Remittitur issued in Stutz v. Larkins on Aug. 20, 2014--but Judge Judith Hayes issued new default judgment TWO WEEKS EARLIER

See all posts regarding this case.

On August 20, 2014 the Court of Appeal issued a remittitur in Stutz v. Larkins. 

But Judge Judge Hayes issued a new judgment two weeks earlier--on August 6, 2014--in San Diego Superior Court!  [In typical fashion, Judge Hayes didn't bother to have her clerk serve me with the judgment.  I didn't know about it until I was served with a copy by plaintiff on August 19, 2014.]

I have no idea why the Court of Appeal bothered to issue the remittitur.  Judge Hayes certainly wasn't waiting for it.


Click image to enlarge.

UPDATE: It turns out that there's case law that says that Judge Hayes did not have jurisdiction on August 6, 2014 to issue a new judgment:

‘Until remittitur issues, the lower court cannot act upon the reviewing court’s decision; remittitur ensures in part that only one court has jurisdiction over the case at any one time.”  (People v. Saunoa (2006) 139 Cal.App.4th 870, 872.) 

So why did she do it?

Don't ask me.  I still don't understand why she felt it was in the interest of justice to throw out my opposition to summary judgment because I made a small mistake in format.  For good measure, she also threw out my evidence (which seems sort of redundant, right?) and then granted plaintiff's motion for summary judgment.

NO WEIGHING OF EVIDENCE, NO JURY TRIAL FOR DAMAGES

Why didn't Judge Hayes want to weigh the evidence?

And then why did she rant and rave about defamation ever since, as if the evidence had been weighed and there had been a factual finding of defamation?

There was no justification for outrage or anger when the decision was based on a pure technicality.  And there was no justification for denying me a jury trial regarding damages for four years.

Judge Hayes granted default four years after granting summary judgment.  She then awarded nominal damages of $30,000 based on the fact that there were TWO (yes, 2!!!) Internet searches for Plaintiff in a certain month. 

Here's what I wrote in my Opening Brief regarding the $30,000 in "nominal" damages:

The calculation for the $30,000 is based on a ludicrous,
unreasonable and illogical conclusion drawn from Exhibits D and E...
If the trial court had looked at Exhibit E of the prove-up, it would
have seen that visitors to Defendant’s site were looking for CVESD, CTA,
MEA, Fagen Friedman Fulfrost, Emily Shieh, Voice of San Diego Education,
Procopio, Kaiser Permanente, Vickie Gilbreath, medical records,
insurance, the new teacher project, Cornell, Bonifacio Bonny Garcia, CTA
lawyer, and Councilman Castaneda.

It isn’t until page AA 2510 that we see the

two (2!) total queries...referring to Plaintiff. 

These two queries would appear to

justify damages of $.86...

It was unreasonable for the trial court to order Defendant to pay Plaintiff
$.43 every single hit on the site, when almost all of the hits were by
Defendant herself; search robots; visitors who only stayed on the site a
second or two; people looking for health and insurance information--
particularly Kaiser Permanente; visitors wanting information about
schools, education and San Diego politics; or non-Plaintiff lawyers.

The Court of Appeal backed-up Judge Hayes, also based mostly on technicalities.

Erasing information on my websites

I've been working hard erasing web pages and blog posts that could be considered violations of  Judge Judith Hayes' injunction.

In the past couple of months I've depublished hundreds of blog posts and erased or edited several web pages.  I'm starting to erase web pages with public records:

Deposition page plus six additional pages

Motion to compel

Stutz v. Larkins defamation case: why did Court of Appeal allow Judge Judith Hayes' anti-free speech injunction?

The Court of Appeal issued a decision yesterday in the Stutz Artiano Shinoff and Holtz v. Maura Larkins defamation case. It upheld the anti-free speech injunction and default entered by Judge Judith Hayes against me in San Diego Superior Court.

Judge Hayes' 2009 injunction in this case was ruled unconstitutional.
So what was different this time?

The only area in which I prevailed in my appeal of was getting the $10,000 punitive damages award thrown out. The Court didn't have much choice about this.  The plaintiff had provided no evidence of my ability to pay.

So, obviously, since the Court of Appeal conclude that my appeal of the unwarranted imposition of punitive sanctions was worthy, there's no way the Court would have ordered me to pay Stutz' costs, right?

Wrong.

WHO PAYS COSTS?

The court has revealed its thinking very clearly in its odd decision to order me to pay Stutz' costs. For perspective, note that the Court of Appeal did NOT order Stutz to pay my costs when I completely prevailed in my request to have Judge Judith Hayes' outrageously unconstitutional December 11, 2009 injunction modification thrown out. Such an order would clearly have been in the interests of justice since one way in which powerful organizations escape legal responsibility is by bankrupting those who challenge them.

The Court apparently feels strongly that blogs like mine that criticize trial courts and attorneys should be silenced.  Even though I prevailed in part, the Court ordered me to bear costs!

It's odd--and interesting.  The Court appears to be sending a warning to all bloggers who might want to inform the public about the tactics of public entity lawyers--and the judges who go beyond the law to defend them. In fact, the Court of Appeal ruled in 2011 that Judge Judge Hayes had violated the Constitution.

Another odd thing about the decision is that it wasn't sent back to the Superior Court with the direction to issue a new judgment that did not include punitive damages.  Instead, the Court of Appeal modified the decision, and then affirmed its own modification.  I never heard of such a thing before.  It seems that the Court of Appeal didn't want to let Judge Hayes get her hands on the case again for even a brief time.  It seems that the Court of Appeal doesn't trust Judge Hayes.

I can't entirely blame the Court of Appeal for taking the side of the big law firm and the wayward judge.   I wasn't a good lawyer--because I'm not a lawyer at all.  If I had filed more and better oppositions, and earlier and better appeals, I believe the Court of Appeal might have found in my favor.

I should have had a lawyer, but I didn't have the money.  I needed not just any lawyer, but one who held a position of respect in the community of judges and lawyers.

 In this same case, the Court of Appeal threw out a different injunction of Judge Hayes as unconstitutional.  Professor Shaun Martin represented me in that appeal.  I wrote the Opening Brief, but I have the feeling that the Court might have ruled differently if Mr. Martin hadn't written the Reply and given the oral arguments.

Also, it probably didn't hurt that Stutz law firm has lots of political connections.  One partner held a fundraiser for one of the Superior Court judges running in the recent election.

I imagine I didn't earn any Brownie points from the Court by writing about the actions of Superior Court Judge Judith Hayes.

A STRANGE CASE

This case is strange in that there was no weighing of evidence to determine that I had committed defamation.  The judge simply threw out my opposition and all my evidence and granted a summary adjudication to Stutz law firm.

Then the judge proceeded to behave as if there had been an actual finding of defamation, rather than a decision based on a technicality.

The summary adjudication should have been followed by a jury trial for damages.  But my requests for that jury trial were ignored or denied and a default was contrived and damages of over $30,000 were granted based on two--yes, you read that correctly: TWO--internet searches for Stutz law firm.  Those two searches might have been done by Stutz law firm itself, but they translated into $30,000 in "nominal" damages.

THE FUTURE

I've erased about four hundred posts from this blog today, and I'll do more erasing as soon as I can.  Many of the posts I erased contained only a tangential reference to Stutz law firm.  When I have time, I'll find those posts and erase the names of Stutz and/or its lawyers, and republish the post.

It's kind of a good feeling to take these names off my blog.  I feel free, light, unburdened.   I think I'm going to enjoy not thinking about the lawyers at Stutz.

Truth is an absolute defense to charge of defamation, says Christopher Juillet

Citizen Media Law Project has posted the EDF Ventures v. Ressi case, a defamation lawsuit regarding The Funded blog.

It appears that the lawsuit is in vain, since The Funded keeps no information about people who post on the site.





"The best rule for writers to follow is to avoid making posts if they can't back up their claims...Be right and be able to prove it because truth is an absolute defense."


Company files defamation lawsuit against anonymous Web poster
Posted by Tina Reed
The Ann Arbor News
August 21, 2008

After executives at an Ann Arbor venture capital firm discovered an anonymous, negative Internet posting about the company, they weren't just mad: They decided to sue.

In a court filing, EDF Ventures accused "John Doe" of defamation for implying in a comment posted on the Web that the people running the firm were dishonest. The comment was made on a California-based Web site called The Funded, which was created to allow entrepreneurs to rate investors anonymously...

Adeo Ressi, the Web site founder, said last week that he planned to cooperate with the subpoena and provide the records he has. But he said the information will likely be unhelpful because of the measures the site takes to make posters anonymous.

The Web site's policy tells visitors, who must be approved to sign up and comment, that all personal information is discarded after approval.

"It's the best thing that ever happened to The Funded," Ressi said. "This case will prove it is truly anonymous."...