kanBARoo Court. 14th Installment. Turning Point.

The California State Bar's Enforcement Division, Hearing Department, and Review Department share a common building, undermining any contemplated adversarial quality in their relations. The Enforcement Division and the Hearing Department reside on adjacent floors; the Hearing Department and the Review Department are on the same floor and share their clerical office. That office was the place where Deputy Trial Counsel Melanie J. Lawrence perpetrated a fraud against me and the court to try to defeat my petition for review. First, I'll describe what I know Ms. Lawrence did and why it is a serious wrong. Then, I'll set out how I know this account is factual and how I can prove it.

Ms. Lawrence meddled with the clerk's reception of my petition for review of my motion to dismiss and interfered with its filing. Specifically, she advised the clerk to reject my filing based on a supposed lack of a proof of service. Then, she created the appearance of deficiency by substituting her unsigned proof of service for the clerk's signed one to engineer a filing delay. Ms. Lawrence falsified a court document because she knows my legal position is correct, and she fears the review department will agree.

Ms. Lawrence committed two grades of moral turpitude. To distinguish them helps in perceiving just how despicable is Ms. Lawrence's conduct. In discussing the matter with the clerk, Ms. Lawrence breached a rule of legal ethics prohibiting ex parte communication. Counsel should funnel argument designed to persuade the court through authorized channels to avoid unfair influence and decisions taken without hearing both sides. Ex parte communication was the subject of the fifth installment, where I claimed these proscribed interactions must be prevalent but immensely hard to prove. State Bar respondents have alleged that ex parte communications violated their due-process rights, but without denying that ex parte communications pose a due-process issue, the courts have been unpersuaded of the ethical infractions.

Ex parte communication potentially denies a respondent due process but is far exceeded in its vileness by the second grade of moral turpitude. Ms. Lawrence colluded with or manipulated the clerk to dispose of the actual signed proof of service and to represent her own copy as the one I tried to file. This is frankly criminal conduct, and my being subjected to it could lead to a "dismissal in the interest of justice." This escalation might convince the Hearing Department, on the other hand, to avoid immediate embarrassment before the Review Department by entering the default Lawrence seeks. The fraud and my response to it in several motions and oppositions should prove a crisis point in the case, where the court either withdraws all confidence from the prosecutrix or closes ranks with her.

How did this prosecutrix become first proven ex parte communicator among the Office of the Chief Trial Counsel's minions? The proof itself is simple. I know I sent out only a single unexecuted proof of service, and that was the proof of service to Ms. Lawrence. I sent the court signed proofs of service but served the opposing party an unsigned one. This is my routine practice, according with law and logic better than the common practice of signing them all.

Many lawyers are unaware of this fine and ordinarily useless point of procedure, and I earlier surmised that Ms. Lawrence is among them. They think you need to sign all of the proofs, and finding hers unsigned, Ms. Lawrence ran for joy to her friend in the clerk's office. She handed the clerk the document and said it must be rejected for want of signature. Lawrence emphasized the rejection should be sent out that day, as the clerk mailed the rejection the day Lawrence received her service copy. The clerk accepted Lawrence's document as identical to the documents filed, packed them off to me, and disposed of the others.

If I am wrong, the prosecutrix can easily so prove by producing her unsigned copy of the proof of service. If her copy is not the one that the clerk returned, then she will have retained it as her file copy. Having committed this deceit, she will instead produce a duplicate copy of the document the clerk returned, distinguishable because, though unsigned, the proof is hand-dated.

Best to understand this blog:
· Consider reading installments 1-7 in succession;
· Then, follow your interests.