The San Diego Reader is no longer blocking me from making comments--and the Court of Appeal will hear my free speech case this Friday

I tried once again this morning to correct an error in the San Diego Reader's story about the defamation suit against me by Stutz Artiano Shinoff & Holtz. My comment went through! I'm delighted. Thank you, Reader owner Jim Holman. You're a gentleman and a scholar.

The Stutz v. Larkins case has been going on for six-and-a-half years, but the end might be in sight. I'll be presenting my oral arguments this Friday at 9 am to the Court of Appeal at 7th and B in downtown San Diego.



In August 2011 the Court of Appeal found
that Judge Judith Hayes' injunction against me
was a violation of the First Amendment, but
Hayes did not seem to get the message.

On June 21, 2012 Judge Hayes said to me,
“I’m not giving you permission to put anything on.”
(See the transcript HERE.)

In 2010 Hayes sanctioned me $3000 for violating the UNCONSTITUTIONAL INJUNCTION--AND REFUSED TO REVERSE HERSELF AFTER THE COURT OF APPEAL RULING! That injunction, which the Court of Appeal called "exceedingly broad", ordered me to never mention the name of Stutz law firm or its attorneys--not even if I wanted to seek legal counsel to defend myself against Stutz law firm's suit against me. Two years later, in 2012, relying on the 2010 contempt motion, Hayes added another $5000 sanction as punishment for my saying "Daniel Shinoff trains school attorneys" and similar statements. I'm not kidding. You can see the courtroom discussion HERE.

Here's my brief for the appeal that will be heard this week.

See all posts on San Diego Education Report about Stutz v. Larkins.

Even the American Bar Association made a big error when it wrote about this case.

THE COMMENT ALLOWED THIS MORNING BY THE READER:

MauraLarkins May 11, 2014 @ 11:45 a.m.

I liked Mr. Hargrove's article about me, but I would like to correct one error. In fact, the comment about Vito Corleone was not written by me, but rather by an anonymous visitor to my website. Mr. Hargrove's mistake can be explained by the fact that Judge Judith Hayes ignored the documentary evidence (exhibits that included printouts of my blog) when she issued a decision saying that I had published the comment!

In fact, I don't believe that Dan Shinoff makes Vito Corleone look like an altar boy. I'd say the exact opposite: that Vito Corleone makes Dan Shinoff look like the personification of moral purity.

I bear no malice toward Mr. Shinoff. I simply believe that the public has a right to know what our tax dollars are paying for, and how our schools are being run.

THE READER STORY ABOUT STUTZ V. LARKINS


Blogger vs. behemoths
By Dorian Hargrove
San Diego Reader
June 26, 2013

[Maura Larkins' note about the following story: The story fails to mention that there was no weighing of evidence in this case. There was no trial. There was not even a normal summary adjudication in which the court considers evidence on both sides. Instead, the judge threw out all my evidence and my opposition to summary judgment (because of a slight defect in format). My comments were NOT found to be defamatory in fact, but rather by a technicality. That's not the same as having the statements found to be defamatory at trial.]

It’s not David versus Goliath. It’s more David taking on a gang of Goliaths.

David in this instance is former elementary school teacher Maura Larkins. Larkins, a quiet but crotchety, middle-aged resident of Lakeside, runs the relatively unknown education blog called The San Diego Education Report.


Blogger Maura Larkins

Playing Goliath is the law firm of Stutz Artiano Shinoff & Holtz. One of the firm’s chief clients is the San Diego County Office of Education, along with the 65 school districts that make up the agency’s Joint Powers Authority. Since 2009, the firm has earned more than $7.7 million defending both the districts and the San Diego County Office of Education.

The conflict has lasted for six years inside courtrooms at the San Diego Superior Courthouse. For the lawyers, it is a fight to silence an incessant blogger from publishing defamatory comments about the firm on her website. For Larkins, it is a fight for her First Amendment rights to free speech.

So far, Larkins appears to be losing.

“The case has been a huge gray cloud hovering over me,” Larkins says at a coffee house in downtown La Mesa. “It’s limited my freedom to do the other things I want to do. My family has been more severely affected than I have. They see Stutz as powerful and invulnerable and don’t believe I have any chance of prevailing.”

But Larkins remains persistent, much as she was in 2007, when she posted what lawyer Daniel Shinoff claims were personal attacks and defamatory comments about the law firm.

Those comments appeared in a 2007 blog post. In it, Larkins accused the firm of “a culture of misrepresentation and deception,” adding that “the firm clearly suffers from a lack of professionalism or lack of understanding of the law…. My own personal opinion is, if a public entity is doing business with Daniel Shinoff of Stutz, Artiano, Shinoff, and Holtz, that public entity is probably involved in dirty business.”

The dispute between Larkins and Shinoff’s law firm goes back to 2002, when Stutz Artiano Shinoff & Holtz defended the Chula Vista Elementary School District in a wrongful-termination lawsuit Larkins had filed.

Larkins lost that case but didn’t forget it. Neither did the firm.

On October 5, 2007, Stutz Artiano Shinoff & Holtz filed a defamation complaint against Larkins. The “publications by defendant…were made with malice, hatred, and ill will towards [Stutz Artiano Shinoff & Holtz], with a design and intent to injure [the firm and its] good name, its reputation, employment, and employability in the future,” reads the complaint.

The firm asked for a judgment of $100,000, saying that due to Larkins’s commentary, it suffered “embarrassment, humiliation, and significant economic loss in the form of lost wages and future earnings.”

[Maura Larkins comment: In fact, in his deposition, Mr. Artiano said that he did not know of any harm that had come to his law firm.]

In 2009, judge Judith Hayes agreed, ruling in favor of Shinoff and company. Judge Hayes prohibited Larkins from posting negative comments about the law firm. Larkins agreed, while insisting that she would not refrain from publishing facts about the attorneys.

But later that year, Larkins couldn’t hold her tongue, or stop her fingers from typing, when former San Diego County Office of Education employee Rodger Hartnett filed a wrongful-termination lawsuit. Hartnett was fired from his job after accusing his boss, a former attorney at the law firm, of showing preferential treatment to her former colleagues by assigning them the bulk of cases from the San Diego County Office of Education.

In the comments section of her website, in response to an online article on the lawsuit by former Voice of San Diego reporter Emily Alpert, Larkins wrote: “…Shinoff makes Vito Corleone look like an altar boy. Shinoff has destroyed the lives of many individuals and families; only God knows what his body count is.”

Shinoff and his partners filed a motion with the court. Judge Hayes agreed with the lawyers, fining Larkins $3000 and barring her from making any further mention of Stutz Artiano Shinoff & Holtz. “And I’m doing that not in an attempt to foreclose or eliminate [Larkins’s] right to free speech,” said the judge, “but because it is crystal clear to me at this point that she is unable or unwilling to modify her [websites] in any good-faith attempt to remove reference to that law firm. So we’re cutting it off at this point. No more reference to the law firm.”

Larkins, however, has not gone this entire time without a few legal victories. In 2011, an appellate court agreed that the earlier judgment violated Larkins’s First Amendment right to free speech. That victory was short-lived, and the case is now back in the hands of Judge Hayes, who was scheduled to hear it sometime this month. Meanwhile, Larkins continues to post articles on her website.

“It upsets my husband every time an envelope comes from Stutz. He doesn’t understand why I don’t just take down my website. But over the past decade I’ve learned that the rule of law is far less secure than I once thought, and if I don’t defend it, then I am guilty of aiding and abetting the elected officials and their associates who want to suspend it whenever it’s in their interest to do so.”

She adds, “The financial costs have been very burdensome. I had to use my credit card to pay for court costs and $3000 [in] sanctions given by judge Judith Hayes. I’m deep in debt, even after breaking into my paltry IRA account.”

Court fees continue to increase without any sign of either side backing down.

Larkins puts court fees (including the judgment) at $43,000, and that’s not counting the money spent on copies and filings.

As for the lawyers, they show no signs of letting Larkins off the hook. In an April 10 email, attorney Ray Artiano wrote: “In the complaint, we set forth a number of the defamatory statements which were made by Ms. Larkins.

“The court agreed, yet Ms. Larkins persisted in making more defamatory comments. When someone makes defamatory comments, and refuses to withdraw those comments, the remedy is to file a lawsuit such as the lawsuit which we filed. This is hardly a case of bullying. [Our law firm] is extremely proud of its reputation, and we will not tolerate the publication of untrue and defamatory comments, nor should we be expected to.”

[Maura Larkins' comment: What Mr. Artiano fails to mention is the fact that there was no weighing of evidence in this case. My comments were NOT found to be defamatory in fact, but rather by a technicality. The judge threw out my opposition to summary judgment because of a slight defect in format. That's not the same as having the statements found to be defamatory at trial. I erased the comments that were adjudicated by a technicality, even though they were true.]

Continued Artiano: “The reason for pursuing this lawsuit is obvious. Why this lawsuit is viewed by you as newsworthy is not. Unless you intend to be less than objective. We have no thought of ‘silencing our detractors.’ Those who want to express opinions are certainly entitled to do so. When comments expressing alleged facts are made, and those comments are untrue and made maliciously, action must be taken.”...

COMMENT BY MAURA LARKINS

There was no trial in this case. In fact, **there was no weighing of evidence by the judge,** either. Judge Judith Hayes made her decision based ONLY on a technicality: that I hadn't used the updated format when I prepared my opposition to summary adjudication.

My statements were NOT found to be defamatory in fact, but only as a matter of law.

The judge could have weighed the evidence, but she chose not to do so. Why not?

To insulate herself even further from the facts of the case, Judge Hayes also threw out all my evidence. That was overkill, of course, since she had thrown out my opposition to summary adjudication.

UPDATE: I added one more comment:

MauraLarkins May 12, 2014 @ 4:33 p.m.

The law does NOT allow prior restraint of speech except for statements found to be defamatory "at trial". Judge Hayes did not have the right to deprive me of my constitutional rights without due process. Obviously, throwing out my evidence and my opposition to summary adjudication does not constitute due process.

San Diego Union-Tribune gets shinoffed

Dan Shinoff

I didn't think this sort of thing could happen to the San Diego Union-Tribune, the major newspaper in San Diego County. I thought it only happened to small-time bloggers like me.

A few years ago Stutz Artiano Shinoff & Holtz used its influence to get Google to shut down my San Diego Education Report Blog. It also managed to sabotage my blog in Google search results. I had to send legal documents like this one to Google lawyers to get them to reinstate my blog. And I never managed to stop Google Alerts from hiding my blog and mentions of me in other media outlets.

Still, I never imagined that Stutz law firm could get Google Alerts to conceal mentions of Dan Shinoff in the San Diego Union-Tribune.

But that's exactly what Google did. I wouldn't have known about the most recent stories about Dan Shinoff in the UT if I didn't also use Talkwalker alerts.

My "shinoff" alert on Google seemed to die on the vine. It didn't alert me to recent stories by the UT, including this story about Dan Shinoff about public records.

This is all the more bizarre since the "shinoff" alert used to tell me every time Dan Shinoff's nephew wrote a sports story for his college newspaper.

If you want to be alerted to stories about Dan Shinoff, I recommend Talkwalker's free alerts. Google Alerts' staff is strangely negligent when it comes to certain search terms. For example, you won't get Google alerts for my name (Maura Larkins). They'll tell you about every other person on the planet named Maura, but none of the alerts will be about me.


Emily Alpert now works for the Los Angeles Times

Emily Alpert wrote about Dan Shinoff and the San Diego County Office of Education before she was muzzled and then unceremoniously dismissed in 2011 by Voice of San Diego.

See all posts on Google censorship.

This can't be good news for U-T San Diego. Voice of San Diego noted on May 5, 2014:

"UT San Diego’s circulation levels have fallen sharply since last year, the Reader reports. Comparing the six months ending on March 31, the average circulation of the Sunday edition fell from 425,000 to 362,166."

My blog hits are often as low as 300 a day. How can Google do this to a newspaper with over 300,000 readers in one day?

Does Frank Gormlie approve of our biased arbitration system? Or is he simply not paying attention?

Frank Gormlie

UPDATE APRIL 11, 2014:

Omar Passons seems to cultivate a lot of friends in the media in addition to Frank Gormlie. Mr. Passons has apparently charmed Scott Lewis, CEO of Voice of San Diego, whose office is just across the courtyard from Mr. Passons' office at Stutz Artiano Shinoff & Holtz. Passon's handsome face is featured frequently in the rotation of photos at the top of VOSD's web pages.

Does this photo look familiar? It's Omar Passons' image from the header of a VOSD web page.

Stutz law firm must be delighted to have such loyal friends in the media. Dan Shinoff, one of the three major partners of Stutz law firm, must have been very grateful when Mr. Lewis not only stopped Emily Alpert's investigation of Mr. Shinoff and his benefactors at SDCOE, but fired her for good measure! But now that so many public officials who were (and still are) clients of Stutz law firm have been indicted, perhaps the media might want to rethink the amount of cheerleading it does for the firm. Why is Mr. Gormlie silent about this issue? Does he assume that no children are being harmed? If so, he's very wrong. But at least he's a good pal to his lawyer friends.


ORIGINAL POST (UPDATED):

I was surprised to see that OB Rag's Frank Gormlie included attorney Omar Passons' blog in his list of "independent and progressive blogs" last August. Passons is certainly not progressive. Just because he's African-American doesn't mean he isn't working for the 1%. I imagine he's about as independent as is expedient for him as an employee of Stutz Artiano Shinoff & Holtz law firm. Perhaps the marketing director at Stutz law firm urged the hiring of Mr. Passons to help with public relations.

Maybe Mr. Gormlie hasn't been paying attention. The following appeared in Voice of San Diego last May.

Justice for Sale, Part One: Arbitration Purgatory
By: Will Carless
Voice of San Diego
May 20, 2013
See Part 2 HERE.
See Part 3 HERE.

...Companies across the country insert wording into their small-print contracts that bars consumers from taking them to court...

The contracts require consumers to settle disputes in arbitration, a private form of conflict resolution. As mandatory arbitration clauses have become ubiquitous, companies have carved out a world of justice that some insiders and academics say is deeply flawed and biased against consumers...

Not only do corporations write arbitration into their contracts, they’re also increasingly stipulating the exact company or organization that will facilitate the arbitration. “It is almost impossible for us not to be self-serving,” says one arbitrator. Another disagrees...

Perz said an independent expert he hired concluded the car had probably been submerged in water, causing the electrics to fail and rotting the vehicle’s frame with rust. Perz decided he couldn’t in good faith sell it to recoup his money...

Arbitration is supposed to provide a cheaper and quicker way to settle legal disputes than the court system. But academics, attorneys, plaintiffs and even an independent arbitrator contacted for this story described arbitration as an uneven playing field, with consumers facing an uphill battle from the start...

In California, most arbitrators are affiliated with one of several large organizations. The largest is the American Arbitration Association (AAA); another big one is JAMS (formerly Judicial Arbitration and Mediation Services). Both have offices in San Diego. Both companies declined to comment for this story...

“In no way in my wildest dreams did I realize an arbitration agreement would allow them to do this,” he said. “It’s so frustrating. It’s just heartbreaking.”


COMMENTS BY OMAR PASSONS AND MAURA LARKINS

"Most people, particularly the people to whom the $30.22 is most critical, do not have the time and/or skill to pursue these issues."--Maura Larkins

Omar Passons May 28, 2013

I almost don't know where to begin. A 3-part series and you dedicate 3 sentences in the final part of the series to the opposing view? Wow. $30.22 is enough to buy food for almost a week, so it's nothing to shake a stick at.

But the ATT Mobility case is the paradigmatic example of why we need class action reform. You left out that the Concepcions only had to fill out a 1-page form to have their issues heard. And you left out that their MINIMUM recovery if they were right on their $30 claim as $7500. And you left out that they had the option to pursue their $30 claim in small claims court, where there are no lawyers and the judges are very relaxed with the rules, if they didn't want arbitration.

You also left out that class action cases can very easily cost more than $100,000 before you even address whether anyone did anything wrong. The "liability" portion of a class action doesn't even really get going until a judge certifies a class. I get it, your a journalist, not a lawyer, but as I mentioned previously there are plenty of lawyers around town who would give you a more fair picture. Or, for that matter, call any in-house lawyer for any large company. Or better, call the CFO. These cases are huge sources of awards for attorneys, not so much for the little guy or woman you claim is being so wronged by class waivers.

Your article also fails to acknowledge that there is no requirement that people actually have been wronged to bring a class action suit. They just need a few plaintiffs to be willing to stand in as the named plaintiffs and then a very expensive fishing expedition can begin to attempt to find people who are actually wronged. And put all this aside for a moment. The whole reason class actions exist is to create a way to make people whole when there is no incentive for them to bring the suit on their own. Here, where the barrier to getting your rights vindicated is a one-page form and a telephone call, there is almost no fear of it not being worth someone's time to file. In fact, with a recovery of more than 1000 times their actual harm I'm surprised everyone who bought an AT&T phone didn't try to use their more than generous dispute resolution procedure. I'm not even a particular supporter of the system of arbitration, it is frequently patently unfair. But this journalism isn't even an attempt to give people enough information to make an informed decision about the topic.


MAURA LARKINS' RESPONSE TO OMAR PASSONS May 28, 2013

Omar, I found that I disagreed with a number of your statements. Here are those statements with my responses:

[Passons] "$30.22 is enough to buy food for almost a week, so it's nothing to shake a stick at."

[Maura Larkins' response] Most people, particularly the people to whom the $30.22 is most critical, do not have the time and/or skill to pursue these issues.

[Passons] But the ATT Mobility case is the paradigmatic example of why we need class action reform.

[Maura Larkins' response]"Paradigmatic"? Why didn't you just say it's a good example? And are you really sure that there is only one paradigmatic example? I doubt that very much. I'm sure many people consider other examples to be more significant in arbitration reform.

[Passons] You left out that the Concepcions only had to fill out a 1-page form to have their issues heard.

[Maura Larkins' response] That's just the start, Omar. Then they have to deal with the big corporation for heaven knows how long.

[Passons] And you left out that their MINIMUM recovery if they were right on their $30 claim as $7500.

[Maura Larkins' response] Since when did arbitration decisions depend on who was "right"? Did you look at the graphic in part 2 of this series? No matter how right the Concepcions might be, they are almost certainly going to lose.

[Passons] And you left out that they had the option to pursue their $30 claim in small claims court, where there are no lawyers and the judges are very relaxed with the rules, if they didn't want arbitration.

[Maura Larkins' response] That would require serving a subpoena on a huge corporation (AT&T) after they discover who it AT&T's agent for service. Then AT&T's lawyers would probably contest everything, including whether service was proper. Then the Concepcions would have to prepare documentation and arguments and go to court. And that still wouldn't guarantee that the judge would side with the little guys against a big corporation.

[Passons] You also left out that class action cases can very easily cost more than $100,000 before you even address whether anyone did anything wrong.

[Maura Larkins' response] That's why you need a big class of people, Omar. So that the payoff will be bigger than the cost.

[Passons] The "liability" portion of a class action doesn't even really get going until a judge certifies a class. I get it, your [sic] a journalist, not a lawyer, but as I mentioned previously there are plenty of lawyers around town who would give you a more fair picture.

[Maura Larkins' response] Don't be patronizing. I think Will got a very fair picture of the situation. And I think there are plenty of lawyers around town who would be happy to give Will an unfair picture.

[Passons] Or, for that matter, call any in-house lawyer for any large company. Or better, call the CFO.

[Maura Larkins' response] We already know AT&T's position. It's in the case pleadings, and in the Supreme Court decision. It's the OTHER side of the story that we need, and Will did a good job on that.

[Passons] These cases are huge sources of awards for attorneys, not so much for the little guy or woman you claim is being so wronged by class waivers.

[Maura Larkins' response] [But the little guy usually can't represent himself effectively. That's why we need lawyers who will represent consumers and make sure that the powerful respect the legal rights of the powerless. Plaintiff lawyers wouldn't have to work so many hours and collect so much pay if there weren't lawyers on the other side being paid big bucks to come up with one reason after another to slow down the case.]

[Passons] Your article also fails to acknowledge that there is no requirement that people actually have been wronged to bring a class action suit. They just need a few plaintiffs to be willing to stand in as the named plaintiffs and then a very expensive fishing expedition can begin to attempt to find people who are actually wronged.

[Maura Larkins' response] [We all know what planet we're on, Omar. Yes, people make false claims all the time. Big corporations are among the worst offenders, making claims that they are owed money when they are not owed anything at all.]

[Passons] Here, where the barrier to getting your rights vindicated is a one-page form and a telephone call, there is almost no fear of it not being worth someone's time to file.

[Maura Larkins' response] [You know very well that you have to do a lot more than fill out one page and make a phone call to get your rights vindicated. And you must have a lot of time on your hands, Omar. Most people go to bed every night wishing they had had time to do things plenty more important than trying to get $30.22 back from AT&T.]

[Passons] In fact, with a recovery of more than 1000 times their actual harm I'm surprised everyone who bought an AT&T phone didn't try to use their more than generous dispute resolution procedure.

[Maura Larkins' response] [If this surprises you, Omar, then you must walk around in a continual state of shock as you observe the incomprehensible behavior of the ordinary people you meet. But I get the feeling that you rarely find the actions of corporations to be anything other than completely reasonable.]

Maura Larkins May 28, 2013

The Concepcion suit never should have been filed in the first place. ATT didn't collect the sales tax, the state did. So to suggest that ATT scammed anybody out of their money is false. It's no wonder companies want to reduce the possibilities of lawsuits when lawyers can talk simple-minded people into filing class actions based on false premises. Carless wants to paint business as the bad guy because that's what he fundamentally believes: that business is bad. Power to the people and all that nonsense. But the sad fact is that if it wasn't for lawyers of questionable moral value hooking up with simpletons, the courts wouldn't be full of bogus lawsuits and our ladders wouldn't have a dozen stickers telling us not to do stupid things. If the lawyers were so worried about the Concepcion's thirty dollars, they should work to rewrite the state law that says the state can collect sales tax on something a company is willing to give away for free.

Two bricks for Leslie Devaney and the San Diego Union Tribune for hypocrisy and secrecy

I'm concerned that attorney Leslie Devaney's demands for openness at Tri-City Healthcare are actually an attempt to STOP OR SABOTAGE THE FORENSIC AUDIT. Which does the public need more: an effective audit of financial shenanigans, or a long fight at a board meeting at which the final outcome was predetermined since the majority had all the votes they needed no matter who showed up? I think that the shortness of the meeting was merely an effort to protect the psyches of the board members, who apparently don't have much of a taste for being yelled at. I think they need to toughen up and summon up some courage. They're way too afraid of Leslie Devaney and Ray Artiano and the bigshots who hired them. The board needs to do some homework, to make sure it really understands the situation, and then stand up and go to bat for what it believes in. Too many board members across the spectrum of public entities simply do what their lawyers tell them to do.

This blog has awarded a big brick to attorney Leslie Devaney for hypocrisy and secrecy. Since 2001 Leslie Devaney's law firm Stutz Artiano Shinoff & Holtz has been paid $100,000s of tax dollars by Chula Vista Elementary School District to cover up crimes and other violations of law.

Yet Devaney has the temerity to denounce the new Tri-City Healthcare board majority for lack of openness. Why is she doing this? Apparently to stop the board's investigation into possible criminal activity by her clients Art Gonzalez and seven of his fellow administrators.

But it gets worse. At the same time that Devaney is denouncing board members for putting administrators on leave during a forensic audit, she and her partners at Stutz law firm are suing this blogger (Maura Larkins) for defamation, and REFUSING TO PRODUCE DOCUMENTS RELATED TO THE CRIMINAL ACTIONS AT CVESD.

How do I know these documents exist? Because I have over half the pages from the 87-page set of Bate-stamped documents--the ones that were cherry-picked by CVESD because they were less incriminating. The documents were collected by Daniel Shinoff at Chula Vista Elementary School District during the fall of 2001, and Bate-stamped with the number “1” (not “01” or “001”) through 87, inclusive.

In order to make it impossible for Stutz law firm to claim that they couldn't identify the documents, I sent them copies of many of the documents from the set. Still, Stutz says it can't find the documents, and blames a paralegal.

Here's where the story gets humorous: Stutz is suing me for saying that "Daniel Shinoff keeps documents locked up in his office."

* * *

And here's a brick to the San Diego Union Tribune for hypocrisy and secrecy on behalf of Stutz law firm, for publishing tirades against CVESD for transferring the "Castle Park Five" while at the same time keeping secret the $100,000s of tax dollars the district had paid to defend many of those same teachers.

Attorney Bradley Marshall tries to intimidate Seattle Blogger

Apparently a lot of lawyers think that bloggers are easy to intimidate. I also have had the honor of having an eminent lawyer (actually, a whole firm of them) try to intimidate me into silence.

Lawyer Tries to Intimidate Seattle Blogger

From Hominid Views: People, politics, science and whatnot
July 31, 2008

What is this world coming to when a high-powered attorney to sports stars (and a now-deceased famous talk-radio host) goes on the attack against a lowly blogger?

You see, Bradley Marshall, attorney extraordinaire (well… if you don’t count the recent 18 month suspension of his license) just sent a letter to Seattle liberal blogger and journalist (and friend of mine) Michael Hood at Blatherwatch requesting that Michael yank some old blog posts and cease writing about him.

Michael is certainly not the first blogger to get such requests, but it must be quite the honor for Michael to get a letter from a lawyer of such stature...

The SDUT isn't telling all about one of its favorite newsmakers

CVESD UPDATE: For news about the $1 million jury award in the Danielle Coziahr v. CVESD lawsuit, click HERE.


David Washburn of the San Diego Union Tribune wrote on May 18, 2007, regarding the recent lawsuit against Vencent Donlan and his wife Robin Donlan, "...Robin Donlan, who teaches fourth grade at Hilltop Drive Elementary in Chula Vista, is cooperating with federal investigators to an “unprecedented degree.”

Any cooperation at all from Robin Donlan in the investigation of crime is unprecedented, in my experience.

Robin's lawyer David Hiden said "she has waived attorney-client and spousal privileges and agreed to informal interviews."

In a civil lawsuit filed about four years ago against Robin Donlan for misdemeanors committed against Maura Larkins at Castle Park Elementary School District, Robin's entire defense was based on attorney-client privilege. Her argument was that any subject she had ever discussed with her attorney was something she should not have to answer questions about. Robin answered only ONE written interrogatory in San Diego Superior Court case no. 781970, and she answered it EIGHT MONTHS after it was served on her, when she knew that the plaintiff had already found out the answer to the question. (The answer was found by a private investigator at a cost of several hundred dollars.) Robin Donlan's brother, Michael Carlson, who is a sheriff's deputy in Santa Barbara, never answered a single interrogatory, nor showed up for a deposition. But perhaps he could be helpful in the current case. He could tell his sister that he puts people in jail all the time for being in possession of stolen property.

While Robin Colls Donlan's cooperation in answering questions is clearly a brand new behavior, some of her other behavior hasn't changed at all.

Robin ensnared a lot of her friends in her crimes, but they all stood loyally by her, claiming the same attorney-client privilege, and committing felonies to cover up her misdemeanors. Robin, on the other hand, seems to have turned against her husband. That's probably wise, since the FBI might be a bit tougher than Robin's victim in the previous case.

Donlan turned against Chula Vista Elementary School District after it had paid many $100,000's of taxpayer dollars to defend her. The San Diego Union Tribune wrote frequently about her attacks on the school district in 2004 when she was transferred to a new school. The district had to spend EVEN MORE MONEY TO DEFEND ITSELF FROM Robin Donlan, after it had spent so much TO DEFEND HER.

Here's what I'm wondering. If Robin really believed that she had HONESTLY AND GENUINELY come into millions of dollars in wealth, why didn't she pay back the taxpayers for all the money they spent on her? Robin's former lawyer Daniel Shinoff is still living high off taxpayer dollars, but the students of Chula Vista Elementary schools could sure use the money.

Interestingly, today's paper says 30 former officials at Mira Costa College are outraged by the college president, Victoria Richart. It seems she funnelled around a million dollars to Daniel Shinoff and school staff to investigate "the errant, but well-intentioned, actions of a teacher struggling to make her program the best in the state." This quote is from a letter from the 30 former officials.

My own personal opinion is, if a public entity is doing business with Daniel Shinoff or Stutz, Artiano, Shinoff & Holtz, that public entity is probably involved in dirty business. Chula Vista Elementary trustees Cheryl Cox, Bertha Lopez, Pamela Smith, Larry Cunningham and Pat Judd wanted lawyers who would be willing to commit crimes to cover up crimes, so they chose Daniel Shinoff of Stutz and Mark Bresee of Parham & Rajcic.

This is certainly true of Grossmont Cuyamaca Community College, where chancellor Omero Suarez changed his own contract without permission, but the lawless board kept him on. He and Dan Shinoff are apparently doing exactly what the board wants. The board clearly does not value honesty. If it did, how could it get away with violating the law so often?