Tag: lawsuits
Sandy Hook Judge Suspends Jones Lawyer's License

Sandy Hook Judge Suspends Jones Lawyer's License

Late last week Infowars conspiracy theorist and bankruptcy filer Alex Jones’ lawyer felt the harsh judgement of Superior Court judge Barbara Bellis. Norm Pattis, who has represented Jones in Sandy Hook defamation lawsuits (and subsequent losses) was hit with a six-month suspension from practicing law by Judge Bellis for his sloppy handling of “thousands of protected medical and psychiatric records obtained from relatives of Sandy Hook shooting victims.”

Judge Bellis clashed with jones and his defense attorneys throughout the Sandy Hook trial, which ended with Jones owing the families he lied about and terrorized for years $1.4 billion in damages. The judge did not take kindly to the endless hemming and hawing and delaying Jones’ lawyers tried to employ as a defense for their indefensible client. Pattis was the lawyer connected to the bizarrely sloppy handling of everything from Alex Jones’ private texts which, after fighting to hide them for years, seemed to have been mistakenly sent to prosecutors along with thousands of files of very sensitive materials.

But while the ruling is a very well-earned cherry on top of the pile of hogwash that is Alex Jones and his defamation defense strategies, it also has larger implications.

Judge Bellis told Pattis his excuse that his release of all of these confidential files was a mistake did not hold any water. Being incompetent and insensitive to the importance of your work and your responsibility to others isn’t a good defense. In a memorandum, Bellis wrote, “We cannot expect our system of justice or our attorneys to be perfect, but we can expect fundamental fairness and decency. There was no fairness or decency in the treatment of the plaintiffs’ most sensitive and personal information, and no excuse for [Pattis’] misconduct.”

Judge Bellis detailed each intentional step necessary to release Sandy Hook families’ private medical and psychiatric records, and the safeguards put in place at each point; and then how slapdash and irresponsibly Pattis and his crew of Jones’ parasites spread this private information around.

Litigants routinely turn over their most private and sensitive information to opposing counsel who are total strangers, and reasonably expect that opposing counsel will safeguard the information without even the need for a protective order. Indeed, our civil system of justice is premised on the trustworthiness of lawyers officers of the court-and we all rely on our lawyers to keep our information secure and safe.

Pattis says he plans to appeal the decision, and this is pretty key since he is currently also representing Proud Boys leader Joseph Biggs and four other Proud fellows in January 6, cases in Washington., D.C. According to the Hartford Courant, Pattis is hoping to at least postpone the suspension until he is finished with the Proud Boys trial.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

Supreme Court To Hear Appeal on 9/11 Detentions Lawsuit

Supreme Court To Hear Appeal on 9/11 Detentions Lawsuit

By Lawrence Hurley

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday agreed to hear an appeal by former senior officials during George W. Bush’s presidency seeking to block a lawsuit filed by immigrants, mainly Muslims, detained after the Sept. 11 attacks who said they faced abusive treatment.

The former officials, including Attorney General John Ashcroft, FBI Director Robert Mueller and Immigration and Naturalization Services Commissioner James Ziglar, are aiming to reverse a 2015 ruling by the New York-based 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals allowing the long-running suit to move forward.

The brief order noted that two justices, liberals Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor, are not participating in the case, meaning that only six justices will be involved. The court is currently one justice short following the death of Antonin Scalia in February.

The civil rights lawsuit seeks to hold the former officials responsible for the racial and religious profiling and abuse in detention that the plaintiffs said they endured after being detained following the 2001 attacks by al Qaeda Islamic militants on the United States.

The suit was filed by a group of Muslim, Arab and South Asian non-U.S. citizens who, their lawyers said, were held as terrorism suspects based on their race, religion, ethnicity and immigration status and abused in detention before being deported.

The court will hear oral arguments and issue a ruling by the end of June.

The court on Tuesday also took up a separate case on a similar legal issue about whether the family of a Mexican teenager can sue the U.S. Border Patrol agent who fatally shot the 15-year-old from across the border in Texas in 2010.

(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Editing by Will Dunham)

Donald Trump Just Asked Judge Gonzalo Curiel For A HUGE Favor

Donald Trump Just Asked Judge Gonzalo Curiel For A HUGE Favor

Oh, the irony.

After calling Judge Gonzalo Curiel a “Trump hater” and casting aspersions on his objectivity because of his “Mexican” heritage, Donald Trump is now asking Curiel to help him out by not releasing video footage of his depositions in the Trump University wealth seminar lawsuits over which Curiel is presiding.

As reported by Politico, the presumptive Republican nominee’s lawyers are doing everything they can to stop the public from seeing the tapes, arguing that the videos should be kept hidden because of Trump’s status as a presidential candidate. “Undoubtedly, these videos…will be used by the media and others in connection with the presidential campaign,” read a motion filed on Wednesday night with Judge Gonzalo Curiel. From Politico: 

“‘[V]ideotapes are subject to a higher degree of potential abuse than transcripts. They can be cut and spliced and used as “soundbites” on the evening news or sports shows….’ And unlike in other cases where it was unclear that ‘out of context snippets’ would be broadcast because the ‘media frenzy’ around the case had died down…the ‘media frenzy’ surrounding this case is certain to continue through the election,” Trump’s legal team added, quoting cases from federal trial courts in Indiana and New York.

To support their point, Trump lawyers cited several federal appeals court rulings rejecting the release of videotaped depositions by Bill Clinton when he was a sitting president.

“These same cautions and concerns apply with full force here to a presidential candidate whose every move is being covered by the media. Mr. Trump may be a sitting President by the time [one of the Trump University’s suits] goes to trial, in which case these principles apply with even greater force,” wrote Trump’s lawyers, lawyers referring the November 28th trial date that Judge Gonzalo Curiel has set.

The Trump camp’s move comes after a coalition of major media organizations, including The New York Times and Chicago Tribune, filed a motion for the footage’s release on June 11. Even Fox News joined their effort on June 16.

#EndorseThis: Trump Didn’t Pay Hundreds Of Employees: USA Today

#EndorseThis: Trump Didn’t Pay Hundreds Of Employees: USA Today

USA Today released a groundbreaking report yesterday detailing hundreds of instances in which Donald Trump failed to pay contractors hired to work on his hotels and resorts. The paper counted “[a]t least 60 lawsuits, along with hundreds of liens, judgments, and other government filings” in which scores of carpenters, painters, waiters, bartenders, lawyers, and other employees and contracted companies accuse Trump of bilking them on the bill, in some cases bankrupting family businesses.

Trump’s response? The same as it’s always been: It’s their fault for not doing the job up to his standards! But then how did a “really smart person” hire so many “incompetents”?

This follows a similar pattern: Trump delegitimizes institutions — in this case, contracts, and elsewhere: the judiciary, the Republican primary, trade deals, NATO, the media — when they become inconvenient for him, and then uses his money and fame to push the victims of his behavior into the shadows.

Now, of course, he’s running for president. Will the American people elect a man who has such a steady pattern of burning his business relationships?

The entire USA Today report is worth a read. For the time-crunched and the Trump-exhausted, here’s their primer:

Photo and video: USA Today