Must read. Seems the corruption extends all the way to the US Supreme Court.
Where have all the cases gone?
By Scott E. Stafne
I was telling opposing counsel that as the lawyer for a servicer successor to Countrywide she needed to make sure no acceleration notice had been issued with regard to the defaulted upon loan before my client’s mortgage was transferred to BOA on or about January 1, 2009. She asked why she needed to do that. I responded that under a recent case out of the federal district court Washington attorneys had an obligation under Rule 11 to verify the absence of limitations defenses.
She said, she didn’t believe me.
So I told her to hold on and brought up my WestLaw legal database. I was flabbergasted. Judge Peterson’s opinion sanctioning me for not anticipating a limitations defense in a
complaint was not there. I immediately suspected the empire’s corrupt legal publishing system.
I have previously written about my concern that the 1% who own everything (including the legal publishing industry) and/or the judicial department itself unfairly and corruptly influence the collection and reporting of legal decisions. On April 2, 2015 I
complained about this in a blog entitled “Do private publishers of legal decisions attempt to influence precedent”. I pointed out that U.S. District Court Judge Richard A. Jones of the Western District of Washington had authored a significant decision discrediting one of MERS legal theories. I told a representative of the private publisher, WestLaw, that I believed this decision should be available to homeowners and their attorneys. I even pointedly asked whether WestLaw was biased in favor of MERS with regard to those decisions which it included in its database.
I was told to put my concerns in writing. So I wrote to WestLaw, which is owned by Reuters (which is likely owned by one of the six big media companies who own 90% of the media) and asked why this decision not been published. “Oversight”, the legal
publisher belatedly responded several days later.
I didn’t believe that then and believe it less so now. But here is a copy of the letter WestLaw sent me indicating the MERS decision would be included in its database.
It is problematic when judges and/or legal publishers, either by themselves or together, seek to alter those decisions which favor one side of a societal issue, like foreclosures.
But such practices appear commonplace.
Indeed, there are frequent reports that United States Supreme Court justices sometime change their decisions after they have been published. Here is one such report. This is the equivalent of Congress changing a law after it has been signed by the President.
Query, whether secret manipulation of judicial decisions after the fact is consistent with
the notion of judicial power expressed in the Federalist Papers #78? I think not.
In criticising the integrity of the federal courts I rely mostly on my own experiences, rather than on articles by others. Let me give you an example.
Early in my career William Schwarzer, who at one point was the Chief federal district court judge for the Ninth Circuit, committed an obvious violation of the Fishery Conservation and Management Act by issuing an injunction stopping my clients from
fishing before the conclusion of judicial review. I brought an emergency appeal to the Ninth Circuit, which couldn’t care less. When it was clear that Court was not going to timely consider whether Schwarzer’s closure in violation of an express statutory
prohibition for doing so was legal, I brought a mandamus action against the Ninth Circuit. Much to my surprise (and probably every one else) then Chief Justice William Rehnquist took the action under advisement and ordered the Ninth Circuit to grant the relief I requested.
When I later tried to obtain these court decisions, i.e. Rehnquist’s order and the Ninth Circuit’s order in favor of my clients, I was told no court (Supreme Court, Ninth Circuit, nor the Federal District Court) could not find them and/or perhaps they did not exist.
Hmmm, I thought. How easily history vanishes. So I started searching google’s newspaper database. Although that database is limited, here is what it shows:
On July 30, 1979 Judge Schwarzer illegally closed the salmon troll fishery off Washington.
August 7, 1979 salmon troll organizations appealed Judge Schwarzer’s decision to the Ninth Circuit.
August 20, 1979 Justice Rehnquist becomes involved in the dispute.
August 28, 1979 and August 29, 1979 – Reports that salmon season may be extended.
So history didn’t vanish. Just those judicial decisions did.
I wrote about Justice Rehnquist’s missing order and the missing decision of the Court of Appeals responding to it in my blog. See Article 1 and Article 2.
But the judicial branch of government apparently didn’t care that no one could locate these records.
But we, the people, should care.
Our founders intended the legitimacy of the judicial branch to be evaluated based on its judgments. Do the courts of the empire really believe the people are so stupid that we won’t catch on when they refuse disclose their judgments or alter their judgments after the fact? Do the courts of the empire now believe that they their decisions are enforceable by the brute force of the government even if the vast majority of the people dispute the legitimacy of their authority?
There was a time, before the courts destroyed our judicial branch of government, when the law was a noble profession. However, that has definitely changed.
