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.


Tuesday, May 17, 2016

The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York, Judge David Peebles, pretends I did not make a motion to vacate, recuse and disqualify in the Argro v Osborne case where I was secretly suspended from the practice of law on the verge of trial and then stripped of 3.5 years worth of legal fees because I dared to sue social services

On Friday the 13th, May 13, 2016, the U.S. District of New York received, by mail, my motion to vacate its earlier decision to rob me of the fruits of my labor, attorney fees for 3.5 years of litigation in a civil rights case that I brought to trial, where the court decided that it is time to change counsel - so, I was suspended in state court, suspended secretly in federal court (you will not see my order of suspension on Pacer) and stripped of the entire legal fees claiming that I wanted it this way.

Of course, I never wanted to forgo 3.5 years worth of attorney fees, especially when I, a mother of a minor child, was stripped of my livelihood by the corrupt state and federal court systems, acting in collusion and, possibly, through the secret organization State-Federal Judicial Council, where both court systems stall me for the list of members of that organization - which may result in a federal lawsuit.

A lawsuit like the one recently brought against the CIA by famous and effective former civil rights attorney Stephen Yagman (the one who turned in Judge Manuel T. Real and triggered impeachment proceedings against him in 2006, and was criminally prosecuted, convicted and disbarred for his effort while Judge Real remains on the bench, with every 3rd of his cases reversed and his misconduct and possibly senility continuing to be legendary).

I will blog about Stephen Yagman's stance against Judge Real, persecution of Stephen Yagman by the government and the case filed by Stephen Yagman against the CIA to verify who were the "we" in the memo of President Obama acknowledging that "we" participated in torture of people - Stephen Yagman struck a nerve with his lawsuit since, while his case is on appeal, the allegedly only existing record of the "torture report" was "inadvertently", "accidentally" destroyed by the CIA.

As to the pirouette by the court system to first suspend me on the day the civil rights lawsuit I brought against the Chenango County Department of Social Services was ordered to proceed to trial (which boasted that "they are the law" and that nobody will ever sue them), and then strip me of my legal fees for suing Chenango County DSS and bringing the case to trial, I wrote about the whole mess here and here.

I also wrote a lot on this blog about misconduct and apparent corruption of Judge David E. Peebles, you can find those blogs by putting the search word "Peebles" in the search window on the right of the blog article.

So, I filed a motion to vacate the decision, and with that motion, I filed a motion to recuse the court that had a raging bias against me from reviewing that motion, as well as to disqualify the new counsel for my former clients and for the Defendants Chenango County Department of Social Services and individual social workers, for misconduct.

Misconduct alleged against the Plaintiffs' new counsel attorney Woodruff Carroll was that attorney Carroll, according to one of the Plaintiffs' statement to me, first asked the Plaintiffs for the original of the retainer agreement to be sent to him by my former clients, they did, and then attorney Woodruff Carroll, having that retainer agreement on file - unless he destroyed it - turned around and claimed to the court, under oath, that there is no evidence of any such retainer agreement.

That is fraud upon the court.

I also notified the court of the Plaintiffs' statement to me that they do not want to settle, that they want to proceed to trial (which I would have done for them), but that Woodruff Carroll practically holds them hostage, uses the fact that other attorneys are afraid to sue social services even at the stage when the case is successfully brought to trial, and thus Carroll was able to sell his clients out to the defendants and accept a $30,000 settlement in a multi-million dollar lawsuit.

Misconduct of the Defendants' counsel attorney Erin Donnelly (Levine, Gouldin, Thomspon, LLC of Binghamton, NY) that I alleged was that attorney Donnelly repeatedly deceived the court and the parties by claiming that she was restricted by insurance policy to the $30,000 or around that sum in award of damages.

While I am currently waiting for response of Chenango County to my FOIL request for the County's insurance policy, a similar insurance policy from Delaware County that I recently received on a FOIL request (and provided to the court as part of my motion), as well as applicable precedent in New York, shows that intentional acts in violation of civil rights, and especially punitive damages that I asked for, are not recoverable in New York from insurance.

In other words, insurance could not control one penny of the settlement payout, and Ms. Donnelly likely lied to the court, too.

Moreover, since I was stripped of 3.5 years worth of my legal fees because of my alleged suspension in that particular federal court (Northern District of New York), and Judge Norman Mordue referred to my suspension without a citation to a court order, and while the order of suspension, as well as the disciplinary proceedings that produced that alleged suspension were secret and "sealed" - and thus non-existent, because there cannot be public discipline without a public order of discipline - I asked the court to show me my order of suspension or change their decision relying on a "little bird's whisper" that I was suspended.

Once again - if there is no public order of revocation of an attorney's license, there is no such revocation.

I attached to my motion, as an illustration that disciplinary proceedings against attorneys are public, a recent order of disbarment and a docket report of disciplinary proceedings from another federal court.

I also raised a question in the motion that the mode of service upon me of various pleadings used in the "motion" to strip me of my legal fee was inapplicable to me after I was "suspended", so the court could not have it both ways - either I am suspended, and then I cannot either file or be served electronically through the court's ECF system, or I am not suspended, and I could not be removed from the case or stripped of my legal fee.

As part of my request to recuse the court I also pointed out that the court's judge Mae D'Agostino (who ruled against me in one of the civil rights lawsuits I filed in 2011, against now-former Delaware County Judge Carl Becker), is heading a secret state-federal organization of judges, and is stalling my Freedom of Information Act requests to see who is part of that secret organization.

I stated that I have a right to know whether other attorneys in the Argro v Osborne case, and in other cases that I litigated in that court, were part of that organization, especially that I sued several judges - and apparently state judges, potential defendants in civil rights cases, are participants in the State-Federal Judicial Council, a secret organization that the NYS Office of Court Administration did not give me any documents about other than a single order of appointment of a judge by former NYS Chief Judge Lippman made on Lippman's last day in office on December 31, 2015 and listing Mae D'Agostino as a Chairperson of the organization.

As you understand, the motion had explosive contents for the court.

And usually, in my experience, that particular court, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York, bends over backwards to control the damage to its reputation and to reputation of well-connected attorneys with whom the court is joined at the hip, if any sensitive information about that court's misconduct is alleged - whether the way they control the damage is lawful or not.

The motion was sent by express mail:


 and arrived to the court on May 13, 2016 at 10:36 am, a "J Bleskoski" signed for it.



The motion was served upon parties with tracking, and was also received by them in the morning of May 13, 2016.

Yet, upon my review of the docket yesterday, on May 16, 2016, the court did not file it, as of the night of May 16, 2016, into Pacer, as required by law (2 days was not enough to scan and file it), and on May 16, 2016, magistrate David Peebles held a telephone conference and claimed in the minutes of the conference that "counsel" tells him of my intention to apply for attorney fees against Defendants under 42 U.S.C. 1988(b) (as civil rights counsel of prevailing defendant is allowed by law) after the case closes, which is also what the timing the procedure requires.

Here is the docket entries from May 6, 2016 to May 16, 2016 - there is no mentioning of the motion received by the court on May 13, 2016 and the motion is not filed by the clerk into Pacer, as the clerk is required to do.



There is no mentioning whatsoever of my currently pending motion to vacate the decision stripping me of fees, to recuse the court and disqualify counsel for parties for misconduct as to opposition to that motion, and therefore I decided to publish it and to publish the mailing receipts for it, and the USPS indication that the motion was, in fact, received by all parties on May 13, 2016.

It actually took me the whole of 2 minutes to scan it.  The court did not find 2 minutes on May 13, 2016 or on May 16, 2016 to scan and file my motion, as the court is required to do.

Here is the motion, in its entirety.

I wonder what the court is planning to do with this obvious hot potato of a motion.

As of yesterday, the court denied ever receiving it.

I wonder if the court will engage in some trick and seal it or reject it without reaching the merits, or pretend it never received it.

In view of my past (vast) experience with this court, I can expect any misconduct from the Northern District of New York.

After all, in view of Judicial Disability Act and judicial immunity, as well as reluctance of U.S. Congress to hold judges accountable even for the most egregious misconduct - like it was in the case of Judge Manuel T. Real, there is no way of holding federal judges accountable in this country.

Well, the Judicial Disability Act may be amended.  

I, as a taxpayer and citizen, am going to ask the U.S. Congress to do just that.

And, I am going to start a Change.org petition about that - and will notify my readers on this blog as soon as it is started.

I will also report as to how the court will decide my motion.

I believe, the motion is of great importance both to civil rights attorneys who walk the tight-rope every day and risk being suspended and stripped of their legal fees the same day I was - simply because courts that are supposed to help civil rights plaintiffs and their attorneys, usually are bent on hurting them for suing the government federal judges are joined at the hip with.

The motion is also of great importance to civil rights plaintiffs, as it shows how civil rights plaintiffs are cheated out of their effective civil rights counsel and are forced to accept miniscule settlements in multi-million dollar lawsuits against the powerful social services who attorneys are afraid to sue.

Stay tuned.




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