• KY Circuit Judge Conliffe's efforts to thwart access to the court with a void injunction which will fail the first reading. |
• KY Circuit Administrator Judge Weir's failure to do his ministerial duty, leading to a denial of meaningful access to the courts. |
• KY Court of Appeals Judge ___________violates the rule and fails to prevent a constitutional violation. |
• Kentucky deserves better judgments. Letters to the Courier Journal.

Plaintiff HEDGES also filed a case in Jefferson Circuit against the several non-judiciary tort-feasors in this matter. This case is based on the constitutional and common law right to a vested interest in property, and is a tort case against all the individuals who caused the realty of the Hedges Farm to change hands away from Robert Hedges, depriving him involuntarily of his vested interest in the historical location. That lengthy case clearly lists the factual events, unjust, illegal, unconstitutional, and/or merely unethical, which have prevented me from keeping a Kentucky bluegrass horse farm, purchased in 1830, paid for and kept by the Hedges family ( those who did not move away), until the Commonwealth of Kentucky via its salaried employees participated in the takeover or failed to act to prevent its loss to the original family, and ultimately to the state itself.

The Jefferson Circuit (Judge Ken Conliffe) dismissed this case (95-CI-002191) on a summary dismissal motion. He assessed Rule 11 sanctions to take a fee from Plaintiff in favor of the defendant, permanently enjoined Plaintiff from further suits against the defendants on speculation, and described the very clear case as frivolous. Appeal followed. Judge Conliffe then issued a fee ruling for $1100. which was garnisheed againt Robert Hedges while the underlying case was on appeal. If a simple Motion to dismiss (containing no case law and clearly not researched or based on law - thus being frivolous) is worth $1100. in legal fees, then the many appeals described in this article, and the federal cases are literally $100,000. worth of litigation.

Plaintiff Hedges was unable to pick up mail from his PO Box for several months during late 95 and Jan 1996. He was also not prepared to spend to reprint the entire Appeal Brief in this case at that time. Thus the Court of Appeals denied the appeal, claiming Hedges was "unable to comply with the rules". The Court of Appeals has used the page counting technicality to deny a hearing on the merits of the Conliffe appeal/trial de novo/summary dismissal.
Conliffe first violated Rule 52, in signing a document he failed to read.

That bad document contains a nonsense phrase regarding specifically what or who is enjoined, and thus is void for vagueness. (void for vagueness standard #1).
It attempts to enjoin suit against certain named individuals and 50 yet unnamed individuals, and thus violates void for vagueness standard #2.
What if one of those named or unnamed individuals tried to sue Plaintiff Hedges? Would service of the injunction served after notice of suit violate the injunction or does it pretend to enjoin unilaterally only, while leaving the rights of the defendants intact?. Remember, injunction is the product of an equity court, depending upon common law for its authority. Equity Law denies protection to the wrongdoer.
The constitutional deprivation issue created by an effort to enjoin a litigant from being allowed a properly-briefed hearing on the merits will ripen for federal action only if the state court fails to hear (and remand) the case on its merits.
Procedural technicalities like page counting do not overcome substantive law issues.
The appeal brief was lengthy due to the many errors of the circuit court
and due to the very nature of "shotgun" appeals which invariably result from violations of Rule 52 by the circuit.
TWO THREATENING LETTERS have been anonymously sent to Robert Hedges over this case.
Judge Conliffe also violated the evidence standard (clear and convincing) required by a Rule 52 summary dismissal. All this is overshadowed by the actual valid multiple actions factually described in the case (labeled clearly with the word TORT), filed for a million dollars in damages.
Federal court has ruled that a deprivation which has never taken effect due to appeal (etc.) is not a ripe cause of action in the Federal Court. The state has actually to deny and deprive before the constitutional issues becomes ripe for Federal action.
The threat of arrest for contempt or a contempt on the record is basis for suit at any future time, and never expires because it calls for prospective relief.
A threat of future arrest (contempt) can be litigated in the present, and will be added to the present Federal case involving the same issues, cases and deprivations. Welcome Defendant Conliffe. [ CI-2191 ]

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Circuit Administrator Judge Weir has failed after notice to assign a Circuit Judge to active cases in which a series of motions are pending since December 1993. KY law requires each active case to be reviewed for hearings or the lack thereof each year. Judge Weir was notified in August and September 1996 about the multiple (appealable) pending motions, just in case he was not informed by the Spencer Circuit Court. He fails to respond, and he has thus far failed to act, to carry out his ministerial (which are not discretionary immuned judicial) duties. [ CI-0021; CI-0070; CI-0083; X-002; CI-024 ]

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KY Appeals Judge ___________ has violated stare decisis ("procedural technicalities are not to be used to thwart justice") by his counting pages in the large appeal brief [ CA - 2096 ] when the injunction on appeal [2 pages] can be read and seen to be void for vagueness (on two separate vagueness standards) without any further reading.
The appeal brief cites substantial BLACK LETTER LAW, however, and because Appellant HEDGES had just finished a Federal Appeal Brief, (longer limits) and failed to reread the shortened state rule (a guideline only) it WAS longer than some. The quality of Judge's decisions in KY results from how well educated those elected politicians are, and all students know that the surest way to be forced to face an absence of knowledge is to be failed. The lengthy HEDGES Appeal brief points out every mistake the void injunction offers up for correction. Appeal Courts always stop at the first fatal flaw. The Court of Appeals is assigned the task of correcting the lower court Judges.
The quality of judicial results in KY is never improved much by the mere correction of a lawyer, but that quality IS improved by the correction of a Circuit Judge, who effects many more cases each day that any one lawyer can. Correcting judges exponentially improves judicial quality.
A second problem with depending on a technicality against the appeal brief to avoid hearing an appeal on the merits is that all summary judgments call for trial de novo, which are based on the brief filed in the Circuit Court, rather than the appeal brief itself.
This act a clear example of an effort to "control the docket", with technicalities, instead of preventing constitutional deprivations and doing substantial justice (as stare decisis of the KY Supreme Court demands).
Also . . .Justice Brandeis, for whom the UnivLou Law School is named and endowed w/ rare original US briefs,made famous the Brandeis Brief, a complete, lengthy brief style. Surely KY doesn't mean to OUTLAW the Brandeis Brief style.?

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The lawyer/defendant Dale said" you can't win" in the beginning. He also said along the way "we have to have this . . . there're assets here" The cost of these appeals and the cases underlying would have devoured the estate and enriched only the lawyers. No land would have been left for the family Hedges was planning to be able to support.

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