Before The Law

Discrimination is not limited to housing, education, employment, or the brutal actions of racist cops — Discrimination is alive and well in the Federal District Court in the Eastern District of Michigan, Bay City Division wherein Federal Magistrate Patricia T. Morris discriminated against a disabled Plaintiff who was representing herself Pro Se.

The disabled Plaintiff lost her job because of the egregious discriminatory actions of Saginaw Valley State University (“SVSU”). After losing her job, the Plaintiff could not afford to hire a law firm and decided to at least commence the case Pro Se.

The rapacious lawyers representing SVSU threatened the Plaintiff that they would seek sanctions from the beginning of the case. Clearly SVSU and their scrofulous lawyer Jamie Nisidis from the Saginaw law firm of BraunKendrick have sought from the beginning to harass, intimidate, and bully the innocent victim into dropping her case.

Most recently, the fatuous Nisidis sought to harass the poor Plaintiff this summer by submitting dozens of scorched earth interrogatories to the Plaintiff knowing that the Plaintiff’s illness and disability was particularly debilitating at the time. Then, when the Plaintiff failed to answer the absurdly intrusive and irrelevant interrogatories within 30 days because she was physically unable to do so due to her illness and disability (even though there had not yet been any case management order and another party had not even submitted their initial disclosures), the swinish and malefic Nisidis filed not only a motion to compel the Plaintiff to relinquish her constitutional rights to privacy and privilege, but also filed a motion for sanctions.

Shockingly, Magistrate Patricia T. Morris ignored the Plaintiff’s disability (and the fact that the discovery request was submitted prior to a case management order and prior to all parties providing their Rule 26 disclosures) and granted Nisidis’s motion to compel and over $2,000.00 in sanctions against the disable plaintiff.

In short, Magistrate Patricia T. Morris penalized a disabled Plaintiff for being too disabled to respond to Nisidis’s scorched earth interrogatories that sought to force the Plaintiff to waive her constitutional rights to privilege and privacy.

Morris told the disabled and underemployed Plaintiff that she should have hired a lawyer! Talk about being out of touch with reality of the average American. If you are disabled and lose your job because of your disability, this Magistrate expects you to be able to hire a lawyer at $250 – $400 per hour.

On the other hand, it is not surprising that Magistrate Patricia Morris grants all of Nisidis’s motions in her Court — Nisidis was on the committee that nominated Morris to her $200,000 per year job as a Magistrate. Shouldn’t Morris and Nisidis have to disclose this conflict of interest to other parties?

Funny thing about the $2,000 sanction though — the Plaintiff is first requesting that the District Judge overrule and vacate the Magistrate’s obviously wrong, discriminatory, and abusive order against the Plaintiff, but if the Judge fails to reverse the Magistrate’s order, then the Plaintiff has stated that she will file a notice of appeal and appeal to the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals as well as file a writ of mandamus seeking to reverse the Court’s obvious abuse of discretion and discriminatory and biased action against the Plaintiff.

If Nisidis’s cost of preparing the motion to compel was $2000, it seems very likely that it will cost Nisidis’s client, SVSU at least $2,000 to respond to the Plaintiff’s request that the Judge vacate the Magistrate’s order and probably 5 times as much more money to respond to the appeal and petition for a writ of mandamus to the 6th Circuit. In other words, Nisidis’ action seeking $2000 in sanctions from the Plaintiff is likely going to cost her client at least $12,000. Sadly, Nisidis’ client is a state university that is funded primarily through student tuition. Certainly the students at the University should be informed about how SVSU is wasting their tuition money on shortsighted, petty, and vengeful lawyers like Nisidis.

P.S. Then again, Nisidis worked for a guy named John Decker who was still employed by BraunKendrick even after he was appointed Chief Counsel of SVSU. One would think such a conflict of interest would not be allowed by a state agency. Perhaps the Attorney General’s office of Professional Responsibility should be made aware of this conflict.  It is certainly disconcerting to think that Decker, as Chief Counsel of SVSU, was wrongfully profiting by having BraunKendrick lawyers churn the bills to SVSU.  It appears that the phrase “conflict of interest” has no meaning to bottom dwelling lawyers like Nisidis and Decker.

The fee just to file a case in federal Court is $500.00. That does not include the costs of making copies of the complaint which can cost hundreds of dollars depending on the number of pages.  If the opposing parties do not waive service, then the cost of hiring process servers or paying federal Marshals to serve the complaint can cost hundreds of dollars more.

Unfortunately, recent surveys have shown that 62% of Americans do not have access to even $500 in cash savings. [1] That means that 62% of Americans would not have access to that same $500 in cash necessary to file a federal lawsuit.

According to the Federal Reserve, [2]  “Only 48 percent of respondents said that they would completely cover a hypothetical emergency expense costing $400 without selling something or borrowing money.”

So in order to be able to afford to file a federal lawsuit, the majority of Americans would have to sell something or, if they knew someone who had that kind of money they could possibly borrow it.

It is absolutely shameful, and in my view, unconstitutional, that the filing of a federal court case is financially out of reach for an average American to even file on their own.

[1] http://www.cnbc.com/2015/01/07/60-percent-of-americans-cant-cover-unexpected-expenses.html

[2] http://www.federalreserve.gov/econresdata/2013-report-economic-well-being-us-households-201407.pdf