Amending Into the Void

Note from TDPZ:

This post is written by our esteemed JeffM. He popped it into my inbox, asking if it deserved a wider audience. I think it does. Picking through the pure, unadulterated DUMBFUCK gibberish can be taxing on the brain. And JeffM has managed to give a good primer as to what is going on by applying rational logic – something which seems to be lacking in the document submitted to the court.

Take it away Jeff!

Although Billy seems to think that quoting his submissions to court is a tort or perhaps even a crime, I refuse to accept his view of the matter. It is not possible to do full justice to his Motion to Amend posted at Hogewash without, as done there, quoting it in full. Many, however, may find that the busy pace of modern life precludes them from reading five pages of inanities. For those busy souls, here is a summary of the highlights.

Paragraph 1:

Billy managed to write a paragraph without any errors of fact or misspellings, with even his full name spelled correctly this time. (NO Krendler, only in Zombie court do you say, “Now comes DUMBFUCK…” Please behave.) Way to go Billy.

Paragraph 2:

Billy admits that he did receive a mailed request for admission of facts and genuineness of documents. He just “sincerely did not remember” receiving it. Can a remembrance be sincere or insincere? People can be sincere or insincere, but memories? I suspect that he means “he did not remember,” but no one ever said that a government flack retired due to disability is supposed to write clearly and concisely.

In any case, forgetting to respond is inadvisable in a lawsuit even if you know that you may have some memory impairment. He should pick up some post-it notes while he gets a copy of Maryland’s rules of civil procedure. (As an older person, I put my post-it notes on the door of the liquor cabinet so I get reminded every evening of what I need to do the next day.)

Nevertheless, forgetting was not really Willie’s fault. He claims to have demanded that the plaintiff prove that what Willie forgot having received by mail was in fact mailed.  Willie may have forgotten having written about the request for admission of facts and genuineness of documents, but nevertheless determined somehow that it might have been sent to him. That determination, however, was not sufficient to refresh Willie’s recollection or jog his memory that he not only had received such a request but had also read it and then written a blog post about its contents. So, Willie took the reasonable course of demanding “several” times that plaintiff prove that Willie had ever seen what Willie had already written about. (To make it clear to the court that Willie had truly written a blog post proving that he had read the request, he carefully included a screen cap of the blog post.) Plaintiff was such a big meanie that he did not provide that proof until after it was too late for Willie to file a timely response with the court.

Paragraphs 3 and 4:

In the third paragraph, Willie asserts his interpretation of what “serve” means in Rule 2-424. You might think that he is laying ground to argue that a response by e-mail is sufficient, but you would be wrong because he did not even claim that he responded by e-mail. No, he is laying ground for the argument that a defendant’s posting on his own blog is legally sufficient service. (Krendler and Neal, it is demeaning for grown men to giggle like that. Stop it right now.)

In the fourth paragraph, Willie admits that his blog post contained no signature as required by Rule 2-424. He argues that such a deficiency makes no difference to the blog post’s being a legally sufficient response because the post did contain his name, which was even correctly spelled. (By that argument, it appears that THIS blog post equally qualifies as properly served on the plaintiff.)

Paragraphs 5 and 6:

Paragraph 5 can be ignored as a whine, but paragraph 6 plays the sympathy card. Willie has noticed, apparently since 2011, “defects in [Willie’s] memory [so] it is entirely possible [he] received Hoge’s request, answered it on [Willie’s] blog, then forgot about it.” My advice above is “possibly” too late: post-it notes on the liquor cabinet should “possibly” have been part of Willie’s routine now for quite a few years.

Paragraph 7:

This paragraph seems to assert that Willie has paranormal powers: he knows when the plaintiff read Willie’s blog post and thereby made it a proper legal response. Or perhaps I am misreading: perhaps Willie intended to say that the plaintiff “should have read” the post, and the plaintiff’s negligence in not doing so makes the post a proper legal response. We should not hold the prose of a retired government writer, who may “have slowness in memory and thinking,” to a very high standard.

In the interest of brevity, I skip over answers 1 through 6. They might have identified issues of material facts in dispute, but, as previously acknowledged, they were not submitted on time. Answer 7 is certainly a blunder. “Your guess is as good as mine, stew meat” admits that the plaintiff’s guess, whatever that might be, is admitted by Willie. Maybe Willie is on to something about slowness in his thinking. (Yes, Krendler NOW you can say it. Good zombie.)

However, let’s be fair. His new insult of “stew meat” is clever in that it takes a moment to realize that stew meat is usually less than prime. A subtle insult from Willie: will wonders never cease?

Answer 8 is probably a blunder. “Beats the hell out of me, poop flake …. I have no idea” does not seem to me (but then I am a bit picky) to be a denial. If it is not a denial, it must be … an admission.

And “poop flake,” how repetitive and childish. Most of us are over bathroom humor by age eight or nine.

Answer 9 is logically interesting. In it, Willie alleges malfeasance on the part of plaintiff but does “not raise it any legal sense,” which seems to imply that even he recognizes that his alleged motion to amend makes no legal sense.

Paragraph 9 (yes, Willie does have some issues with clear numbering, but be charitable and remember his probably “slow” thinking). He claims that the rest of his original motion for summary judgment stands “as filed with the court.” Very clear but not highly persuasive as no motion for summary judgment is currently filed with the court. Perhaps though I am missing some subtlety because neither the certificate of service nor the affidavit of the truth of the motion’s assertions are signed.

Perhaps the proper way to amend an unfiled motion is with a facially defective motion on the principle that the product of two negatives is positive. (An alternative mathematical principle may be applicable, namely that 0 times 0 is still 0.)

So, basically, Bill is just attemping to amend into the void. Bet it works as well as screaming. – TDPZ