Wednesday, February 02, 2022

If You Want To Play With The Sharks Part 4 - Well, Don't Tick off The Judge!

So I appeared on Zoom ready to defend against the Third Party Defendant's whacky motion for Summary Disposition.  Ready to go and well-prepped to argue this baby.

I and the pro per Third Party Defendant show up, but for some reason the pro per Plaintiff does not which is interesting.

Judge has us put our appearances on the record.

Then things get interesting.

He starts off by asking her:"Miss Third Party Defendant, did you write and submit this motion all by yourself ,and not get help from anyone else?"

She says yes, yes she did.

Then it gets more interesting.

The Judge goes "I highly doubt that.  I see the font, which is not usually a font submitted to this court, is the exact same as the one used by the Plaintiff in his prior motions."

Oh, that's Interesting.

"I see the style is also the same in terms of word choice and underlining and overall format."

Even more interesting.

"My staff sees from reviewing the history of the electronic filing system that this motion and your reply was not filed with the court by you, but by Plaintiff, and you were even served by him with a copy of the filing via the electronic system."

Ruh Roh Shaggy. This is getting good.

"Plaintiff cannot assist or represent you Miss Third Party Defendant, as that's the unauthorized practice of law, he can't write things for you or file things for you and you have to be truthful to the court about such matters. I as a judge have a duty to prevent such things as it is both unethical and improper for that to occur."

She then tries to interrupt, which really annoys the judge.   Quick tip - Never, ever, try to speak over a judge in their courtroom.  It never works out well for you.

The judge: "You may not interrupt me, I gave you an opportunity to explain at the start of this and instead you told me you wrote this all by yourself."

Then the hammer falls:

"I am striking this motion as a result. I want both Plaintiff and you Miss Third Party Defendant to appear in my courtroom in 21 days via Zoom to show cause why you both should not be held in civil or criminal contempt for the unauthorized practice of law and why you misled the court about this filing, and to explain the circumstances of this filing."

Kaboom.

"Mr. Aaron __, since they are both in pro per, please draft the show cause order and submit it with my court today."

"Yes, Your Honor."

"This motion is stricken and dismissed, sorry to waste your time Mr. Aaron __".

About time he got tired of their nonsense. 

Still, she can apparently refile this once she gets past the show cause, and might fix some of the major errors with it, causing me to work a bit more to answer it, but we will see how it goes.

3 comments:

drjim said...

Now that's a Judge!

What are the penalties for lying like that to the Judge? Is that "contempt", or something else?

Old NFO said...

LOL, love it!

Aaron said...

drjim: Yes he finally got all fired up on this after letting them ride roughshod over the rules all this time so far.

It is indeed the very definition of contempt. The judge was really angry, so we may see civil contempt which could be fines, dismissal of the case or other similar penalties or even criminal contempt for improperly using the e-filing system (the system does have warnings on it regarding not using other users ids/passwords to file things, etc so you can't claim ignorance). He may also just let them off with a warning. We will see what tales they try to spin and what he does on the 24th.

Old NFO: Yep, it was rather unexpected, but rather glorious to watch.