Greer v. Moon, No. 20-cv-00647 (D. Utah Sep. 16, 2020)

[AnOminous]

The Magistrate Judge presumably can't make the final decision on those numbers (which he will have to do since we know Greer and Hardin won't have come to any agreement) until the objection is ruled on.

An objection doesn't amount to a stay, unless a stay is explicitly granted, so the magistrate can continue. Presumably, Hardin is still under the obligation to submit the numbers on the ordered date. The magistrate may choose to wait, though.

After all, if it's granted, any time spent analyzing Hardin's numbers will have been wasted.

The court has given him all the lifeline and assistance they can, but fucking up in discovery is big boy real bad.

I predicted this well before Russ even started misbehaving specifically in discovery. These aren't some namby-pamby white collar permissive sanctions, they're federal pound me in the ass sanctions.

 

[Post Reply]

Russ is so stupid as to think that a “modified protective order” is not only a thing, but something he should ask for, and that it might somehow be retroactive.

He’s stupid enough to think he can dodge sanctions by threatening Hardin personally.

"If you don't sanction me again, I'll hold off getting a protective order against you for getting sanctions against me the first time!" Truly a deal Hardin can't refuse.

 

[a hapless toad]

Can Greer be sanctioned for leaving out several cases (Farrah Abraham, when he tried to sue Utah over his brothel license, the interventions into Guinasso's suits, and when he stalked Erica) when he provided his litigation history to Hardin?

 

[reptile baht spaniard rid]

Truly a deal Hardin can't refuse.

That’s a whole separate bag of jokes. Greer thinks he can negotiate with Hardin against Null. He really doesn’t get the rules of the game.

 

[Harvey Danger]

My understanding is that Hardin was threatening to ask for more sanctions over Steve Taylor and that's what Russ was offering to delay or not send his own sanctions request for

Reading Greer's responding email, it sounds like Hardin is asking for sanctions over all the witness issues, including Steve. The retransfer motion was just one aspect of this that Greer was responding to specifically. There's probably a line in the sanctions motion that says "nobody knows who Steve is" and Greer felt compelled to just explain himself.

That explanation was so terrible that Hardin then filed the motion for adverse inference first. Everyone finding out Steve's dead was quite the distraction from the other things Hardin will likely be alleging, assuming Russ doesn't retract things within another 14 days. I'm guessing nothing Russ filed in his insane Response addressed those topics either, even though he'll copy-paste it into a future Response eventually.

 

[RodgerDodger]

Can Greer be sanctioned for leaving out several cases (Farrah Abraham, when he tried to sue Utah over his brothel license, the interventions into Guinasso's suits, and when he stalked Erica) when he provided his litigation history to Hardin?

Yes. Considering the were not discovered during the normal back and forth of discovery. But only came to light after deadlines had long since past.

Will he be? No. Although the most recent meddling in the Guinasso lawsuit will unquestionably piss the Judge off. Russ was filing all that nonsense when he was supposed to be working on his own discovery deadlines, for his case in front of THIS Judge.

 

[reptile baht spaniard rid]

will unquestionably piss the Judge off

Remember that you can piss a Judge off in at least three ways.

1. As judge of your case, officially. This is the one where he can most easily slap you around (contempt of court, etc). This is things like ignoring a court order.
2. As judge of your case, unofficially. This is doing things he cannot officially take notice of (or it can be harder to), but he still notices. He will be quiet, and remember.
3. As judge, personally. This is the normal human reaction to someone being a fuckwit; judges work hard to avoid this and have particular methods to calm it down (sending clients/jury out of the room and yelling at the lawyers is a great one when available). It's the hardest for the judge to react to, but they still remember.

 

[Swole McPole]

If you file a facially meritorious lawsuit

I see what you did there.

 

[Debbie Macomber]

Notice Greer's original threat was that Hardin filing for sanctions over Steve Taylor would only hasten his own motion for sanctions, which people pointed out was basically offering "Don't file yours and I'll still file mine later" but more recently Russ graciously offered to NOT file his motion for sanctions at all if Hardin didn't do his.

I've said it before that Russ hasn't put himself in a good negotiating position because Hardin sees every time Russell cries to the court "Please show mercy! I'm just a poor widdle pro se who doesn't know anything about the law! I'm STUPID STUPID STUPID!!!!" and then he turns around and expects to play hardball with Hardin like "Maybe I'll file sanctions against YOU! Getting scared buddy boy?"

 

[Grotesque Bushes]

I think Russell is making a mistake not calling Steve as witness. He should do it, cite the Cadaver Synod as precedent and have the dude exhumed and deposed.

 

[S.C.U.D.]

What?? We do know, because he quite literally has attached various emails from potential trolls as exhibits in his filings, the most recent one being the one informing him that he forgot to mark his emails to Hardin as confidential.

If you read the post I was quoting and my own post, I am clearly not talking about the emails in general but rather the specific hypothetical email about Steve being dead. See the post I quoted (emphasis mine):

Now I’m suddenly wondering if some idiot troll, not necessarily one of us, has been emailing him shit like “Hey dum dum, Steve is DEAD LOL”

If someone was emailing him, we'd know. Russ wouldn't shut up about it in filings like he does every time someone, be they a real troll or Russ himself pretending, emails him.

Again, emphasis mine. I already knew about the emails in general. I was specifically, clearly stating that if someone had emailed him about Steve being dead, we would know as Russ would have mentioned it in a filing. He didn't, which means that likely has not happened.

 

[jerkstore]

russell’s entire personality is two-pronged: when he was in the mormon community, as @Nippless_Woman explained when she was on cuckeita’s stream as russell’s former classmate, he was basically viewed as “god’s special idiot” who could do no wrong. because of his disability, he was treated as specially “blessed.” this helped create him into a person who expects “minimum effort, maximum result.” his experiences at strips clubs and brothels have turned his human experiences into purely transactional ones, “i give you money (or do something specific), i get a result.” that’s why he’s STILL to this day asking instathots for their venmo. that’s why in spite of losing every court case, he continues to weaponize the court system because he’s “the greatest paralegal ever” until he’s “just a poor poor pro se litigant with a disability being bullied.” he was raised that he could do no wrong, and when he did wrong it was only because of his disability, and only found sex (or “intimacy,” as he says) through transaction. his brain is so irreparably broken.

edit to add: i absolutely do not think he would have denounced his mormonism if it weren’t for their views on sex.

 

[mindlessobserver]

russell’s entire personality is two-pronged: when he was in the mormon community, as @Nippless_Woman explained when she was on cuckeita’s stream as russell’s former classmate, he was basically viewed as “god’s special idiot” who could do no wrong. because of his disability, he was treated as specially “blessed.” this helped create him into a person who expects “minimum effort, maximum result.” his experiences at strips clubs and brothels have turned his human experiences into purely transactional ones, “i give you money (or do something specific), i get a result.” that’s why he’s STILL to this day asking instathots for their venmo. that’s why in spite of losing every court case, he continues to weaponize the court system because he’s “the greatest paralegal ever” until he’s “just a poor poor pro se litigant with a disability being bullied.” he was raised that he could do no wrong, and when he did wrong it was only because of his disability, and only found sex (or “intimacy,” as he says) through transaction. his brain is so irreparably broken.

Kiwifarms has been very instructive in how to parent. All the worst cows are horrendously enabled by their parents or orbiters. And all without question were never told NO and/or given appropriate punishment for deviant behavior.

Spare the rod, spoil the monkey.

 

[AnOminous]

I've said it before that Russ hasn't put himself in a good negotiating position because Hardin sees every time Russell cries to the court "Please show mercy! I'm just a poor widdle pro se who doesn't know anything about the law! I'm STUPID STUPID STUPID!!!!" and then he turns around and expects to play hardball with Hardin like "Maybe I'll file sanctions against YOU! Getting scared buddy boy?"

He absolutely misjudged his position, because Hardin already HAS sanctions granted, unless the judge actually grants the objection (a possibility that is incredibly minute). It's just a matter of how much.

Russtard's blustering does him no good.

 

[Accept Only Substitutes]

Russtard's blustering does him no good.

This is perhaps the subtitle of his whole life. But Charlie Brown and the football he'll never learn this lesson.

 

[Friend of Dorothy Parker]

Kiwifarms has been very instructive in how to parent. All the worst cows are horrendously enabled by their parents or orbiters. And all without question were never told NO and/or given appropriate punishment for deviant behavior.

Spare the rod, spoil the monkey.

Ugh, man, that last line^ is a hard one to read as the first comment I see, clicking in here and thinking I'm back on safer ground after after spending the last 20 minutes or so in the baby monkey thread.

 

[Swole McPole]

I've said it before that Russ hasn't put himself in a good negotiating position because Hardin sees every time Russell cries to the court "Please show mercy! I'm just a poor widdle pro se who doesn't know anything about the law! I'm STUPID STUPID STUPID!!!!"

I'm completely baffled as to how and why the courts keep on falling for this bullshit. Greer might be representing himself pro se, but the man can't sign his fucking name without also mentioning that he's a qualified paralegal. He's not somebody who was taken on as a general office clerk or secretary and then filled in as a paralegal when nobody with training was available. He did five years of training AND he was hired and worked in that role professionally.

If you can get your arse through the training and into a position, even though you might not be able to grasp the finer points of abstract and obscure legal argument, at the very fucking least, you should know how to be able to look up, read and follow the rules of civil procedure. It's one thing to cut him some slack for being a mong, but he's taking the fucking piss and the judges are just lapping it up.

Presumably, at some point Hardin will bring all this to the courts attention, and I've no doubt he's keeping his powder dry to deploy when it'll have most impact. Even so, it's very frustrating to watch.

 

[Justice Tony]

There are a number of torts, statutes, rules and doctrines relevant to Greer's conduct.

I'm sorry I don't know how it slipped my mind to respond to this message.

The first is malicious prosecution (not to be confused with the civil tort for malicious prosecution of a criminal action). This would involve intentionally filing a completely nonmeritorious lawsuit while knowing it to be so. Now, this is pretty much a nonstarter considering the opinion, however bad, of the Tenth Circuit, since that's the law of the case now. On top of that, there actually was copyright infringement by some party.

Yeah I don't know why the fuck they held that way. Fuck the 10th circuit, all my homies hate the 10th circuit.

The next, more apropos, is abuse of process. This involves the prosecution of a legal action which, while facially valid, is pursued for an improper collateral purpose. For instance, you know a witness on the other side has a trial date in California, so you serve them with a deposition subpoena for the same day in New York deliberately to force them to oppose it or else fail to appear in one of the cases.

So, for instance, the purpose of intellectual property law is to compensate IP owners for infringement and to penalize infringers to deter infringement. It is not to bankrupt the other side. Saying this is, at least in theory, a possible admission of abuse of process. A lawyer might face some minor discipline for doing this, but I think a pro se wouldn't, because the lawyer would be presumed to know this was an abuse of process. By itself, I don't think this would hold up even against a lawyer, though, at least taken in isolation.

Right I agree but let me ask you this: if I'm suing someone and I get drunk and say something to that affect, will the court throw out the case? No, because I said that when I was drunk and out of the courthouse. It's just hearsay and I don't think it has standing. Granted, this is much more serious but still. The point still stands.

Then we have FRCP's Rule 11, for frivolous litigation. Again, I think this is a nonstarter at least for the initial filing. Some of the ongoing shenanigans may qualify. At least at present, I'm not sure that would really be a good approach.

Now, what I think might be applicable are sanctions under 28 U.S.C. § 1927 (vexatious litigation).

"Any attorney or other person admitted to conduct cases in any court of the United States or any Territory thereof who so multiplies the proceedings in any case unreasonably and vexatiously may be required by the court to satisfy personally the excess costs, expenses, and attorneys' fees reasonably incurred because of such conduct."

Vexatious litigation does not require the underlying lawsuit to be frivolous, merely that the attorney (or pro se litigant in this case) has behaved unreasonably and vexatiously, which Russ has continually done for years.

I definitely think that vexatious litigation is promising but I'd have to see how courts apply it.

And then, finally, we have the actual sanctions issue related to discovery, and the award of this is clear-cut, effectively automatic (and I went into that earlier in this post).

So, these are some of the more pertinent theories related to what Russ has done (possibly including others like fraud on the court). Hardin probably will not pursue these against the current behavior since it's already covered under the discovery shenanigans sanctions which Russtard does not seem to understand have already been imposed, and that it's just a matter of how much he gets sanctioned, not whether it happens.

Ngl I haven't really caught myself up on the sanctions so I won't comment on that but I really enjoyed this.

 

[Harvey Danger]

Steve getting a shoutout on today's MATI.

Josh doesn't get half the details right, but you know this segment was in there for the great stinger "Steve was FUCKING DEAD".

 

[Prokhor Zakharov]

c.) Every woman you do have sex with will loathe herself for having stooped so low as to have sex with you.

As was once famously said, and certainly applies to Rusty, "I perform purification rituals on my body after we have sex. I find it cleanses the immeasurable sadness of having lain with a wretch."

He’s stupid enough to think he can dodge sanctions by threatening Hardin personally.

Which, in and of itself, is sanctionable under the rules of procedure, isn't it? I don't think one is allowed to threaten opposing council.