Upper crust conceals Civil cases

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Upper crust conceals Civil cases

Postby Et in Arcadia ego » Fri Aug 18, 2006 1:47 pm

Saw this article written back home. This is par for the course, as you'd all agree, but it's also very symptomatic of just how bad the problem between castes here in America has grown. Laws are being broken here not just by the rich, but by the Judges who are screening their cases for them illegally. Voters are unable to make informed decisions at the ballot when civil cases are hidden from public view. Amplify this local problem in Broward county and apply it to the entire United States and you see a SIGNIFICANT problem here..<br>__________________________________________<br><br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/local/states/florida/counties/broward_county/15301953.htm">www.miami.com/mld/miamihe...301953.htm</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br><br><!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>More cases have been hidden from the public in Broward Circuit Court, including the divorces of public officials and business people.</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--><br>BY PATRICK DANNER AND DAN CHRISTENSEN<br>dchristensen@MiamiHerald.com<br><br><br>More than 300 civil cases filed between 1989 and 2001 in Broward Circuit Court were kept secret from the public, showing that the hiding of select lawsuits was a deep-rooted practice.<br><br><!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>Dozens of the confidential divorces and lawsuits involve the powerful and influential, including politicians, judges, lawyers and law enforcement officers.</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--><br><br>Those cases come on top of another 107 civil cases that were kept off the public docket between 2001 and 2006, reported by The Miami Herald in April. At the newspaper's request, the Broward clerk's office searched its records and located another 314 cases.<br><br>All the cases are now on the public docket, under new rules issued this summer by Chief Judge Dale Ross, but their contents remain sealed.<br><br>Secret cases are extremely rare -- just 421 since the clerk began electronically docketing cases in 1989. Last year alone, there were 44,775 civil and family court cases filed in Broward Circuit Court.<br><br>But the fact that many hidden cases involved local leaders disturbed advocates.<br><br>''It's depressing,'' said Paul K. McMasters, First Amendment ombudsman for the Freedom Forum foundation in Arlington, Va. ``It's secret justice for some and public justice for everyone else. The problem is secret justice is not really justice.''<br><br>Among the newly discovered hidden cases:<br><br>• Broward County Commissioner Diana Wasserman-Rubin's divorce from her first husband, Boca Raton lawyer Jeffrey Wasserman, in the early 1990s, when she was chairwoman of the Broward School Board.<br><br>• Broward Circuit Judge Ana Gardiner's divorce from lawyer William Gardiner III, filed six months after Gardiner took office in 1998. It vanished from the public record the next day.<br><br>• Broward Circuit Judge Jeffrey Levenson's divorce, removed from the public docket in 1998 when he was an assistant U.S. attorney in Fort Lauderdale. Levenson said he asked to seal the case for security reasons, but didn't know it also had been removed from the docket.<br><br>''That's weird,'' Levenson said.<br><br>Wasserman-Rubin and Gardiner did not return telephone calls.<br><br>• The divorces of several former public officials, such as Broward Commissioner Howard Craft and Fort Lauderdale Mayor Robert Dressler. Craft, whom records indicate was not represented by an attorney, could not be located for comment.<br><br>Dressler's divorce lawyer, Bruce Little, said he didn't know the ex-mayor's case was off the docket -- or that his own divorce was also.<br><br><!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>DIVORCES HIDDEN</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--><br><br>The Miami Herald previously reported that divorces involving Circuit Judge Thomas M. Lynch IV; County Court Judge Ginger Lerner-Wren; ex-Broward Supervisor of Elections Miriam Oliphant and North Broward Hospital District Chairman Paul Sallarulo were kept confidential. Also hidden were lawsuits against a former presidential speechwriter, the South Broward Hospital District and Holy Cross Hospital.<br><br><!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>Sensitive information in cases can legally be sealed under certain circumstances. But no state law authorizes judges to remove cases from the public docket. And federal courts with authority over Florida have declared the practice unconstitutional.</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--><br><br>It's unclear why the cases were off the public docket. Broward Clerk of Courts Howard Forman has said it happens only when judges order it. Judge Ross said clerks might have misconstrued judicial orders. He did not return two calls seeking comment.<br><br>''The fact that we're finding more and more of these cases is alarming,'' said Adria Harper, director of the First Amendment Foundation in Tallahassee.<br><br><!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>`WHAT'S HAPPENING?'</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--><br><br>``It makes you question what's happening with the judicial system. Is there a lack of communication between judges and clerks? Are there judges who are arbitrarily just improperly sealing cases as political favor, or whatever? What's happening here?''<br><br><!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>A review of the recently opened dockets showed judges typically acted to seal cases at the request of one or both parties. They often did so without issuing public notice or holding a hearing, as required by law.</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--><br><br><!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>OTHER COUNTIES</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--><br><br>But progress dockets -- a log of the court proceedings -- indicate judges sometimes issued sealing orders without being asked, and clerks sometimes closed off cases when no sealing order was issued.<br><br>Such cases also have been found in Palm Beach, Hillsborough, Pinellas, Pasco and Sarasota counties. Court officials in Miami-Dade have said cases are not hidden there.<br><br>Other newly uncovered Broward cases include:<br><br>• A 2000 lawsuit against Fort Lauderdale's Mutual Benefits Corp by investor Rory R. Enright over an insurance policy. Four years later, the nation's largest viatical settlement company was shut down for allegedly running an elaborate Ponzi scheme that took in more than $1 billion from unsuspecting investors.<br><br>The case was later dismissed, and the judge granted Mutual Benefits' motion to seal it. Bruce Culpepper, Enright's lawyer, said he didn't know the case had been removed from public view.<br><br>• A 1998 case involving Jennifer Bush, whose mother was found guilty of deliberately making her child sick to attract attention for herself.<br><br>The state sued to terminate parental rights, a proceeding the Florida Supreme Court ruled in 2001 should remain secret. Beverly Pohl, a lawyer for the mother who wanted the case heard in open court, said it appeared to her that under a state statute, any information pertaining to such proceedings should not be open to the public. Nevertheless, the progress docket now is accessible.<br><br>• The 2000 divorce of Coral Springs-based home builder Itzhak Ezratti of G.L. Homes. ''In all my years practicing law, I've never asked for, or been the recipient of, a motion or request to basically undocket a case,'' said Andrew Leinoff, a Miami lawyer who represented Anna Ezratti. Itzhak Ezratti did not respond to calls for comment.<br><br>• The 1990 divorce of Preston G. Stern, a one-time Coral Springs doctor who pleaded guilty to sexual battery on a patient. Parties involved in the case couldn't be located for comment. <p>____________________<br>Some are born to sweet delight, some are born to endless night.</p><i>Edited by: <A HREF=http://p216.ezboard.com/brigorousintuition.showUserPublicProfile?gid=etinarcadiaego@rigorousintuition>et in Arcadia ego</A>  <IMG HEIGHT=10 WIDTH=10 SRC="http://www.sickle666.com/images/Arcadia.jpg" BORDER=0> at: 8/18/06 11:49 am<br></i>
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Re: Upper crust conceals Civil cases

Postby bvonahsen » Fri Aug 18, 2006 2:38 pm

Even more infuriating, when attourneys and judges get together in the judges private chamber, they often cut deals that are essentially "off the record". All kinds of agrements can be made and there sometimes there is no court reporter to witness it.<br><br>Us po' folk doan git no access ta de judge. We've lucky if our attourney is sober that day.<br><br>I say the court reporters need to upgrade their equipment. They should carry a hand held movie camera with them and constantly tape everything. Or at least carry an audio recorder and make a law that as long as the court is in session, anywhere he goes and everything he says is taped and logged and sealed. <p></p><i></i>
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Re: Upper crust conceals Civil cases

Postby StarmanSkye » Fri Aug 18, 2006 7:11 pm

Great Heads-uP!<br><br>Thanx for the posting ...<br><br>S <p></p><i></i>
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Re: Upper crust conceals Civil cases

Postby * » Fri Aug 18, 2006 10:15 pm

<br> from The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press :<br><br><!--EZCODE LINK START--><a href="http://www.rcfp.org/secretjustice/secretdockets/pg2.html">Secret Justice: Secret Dockets</a><!--EZCODE LINK END--><br><br>excerpt: <!--EZCODE ITALIC START--><em>"<!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong> Special treatment for prominent divorcees</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--><br><br>In Connecticut, a secret docketing system was so hidden that not even the chief justice knew of its existence. Any party could choose to file a case under three different levels of secrecy. In Level 1 or "super-secret" cases, all information, including the case number, the parties' names, the nature of the case, and all court documents remained off the public docket. Level 2 docketing permitted disclosure of the case number and parties' names, but sealed all other information. And Level 3 cases were open to the public except for certain sealed documents contained in the court file. This secret docketing system is not found in Connecticut court rules or statutes, but was established as an internal administrative procedure to assist court clerks in processing sealed files.<br><br>Last fall, Connecticut Law Tribune reporter Thomas B. Scheffey discovered the secret docketing system while reporting on the divorce of former General Electric Chairman Jack Welch, who filed for divorce in Bridgeport, Conn., ending his 13-year marriage to Jane Welch."</em><!--EZCODE ITALIC END--><br><br> It was actually the Jack Welch case that blew this practice out into the open in Connecticut. But even more alarming, considering this is Jeb Bush's Florida:<br><br><br> <!--EZCODE ITALIC START--><em>"..Aside from the Miami Business Daily, who first broke this story, the corporate and legal media have largely ignored the use of secret court dockets by the judiciary. Most alarmingly,<br><!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>these secret court dockets are being used to hide civil rights lawsuits, criminal drug cases,</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--> and even divorce proceedings by wealthy litigants."</em><!--EZCODE ITALIC END--><br><!--EZCODE LINK START--><a href="http://www.jail4judges.org/BlakColrLog/Log/2003/Secret%20Court%20Docket%20Practice%20Exposed.pdf">more (pdf)</a><!--EZCODE LINK END--><br><br><br> <p></p><i></i>
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Privilege

Postby km artlu » Sat Aug 19, 2006 5:25 am

The word "privilege" has as its roots:<br><br> "private" and "law" <p></p><i></i>
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Re: Privilege

Postby Uncle Scam » Sat Aug 19, 2006 7:35 am

And people wonder why I'm so goddamned<br>ascetic in other places on other blogs...<br><br>I use to have a love affair with jurisprudence but generation after generation, year after year, has taught me that as an ideal justice is a noble thing, but that the reality - the reality that is common to most of us wherever we live - is that the institutioons of jurisprudence are completely corrupted, completely bankrupt<br><br>the exceptional advocat is exactly that - exceptional - & the hired gun 'professionalism' of a lawyer is by far the more common route - even amongst the most gifted & unfortunately especially amongst the most gifted<br><br>I simply cannot bear all the googoo baabaa talk at firedoglake on 'the law' and the other blawgs - it is that babytalk we hear so often in the university cafeterias - the law is not neutral - it is not above the actions & questions of human affairs & like its sister journalism it has become completely subsumed by its own internal necessities & 'values'.<br><br>I do not now believe that that law can redeem anything except the most basic & accidental causalities<br><br>as i have sd here before In other places- it was what was happening on the streets of America that created real civil rights - real justice at least as they existed<br><br>the 'law' has become for me an integral element of the 'institutions of fear' - this becaem very clear when the West began in an onslaught to criminalise resistance - whether that was irish republicans, whether it was trade unionists, whether it was in silencing public advocates - this criminalisation for example in commonwealth law which led to the deregistering of militant unions & now of sacrificing their exmembers to work practices & conditions that rival anything in the late 19th century<br><br>Justice, justice might exist perhaps, but not jurisprudence... American justice is nothing more than hypocrisy hiding behind law. Revenge is not justice, which is what our courts have become. A kangaroo in a circus surrounding a lie. <br><br>America has reach the backside of the event horizon of organised, institutionalised corruption and fraud on every level. Where protection rackets, embezzlement, larceny, confiscation, entrapment, misappropriation, and rico crimes, as well as murder have become the norm; by bullies, fraudsters, pervert soul sick class elites, politicians with their sykophants*, lobbys, lawyers of the Kelptomania class who run everything. An entropy litigation nation where truth is treason, justice is a mockery, and liberty is for sale to the highest bidder, where action of the State, arising from suspicion and not from proof, has degenerated into the satisfaction of vendettas by a "coin-operated congress", a "blue-blooded-aristocratic Senate" and finally, a power hungry blood thirsty executive branch- hiding behind Natinal security, a general system of tyranny, all in the name of "public safety."<br><br>The general public means nothing to them, we have been and are being, carved out like a pumpkin, the seeds spit in our faces, while they laugh at our poverty. "The essential political choice is the same as it always was: "freedom or security" nor, is the blame entirely with the warmongers, plutocrats, and demagogues.<br><br>If a people permit exploitation and regimentation in any name they deserve their slavery. The law has always been perverted to serve the "haves" and not the "haves-not", only not always as heavy handed as it is now. We have made progress in the recent historical past with "the New Deal", labor unions, civil rights, and the constitution. Only within the last few decades have the ruling elites pushed back, with their hatred of liberal democracy. What once existied in ancient Athens - now hold sway in America and UK, (it's transatlantic and trans-national now ) where powerful and corrupt individuals, organizations and corporations are routinely using threats of vexatious and malicious litigation to bully and oppress ordinary innocent and working class people.<br><br>Coercion seems to be covering-up greater crimes committed by these individuals / organizations. Their corrupt misuse of Law takes the form of restraint of trade and prevention of free speech, eminent domain, tax cuts for the top 1%, hidden fiat/poll-taxes, KGB style surveillance, money laundering in off shore bankings and usury interests and loans. A covert Military indus pharm entertainment complex. All nothing more than hypocrisy, hiding behind law.<br><br>Take for instance, What Congress Does Not Know about Enron and 9/11.<br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.john-loftus.com/enron3.asp">www.john-loftus.com/enron3.asp</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br><br> I'm sure you could come up with hundreds of other examples but make no mistake, "the Class War" has shifted and started a dramatic new phase of Supernova proportions with The Rise of Rove's Republic. And the one thing that todays "New America" has in common is the elite stranglehold on Politics, medicine, law, policing, media, bureaucracy etc. where, they are all "self-regulating". <br><br>Further, and not so coincidentally, all these 'trades' tend, more or less, to control their own incomes at the top levels. [i.e. the fat cats decide their own].<br><br><br><br><br>*SYKOPHANCY - "Generally, sykophancy has been viewed as an "inevitable disease" that plagued a society "where the chances of perverting justice were so numerous because of the character of the courts" (Lofberg 1917, 10).<br><br><br>Of interest? <p></p><i></i>
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Re: Privilege

Postby Uncle Scam » Sat Aug 19, 2006 8:01 am

addendum:<br><br>forgive the screed above, but I look around me and this countries national issues as well as it's national welfare, for example but not limited to Katrina, masterbating Judges, sadistic Sadian pResident dehumanizing here and abroad, e.g., "Torture at Abu Ghraib," And I am sick, soul sick by what I see.<br><br>As Krishnamurti, --or maybe it was HL Mencken-- sd, "It's no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society."<br><br>Ol' Wilie Reich was dead on in his mass psychology of fanatics, the positively Orwellian use of the word "justice" (in addition to the national obsession for it) is, at the end of the day, what we are killing poor people over and surrendering our freedoms for. Justice.<br><br>Finally, In Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment Raskolnikov, while delirious in the Siberian prison hospital, has a recurring dream. In it, the whole world had been condemned to a terrible and strange plague. Some new sorts of microbes began to afflict people. "Men attacked by them," he writes, "became at once mad and furious. But never had men considered themselves so intellectual and so completely in possession of the truth as these sufferers, never had they considered their decisions, their scientific conclusions, their moral convictions so infallible..."<br><br>One hundred-and-thirty years after those lines were written, it is disquieting to see just such "sufferers" among us today. Are we participants in a debate or are we fighting a virus? <p></p><i></i>
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Re: Privilege

Postby Jezebelladonna » Sat Aug 19, 2006 12:37 pm

As a lawyer in Florida, this story about sealing dockets amazes me. There are good reasons to seal certain documents filed that contain snesitive information (Florida's open government "sunshine law" permits public viewing of court docs), but entire dockets? Unbelievable.<br><br>As to to lawyers and judges reaching certain deals in chambers, that is, fortunately, not the practice in Florida. They do reach deals, of course, but in open court. There are other states (NY comes to mind) where lawyers do meet with the judge in his chambers to present a motion or petition. Mind-boggling. Even more mind-boggling (for our adversarial system of law) is that one lawyer can present a motion to a judge <!--EZCODE ITALIC START--><em>ex parte</em><!--EZCODE ITALIC END--> - without the other side there or heard. <br><br>Not so in Florida, unless it's a routine admin situation (e.g. opening a probate estate). (I practiced for a time in Massachusetts, so I'm a big fan of Florida's system, which actually is superior, imo.)<br><br>Plus, by statute, some hearings are automatically digitally recorded by the court, whether one party hires a court reporter or not. I gotta say though, for those hearings where I've hired a court reporter, if I haven't worked with them before, I always have to tell them to record everything and do not close up shop until the judge leaves the courtroom. Too many times the judge will say something significant on his way out the door.<br><br>With respect to the system itself, no doubt it's flawed. One can hope that, in the aggregate, justice is served, at least from time to time. I have seen it go both ways. And no doubt the system was set up to favor the privileged, as nearly every system in our capitalist society was. Add to that the human failings: incompetent lawyers, stupid judges, unthinking jury members, and, let us not forget, clients who fail to disclose the full story to their lawyer.<br><br>And judges who must be elected? What's up with that? In Florida, some judges are appointed. It used to be done by a judicial nominating committee, but it will surprise no one that our esteemed govenor, JEB Bush, took the bold step of wresting control away of the judicial nominating committee, and now runs the nominating of judges.<br><br> <p></p><i></i>
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Re: Privilege

Postby StarmanSkye » Sat Aug 19, 2006 1:43 pm

Uncle Sam:<br><br>Great rant! <br>I share your cynical, outraged, soul-sick sentiments.<br>Esp. apt, your observation in our, The Citizenry's, complicity in accepting, accomodating and even facilitating the abuses and frauds and corruption and subversion now endemic in our system of 'Justice'.<br><br>I take heart that eyes and hearts and minds ARE waking up and taking note and at least TRYING to find, or make, a line in the sand.<br><br>Keep them hands on dat plow!<br>Starman <p></p><i></i>
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Re: Privilege

Postby bvonahsen » Sat Aug 19, 2006 2:25 pm

<!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>And judges who must be elected? What's up with that? In Florida, some judges are appointed. It used to be done by a judicial nominating committee, but it will surprise no one that our esteemed govenor, JEB Bush, took the bold step of wresting control away of the judicial nominating committee, and now runs the nominating of judges.<hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br><br>Here in Minnesota there has been a movement through our gov, Tim Pawlenty, to changed our consistution and allow for the election of judges. We get the usual talking point BS on <!--EZCODE ITALIC START--><em>"unelected judges"</em><!--EZCODE ITALIC END--> The truth is "we the people" of Minn have benefited from those judges. What they really mean is that appointed judges cannot be corrupted the way one who depends on getting re-elected can be. The powers that be have been cynically manipulating the anti-abortionists by promoting the belief that it is unelected judges who are preventing prolife legislation from getting passed. They are just using them to get their own agenda advanced.<br><br>It's pretty hard not to see a conspiracy here. Though I think I could go with something like "The overall descisions made in the interest of a particular class over a period of time." And you might even convice me that it wasn't a conscious descision but a collective one. But I believe, on the other hand, that <!--EZCODE ITALIC START--><em>at some point</em><!--EZCODE ITALIC END--> someone did have to have an awareness of where things were going. But chose not to criticize because it wasn't in his or her interest to do so. Sure there have been exceptions, but over time they lose out because of the collective choices made <!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>not</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--> to fight against this agenda. <br><br>Here in Minnesota we had a horrible legislative session where nothing, and I mean nothing, was accomplished except to pass legislation for a new sports arena for the Minnesota Twins. They did this by passing a tax on Hennepin county because the rest of the state is so sick of this issue that they refuse to allow any taxes to raise money for it. We have a law to says you cannot pass a tax on a municipality without allowing a referandum, and yet the legislature <!--EZCODE ITALIC START--><em>explicitly forbide</em><!--EZCODE ITALIC END--> us for doing just that. All with the blessing of our county reps. Makes me sick.<br><!--EZCODE ITALIC START--><em><br><!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>The rich will have their way and the poor will pay for it.</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--></em><!--EZCODE ITALIC END--> <p></p><i></i>
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