Federal District Judge Sam Sparks has had just about enough of attorney Allen Parker’s attempts to grandstand on the pending sonogram lawsuit (courtesy of BurkaBlog):
However, the Court is forced to conclude that Allen E. Parker, Jr., the attorney whose signature appears on this motion, is anything but competent. A competent attorney would not have filed this motion in the first place; if he did, he certainly would not have attached exhibits that are both highly prejudicial and legally irrelevant; and if he foolishly did both things, he surely would not be so prejudicial as to file such exhibits unsealed. A competent attorney who did these things would be deliberately disrespecting this Court and knowingly shirking his professional responsibilities, offenses for which he would be lucky to retain his bar card, much less an intact bank balance.
For Mr. Parker’s sake, and because the Court has not time to hold a sanctions hearing–in part because it must take time out of deciding the actual legal issues in this case to address the self-serving entreaties of attention-seekers like Mr. Parker–the Court assumes Mr. Parker is as incompetent as he appears. Rather than sanction him, the Court simply does what Mr. Parker would have done if he was a competent professional, and seals attachment 7 to his motion.
Ouch.
Parker runs the San Antonio-based Justice Foundation, a spin-off of the Texas Public Policy Foundation that litigates on behalf of far-right causes — especially abortion. He’s also been a prominent supporter of Gov. Rick Perry over the years and made news last month with his strident defense of Perry’s decision to limit his prayer rally to Christians only (h/t Right Wing Watch):
This is an explicitly Christian event because we are going to be praying to the one true God through His son, Jesus Christ. It would be idolatry of the worst sort for Christians to gather and invite false gods like Allah and Buddha and their false prophets to be with us at that time. Because we have religious liberty in this country, they are free to have events and pray to Buddha and Allah on their own. But this is time of prayer to the One True God through His son, Jesus Christ, who is The Way, The Truth, and The Life.
Pwn3d? Did someone let the 12-year-old intern choose the title? Please don’t use sophomoric l33t-sp34k on subjects like unconstitutional incursions on our civil liberties.
Wow. That is absolutely lovely.
OMG Tom – lighten up.
What does it mean, in Texas or US law, when a judge “seals attachment 7 to [someone’s] motion”? Is this a phrase of art, or is there a literal “attachment 7”? In which case, what is it sealed to, what does it take to unseal it, and what happened to attachments 1 through 6?
My guess is that attachment 7 contained medical information of a personal nature, the disclosure of which violated HIPAA.