Secrets of the Legal Industry Part 1 of 3

Having talked to um a number of you today and having talked to a number of people that are patriots, associated with the patriot movements, patriot sympathizers, I think it's safe to say that some of the things that I'm going to share with you today may invite a little contention. You might even be a little bit shocked at some of the things I say. Uh, nothing that I say is meant to do anything but inform and empower people that I regard as friends. And I don't remember exactly how the saying goes, but there is a saying something to the effect, "It's better to be insulted by a friend than kissed by an enemy," or something like that. In other words, I'd rather hear an unsavory truth than an attractive lie. So, at any time during the program, if I say anything that's contrary to what you've been told, what you've been led to believe, and it kind of makes you wince a little bit, bear with me. Bear with me. Let me make my case. Because I think by the um, the end of the presentation, I think I may share something with you that you can actually take away from here and actually um, benefit from, hopefully. If I do my job, that's what I'm here to do.

Are we ready? Good morning. Good morning. How is everybody? This is my inaugural uh seminar. I'm um here to share some secrets about the legal industry. Have a couple of helpers, uh, Deborah Lay and Mark Mayze, that are uh, fellow members of the Oklahoma City uh, Due Process organization known as TOACCUSE. My name is Richard Cornforth. I'm the person that was billed as being the the one to put this on. I don't have anybody to introduce me. So, I guess I'm introducing myself, but I'm going not going to do much in the way of introducing. I will tell you that I'm not an attorney. I have absolutely no formal legal training at all. I'm not a legal expert. I'm not a legal advisor, not a legal counselor. And in fact, when it comes to knowing things about law, if I were in a contest, I probably wouldn't get past the first round. There's probably people in this room that know more about law generally and certain subjects than I do. But I am not intending to make a long-winded speech to try to impress you with everything that I know about law. What I'm here to do is tell you a few secrets that I believe will enable you to win. If I'm you sitting out there and I'm listening to me, what I would be here to find out is, "Tell me how to win. I want to know, how do I win?" We've all been around this movement for 5, 10, 15 years, and we've all heard speeches, we've all been to seminars, we've all had this massive amount of information that we've been asked to absorb, assimilate, but it seems that the part of the formula that's missing is somebody needs to tell us how we use information to win. Is, are we somewhat in agreement with that? Okay. All right. So, if I can tell you something that will empower you to win, I think we're all winners. And that's what I'm intending to do. And I'm going to try to make it a little bit of fun, too, because this struggle that we're all in has been so hateful and mean-spirited and downright dishonest that the only things that I can think of to compare our legal industry to that have happened in a century are things like uh, the Gestapo, the Mafia. It's hateful. It's evil. But uh, if you didn't have a little bit of comic relief, uh, I think it would destroy you emotionally. So, we're going to have try to have a little fun with this um, uh, today, too.

So, I'm not any kind of a big shot legal advisor expert. In fact, uh, kind of think of me this way. I'm kind of like your old uh, kindly Uncle Luke, and Luke is my middle name. Uh, remember that because it'll be important later. But it's kind of like I've uh, come up behind you and I'm watching you playing checkers. And I notice a triple jump that you've overlooked. And I'm there whispering, you know, "Take that triple jump. Look, right there." And one of the things about the law business, the legal industry, is some of the most important things about law are actually so simple that they're easy to overlook. They're just absolutely so darn simple that in an effort to try to understand them, we make them way too complicated. And in an effort to try to lead this movement towards some new day when we can all achieve what we want to through the legal system, there are some false prophets. There's a lot of misinformation. And so, one of the things that I hope to accomplish today is free you of your tether. You know what your goal is, and you've been struggling for years to reach that goal. But I'm here to tell you, friends, you probably didn't reach that goal because you're on the end of a tether and didn't realize it. And I want to cut that tether. I want to set you free of that tether by giving you a different approach and some different information. And there are only about four very simple truths, and if you know and understand these truths, you will be empowered to win. Nobody can guarantee a win. Our legal system, for some time to come, is still going to be a crapshoot. But you can win, and we're going to actually look at four cases out of a goodly number of cases that I've worked. And these are real cases. And we're going to uh, fit what I call the truths about the legal industry. We're going to see how those are actually threaded into these pleadings and how this empowers us to win.

If you walk into a courtroom and you see a flag, and that flag has gold fringe around it, do you think that that means that you're in a military court or a court of admiralty or maritime jurisdiction? How many have heard that? How many believe it? How come? How come? Why? Okay. Here is the first truth which I have to share with you. That court does not get its jurisdiction from that flag. It doesn't even matter if there even is a flag there. That flag does not confer jurisdiction on that court. Here's the first great secret. Where does the court get its jurisdiction? Well, first of all, there are actually two levels of courts. We have a two-tiered court system. There are the Supreme Courts and their tribunals. There are courts of inferior jurisdiction. And I imagine most of the minds in this room are clicking, say, "Yeah, I've been in some of those inferior courts, and they sure are inferior." Now, when we're talking about Supreme Courts like the United States Supreme Court and the Oklahoma Supreme Court, where did they get their jurisdiction? They get their jurisdiction because of who they are. They are constitutional courts. But what about these courts of inferior jurisdiction? Where do they get, where do they get their authority? Where? Kind of, because they're legislative courts. Congress created the federal court system. It's not in the Constitution. Congress created it to settle courts uh, to settle cases and controversy. But when a judge of an inferior court puts on a black robe and walks into that room and the bailiff says, "All rise." Is that person a judge at that moment? No. The reason they're not a judge at that moment is because they have not established jurisdiction. Because they don't have jurisdiction. But these people do. Now, we know in all of these struggles we're in, this level down here when we start our fight. Or when we're pulled into that fight. Where do courts of inferior jurisdiction get their power to act? No. No. Yeah. Yeah, you. You, you got it right. The courts of inferior jurisdiction are empowered to act by pleadings sufficient to invoke their judicial authority. Which means that the people, the people, not the attorneys. The people that walk into that court empower that person in the black robe to be a judge. That person is not a judge until actually four things happen. There's two very important things. How many remember Judge Wapner? Man, that guy was great. He was great. It's too bad that we can't clone him and send him up and let him be the Supreme Court. If you remember those old programs, Judge Wapner always began every court session with the same pronouncement. Do you remember what it was? "I've read your complaint. I know you've been sworn." He never conducted a session until he said, "I've read your complaint. I know you've been sworn." Until he did that, he was not a judge. Because a judge is somebody that has judicial power. He did not have judicial power until he did that. Now, jurisdiction has four corners on it. It's a four-legged table. It's not a three-legged table or two-legged table or one-legged table. It's a four-legged table. And if you take away one of those legs, it's not a court anymore. It won't stand. It'll fall down. And we are going to understand how we put four legs under that table. And we're going to understand what we can do if our money or property was taken in a three-legged deal. We're going to learn how to do that. It's possible. Now then. So, that's the first secret. Now, y'all seem to be somewhat embraced of that, so maybe it's not a great shocking secret to you. But the reason I mentioned it is determine what your winning point is and focus on it and plead your winning point. Don't go into a courtroom and tell the judge, "Judge, I'm not going to step in front of this little bar because you'll get jurisdiction." Or, "I want you to move that flag because that's wrong jurisdiction." That's tether. That's holding you back. You don't win with that stuff. At least I don't. Anybody that does. You win when you know how to invoke the court's jurisdiction, when you empower that judge to make the decision that you want that judge to make.

Now then, if we get our marvelous Constitution, and our Constitution is marvelous. By that I mean our United States Constitution is marvelous. And we go to a certain article in that con, in that Constitution, and we read it like a second amendment or first amendment or whatever, whatever we're thinking we're pursuing, fifth amendment, whatever. We read that Constitution, are we informed of what the law of the land is? No. No. That's the second great secret. Is the Constitution, state constitution, statutes, laws, rules, what meaning do they have as you read them in their black and white print? Uh, true, but we won't go there. As far as what they mean to us, they don't really mean anything except a hint, a suggestion of what the law is. Because we have a common law system. The American common law system is arguably based on the English common law system, which I think is actually based on Viking law, but that's another story for another day. But we have a common law system. Now, I know that there's probably some controversy about what's meant by common law. But a common law system means that you can't read the Constitution, the statute, rule, or anything else and know what it means because there is a cluster of organizations that rules and determines and tells you what it means. And that's back over here. That's these Supreme Court people. The Supreme Court tells you what that means. You think the Second Amendment gives you the right to keep and bear arms? Maybe. But who do you have to ask what the Second Amendment means? Supreme Court. They're the guys that tell you, "This is what this law means." Now, you can waste a lot of time, a lot of effort, and a lot of energy, and get your false hopes and get crushed if you read some statutes or some rules or some constitutional articles and start thinking that that establishes a basis for whatever you want to accomplish. The Constitution, the statutes, and the rules, as far as we're concerned, are largely silent. Because they don't tell us what the law is. To find out what the law is, we have to find out what the Supreme Courts have said that that particular law means. Now, that's the second great secret. But it's really pretty simple stuff because we have a means of finding out what the law is. It's written down. We can go read it. We can rely on it. We can use it. And if we're in a court of competent jurisdiction that's fair, open, and honest, which is not a given, is it? But we can win, can't we? Where do we find the common law? Where do we find this common law that we can rely on? There's only one type of book that has this common law. It's a federal and state annotated statutes. Now, if you can go on the internet and find the federal and state annotated statutes, or better, better uh, web browser than I am. Because again, that's a secret. They don't want you to know that. If you can read the annotated statutes, now you know what the law is. Now, you're empowered to act. You can go into a law library, and I often do, over the state capital. There must be a hundred thousand books in there. I don't know, maybe several hundred thousand. But when I go in there, I go right back to the state annotated statutes. Because I know that all of those other books are probably philosophy of law. Those annotated statutes are going to tell me what the law is. By reading them, I'm going to know what the law is. And here's another thing that's really kind of shocking, or maybe it's shocking. It was shocking to me when I discovered it. Is I used to have the belief that if I was going to know enough about law to actually argue effectively, man, I was going to have to spend thousands of hours in a law library. And I've spent probably several thousand hours in a law library. But you're way overshooting your mark because it's not complicated. It's actually very simple. Because the annotated are not going to publish law cases. They're going to refer to them as the decision, but they're going to publish the holding. They're going to tell you the essence of that decision. And that essence of that decision out of that case is that one paragraph, that one sentence, or maybe just that one phrase that you need to win. And, and that's all you need if you know how to use it.

At this time, I'm going to um, ask my associate Mark Maze to read a case. He's going to read a case in its entirety. This is going to be the only case that we're going to read today because to me, there's a lot of things I'd rather do than read a case. But we're going to read one to illustrate this point. Mark Maze is going to read a case called Trenz, Trenz vs. Pagliaro. It is one of the most important cases that has ever been decided by the United States Supreme Court. And he's going to read it. And as he reads it, I want us to listen for the holding of the case.

Trenz vs. Pagliaro. Action to nullify an outstanding deed and remove a cloud on title to certain premises. Defendants moved to dismiss. The District Court, Wood, J., held that the fact that a state in personam action acting acts of a trustee might be revived did not preclude federal court from taking jurisdiction of an in rem action. Nor was court precluded from taking jurisdiction by virtue of pending arbitration proceedings which would not determine title to the land involved. Motion denied. Courts, fact that a state in personam action acting acts of a trustee might be revived did not preclude federal court from taking jurisdiction of an in rem action. Nor was court precluded from taking jurisdiction by virtue of pending arbitration proceedings which would not determine title to the land involved. To the courts, there is no bar to parallel federal and state actions where each court has jurisdiction over the persons. Federal Civil Procedures, statements of counsel in their briefs or arguments are not sufficient for purposes of granting a motion to dismiss or for summary judgment. Federal Rules Civil Procedures 12B. Cohen, Shapiro, Berger and Cohen by David Berger and Herbert B. Newberg, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania for the plaintiff. Silver and Barsky by J. D. Barsky, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania for defendants. Wood, the District Judge. This case arises out of a dispute over the extent of the plaintiff's ownership interest in a tract of land of approximately 47.6 acres located in Gulf Mills, Pennsylvania, known as Rebel Hill. By an agreement dated April 29th, 1960, title to the land was taken by the plaintiff and the defendant Pagliaro. On May 9th, 1960, pursuant to a second agreement between the parties, title was transferred to a trustee straw party, Howard Richard, Esquire, for the benefit of Trenz and Pagliaro. Thereafter, on May 13th, 1960, Pagliaro and his attorney, Albert Foreman, Esquire, procured a blank deed from the straw party and his wife. It is this blank deed that the plaintiff, by a civil action filed with this court, seeks to have nullified. Following the delivery of the blank deed, the straw party, Richard, executed a deed on November 29th, 1962, conveying Rebel Hill to Trenz and Pagliaro as tenants in common. This deed was reported in the office of the recorder of deeds for Montgomery County. A civil action was commenced by Pagliaro in Montgomery County in December, 1962, against Trenz and Richard as defendants in the Court of Common Pleas on the ground that Richard, at the instance of Trenz, violated his duties as a trustee when Richard, when Richard executed the November 29th, 1962 deed in favor of Trenz and Pagliaro. This action resulted in a mistrial, and Trenz filed a petition to have a case referred to arbitration before the American Arbitration Association. The Montgomery County, excuse me, the Montgomery County Court granted this petition, and Pagliaro appealed the order to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, which is awaiting decision at this time. The arbitration has not reached the hearing stage. The defendants Pagliaro and Foreman had filed a motion to dismiss the action in this court because of the possibility of further action in the Montgomery County Court and the arbitration appeal before the Supreme Court. Also, the defendants contend in their motion that this action is moot because the deed is in the control of the Montgomery County Court, having been offered in evidence in the original action and not in possession of Pagliaro. Finally, the defendants argue that if the State Supreme Court sustains the order for arbitration, this court will lack jurisdiction to decide the matter. This court has jurisdiction because of the diversity and the amount involved. The Montgomery County in personam action attacking the acts of the trustee and which resulted in a mistrial, as aforesaid, does not preclude the court from taking jurisdiction of the in rem action. This court, if the facts weren't such as such a determination, could nullify the blank deed on May 13th, 1960, as prayed for, and declared the record, excuse me, declare the recorded deed creating ownership as tenants in common between the parties valid, or render such other relief as might be proper insofar as the land itself is concerned. On the record before us, the arbitration proceedings on appeal concern plaintiff trustee's claims for the back, for the back pay and collateral matters under an agreement between the parties. There is nothing before us which would warrant a determination that the arbitration proceedings will in any way determine title to the land involved. Notwithstanding the statement at argument that a counterclaim had been filed in the arbitration proceedings by defendant which raised the question previously before the Montgomery County Court. And furthermore, no mention was made of the May 13th, 1960 blank deed in this counterclaim insofar as we are able to determine from the oral, oral argument or the record. The action before this court being partly in rem because it seeks to nullify an outstanding deed and remove a cloud on the title of the premises, is not in conflict with the in personam action before the state court or the arbitration board. Insofar as this action is personam in that it seeks to restrain the defendants from executing the blank deed in favor of anyone other than the plaintiff, the federal court may proceed with the litigation because there is no bar to parallel federal and state actions where each court has jurisdiction over the persons. And that's based upon Penn General Casualty Company vs. Pennsylvania. The defendants' motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim unsupported by affidavits or dispositions, I'm sorry, or depositions, is incomplete because it requests this court to consider facts outside the record which have not been presented in the form required by Rules 12B, 6, and 56C. Statements of counsel in their briefs or argument, while enlightening to the court, are not sufficient for purposes of granting a motion to dismiss or summary judgment. Order. And now, this 28th day of May, 1964, the defendants' motion to dismiss is denied without prejudice.

Thank you, Mark. Is everybody spellbound? Fascinated? Okay, that is um, you can get the site off of that. We're not going to do that again. And you're probably thinking, "Phew, man. Glad of that." Cuz I'm here to tell you, I don't know how many law books there are. I don't know how many cases there are. There must be millions of them. Maybe, I don't know, maybe a billion of them. But if you go into a law library trying to support your cause, you're going to read cases, you're going to go blind and insane. But Trenz v. Pagliaro is absolutely earth-shaking if you heard the holding of the court. How many people here have been walked over with a summary judgment? Okay. What did we learn from Trenz v. Pagliaro? What was the holding? And I guarantee it was one sentence. The holding of Trenz v. Pagliaro: "Statements of counsel in brief or argument are not sufficient for a summary judgment." Did a light bulb just go on anyplace? Can you say that again, please? "Statements of counsel in brief or argument are not sufficient for summary judgment." Take it to heart, memorize it, get a tattoo that says it. Because that is one of the most important principles on law in law. And that is one of the most powerful things that you will ever learn and have to use.

There are four legs on this table. There are four legs before that inferior court has jurisdiction. That's not according to me. Remember, I'm not a legal expert. That's according to United States Supreme Court. And what are those four legs? You've got to have two people that are opposing. That's two of your legs. You've got to have the subject matter. But that one fourth thing that has probably been missing 50 million times in this country when we got shafted in the court was a competent witness. Where's the competent witness? That's the fourth leg on that table. That table doesn't have four legs, that court did not have jurisdiction. Period. That's gospel. Not because I said so, but because that's what the Supreme Court said that jurisdiction means. Would that be criminal or civil? Either way. You've got to have somebody at some point in time before the judgment raise their hand and testify under oath and subject to cross-examination, or it's nonsense. But if you would get the admissions yourself? No. No. Admissions are of value. But you still have to have a witness. And what? The court didn't have jurisdiction unless there was going to be four legs on that table. Can they use those affidavits? Affidavits can be sufficient, but remember, an affidavit can be challenged. An affidavit, if un-, if unchallenged, is going to be testimony before the court, and that's going to be the fourth leg on the table. And that's why I'm here to tell you that the other side uh, supports their pleadings with an affidavit, which they rarely do, but if they do, you subpoena that witness because you want to question them under oath. Also, depositions count. But again, you have the right to challenge and interrogate that witness. And so if there's a deposition or if there's an affidavit, those are extremely powerful, particularly the affidavit. But they're still at some point in time, if challenged before judgment, they have to raise their hand and swear that it's true. If you challenge it and they don't do that, then their affidavit is null. What if they've already got the judgment against you? We'll get to that. We'll get to that.

And again, how do I know this? How do I know this? Because this is the common law. Our federal system is a common law system. All of our, all of our states, excepting Louisiana, are common law states. And I'm not talking about marriage and sharing property and community property. I'm talking about what the law means as determined by Supreme Courts. And the idea that is the kernel of truth in Trenz v. Pagliaro is a thread that runs through everything. Criminal, civil, it runs through everything. Administrative, it's, it's got to be there. It's got to be there. How do I know? Here is a very good statement. And again, this is from an annotated statute. "Actual facts, not mere allegations of complaint, are determinative of issue of jurisdiction." Isn't that what I just said? If there's no witness, there's no facts. There's no facts, there's no what? No jurisdiction. That's not what I think. I think it, but it's not true because I think it. It's be true because it's the law. It's not the law as you see in statute or rule, it's the law because the Supreme Court says, "Yes. Yes, you've got to have a competent witness to have that fourth leg on that table, or there's no jurisdiction."

Um, I'm going to ask uh, Deborah and Mark to pass out some holdings. That's this page right here. And uh, we'll take a glance at some holdings. And also, I'm going to kind of turn around and show you some pages that I've got out of annotated statutes. All these law books may be very intimidating. But when it gets down to reading the holdings of what the Supreme Courts have said the law means, it's really not that complicated. I've been questioned under oath by two different judges. "Where'd you go to law school?" Well, I've never been to law school. One judge said, "Well, where'd you get your fine legal training?" Said, "Well, I can read and write." It's a little bit more complicated than that. It helps to uh, be able to think somewhat analytically. Uh, it also helps to uh, be somewhat confident when you speak in front of people. But really, it's not really terribly complicated stuff. You know, if you needed a craniotomy, don't call me. I'm not qualified. I'd kill you. If you're refurbishing your house, you want trim carpentry, you better get Don Vance or somebody because I'd cut off all her fingers. There's a lot of stuff that I don't know how to do. I'm not trained, I'm not educated in that particular discipline. The law is different. Law is reading, writing, speaking, and analytical thinking. If you can do those things, you can do law. And don't they hate it? Don't they hate it?

Um, Deborah, would you read the holdings in that passout? Come up to the microphone, if you will, and let, and read those holdings. You don't need to read the case site, just the holding. The Marco versus Carey? Yeah, just read, just read, just the opinion.

Lack of subject matter jurisdiction is not waivable and can even be raised on appeal after judgment on the merits. Schmitt versus Hunter. Allegations in pleadings are not to be considered as evidence tending to establish jurisdiction except for the limited purpose of determining type of action. In J Cash, an affidavit where it did not appear therein that the affi-, affiant had competent knowledge of the facts sworn to, was not a sufficient compliance with RS 2232-118 and 232-119 in order to enter a valid judgment in the district court by default in a suit on a promissory note. Morales versus Santiago, that where the court has undertaken to require proof as to liability as well as damages, judgments should not be entered unless plaintiffs' liability proofs are competent and persuasive. Burnham versus Superior Court, judgments or judgment of a court lacking jurisdiction is void. Per Justice Scalia with three justices concurring and five justices concurring in the judgment. Hatchet Supply under Texas law, no answer defaults are not presumed to be final judgments. For City of Texas Beaumont, although judgments entered after conventional trial on the merits is presumed final under Texas law, summary judgments and default judgments are not entitled to such presumptions. Babcock, subject matter jurisdiction cannot be waived by parties, conferred by consent, or ignored by court. Athens, subject matter jurisdiction may not be waived and courts may raise the issue sua sponte. Edwards, lack of subject matter jurisdiction is a defense that is never waivered, waived. Scenic, subject matter jurisdiction can never be waived and can be raised at any time, even after trial.

Thank you, Deborah. Okay, now did this just tell us how to save ourselves a whole lot of time? Yeah. We've got to get our hands on that annotated. Unless you're a subscriber to Lexis, you're going to have to go to the law library to do it. For the federal, would you go to the United States Code Annotated? Is that the federal one? Yeah. Yeah. And for the state, would it be Oklahoma State Annotated? Yeah. And they say annotated? Yes. The question was for the federal, do you go to the Federal Code Annotated? The answer is yes. There's actually about three different sets depending on which body of law, but it's all the same. You can't read the rule, you got to read what the judges have said the rule means. So, this will save you a lot of time when you're fighting anything to look in the annotated to look to see what the courts have said in their holdings because remember in Pagli versus Pagliaro or Pagliaro, do we really need to read a thousand cases? All we really need is one sentence that represents the holding of that case to use in support of our own case.

Now then, there was something else that came to light in what um, Deborah just read. Did anybody hear the word "void"? Did anybody hear the word "subject matter jurisdiction"? Is anybody excited? Please get excited. And the reason I say get excited is because without subject matter jurisdiction, the court did not have authority to act, and is that judgment a valid judgment? That judgment is a void. It is subject to collateral attack. If you're going to void it, don't ever do a direct attack on a void because you're asking the same idiot of a judge to rule on his own work. You always do a collateral attack, which means you sue them. Does anybody know what the statute of limitations is on voids? Never runs out. The statute of limitation never runs out. That means that you can pick your shots and wait for your time. So, if you bring the suit against the judge? No. No. You bring it against the opposing party, and we'll get to that.

Okay. Now let's talk very briefly about subject matter jurisdiction. Subject matter jurisdiction is my one exception to the claim that all of this stuff is really very simple and we try to make it way too complicated. Subject matter jurisdiction is the one thing that there's a tendency to try to make too simple. And the reason that that's done is they don't want you to know what it is. They'll try to confuse you and try to get you to admit that what they're talking about is venue. We're not talking about venue. We're talking about subject matter jurisdiction. "Well, this court can handle. This court can handle foreclosures." Excuse me, that's venue. I'm not talking about venue. I'm talking about subject matter jurisdiction. "Well, this is a judge. This is a district judge." No, no. A district judge has no inherent jurisdictional authority whatsoever. "Well, he's heard a thousand foreclosure cases." We're talking about venue. I want to talk about subject matter jurisdiction.

Now, here's a um, um, an analogy that I think helps understand what we mean when we talk about subject matter jurisdiction. If you were a board-certified physician, a medical doctor, an oncologist, you would have venue to operate for cancer, wouldn't you? But would you have subject matter jurisdiction to operate for cancer? Because before you can have the surgery, you've got to do what? You've got to get permission. No. Permission is important. Consent is important. But that would be personal jurisdiction. The thing that you have to establish is that there's a cancer to be operated on. You've got to do the fact-find first before subject matter is complete. Subject matter is not just the ability to make a decision of a certain nature. It's actually having the facts in front of the court to make the decision. It's just like that doctor. He better do a biopsy. He better make sure that there's a tumor there. Because if he operates and there's no tumor, he's in big trouble. Unfortunately, our judges are not held to the same standard yet. As far as accountability, but they are held to the same standard. And the reason for that is if you can show that that doctor operated without a fact-find, that's a void. And again, is this because I thought it up? It's what the courts have said. It's what the courts tell me the law means.

Anybody here from Texas? There's a nice little case called Merrill v. Dunn. And I'll lay that back on the table if you, if you guys want to take a look at it, copy that site. And this was actually referenced um, in what Deborah read. I'm going to read it again. "Final judgment. Under Texas law, no answer defaults are not presumed to be final judgments." Has everybody been rung up on a default judgment before? Okay. Is it a final judgment in the eyes of the court? No. In my case, they thought it, they thought it was, but it wasn't final unless an examination of the record shows that there were four legs on that table. Which means you can go back and look at that record. And if there was never any witness appearing and testifying to the facts, that was a three-legged table, and you can get that thing removed. I'm not saying will or shall, I'm saying can. Another Texas case. "Although judgments entered after conventional trial on the merits is presumed final under Texas law, summary judgments and default judgments are not entitled to such presumption." What does that mean? It means they're not res judicata. It means they're not over until you want them to be over. It ain't over until it's over. And who controls that? Who empowers the court? You do. You do if it's not res judicata. And the Texas Supreme Court has said, "Hey, hey, go ahead with your summary judgment. Go ahead with your default. But be forewarned. If that person comes along a year later, 30 years later, and finds a failing appearing on the face of the record, they have a right to petition their government to remove that." Is that good news for anybody?

Now, how solid is this competent witness stuff? Because I have a perception that's probably shared by a lot of you that we've been about 35 years into something called the Great Society, and it's meant nothing but degradation of our institutions. Anybody agree with that? Okay. But is the real legal institution still paying attention? In other words, Stripling versus Pyeatt et al. was 40 years ago. It was 40 years ago that the Supreme Court said, "Hey, hey, you guys are not paying attention out there. If there's no competent witness here, there's no case. So, pay attention." That's 40 years ago that the Supreme Court said that. Are the courts of competent jurisdiction still saying that? Happy to tell you that they are. Because it was never reversed, and it's being followed. This is a New Jersey case. Great little piece of legal writing, even though it was done either by a judge or a judge's clerk. And I'm not going to read this case because I promised you wouldn't read any more cases because really not that interesting. But what we get from the holding of this case, and this was New Jersey, and this was the autumn of 1999, is you can submit a piece of evidence through an attorney, but if it doesn't have a witness's signature on it and it isn't dated, it's not evidence. Can't be seen by the court. You've got to have a competent witness who will appear and testify.

Now, two of the things that I've advocated today were recently seen in this election that we just had. Who finally determined what the law was in that election? Supreme Court. Okay. And it's also true that there was a judge that to me probably might be maybe as good as uh, as Judge Wapner, by the name of Sanders Sauls. This, do you remember Sanders Sauls? Sanders Sauls threw out the Gore people. Threw them out. Threw them out. They appealed him, but he, he threw them out. And they went whining up to their Florida Supreme Court. And one of the things they whined about is, "Well, there were just boxes of thousands of thousands of these questionable ballots in that courtroom, and that judge never even looked at them." Why didn't the judge look at them? There was no witness. There was no witness. You know, one, one of the Supreme Court justices of Florida actually was not a dodo. Several of them were. As the Supreme Court of the United States proved when they did what's called instruction to the lower court. And they are lower than the United States Supreme Court, although supreme in Florida. One of those Supreme Court justices in Florida asked the attorney for the Gore campaign, "At any point in time did any person so much as pick up one of those ballots, hold it up to the court, and say what it meant?" No. Well, it was never evidence, though. It's sitting in the courtroom, but that doesn't admit it as evidence because it can't get there except one way, through a competent witness. And here are these guys, what are they making? $500 or $1,000 an hour? They're idiots. They're idiots because they haven't been paying attention to the law that still endures today. They were playing games. And they got beat, fortunately. Of course, if it weren't for our common law system, they'd have won. But fortunately, we still have a common law system.

Is there anything in that case? What? It's not a published case. I'll give it to you and you can make a copy of it if you'll get it back to me, but it's not a published case. And there's an interesting, if we have time today, we'll talk about uh, unpublished law. Um, the um, 8th Circuit has made one of the most meaningful decisions in the history of the world, if it holds. And it, and as much as the 8th Circuit says that you have to follow precedent in a decision or published new authority, or your appellate decision is not only void, it's unconstitutional. How about that? We'll talk about that later if we have a chance. Um.

So, I discovered the law of voids in 1993. I discovered the the uh, competent witness in 1995. And like I told you from the very beginning, I'm not a legal scholar. Because I've been knocking around in this war for about 15 years, since about 1986. But that's what I want to share with you. If you don't know these things, you do now. You do now. Um, as far as when we are representing ourselves, when we're going to court, when we're doing battle, I have a little bit of advice, and that's do it. As far as testimony is concerned, don't ever be afraid to testify. You have to think about what's at stake. It's scary. I know it's scary. It's scary for two reasons. One, it's not our game. I have no intention of ever becoming a licensed practicing attorney. Just never going to do it. I was looking at the paper this morning, and on the front page of the sports section, it had a picture of Randy Johnson. Does everybody know who Randy Johnson is? And here I was born within a few days of Nolan Ryan. Used to have a pretty good fastball, and I actually had some some baseball ambitions, but I got hurt. I always thought, "Nolan Ryan got my spot." But there's somebody that's probably going to be uh, more dominant in the game of baseball as a pitcher than Nolan Ryan, and that's Randy Johnson. This guy is about 6'10" and throws these 100 mile an hour fastballs. And what must be even more intimidating is his control is not that good. Maybe he does it on purpose. But how would you like to be, how would you like to be a left-handed batter facing Randy Johnson? I mean, he must, he must look like he could almost reach out and touch you. He's so big. It'd scare the heck out of me. But you see, it's been 30-some years since I played baseball. It's not my game. Going into court is not your game. And so, it's a little scary. The other thing that makes it scary is we are always at risk of being absolutely clobbered if we haven't done our homework, or if we've been misled. We get clobbered. But in these wars, you have to think about what's at stake. There's a lot at stake. Financially, emotionally, socially, it's life-threatening. So, you have to gather the will and resolve and the courage to go testify. And you can build up your own self-confidence and your stock way up if you come back to this meeting and think about the things we've discussed, and think about the fact that facts only get in front of a court one way, through what? Competent witness.

Everybody go sit. Has anybody here just sat in the courtroom waiting for their number to come up and you're sitting there and you're watching these proceedings? How often when you're sitting there do you see an attorney jump up and another attorney jump up, and then a couple of witnesses jump up? How often do you see that? Because it's just the attorneys, right? What did we just learn about attorneys? Can they testify? You can beat the snot out of them. I know because I've done it. And I've coached other people to do it. Because when it comes time for your hearing, you are a witness. You are the witness. You're the key witness. And you can have your say. Be prepared and speak your peace. And then when that attorney starts, starts to talk, here's what you do. Very loudly, you say, "I object." And that judge is going to look at you because you have upset his little tea party. "What are you objecting about?" "It's the attorney. He's not a witness. He can't testify." "Oh, well, he's um, he's just uh, discussing uh, points of law." "And I'm going to let him continue. You got to talk. Now he gets to talk." That attorney gets to talk, starts talking again. What do you do? "Object." "He's still testifying." "He's not a witness. He's come here without a witness. That's his peril. They usually let them present their case first. On, it's the movement if it's a, if it's a movement's priority. If it's your motion, if your action, you talk first. But even if they, but even if they talk first, you still object. Even if it's their action? Yeah. You can object by saying, you object and object and object until the judge tells you don't object anymore. That's kind of because there's no controversy there in this situation. You're exactly right because the fourth leg is not on that table. Question? I said there was no controversy unless there's a witness there to establish a controversy. Full jurisdiction. Full jurisdiction. It's not there. But as far as test-, testifying, don't be afraid to testify. Didn't you say that you could testify, but if you're not sworn in, is anything that you say considered testimony? So it's just pleadings, officer. We're going back to the flag. See, the credibility of that hearing is not dependent on the flag, but it's not dependent on a lot of other peripheral factors either. It's dependent on what? Pleadings. And so whatever the record shows, and that's why if there's going to be a judicial determination, you always want to have a court reporter there. Because you want it on record what was said. You want your oral pleadings to be recorded. You want your objections to be recorded. But it's that critical information that's in the written and oral pleadings, which must be sufficient to empower the court to act. Those other things are just kind of like ceremony. So because you're not an attorney, you can, you can talk even though you're not sworn in and it would be sufficient for a You're a witness. You're a witness. You can testify as to facts that attorney can't. Can't testify to one fact whatsoever. So that's a little bit more power for us.

Depositions. Somebody wants to depose you, jump up and down, shout it. Shout hooray. I'm glad. I get to make a record. I get to tell my story. Don't be afraid to get in a deposition. Just be wary before the deposition ever begins that that lawyer is there to trick you, to save you, mislead you, abuse you, and do anything else he can to intimidate you, but make them sweat. I have made two attorneys cry in court. I was deposed in a lawsuit that I was involved in. An attorney kept coming back to the same thing, and I kept answering it the same way. He never did get me to actually impeach myself in that first deposition. Uh, more than a year later, there was a second deposition. So here I was in the second deposition, and here was this hotshot high dollar.

stockholder lawyer of this big law firm. And uh, he begins by saying, "What from your first deposition do you want to change?" It's called impeachment. Watch it.

Well, I don't know that I want to change anything. And that's the answer that you want to give. Well, why don't you know? I I just don't know if there's anything I want to change. See, because if you said that there was nothing you wanted to change, then you're verifying that if there's anything in that original deposition that's a mistake, you've insulated that for him. But if you do say there's something you want to change, you've impeached yourself as a witness. Not credible. Change your mind. I don't know if there's anything I want to change.

Well, have you read the deposition? Yeah. Yeah? I've read it. Okay, well then what do you want to change? I don't know if there's anything I want to change. Well, why don't you know? Well, that deposition was 97 pages long. I don't remember every sentence of every paragraph, every page. I don't know I don't remember what I what I might want to change or might not. I just don't know. I said, "You want me to read the deposition and tell you as I read it if there's something I want to change?" So you niggle them. You play their own game. Why don't you do is answer the question? I've already answered it. I don't know. I don't know. So don't be afraid to be deposed. Just do your homework and be prepared for it.

There is one body of people when it comes to making law that's just under the Supreme Courts. And they are the jurors. The only people that are more powerful than jurors in this whole legal psychodrama are the Supreme Courts. I will always request, ask, or demand a jury. I've never gotten one. I've never gotten that far. Most cases don't go there. They're settled. Something happens. They just don't get in front of a jury. But I guarantee you that I will take my chances in front of a jury of somebody, maybe my peers, maybe not, any day before I will allow a judge to make a decision on my life. So those are things as we as we find these wars, be ready to testify. Be eager to testify. Be ready to be deposed. And when it comes to actually making the decision, ask for a jury.

One of the reasons why you want to ask for a jury, those lawyers on the other side are terrified of facing a jury. They're scared to death of juries. Juries are made up of people. Do people like lawyers? They hate lawyers. Not only that, it's a rare lawyer that really has competent, effective courtroom experience even at the hearing level. Most incompetent, nonsensical business that I've ever witnessed. As near as I can As near as I can tell, I'm responsible for probably three lawyers not being lawyers anymore. You can do it, too. You can do it, too.

Is there any cases where they won't let you have a jury? Uh only petite cases. In other words, little tiny ones. Only little tiny ones. If there is a certain amount of uh currency in controversy, in most states you demand it. You need to actually look at the state that you're pleading in. Some some place uh some states don't want you to demand. They want you to request. Okay, read their law, follow their rules.

And when we're talking about pleadings, too, uh I pride myself as a legal writer. Maybe I Maybe I'll make that boast. Maybe I'm a good legal writer. But your pleadings do not actually have to be sterling examples of the legal writing art. Again, why do I think that? Is Do I just happen to think that? All right. All right. Yes, the Supreme Court. Supreme Court has said that in fact if you would like to know the case where they said that, one of the cases where they made that ruling and determination was Haines v. Kerner. Now, I've got it here, but I promise you I'm not going to read you any more cases. Won't do that to you. It's boring.

But if we get Haines v. Kerner and we look at the holding of Haines v. Kerner, and again, this is United States Supreme Court, they say, "Accordingly, although we intimate no view whatever on the merits of the petitioner's allegations of somebody representing themselves, we conclude that he is entitled to an opportunity to offer proof. The judgment is reversed and the case is remanded with further proceedings consistent herewith." What did the Supreme Court just tell you? That according to the Supreme Court, if you're representing yourself, you cannot be dismissed for failing to state a claim upon which relief was granted because the Supreme Court says you do not have to be a fellow daffy lawyer. We understand what you want. That's sufficient. You can't be dismissed. You get the opportunity to present proof in support of your claims.

It's also true that the courts when you're representing yourself, they are the guardians of your liberties. You walk into a court and tell the judge, "Judge, you're the guardian of my liberties." What do you think most judges will do? Well, I'm not sure, attorney. Because they're ignorant. But they are the guardian of your liberties. Do you know why? Supreme Court says so. Here's an example. District Court instead of simply dismissing plaintiff's pro se actions for injunctive relief and damages against Central Intelligence Agency, Federal Bureau Federal Bureau of Investigation and Defense Intelligence Agency on grounds that he failed to name responsible federal government officials should have explained. Court should have explained correct form to the plaintiff so that he could have amended his pleadings accordingly. The Supreme Court expects that judge to tell you how to do it right if you're not doing it right. Are we getting a little bit more power as we go along here? Uh that's actually Platsky versus CIA. I'll have all these papers that you do not have laid out and you can be able to make copies of the sites later.

So, do we understand the power of voids? Voids, a judgment that is void on its face may be attacked at any time. Judgment being void, execution issued thereon was void and the title could not pass to purchaser on at execution of the sale. That's a couple cases, that's a couple of holdings. I've worked cases across this country. I've studied statutes annotated in many states. And to some degree, and usually a high degree the courts are in agreement that there can be no three-legged tables. And that when a person discovers that they've been walloped with a three-legged table decision can have it removed.

Now, when we're um when we are um doing our pleadings there's uh some powerful tools that we can use that will give us some degree of immediate relief. Uh if you want to help Deborah pass out uh the uh Superior Court of New Jersey, that's the injunction and then the notice of lis pendens. They're Well, I don't know if they have these. Did you pass out all the documents? Okay. Well, that should be uh about one or two documents back in your stack when you get to that. Okay, the first one that we'll look at is an is an injunction. You should have one, John Q and Jane Citizen. Superior Court of New Jersey. John Q Citizen. It's the one that looks like this. John Q. It's New Jersey. Yeah. Okay.

This is a procedurally proper motion for a preliminary injunction. And again it's not procedurally proper because I say so. Again, it's because the annotated statute says if you're going to file an injunction, make it look like this. This injunction actually asks the court to stop any action to take property. That's important. But the injunction also gives the reasons why and the brief in support. Now, I'm going to read that. The brief in support of an injunction. And this is always important to prejudice the court in your favor. It is not now nor has it ever been our intention to avoid paying any obligation that we lawfully owe. You want to remember those words. They're they're gospel to use in many sentences sentences. Dewey, Cheatem and Howe is the name of the law firm purporting to act on behalf of Greedy Mortgage Company have repeatedly refused to document and verify an obligation which we may owe Greedy Mortgage Company as required by law. What are we alluding to there? Was there a competent witness? No. We will suffer irreparable harm by denial of this preliminary injunction. We have lived at our address in our home for many years with our children. We will lose our abode and suffer irreparable harm by denial of this preliminary injunction. We will suffer insult, degradation, and deprivation of personhood denial of this preliminary injunction. We are likely to prevail in our petition. The record in the underlying case makes us makes our claims undeniable. Public interest will not be impaired by granting this preliminary injunction. The public interest will be impaired by denial of our preliminary injunction by public awareness that citizens can be victimized by those who declare themselves to be of a superior class. Everybody had Anybody had that feeling? Okay. We have no other remedy at law to protect ourselves from parties record show have conspired to deprive us of our most fundamental rights. Denial of our preliminary injunction will cause us to bear a greatly imbalanced harm. Greedy Mortgage Company harm would be delayed possession. Our harm will be loss of abode, damage to reputation, character, and assault on personhood. Denial of our preliminary injunction goes beyond economic injury. The cost to the court on error later corrected to the favor of Greedy Mortgage Company Incorporated is not as great as the cost to the court for error later corrected to our favor. Granting our motion for preliminary injunction conserves the property no matter who prevails. Denial of our motion for preliminary injunction directly affects the property by reducing it to a status of a bell which can't be unwrung. Emotionally, has everybody been in this teapot before? Okay.

Now then. The reason that I gave this to you is because I want you to rush out and get me put in jail for practicing law. This is, and again, it's not because I say so, but this is a pro forma that you can use on your own behalf. Any time that you're fighting the evil ones of the establishment put your own facts and your own names into this and file it in the court and try to get injunctive relief. You're probably not going to get it because not enough judges out there have been informed of the fact that there's a revolution going on and you're part of it. But they might grant it. I guarantee one thing, if they read it they're going to take a deep breath before they do anything. Because they realize that somebody knows what they're doing. Me knows what they're doing. So, they better crank it up a little bit as far as how they proceed. They better watch it. They might make a fatal mistake. That is always going to play into it.

Now, you also have a notice of lis pendens. A notice of lis pendens will stop the transfer of property. It will stop the transfer of property. It needs to be procedurally proper. And again that's why I'm risking being incarcerated in my old age for practicing law. This one's right. This one crosses the T's and dots the I's. Because there has to be a pending action. There has to be notice and opportunity to the opposing side. The property has to be subject to the principle of the notice of lis pendens. And it has to be sufficiently identified so that there's no mistake about which property you're talking about. Now, almost all property is subject to the principle of lis pendens. So, when you're fighting them and you don't want your property to be taken away file a notice of lis pendens. Because there might be a sheriff sale but it's not going to be resold. The notice of lis pendens will stop that. Because a person acquiring that property is informed that they may have to give it back. With damages. We'll we'll get to it. We'll get to it. Um what we're probably going to do this afternoon is have a question and answer and maybe even even discuss some specific uh matters that you may be involved in. But the other power behind a notice of lis pendens when a title insurance company goes to inspect a property and they find one of these hot potato. I don't want any of that. Because they know they know that they may have to pay a claim. They're not going to insure it. Not if there's not notice.

Now, you can do a quiet title without a notice of lis pendens. But with all of these things we've got to remember that we've got to put four legs on a table, too. Now, I know a lot of people that have trusts. And I say do I want to file that trust in the courthouse? And my answer is maybe. I probably wouldn't until you are threatened with a an action. Then you want to file it. Because if it's not on file, if the other person has no means to know about it, it doesn't mean anything. Because you've got to put that first leg on that table, which is notice to the person. That person has no means to know about that they cannot be subjected to it. How would the person find out about it? Where is it filed? Okay. That's sufficient. They've they've got to have a means to be able to find it out. You can't surprise them with it after the sheriff sale. Well, the the person that's considering the property has to have a way to ascertain that that document exists for it to operate. I mean, it's kind of a golden rule thing. How would you feel? You went to the courthouse, there were no there were no encumbrances on this property, you bought it. Somebody comes along later and says, "Well, you know, I got I had this trust in my uh safety deposit box here and now you're out of luck." Well, how was I supposed to know that? Uh I don't know. Sounds like a reasonable theory, but I just don't know. That you could file a Uh it strikes me as being sufficient, but I don't know. I'm not qualified to answer that. I'd have to give it some research, but what you might do is go to the law library get in the annotated statutes look in the index under trusts and it'll all be there. And if it ain't there it doesn't count. Well sounds good to me. I I don't have any basis to dispute him or affirm him either way. I don't know.

Use it against everybody, but because see it's not something that you use directly against your opposing party. It is to inform anybody that might acquire that property that they're acquiring at their own risk. And it's their peril. Anybody read the Burn Holland case that was recently decided in the 10th Circuit? See see the people that acquired that property are the ones in real peril. Not the IRS that precipitated the taking of the property, but the people that got the property. And I'll tell you what if there was a notice of lis pendens, they're dead ducks. They have no defense because they should have known better. I don't know. I don't know. Lady says that all they can sell is the lien on the property and not the property. I don't know. Uh I'm inclined to agree just simply because I know that the IRS has a long history of ignoring all laws and all rules. But I've got you know, I may I may have my own surprise for them in the not too distant future.

Does anybody need to take a break? We need I have one question. Uh if they were already taking your stuff, you had a foreclosure, you counter you counter sued and you put the the notice of lis pendens this property that wasn't involved in the foreclosure can you revive that case if the lis pendens come back? If I understand your question yes. See, that's the nice thing about the body of law that I'm talking about here today is most of these things are never over until you want it to be over. Until you've either won or you just want to fight anymore. You could you can string these things along for years and years. I've worked a lot of people. I always tell them right in the beginning, "I can't guarantee that you'll win." But I'll guarantee you one thing. You'll make those people on the other side and their attorneys absolutely miserable because I do know how to do that. Do do we want to take a 15-minute break at this time? All right. 10, okay. Let's uh it's uh it's about 8 minutes after. Let's be back about uh 20 minutes after. Yeah, love