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But what about those missing documents?
"It is disingenuous and cynical to invite me to carry my complaint to an appellate court when my complaint is that James R. Dunn destruction of documents leaves me with a trial record too expurgated to support an appeal." � Lubomyr Prytulak

Lubomyr Prytulak
UKAR the Ukrainian Archive at www.ukar.org
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14 March 2003


Carolyn B. Kuhl
Supervising Judge, Civil Departments
Los Angeles Superior Court
111 North Hill Street
Los Angeles, CA
USA     90012


Re: Rambam v Prytulak   BC271433   James R. Dunn

Carolyn B. Kuhl:

I appreciate your attaching to your letter of 28-Feb-2003 copies of eleven minute orders, seven of which I had never seen before.

But What About Those Missing Documents?

I should clarify that my central complaint concerns the unexplained disappearance of ten documents placed in the hands of the Court, nine of them Defendant Lubomyr Prytulak's, and one of them Plaintiff Steven Rambam's which proved to be inadvertently helpful to the defense:

1   27-May-2002    Motion-to-Quash-B
2   14-Jun-2002    Prytulak-Query-B
3   29-Aug-2002    Motion-to-Quash-C (with US$193 money order)
4   03-Sep-2002    Rambam-Objection-C
5   13-Sep-2002    Prytulak-Reply-C (with US$23 money order)
6   05-Nov-2002    Prytulak-Reply-D3
7   21-Nov-2002    Prytulak-Reply-D7
8   02-Dec-2002    Prytulak-Request-For-Minute-Order
9   10-Jan-2003    Prytulak-to-Clarke-03 Transcript Order
10   20-Jan-2003    Prytulak-to-Dunn-01 Three Documents Call for a Reply
With regard to the ten above vanished documents (not to mention the two vanished money orders), it is even at this late date still a matter of considerable urgency that I be for the first time informed which of the following is the case:

  • James R. Dunn cannot account for the whereabouts of the ten vanished documents, they are excluded from the trial record, and James R. Dunn will not forward them to a higher court in case of appeal.  If this is the case, then my follow-up must be to request citation of the authority which permits James R. Dunn to destroy submissions, and without announcing that he does so, and without explaining why he does so, and without offering feedback as to how the submissions could be amended so as to give them protection from destruction, and without answering queries as to their fate.

    � or �

  • James R. Dunn does have the ten vanished documents in his possession, they are included in the trial record, and James R. Dunn will forward them to a higher court in case of appeal.  If this is the case, then my follow-up must be to ask why James R. Dunn has not listed these documents under Documents Filed in the online Case Summary, and why he leaves unanswered my queries as to their fate.

Your letter of 28-Feb-2003 is as satisfying as would be my bank manager's who did not contest my deposit slip for one thousand dollars, but answered only that his two-month investigation of the failure of the deposit to appear in my account had uncovered no misconduct or wrongdoing.  What is missing in my imaginary bank manager's response, and in your real response, is the acknowledgement that the disappearance of property entrusted to someone's care is not answered by an assertion of innocence, but rather confers upon the caretaker an obligation to account for the loss, with the question of innocence depending on the content and the persuasiveness of that account.

When you address the question of what is within the purview of the trial court, you mention rulings of law, findings of fact, rulings, decision, and rulings and findings, which with bold emphasis added are as follows:

Insofar as your complaint concerns rulings of law and findings of fact made by Judge Dunn, including the extent to which Judge Dunn did or did not consider documents you sent to his court in making his rulings in this case, these matters are within the purview of the trial court.  Neither the Presiding Judge, a Supervising Judge, nor any other Judge of this Court has authority to overturn or review another judicial officer's decision.  [...]  Again, the rulings and findings reflected in those minute orders are within the purview of the trial court, may not be overturned or reviewed by another judge of this court and may only be reviewed through the appellate process.

However, you do not say, and I expect no informed and responsible person is able to say, that it is within the purview of the trial court to destroy nine out of a total of ten defendant submissions (one of my ten submissions was filed), and to refuse to justify or to explain the destruction, and to refuse even to acknowledge that the destruction has taken place.  Because of my distance from the Court, my written submissions constitute my only access to the Court, and James R. Dunn destroying nine out of a total of ten of them is the equivalent of his clapping his hands over his ears nine out of the ten times that a litigant present in his court rises to speak.

You are correct in your words quoted above to say that I complain of James R. Dunn not considering my documents � but this is only one of my secondary complaints; my primary complaint is of James R. Dunn destroying my documents in an attempt to remove them from everybody's consideration, even from the consideration of an appellate court.  It is disingenuous and cynical to invite me to carry my complaint to an appellate court when my complaint is that James R. Dunn destruction of documents leaves me with a trial record too expurgated to support an appeal.  Surely it is among the obligations of Court administrators to impose as much order over maverick judges as is needed to keep them from sabotaging appeals of their decisions.

What if Absence of Jurisdiction is Prima Facie?

I can well understand that a judge may exceed his jurisdiction in some subtle or non-obvious way which would properly be remedied only through the appellate process.  However, I am not sure that I agree that appellate review is the only remedy when absence of jurisdiction is prima facie.

If James R. Dunn proceeded with a trial having a dead dog as defendant, I believe that the trial court would stop his coram non judice proceedings and would not leave his error to be corrected by appellate review.  Or if James R. Dunn relocated his courtroom to Acapulco, I think that the Court would intervene, and not recommend to a litigant who objected to commuting to Acapulco that his remedy lay in appeal.  The case of Rambam v Prytulak is less extreme, but in the same ball park.  Ten out of ten judges will tell you after half a minute's scrutiny of Rambam v Prytulak that James R. Dunn lacks in personam jurisdiction � I am a Canadian citizen living in Canada, and during the more than fourteen months of the two Rambam v Prytulak proceedings, Rambam lawyer Gary Kurtz has not so much as made the slightest allegation of fact which would give the Los Angeles Superior Court in personam jurisdiction over me.  Gary Kurtz certainly understood the Court's lack of jurisdiction from the very beginning, as probably did James R. Dunn himself.  I suspected it at the outset, but having no legal training, it was a couple of days before I read JDO v Superior Court, and was able to prove it.

Rambam v Prytulak is not a subtle case that needs to be brought before an appellate court � it is James R. Dunn allowing a dead dog to be sued in his courtroom, it is James R. Dunn relocating his courtroom to Acapulco, it is a coram non judice circus that the Los Angeles Superior Court has created, and that the Court has the power to sweep away without asking a foreign national to undertake the labor and to pay the expense of appeal.  It is beyond question that the trial court cannot intervene in what James R. Dunn does so long as he stays within his jurisdiction and plays the role of judge; but when he egregiously leaps outside his jurisdiction and plays the role of usurper, then he forsakes the protection of the law and can be stopped by anybody.

It must be kept in mind, however, that prima facie lack of jurisdiction is only the secondary of the two justifications for immediate intervention in the James R. Dunn proceedings.  The primary justification is that James R. Dunn's wholesale destruction of trial documents denies me access to the Court, brings the judicial office into disrepute, and is in violation of the California Penal Code:

§135.  Every person who, knowing that any book, paper, record, instrument in writing, or other matter or thing, is about to be produced in evidence upon any trial, inquiry, or investigation whatever, authorized by law, willfully destroys or conceals the same, with intent thereby to prevent it from being produced, is guilty of a misdemeanor.




Lubomyr Prytulak

cc:

James A Bascue, Judge • LASC • 111 North Hill Street • Los Angeles, CA • USA 90012
John A Clarke, Executive Officer/Clerk • LASC • PO Box 151, Main Post Office • Los Angeles, CA • USA 90053
Robert A Dukes, Presiding Judge • LASC • 111 North Hill Street • Los Angeles, CA • USA 90012
James R Dunn, Judge • LASC • 111 North Hill Street • Los Angeles, CA • USA 90012
Gary Klausner, Judge • USDC • 255 East Temple Street, Courtroom 850 • Los Angeles, CA • USA 90012
Gary Kurtz, Esq • 20335 Ventura Boulevard, Suite 200 • Woodland Hills, CA • USA 91364
William A MacLaughlin • Assistant Presiding Judge • LASC • 111 North Hill Street • Los Angeles, CA • USA 90012
S James Otero, Judge • USDC • 312 North Spring Street, Courtroom 1600 • Los Angeles, CA • USA 90012
Barry A Taylor, Judge • LASC • 6230 Sylmar Avenue • Van Nuys, CA • USA 91401
Bernadette Torivio, Executive Secretary • CJP • 455 Golden Gate Avenue, Suite 14400 • San Francisco, CA • USA 94102-3660
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