Oddities from Docketland
posted by Dave Hoffman
I’m hip deep in my latest docketology project, which, on my end, involves organizing lots of RAs who read many dockets and code them. Apart from the $10/hr wage, and the occasional lunch, the only thing my RA team gets in return for spending too much time on this tedious task is the chance to see a few small nuggets of random nuttiness emerging from the glorious mess that is our litigation system. Take, for example, this claim:
“TRAVEL BARGAINS USA is reasonably assumed to have a Corporate Charter or otherwise a Mission Statement which does not include as part of its ordinary Charter the act of threatening such other business entities as Plaintiff A VACATION 4 YOU, by, for example, stating that You’re up shits creek because if you do not honor the certificates, or refund our money in full on the distributorship, we WILL put you out of business. It will only take a few complaints from people. You started this war, and now you have to deal with ME! “
Of course, such nutbar pleading rarely survives judicial scrutiny. It’s thus a surprise to see one particular set of phrases repeated in over a dozen totally distinct, veil piercing cases:
“Any character assassination will activate Instrumentality Rule and pierce the corporate veil of the United States and all agencies,”and
“All testimony will be without immunity – piercing the corporate veil and Instrumentality Rule.”
My RAs and I have tracked this language, which sometimes appears in a counterclaim and sometimes in the complaint, to The Court Watcher’s document page, which lists a “counter-claim“. That document, in turn, appears to suggest that filers ought to check to see if the other side has violated any particular provisions of the declaration of independance as a way to frame their pleading. I particularly like the following form paragraph:
“Was there a treaty or alliance or letter of Marque and reprisal imposed against you by the public servant? __ Yes __ No Explain”
A letter of marque? Avast mateys!
July 7, 2008 at 1:08 pm
Posted in: Civil Procedure, Law School (Scholarship), Sociology of Law
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Responses (1)
A.J. Sutter - July 8, 2008 at 11:57 am
BTW Congress is authorized to issue letters of marque and reprisal under the US Constition (Article I, Section 8, paragraph 11). Whence the question, I suppose. And at least one (former? current but suspended?) Presidential candidate thought Congress should have immediately done so in the days after 9/11, to fight Osama bin Laden: see http://www.house.gov/paul/press/press2001/pr101101.htm
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