CORRUPT CIVIL COURTS
The corruption in our Civil Courts, at all levels, is so rampant, and has been for so long, that one fears it cannot be corrected.
The most prevalent corruption is that of dragging cases out for months or years.
Consider this: a presiding judge is expected to have knowledge of the area of law that is in question before him. Not complete understanding of all nuances and niceties, but a good general grasp.
Plaintiffs come to his court with an accusation, so they already have knowledge of the legal statutes that are being allegedly violated.
Defendants, knowing what they are charged with, usually have their defense prepared, again based on the statutes and whatever mitigating circumstances they claim.
The plaintiffs argue their case, then the defendants theirs.
So the role of the judge is simple; he looks at the law the plaintiffs invoke (using Blackstone's Commentaries as a guide to interpretation), considers the defense, looks at past judgments if necessary, and makes his ruling as to who prevails.
How long can that process take?
Now, I understand there may be issues of discovery, which the judge can order at the first and subsequent hearings, and those may take some time depending on how much stonewalling goes on. But, again, how long should the stonewalling be allowed to continue?
An example case: the California Fire Prevention Fee (called by opponents the Illegal Fire Tax), enacted in 2012. There is only one question about this, is it a fee or a tax? The question has been before the court now for 5 years, and neither the Howard Johnson Taxpayers Association (plaintiff) nor the state (defendant) seems to be in any hurry to resolve it. Grab any 10-year-old off the street, give him the facts, and he will give the answer in no more than an hour or two. Why 5 years? Because they can. All parties to the matter are corrupt, looking out for just themselves.
You can find numberless cases where the courts have put off decisions for years, sometimes until many of the parties have died. It is a disgrace.
My suggestion to fix this abuse? First, consistent stonewalling should be penalized. Stonewalling usually is one-sided. If the 3rd time a judge orders information turned over the litigant fails to comply in full, they automatically lose the case.
Secondly, require judges to rule within 30 days of final arguments. If the government is involved and the 30 day rule is not complied with, the government automatically loses, whichever side it is on. With 2 private litigants, it goes to the plaintiff. Government versus government to the lower entity. There is no reason a judge cannot come to a decision in a week, much less 30 days.
There may also need to be restrictions on how many days are allowed between hearings, else a judge might schedule the next hearing too many months away. Justice delayed is justice denied.
This should apply to all courts, up to the Supreme. There is no good reason to drag cases out for years before final resolution, except most of the parties, the powerful ones, like it that way.
More blatant corruption exists from the Supreme Court down to the lowest courts. I assume almost every reader is familiar with Chief Justice John Robert's Obamacare rulings, agonizingly twisting the law to uphold it. Here in California we had a local case of the same "decide the outcome first" corruption.
A group called STOP wanted to stop the Kings' basketball arena from being built, so they started a petition drive to let the voters decide. The political elites and the media, almost without exception, wanted the arena. Opponents went to court to kill the petitions.
In 20-20 hindsight, it is clear what occurred. The first argument by opponents was that the petition was payed for by an out-of-state entity, therefore must be invalid. This was rejected by the Fair Political Practices Committee, who did fine the funders for non-disclosure but did not stop the petitions from going forward. Of course, since many out-of-state entities get involved in petitions (can you say unions?), this would have set a bad precedent. So they let the petitions continue.
The next attempt was to get a court to throw out the petitions because they had flaws. Again, a bad precedent; if a politically-approved group's petition has flaws, a court may well reject it. Can't have that.
So the judge got creative. From Ballotpedia.org:
On February 21, 2014, Sacramento Superior Court Judge Timothy Frawley, while reserving his final ruling, stated that the petitions were indeed very flawed and that, although each individual error was not serious, the errors taken together add up to a "fatal flaw." Frawley said, “These petitions are defective in a multitude of ways."
On Feb. 26, he killed the petitions.
Think about it in school terms. You got a C on every test, every essay, every report. Everything was a C. Then the teacher tells you all of those Cs add up to an F. Too many mistakes.
Each petition that was not fatally flawed, which was most if not all, should have had the names reviewed and counted. That is basic fairness. The signers signed in good faith and their voices should have been heard. If the number fell short, then no referendum.
But the outcome had been cooked in, the judge just had to find a way to enact it without a dangerous, to his political side, precedent. Classic corruption. And no-one complained or noted the corruption, it went unremarked by all involved.
We need better judges, honest judges, working in a system that gives swift and just rulings. There are some, I'm sure, but too many put politically preferred outcomes ahead of the law.
The corruption in our Civil Courts, at all levels, is so rampant, and has been for so long, that one fears it cannot be corrected.
The most prevalent corruption is that of dragging cases out for months or years.
Consider this: a presiding judge is expected to have knowledge of the area of law that is in question before him. Not complete understanding of all nuances and niceties, but a good general grasp.
Plaintiffs come to his court with an accusation, so they already have knowledge of the legal statutes that are being allegedly violated.
Defendants, knowing what they are charged with, usually have their defense prepared, again based on the statutes and whatever mitigating circumstances they claim.
The plaintiffs argue their case, then the defendants theirs.
So the role of the judge is simple; he looks at the law the plaintiffs invoke (using Blackstone's Commentaries as a guide to interpretation), considers the defense, looks at past judgments if necessary, and makes his ruling as to who prevails.
How long can that process take?
Now, I understand there may be issues of discovery, which the judge can order at the first and subsequent hearings, and those may take some time depending on how much stonewalling goes on. But, again, how long should the stonewalling be allowed to continue?
An example case: the California Fire Prevention Fee (called by opponents the Illegal Fire Tax), enacted in 2012. There is only one question about this, is it a fee or a tax? The question has been before the court now for 5 years, and neither the Howard Johnson Taxpayers Association (plaintiff) nor the state (defendant) seems to be in any hurry to resolve it. Grab any 10-year-old off the street, give him the facts, and he will give the answer in no more than an hour or two. Why 5 years? Because they can. All parties to the matter are corrupt, looking out for just themselves.
You can find numberless cases where the courts have put off decisions for years, sometimes until many of the parties have died. It is a disgrace.
My suggestion to fix this abuse? First, consistent stonewalling should be penalized. Stonewalling usually is one-sided. If the 3rd time a judge orders information turned over the litigant fails to comply in full, they automatically lose the case.
Secondly, require judges to rule within 30 days of final arguments. If the government is involved and the 30 day rule is not complied with, the government automatically loses, whichever side it is on. With 2 private litigants, it goes to the plaintiff. Government versus government to the lower entity. There is no reason a judge cannot come to a decision in a week, much less 30 days.
There may also need to be restrictions on how many days are allowed between hearings, else a judge might schedule the next hearing too many months away. Justice delayed is justice denied.
This should apply to all courts, up to the Supreme. There is no good reason to drag cases out for years before final resolution, except most of the parties, the powerful ones, like it that way.
More blatant corruption exists from the Supreme Court down to the lowest courts. I assume almost every reader is familiar with Chief Justice John Robert's Obamacare rulings, agonizingly twisting the law to uphold it. Here in California we had a local case of the same "decide the outcome first" corruption.
A group called STOP wanted to stop the Kings' basketball arena from being built, so they started a petition drive to let the voters decide. The political elites and the media, almost without exception, wanted the arena. Opponents went to court to kill the petitions.
In 20-20 hindsight, it is clear what occurred. The first argument by opponents was that the petition was payed for by an out-of-state entity, therefore must be invalid. This was rejected by the Fair Political Practices Committee, who did fine the funders for non-disclosure but did not stop the petitions from going forward. Of course, since many out-of-state entities get involved in petitions (can you say unions?), this would have set a bad precedent. So they let the petitions continue.
The next attempt was to get a court to throw out the petitions because they had flaws. Again, a bad precedent; if a politically-approved group's petition has flaws, a court may well reject it. Can't have that.
So the judge got creative. From Ballotpedia.org:
On February 21, 2014, Sacramento Superior Court Judge Timothy Frawley, while reserving his final ruling, stated that the petitions were indeed very flawed and that, although each individual error was not serious, the errors taken together add up to a "fatal flaw." Frawley said, “These petitions are defective in a multitude of ways."
On Feb. 26, he killed the petitions.
Think about it in school terms. You got a C on every test, every essay, every report. Everything was a C. Then the teacher tells you all of those Cs add up to an F. Too many mistakes.
Each petition that was not fatally flawed, which was most if not all, should have had the names reviewed and counted. That is basic fairness. The signers signed in good faith and their voices should have been heard. If the number fell short, then no referendum.
But the outcome had been cooked in, the judge just had to find a way to enact it without a dangerous, to his political side, precedent. Classic corruption. And no-one complained or noted the corruption, it went unremarked by all involved.
We need better judges, honest judges, working in a system that gives swift and just rulings. There are some, I'm sure, but too many put politically preferred outcomes ahead of the law.