Justice moved one step closer to being served upon Grenada attorney Carlos Moore. The Supreme Court denied certiorari for Moore's appeal of sanctions levied against him by a federal judge. U.S. District Judge David Sanders sanctioned Mr. Moore after he failed to respond to discovery requests in a wrongful death lawsuit. Mr. Moore sued the city of Tupelo on behalf of the family of Antwun Shumpert after he was shot to death by a Tupelo police officer. Judge Sanders sanctioned him for $3,000. Moore struck out for himself and his client at the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. The Supreme Court ruling allows the judgement against his client and the sanctions against the grandstanding attorney to stand.
JJ reported on April 2, 2017:
A federal judge told attorney Carlos Moore to start actually practicing law and stop grandstanding as he fined him $3,000 two weeks ago for failing to respond to discovery requests in a wrongful death lawsuit. Mr. Moore sued the city of Tupelo last year on behalf of the family of Antwun Shumpert after he was shot to death by a Tupelo police officer. It also appears Mr. Moore is using anonymous phone calls and memos that don't exist to support his claims as well.
The shooting occurred on June 18, 2016. Mr. Moore filed the lawsuit on June 30. The city responded to the lawsuit a month later. The city served the First Set of Interrogatories, Requests for Production of Documents and Requests for Admission upon the plaintiffs on November 23. The plaintiffs didn't respond to the request for the documents or admissions so the defense filed a motion to compel on January 25 - two months later.The defendants filed a second motion to compel on February 21 and accused Schumpert of filing inadequate responses.
Moore held an inflammatory press conference when he filed the lawsuit. He charged the city issued a memo that said it was "open season on black people". The police let a K-9 dog chew up Shumpert. He said an ambulance intentionally delayed responding to a dying Antwun Shumpert. He alleged that Shumpert was killed when he tried to surrender and said “It was a modern day lynching. It was simply an execution.” He even told the New York Times “They have declared open season on us, and they are killing with impunity.”
Tupelo had enough and told him and his client to put up or shut up. Carlos the Clown began playing discovery games. Mr. Moore and his client didn't respond to the discovery requests and then submitted some half-baked, vague answers that were deemed to be more than a little deficient in nature. The court imposed sanctions on Mr. Moore for $3,000. The court also noted that Moore was using an anonymous phone call to support some of his claims and that Moore fabricated the memo. He defended doing so on the grounds that he was using a "rhetorical device." Earlier post with more thorough coverage.
Thus telling a blatant lie that is nothing less than racial agitation is a "rhetorical device." However, the Clown tried to escape the court's justice and blamed it all on, you guessed it, the state flag. complained to the court that he could not comply with discovery deadlines because of death threats he received due to his efforts in another lawsuit to get the Mississippi state flag removed. He argued in a motion for reconsideration:
2) Also, Plaintiffs through counsel, ask the Court to take judicial notice that no other lawyer in Mississippi likely endured five death threats from various sources as well as had a spouse with a prolonged unexpected illness requiring said spouse to be out of work for a month in the last quarter of 2016. The Court is asked to find excusable neglect and no malice under the circumstances. Counsel for the Plaintiffs simply filed a lawsuit and appeal challenging the state flag which has the Confederate emblem, a symbol of white supremacy, embedded, and received unwarranted death make threats which had an adverse effect on counsel’s job performanceThe Clown sparred with Tupelo and the judge as he tried to escape paying sanctions. Meanwhile, U.S. District Judge Sharion Aycock ruled against his client and approved Tupelo's motion for summary judgment. The Court stated:
As Shumpert emerged from the crawlspace and tackled Cook, the two were actively engaged in a fight with both landing blows on the other. Based on the record, Shumpert was on top of him beating him in the face, he struck back at Shumpert with his left hand and his gun, and only started firing when he started to lose consciousness. Under these facts, all three Graham factors favor qualified immunity.The Court also stated that the plaintiff's expert's conclusions supported a struggle between the officer and the deceased. Judge Aycock dismissed the case with prejudice.
Carlos the Clown may be a publicity hound but never let it be said he is a quitter. He did not take his federal beating lying down but appealed to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. Unfortunately for The Clown, the Fifth Circuit ruled against him and his client on September 25, 2018.
Plaintiffs contend that the district court was not required to impose sanctions. Plaintiffs’ counsel’s only justification for his failure to respond to the discovery request was that he was busy with professional and personal obligations. These circumstances do not “substantially justif[y]” Plaintiffs’ failure to comply with the discovery deadlines or respond to Defendants. The district court did not abuse its discretion in granting Defendants’ motion for sanctions.Moore took his cause to the U.S. Supreme Court. The Court denied his petition for writ of certiorari on February 19.
Plaintiffs also contend that the amount of the sanctions was unreasonable. The total sanctions award in this case was $3,086.00, which the district court found represented reasonable costs for filing two motions to compel. The court noted that this case involved “heightened media scrutiny,” which necessarily demanded careful research and attention to factual details when drafting the discovery motions. There is no evidence that the district court abused its discretion in awarding $3,086.00 in sanctions
Kingfish note: Don't forget, another federal judge sanctioned Moore and his client for destroying evidence in the Belhaven case.
6 comments:
Rhetorical device? In my personal opinion, that seems to translate to a deliberate and calculated lie filtered through a fine mesh of bullshit.
as usual, you drive past the ms state bar asssociation building and the lights are on but nobody is home.
Mississippi Bar. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
the one thing you can be sure about at the ms state bar association , that this being friday , they are all lining up to collect their 4 figure paychecks for their 5 and 6 figure yearly salaries, not to mention the full package of benefits, to really not do to much all week long. there has been alot of talk on JJ over the past 2 weeks about boards, associations, and administrative agencies, all of which are creations of the legislature. the ms state bar association is just one more of them. proving that , yet again, the biggest growth industry in mississippi, along with the biggest salaries, all come from governmental growth.
If Carlos hired a publicist he would charge far more than $3,000. This is a very small price to pay for all the publicity and attention he garners as a "champion of justice" for the victims of racism.
According to this week's C-L abd a post on Y'all Politics about "Judge" Carlos' publicly proclaiming a suicide by hanging to be a lynching, it appears that $3,000 hasn't slowed him down a bit. The Bar needs to take some initiative on Mr. Moore.
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