51st Circuit Court or Area 51? Unexplained Phenomena in Judge Richard Cooper's Court

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Area 51 is a part of Edwards Air Force Base whose secretive nature and undoubted connection to classified aircraft research, together with reports of unusual phenomena, have led it to become a focus of modern UFO and conspiracy theories. Some of the activities mentioned in such theories at Area 51 include:

The storage, examination, and reverse engineering of crashed alien spacecraft (including material supposedly recovered at Roswell), the study of their occupants (living and dead), and the manufacture of aircraft based on alien technology.
Meetings or joint undertakings with extraterrestrials.
The development of exotic energy weapons for the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) or other weapons programs.
The development of means of weather control.
The development of time travel and teleportation technology.
The development of unusual and exotic propulsion systems related to the Aurora Program.
Activities related to a supposed shadowy one world government or the Majestic 12 organization

 

The Circuit Courts of Michigan also have an area 51, located within Mason and Lake Counties.  Strange things have been reported happening there of recent note under the direction of its leader Judge Richard I. Cooper. 

 

The recently finished "Baby Kate" trial which found Sean Phillips guilty of "secret confinement", a potential 15 year felony, is the first such event going back in reverse chronological order.  This was covered well by the media, and a review of the case shows what many would consider a permissive attitude by the judge for the prosecution, a dismissive attitude for the defense, and a broadening of the meaning of the law in the court's directions to the jury, likely making the jurors return a guilty verdict with more of a clear conscience.  The appearance of such bias has already opened avenues of appeal for the defense.  "(Phillips' Attorney) Smedley said appeal issues include the judge's instructions to the jury; his allowing Prosecutor Paul Spaniola to introduce a last-minute "surprise" witness; and a Sixth Amendment issue -- regarding attorney-client privilege -- over introduction of a jailhouse note found in a shirt pocket of Phillips' jail fatigues July 11." Muskegon News 4-27-12. 

 

The other high profile case recently decided was finding in favor of Consumer's Energy in a lawsuit initiated by CARRE, a group of Mason County individuals united to address the safety, legal and health concerns of the proposed wind farm in Riverton and Summit Townships.  In Judge Cooper's decision, he totally dismissed the concerns of the citizen's group.  Not covered in any of the other media outlets was the fact that Consumer's Energy was represented by his son's law firm, and that they made a tiny profit from representing the Energy juggernaut.  CARRE members have presented their case here at the Torch, and it deserves a better, and more expeditious, judicial review than this was. 

 

Then there was a minor circus atmosphere created by the PPO took out on April Reynolds by Baby Kate Mother, Ariel Courtland.  There was plenty of evidence showing that Ariel had lied repeatedly on her sworn PPO affidavit about Ms. Reynolds, but as the confirmed lies Ariel told in the Baby Kate trial, her lies here were overlooked by Judge Cooper as meaningless details in the finding of facts supporting his original supposition of guilt.  This is currently under further review by the Torch.

 

Lastly, I had two FOIA appeals in front of Judge Cooper.  One involved the lack of a response from the Prosecutor's office to a request, and although this turned out favorable for myself in February 2012, and the Judge effectively admonished Paul Spaniola for the better part of an hour, the Chief Jurist of the 51st Circuit Court failed to admit his own ethical failings; that would come to light at the other FOIA case, where I was co-plaintiff with another with an appeal of the City of Ludington denying us public records.  This was brought to light in The Appearance of Impropriety, pt.1 and pt.2 at the Torch. 

 

But whereas the Ludington Torch is an avenue for raising the awareness of such issues in our area, we would be remiss in not doing our civic duty in trying to correct some of the problems we turn up.  In such manner, we contacted the Michigan Judicial Tenure Commission, a committee of retired jurists whose duty is to review the activities of judges to make sure they are doing their jobs properly.  We hope to get Judge Cooper back on the right track.  Here is our complaint against Judge Cooper that was submitted to the JTC at the beginning of last week.  The links are provided to various documents, some of which were provided in the complaint.

 

Remember, if you enter Michigan Circuit Court, area 51, and something inexplicable happens to you, you do have recourse, and the precedent of bizarre behavior from high up is growing in documentation.  If you are looking for alien autopsies, this isn't the place, but if you are looking for justice miscarriages, you're in the right area.

 

  (Attached Sheet)              ALLEGATION OF MISCONDUCT: JUDGE RICHARD I. COOPER

 

We, TOM ROTTA and TONI SWIGER, two individuals, filed a civil action: 11-415-CZ in the 51st Circuit Court last year as co-plaintiffs in a FOIA appeal against the City of Ludington, DEFENDANT, and was assigned Hon. Judge COOPER, the judge for that court. On or before November 8, 2011, the DEFENDANT chose the lawfirm of Gockerman, Wilson, Saylor and Hesslin (GWSH) (their 'City Attorney') as their counsel and they contacted the court to come forth and apprise them of that fact, this is presented as Exhibit 1 . Shortly thereafter, PLAINTIFFS received a letter from Judge COOPER describing what the court's intentions were, this is presented as Exhibit 2.

Other than a notice from court administration for a court date to determine summary judgments that both parties asked for, this is the only communication received by PLAINTIFFS from the 51st Circuit Court or Judge COOPER. On the date the summary judgment was to be determined, March 7, 2012, Judge COOPER made it known that an "appearance of impropriety" existed, in that he was the father of one of the DEFENDANT'S attorneys.

On EXHIBIT 1, you will notice the last associate of DEFENDANT's attorney is Craig R. Cooper, and that he came forth on the case on November 8, 2011 according to the author of that document, Richard Wilson. Effectively, 121 days had elapsed between the time that Judge COOPER's son came forth to represent the DEFENDANT, and Judge COOPER's acknowledgment of that fact.

Judge COOPER was well aware of this relationship between himself and the DEFENDANT's attorney. He had been the presiding judge of another case that involved the GWSH lawfirm that started around the same time between a group called CARRE and CONSUMER's ENERGY, where that firm represented the defendant. The judge allegedly had immediately disclosed the relationship he had with his son on the GWSH lawfirm to the attorneys representing the plaintiffs. Yet though we filed motions and regularly met in person with the 51st Circuit to drop off briefs and discovery copies, this relationship was kept secret for the over four months.

Though we asked repeatedly for expediency throughout for our time-sensitive FOIA request, it was never addressed by the court. A short list of actions that occurred that may have been fostered by the improper relationship between the judge and the judge's son's law firm include these actions by the law firm: unprofessional badgering of plaintiffs by defendants for depositions without purpose and in violation of court rules, filing a Show Cause Motion [p.2] and order against plaintiff ROTTA for contempt of court for engaging in the unauthorized practice of law for advising plaintiff SWIGER to not attend a deposition when the plaintiffs had an active Motion to Quash deposition filed with the court, filing a Motion to Compel Discovery [p.2] on plaintiff SWIGER for not being deposed, Motions to Compel Discovery and Sanctions against both ROTTA [p. 2] and SWIGER [p. 2] for lawfully objecting to some interrogatories, filing a MOTION TO STRIKE/OBJECTION TO DISCOVERY AND REQUEST FOR SANCTIONS [p. 2] avoiding discovery by the plaintiffs and attempting to sanction them for process delivering to them via the Ludington City Attorney's office at 400 S Harrison. The court did nothing for those 121 days, either way. We hope to have the involved attorneys' conduct reviewed by the Attorney Grievance Commission as well.

We humbly claim that Judge COOPER has therefore violated some of the Canons of the Code of Judicial Conduct in his behavior as regards our case.

We claim that Canon 3C, "A judge should raise the issue of disqualification whenever the judge has cause to believe that grounds for disqualification may exist" has been violated in his untimely raising of this appearance of impropriety 121 days after the fact.

We claim that there was impropriety or at least the appearance of impropriety defined in Canon 2C, which says "A judge should not allow family, social, or other relationships to influence judicial conduct or judgment. A judge should not use the prestige of office to advance personal business interests or those of others." The methods used by the DEFENDANT's counsel, the language used by their attorneys in their pressing of their case, were never commented on by the court, even though they went beyond the codes of professional conduct of attorneys as far as we understand those to be, with our limited knowledge. The DEFENDANT's GWSH lawfirm, which includes the judge's son, received many hours of 'special project' remuneration from the DEFENDANT at $185 per hour for their efforts in drafting about 200 pieces of documentation including six motions.

We claim that Canon 1 was violated in that high standards of conduct by the judge and the 51st Circuit Court's administration, were not met. They knew of the relationship between Judge COOPER and Attorney COOPER, and stood mute for 121 days, while not affording us the knowledge of the relationship. The judicial system is for the benefit of the litigant and the public, and the DEFENDANT and Judge COOPER appeared to have forgot that.

To his credit, Hon. Judge COOPER did eventually bring up the appearance of impropriety on his own, and gave us the opportunity to disqualify him, which we decided was best. Yet, since March 7, 2012, when we were told by Judge COOPER that we would be assigned to a new judge, a call to the Court Administrator on March 13, 2012 found that the judge had still not been officially disqualified from our case. We had to read that in the local paper to figure that out.
We wound up filing a Motion for Disqualification on our own on March 22, 2012 with the court and have not heard anything from them in over a month. For a FOIA appeal, which by law should be adjudicated in the most expeditious manner. In our opinion, Judge COOPER and the court administration should be investigated, and sanctioned for their actions in this case.

[AQUAMAN]

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