kanBARoo Court. 34th Installment. disHONNest Judge

Judge Honn's awaited disbarment recommendation arrived Monday, relieving me of the chore of compelling the State Bar Court’s issuing this precondition to California Supreme Court review. The 24-page recommendation was a cut-and-paste job from fragments our prosecutrix composed. In response, I extend a warm invitation to both the prosecutrix and the Good Judge to consult my other blog, Disputed Issues, where they can extract advice about finding a much needed legal ghostwriter.

Judges are less intellectually honest than most of us might prefer to believe. Judicial tactics in a close case, for example, include omitting important facts supporting the other side. (See for example, Odom v. South Carolina Department of Corrections (4th Cir. Dissent 2003) 349 F.3d 756 ["Finally, in addition to its selective recitation of facts and mischaracterization, the majority omits entirely to recite perhaps the most critical facts from Odom's allegations that ultimately prove the reasonableness of the actions taken by all of the defendants, and Taylor in particular."])That judges are not possessed of greater intellectual honesty disappoints, but while omitting discordant facts in court opinions isn't exceptional, intentionally misstating a party's position is. A court may misunderstand a legal theory, and as I discuss in my other blog, incomprehension is a frequent unwanted result of common litigation tactics. (See for example, "Emotionalization.") The magnitude and direction of the misrepresentation, when compared to the information available and the depth of review claimed, proves intentional deception outside judicial norms. Judge Honn's comparable performance in the Richard Fine case also supports this criticism of the court's integrity. There, the court failed to present Fine's contentions, despite Fine's unmistakeable clarity. In the Richard Fine series (see 30th Installment to 30C Installment), I summarized:

Judge Honn's 72-page opinion differs from similar documents in other courts by the absence of respondent Fine's legal and factual contentions. Judge Honn presents the findings in full comprehensiveness, dwelling on the smallest details of what the court claims transpired, while he provides scant indication of the issues and none of Fine's contentions. The omissions are giveaway that justice is not being done. (30th Installment. The Richard Fine Matter and the Moral Turpitude Travesty.)

In Judge Honn's Fine recommendation, the court held it had no duty to respond to Fine's contentions, an evasion that still doesn't explain the distortions in the court's opinions. The court misleads about my position by misstating explanations I provided to defrauded persons and the court, as when Judge Honn states:

Instead, in his response to attorney Kim, he [respondent] disavowed any knowledge of Yoo's case, claimed that he was not her attorney, never had been her attorney and owed her no duty, and blamed his office staff for the misconduct. Respondent claimed, further, that he had recently fired Kim and staff upon discovery they had signed medical liens without his permission." (Judge Honn, Decision, p. 5.)

By out-of-context paraphrase, Judge Honn dissembles my disavowal of duty to supervise staff. Rather, I contended consistently to defrauded persons and to the court, a small subset of the public served at my office comprised defrauded persons distinct from clients, with whom I had an attorney-client relationship. Staff handled defrauded persons' cases conspiratorially, including communicating about those cases only in Korean. As I wrote on penalty of perjury in my original motion to dismiss the Notice of Disciplinary Charges:

Kim, Shin, and colleagues plotted undetected by respondent by using their native language for office communication. Respondent—relying on his clients to report any complaints, problems, or anomalies—thought the absence of client complaints verified the operation’s correctitude and did not entertain the possibility that each and every employee would cooperate in keeping Kim’s operation secret. Kim had only recently hired most of the staff, whom Kim and respondent instructed on respondent’s ultimate authority. When respondent finally received a complaint from Scott Meyers, Esq., despite the fraudulent and extortionate character of Meyers’s demands, respondent immediately investigated. Finding he could not rely on his staff, respondent promptly closed his office. (17th Installment, Original Motion to Dismiss.)