10-02-11 Huminski v. Town of Bennington (2d Cir. November 05, 2004) - and integrity, or lack thereof, in Justice Sotomayor confirmation hearing statement to the US Senate

 

Date: Thu, 11 Feb 2010 13:49:53 -0800
To: lawsters@googlegroups.com
From: joseph zernik
Subject: Sotomayor's decisions: Authored? Co-authored? Entered? Unentered?

Hi Scott, Hi All:

As usual, I am just touching the surface of the matters at hand, with no claims of understanding the true legal matters of the decisions.

Huminski cases were listed by Sotomayor in her statement to the US Senate as cases where she authored or co-authored the decisions:

• 1) Huminski v. Rutland City Police Dept., 221 F.3d 357 (2d Cir. 2000) (per curiam) - p 9
• 2) Huminski v. Town of Bennington, Vt., 111 Fed. Appx. 643, No. 03-7036., 2004 WL 2490 (2d Cir. November 05, 2004) - p 97

The listing of the latter case is the first evidence that Sotomayor in fact had written or participated in writing the decision. In the order itself, not only the signatures were missing, but also the signature boxes. Therefore, prior to this listing by Sotomayor, one could not even say that Sotomayor authored it, although her name was mentioned at the top of the paper.

Now, since you have her statement to the US Senate that she co-authored such decision, I would say, you should ask her to correct the omission, sign the decision, and take proper ownership of it.  It is as simple as someone mailing you a check with no signature, you mail the check back, and ask the person who issued the check to correct the omission...  I would be curious to hear if Sotomayor would ever respond, and which way. In case she does not respond, one must question the integrity of her statement to the US Senate, where she claimed ownership of such decision.  As my contribution, I am willing to pay the $14.00 for certified, restricted delivery, return receipt, priority mail, if you send her such request, asking for the favor of a response within 10 business days.

It would be of interest, and also of significance I believe, to scan all her decisions as a circuit judge, and get the true number of unsigned decisions as percentage of the total that she claimed. It may be eye opening data.

• Have you figured out the total number of her decisions as a circuit judge?
• What is your estimate of average pages per decision?
• Costs on Pacer?

If the cost is too high, please point out to me the relevant section in the 130 page document listing her decisions, I may just do some random sampling.  There is high likelihood that all such unsigned decisions were in sham cases, which were not entered by the appellate court at all.  One would need to go back to the dockets, and ask for the NEFs to ascertain the true nature of such cases.

Unfortunately, the language of the questions, as stated by the US Senate was not clear enough. It should have stated "decisions that you have written and entered".  Writing alone is of no significance.   Regardless, if we find that substantial portion of the decisions that Sotomayor claimed in her statement to US Senate were unsigned decisions, and if she would refuse to sign yours (which is almost a certainty), and the 2nd Circuit would refuse to allow access to the NEFs (which is by now the established pattern in all US Courts), integrity of the Sotomayor statement to US Senate in her confirmation hearings must be questioned.

Truly,

Joseph Zernik, PhD
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At 07:45 AM 2/11/2010, you wrote:

So three justice panels handle cases in us appellate courts, based upon sotomayor's 98 page listing of decisions she was invovled in, that's approximately 1000 rulings per year for a generic 3 judge panel.  How can anyone believe that 3 judges can decide (or even understand) this many appellate cases?  It is humanly impossible considering that between briefs and appendices most federal appeals amount to several hundreds of pages.  So it is flocks of clerks, some just out of law school with zero trial or court experience, that decide these federal appeal cases which are highly important to the parties as revealed by their choice to appeal.

It was informative that she listed the unpublished (junk) cases separately from the published (important) cases.

--scott

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From: s_huminski@live.com
To: lawsters@googlegroups.com
Subject: Sotomayor's decisions
Date: Wed, 10 Feb 2010 18:12:52 -0500

Sotomayor's decisions for 2005.........

Approx. 280 unpublished opinions for 2005, 29 published opinions =

280 cases she knew nothing about and had nothing to do with +
29 cases where she might have read some facts and participated in some degree in the disposition.

Link to Sotomayor's decisions:

http://74.125.155.132/search?q=cache%3AIv-1-0Aq7JwJ%3Ai2.cdn.turner.com%2Fcnn%2F2009%2Fimages%2F06%2F04%2Fquestionnaire-appendix-2009.pdf+huminski+v.+bennington+03-7036&hl=en&gl=us

I was at oral argument for 1 of those 280 cases and Sotomayor didn't have a clue concerning the facts or legal claims before her.  -- scott