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Court - rulings - procedures

Wednesday, June 11, 2008

9th circuit court of appeals chief judge Alex Kozinski caught with porn on his site

9th Circuit’s chief judge posted sexually explicit matter on his website

One of the highest-ranking federal judges in the United States, who is currently presiding over an obscenity trial in Los Angeles, has maintained his own publicly accessible website featuring sexually explicit photos and videos.

Alex Kozinski, chief judge of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, acknowledged in an interview with The Times that he had posted the materials, which included a photo of naked women on all fours painted to look like cows and a video of a half-dressed man cavorting with a sexually aroused farm animal. Some of the material was inappropriate, he conceded, although he defended other sexually explicit content as “funny.”

Kozinski, 57, said that he thought the site was for his private storage and that he was not aware the images could be seen by the public, although he also said he had shared some material on the site with friends. After the interview Tuesday evening, he blocked public access to the site.

...

Kozinski said he must have accidentally uploaded those images to his server while intending to upload something else. “I would not keep those files intentionally,” he said. The judge pointed out that he never used appeals court computers to maintain the site.

The sexually explicit material on Kozinski’s site earlier this week was extensive, including images of ... [read the article for details, I don’t need traffic from people looking for porn.]

Kozinski, who was named chief judge of the 9th Circuit last year, is considered a judicial conservative on most issues. He was appointed to the federal bench by then-President Ronald Reagan in 1985. He has a national reputation for a brilliant legal mind and has developed a reputation as a champion of the First Amendment right to freedom of speech and expression. Several year ago, for example, after learning that appeals court administrators had placed filters on computers that denied access to pornography and other materials, Kozinski led a successful effort to have the filters removed.

...

For the most part, I really don’t care what people do in the privacy of their home.  But it strikes me as odd that a federal judge would trade porn online or post pics at his site.

I think he lied when he said that he didn’t know the pics were there and that he must have accidentally uploaded them.

I suppose that Kozinski gave the name of the subdirectory to his friends and that he was not very careful about who he shared with or, quite likely, one of his friends shared with another friend who decided to go public when he realized who Kozinski is.

He didn’t do anything illegal, why lie about accidentally uploading the pics?

One sex scandal after the other, the ex NJ and NY governors, ex priest and infamous liberal talk show host Bernie Wards and now the 9th circuit chief justice.  I really don’t understand why they would risk their reputations and jobs, their lives as they know it. 

I remember Bernie Ward from San Francisco in the 90s and I didn’t care for his talk show.  It was a tough choice between him and Dr. Laura.  He seemed not very bright.  That he would be so stupid and send child porn to someone in a chat room ..., I don’t get it.  I suppose it’s the lack of blood in the brain.

I read the transcripts of Ward’s chats and also found them funny, but it wouldn’t occur to me to upload them for my friends to read.  You got to have a serious interest to make that effort and I doubt that many of my friends would be interested.  Maybe it’s a guy thing.  I just can’t relate.

With 3 cases in the 9th circuit court of appeals, I hope I didn’t piss anyone off. 

Wednesday, January 16, 2008

Supreme Court Blocks Suits by Defrauded Investors

Listen to the NPR podcast:

Supreme Court Blocks Suits by Defrauded Investors

Morning Edition, January 16, 2008 · The Supreme Court gives the business community a major victory. By a 5-3 vote, the justices block almost all efforts by investors to recover losses from secondary players in schemes to defraud stockholders. The ramifications involve suits like the one brought by Enron investors against banks that are accused of helping Enron conceal its perilous financial condition.

This one more reason to STOP paying your unsecured debts.

Monday, October 29, 2007

Nelson v. Arrow Financial:  Arrow appealed, then dismissed - settled?

I previously posted about this $100,000 jury verdict against collector Arrow Financial and thought I’d have a look at the docket and get some of the filings and orders.

Unfortunately, they do NOT file electronically in Southern California.

Equifax settled just before the trial and Arrow went to trial.  The jury awarded $100k.  Arrow requested a new trial and modification of the judgment.  The judge denied the new trial, but reduced the awarded $18k in statutory damages to the maximum $1,000.

Arrow then appealed, Nelson cross appealed, the case was selected for mediation and then dismissed.  I suppose they settled.

I downloaded the 4/5/07 Orders, the Arrow Financial motion for summary judgment, granted in part and denied in part, and the Order denying the Equifax msj, posted at CreditFactors. 

Since 2001, Laura Nelson battled collectors over the same fraudulent collection and even despite her previous lawsuit, the entirely fraudulent collection AGAIN showed up on Equifax. 

I find it especially interesting that Equifax stated that it wasn’t reporting the collection while in fact it WAS reporting it.

It’s a common problem that Equifax denies reporting accounts that are right on the attached report.  And that’s why I require my clients to send me the ENTIRE CRA mailings—you can’t just look at the investigation summary and expect it to be accurate.

EQUIFAX IS SO SCREWED UP!

From the 4/5/07 Order:

According to the evidence, Nelson notified Equifax of the disputed Account in September 2005, but Equifax failed to send notice to Arrow of the dispute.

Lately, Equifax FAILS to forward disputes to creditors and collectors for about 50% of my clients’ disputes.  One of my clients had 5 disputes and all 5 were “reviewed” or otherwise ignored by Equifax and NOT forwarded to the creditors/collectors.  My client disputed collections that were re-aged and should be deleted.  Equifax “reviewed” and did NOT delete.

How could EQUIFAX possibly determine when the accounts first became permanently delinquent without contacting the data furnisher?

They can’t.  Especially because the original creditors already deleted, as they CORRECTLY aged the accounts.

It is SO frustrating.

Tuesday, June 12, 2007

Debt collection litigation NOT exempt from FDCPA—Sayyed v. Wolpoff & Abramson

I just read the 4th circuit court of appeal 5/9/07 Opinion:

Sayyed v. Wolpoff & Abramson, No. 06-1458 (4th Cir.)

Many thanks to Ernest Paul Francis, Arlington, Virginia, attorney for Sayyed.

It’s a great decision, but don’t get too excited:

“… On remand, W&A may of course (1) contend that there were no statutory violations, or (2) avail itself of the § 1692k(c) defense by showing by a preponderance of the evidence that any violations were not intentional and “resulted from a bona fide error notwithstanding the maintenance of procedures reasonably adapted to avoid any such error.” 15 U.S.C. § 1692k(c). W&A’s reliance on its client may well be relevant to that inquiry. But the district court erred in dismissing Sayyed’s claims outright on the basis of this concern. ...”

If an attorney should not be held liable for relying in pleadings on the client’s affidavit, where does it leave the debtor?  What are the debtor’s remedies for being sued for an amount higher than the actual debt?

Discover is NOT subject to the FDCPA as it is the original creditor and exempt.

So, I conclude that the attorney DOES need to be liable.

Wolpoff & Abramson made false statements in the pleadings based on the information provided by Discover.  If the court rules in favor of Sayyed, W&A has a claim against Discover.  Presumably, W&A has an agreement with Discover requiring it to provide accurate information and holding Discover liable.

If the court does NOT hold W & A liable due to false information furnished by Discover, suing debtors for inflated amounts is effectively legalized and the FDCPA is preempted.

Am I missing something?

Sunday, June 10, 2007

Appeal: The Equifax response—Westlaw Dennis v. BEH-1

I finally scanned the Equifax filings.

They included the Westlaw printout for Dennis v. BEH-1,—F.3d ----, 2007 WL 1309560 (C.A.9 (Cal.))

This is a HORRIBLE decision by the 9th circuit court of appeals.

Dennis had disputed a judgment that had been entered in error and after he disputed it, Experian received the stipulation stating that no judgment would be entered.  As usually, the malicious morons at Experian refused to delete it DESPITE having the document in support of the consumer’s dispute.

According to this ruling, Dennis was supposed to have the court record corrected, he was supposed to know how to do this or have the cash for an attorney to do it.

And Experian can now LEGALLY ignore documentation substantiating consumer disputes and it can continue to ruin lives, cause divorces, illness and deaths.  LEGALLY!

This is truly horrible for EVERY one of the 200,000,000+ consumers with credit reports in America.  Just today I received an email from a reader who after MANY disputes was unable to get charge-offs and collections deleted with all three CRAs.  It’s ID theft or mixed files.  She was unable to find an attorney.  They once had perfect credit, now they get declined for auto and mortgage loans.

IT COULD HAPPEN TO YOU!

I don’t know how Dennis v. BEH-1 applies to my disputes of the missing Capital One credit limits or my other claims against Equifax, I haven’t been able to get myself to read the response.  It is just too aggravating.  After 4 years in federal court, still not having the limits reported and reading about the Dennis ruling, well, what can I say that won’t put me in jail?

Americans didn’t become independent because they sued the Queen,
Hitler wasn’t stopped by a court order
and the slaves weren’t freed because they voted for freedom.

Wake up America!

Time is running out. 

As these bizarre rulings come in, the CRAs will expand their already so successful efforts to artificially lower credit scores for many millions of consumers.

NOW is the time to ask Congress to step in.

Apparently the FCRA has to be amended to read that when a CRA has documentation supporting the consumer’s dispute, they have to correct or delete as per the consumer’s dispute.

It seems like a no brainer, but except for dissenting judge Kozinski, the majority did not feel that way.

NEWSFLASH:

Once the credit bureaus destroyed you financially and emotionally, you’ll be busy trying to raise the cash to feed yourself, getting enough gas in your car to make it to work and keeping from blowing your brains out.

If the American people who are capable and have the resources to make an effort to stop this madness do nothing, they get what they deserve.

I will be adding this issue to CreditLegislation and I’ll try to send it to a few legislators and presidential candidates.