*CLARIFICATION: I copied and pasted the article below, “Defending Families Against Forced No-Fault Divorce,” because it accurately depicts the horror that I endured pre-Hurricane Katrina while seeking relief for my domestic abusive marriage from the courtroom of despicable joker, New Orleans Parish Civil ‘ judge’ Herbert A. Cade, prior to his promotion from FAMILY COURT to Division “K” .   Cade created, scrambled, and he left many people’s cases in such a fog that –including pleadings and documents missing from case records –some people’s lives have become irreversibly crippled post-Katrina.  The emphasis I am making about Hardy Parkerson’s statement, is that it depicts exactly how Cade ran his courtroom, and the far- reaching harms that judges like create.
[ Additional info about Herbert Cade>> COMMENT: The New Orleans Lake Forest Plaza Lawsuit, Judge Herbert Cade, and Oblique Things **and about New Orleans JUDICIAL CORRUPTION>> “Judge Thomas Porteous and the Judicial ‘Devil’s Den’ from Whence He Came” ]

Tweet

Defending Families Against Forced No-Fault Divorce

Defendants are Denied a Trial According to the Laws and Rules of Evidence and Civil Procedure Spread the Word to Family-Minded Americans Boiler Room Justice

From Hardy Parkerson, (former) Atty
Lake Charles, LA
September 04, 2004

One thing that really disturbs me about the Divorce Industry, sometimes called “Family Court”, is that the parties, especially the defendant, are denied a trial according to the laws and rules of evidence and civil procedure. A new practice of what I call “boiler room” justice has evolved where the parties’ lawyers and the judges (not the parties) are called into the back, and each lawyer is allowed to make his or her own statement of what the facts and the law are; of course, not under oath, and no records being made of the proceeding; and then the lawyer in the black robe tells the other two lawyers how he is going to rule; and then he tells the lawyers to go on outside and stipulate their “agreement” into the record; and usually they do; but Heaven help them if they don’t for then they have an angry judge to face in the courtroom; and he/she will do his/her best to show the lawyer who wouldn’t “agree” that he or she should have “agreed”.

That usually happens after the parties, again through their attorneys, have been ordered to show up at another proceeding called a Hearing Officer proceeding; and the parties’ attorneys, not the parties, are then invited into the back to the “boiler room”, where a Hearing Officer “proceeding” is held, during which no one is under oath, and each attorney gets to make his or her own statement to the Hearing Officer of what he or she believes the evidence and the law to be; and, as the lawyers “advocate”, the Hearing Officer is filling out a form which he or she signs off on and which becomes the Recommendation of the Hearing Officer. I have even seen the attorney for the state filling out the Hearing Officer Recommendation form for the Hearing Officer during the proceedings, and then have seen the Hearing Officer sign off on the form that the lawyer for the State had helped her fill out. Of course, I was not sitting close enough to the Hearing Officer nor to the lawyer for the state (who, I have noticed, sits closely to the Hearing Officer) to know what it was that the lawyer for the State filled in on the form: hopefully, only the caption of the case, names of parties and attorneys, and such; surely not the Hearing Officer’s “Recommendation”. This Hearing Officer is a lawyer who has been hired by the court, not elected by anyone ,and who may, and usually does, wear a black robe; but who is not a judge, not elected by anybody, not answerwable to anybody but the judges who hire him or her. Once the Hearing Officer has gotten enough of listening to the two lawyers, he or she then signs off on his or her Recommendation, which if not “appealed” by a party withing the delays set by court rules, usually ten days, is then signed off on by the district judge and becomes the judgment of the court.

If an “appeal” is taken by either party within the delay allowed by the rules of court, a $150.00 deposit has to be made to the Clerk of Court, and eventually the “appeal” is heard by the district judge. At this appeal hearing (which is the only trial where testimony MAY (that is “might”) be taken, the parties may or may not be allowed to give evidence under oath and according to the Louisiana laws and rules of Evidence and Civil Procedure.

In a case recently that I had so “appealed” from the Hearing Officer’s Recommendation, the district judge dismissed my “appeal” without ever having heard one word of evidence from anybody; and, since not one word of evidence had been heard at the Hearing Officer proceeding, a Money Judgment now exists against my client, based on ABSOLUTELY NO EVIDENCE WHATSOEVER. My plan is to seek a review by the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, but even there the procedures have become so complicated that I will be lucky if I can even comply with the Rules of Appellate Procedure; but I will try. My plan is to teach this judge a lesson. He was a Hearing Officer for 11 years before he was elected judge, and he has never practiced law a day in his life, so I hear. He’s an X-LSU baseball player hired by an X-L.S.U. football player and judge. I put the word “appeal” in quotes; for the law does not say that one can appeal a Hearing Officer’s Recommendation, but that an “exception” may be taken to it; yet even the Rules of Court refer to such exceptions as “appeals”; and the district judge, instead of allowing a DE NOVO hearing, treats them as appeals and even requires the lawyers or parties “appealing” to specify in their “Motion for Appeal of Hearing Officer Recommendation the errors to the Hearing Officer’s ruling that they intend to rely on when the “appeal” is heard by the district court judge; and in fact the district court judge treats the initial district court hearing, not as a trial, but as an appeal, just like in the Court of Appeals; and the district judge now performs the function of only an appellate judge, not a NISI PRIUS judge, deciding cases not based on evidence lawfully adduced according to the Louisiana laws of Evidence and Civil Procedure, but based on the record; but what’s worse, as I learned recently in the case of STATE, EX REL. VS. STROH, the district judge just decided the case based on what was stated, not under oath, by counsel for both parties, first in the “boiler room”, and secondly, in Open Court when I refused to “stipulate” as “recommended” by the district judge.

Our legal rights are being eroded, even our Louisiana legal rights, in favor of a system of “expedited” legal process in the Divorce Industry (a/k/a Family Court); and although the judge who recently totally disregarded the Louisiana laws of evidence and civil procedure, not to mention “due process”, in disposing of and adjudicating my case is not my favorite district judge; nevertheless, he is a nice guy, especially off the bench; and with his self-created system of running contested cases through the judicial system in the Divorce Industry (a/k/a “Family Court”), he is great at disposing of literally hundreds of contested cases. I personally find that he decides cases on the evidence, at least the evidence as he sees or hears about it; but he totally (at least did in the STROH Case) disregards the law. This is just one lawyer’s opinion. I have never heard other lawyers express what I feel, but most lawyers are tight-lipped (a quality I do not possess, sometimes to my peril) and seldom express their feelings about judicial conduct; at least that is the way I see it based on almost forty years’ experience in and out of domestic court.

In the old days, when divorce cases were contested, every litigant got/ received his or her day in court and received a trial which proceeded according to the Louisiana laws of Evidence and Civil Procedure. Pre-trial conferences, generally in the old days not even held, were just that; but they were not “boiler room” proceedings where, for all practical intents and purposes, the case was “decided”.

There is more to it all than this, but this is something to think about.

Sincerely,

Hardy Parkerson, Atty.
Lake Charles, LA

No Comments