Judge Sniegowski's Disqualified Immunity

[XLFD]

This reporter has filed eight cases in the 51st Circuit Court against the City of Ludington for violating the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), the Open Meetings Act (OMA), and/or the Home Rule City Act, since 2015, when Susan Sniegowski succeeded Richard Cooper as the judge of that court.  In the seven cases before this year, Sniegowski would disqualify herself on the grounds that either she had worked for the City of Ludington within two years of deciding on the issue, or on the grounds that her husband was a long-term employee/officer of that public entity.  She would do this sua sponte, on her own motion, even though I would often file a motion with my complaint asking for her recusal on either ground.

This year, I filed a FOIA complaint against the City with a motion to disqualify her on the usual grounds and she decided to hold a hearing on that motion rather than disqualify herself.  My motion, which was more of a reminder to the judge of her need to recuse herself, was countered by a response from the city's risk management attorneys in support of her staying on the case and not recusing herself, despite the very real appearance of conflict and/or impropriety.  

A hearing was held on the matter a little over a month after I filed the FOIA case, which by statute is supposed to be expedited through the process because of the state's objectives to keep citizens informed about the actions of their government through providing public records expeditiously. 

The judge would acknowledge reading the COL's Brief and my original motion and after listening to what I called my opening statement and the defendant's attorney (Kristen Rewa's) summary of her brief, her Honor would come to the conclusion that she was wrong the prior seven times and denied her disqualification.  It takes an awful lot of judicial nerve to say you were wrong when you did the right thing seven times and hurtle headlong into judging a court case where the bias is seemingly overwhelming.

Before I discuss this in better detail, here's what my opening statement entered into the record stated.  It is not a fun task trying to tell a judge who has disqualified herself many times in the past why she needs to continue that trend, but I decided to remind her of the past and introduce several posts I have made in this medium that she could very easily take offense at because they describe what I believe are severe deficiencies in her judicial ethics and competency.  

XLFD:  "When I entered a simple motion of disqualification, I did it more as a reminder to the Honorable judge that she has recused herself, sua sponte, from seven prior prosecutions I have had against the City of Ludington over the course of the last nine years.  As this is a Freedom of Information Act case, that statute requires my case to be heard expeditiously, and so I had hoped that her Honor would have recused herself on her own motion so that an impartial judge could be seated, and we could have this matter adjudicated promptly.  The records sought should have been released months ago at a lawful cost, and their journalistic value is decreasing every day they fail to be disclosed.

At the court's leave may I briefly go down the list of seven cases I filed against the City that her Honor has disqualified herself sua sponte and how they were disposed? [Her Honor at this point indicated that she was aware of the prior disqualifications, our readers can go here and look up these cases at the 51st Circuit Court, Rotta v. City of Ludington, I list those seven here]

15-263-CZ: filed 9-14-15, DQ w/o hearing:  9-22-15, 8 days

16-91-CZ:  filed 3-7-16, DQ w/o hearing:  3-10-16, 3 days

17-109-CZ:  filed 5-5-17, DQ w/o hearing:  5-11-17, 6 days

17-325-CZ:  filed 10-20-17, DQ w/o hearing:  10-25-17, 5 days

17-378-CZ:  filed 12-15-17, DQ w/o hearing:  1-2-18, 17 days

20-68-CZ:  filed 3-3-20, DQ w/o hearing:  3-17-20, 14 days

22-153-AW:  filed 6-2-22, DQ w/o hearing:  6-24-22, 22 days

When I look at the defendant's response to my motion, arguing stridently and eloquently as to why her Honor should not recuse herself from this case, I admire their courage for effectively telling her that she has made seven bad decisions for erroneously disqualifying herself seven times in the past.

Over the last nine years, the disqualifying factors have not really changed.  Her Honor's husband has nine more years of seniority in the municipal corporation, her past service to the corporation is further in the past, but still there.  So why are we here the eighth time failing to expedite a FOIA case and holding a hearing about the topic of disqualification when the issue has been decided solely by this judge for disqualification seven prior times?  Permit me to borrow some courage from the defendant's lawyers and submit my belief as to why the court has a desire to take this case up.  

I run and write for a local alternative news website called the Ludington Torch.  Since June 2022, the last time her Honor has recused herself, I have written several articles about her Honor and most of them were very critical of her performance in other cases.  Keep in mind that my worst performing articles get 100s of views from mostly local people and that my better ones get several thousand.  It is not unlikely that some of these criticisms were either read by her Honor or brought to her attention by her husband or some other party.  By the court's leave, can I briefly read three of those criticisms and commentaries to establish the point that the risk of actual bias that is too high to be constitutionally tolerable may be present in this court?

Aug. 17, 2022 (on State v. Lilleberg):  "Susan Sniegowski served as Mason County's prosecutor just ten years ago, finding ways to convince an often-friendly Judge Cooper that defendants were guilty as charged.  Her inner prosecutor that day took hold after both sides rested their cases and over an extended lunch break she decided to change the established elements of disorderly conduct into one of her own making and changed the jury instructions to reflect her and the prosecutor's view that one could be found disorderly on private property.... Why was Judge Sniegowski so willing to change the jury instructions after the parties had rested their cases and allowed the jury to easily convict Lilleberg on the basis of her legal creation?  It may have stemmed back to a 2019 case tried before the judge involving Lilleberg and three resisting charges alleged against him then, back when he didn't have a prior record.  One must always wonder how one can only be charged with resisting arrest when no other charge is present preceding the attempted arrest."  

Feb. 23, 2023 (Rotta v. Spencer, et. al.):  The judge's 'opinion an order' is littered with misrepresentations and worse starting at the second sentence.  She writes:  "The application alleges impropriety in the election" of the defendants, but I had claimed no such thing.  The election, where a political novice beat out 3 incumbents is proper enough and I never claim otherwise.   The third sentence goes way off the reservation when she says:  "The application alleges election fraud...", which is totally false again... Next sentence, Judge Sniegowski goes deeper into the fiction and claims that MCL 600.4545 gives me only 30 days after an election to file a quo warranto complaint.  The judge fails to understand that the statute mentioned is only applicable to ballot proposals when material fraud or error is alleged.' 

May 28, 24 (State v. Eichler):  In the 16 years the Ludington Torch has been monitoring and covering legal events of the local courthouse, this year we have been witness to the biggest miscarriage of justice we have ever seen there.  A man was quietly sentenced on the afternoon Friday, May 24th by 51st Judge Susan Sniegowski for a maximum incarceration in prison of 17 years (albeit the sentences are concurrent, so the max was 10 years).  His actions which led to such a sentence:  sending several text messages to his probation officer regarding matters concerning his terms of probation."

The Eichler case was decided less than two months ago but has had one thousand views and beyond the paragraph shared critiques the court led by her Honor in that bench trial I witnessed.  Since her last disqualification, no other local judge has been criticized at my website, but I did publish an article very favorable to retiring Circuit Court Judge Mark Wickens who served Lake County for four decades.  

These publicly made criticisms of her performance is precisely why there is more reason to disqualify her Honor from this eighth case than the prior seven, since she is not doing it herself, sua sponte, and why she should publicly declare why she has decided not to recuse herself this time.  Was it in order to retaliate for the recent critiques by going through the usual motions and finding against me and finding for her husband's employers despite the facts of the case?    

In the Judicial Disqualification guide supplied by the defendant in their brief on page 7 [p. 14 of the pdf file of the COL's brief] it says:  "Among the situations identified by the SCOTUS as presenting a risk of actual bias that is too high to be constitutionally tolerable are where the judge (2) has been the target of personal abuse or criticism from the party before him."

These very public criticisms I have made, along with several more made over the last couple of years and seems to be the only thing that has changed between now and the last seven times she has disqualified herself sua sponte.  Any reasonable arbiter of law would understand that this only makes her disqualification in this case more necessary than it ever has before especially those reasonable arbiters in the Supreme Court. 

I humbly beseech this judge to disqualify herself as she has done seven times before for less reasons than exist now.  Thank you. [END of opening statement]

I couldn't help but notice the judge's deportment as I would look up, and could sense the tension about whether to let me go on with each example, and the opposing attorney thinking that if the judge didn't disqualify herself, that her Honor wouldn't be happy with the plaintiff's observations, but in the end, the judge said that my posts (and other ones I alleged) were just the plaintiff's opinions and not criticism, saying that she would hear this case as her time as having worked for the COL was long past and her husband's working for the defendant in a supervisory role was not a disqualifier.  

My posts were more than just opinion, they were three criticisms of this judge's actions, representative of three ways she has failed to be a competent judge.  In the Lilleberg case, the prosecution's tact had fallen apart due to the city code's requirement that the infraction had to take place in a public area.  The judge corruptly changed the city law so as to help the prosecutor get a conviction by explicitly telling the jurors in her instructions that it could also take place on private property.  This wasn't interpreting the law as written, this was rewriting the law which judge's are restricted from doing.  

The second case, my own, showed that her bias was so great with a prior case with Scottville officials and their ability to hold office, that she applied law that never applied to my case which was about the validity of two to hold office and not for a ballot proposal.  Everything she wrote in her opinion was ill-founded and showed either gross incompetence or bias.  The third case, one month fresh, was complex but showed several abuses of discretion on her part throughout the bench trial, where (and this is an opinion) it appeared throughout that she should have been sitting next to the prosecutor (Lauren Kreinbrink) doing her job because the case was so very weak-- and likely to be reversed on appeal.

Which reminds me of an article I once wrote and left on the cutting room floor back in 2019 called "Dirty Water"about Judge Susan Kasley Sniegowski's lack of judicial skills in the Osceola Township's case against Nestle back in 2017.  She was assigned to the case after their county's judge disqualified himself, and eventually would find for Nestle's, in what most everyone thought was a very fragile opinion, which made most people wonder whether she had some sort of payoff with that company-- it was that bad.

The township appealed and in 2019 won.  The unanimous appeals court unusually long 13 page opinion ruled among other things:  "The trial court erred in effectively concluding that because water is essential, the provision of water in any form, manner, or context is necessarily an “essential public service... the trial court erred by reversing the ZBA’s decision on the basis of plaintiff’s proposal constituting an “essential public service”

This was a total reversal on everything that Sniegowski ruled on, because the decision of hers was without legal merit, much like the three examples I brought to court last Thursday, showing criticism, not opinions, on how this judge cannot fairly hear a case and fairly apply the law.  The public expects a judge to have at least a rudimentary understanding of the law and not just rule for the side that can provide you with free bottled water for the rest of your life or for the side that can give your husband a golden parachute when he retires because of his loyal service to the crown.  

You may ask why Judge Sniegowski, after disqualifying herself seven times, finally decided to take one of my cases up in front of her even when her husband has been working for the defendant for decades.  My guess is that Ms. Sniegowski was the judge in the Grams v. COL lawsuit where he was seeking an injunction against the deer cull being held in Cartier Park this year.  In this case, a case where the DPW (husband Tom Sniegowski's department) was intimately involved with the deer cull by having them use the DPW Building and personnel resources for the cull, Her Honor would never do the honorable thing and tell Mr. Grams that she had that connection before deciding that the case was moot by the time it got to trial (her Incompetence failing to take into account that the contract with the USDA still had another year on it), rather than take up any of the issues raised.

I was present in the courtroom, learned from Mr. Grams that he was never apprised of the disqualifying factor by the judge or the opposing party, and Her Honor saw me there chatting with him.  Her lack of disclosure of the connection (and the city attorney's) was improper, or at the very least appeared improper under the canons of judicial conduct. 

Rather than have to deal with her inconsistency and lack of ethical judicial conduct, she tried to normalize that behavior by not recusing herself this time for me and claim that she felt that the period of time between when she worked for the COL was far enough in the past to affect her current judgment.  And that's believable, since disqualification is only mandated if you've been employed by one of the parties in the last two years, discretional thereafter, however...  

When one looks at the court records of my last two lawsuits with the COL in 2020 and 2022 (the 2020 record shown above) one can find that she disqualified herself on her own motion both times.  And although the required form is missing for some reason in the 2022 case, the order of disqualification in the 2020 case shows she disqualified herself solely because her spouse worked for the COL, as would presumably be the case for five of the prior lawsuits happening after that two year mandate previously explained.  

So why didn't the corrupt and incompetent judge, Susan Kasley Sniegowski, disqualify herself on her own motion for Mr. Gram's lawsuit, and why is she now qualifying herself when she has repeatedly used her husband's employment relationship with the COL as the reason for disqualification in the past? 

If this frank public critique based on facts and the record of Judge Sniegowski's conduct and comportment gets back to her, just keep in mind, your Honor, that it's more than opinion.  I spend $175 to bring a FOIA case to court, a case that statute demands be expedited so that the records can be disclosed in timely fashion, and beyond this unnecessary hearing, our first scheduled court date won't be until October, four months from when I filed it?  If that's not incompetence and/or evidence of inherent bias against the plaintiff, what is?  Oh yeah, almost everything else she has been part of.  

[Willy]

It's obvious she has an agenda and is going to act on it. When a government agency forces the citizens to seek court action just to see public information it is a sure sign that the government agency is poisoned with corruption. It's to bad Ludington has turned into one of those entities. When citizens are required to fight that corruption in order to gather public information the Constitution is diminished and we all pay the price for our loss of rights and freedoms. Who knows she may have been replaced by an AI judge. Good luck X. I hope you win.

[XLFD]

Right at the end of 2009, just before the Ludington Torch was lit, Ludington's City Attorney Roger Anderson retired and a funny thing happened.  The city decided to hire a law firm and an attorney to replace him.  Richard Wilson and the Gockerman et. al. firm out of Manistee was hired for general purposes and for civil matters, and Susan Sniegowski was hired for handling criminal matters as deals with the city code.  

At that time, the Sniegowski's were newlyweds and one can only imagine what machinations went on behind the scenes to get her that position, because one thing that was never done was to disclose that her bridegroom was an established employee at the City of Ludington at that time.  One positive attribute that one can assign to Judge Susan is that she has remained loyal after all these years. 

I will not get justice with this judge, that's a foreign concept to the epicenter of corruption at the courthouse.

[Freedom Seeker]

Hang in there X and be legal. A crooked judge can't be forever but I think the current good boys admin has put pressure on her to do anything she can to neutralize you.

[XLFD]

You're right, as usual, FS, but I think the city fails to understand that if I can't find a fair and impartial state court without tons of conflicts of interest to hear my cases against blatant city offenses, that I will start filing my grievances in federal court and hiring attorneys to make them really pay out the big bucks when they lose, rather than just court costs.