National Liberty Alliance - Citizen Grand Juries

[LightinDarkness]

That is a good question, but can you declare someone a vexatious litigant for filing gibberish only if it never goes to court? That is essentially what they are doing - and Darash is doing it at multiple courts in small doses of crazy, so the NY court system may not realize what is going on.

[fortinbras]

Possibly the best way is to issue an order to court staff that this guy gets to file nothing without paying the filing fee in full.

[davids]

Possibly the best way is to issue an order to court staff that this guy gets to file nothing without paying the filing fee in full.

There's that phrase again. Laypeople like to use the phrase "go to court" which is actually kind of nonspecific. Once something is filed, it has "gone to court." If you mean go to trial, that is something different. And most cases, whether or not frivolous, don't go to trial. Frivolous cases especially are often dismissed far in advance of that.

About a year ago I had reason to research the vexatious litigant laws as they were then in the Central District of Ca and at the time they were fairly broad. In theory, one could even be declared a vexatious litigant for filings relating to a specific case or issue. However, judges almost never grant a motion in that regard unless there is a pattern over several recent cases, or a prior judicial determination.

As a practical matter, unless a litigant has had several matters dismissed within the past few years (which means they would have to have been accepted as "filed" first) then it is a losing battle to bring a motion to have that person declared a vexatious litigant. And I don't believe the law was broad enough to include unsuccessful attempts at filing cases, though a lawyer could most certainly mention that in the papers. Most clients don't want to pay for it either, when it essentially adds frosting to the cake that you get with a motion to dismiss.

There was, at least in 9th Circuit jurisprudence, a doctrine that allows Federal courts more leeway to summarily dismiss obviously frivolous pleadings by pro per litigants. In other words, without the normal motion to dismiss - granted - leave to amend - amended pleadings - rinse and repeat dance that occurs when the litigant has counsel. It too is underutilized by the Courts. But that doesn't change the fact that faulty papers based on gibberish based on nothing are doomed from the start...it just might take a few months for the Federal court to deem them as such.

[fortinbras]

Darah is sending papers to various courts and he evidently wants those courts to take those papers seriously. So, what he's doing is "filing papers". And saying that his papers will be sent back, unfiled, unless he pays the full filing fee upfront will pretty much put a stop to that. Even if he pays the fee that does not oblige the courts to do anything in the absence of a properly commenced suit.

[LPC]

Possibly the best way is to issue an order to court staff that this guy gets to file nothing without paying the filing fee in full.

There's that phrase again. Laypeople like to use the phrase "go to court" which is actually kind of nonspecific. Once something is filed, it has "gone to court." If you mean go to trial, that is something different. And most cases, whether or not frivolous, don't go to trial. Frivolous cases especially are often dismissed far in advance of that.

Where do you see "that phrase" "go to court"?

You seem to be railing against (or analyzing) a phrase that is not there.

[LightinDarkness]

Probably refers to my post which uses that phrase, but I was referring to where Darash had done the "getting an index number" thing which to me is basically usually the court as a filing cabinet (there are a legitimate reasons to do it, but sov'runs like DMVP also seem to think getting a file number is a big deal).

[davids]

oops - quoted wrong post above...edited mistake out

[davids]

Possibly the best way is to issue an order to court staff that this guy gets to file nothing without paying the filing fee in full.

There's that phrase again. Laypeople like to use the phrase "go to court" which is actually kind of nonspecific. Once something is filed, it has "gone to court." If you mean go to trial, that is something different. And most cases, whether or not frivolous, don't go to trial. Frivolous cases especially are often dismissed far in advance of that.

Where do you see "that phrase" "go to court"?

You seem to be railing against (or analyzing) a phrase that is not there.

I quoted the wrong post. Not railing against it, just commenting on it.

[LightinDarkness]

I think Darash may have finally done something that is actually illegal, but I am not sure how easy it would be to get him for this:
http://www.nationallibertyalliance.com/ ... -17-14.mp3

That is a 3.5 hour call of Darash giving personal legal advice to a dozen callers about their cases. Absolutely all of it is sov'run gibberish - paper terrorism, filing writs of error/every other writ John can google, claiming there is some secret equity/common law court, charging the judge with 20 day sin jail for every 1 day you are in jail, etc.

Darash lives in New York, and supposedly that is now a felony: http://www.lexology.com/library/detail. ... a606741408

Come on FBI, you've got a sov'run giving legal advice to people and telling them to harass and attempt to intimidate courts with sov'run gibberish. I hope they are listening...

[fortinbras]

While giving legal advice would appear to be unauthorized practice, it is SELDOM prosecuted and then apparently only for people who either take money for their amateur instructions or who draft pleadings or actually show up in the courtroom.

The unauthorized practice laws have undergone a serious change in the last half-century. Fifty years ago the legal profession was trying to bully accountants, bankers, and financial consultants whenever they dared to suggest ways to minimize tax liabilities and the like. Then they dared to take on Norman Dacey for his book, How to Avoid Probate, and the courts weren't nearly as cooperative as the bar associations expected. Bit by bit things that were once accused of being unauthorized practice are no longer forbidden.

[davids]

Come on FBI, you've got a sov'run giving legal advice to people and telling them to harass and attempt to intimidate courts with sov'run gibberish. I hope they are listening...

He's certainly practicing law without a license, and if others rely on it and file nonsense, and it becomes known, he could be the rare case that gets prosecuted. The higher the profile he seeks or attains, the more likely it is to happen. Perhaps his general ineffectiveness is his best ally here, that and the fact that he's not going into court pretending to be a lawyer representing people in regards to substantive rights - he's just telling them nonsense and having them file meaningless gibberish with the courts, which gets rejected, leaving everyone back the way they started, with the remote in their hand watching the television.

[Judge Roy Bean]

...
Come on FBI, you've got a sov'run giving legal advice to people and telling them to harass and attempt to intimidate courts with sov'run gibberish. I hope they are listening...

Methinks the FBI has more pressing matters to deal with. I'd recommend the clerks post a notice to the effect that pro se filers face contempt citations and fines for submitting documents the court determines are incompetent.

Me, it would just be the cattle prod.

[fortinbras]

(1) I don't recall an instance of FEDERAL prosecution for unauthorized practice.

(2) I don't recall an instance of unauthorized practice being prosecuted except when brought by the state's bar or judicial system.

(3) I have a gut feeling that the govt could, should, and probably will, bring charges much more serious than unauthorized practice and when that's done Darash won't be using the phone system or the internet to give out his advice.

[Chados]

We've used the UPL laws in my jurisdiction. It depends on what advice is being given, and how the advice giver is representing himself, frankly.

I'm amazed no one has tried to track someone in the chain down and charge them. Most states have a variety of antiterrorism laws that would apply. For New York to ignore wide scale attempts to intimidate legitimate courts by faking the legitimate authority to issue process of law like this is disturbing, especially when your chief suspect admits the whole scam in recorded phone calls he is podcasting. I'd have had detectives visiting every player I could identify by now, and interviewing them, at the very least. We've had small scale NLA activities in my jurisdiction, but it's been limited to filing the paperwork where they declare themselves to be the authority, and nothing else. No one cares about that, you can call yourself the Unified Grand Jury of Susie Derkins for all we care. It's what you do with it that gets us interested. We typically draw the line at filing papers ordering our courts or government officials around, or fake presentments or fake indictments, or fake liens. Our local sovereigns seem to have figured out where the line is, for the most part. The NLA organizers that put our local carnival of crazy together didn't even put it together in this county, they met somewhere else.

[LightinDarkness]

The NLA is spreading like the plague amongst the sov'run realm of the internet. RuSA on its weekly propaganda calls had a "guest speaker" who appears to be someone leading the NLA sov'run grand jury effort in Colorado. I find it interesting that they didn't get Darash, since he usually loves doing this stuff - but its definitely a NLA group, the sov'run myths were the exact same.

The call revealed several things that I found hilarious. It involved two counties, one in Colorado (they did not name the county) and the other was Alachua County, Florida.

The Tale of the NLA in A Colorado County
(1) The NLA crazies in one county in Colorado first went to a sheriff to demand that they be let in the court to start playing grand jury. The sheriff laughed at them, and so they concluded the sheriff wasn't constitutional.
(2) Next, they went to the county commissioners with a $1.5 million dollar budget demanding that the county give them the money so they could set up their grand jury playpen. The county commissioners, as you would expect, laughed at them.
(3) But they are undeterred, because you see they just know those county commissioners can get all that money out of the magical CAFR accounts (a popular sov'run myth that requires someone to be so stupid you can't even understand how budgets work on a basic level, see here: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=10097 for more information if you aren't familiar with it).
(4) At one point one of the NLA cultists lost it in a meeting with the county commissioners and had to be escorted out of the room, but no worry, the other ones kept their calm and had pretty little agendas and talking points made up so that the commissioners would "see the light."
(5) They claim 2 out of 3 commissioners were then swayed by their paperwork and agreed to bring in the sov'run grand juries. Of course I think what actually happened is the commissioners determined they were dealing with lunatics who are unstable, so you tell them what they want to hear in their presence so they don't start getting violent. If there are any county commissioners stupid enough to fall for this stuff, it won't last long once the county attorney looks at it.
(6) The NLA crazies in Colorado are confident the county commissioners will take a vote in the affirmative and they will be playing sov'run jury by the end of the month! Why do I think we won't hear anything further about this?

The Tale of the NLA in Alachua County, Florida
(1) The NLA sadly has not been nearly as successful here. The sov'runs in Alachua filed their gibberish paperwork but it got immediately rejected by the clerk.
(2) They are convinced they will "win" though and are already talking amongst themselves about how all the government officials denying them will "pay" for it.
(3) And they have grand plans in Alachua. Some of the counties appear to be involved in regional agreements (which, as a Public Administration PhD, I must say its A GREAT THING!). First thing on the agenda of course is to strike down those regional agreements as unconstitutional and a fascist attempt at world government.
(4) Item number two on the agenda is to remove all of Florida's lands from their conservation status because its part of the evil Agenda 21.

[notorial dissent]

Ya know, they really coulda/shoulda chosen a better set of initials to go by. Somehow I just don’t think the National Leather Association is going to appreciate being linked to this crowd A TALL!!! Some of the things that come up when you search by those initials are a bit much for someone of a delicate “constitution”, or before they’ve had their first cup of morning coffee, or both!!!!

I think the nut in Colorado is named Leland Cramer, at least he seems to be the one pushing for a jury in Logan County which was active in the state secession movement for a time. I really can’t find much else listed for Colorado, I think the CLGJ in Colorado is more a real paper tiger than anything else, although they do seem to be pretty hand in glove with at least a faction of the Colorado Tea Party, at least the local TP seems to have swallowed the CLGJ koolaid by the gallon.

I suspect that one of the reasons that Darash wasn’t on the agenda with fRuSA was that he isn’t at all about sharing power, but about holding it all in his two own widdle hands, and I doubt seriously if his agenda and the fRuSA one are even close on. The Colorado faction has already been lectured about staying from the flock, filing all those liens is more sovrun than NLA, and I personally suspect they are more sovrun than CLGJ when it comes right down to it. I also don’t think there are more than a handful of them either.t

[davids]

(1) I don't recall an instance of FEDERAL prosecution for unauthorized practice.

(2) I don't recall an instance of unauthorized practice being prosecuted except when brought by the state's bar or judicial system.

(3) I have a gut feeling that the govt could, should, and probably will, bring charges much more serious than unauthorized practice and when that's done Darash won't be using the phone system or the internet to give out his advice.

1) It still is a state crime, as in unauthorized practice in federal court is a crime under state laws. There is no exemption from those state laws for the fact that it happens in federal court. There may be a federal set of unauthorized practice laws as well, but I have not seen those utilized, either.

2) In California at least, it is a crime and is prosecuted by either the AG's office or the local law enforcement. The state bar doesn't have jurisdiction over nonlawyers in California.

3) A very good point.

[LightinDarkness]

Nothing much to report from the NLA conference call this week, just a few funny things:

- Darash has started a $8k fund raiser in order to print and distribute his "Grand Jury Handbook" which is basically 40 pages of sov'run gibberish. Its not clear to me why there is a need to get them printed out when he has PDFs of it on his website - except that hes making a profit off each book.

- Little to no talk this week about the "BIG WIN!" of having a clerk not automatically reject NLA papers that was such a big deal last week.

- Darash has declared that once all 50 states are "constituted" and he has the seals, when he sends out his "powerful paperwork" that the judges will literally be quivering at the sheer power of the 50 embossed seals from Staples.

- Darash has now...wait for it..started a weekly bible study program.

- The final verdict is in on just how many people you need to "constitute" an entire state - 3 will do. Darash reminds everyone that this is just a courtesy and really you don't even need that many, they are just being "honorable." Funny how "honorable" seems to mean deciding for millions of people with the votes of 3 people.

- Given Darash's new proclamation, I suspect every remaining state will be "constituted" within a week or two since you only need 3 crazies per state now.

[LightinDarkness]

I suspect that one of the reasons that Darash wasn’t on the agenda with fRuSA was that he isn’t at all about sharing power, but about holding it all in his two own widdle hands, and I doubt seriously if his agenda and the fRuSA one are even close on. The Colorado faction has already been lectured about staying from the flock, filing all those liens is more sovrun than NLA, and I personally suspect they are more sovrun than CLGJ when it comes right down to it. I also don’t think there are more than a handful of them either.[/color][/b]t

I think you have hit it on the head, I didn't even think about that - Darash wants nothing to do with RuSA because there he has to compete with Fake Presidents, Fake Senators, Fake Governors, etc. Its no fun being the leader of a sov'run movement when you have to share the glory.

[LightinDarkness]

Uh-oh, I didn't listen to the call long enough, someone called in with a question about RuSA and Darash is NOT a fan! Apparently he has looked at their site and determined using google analytics that they don't get enough visitors to be worthy of NLA support. Also, supposedly RuSA contacted him months ago begging to "join" with him but he declined (no surprise there, Darash likes to be in charge!).