THE EVOLUTION OF JUDICIAL TYRANNY IN THE UNITED STATES:

"If the judges interpret the laws themselves, and suffer none else to interpret, they may easily make, of the laws, [a shredded] shipman's hose!" - King James I of England, around 1616.

“No class of the community ought to be allowed freer scope in the expression or publication of opinions as to the capacity, impartiality or integrity of judges than members of the bar. They have the best opportunities of observing and forming a correct judgment. They are in constant attendance on the courts. Hundreds of those who are called on to vote never enter a court-house, or if they do, it is only at intervals as jurors, witnesses or parties. To say that an attorney can only act or speak on this subject under liability to be called to account and to be deprived of his profession and livelihood by the very judge or judges whom he may consider it his duty to attack and expose, is a position too monstrous to be entertained for a moment under our present system,” Justice Sharwood in Ex Parte Steinman and Hensel, 95 Pa 220, 238-39 (1880).

“This case illustrates to me the serious consequences to the Bar itself of not affording the full protections of the First Amendment to its applicants for admission. For this record shows that [the rejected attorney candidate] has many of the qualities that are needed in the American Bar. It shows not only that [the rejected attorney candidate] has followed a high moral, ethical and patriotic course in all of the activities of his life, but also that he combines these more common virtues with the uncommon virtue of courage to stand by his principles at any cost.

It is such men as these who have most greatly honored the profession of the law. The legal profession will lose much of its nobility and its glory if it is not constantly replenished with lawyers like these. To force the Bar to become a group of thoroughly orthodox, time-serving, government-fearing individuals is to humiliate and degrade it.” In Re Anastaplo, 18 Ill. 2d 182, 163 N.E.2d 429 (1959), cert. granted, 362 U.S. 968 (1960), affirmed over strong dissent, 366 U.S. 82 (1961), Justice Black, Chief Justice Douglas and Justice Brennan, dissenting.

" I do not believe that the practice of law is a "privilege" which empowers Government to deny lawyers their constitutional rights. The mere fact that a lawyer has important responsibilities in society does not require or even permit the State to deprive him of those protections of freedom set out in the Bill of Rights for the precise purpose of insuring the independence of the individual against the Government and those acting for the Government”. Lathrop v Donohue, 367 US 820 (1961), Justice Black, dissenting.

"The legal profession must take great care not to emulate the many occupational groups that have managed to convert licensure from a sharp weapon of public defense into blunt instrument of self-enrichment". Walter Gellhorn, "The Abuse of Occupational Licensing", University of Chicago Law Review, Volume 44 Issue 1, September of 1976.

“Because the law requires that judges no matter how corrupt, who do not act in the clear absence of jurisdiction while performing a judicial act, are immune from suit, former Judge Ciavarella will escape liability for the vast majority of his conduct in this action. This is, to be sure, against the popular will, but it is the very oath which he is alleged to have so indecently, cavalierly, baselessly and willfully violated for personal gain that requires this Court to find him immune from suit”, District Judge A. Richard Caputo in H.T., et al, v. Ciavarella, Jr, et al, Case No. 3:09-cv-00286-ARC in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania, Document 336, page 18, November 20, 2009. This is about judges who were sentencing kids to juvenile detention for kickbacks.

Wednesday, February 4, 2015

There is no effective legal remedy in New York to stop an appellate court from engaging in an unlawful conduct


I have a problem, for which there is no legal remedy in New York - or on the federal level, for that matter.

And since I am sure that not only I have such a problem, but many litigants, but it "escapes judicial review", for lack of an appropriate remedy, I believe that New York State legislators need to look into creating such a legal remedy, because it is a due process violation for a state not to provide a legal remedy for injuries, especially for injuries involving violations such a fundamental constitutional right as access to courts.

On June 11, 2014, by an ex parte order, the New York State Appellate Division 3rd Judicial Department recused from a case where I was a party.

When a court recuses from one case of a party, it must recuse from all other cases where that party appears.

The 3rd Department refused to recuse from several other appeals pending before the court where I was a party or an attorney, and so far granted three appeals against me in cases where it should have recused and is arbitrarily denying me consolidation of large records on two more appeals, thus harassing me and causing me stress and financial loss.

Usually consolidation of appeals with large records and similar issues is liberally granted.

Appellate Division 3rd Department bent over backwards for attorney (and former judge, now deceased) Robert Harlem and his son Richard Harlem when it dragged a perfected appeal from the court calendar set for oral argument and consolidated it with an unperfected appeal on request from Robert Harlem and Richard Harlem, in violation of its own rules.

Yet, when I asked consolidation in the same case Mokay v. Mokay of two appeals, from a denial of a motion to vacate and from an award of attorney fees stemming from the same decision denying motion to vacate, consolidation was denied to me without any explanation, in violation of my due process right to a reasoned decision by the court.  A denial of consolidation means redoing the record and filing two $315.00 fees instead of one to perfect the appeal.

Similarly, a consolidation was denied in yet another case where the Delaware County Supreme Court, Judge Tormey, after NOT reading the underlying court cases before dismissing my lawsuit against an attorney who defamed and defrauded me (it is an established fact that Judge Tormey did not even sign out the court files to read them before he made his decision).

I appealed both the dismissal and award of attorney fees based on the dismissal.  Naturally, these two decisions came months apart.  Naturally, the records are connected and issues are related.  Naturally, this is a usual ground for consolidation.

I delivered a HUMUNGOUS record taking the entire back of a large station-wagon car to the court, along with a large heavy-duty carrier, THREE times:

(1) the first time on November 4, 2014, on the deadline of perfecting the appeal - but the court was closed for election day when majority of people were working;

(2) the second time the next day, November 5, 2014, when the record was accepted by the court, together with the filing fee - which has not been returned until now, even though the record was returned a couple of days ago - once again;

(3) the third time I redelivered the REDONE record on December 10, 2014 when I made corrections to the record in accordance to the directives of the court, even though required corrections were not required by the court rules and even though the court returned the record on a pretextual basis that I did not include certain required statements into the record, while such statements were in fact in the records with blue-and-red date-stamps of the court of November 5, 2014;

(4) the fourth time I will have to REDO the record once again when the court denied me, without an explanation, my motion to consolidate and the record was dumped on my porch for the second time - while the money for the filing fee was not returned.

The attorney involved in the last described action is a justice in a local justice court.  The attorney representing respondents in the Mokay action is a son of a judge.

For these people, rules of the Appellate court and rules of law are bent and broken and for me, their opponent, additional rules, rules increasing my stress, financial exposure, physical strain and exposing me to pure harassment, are created on the spot.

What remedy do I have for that? None under the law.

1) NYS Commission for Judicial Conduct is a glorified shredder of complaints against judges and courts dismissing without an explanation practically all meritorious claims it receives, and the person who filed the complaint has no standing to contest that;

2) Article 78 under the CPLR providing for a writ of mandamus against judges, does not provide for a writ of mandamus against appelllate judges and courts;

3) New York State Court of Appeals, the court higher than the Appellate Division, has a limited jurisdiction that does not include writs of mandamus against the Appellate Division;

4) suing in federal court is precluded by judicial immunity and by the section in the 42 U.S.C. 1983 (the Civil Rights Act) that does not allow lawsuits against judges in their official capacities.

And - since no legal remedy exists against Appellate courts, appellate courts can do with you whatever they want.  Which is a clear violation of due process of law of litigants in such courts. 

And such a lack of remedy should be legislatively cured.

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