Eric Holder Nailed $120,000 for Meritless Abortion Clinic Lawsuit
The Department of Justice has been forced to hand over $120,000 for bringing a meritless abortion clinic access lawsuit against a clinic protester. This loss is one of multiple lost cases by the Department of Justice against abortion clinic protesters. The Special Litigation Section is the unit bringing the meritless cases. It was profiled in the PJ Media Every Single One Series as being headed by and filled with Leftist ideologues.
The Special Litigation Section sued Mary Sue Pine under the “FACE” Act, which guarantees access to abortion clinics. The complaint alleged Pine obstructed a car entering the clinic by standing in front of it. Hans von Spakovsky previously wrote about the scalding the DOJ received in the trial court.
Judge Kenneth Ryskamp was left to wonder at the near-total lack of evidence offered by the prosecution. The government was unable to show that Pine had in fact violated any provision of the FACE Act; prosecutors had no evidence that she had injured, intimidated, or interfered with the people she spoke to on a public sidewalk. It was not even clear that the people she was talking to were entering the abortion clinic.
In fact, as a routine business practice, the abortion clinic keeps a video surveillance record of its driveways and entrances. Those videotapes would have shown whether Pine was actually interfering with or obstructing any customers, but the clinic destroyed the tapes. Its sign-in sheets, which would have had the names of potential witnesses who went into the clinic the day Pine was there, were also destroyed.
DOJ lawyers apparently thought the case heinous enough to meet with the president of the abortion clinic the day after the incident. But they conceded that at no time during this meeting or after did they ask the clinic for the tapes or the sign-in sheets. Accordingly, DOJ entirely failed to obtain what the judge called “potentially critical evidence.”
The Court found a strange relationship between the DOJ lawyers and the abortion clinic. From the opinion:
The Court is at a loss as to why the Government chose to prosecute this particular case in the first place. . . . The Court can only wonder whether this action was the product of a concerted effort between the Government and PWC, which began well before the date of the incident at issue, to quell Ms. Pine’s activities rather than to vindicate the rights of those allegedly aggrieved by Ms. Pine’s conduct.
The DOJ wasn’t so concerned when New Black Panthers were blocking the access with a weapon in a polling place in Philadelphia when Chris Hill tried to enter. Like so much with Eric Holder, the case against Pine was another example of using the power of the federal government to skewer political enemies. The New Black Panthers got a pass, while Mrs. Pine did not.
As a condition to dropping the appeal of this meritless lawsuit, Eric Holder’s Justice Department has agreed to pony up $120,000 in attorneys fees to Mrs. Pine. If you think the attorneys who brought the bogus case should have to pay instead of you, the taxpayers, you’re note alone. Let’s meet the lawyers who were on the complaint in the bogus case.
Mr. Adams, as a trained attorney, you are more of a journalist than most of the trained journalists working for the left stream media. And if these DOJ shakedown artists don’t pay the fine themselves, they should at least be fired. Instead, they’ll probably be promoted.
Mr. Adams, I say this as a strong admirer of what you have produced and, probably sacrificed, in the cause of continued American freedom. Unfortunately, what is being published by most of us who believe in our country is nothing but a series of complaints. Where are the solutions? What should we do to remedy this horrible situation? I have mentioned civil war as an answer for many years and almost everyone, on conservative sites like this one, rejects this. If not that, then what? Please. Some alternative solution… (please don’t say Mitt Romney).
Have you read my book? Your question is answered by the last chapter.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1596982772/pajamasmedia-20
Also, have you written to yours Senator and Congressmen? House Judiciary is in a constant state of oversight over DOJ. They are the constitutional mechanism for obtaining informationa and making results known to the public. Have you asked them to do something?
I ordered your book from Amazon…looking forward to reading it. With regards to contacting my congress critters, I have, but they mostly oppose me and I have contributed to their opponents and am working to defeat them. I currently support Ted Cruz for KBH’s Senate seat and Matt Beebe to replace Joe Straus in the Tehas house.
Hmmm, Cruz and Beebe, huh???? Well, it took some convensive reading to come to Cruz, but it appears to be the best to represent my beliefs. As far as Beebe goes, if he’s running against Straus, them I’m just about automatically for him. I haven’t like Straus (the louse) since he became Speaker. (For those who don’t know, that Texas politics).
What is a shame is that they will continue to bring frivolous lawsuits, and scare off people from excercising their civil rights, because they cannot afford the personal cost of being prosecuted, even if they “win”.
Can’t any criminal penalties/restraining orders/disbarments be assessed? Aren’t there penalies for frivolous lawsuits or for denial of civil rights?
One big issue in the GOP race should be the bad actors entrenched at DOJ and which candidate is most apt to purge them from the ranks of that organization.
The simple fact that these radical nut jobs are even working in the Justice Dept. proves what a worthless organization it is. ALL Americans should be ashamed of such hack lawyers as Mr. Simth & Zisser. The sound just like the old Soviet Union “lawyers” that condemned their own clients or Nazi judicial hacks like the infamous Roland Freisler. Simply despicable people and a disgrace to our nation.
I received the “meet Christian Adams” note in my email. My reply: “so Pajama’s Media got an old WASP type to help their Eretz Israel agenda go down more easily. I wonder how long Christian will want to carry water for someone else’s fantatical nationalism. Or when he might consider whether the “rule of law” should pertain to the West Bank. It will happen, sooner or later.
WASP? You’re battting 1 for 4.
mr. adams,
pay “nlgaer” no mind sir, he’s what we on the internet call a “troll”. he lives to insult and annoy people, to feed his shabby little ego. ignore him and others like him that you may encounter. you do us good service by exposing the rot in the present regime’s justice department, and hopefully after the next election we can clean it out so honest men, such as yourself, can honourably serve in it.
The use of government agencies to punish political foes has a long tradition. How to make them stop without taking their power to do good works is a conundrum that needs to be addressed.
I think Mr Adams has hit upon the solution. Obviously a single bad case can’t be the test, but a string of them should arouse some suspicion…a situation best handled by a special prosecution group who must be made unanswerable to the executive branch, but not directly answerable to the legislative either. How that, specifically, is done, I can’t say.
Clearly the acts of the justice dept are designed to silence the free speech rights of citizens, the punishments for such acts should include prison time and some kind of independent oversight authority that has the power to subpoena any and all documentation…and the physical capability to back that up, as in an armed capacity to force executive branch employees to comply.
It’s such a shame we have come to this, yet here we are.
Thanks to Mr Adams, we are more aware of the malfeasance of Mr Holder’s justice dept.
Well done on your wonderful work. When will these dishonest and disgraceful acts being carried out by the DOJ going to be used against Mr O. Time to stop the infighting and fight the real enemy. Serious issue otherwise the whole world is in trouble!
The lawyers in the federal government have turned it into a cash cow for their fellow lawyers. Shakespeare said “Kill all the lawyers…” as a joke I’m sure but one wonders how much more easily society might function if there were actually fewer lawyers in government.
I believe any time lawyers bring meritless cases such as these and lose, they should pay the court costs and defendant’s costs in addition to being suspended from practicing law for several years. Take away their jobs and see if their behavior doesn’t change.
You don’t want to think about how many billions of dollars the taxpayers of the several states were shaken down for by FLSA and various discrimination complaints during the Clinton Administration. The “Consent Decree” shakedown is just SOP during a Democrat Administration. Public employers were only made subject to the Fair Labor Standards Act in 1986 when the Supreme Court ruled in Garcia v. San Antonio that public employers were engaged in interstate commerce and thus were subject to the 1938 law that establishes minimum wage and overtime criteria. Prior to coming under FLSA, most public employers set wages either through statute or by collective bargaining, generally blue and gray collar employees and lower level clerical and administrative employees were considered hourly and paid overtime under state or local law and policy. In many states all but the lowest level employees were considered salaried. One wouldn’t think of minimum wage as much of an issue for public employees but it certainly became one for police and fire employees, many employees in institutions, and public employees who worked aboard vessels. Various groups went to Congress for implementing legislation seeking exemptions and at least an orderly transition to a scheme totally foreign to most public employers. Any sense of order ended with the inauguration of Clinton who seemed joined at the hip with Gerald McEntee of the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, AFL-CIO (AFSCME). AFSCME and other public employee unions armed with the courage of their connections in the US Department of Labor and USDOJ launched an assault on public employers around the Country. The union would gin up complaints on behalf of employees, sometimes on behalf of thousands of employees, the US DOL would “investigate” and find the employer in willful violation of the FLSA which made the employer liable for back overtime claims for three years prior. Since few employers had timekeeping systems capable of recording hours worked for employees previously assumed to be salaried, employers had no means of rebutting even the most far-fetched claims of hours worked. The USDOL would offer the employer a consent decree in which the employer agreed to pay all the claims on naked assertions and make all the claiming employees hourly and overtime eligible. Most of the union states are Democrat owned, so the FLSA consent decrees were just a money laundry in which taxpayer dollars were funnelled to a Democrat constituence, unionized public employees, with a rake off to the unions and back to the Democrats who agreed to the consent decrees to begin with. The non-union states put up more of a fight and were actually having some success late in Bush I and early Clinton having convinced some federal circuits that despite Garcia core functions of governments were not engaged in interstate commerce and thus were not covered by the FLSA. But the Clinton DOJ soon got a firm grip on that and began on the one hand the “government grind” against the complaining states in which the US with its virtually unlimited resources sets out to bankrupt a state or polisub that dares defy it, and on the other hand offering relatively generous consent decrees covering past “sins” if the state or polisub would just make all the complaining employee groups OT eligible under the FLSA and drop any pending appeals to the courts. By the time Bush II took office, the treasuries of the states and polisubs had been looted for overtime claims, the Country had tens of thousands of cops,firemen, and correctional officer making over $100K/yr. through abuse of OT “entitilements.” One of the most frustrating series of cases I ever did was trying to defend Alaska against claims for overtime made by AFSCME represented COs in which the assignments that allegedly invoked FLSA overtime entitlements were not made by out of unit supervisors but rather by lead workers, Sergeants, in the unit – the unions own members were making the assignments to other members and then grieving for OT pay, and if unsuccessful, going to USDOL. By that time, we had a Democrat governor, so we started just handing over the money as well.
Likewise, the Americans with Disabilities Act was new and relatively untested when Clinton took office and it too provide a fertile field for unions and the plaintiffs’ bar. For awhile there in the early ’90s it seemed that every damned employee we had was disabled in some fashion. The reason workplace ergonomics and building access for the disabled were such issues is that they could be pursue as class action grievances, complaints, or lawsuits. Again the government played the Consent Decree game and billions changed hands, and with these complaints not only the complaining employees got in on it but the Democrat favored vendors that supplied all the new “ergonomic” office chairs, computer and keyboard mounts, special desks, etc. and the Democrat favored contractors that got to install all the wheelchair accessible toilets and water fountains, ramps, elevators, automatic doors. And that one was an even wider scam because they could reach out into the private sector and grab other people’s money.
And the same people were administering sexual harassment and other discrimination complaints, EEOC and USDOJ, and neither ever met an complaining employee they didn’t like. Big, deep pockets employers spent the entire Clinton terms fighting off discrimination complaints and lawsuits. Of course, the Democrat states were only too happy to pay because the governments knew that some “fair share” of the money was coming back to the Democrats. In Republican states, you had to do the math of whether it was in your state’s interest, and in your political interests, to just pay them off or weather the storm of bad publicity the EEO and DOJ could always stir up against you and spend the tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars that it would cost to win the lawsuit and risk the millions that it would cost to lose it; most just settled. And it really didn’t get a whole lot better after GWB took office because, typical Republican, he left a bazillion Clinton holdovers in place and they continued business as usual, the only limiting factor being there just weren’t that many more things left to claim. Now with the two communist SOBs we have running things, it must be sheer Hell to be a large employer. Some days I miss suiting up and “riding to the sound of the guns,” but this stuff I’m happy to leave to the young’uns with more energy. I do give them a tip now and then though.
I did food prep at the local day shelter for 6 years. Free coffee & donuts in the a.m. Hot lunch 12:00 to 1:00.
The shelter opened at 7:30 a.m. and closed at 5 p.m. It was air conditioned in summer, quiet, books or tv in common room for entertainment. Had a washer/dryer and one shower. You don’t have to be homeless to come. Not fancy. Small city. Also has small fund for people with trouble paying bills, interview rooms & waiting room for this need. The average “grant” is $100.
Small paid staff, small budget – local religious organizations donate money and food and volunteers. Very little money from local governments. Some meat purchased, some meat free from dairy farmers, deer meat by hunters. All bread/pies donated by grocery stores when “dated”. Garden produce in summer.
In my second year as a volunteer, a paid employee of a handicap association came to inspect our handicap accessibility. Our wheelchair ramp was deemed out of compliance by 1/2 inches. The shelter was forced to tear it down and rebuild at a cost of almost $20,000. That $20,000 came out of the fund to help people pay bills. With a grant average of $100, that is 200 people who had their electricity or water cut off, unless they found other help.
The handicap “inspector” worked for a national handicap nonprofit. He came to town on an airplane, lived in a hotel while he went around doing the inspections, drove a rented car, ate restaurant food.
What I want to know is: did he give a thought for the poor people of my city who were going to be damaged by that 1/2 inch measurement.
Thank you Art for taking the time to share your real world experience. It is always a learning process.
art, write a series of e-books. How-tos. how to win an election. how to break a union stranglehold. how-to clean up a gov’t.
write out what you know. ebook it. I can’t always find your posts. I’m not connected- I live under a rock, basically- but other people are connected, they can learn, and they can apply your skill set.
Thank you for the kind words! I haven’t a clue how to win an election, though not having a resume seems to work. The only time I ever ran for office was sort of a busman’s holiday; the teachers’ union and their union-owned school administration and they’d taken the position that all the negotiations were confidential – an illegal position in my opinion. So, I got in first a letter to the editor war with the union that basically had them bargaining publicly with me and then I extended it to a School Board campaign. I didn’t have enough money to win, but I had enough, I budgeted $2500, to keep the bargaining alive until the union and the administration finally relented and made the bargaining public. A “friend,” in that word’s political sense, of mine did win a seat but it cost him almost $20K to win a three year term in an unpaid position that pretty much guarantees you’ll have no further political career if you actually represent the people rather than the NEA. As to the other subjects you raise, see here: http://www.amazon.com/Red-Blue-Establishing-Republican-ebook/dp/B005M784HW/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1333466841&sr=8-1
For $9.99 you can know everything I know except most of it was written before I could really see what an unchecked Alinskyite administration could really do. I’ve dealt with them, but they were always restrained by Republicans having effective control of at least one and often two branches of government. Comrade Obama’s first two years are unprecedented.
and thank you, mr adams, for your articles, investigations, and books.
Power, it’s the left/liberal way (and why we have checks and balances).
“…(and why we have checks and balances).” This admin couldn’t care less about no stinkin checks and balances! They do as they darn well please! We be under control of dicktators now!
Mr. J. C. Adams, thank you for your service.
I presume Mary Sue Pine’s case was a civil, not criminal action; am I correct?
Is there a break down (rough) estimate of the defendant’s legal costs and time associated with Mary Sue Pine’s case? Was she made whole? Was there intentional punitive damages?
What is the basis, and likelihood of bar action against government lawyers who litigate based on ideology, not law? Is the judge’s findings sufficient to succeed against them? (Are there any real bounds constraining government lawyers, beyond Congressional oversight?)
DoJ holds awesome power. Unleashed from legal (and ethical) constraints, they can become tyrants. Abortion, Civil Rights, and Environmental laws seem to be the coming battlegrounds.
The DOJ was “forced to hand over $120,000″ to whom? Does the legal system compensate a victim of a meritless charge in dollars? It should. Did Ms. Pine have to retain defense counsel? What of her emotional distress over being the subject of an attempted conviction under the FACE Act? What penalty would she have incurred if convicted? How would that affect her state of mind? The government should not so threaten citizens.
I was a newspaper reporter back in the 1960s, a practicing Catholic who applied the Sigma Delta Chi (a journalism fraternity) and general journalists’ obligations to be fair and truthful in the reporting of significant news in the areas of government and politics. I tried to report developments that I’d rather not report, but which I knew were of considerable importance to many readers, and I tried to let the facts speak, not my opinion on them. Such ethical practices are alien to many current journalists, most notably the propagandistic staff of the Washington Bureau of the Associated Press.
Except for Tom Blumer at NewsBusters.org and, occasionally, Rush Limbaugh, the AP’s obvious propagandistic tilt, e.g., its reporting and commentary on the recent Supreme Court hearings on the challenge to ObamaCare, escapes criticism from the New York-Washington based conservative media. Yet the AP, presently, arguably has the greatest power to affect public opinion in the country. And one notices major developments it ignores and matters it does not pursue, like the president’s background, and how it reports and comments on what it does send to member news clients
“Wouldn’t it be nice if Zisser, Smith, and Abbate had to pay for their failures instead of the American taxpayers?”
YES! It should be illegal for government representatives to rob the tax payer.
The Obama administration is the Andy Gump, honey bucket of all administrations.
This administration will go down in history as the most corrupt ever. That is if history decides to remember it at all. And we thought Jimmy Carter was bad.
Can a President pardon himself for his own crimes? Right now Eric Holder is pardoning every criminal he knows by not prosecuting them and committing criminal acts by prosecuting the innocent.
It will take a long time to sort out where all the money went. In the end every dime will be accounted for and every criminal will pay, it’s called true justice, something we haven’t seen for years.
Mr. Adams, Good Job my deepest respect for your work and the defence of Liberty and the rule of law. What we Americans have to grasp and fully understand is that this is not about a white or black U.S. President, but about the adulteration of our “Constitution”. Which will lead to a total destruccion of our Republic by the Socialists’ Agenda. It makes me wonder about The Lenin’s Methology—”THE WESTERN MIND WHICH IS A CIVILIZED DEVELOPED MIND DOES NOT UNDERSTAND THE DIALECTIC DECEPTION”. Or is it true that we American chose to be blinded by the thruth and we readelly accept a Lie. I have seen it with my own friends they do not lack the intellectual, but decided in their minds and hearts that this current threat against our contitutional freedoms is not REAL.
Jan Crawford of CBS reports that a three-member panel of the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals has ordered the U.S. Department of Justice to “answer by Thursday whether the Obama Administration believes that the courts have the right to strike down a federal law.”
The response is to be three pages long, single-spaced, according to an unnamed lawyer who was in the courtroom.
The court’s response appears to be a direct challenge to President Barack Obama’s attack yesterday on the Supreme Court and the power of judicial review, which federal courts have exercised for over 200 years.
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/04/03/Its-On-5th-Circuit-Dares-Obama-Justice-Department-to-Deny-Power-of-Judicial-Review?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+BigGovernment+%28Big+Government%29
Obama is already reverse-spinning his comments made disparaging our Supreme Court in front of the whole world, in new statements made today…
If I had a President, he would look like Mitt Romney…
Unwarrented lawsuits are detrimental to our society, but this is government sponsored. I’m amazed that the judge did not do more to censure the lawyers involved.
Great report, Mr. Adams.
It would also help to note that if it weren’t for the legal representation Ms. Pine received from Liberty Counsel, things might have turned out very differently.
I think Mat Staver and others at LC deserve a shout-out for their defense in this case.
Great reporting, Mr. Adams. You are a God-send to those of us who seek the truth. I would like to see your reports publicized on TV and in the print media. Are you listening, FOX, National Review, etc.? Even the MSM should republish your articles, but that’s very unlikely.