We have a NC constitutional guarantee of open courts, but here in Asheville the judges thumb their noses at it: “All courts shall be open…” One judge, the chief district court judge [Calvin Hill], closes his court at will by having the door locked and a deputy posted at the door. Another, if she sees you in the courtroom and dislikes you because she’s afraid you might write something uncomplimentary (but true) about her [Julie Kepple], will single you out and angrily tell you to leave and even have her bailiff threaten you with his gun and taser. Still another one [Edwin Clontz] – who has recently been embarrassed by a pubic reprimand adopted by our Supreme Court – will have his bailiff rush at you as if to lay violent hands on you and then tell you, as he opens the door to shove you out, that “You’re free to leave!” If you want their names, I’ll give them to you. — published in Volokh Conspiracy, as a comment about an article in VS by Prof. Volokh in which the great Roman philosopher Plutarch advocated for open courts when a Roman nabob requested that a lawsuit in which he was a party be tried at his home. [The names were added here in brackets.]
But there is more: I learned from a Dr. Hubbard, a NC orthopedic surgeon, that he filed an application here in Buncombe for an absolute divorce. The property settlement had been concluded in earlier proceedings. Then I learned from him that the judge, Andrea Dray, refused to grant him the divorce when his ex showed up and demanded his Lexus. In other words unless he turned his Lexus over to her, also a medical doctor, Dray would not grant the divorce. Now that is about the extent I know about this shocker, and I have been trying to get to the courthouse to look at the file (Hubbard vs. Hubbard). The first time I looked for it, the file could not be found but then I called recently and it is in the clerk’s office… and thick too! So as soon as I am able to look at at and draw some conclusions for passing on here, I’ll pass on some more commentary about it. I am trying to get better at walking after kidney surgery.
Oddly, as you know, Hill and Dray, have been replaced by two more mopes, one from the despicable dissembling farce known as Pisgah Legal, and the other from Ron Moore’s nest of snakes. I can only infer that some of the Brahmins of the Bar convinced Hill, the courtroom golfball tosser, and ultra vires Dray that they had become personae non grata.
There will be more about the scandalous Buncombe courts, and in the meantime I am thankful to the one or two folks in the courthouse who anonymously send me very helpful hints about its numerous skanks and the sullied institution known as our courthouse: Whistleblower 1 and whistleblower 2. Aren’t you glad that the “fierce little biscuit,” Katie Dreher of Fifth Amendment fame, never got to be a judge? Well, let me tell you these latest two may be even rottener than she was. Meredith and Robin, I got my calculating eyes on you!
Re: Judge Andrea Dray
Just read my previous posts under “Hubbs” on this blog. In the absolute divorce there were no issues to adjudicate. I had a solid prenup which mooted any issues of property distribution, our 14 year old daughter had elected to live with me, I made no motion for child support, and by the prenup, my ex could not ask for any temporary or permanent alimony. All four areas were covered and there were no conditions to set aside the prenup as unconscionable. She had not responded for 5 months, well past the 30 day deadline.
But she is not a doctor. That was my first ex who was a board certified double fellowship trained, fully licensed physician, now Laura Clark, MD, full professor at U of Louisville Dept of Anesthesia , which is why I made sure to protect myself -from the family courts from a repeat experience with my second wife. I had to file for divorce both times. My first divorce was back in Elizabethtown KY, case 90-CI-276 Hardin Circuit Court Division II Judge Hugh Roark. Absolute, total incompetence where the statutes were even cited by the court in its opinion and then stood on their heads. My lawyers, all four of them, got me embroiled in a needlessly bitter and costly divorce. As usual, it boiled down to lying and money. When I tried to sue them for legal malpractice, the Special Appointed Judge, William Harris, Louisville, KY immediately recognized these defendant lawyers had been negligent. These 4 lawyers came back with a motion for “clarification” of the opinion to change the words from “this court concludes these attorneys were negligent” to “assumes for the purpose of discussion these attorneys were negligent.” And from there, the court relied on a very weak Mitchell v TransAmerica @1970s case from the lower KY Appellate court, when in 1991, the highest KY State Supreme Court had specifically addressed this abuse of summary judgement (to prevent a party from introducing his evidence at a trial) through Steelvest v Scansteel, KY Supreme Court, 1991.
Long story short, my ex wife ran off with the entire marital estate ($650,000 tax free 1991 dollars) and I was left with double extrapolated child support payments, a excess med-mal liability exposure that later became reality via a $150,000 excess judgement ( all in 1991 dollars) and my my medical license suspension for which my lawyers had made no provisions when they pulled the rug from under me the morning of trial suddenly urging me to settle because “my exposure was too high.” All I needed was for them to affirm on my interrogatories that “I had reached a good settlement.” Judge William Harris further wrote “The dispositive feature is that the Plaintiff settled his divorce case.” Any claims, no matter material, were now automatically “speculative.”
The same with the KY Board of Medical Licensure (KBML) case 467 for the aforementioned med-mal case. Now that the SCOTUS has overturned Chevron Deference, my next case before the KMBL was even more outrageous as they had no expert in my specialty as required in the KY Medical Practice Act to prevail as their own required same specialty expert had totally exonerated me. They did not call him to testify as an expert witness. Instead they then held me to anesthesiology standards. The case should have been summarily dismissed through summary judgement because the KBML could not possibly have prevailed if they had ZERO evidence to support their case. On Appeals to the KY State Court of Appeals, it was obvious that the Appellate Court had not even read my appeal based on the fundamental controlling issue and immediately had shot gunned in three totally unrelated cases to “support” their opinion, even confusing doctrines of Captain of the Ship with Respondeat Superior showing that they had not even read the three cases they had cited.
The KY Court of Appeals then wrote: “Great deference must be given to the Medical Boards because they are the most knowledgeable in the the practice of medicine.”
Except that my case was purely legal based! There were no issues of causation or medical probability. All medical facts and actions by the medical team were undisputed by all experts. But Chevron deference can only be relied upon when the laws were ambiguous, and there was no ambiguity in this case, and in fact the administrative law judge had cited this law which required I be held to the same specialty standard of care as are physicians in med-mal lawsuits, but then turned around and created his own lay person standard of care. The tech and the nurse who had violated time honored rules and regulations and standards of care in delivering me a lethal drug in the operating room when it was undisputed I had asked for the correct drug and dose got off- to protect Hardin Memorial Hospital in Elizabethtown, KY.
When I arrived as a medical refugee from KY to NC in 1995 at tried to resurrect my career at Albemarle Hospital in Elizabeth City (not Elizabethown NC) it was more of the same. The NC Medical Board, in search of a poster child for its new 2003 agenda, could not get any of its 5 appointed experts to give the board what it wanted, and finally had to shop for an out of state opinion at Talbot Recovery Center in Atlanta GA, which had a $50,000 minimum conflict of interest. The NCMB and its rogue agency hitman, the NC Physician’s Health Program (NCPHP), were subject of a 2014 NC State audit looking into kick backs by these treatment centers to NCPHP in exchange for referrals to their facilities. These are for drug and alcohol addicted doctors. The problem is, I am teatotaler and have never had a failed drug screen, a DUI, a DWI, an accusation by any of the NCMB experts or any health care workers, members of the public of ever using drugs or alcohol.
All this and a whole lot more in my memoirs, My Medical -Legal Back Pages. Archway, Pen name Bryce Sterling.
And then last year I ran across an undergraduate classmate’s (Donald Cameron Clark Jr) book entitled “Summary Judgment” I wrote a review on Amazon, It has my picture under the 4 star review with my name “H Zilla” holding both books. I have never had a legal expert challenge, rebut or render any opinion to any of my claims in my book or by the NC Medical Board either. But I have been shadowbanned on Google, Facebook.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R942TEXLHAEW3/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_ttl?ie=UTF8&ASIN=B09HDJ6CXK
https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R942TEXLHAEW3/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_ttl?ie=UTF8&ASIN=B09HDJ6CXK
https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R942TEXLHAEW3/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_ttl?ie=UTF8&ASIN=B09HDJ6CXK
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