Maybe at some point I will do a thorough dissection of Smelly's arguments, but I just want to hit on one thing that's been bugging me and I did like five minutes of research and since she shouldn't be filing any more on the issue, pointing this out here won't help her.
Smelly loves a quote she cites to a case called
Wade v. Alamanace C'nty Dept. of Soc. Servs. Wade is a case out of North Carolina decided this summer brought by some Smelly-like lolcow suing a bunch of county agencies for the termination of her parental rights. It doesn't appear to be collected in Federal Supplement (Third), but you can read the order here:
https://casetext.com/case/wade-v-alamance-cnty-dept-of-soc-servs-1
Marsha Wade, just like Smelly, fucked up service. The District Court dismisses her insane claims for various reasons relating to personal and subject matter jurisdiction. Wade lost, just like Smelly will lose.
What Smelly keeps quoting from
Wade is this:
"When there is actual notice, every technical violation of the rule or failure of strict compliance may not invalidate the service of process" (emphasis added) (Wade v. Alamance Caunty Department Of Social Services, Dist. Court, MD North Carolina 2020 citing Armco, Inc. v. Penrod-Stauffer Bldg. Sys., Inc., 733 F.2d 1087, 1089 (4th Cir. 1984)
The portion in qutotation marks is a direct quote from the Fourth Circuit case of
Armco. If Smelly was doing actual research rather than cutting and pasting bits of things she found on the internet, she would have cited directly to
Armco, which is binding precedent, rather than to
Wade, which is just another district court case.
But! Let's take a look at
Armco. The sentence quoted by the
Wade court and Smelly is only part of a paragraph. The entire paragraph is:
The defendant, of course, had notice that an action had been commenced by the filing of a complaint. When the process gives the defendant actual notice of the pendency of the action, the rules, in general, are entitled to a liberal construction. When there is actual notice, every technical violation of the rule or failure of strict compliance may not invalidate the service of process. But the rules are there to be followed, and plain requirements for the means of effecting service of process may not be ignored. This is particularly so when the means employed engenders the kind of confusion which the defendant's officers reasonably experienced here, leaving them without clear notice of the necessity to respond.
Armco, Inc. v. Penrod-Staufer Bldg. Sys., 733 F.2d 1087, 1089 (4th Cir. 1984).
Smelly only quotes the sentence in italics. She does not quote (and likely has not read) the immediately following sentence in bold, which sets forth the rule. The
Armco court, in fact, held service was not effective and reversed the district court's refusal to grant relief from the default.
(Free link to
Armco for the curious:
https://casetext.com/case/armco-inc-v-penrod-stauffer-bldg-systems)
, but I think the Judge will finally enjoin Mel from filing under the IFP statute for a couple of years. I can't imagine any other reason why a Federal Judge would keep this shit on their docket when there are already enough reasons to get rid of it.
