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Birther appeal of the day

By on April 6, 2013 in Lawsuits, Sanctions

Let us not forget among the detritus1 of failed birther lawsuits, the one filed in Tennessee by John Dummett, the Liberty Legal Foundation (a group who usually works to protect the rights of children to wear Confederate Flags at school2). If not for the high bar for sanctions set by Orly Taitz and now Christopher-Earl : Strunk, we would be celebrating it as the leading example of the consequences of filing a frivolous lawsuit.

Plaintiffs appealed the decision in Liberty Legal Foundation v. National Democratic Party of the U.S.A. (sic) as to the order of the award of $10,565.23 for their filing a lawsuit that they should have know was frivolous for lack of standing (perhaps by having looked at 200 other failed lawsuits). They are not appealing the fact that they didn’t have standing to bring the lawsuit in the first place, just the cash award, which only addresses a small portion of the costs of actually defending the suit ($69,932.50).

Featured following is the defense motion to dismiss the appeal for lack of jurisdiction. I had never heard of a motion to dismiss an appeal before, but here one is and it is based on an argument that the appeal is technically defective (filed wrong) and because it was filed wrong, the Court of Appeals can’t hear it.

LLF – TN – Appeal – 2013-03-21 – Appellees Motion to Dismiss by Jack Ryan


1This is the first time I have ever used this word in a sentence.

2The local high school sports team mascot is the “Rebels.”

Strunk hit with staggering $177,000 legal sanction

By on April 3, 2013 in Lawsuits, Sanctions

I’m going to have this thing overturned and I’m not going to pay a dime.

The New York Daily News reports that the amount of legal sanctions to be imposed on persistent New York litigator Christopher-Earl : Strunk is $177,000, by far the largest birther penalty imposed to date. Strunk is also barred from suing a long list of individuals in the New York Court System.

Prior to this, the birther sanctions record was held by Orly Taitz at $20,000 and $4,000, and seconded by $10,565.23 against the Liberty Legal Foundation and a distant third by Linda Jordan at a reduced amount of $3,500.

Strunk, who lives on a modest retirement income from Social Security has, according to prior court filings, no assets of note.

Read more:

Strunk sanctions appeal: brief due today

By on March 8, 2013 in Lawsuits, Sanctions

Christopher-Earl: Strunk is a conspiracy theorist, and a passionate one whose beliefs have led him to take to the courts. In one particular case, Strunk v. NY State Board of Elections, he ran into trouble in the form of sanctions.

While federal defendants cannot recover legal fees in the cases they defend, state defendants and individuals may. We saw this with an award of almost $13,000 in Washington State of Jordan v. Reed (being appealed). However, with no less than 9 law firms defending an array of defendants from Boehner to Brzezinski to the Jesuits in the Strunk case, anticipated costs could far surpass anything in Jordan (I haven’t seen a number yet). The court also ordered that Strunk not be allowed to file more lawsuits in New York against a long list of defendants.

Today is the deadline for Strunk to file his brief in an appeal of the trial court’s decision and sanctions order. The documents in the case (below) have some high comedic moments as they romp over the conspiracy landscape, of which Manchurian Candidate Soebarkah (a.k.a. Barry Soetoro, Barack Hussein Obama II, and Steve Dunham) is just one small part.

Documents in Strunk V. NY SBOE:

Continue Reading →

Taitz appeals Orange County court sanctions, loses

By on January 30, 2013 in Lawsuits, Orly Taitz, Sanctions

Orly Taitz has appealed the imposition of $4,000 in sanctions against her for filing an abusive motion (one that was legally flawed) on Occidental College to produce documents regarding Barack Obama (documents which may or may not actually exist). The order by Judge Marginis details what was wrong with the motion and cited California law under which sanctions were issued.

Orly Taitz filed an appeal with California 4th Appellate District Division 3. Her appeal, according to the Court, is defective, both in form and in service. She applied to have the appeal reinstated, but that was defective too:

CA – Taitz v Occidental Sanctions Appeal – 2013-01-28 ORDER by Jack Ryan

Jordan docked $12,675 for filing frivolous appeal

By on January 23, 2013 in Consequences, Lawsuits, Sanctions, Social-security numbers

How is it frivolous? Let me count the ways.

Washington State birther and litigant Linda Jordan has been assessed fees of nearly $13,000 for filling a frivolous appeal to a prior loss in court, where she alleged Obama was using a stolen social-security number. Jordan v. Reed was dismissed for lack of subject matter jurisdiction, and Judge Robertson suggested Jordan should have known better and that the case was brought for improper purposes:

… all the so-called evidence offered by plaintiff has been in the blogosphere for years, in one form or another, so too has all the law rejecting plaintiffs allegations. I can conceive of no reason why this lawsuit was brought, except to join the chorus of noise in that blogosphere. The case is dismissed.

Secretary of State Sam Reed submitted a Cost Bill for “statutory costs” to the Court in the amount of $200. That could have been the end of it, but…

The Court’s warning ignored, Jordan pressed on, filing notice of an appeal with the Washington State Supreme Court. The Secretary of State warned Jordan in a letter that if this frivolous appeal were not withdrawn by September 6, the Secretary of State would demand penalties provided by law. I love the quote from the letter: “This letter does not attempt to catalog all the ways in which your appeal is frivolous.” The Court subsequently denied the appeal and awarded costs to the State. The Washington State Attorney General filed particulars with the Court documenting expenses of $12,675.

The birther web sites are obscuring the details, leaving readers to believe that these costs were awarded against Jordan for bringing suit against Reed, when in fact they are for the appeal, not the initial suit, and after she had been duly warned.

According to the Linda Jordan Defense Fund web site, she has raised $435 towards her expense. Jordan is lucky that she hasn’t been prosecuted for illegal access to a federal database when she attempted to use E-Verify on President Obama’s social-security number.

The cost of birtherism–Part 3

By on December 4, 2012 in Consequences, Lawsuits, Sanctions

The punishment phase

United States District Judge S. Thomas Anderson in Tennessee has awarded Defendants $10,565.23 in the case of Liberty Legal Foundation v. Democratic National Committee of the USA. This is less than half of what the Defense asked for. Judge Anderson spent 17 pages explaining his decision.

This order goes against the Plaintiffs’ counsel, Van R. Irion, for needlessly multiplying proceedings, pursuant to 28 USC §1927.

It seems to me that with all of the significant birther lawsuits winding down, we’re seeing the Courts trying to make some defendants whole by assessing the costs of defending frivolous lawsuits to the birthers who brought them. Taitz was required to pay $20,000 as a punishment and $4,000 in costs in birther cases. This plus some small court costs bring the total to over $30,500. The threat of §1927 sanctions against Orly Taitz in Mississippi of much larger magnitude is looming. If we get a few more, I’ll do a table of them.

Read the order:

LLF-TN – ECF 53 – 2012-12-04 – OrDER Granting in Part Motion for Attorn

Previous articles in this series:

Mississippi boiling

By on December 2, 2012 in Lawsuits, Orly Taitz, Sanctions

The media is catching up with the fact that Orly’s California case was dismissed after she had to pay costs of $4,000 to Occidental College for that bum subpoena. OC Weekly, which has some of the best Taitz local coverage reported the money quote from Judge Marginis to Taitz: “You should know that evidence is not stuff printed from the Internet.” (We’ll see below that Taitz did not grasp this concept since it undermines her entire legal strategy.) The following comment was made on that article:

DaxDax: How this woman hasn’t gotten serious sanctions and some disciplinary action via the Ca State Bar is beyond me.

The thing that’s more likely to get serious sanctions and a Bar disciplinary action isn’t what happened in California, but what is unfolding in Mississippi, as Taitz continues to amaze with a new filing that discloses email exchanges between her and Leah Lax, compounding the case even further.

First, a reminder of where the case stands. The Hawaii Defendants have moved to be dismissed from the case on several grounds. The Democratic Defendants have move for judgment on the pleadings. A hearing was held last month on those motions.

Since the hearing a small flurry of documents have been filed. Taitz filed her opposition to the dismissal and judgment in a “Supplemental response” pancakes and all. Taitz subsequently filed an Amended supplemental response that I haven’t yet read.

The Mississippi Attorney General on behalf of the Secretary of State has filed a “Supplemental brief” in response to Taitz’ Supplemental response, calling it a bunch of hooey (my words). It’s not groundbreaking, but it does catalog Taitz’ ineptitude and lack of candor. The Hawaii defendants have filed a “Supplemental brief” too. And there are briefs from the Mississippi Democratic Party Executive Committee and from the National Democratic defendants: Obama, Pelosi and Obama for America.

All of this filing and briefing and supplementing is work for the attorneys, and they have to be paid. If the judge can be convinced that Taitz is vexatiously or unnecessarily making the case more complicated, she can be asked to pay those attorney fees under 28 U.S.C. § 1927, and that could turn out to be a staggering amount.

Laurie Roth and Leah Lax, both putative plaintiffs in the case have written letters to the Court asking that they be excused, and that provides the second threat to Taitz. Lax claims that Taitz drug her into the case without her intention and misrepresented those intentions, and that she faked her signature on the complaint. Now Taitz in retaliation has written a 58-page response to Lax that includes dumps of emails between the two of them, made barely legible by Orly’s crappy scanner. It even contains 14 pages of a hexadecimal encoded PDF file, purportedly a signature page signed by Lax. Taitz also discloses the “Confidential settlement” offer from the Democratic Defendants to Taitz.

In the “Response” Taitz denies that she “pasted” Lax’s signature on the “First amended complaint.” The signature page from Lax was filed with the court, but I didn’t know this because the Jack Ryan copy of it is labeled “Brian Fedorka” (which is the line where she signed it). Taitz says that she shouldn’t be sanctioned—Lax should!

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