I knew that being on the STACLU mailing list would be a source of much amusement and it didn't take long to pay off. The second email I got from them referred to a lawsuit filed by a STACLU "supporter" by the name of Bobby Wightman-Cervantes. He's filing a RICO suit against...well, practically everyone, including the ACLU (read the complaint here), alleging a vast conspiracy going all the way back to a Supreme Court decision in 1865. I've just started reading the complaint and it's already given me a good deal of mirth.
First of all, he's alleging a RICO conspiracy involving practically everyone. The list of defendants include not only the ACLU but also the Texas Commission on Lawyer Discipline, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, the Dallas County District Attorney, the Texas Supreme Court and the Dallas Court of Appeals, plus a number of individual attorneys and various political officials. He alleges "the creation of a criminal enterprise...for the purpose of obstructing justice and violating the rights" of himself.
The preliminary statement of his complaint, where one would typically give a description of the exact events that led to the filing of the suit, is literally just incoherent rambling about vast conspiracies going back 150 years. To give an example of this incoherency, here is one of the first paragraphs of the complaint:
In the little known, post civil war case of Texas v. White, 75 U.S. 700 (1865 ), the United States Supreme Court reasoned that the legal foundation for the Declaration of Independence, the right to throw off an oppressive government had been abolished with the signing of the Constitution, and the creation of the 'more perfect union", and thereby post civil war Texas was liable to White for debt incurred by Confederate Texas in that the people in Texas did not have the right of succession in the first instance, even if the federal government had become destructive of the ends government.
What does this have to do with a conspiracy against the plaintiff to deny him his rights? Your guess is as good as mine. But it's probably worth noting that the plaintiff apparently doesn't know the difference between "succession" and "secession"; they're mildly different concepts, to say the least. He then goes on to tell a bunch of stories about alleged incidents of corruption that the plaintiff was bravely fighting against when he was arrested and disbarred. Those stories include allegations that Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks, bribed a judge to win a lawsuit.
There are also allegations against the Catholic Church, against Attorney General Alberto Gonzales (then a Texas Supreme Court Justice). Oh, and did I mention that this same guy has also filed a RICO suit against President Bush? He also has allegations against Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson and Ronnie Earle, the prosecutor going after Tom DeLay. Basically, he seems to think that everyone involved in politics in Texas, of either party, has conspired to ruin his life. The conspiracy also includes several Bush-appointed Federal judges, including Jane Boyle and Priscilla Owens.
If anyone can make any sense out of the complaint, you're a better man than I, Gunga Din. I suspect the taking of the name Cervantes is intentional on his part and not his given name, and that seems appropriate. Cervantes' legendary hero tilted at windmills thinking they were dragons and this guy sees conspiracies all around him. I would love to be in the courtroom to hear this argued in front of a judge.
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And yet, it's only second place hall of famer for lunatic conspiracy lawsuits:
SYRACUSE, N.Y. (AP) -- In the matter of Drusky versus God -- God has won. A Pennsylvania man's lawsuit naming God as a defendant has been thrown out by a court in Syracuse. Donald Drusky, 63, of East McKeesport, Pa., blamed God for failing to bring him justice in a 30-year battle against his former employer, the steelmaker now called USX Corp. The company fired him in 1968, when it was called U.S. Steel. "Defendant God is the sovereign ruler of the universe and took no corrective action against the leaders of his church and his nation for their extremely serious wrongs, which ruined the life of Donald S. Drusky," the lawsuit said. Drusky wanted God to return his youth and grant him the guitar-playing skills of famous guitarists, along with resurrecting his mother and his pet pigeon. If God failed to appear in court, federal rules of civil procedure say he must lose by default, Drusky argued. But U.S. district Judge Norman Mordue threw out the case earlier this month. Mordue ruled that the suit -- which also named former U.S. presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush, the major U.S. television networks, all 50 states, every single American, all federal judges, and the 100th through 105th congresses as defendants -- was frivolous.
For some reason, I have the urge to intervene as a defendant in this case. How DARE he fail to list me as a conspiritor after I have spent the last 20 years depriving him of his rights. The nerve!
Is this an actual lawsuit? Unreal.
Wait a second... you mean, after the previous newsletter - the one in which readers were given several pointers on How-To-Avoid-Embarrassing-STACLU - they print this?
Was there at least a headline exclaiming something like, "See, people... This is what we were talking about when we said 'don't embarrass' STACLU"?
Incidentally, Wightman-Cervantes has his own website (be sure to read "Tattoo Charlie & The Tattoo Village"), which gives his location as Brownsville, TX. That might explain the Wightman-Cervantes last name. I used to work on a lot of civil cases in Brownsville and Laredo, and whenever someone could play up their Hispanic heritage, they did. On one case, there was a video deposition by a woman named something like "Laura Smith" who spoke with no discernable accent. During the actual trial, she became "Laura Smith-Hernandez" and spoke with a thick Hispanic accent.