Harsh lessons for Emerald City citizen litigants
Bad news this morning in the Standard-Examiner for the 58 plaintiffs in the 2007 election lawsuit. As Ace Reporter Schwebke reports, Judge Parley Baldwin has issued a decision awarding the prevailing defendants $15,167 in costs and fees, under provisions of Utah Code Section 78-27-56.
For the benefit of those readers who'd like read Judge Baldwin's full text decision, we provide an online PDF version, straight from our storage site.
Interestingly, Judge Baldwin actually chopped the award nearly in half from the $29,000 originally demanded by defendants. Whether Judge Baldwin believed the defendants' cost bill was excessive, or he merely split the difference between the demands of the plaintiffs and defendants, we'll probably never know, unless the matter goes up on appeal.
Also very interesting is Mr. Schwebke's reporting that the defendants may be preparing to avail themselves of another bite of the apple under provisions of Rule 11 of the Utah Rules of Civil Procedure, a code section that's aimed squarely at Utah lawyers who file and prosecute frivolous lawsuits. In this connection, we've believed all along that any costs and fees awarded for a frivolous filing in this action might ultimately be borne by Attorney Bernard's malpractice insurance, and not by a collection of plaintiffs unlearned in the intricacies of the law, lumpencitizen plaintiffs who retained an experienced attorney, remained mainly out of the loop, and relied upon council's presumably learned advice.
And we would have sworn, reading the flow of Judge Baldwin's written decision, that he was leaning toward letting everyone except plaintiff Littrell completely off the hook; and yet he nevertheless clobbered them all in the end. Read the memorandum yourselves, gentle readers, and ask yourselves why Judge Baldwin finally decided to issue the award against these secondary plaintiffs. Although this decision is probably technically within his judicial discretion, the result certainly doesn't seem just, under the peculiar facts of the case.
And we'll note one final curiosity, especially for those sharp-eyed readers who opened the above link to Utah Code Section 78-27-56, and noticed the citation came from a second party website (justia.com), and NOT from the state legislature's official online code service. There's a reason for that. Utah Code Section 78-27-56 no longer appears in the Utah Code, at least not in the online version, as far as we were able to determine through a quick search this morning. Whether it appears re-numbered as another code section we haven't been able to determine. But it's something both the plaintiffs and their attorney certainly ought to check out.
As for the prospect of appeal, we would strongly urge these plaintiffs and their attorney to continuing to pursue this matter at the appellate court level. Having taken it upon themselves to act as private Attornies General, we believe it would be a shame to drop the ball now, and leave future citizen litigants with bad precedent for well grounded future citizen-propelled litigation.
This case certainly grows interestinger and interestinger...
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8 comments:
Rudi, it appears that the Judges ruling was based on what is usually a child's excuse for doing something wrong. Everybody's doing it.
He never really concidered whether or not lying little matty's filings were in order, he ruled based on no other candidates were listed in the complaint.
The essence of this ruling is you shouldn't file frivolous lawsuits, which most of us, fans of Dorothy though we are, would agree this particulate instance was.
Would that judges would apply this rule more often - much more often.
OK, here goes. I am not knowledgeable about Utah's commercial code. And I agree the bar for assigning defense costs to the plaintiffs in cases brought against public officials should be higher than in other instances, because it would not be wise policy to discourage suits with merit out of fear of plaintiff's losing and having to pay the other side's costs.
That said, it is also true that there is a public interest in discouraging frivolous suits, particularly since the public pays the cost of defending public officials. So, once a judge rules that a suit is frivolous, assigning substantial costs to the plaintiffs seems neither wrong nor ill-advised.
I do not think that this law suit was frivolous. There are laws in place dealing with this situation and Godfrey did in fact break those laws. (There are other reporting laws dealing with conflict of interest that he and his circle of empty suits blatantly and routinely disregard as well)
The problem is that most other candidates also broke these same laws and Dorothy did not include them in her law suit. She should have sought sanctions against all of them, not just Godfrey. Bottom line is that all of them were guilty and Dorothy only tried to bring action on Godfrey - which of course pissed off the good judge.
I hope that the "persecuted by Judge Baldwin" plaintiffs in this case appeal his petulant and ridiculous judgment. I don't think there was much merit to this case, but I certainly do not think it was as worthless as the good judge thinks it is. After all, there are laws that cover this situation, and they were broken.
I think this case was very inadvisable to begin with, but it certainly was not as frivolous as the judge decreed.
Whether the good judge intended it or not, this judgment against Dorothy is a definate victory for the dark side. I am sure the petty little players in the mayor's dark little drama are dancing the victory jig on the ninth floor over this ill advized ruling.
Is Baldwin up for retention? I wonder of his retention is frivolous. Vote this Bum out Too.
if 10 cars speed down 12th street and you are the only one to get pulled over are you innocent if you got a ticket?
is the police office that gave you the ticket wrong because he only gave you the ticket?
this is bs.
i dont think the case was approached correctly by the attorney that brought the case to the judge. if you read the ordinance it only applies if someone brings up a complaint which is what dorothy did. no one else raised any complaints against any of the other canidates as such there was no foul so to speak. only in godfreys case where there was a complaint raised. had the case been properly presented i think the outcome would have been very different.
Am I blind or can someone show me in Baldwin's decision where the word "vindictive" was used? Schwebke specifically uses this word in "quotation" marks. Is this truth in reporting that the Stadard rag is so famous for? Seems someone can't let go. Poor Scotty.
Opps never mind, I found it. He is saying that the courts should not be used to file vinductive suits, it was Schwebke's association with this word to call this particular suit "vindictive". However if Parley Ball-less would have read the ordinance he may have been able to see the merit and basis for the case. if Schwebke wanted to actually utilize his journalistic prowess, he would read the ordinance, or code as it may be, and follow the steps laid out in it to determine how it ever got to court in the first place. Also, he should check out the e-mail storage at the city to see that Ms. Littrell offered to drop the suit if Matty would submit to an audit of his finances. He should also check his own e-mail cache for the one I personally sent to him stating this same fact. The only reason the thing ever went to court was because of the arrogance of the Mayor thinking he did not have to report to a citizen when questioned. It is a sad state of affairs that government, our judicial system, and our news sources can not be trusted to simply submit to the truth.
Schwebke's article is another example of manipulation of the judges words to meet a personal end and continue to try to smear someone who has been advocating for good government while he was pissing himself in kindergarten.
Another reason I do not, nor will I ever, subscribe to the SE.
I agree with a previous poster, vote Baldweinie out of office.
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