The first point I want to make is that my injustice experience was mostly “inconvenient” in the sense that it arose from a civil matter, not a criminal matter, and did not result in a criminal record.
I understand that almost every example of injustice involves much more significant consequences and I did not create this post because I think that my experience was a huge miscarriage of justice that needs to be addressed.
I created this post because my experience did involve a judge deliberately ignoring “black and white” evidence and judges that behave this way should be held accountable for their actions.
Summary
I acquired an unprofitable business with the intention of executing a “turnaround”. I couldn’t turn the business around and the failure of the business triggered a sequence of litigation with the former owner that unfolded over several years.
At one point in time during this litigation, the judge entered a court order that stated that “no assets can be transferred”. Sometime later, I issued a press release about the sale of some shares that I believed were not subject to the court order (people that try to secretly transfer assets or do something they believe to be wrong don’t send out press releases about it).
After getting some legal advice indicating that the shares could be subject to the court order, I decided not to complete the sale of shares and there was never any transfer of ownership of the shares at any time.
The shares in question were held by an independent “stock transfer agent”. I knew that this entire issue could simply be resolved by getting an affidavit from the independent stock transfer agent confirming that the shares had never been transferred. The stock transfer agent did provide the affidavit and also agreed to be a witness if required.
Also, the company’s financial statements were audited by a reputable independent accounting firm and the audit report confirmed that there was no sale of shares.
Further, as you would expect, the actual contracts relating to the sale of shares also confirmed that the entire transaction was terminated before any shares were transferred.
All of this black and white evidence was presented to the court and the judge simply decided to ignore all of it and chose, instead, to find me in contempt of court based solely on a press release. The net result: I ended up spending approximately 27 hours in a cell and a $4,000 fine.
Even though the consequences were minor, the idea of a judge clearly and deliberately ignoring black and white evidence is absurd and it occurred to me that there must be a lot of people that must have encountered similar absurd behavior from other judges and ended up with much more severe consequences than mine.
Review By Independent Judges
I am obviously biased toward myself so I decided to hire multiple independent judges to review my case and confirm that the judge in this case got it wrong.
Reports from three independent judges (all clearly indicating that the judge in my case got it wrong):
Judge Cardenas (click to view the unedited report).
Judge Lewis
Ridgell
These judges were not been selected because I expected them to provide opinions in my favor. They were randomly selected and I’m perfectly happy for any judge to review the case. In fact, I challenge any judge to review the evidence and come to the same conclusion as the judge in my case.
Plaintiff’s Attorney
Finally, there’s a point that needs to be made about the lawyer for the plaintiff.
Unlike the judge, who constantly failed to understand the simplest concepts, the plaintiff’s attorney was very clear about the fact that evidence from an independent “stock transfer agent” confirming that “no stock was transferred” was black and white evidence that confirmed that there was no violation of the court order that said that “no assets can be transferred” – yet he still decided to proceed with the request for a finding of contempt.
At best, this is “extremely unethical”. At worst it’s completely *uckedup and, in my opinion, lawyers that do this should be penalized with a prison sentence.