From hkhenson@home.com Sat Sep 08 20:49:49 2001 Path: sn-us!sn-xit-04!supernews.com!feed.textport.net!newsfeed.stanford.edu!news-spur1.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!howland.erols.net!newspeer.monmouth.com!news.lightlink.com!news2.lightlink.com From: hkhenson@home.com (Keith Henson) Newsgroups: alt.religion.scientology Subject: Berry at the Bar (the State Bar) Date: Sun, 09 Sep 2001 00:49:49 GMT Organization: Temple of At'L'An Lines: 141 Message-ID: <3b9abc78.82181978@news2.lightlink.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: 205.232.34.12 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Newsreader: Forte Agent 1.5/32.451 X-Original-NNTP-Posting-Host: 24.141.40.229 X-Original-Trace: 8 Sep 2001 20:49:06 -0400, 24.141.40.229 Xref: sn-us alt.religion.scientology:974285 Berry at the Bar (the State Bar) September 7, 2001 As a.r.s readers are aware, Graham Berry has been defending himself in the State Bar Court against charges brought by scientology using their lawyers. Scientology is of course utterly determined to ruin Graham Berry and like my case in Hemet is hardly bothering to put a fig leaf over their overwhelming and corrupting influence. Friday Graham had a status conference meeting with Deputy State Bar Trial Counsels Terri Goldade and Agustin Hernandez and Michael Gerner before Judge Eugene E. Brott (San Francisco). The status conference (on a conference call) lasted two hours. Graham had served subpoenas seeking documents from Moxon, Kobrin, Paquette, Byrnes, Abelson, Drescher, Wager and Lenske. Gerner was the lawyer retained by the cult's lawyers to respond. Gerner and Wager had filed the Hurtardo case against Berry for the cult (which paid for the Hurtado case) and Wager and Gerner filed separate complaints against Berry that become the Wager/Gerner complaint now before the State Bar (Gerner claims more than half of his practice is *defending* lawyers before the State Bar.) Gerner's motion was to quash the document subpoenas on the 8 lawyers. He claimed that Berry was a vexatious litigant who disliked the CoS and was using the discovery process to harass them and that Berry should not be permitted to take *any* discovery in the case without having special leave of the court showing good cause. Berry's papers showed that: The lawyers had all lied under oath when they claimed that Berry had signed the subpoenas and not the clerk of the court. That they had filed their motions too late, and had not engaged in the mandatory meet and confer. Berry also introduced evidence that the crime-fraud exception applied to the attorney work product and attorney client communication privileges. Under questioning from the judge at the hearing Gerner admitted that he had been retained by CoS to file the State Bar proceeding. He also admitted that Berry had not signed the subpoenas as he had stated under oath and his clients had stated under oath. His excuse was that he was not familiar with Berry's signature. (This might work for Gerner, but not Moxon or the rest of them.) He also conceded his papers had been filed too late because they could not get them together in time. They had not engaged in the mandatory meet and confer because they did not want to talk to Berry and just wanted him to go away. Also Berry continues to vex them (whine). The Hurtado conduct had nothing to do with Cipriano and Pattinson and they wanted all the Wager materials (where Wager admits to criminal activity against Berry) stricken. The State Bar made its own motion to strike the Wager deposition. Berry advised the judge that failure to meet and confer was fatal under the law and the judge had no option but to deny their motion. The judge ignored the law and ordered the Wager deposition (with its admission of criminal acts implicating Moxon) stricken and returned to Berry with *all* of Berry's exhibits. He granted their motion to quash in its entirety, refused to order them to meet and confer under any circumstances with Berry, and consistent with CoS's demands, forbade Berry from conducting any discovery without first filing a motion showing good cause why Berry should be permitted to take discovery. He did so after Berry pointed out this provided scientology opportunity to destroy evidence, something they been judicially determined to have been done in the Armstrong case. He refused to accept Berry's doctor's recommendation that the trial date should be continued, and refused to grant a first continuance (it is extremely unusual for a judge to fail to grant the first request) or *any* continuance in discovery. I.e., Berry has to provide all discovery the State Bar wants, all the cases Berry has ever been in with scientology (roughly 100 boxes of documents), but Berry will be permitted to do no discovery of his own and must comply by the 24th of Sept. for a mountain of admissions documents and such. The judge did this after *stating* on the record that scientology has a bad reputation and they may be vexaciously pursuing Berry! He considered it a joke for Berry to consider the possibility that the State Bar and scientology may be proceeding together against Berry and laughed at the concept that the State Bar may be incompetent or corrupted. Then the judge encouraged the State Bar and Berry to meet and narrow their differences. The State Bar refused do so, claiming that Berry would distort or misrepresent what they said. Despite the fact they made this claim before, they have never specified what Berry had distorted or misrepresented before. For example they have never denied stating to Berry that there were too many documents and facts to fully review before filing charges and that they commented that scientology's attorneys *had* engaged in criminal conduct, but that such a fact is irrelevant to the charges against Berry. (Perhaps they fear further slips of the tongue and Berry's making them public. ) He did throw Berry one bone, that if he shows good cause for discovery, then any of their attorneys will be served by mail through Mr. Gerner. Berry is filing a motion for reconsideration and may appeal it to the Supreme Court of California if it is not granted. Blind eye Bottom line is that the State Bar Court and the State Bar are ignoring, condoning, and aiding these attorney's criminal and unethical conduct. Historicly corruption in California is just mind-boggling. The State and its government have a long reputation for corruption. The FBI has investigated the legislature before, so it is not exactly a historical first. Early this year many people wrote the State Bar and LAPD Police Chief Parks and DA Cooley demanding an investigation of the Moxon/Kobrin/Wager/Abelson/Ingram activities. The State Bar has responded three times staying they have investigated and found that these lawyers have done nothing wrong or that there is insufficient evidence. The former DA Garcetti said he would not investigate for political reasons. Current Los Angeles DA Cooley, who previously vowed to clean up corruption, dodges it by saying it's a Federal problem. The State says it's a Federal problem, the Feds say it's a local problem. Whatever it is, as the guy said in The Pink Panther, "It's not my dog!" Keith Henson