In 1748 Baron de Montesquieu in his best known work "The Spirit of the Laws" wrote that "There is no crueler tyranny than that which is perpetuated under the shield of law and in the name of justice." I deeply agree especially considering that I have been fighting for custody over my daughter in Los Angeles Superior Family Courts as a pro se litigant for more than three years against a certified attorney. I faced three different judges, one of whom I could disqualify under peremptory challenge. However - to the shame of the Los Angeles Judiciary - the Los Angeles Court has proven itself its incapability in protecting children and rendering judgments in accordance with the law, especially when a pro se litigant dares to fight hard against Judicial incompetence and indifference to the California law.
In LA Family Court, if you're a passive pro se litigant meekly and clumsily pleading your case, judges might condescendingly toss to you scraps of what you're legally entitled to, as if throwing a gnawed bone to a whimpering dog to prevent dog from dying. However, woe betide the independent plaintiff who diligently prepares his case, basing arguments on precedents, citing legislative acts and intentions. Such efforts often backfire spectacularly. Judges usually resent your competence, forcing you to battle not just the opposing party, but also judicial hostility. The unspoken message seems to be: "How dare you educate me on the law? Think you're clever? I'll show you your insignificance!"
From that point on, you are fighting with a judges psychological issues and with Judges' under self-esteem. Your submissions meticulously and deliberately are dismissed or ignored for any of the tiniest technical inconsistencies. The courtroom transforms into a draconian classroom, with you cast as the student facing a harsh professor. Every motion, every argument becomes an exercise in frustration, as if you're being forced to rewrite the same essay ten times for minor infractions, all in a bid to put you in your place and proove you are just nothing here, even though you were never pretended to prove anything but your arguments in your case.
Indeed, formally – LA Judges do everything correct. However, as Justice Cardozo wisely observed long time ago – in 1932, "[a] system of procedure is perverted from its proper function when it multiplies impediments to justice without the warrant of clear necessity." Reed v. Allen, 286 U.S. 191, 209, 52 S.Ct. 532, 537, 76 L.Ed. 1054 (1932) (dissenting opinion).
However, be sure, when a Los Angeles Family Court Judge faces a choice between safeguarding a child's wellbeing or right to be free from abuse based on your motion and dismissing your submission due to inadvertent procedural errors, they often choose the latter. These LA Judges sacrifice your child's safety in favor of the perverse satisfaction they derive from dismissing your motions on technicalities. Their priority appears to be not your child's well-being, but rather the cruel own pleasure of demonstrating their disrespect to you because you are not represented by the certified attorney and showing how powerless you are in their courtroom.
Moreover, it's a bitter irony that while certified attorneys are paid professionals expected to be well-versed in legal procedures, judges typically treat them with far more leniency for their inadvertent mistakes or minor procedural violations than unrepresented litigants. This disparity in treatment flies in the face of fairness and Judges' integrity. Indeed, logically, it should be the opposite. Self-represented individuals, navigating the complex legal procedures without experience, should be afforded more understanding if they made some mistake not in bad faith. Instead, the LA Judges punish those who most in need by that, substituting their own pleasure and emphasizing their elevated status for the expense of vulnerable litigants seeking justice. LA Family Court Judges (as any other Judges) are shielded by absolute immunity and thus, lack any responsibility for their actions.
The contemporary Los Angeles judicial system is becoming increasingly unreachable for people who wish to resolve their cases but lack the opportunity to be represented by certified attorneys. Nowadays, the LA judicial system has devolved into a competition of procedural compliance. Unrepresented, pro se litigants, even those with genuine cases and sincere intentions to comply with procedural requirements, are often not fully aware of these requirements due to their lack of direct experience. As a result, they may make unintentional mistakes, not out of bad faith, but due to the system's complexity and procedural impedements about which Justice Cardozo said (cited above).
For more than three years, I've been fighting in Los Angeles Superior Courts tirelessly to maintain a relationship with my daughter despite her mom's repeated attempts to alienate us.
For three years, right before the judge's eyes, the daughter’s mom moved four times, by that - increasing my travel time to my daughter from a manageable 40 minutes to an arduous 2.5 hours one way. Simultaneously, the mom's attorney shamelessly claimed that it was detrimental for the child to drive so long and thus, I should be restricted from having physical custody over my daughter but have only visitations. I urged the Court that this was insanity, as I had not created that driving time, having lived in the same place for the last four years.
What did the Los Angeles Family Judges do? They admitted that two-and-a-half hours of driving is indeed detrimental for a 5-year-old daughter and... in a perverse twist of logic, abusing their discretion, the Los Angeles Judges used this factual finding about duration of driving against me - punishing my child and me for a situation we didn't create! Factually, they favored a perpetrator of detriment to the child, rendering a decision that is deprived of any common sense.
The Los Angeles Family Court unlawfully restricted my custody time, giving me only visitations amounting to about 24% of custody time. This flies in the face of California's Family Code, which emphasizes frequent contact with both parents and mandates that in determining custody, the Court must consider which parent would more likely share custody with the non-custodial parent. So, while I always stood in my arguments that daughter’s mom and I, we both entitled and must have equal physical custody, the Los Angeles Family Judges gives custody to the mom who in all her submissions and by all deeds alienated child from a father. That is blatant disrespect to the CA family law showed by the LA family Judges. They do not care to read and apply the law, rather they rely on their own whims or whatever accidentally comes to their minds even though it is unsupported by factual any legal grounds.
But it gets worse. The court has thrown my daughter into a home with the mom's new husband - a man indicted under CA Penal Code 273d(a) for willful infliction upon a child of cruel or inhuman corporal punishment or injury resulting in a traumatic condition. This man also has multiple restraining orders against him protecting his biological children and former wife.
So, everyone should know that the Los Angeles Family Court and its Judges consider that Los Angeles children need not be free from abuse and may easily live with a criminally indicted child abuser, while not a single piece of evidence was filed against the child's father in Court because none exists. I insist that Los Angeles Family Judges are incompetent and see nothing wrong with endangering children's safety based on my experience.
The Los Angeles Superior Court by such judgments send a message to society that it is punishable to claim paternity rights in Los Angeles Courts even when one parent gravely infringes the child’s right.
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To my opinion, such LA Judges’s decisions might lead people to resolve their problems on the streets instead of doing it within the legal, polite Court processes because there is no trust and confidence to Los Angeles Family Courts after Judges display very clearly their incapability and professional incompetence to safeguard children's and parents’ rights in accordance with California legislation.
So, people should understand that while they pay taxes to treat and feed Judges and their family, hoping that when they come to the LA Court they will get a fair trial in accordance with the law, and the CA law will be equally (not selectively) applied to everyone, in reality, the judgment will be based on Judges’ whim and depend on how they like you personally and as I noticed the law means nothing in LA Superior Family Courts – at least, in those courts and for those Judges that I have faced.
This blatant disregard for the law and my child's wellbeing is why I'm demanding a new trial. If they do not grant it, I intend to move my case under 42 U.S.C. 1983 and seek a declaratory judgment in Federal Courts for violation of my daughter's and my rights under the Fourteenth Amendment, which protects my rights to be heard and to get a fair trial, and my daughter's right to be equally protected from abuse by CA Family Law. Maybe the U.S. Federal Court will show to the LA Family Court Judges “what the law really is” and remind them their “emphatic duty” since it has as long been held as in 1803 by Chief Justice John Marshall in Marbury v. Madison - "It is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is." Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. (1 Cranch) 137, 177 (1803)
If you are interested - see my Memorandum in support of my Notice of Intention For a New Trial.
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