That is what Dr. Dixon has been telling folks he’ll do with LDV and the taxpayers to discourage his silent dissenters and embolden his resurgent supporters. Big corporations have done that for years to wear out critics. So it was with some trepidation that I opened a yellow envelope from the Clerk of the State Appellate Court Friday night when I noticed it sticking out of the mail box as my wife and I were heading off to dine out. I must say my wife was a bit put out that I was delaying us by opening it up. It was one more intrusion of the LDV fight into a weekend or evenings which I’ve tried to keep as family time.
Consequently, I didn’t read the darned thing very carefully. It told me that a transcript of Sixth District hearings had not been provided to the Appellate Court. There was tough talk about sanctions or dismissing the case. The letter was sent to all five plaintiffs who are still looking for a new attorney. Of course, this is the sort of administrative detail a bunch of novices would miss. I hastily tossed the letter aside and made up my mind that it was a detail I could deal with on Monday.
Just because we have no attorney hasn’t stopped the legal work. The day before I’d been sent a fat package by the Appellant’s attorneys which laid out their case to the Appeals court appealing Judge Hylden’s jurisdiction. I’d been too busy working on a more polished book cover for my tell-all book about the conning of Duluth.
The Tan Man was over both Friday and Saturday night and the little Dickens didn’t give us the best night’s sleep. Last night Claudia and I both crashed before the evening news which guaranteed I’d wake up early this morning. I woke during a dream about attorneys drowning me with a huge legal brief. It was dark outside being the eve of the fall equinox. I got out of bed fed the cats and retrieved the letter and the Appeals brief that I had been sent as my own “pro se” attorney.
To my relief the letter was not about my failure to provide a transcript. It was sent to me per legal courtesy by the Court Clerk so I would know that the School District’s attorneys had failed to provide the Appeals Court with the required transcripts. Anyone can make a mistake and I’m just delighted that this time it wasn’t mine.
Then I began wading through the brief. Its an inch thick but only 25 pages of it contain legal arguments. The rest is mostly previously submitted affidavits and such. I only got through five pages of it which mostly amounted to a faulty and prejudiced history of events leading up to the initial court hearings. It was full of it. Just full of it. Among its misrepresentations I found:
Let Duluth Vote was described as an organization dedicated to stopping the long range plan not an organization dedicated to winning back the voters right to vote on it.
Gary Glass was the ringleader of the five plaintiffs.
The School District was innocently unaware of any attempt on our part to organize a legal challenge to their vote theft.
It was a colossal crock.
Now, Now, Harry. Ease up. You haven’t read the last twenty pages where the legal stuff kicks in and writs of certiorari are thrown around like Max Sennett pies. It could get very murky again. OK OK. I’m fine now.
As I read it I couldn’t help thinking that the Appeals Court may not buy the District’s arguments. A more accurate telling of the LDV side of things might be enough to scuttle the defense all by itself. After-all, our initial concern was the loss of the right to vote. That was the legal theory we hoped to develop. I’ll bet the Appeals Court would find that somewhat mitigating all by itself even though it is absolutely irrelevant to the issue of whether the sweetheart contract was unlawful.
I also began thinking that it might be our turn to appeal one of Judge Hylden’s orders – the removal of our attorney Craig Hunter. After all, Craig was only removed for appearance’s sake. The Judge who removed him said he saw no evidence that Hunter had done anything wrong or gotten communications that he shouldn’t have been privy to. That was no surprise to me. I found several folks after Craig was removed who commented that Mr. Hunter was “Mr. Ethics.”
All the email I provided to the Defense I provided because Hunter advised me to release it even though he didn’t think the District had any right to it. He simply said my holding it back would likely result in a new round of objections about our failure to cooperate. He should have been more concerned as it turned out. It has been flailed about (a few tiny samples of it) to suggest an alternative, Bizarro World history of the lead up to our legal challenge.
Conveniently left unpublicized are hundreds of emails detailing likely misdeeds by the School Board, JCI and the School Administration. Indeed, I’ve suspected that the attorneys for the District have been eager to suppress all those emails. When a reporter recently went to the District Court to plumb the files she was surprised to discover that my CD of the email wasn’t in the files.
I didn’t find it all that surprising. It was much more useful to leak half a dozen snippets of my email rather than a exculpating boatload of it. In fact, I told Gary Glass prior to releasing it to the School District that if I had my druthers I’d put the whole lot of it on the Internet for anyone to read. Gary, who knew his email was what they District really prized, wasn’t all that thrilled with my suggestion so I didn’t do it. But that was then.
I promised weeks ago to begin releasing some of the more interesting email but I just haven’t had time. Maybe I should start looking for that time.
Recently I’ve gotten a bit more communicative on the ole blog here and perhaps coincidentally the negotiations from the other side on a dismissal seem to have found new life. Hmmmmmmm.
