Enough Is Enough: Jones' & Davis' Birther Lawyer Fined $20k For Wasting Taxpayer Resources
Orly Taitz, lawyer for Representatives Tim Jones and Cynthia Davis in a sister birther lawsuit filed in California, has been fined $20,000 by a federal judge in Georgia. The Washington Independent:
The "Birther queen" has been slapped with a five-figure fine for “wasting the judicial resources” of the Middle District of Georgia, where she’d filed one of her numerous lawsuits demanding that President Obama prove his citizenship before deploying soldiers to Iraq and Afghanistan.
Below the Beltway has posted excerpts from the judge's order:
The Court finds that counsel’s conduct was willful and not merely negligent. It demonstrates bad faith on her part. As an attorney, she is deemed to have known better. She owed a duty to follow the rules and to respect the Court. Counsel’s pattern of conduct conclusively establishes that she did not mistakenly violate a provision of law. She knowingly violated Rule 11. Her response to the Court’s show cause order is breathtaking in its arrogance and borders on delusional. She expresses no contrition or regret regarding her misconduct. To the contrary, she continues her baseless attacks on the Court.
(…)
Counsel’s frivolous and sanctionable conduct wasted the Defendants’ time and valuable judicial resources that could have been devoted to legitimate cases pending with the Court.When she filed the Rhodes case, counsel indicated that it was urgent that the matter be heard because her client was facing imminent deployment. The Court rearranged its schedule, took time to read the legal papers, and conducted preliminary research in preparation for the hearing. The Army had to activate its legal team on short notice, sending a Major from the Army Litigation Division in Washington, D.C. and a Captain from the CONUS Replacement Center at Ft. Benning. In addition, the Assistant U.S. Attorney had to accompany them. Like the Court, the government attorneys had to prepare in an expedited manner for the hearing. During the week preceding Captain Rhodes’s deployment, the Court was in the midst of a jury trial. Therefore, the Court had to alter the trial schedule to conduct the hearing during an extended lunch break, thus affecting other counsel and jurors. The Clerk’s Office was burdened by Ms. Taitz’s inability to follow the Court’s rules regarding pro hac vice admission and the Court’s rules for electronic filing. On five separate occasions in a short period, the Clerk’s Office personnel error-noticed counsel for her failure to follow simple rules. At the hearing, counsel failed to make coherent legal arguments but instead wasted the Court’s time with press conference sound bites and speeches.
That Orly Taitz, Tim Jones, Cynthia Davis, and the rest of their ilk are wasting enormous resources is not new information. But now that a judge has fined their lawyer and laid out all the ways Taitz is burning through public dollars, how will these professed defenders of the taxpayer respond?
The full order, courtesy of TWI:
