"THE SYSTEM WORKS!" SAYS A LAWYER
This message received by JAIL 2/16/2000 from: Attorney Frederick Graves, JD, and is being forwarded to you for your entertainment of the naivete of a lawyer. Unfortunately, this thinking is all TOO prevalent among the ignorant masses.
From: Frederick Graves
Dear Friends of Public Legal Education:
We are very gratified and appreciate the recent increased interest in our work. We want to thank each of you for taking a new look at your problems, getting your vision off the negative side and putting your faith in what we can accomplish by working TOGETHER to teach our children their heritage of law while encouraging everyone young and old alike to learn the principles of justice and the rules of our American legal heritage.
I have a great deal of work to do today and cannot write a long letter for you, but I thought I'd give a good report of a successful hearing yesterday in which I was able to get a case against my client dismissed ... and by explaining this perhaps in some small way encourage more of you to believe in the goodness of our present system instead of fearing some collective conspiracy is hiding behind the bench or pledging allegiance to the golden fringe on a flag. The system works!
My client, the defendant, is a corporation. The plaintiff is a contractor who hired my client to do a $50,000 flooring job at the local junior college. Other sub-contractors working at the contractor's direction interfered with my client's ability to get the job done. For example, my client was supposed to lay tile in several rooms that were still occupied by drywall hangers on scaffolding that got in the way. The contractor fired my client and hired someone else to complete the job ... expecting my client to pay for the work of the other sub-contractor.
The complaint listed plaintiff by name suing my client in its corporate name, but the contract attached to the complaint nowhere mentioned my client by name. It was signed by various individuals, but my corporate client's name was nowhere to be found! The contract could not be binding on a corporation it failed to name!
I moved the court to dismiss the complaint for failure to state a cause of action against my client. ....
We knew we were in the local circuit court and that the judge is bound by the Florida Rules of Court. There was no evil conspiracy of world bankers. No black UN piloted helicopters hovered overhead. No armored ATF vehicles assembled in the parking lot outside to demonstrate the persuasion of their fire power if I refused to submit to globalist policies.
(I'm trying to introduce a bit of humor here. Have mercy on me for my poor attempt, but perhaps it's time we began to take ourselves a little less seriously in our tiresome complaints that the sky is falling. The sky is NOT falling.)
The judge was very patient and politely attentive as I quoted Rule 1.130, explained what the rule requires, and cited several cases from our 4th District Court of Appeal (that sits in supervision of our circuit judges) to demonstrate that an error in his ruling yesterday would result in reversal on appeal a few weeks later. I concluded my arguments and once more moved the court to dismiss the other side's complaint against my client.
When I finished having my say, the young lawyer for the other side (who to this old man seemed to be about 12 years old) began arguing much like my ex-wife used to do ... from an emotional stance instead of citing the law. He had no notes. He brought no cases to cite. He didn't even refer to the Rules of Court. He simply urged the court to see how difficult it would be for him to obtain a contract specifically naming my client and actually expected (at least I assume he expected) that the court would have mercy on him or somehow bend the rules because he is a member of one of the more prestigious firms in our Circuit.
This is a good judge!
He ruled in my favor, of course.
He ruled according to the law ... as nearly all good judges do when the prevailing litigant comes to court properly prepared!
As I've tried to teach you for years, the judge is there to rule upon the law. If we cite the law and accurately present the facts as they are, the judge is not permitted to go outside the law. If he or she goes outside the law, we have appeals courts (for those smart enough to follow Jurisdictionary teachings and make a record of the facts and law so there is something in the record to send up to the appellate court if it becomes necessary). Judges may intimidate many of you, but they are men and women just like you. They have a job to do. Their job is to weigh what is presented to them and make a ruling based on the law and the facts.
Some of you are losing because your pleadings are ridiculously inept! Some of you are losing because, like the young man yesterday morning, you think by arguing "what's right" in your own eyes without properly presenting the facts according to the rules of evidence and citing to the applicable law that you "should" win, well, er, uhh, gosh, oh gee ... just because you tell the court you "should" win. Get a grip!
It doesn't work like that.
It SHOULDN'T work like that.
None of you should even WANT it to work like that.
The rule of law should control.
The principles of due process should be upheld.
All of you should be fighting for these things and supporting our work at Jurisdictionary Foundation to teach these truths to as many people as possible just as quickly as possible!
Some of you are angry at judges.
Some of you have even allowed yourselves to be convinced by men and women selling tapes and workbooks that there is some kind of evil conspiracy signed in blood between us lawyers and the judges of our courts. Those of you who think this are stupid. Those of you who tell this to others should be locked in a pillory on the courthouse lawn so children can come tickle your noses with feathers and mock you for refusing to stand up for what's right and help us keep our nation free!
Some of you think you can solve our country's woes by taking judges off the bench, and I applaud you for going after the few who really need to be defrocked, but getting rid of a few corrupt judges isn't going to solve our major problem.
Ignorance is your enemy ... not people.
The answer is to LEARN how to put your cases before the court in a cogent manner that presents the facts and effectively cites the relevant law as it is, moving the court to do its job, to rule on the law and facts. Stop listening to the paranoia that calls itself patriotism and LEARN how to use the system to make our nation better ... for you and for your children.
Stop finding fault with what you hardly understand and LEARN how to celebrate the wonderful powers that are yours by virtue of our legal system to get what's right by BEING right!
The court considered our arguments -- mine based on cited law and rules that bind the court and the other young fellow's presented as an impassioned plea for the court to go outside the rules for his convenience -- and the judge wisely ruled the case must be dismissed for failure to state a cause of action.
The system works!
YOUR system works!
Learn about it.
Teach others about it.