Ava Maria University Gets "Death Book" Zealot as New Head!

Ava Maria University, a conservative Catholic law school based in Naples, made some headlines a while back when Loring Spolter noted that Judge Zloch has hired several law clerks from that school.

Believe me, I'm not getting in the middle of that.

But it seems the struggling school has a new head: James Towey, the former director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives under George W. Bush.

Towey's a Seminole law grad who most recently made news flocking a "death book for veterans"(!) as part of the scare campaign over health care reform.

Amid many crazy health care allegations, this one was a doozy and earned Towey the much-coveted BuzzFeed  "Pure Manure" rating.

So the school's in good hands (I'm talking about the FSU part).

BTW, the Washington Monthly previously took a look at Ava Maria back in late 2009, and it didn't look so good:

Most of the original faculty have fled or been pushed out, and the quality of the students has tumbled. One current professor told me, “Our student body now is one of the four or five worst in America.” The instability has also wreaked havoc on the school’s reputation: in the 2009 U.S. News & World Report law school rankings, Ave Maria tied for last place in the peer-assessment category, the most important measure in determining a school’s standing. (The school was not officially ranked because U.S. News doesn’t rank schools that land in the bottom tier.) Meanwhile, there are signs that Monaghan’s foundation, which funds the law school and the university, is on the verge of running out of money, in part because Monaghan bet his fortune—and the future of his nonprofits—on the now-crumbling Florida real estate market. Earlier this year, Ave Maria University’s second-longest-standing professor resigned, but not before sending a letter to administrators expressing his alarm at the school’s financial straits. “I fear that all of us (to different degrees) are participating in something that we may later deeply regret,” he wrote, “namely selling to young people and their families [an] educational product that we do not have sufficient reason to believe can be delivered.”

 Sounds like a great place to spend a lot of money when the legal job market is already in the crapper.

11th Circuit Upholds Judge Zloch Sanctions Order Against Loring Spolter!

Remember that time in band camp when Judge Zloch hammered -- and I mean hammered -- Fort Lauderdale attorney Loring Spolter?

Well the digital ink is barely dry on the 11th's unpublished affirmance of the sanctions order:

A review of the record, including the 68-page district court order, shows Spolter has been intensely persistent in seeking the recusal of Judge Zloch because of a perceived bias he believes the judge has against him. It is clear from the record that Spolter has repeatedly attempted to create the appearance of impropriety to further his requests for the recusal and reassignment of cases by Judge Zloch. Spolter has repeatedly attacked Judge Zloch’s faith and political affiliations, and has also called into question the credentials of some of his former law clerks. Spolter has further impugned the dignity of the court by alleging that both Judge Zloch and the Clerk’s Office have manipulated the case assignment system of the entire Southern District of Florida for the sole purpose of ensuring Judge Zloch receives a disproportionate number of Spolter’s cases.

Ok, so?

I'm not following.

The Court continues:

Spolter’s conduct in filing multiple recusal and reconsideration motions without providing a good faith basis supports the district court’s imposition of sanctions. Even though Spolter claims he had a good faith belief the case assignment system operated on a blind random basis before filing his motion for reconsideration, his claims are unpersuasive. The record shows he was notified by a letter from the court explaining how the case assignment system operates in the Southern District of Florida. If Spolter reviewed the case assignment rules cited in this letter, he would have known the Southern District of Florida does not operate on a pure blind, random basis. Instead, Spolter enlisted the services of an expert five days after receiving notification from the court, and provided him with inaccurate information in an attempt to try and prove the case assignment system had been manipulated and that Judge Zloch was behind it. Further, Spolter even admits that prior to filing his motion for reconsideration, he should have investigated the Court’s internal operating procedure and that he mistakenly directed the expert to assume facts that he knew were not true. Although Spolter claims he made a good faith mistake, we believe Spolter’s actions were done in bad faith and for an improper purpose. See Jones, 49 F.3d at 694. Accordingly, we hold the district court did not abuse its discretion when it imposed sanctions against Spolter pursuant to Rule 11.

Oy.

Is that full-page, Judge Zloch-approved DBR ad still an option?

Judge Zloch Sends New Year's Greetings to Loring Spolter!

Zloch Order 12-30-09 Re Spolter Sanctions

Hi folks, I hope you all had a tremendous New Year.

I think it's fair to say that whatever you did this New Year's, you probably had a better time than Loring Spolter, who was the recipient of a very special holiday card by Judge Zloch.

The entire Order is a must-read, but here's the kicker:

However, the Court wishes to make absolutely clear that Mr. Spolter is not being punished for his criticism of the undersigned. Despite Magistrate Judge Rosenbaum’s thorough and articulate 92-page Report and Recommendation confirming the same, this Court will state the basis for sanctions once more——for those who continue to mislead the public by characterizing Mr. Spolter as some sort of First Amendment martyr. Mr. Spolter has the absolute right to criticize a judge, but what he does not have the right to do is to file pleadings in Federal court for an improper purpose and in bad faith. For this, and for engaging in behavior that no reasonably competent lawyer in like circumstances would have engaged in, and for these reasons alone, Mr. Spolter will be suspended from practice in this District for 42 months, he will be referred to the Florida bar, a reasonable fine will be imposed, and reasonable attorney’s fees assessed against him and his law firm, Loring N. Spolter, P.A.

BTW, I had no idea the DBR is a "local tabloid"!

Did you see that, Julie?

If the DBR is a tabloid what does that make us?

(Don't answer).

Help Wanted -- Loring Spolter Is Looking For Someone to Bounce Ideas Off Of.

Poor Fort Lauderdale attorney Loring Spolter.

All he did was suggest to Judge Zloch that he is biased and cherry picks cases so he can further his conservative, anti-employment plaintiffs' agenda:

Fort Lauderdale lawyer Loring Spolter said the former chief judge allows his religious and conservative views to color his decisions. He also commissioned a statistical analysis that Spolter said showed it was impossible for so many of his cases to be randomly assigned to Zloch, only to be dismissed.

Cases are assigned in the Southern District through a somewhat weighted wheel system that takes into account where cases are filed and where the action occurred.

Spolter bolstered his arguments in court filings by saying Zloch has made financial contributions to Ave Maria Law School, which is relocating to Naples. Spolter said Zloch has hired four law clerks from the school. Ave Maria officials have made statements supporting the position that women who have given birth should leave the workplace to become homemakers.

Zloch’s support of the school “is a telltale sign of his partiality,” Spolter told the DBR for an article published June 8.

Zloch also has longstanding involvement with the Federalist Society and other conservative groups and shows a pro-employer bias, Spolter’s pleadings alleged.

I guess this didn't go over so well, and now Zloch is considering suspending Spolter from the practice of law in the Southern District for five years.

Alternatively, Spolter can take out a full-page ad in the DBR apologizing to Judge Zloch:

The judge told Spolter he could mitigate the sanctions if the lawyer bought a full-page, court-approved advertisement in the Review apologizing for his previous position.

Zloch did not return a call for comment by deadline. At the August hearing, he said federal case law gives him the authority to disbar Spolter.

Spolter's attorney said it's just a matter of having someone to bounce ideas off of:

“He had his views, he has in his own mind, bought into them, and he had no one to bounce off to give him a reality check,” Reinhardt told Zloch during the hearing. “He’s conceded he was wrong. He withdrew his motions.”

Zloch said Spolter’s statistical expert recanted his position at Rosenbaum’s hearing. The statistician had said it was nearly impossible for Spolter’s cases to randomly end up with Zloch only to be dismissed.

That’s when Spolter stood up and said the judge was wrong.

“The expert just called me up last week and spoke to me about this case again, and he said to me that he stood by his testimony,” Spolter said.

Oy.

Mr. Spolter, you have a lawyer. He is trying to save your tuches. Don't stand up before Judge Zloch in the middle of his argument and tell the judge he's wrong. That's a very good example of where you might want to bounce that idea off of your lawyer first.

Unfortunately, some ideas persist even where facts stand in the way.

In an otherwise fascinating article on the Perry/Cook North Pole debate, I came across this little nugget:

When we contemplate contradictions in the rhetoric of the opposition party’s candidate, the rational centers of our brains are active, but contradictions from our own party’s candidate set off a different reaction: the emotional centers light up and levels of feel-good dopamine surge.

With our rational faculties muted, sometimes the unwelcome evidence doesn’t even register, and sometimes we use marvelous logic to get around the facts.

In one study, Republicans who blamed Saddam Hussein for the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, were presented with strong counterevidence, including a statement from President George W. Bush absolving Hussein. But most of the people in the study went on blaming Hussein anyway, as the researchers report in the current issue of Sociological Inquiry.

Some of the people ignored or rejected the counterevidence; some “counterargued” that Hussein was evil enough to do it; some flatly said they were entitled to counterfactual opinions. And some came up with an especially creative form of motivated reasoning that the psychologists labeled “inferred justification”: because the United States went to war against Hussein, the reasoning went, it must therefore have been provoked by his attack on Sept. 11.

Who was the smart guy who said facts are stubborn things?