possible for a professional to do their job properly with the thought hanging over their head that they might be sued if they hurt you? The answer is: Yes. They had damn well better do the job right or they are going to get sued. That’s the only remedy we have, short of taking the law into our own hands. Do we want vigilante justice?
If you had no recourse against somebody who injures you, what kind of legal system even exists? And the previous examples related to accidental injuries. What about intentional injuries? Judicial Immunity protects judges even when it can be proven that they injured a person on purpose. Seriously, there is case law that says this.
No one, not even a judge, should be above the law. We want judges to be afraid of making illegal, injurious decisions. Yes, that’s exactly what we want. Be afraid, the same way every professional is afraid they might hurt someone. Like most professionals, Judges should have liability insurance to cover them for negligence, but be held personally liable for fraud or other intentional torts. Why wouldn’t we want judges to go to jail and pay steep restitution if it is proven they harmed somebody on purpose?
As it stands, we are not the least bit surprised that Judicial Immunity has resulted in a system that runs on bribery and corruption. From the judge’s perspective, corruption is all upside, with no downside. Judges are completely above the law. And since the decisions that judges make ARE the law, we might as well face up to this sad and disturbing conclusion:
As long as there is Judicial Immunity, there is no law.
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Judge Lee P. Rudofsky Says Phone Calls Not Annoying
I filed a lawsuit against Portfolio Recovery Associates, LLC because they called me hundreds of times and would not tell me who they were or why they were calling until I verified a previous address, my birthday or the last four of my social security number on a recorded line.
PRA opened the call by informing me it was a recorded line, but in Arkansas, one may presume all calls are recorded by the instigator. I don’t think it wise to speak to random callers, speaking your name and identifying information without knowing who the caller is and how your voice will be used in the future.
How easy would it be for some nefarious folk to edit a recording, splicing in their victim’s alleged acceptance of a trial offer, a book of the month club or a credit card?
Portfolio Recovery Associates, a subsidiary of publicly traded PRA Group, Inc., refused to stop calling me unless I let them record a conversation.
I tried blocking their number. They called from another one. They have an unlimited supply.
I tried letting the calls go to voice mail. They did not leave a message and kept calling. I was ill and had insomnia. PRA woke me from much needed naps on more than one occasion.
I tape recorded the first substantive conversation I had with the junk debt buyer, of which I am aware. I would not give them my address but did tell them emphatically not to call me again. They called again. And again.
After I gave them my address and made a plausible threat of a lawsuit, they stopped calling. I filed the suit before they resumed calling or sold the alleged debt to another PRA Group, Inc. subsidiary and let me know that I should expect another round of obnoxious calls to start in the future.
I was expecting about $5,000 in actual damages and over a million in punitive damages from a jury verdict. I offered to settle for a million. I would have settled for less, but not under $50,000.
I’ve seen an alleged $50,000 settlement PRA gave to a convicted fraudster for similar conduct. [I will provide this his name to you for verification. Simply ask. I originally published his name but decided that plays into the debt buyer’s desire to excuse their annoying conduct by shifting the blame to the victim by exposing the victim’s sins, real or imagined.]
Instead, PRA forced me to let them see my complete medical and psychiatric history. They forced me to be examined by an out-of-state psychiatrist that I think is a shyster, quack, liar and incompetent.
The supposed expert, Dr. Sanjay Adhia, wrote a report and refused to mark it confidential. He implied that I agreed the exam and resulting report would not be confidential by continuing to speak to him. He omitted that I told him the exam must be kept confidential except of course between PRA’s attorneys and the doctor.
Further research taught me that Dr. Adhia obtained his medical degree from a university in India. (He was born in the United States, in Michigan, according to records he provided to a medical board in Texas.) I could not find a record of him with India’s equivalent of a medical board. It was about four years between Dr. Adhia’s alleged graduation from medical school in India and his next recorded activity in the health industry.
Judge Rudofsky, a Trump appointee, decided that no rational juror could decide the phone calls were intended to annoy, abuse or harass.
“Likewise, no rational juror could conclude that the substance of the phone calls between
Ms. Hammett and PRA, LLC manifested such an intent. PRA, LLC never threatened Ms.
Hammett, used obscene language with Ms. Hammett, misrepresented who it was, or otherwise
engaged in any conversations that could lead a rational juror to conclude that PRA, LLC, through
its phone calls, intended to annoy, abuse, or harass Ms. Hammett.”
Judge Rudofsky does not consider refusing to say what company is calling as misrepresenting who was calling.
Judge Rudofsky cited this caselaw:
“Similarly, in VanHorn v. Genpact Services, LLC, Judge Fenner of the Western District of Missouri explained that, ‘[w]hen reading § 1692d in its entirety, it is evident [that] absent egregious conduct or intent to annoy, abuse, or harass, a debt collector does not violate the FDCPA by persistently calling in the attempt to reach a debtor regarding a debt owed and due.’”
I did not have a debt to PRA owed and due. Judge Rudofsky referred to text generated by PRA “(illustrating that the record likely leads to only one possible conclusion––that Ms. Hammett owed PRA, LLC $2,297.63).”
The sentence Judge Rudofsky wrote requires the advanced study of sentence structure to determine that he did not necessarily agree with PRA. He then followed up with a misquotation of what I wrote:
“I am a consumer in respect to any debt incurred by me on a credit card issued by Capital One Bank (USA) in or about 2001.”
That sentence makes it look like I possibly incurred a debt on a Capital One credit card.
My actual sentence was “I am a consumer in respect to any debt incurred by me on a credit card issued by Capital One Bank (USA) in or about 2001, as I used any credit card to purchase household items, food and other consumer items.”
My intent was to say I had no business debt until I started investing in the stock market in 2017. Any debt incurred by me, before that, to anyone, was for consumerism. PRA had yet to argue the alleged debt was for business purposes, but I wanted to foreclose that argument.
Judge Rudofsky knows the shorthand used by attorneys and judges. Judge Lee P. Rudofsky studied at Cornell and Harvard. He has academic intelligence that is probably quite a bit higher than Dr. Sanjay Adhia’s academic intelligence.
It seems that Judge Rudofsky had an agenda, that was not to do the right thing, when he truncated my sentence without adding the character chain “[]” where he omitted a clause before the period.
I wrote about this many months ago. Why am I repeating myself?
My son recently complained about receiving annoying calls and texts. Not debt collectors. Random sales pitches.
He wanted to know who to complain to and where to find information about filing a small claims suit for violations of the Do Not Call list.
There are statutes, similar to the FDCPA, the statute I claim PRA violated, that forbid persons from calling a personal line if the owner of the line is registered on the National Do Not Call Registry.
But enforcing that law is almost impossible. It requires discovering who is calling. Good luck with that.
If you do find out who is calling, like I did with PRA, by tape recording the conversation and disclosing more of your personal information than you are comfortable disclosing, you then need to sue them.
If your judge is Lee P. Rudofsky or similar, he will probably say the call was not annoying.
If you are lucky enough to find an honest textualist judge, you will probably be awarded $500.
Then you need to collect. Good luck again.
The easier way to handle the problem is to report the transgressor to the FTC.
Pardon my cynicism, but those complaints probably get filed in the round file system. The bureaucracies are toothless tigers.
The law is useless when the judiciary refuses to heed the will of the People.
The vast majority of us want the junk calls to stop.
There has to be a Court at some level that agrees.
Portfolio Recovery Associates Threatened Little Old Lady who had COVID and Auto-immune Disease
Portfolio Recovery Associates, LLC, a Goliath debt buyer, files about 3,000 lawsuits per week against alleged debtors.
PRA knows the lists of debts it purchases from original creditors are riddled with errors, but presses forward before verifying the debt.
Government agencies such as the CFPB and State Attorney Generals have come to settlements with PRA over the conduct. Much of the restitution PRA made was to old people and people of color who lost in court when PRA sued them.
PRA is relentless when it is plaintiff in a case. There was one interesting, rare person who fought back named “Susan Young”. (04CV-20-197, Benton County Arkansas Circuit Court) PRA dismissed that case eventually. The reason it caught my attention is that there is a corrupt judge named Susan Weaver who was “Susan Young” briefly, due to a short-lived marriage. Maybe just a coincidence, but unconfirmed rumor has it that Judge Weaver had debt issues and she went to college in Fayetteville, in Benton County neck of the woods. This is just interesting speculation.
What I do know is that when I sued PRA for violating the FDCPA and causing intentional infliction of emotional distress against me, PRA brought out the big guns to defend itself.
They hired Rose Law Firm of Hillary Clinton fame. They hired a second big national firm called Troutman-Pepper. They filed motions that were hundreds of pages long and full of lies.
The judge on the case, Lee P. Rudofsky, appears to have a big-business bias. The Harvard trained judge was Solicitor General in Arkansas after working as counsel to Wal-Mart. He acts like Portfolio Recovery is not known to file false affidavits. He looked at the simple math errors made on the one statement produced by PRA and did not discount the statement. He saw that PRA claimed the alleged debt carried an interest rate of 29.4% on one document and an interest rate of 0.00% on another document, but did not accept the debt PRA bought for pennies on the dollar was invalid.
It looks to me like I have an uphill battle to fight. It looks that way to PRA, also. The fancy lawyers are getting real arrogant and bossy. Like they “own the court.”
While I was sick with COVID, PRA attorneys kept sending me demands to give them a list of people who I consider “employees”. Here is the latest letter with my response in red.
Ms. Hammett,
PRA has no interest in your “confidential” information and, outside of Dr. Adhia and PRA counsel, has disclosed it to no one. PRA posted my confidential information on PACER and I documented the contemptuous acts. Dr. Adhia’s report specifically excluded a “Confidential” designation and Dr. Adhia said he does not consider the exam as confidential. He said that he told me the exam was not confidential and that I proceeded. He failed to mention that I first corrected him as to the confidentiality.
You, however, have from the inception of this case tried to leverage threats to disclose PRA’s confidential and proprietary information – by “getting loud” PRA has access to all my blog posts and there is not a single confidential disclosure.– to extract an exorbitant settlement from PRA. PRA violated the Consent Order concerning me before the Consent Order expired. PRA already paid $8M in fines for the same behavior and it did not slow PRA down. I offered to settle for far less than that. I did as much work as the CFPB, without any compensation for my time and taking all the risk. As a public action, I anticipate the CFPB will collect quite a bit more than $8M. If PRA agreed to the settlement of our private right of action, the government would collect the appropriate percentage of my settlement as tax. Indeed, you have expressly stated your intent to publicly share as much of PRA’s confidential information as possible. I have not said anything of the sort. Put that in the bin with the other PRA lies, such as PRA’s invention of “online (therefore illegal) poker losses” and that PRA did not call my cell phone repeatedly in September and October 2020.
In your recent barrage of filings, you indicated that you have provided PRA’s confidential materials to other individuals No, I quite specifically said I had not provided confidential materials to Mr. Paisola yet.and that by errantly self-labelling these individuals as your “employees” that you can do so in contravention of the Protective Order with impunity. PRA does not have a monopoly on hiring employees. Note that PRA refused to disclose the names of any employees in response to discovery requests. Perhaps coincidentally, but likely as wrongdoing by PRA, I told PRA two of my employees’ names and within days, each of those employees ghosted me.
It is highly unlikely you have any actual “employees,” which is a term of art with a very specific meaning. PRA is pompous and self-absorbed. Note that PRA hired two law firms and has a legal department with hundreds of employees helping to try to crush a 60-year-old non-attorney and expects her to do every bit of the work without help. After being given documentation that the older woman has COVID and an auto-immune disease, PRA sent a barrage of demands to the woman telling her she must create employee records and disclose them to PRA, while she has COVID. Merely calling someone an “employee” does not make it so. Your latest attempt to sidestep Judge Rudofsky’s protective order is improper.
To be clear, my client does not wish to file a motion. There have been far too many of those in this case already. We agree on one point; this should have been a simple case. It did not warrant a thousand page motion for summary judgment or a protective order that requires a motion to unseal “Confidential” documents that already exist in the exact form (with different data) elsewhere on the internet.
Rather, my client’s sole objective is to ascertain who is in possession of its confidential materials, properly or otherwise, and to ensure that PRA’s confidential materials remain protected. PRA is inventing things to worry about. PRA has not seen any posting of its confidential information by me or anyone remotely related to me, because there has been no inappropriate disclosures. PRA on the other hand has violated the protective order and the signed confidentiality agreement from the settlement conference.
At present, you are refusing to identify the individual(s) to whom you have disclosed PRA documents designated as confidential under the protective order. We ask once more that you do so. I am not aware of any mechanism for you to make that demand. I copy and pasted your demand, changing the name of the requesting party, and you ignored that demand completely. All of this will be shared with proper authorities and the public at the appropriate time.
Should you once again refuse, PRA reserves all rights in this regard (attached).
I wrote a motion under Rule 11 against PRA in my head when I could not sit up to write it on the computer. I will add this latest threat if I decide to put the Rule 11 Motion in writing now that I am able to sit up. Frankly, I think the reports to the CFPB and the IRS are more important. There will be no confidential information included, but I will point out that you convinced the Court to keep evidence of PRA’s wrongdoing confidential.
Regards,
Jim (The debt buyer company attorney who filed for bankruptcy himself to get out from under his insurmountable debt.)
Laura Hammett
Do You Play With Cheaters?
I finally have a good excuse to write about my passion: Poker.
What does poker have to do with court corruption?
Simple. Sometimes players cheat at poker. Sometimes litigants cheat at litigation.
Sadly, sometimes “the house” (the court) is complicit.
For instance, an attorney named William Z. White maliciously filed a lawsuit against me to benefit my former romantic and business partner, Micheal “Mike” Pietrczak. (Micheal is the correct spelling of his name, though even the Federal Court got it wrong when he was convicted of using a false i.d. at the U.S.-Mexico border.)
Mike was committing fraud on me. Mr. White had a suicide note written by Mike to his father that described the fraud. He proceeded against me anyhow, claiming I was defrauding Mike.
Eventually the suit against me was dismissed twice. The second dismissal was voluntary, instigated by Mr. White after the suicide note was sent to me in a production of documents. The big box of documents looked like someone peed and pooped on some papers, then shuffled them together. I put on gloves and looked through each page.
Still, I had a common defense doctrine co-defendant, a trust. I was trustee and beneficiary of that trust. I was not allowed to advocate for the trust because I am not licensed to practice law.
Judge Susan Kaye Weaver granted default judgment against the trust. She transferred all the assets I intended to use for retirement to a brand-new trust that will fund Mike Pietrczak’s drug and alcohol abuse and the trauma’s he causes to his own body. He was paralyzed in one of his accidents, after I broke up with him. (Mike told me his medical bills cost the taxpayers millions of dollars. His lawsuit probably cost the taxpayers quite a bit more.)
Early in the second case Mr. White filed in the Searcy County Arkansas Circuit Court, 65-CV-21-20, the Court Reporter Jana Perry deliberately falsified what was said in a hearing. Even though I threw a tizzy, filing motions to settle, civil rights lawsuits and complaints to administrative agencies, Ms. Perry repeated her dishonest services by falsifying a second hearing transcript.
You may notice that I am not using my usual cautionary words, such as “allegedly”. That is because truth is a defense against defamation, and I know what I am saying is true. If any of the conspirators who cheated at court sues me for defamation, the tape of the hearing will be exculpatory evidence and Ms. Perry will be required to play it in open court with a copy of the transcript on a screen for all to see. (Unless that court cheats, too.)
I have begged Judge Weaver and the Justices at the Court of Appeals to play the tape, with no success.
My 1983 suit in Federal District Court against Ms. Perry, Judge Weaver and Mr. White was dismissed without reaching discovery by Judge Billy Roy Wilson. (I call him “Billy Bob”.)
I was going to use the tape as evidence in an FDCPA case against Portfolio Recovery Associates, LLC. But Judge Rudofsky is leaning towards ending that case before allowing Ms. Perry to comply with my subpoena.
Judge Weaver and her good ol’ peeps are definitely cheating.
Judge Rudofsky, if he is cheating, is much smarter and more subtle. He allows for Portfolio Recovery to file everything it wants under seal, even forms it has published to the public numerous times in other cases, with just different data. They are able to avoid scrutiny.
This is where law feels like a poker game. There is collusion going on. meaning two or more people at the table are working together. Collusion is a form of cheating.
For instance, I have watched a couple sitting next to each other. The woman was on the man’s right. Every time she played a hand, so did he. This is called “protection”. It is subtle and may happen unintentionally, as well.
I know that when I am at a table with my son, I am more likely to call a hand he is in. I know that if I lose, the money will probably go to him. He wins more hands than he loses. I would give him all my money and my right arm if he needed it. So, what’s an extra ten bucks? I should learn from the experience, because every time I play at a table with my son, I come out ahead. I should probably loosen up even when my son is not at the table.
The difference between how I play when my son is there and how the couple was playing is that I don’t play my crap hands when my son is next to me. I fold 7-2 off suit. I noticed the couple’s gambit when all other players folded and both had to expose their hands for the show down. They both had Jack-shit. (Not literally a jack and a shitty kicker. That is a colloquialism for “nothing” that was taken from poker, because a jack with a low off suit kicker is not likely to be a winning hand.) The woman had a good opening hand, but the flop made it unplayable. The man had nothing to start and nothing to finish. They both bluffed the other players out together. After that hand I paid close attention to their pattern. It defied statistical probability, so I got up and found other kids to play with.
I do not play with cheaters. Collusion is cheating.
My son, on the other hand, will. He once told me there were cheaters at the game he played the night before. I asked why he continued to play. He said “if they have to cheat to win, they are not good players. They might win a few hands against me, but I will win more. Eventually I will leave with their money.”
I don’t think my son’s theory works at law.
I took the case Billy Bob presided over to the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals and those Justices dismissed my appeal summarily. That means they did not allow me to write a brief. I didn’t know the appellate court could do that. Maybe I should have brought the case to the U.S. Supreme Court.
I made two bids on a case in California to go to the U.S. Supreme Court. Both petitions for writ of cert were denied. That is not unusual. A miniscule percentage of petitions are granted for discretionary review by SCOTUS.
On the California case I was able to have a judge admonished for his unethical behavior. That was a slap on the wrist. I believe the presiding family law judge took early retirement in part because of my complaints about her. But there was no dramatic improvement in the court.
It is too easy for judges to show a bias toward favored litigants or to outright cheat for them. They can easily collude.
Unlike at a poker game, the players are not allowed to just get up and leave without leaving all their money on the table.
Since the unethical judges will eventually transfer all the marks’ money to the opponent, is it wiser for the mark to hand her money over? I don’t think so.
Because unlike at poker, the opponent is allowed to force the mark to bring more money to the table, by filing another bullshit lawsuit or getting an impermissible order for attorney fees. Portfolio Recovery Associates and the William Zac Whites of the world make billions of dollars a year doing just that.
Punctuation Matters. Period. End of Story.
If this conduct by Goliath debt buyer Portfolio Recovery Associates, LLC and Trump appointed Judge Lee P. Rudofsky was not so evil, it would be humorous.
So, I’ll start with one of my dearly departed father, Dr. Norman H. Kramer’s favorite jokes.
He wrote words on a piece of paper exactly like this:
Sex Sex Sex
Worry Worry Worry
Then he told his audience to punctuate the words correctly.
You try.
Sex Sex Sex
Worry Worry Worry
Should I help you?
Sex. Sex. Sex
Worry Worry Worry
Speak the punctuation outloud.
Sex, period, Sex, period, Sex, no period. Worry Worry Worry. lol
Seriously, the placement of a single period or comma can change the meaning of a sentence completely.
For example, there is a case Portfolio Recovery loves called Facebook, Inc. v Duguid. The U.S. Supreme Court decided that dialing systems like those used by Portfolio Recovery are not an “auto dialer” subjecting their obnoxious calls to the TCPA. The decision is 13 pages long, focused primarily on the placement of a comma in the Telephone Consumer Protection Act statute.
“When interpreting a statute, a qualifying phrase separated from antecedents by a comma is evidence that the qualifier is supposed to apply to all the antecedents instead of only to the immediately preceding one.” Facebook, Inc. v. Duguid, 209 L. Ed. 2d 272, 141 S. Ct. 1163 (2021)
If you don’t fear death by boredom, read this entire paragraph: “(a) This case turns on whether the clause ‘using a random or sequential number generator’ in § 227(a)(1)(A) modifies both of the two verbs that precede it (‘store’ and ‘produce’), as Facebook contends, or only the closest one (‘produce’), as maintained by Duguid. The most natural reading of the text and other aspects of § 227(a)(1)(A) confirm Facebook’s view. First, in an ordinary case, the ‘series-qualifier canon’ instructs that a modifier at the end of a series of nouns or verbs applies to the entire series. Here, that canon indicates that the modifying phrase ‘using a random or sequential number generator’ qualifies both antecedent verbs, ‘store’ and ‘produce.’ Second, the modifying phrase immediately follows a concise, integrated clause (‘store or produce telephone numbers to be called’), which uses the word ‘or’ to connect two verbs that share a common direct object (‘telephone numbers to be called’). Given this structure, it would be odd to apply the modifier to just one part of the cohesive clause. Third, the comma in § 227(a)(1)(A) separating the modifying phrase from the antecedents suggests that the qualifier applies to all of the antecedents, instead of just the nearest one. Pp. 1168 – 1170.” Ok, WAKE UP!
Judge Rudofsky created a “fact” in my litigation against Portfolio Recovery Associates by claiming that I admitted to owing a debt to PRA. He based that “fact” in major part on a sentence he claimed I wrote.
“I am a consumer in respect to any debt incurred by me on
a credit card issued by Capital One Bank (USA) in or about 2001.” – see footnote 463 on the consolidated order granting PRA’s motion for summary judgment.
The actual sentence I wrote: “I am a consumer in respect to any debt incurred by me on a credit card issued by Capital One Bank (USA) in or about 2001, as I used any credit card to purchase household items, food and other consumer items.”
I could have said “I am a consumer in respect to any debt incurred by me on a credit card issued by Capital One Bank (USA) in or about 2001, as I had not borrowed money for business prior to 2013 when PRA allegedly bought the alleged debt.” Still, Judge Rudofsky would still truncate the sentence without indicating the clause removed.
I explained this in a later document, my opposition to PRA’s supplemental motion for summary judgment. I accidentally attributed the misquotation to the defendant instead of the judge. It is so difficult to remember who said something when the judge is creating arguments for a favored litigant.
Yesterday, PRA filed an opposition to my motion for reconsideration or alternatively to compel production of the credit card agreement that was necessary to create an obligation to pay. PRA admitted there is no record of an agreement, written or oral.
Unbelievable as it may seem, PRA repeated Judge Rudofsky’s misquotation of the sentence. But, like a child who looks around furtively and then interjects another lie to try to cover-up for its previous lie, PRA added two characters around the period. “[.]” Here is PRA’s version of the sentence:
“I am a consumer in respect to any debt incurred by me on a credit card issued by Capital One Bank (USA) in or about 2001[.]”
OOOOhhh… Lawyers James Trefil of Troutman Pepper and David Mitchell of Rose Law Firm were trying to not lie. The straight parentheses mean something was changed. They changed the comma to a period. But a person filing documents is subject to Rule 11, that they reasonably believe what they write is accurate. The change PRA made by straight parentheses is not accurate.
For instance, if quoting case law that says “Facebook, inc. is right” the filer writes “[Duguid] is right”, the filer has made a statement he knows is false. Otherwise, lawyers would riddle their points and authorities with straight parentheses that change the meaning of the caselaw completely. Don’t like caselaw? Just change “shall” to “[may]”.
Clever, clever children.
If you had a period after the last “sex”, you might not need the worry, worry, worry, either.
Why Did Judge Rudofsky Allow A Debt Buyer to Turn an FDCPA Case Into a Star Chamber?
I can only speculate based on the evidence I have.
Trump appointee Judge Lee P. Rudofsky allowed Goliath debt buyer Portfolio Recovery Associates, LLC to redact and file under seal anything it wanted. I cannot give particulars, because they are under seal.
An example is that PRA filed several forms under seal in my case against the company, but forms almost identical, with different data, were filed in the public record of other cases.
I am pro se and modest means.
Portfolio Recovery Associates has an army of lawyers. It has an inhouse legal department 400+ strong. It hired Rose Law Firm of Hillary Clinton fame. Co-counsel is the big defense firm, Troutman Pepper.
PRA is a billion dollar company.
Judge Rudofsky denied my request to file electronically. Portfolio Recovery Associate’s attorneys all file electronically. The rule against non-attorneys filing electronically cited by the judge gives the judge discretion to allow a pro se litigant equal access to the court.
I have filed almost 90 documents. That means that I have paid for four copies of 90 documents at roughly 10 pages each, at 10 cents per page minimum. That is $360.
I had to drive to the courthouse in Little Rock to file the documents. That is about $30 at the standard mileage rate for about 40 trips. $1,200. That gives me nothing for my time driving.
When information is redacted, the filer must also file a copy of the unredacted document under seal. That jacks up the printing costs and the amount of work. I didn’t know how to redact until recently. I think it is easy. You would make two copies of the document, then highlight the background in the same color (black) as the text for the information to be redacted.
One important document I filed was about 250 pages. If I redacted everything the defendant called “confidential” and filed one unredacted copy under seal, that would add a bunch of time to the project and about $100. I had not figured out how to redact yet. So, I filed the entire document under seal.
This gave Judge Rudofsky the opportunity to misstate what was said in the document.
I will use an example of the judge’s misstatement of facts from a document that was not under seal. In his Consolidated Order dated August 16, 2022, the Court wrote: “Ms. Hammett admits that she made purchases on the Capital One account. Aff. in Supp. of Pl.’s Mot. for Partial Summ. J. (Doc. 39) ¶ 3.”
It is important to read the paragraph before the cited paragraph first. “I am a consumer in respect to any debt incurred by me on a credit card issued by Capital One Bank (USA) in or about 2001, as I used any credit card to purchase household items, food and other consumer items.”
The cited paragraph says in full, “I have no documentary evidence because the purchases were made 10 to 20 years ago. I remember and it was my practice not to borrow money for business ventures. The first time I borrowed money to invest was in 2017 and that was a financial disaster.”
My statements were meant to say I was a consumer in regard to any debt I incurred on any credit card; that I never had a business credit card. I did not admit to making purchases on the alleged account.
Judge Rudofsky is infamous for pursuing an agenda from the bench that does not include finding the truth or providing justice to individuals. That is not a fault I usually discuss. I focus on overtly corrupt acts, like Judge Susan Weaver and Court Reporter Jana Perry altering records of hearings.
If Judge Rudofsky was not so darn brilliant, I would consider his claimed misunderstanding of my meaning as just that, a misunderstanding.
But he is brilliant. Cornell. Harvard. Position as Solicitor General created for him to fill. Appointed to a lifetime position as a District Court Judge in his late 30s or early 40s.
We the People should expect more from Judge Rudofsky than allegedly misunderstanding the focal point of a case.
More importantly, when the judge is up for promotion, it should be easy for his detractors to find the examples of the judge’s errors. By allowing big-business to litigate in a cone of silence, the somewhat honorable judge provides protection for his own career.
Shabbat Shalom! Judge Rudofsky’s Demeanor
I am slammed with legal work. I have to write an appellate brief, maybe a petition for writ of certiorari to the Arkansas Supreme Court and an opposition to a motion for summary judgment.
My doctor just gave me the news that I have Hoshimoto’s Disease. We caught it early and I probably don’t have thyroid cancer. That is the good news.
The bad news is that I need to go on a gluten free, dairy free diet. No more (real) pizza. I’m not a fan of fake foods, like imitation cheese.
The other good news is that I ate this way for a four-year period and a two-year period, and those were the most energetic, pain free six years of my life. Maybe I’ll get back that vigor it takes to take down bad judges.
You know I am still a wobbler on Judge Lee P. Rudofsky.
Today he used a word that tips my judgment of him a bit back in the happy direction.
He granted me an extension of time to write an important and challenging document as a “courtesy”.
If Judge Susan Weaver knows that word, the only time she uses it is to demand that other people treat her with courtesy.
Portfolio Recovery Associates’ attorneys at the Rose Law Firm and Troutman Pepper will probably whine about me writing a blog post today, after asking for a weeklong extension.
Writing is therapy for me. Legal writing is no fun. For every one page I file, I rip up 10 more. (Now you know I’m old, because I still equate writing with papyrus.)
Plus, this informal, brainstorming helps my thoughts gel.
Today I am thinking about a concept that I think Judge R. got wrong. He said a plaintiff in an FDCPA case based on 15 U.S.C. 1692(e)(2)(A) has the burden of proving that the alleged debt was not owed. I said I believed that I did not owe the alleged debt, and if the defendant could show me credible evidence such as where I shopped and when, I might be swayed to thinking I did incur a debt to PRA’s predecessor that did not get paid.
My reasons for thinking there was no debt are many. Not in detail, here are a few. PRA’s documentation shows I made a last payment of $0.00. I usually paid off the entire balance of my credit cards in full. PRA’s documentation shows that two months after I made my last payment, I made my last purchase. Then, for the first time in ten years, according to PRA’s records, I went delinquent.
Judge Rudofsky’s rendition of the events that followed is this:
“On March 10, 2021, Ms. Hammett filed the instant lawsuit.[fn] On March 11, 2021, PRA,
LLC closed Ms. Hammett’s account and waived it ‘in light of the ongoing litigation’ brought by
Ms. Hammett.[fn] On April 1, 2021, Ms. Hammett received a letter from PRA, LLC dated March 18, 2021.[fn] The letter was addressed to a Laura Lyman (not Laura Lynn).[fn] The letter referenced
Lyman’s account number and said that PRA, LLC had ‘completed the investigation into your
dispute and your account has been closed.'”[fn]
Judge Rudofsky is a brilliant writer. He does tend to lose the details into the footnotes, which are profuse. For example, after stating that PRA sent the first closure letter “in light of the ongoing litigation”, as if it was the God given truth, Judge Rudofsky gave a footnote that said, “Ms. Hammett denies this but fails to offer any evidence to raise a genuine dispute of material fact on whether PRA, LLC waived the debt.”
Not true. First, the meaning of the letter to any reasonable person (other than Judge Rudofsky, of course) would be that PRA discovered it was wrong about the debt and closed the account. PRA did not say anything about waiving a debt. PRA waited about 20 days before posting the letter. PRA did not make an offer to waive the debt as partial settlement of the suit. The original creditor did not send a Form 1099-C, which is required when a bank forgives a debt.
What I just did is the same thing I did in my opposition papers to PRA and my deposition. I keep open to the opposition’s point of view. I hope they will prove me wrong or admit to their errors, settle or let a jury decide the value of the damages and move on.
If there is a remote chance the opposition is right, I don’t make absolute statements about my perspective of the events. I give the other side a chance to produce its best evidence. If they have no evidence, to me, they have no case.
Judge Rudofsky called it “trying to turn the tables”. I think a debt collector must have a reasonable expectation that a debt is valid before trying to collect, even through non-judicial means.
I think it is impossible to prove a negative. “You have a debt.” “Do not.” “Do too.”
Maybe, if it was not a 10-year-old debt, I would have documentation of my payments. I don’t even remember all the banks I used back then and don’t know if they are in business. If they still exist, their 10-year-old records probably do not. Do you think proving that there was no debt, more probably than not, meets the burden for a plaintiff in an FDCPA claim? Judge Rudofsky does not.
Back in the day, in California, writing about Commissioner Alan Friedenthal, his wife Stef Padilla and the gang of black robed thugs in L.A., readers reached out to me a lot more than they do here in Arkansas. I even had people typewrite tips and mail them to me.
If you are an attorney who is secretly rooting for me, or even a regular person who has intel, please send an email to bohemian_books@yahoo.com, or send snail mail to 16 Gold Lake Club Road, Conway, Arkansas, 72032.
I would never have ex parte communications with a judge, but today I am sending good vibes out to Judge Rudofsky.
Shabbat Shalom.
A judge I Hate to Hate: Judge Lee P. Rudofsky
Most of the time I am railing on buffoons like Commissioner Alan H. Friedenthal (deceased) and plump little piggies like Judge Susan Weaver, who admitted as per a Gazette reporter to loving to play with other people’s money.
Unfortunately, I must turn to a more serious threat to our country and the Republican party. (I am a right leaning Libertarian, registered Republican in 2016 so I could vote for Ben Carson or Rand Paul instead of Donald Trump.)
There is a newish young Federal District Court Judge named Lee P. Rudofsky.
Judge Rudofsky has the right pedigree. He went to Cornell and Harvard.
He is not lazy. He reads documents and makes intelligent commentary in his long hearings.
I agree with some of his views.
But this week I had a rude awakening. Judge Rudofsky misstated facts presented in my opposition to a motion for summary judgment and ruled for the goliath company defending against making obnoxious, intrusive telephone calls to alleged debtors, without verifying the debt first.
I didn’t take the leftist organizations seriously until now. For example, The Alliance for Justice had this to say about Judge Rudofsky when he was a nominee. “Rudofsky’s record paints a clear picture of a partisan warrior bent on curtailing critical rights and protections for everyday people.”
The case I am fighting should carry a jury award for punitive damages in the millions. The defendant, Portfolio Recovery Associates, LLC has paid out tens of millions in stipulated agreements already and does not curtail its bad behavior.
I would love to take on an attorney for an appeal of Judge Rudofsky’s orders on contingency. I think my case is a good vehicle to bring together populist Republicans and Libertarians with true Democrats and even socialists.
We all want honest judges who support the individual.
Read more about Defendant Portfolio Recovery Associates Here.
A Higher Law 