Too bad that the quality of legal practice leaves much to be desired here, but that is the real problem. Don’t blame it on the courts. "
Do the courts need to follow the laws and rules? Or are they exempt somehow?
So far as I can tell in this particular case, it looks like the clerk for the court required something of the plaintiff that wasn't required.
So the paralegal files documentary evidence of what transpired.
Then, the judge takes it out on the plaintiff's paralegal?
This appears to me that the judge on this case is basically saying he and his court are above the rules.
What the judge's order states is this:
The plaintiff filed an interpleader action--that is a special kind of lawsuit where one person is holding money or property and isn't sure who it belongs to and asks the court to tell him who to pay so he doesn't wind up paying twice. The Complaint said that the "property" they were holding was their "loyalty" to the President and they needed interpleader because they don't know who the real President is. (Aside: when this lawsuit was first filed, I posted here that this was a frivolous claim, and got seriously flamed for saying that.)
The Judge said that it was frivolous to sue for interpleader because "loyalty" is not property. However, he didn't dismiss the Complaint because the defendants hadn't yet asked him to.
Obama then moved to dismiss the Complaint and Berg missed the deadline to respond to Obama's motion to dismiss. The judge gave Berg more time to respond to the motion. Berg still didn't respond to the motion to dismiss. Instead, he has his paralegal file an affidavit saying that the court clerk bullied her into filing a motion she didn't have to file. The judge said that he ordered Berg to respond, not the paralegal, and that what he wanted was a response to the motion to dismiss, not an explanation for the filing of the motion. The judge is now giving Berg a third chance to respond to the motion to dismiss.
Added to all of this is that Berg is not licensed to practice law in D.C. He filed a motion to be admitted "pro hac vice" -- that is, allowed to practice just for this one case. The judge said that he is not inclined to do that because Berg is clearly not following court rules (although he has not definitively rejected Berg's motion yet).