Opinion
Case No. 3:04-cv-0371.
March 8, 2006
DECISION AND ORDER
This case is before the Court on Plaintiff's Motion for Abeyance of Ruling on Summary Judgment (Doc. No. 105), Plaintiff's Motion to Compel Discovery (Doc. No. 106), Plaintiff's Motion to Set Aside Summary Judgment (Doc. No. 107), and Plaintiff's Motion for Leave to Submit Objections to Defendant Fischer's Motion for Summary Judgment (Doc. No. 108).
The summary judgment motion in question, that of Defendant Gene Fischer (Doc. No. 98) was filed and served January 12, 2006. Shortly thereafter, the Court advised Plaintiff in writing of the time when a response was required (i.e., by February 6, 2006) and of the quality of evidence required in opposition (Notice, Doc. No. 99). Plaintiff filed nothing by that date. Eight days after the due date, the Court considered the Motion on the merits and granted it. Plaintiff's instant Motions were filed ten days later on February 24, 2006.
Plaintiff avers that attorney Kevin Lantz agreed not to oppose a motion for extension of time to respond when requested to consent to an extension on the due date. Mr. Lantz's office confirms that agreement. No such motion was ever filed.
In the mean time, the discovery period in this case closed on March 1, 2006. Plaintiff now seeks to obtain discovery by means of a Motion to Compel. He admits that he should have "held Defendants to a stricter regimen in terms of discovery, and should have filed motions to compel discovery at an earlier stage." (Doc. No. 105 at 2.) In the Scheduling Order, the Court expressly provided that all discovery had to be completed and not merely requested by the cut-off. (Scheduling Order, Doc. No. 83). Thus it is simply too late to begin requesting discovery. And that is what Plaintiff is doing. He is not seeking to compel answers to interrogatories already unsatisfactorily answered or to obtain documents refused — at least he has not provided copies of any such documents previously served on the Defendants.
Plaintiff's Objections to the summary judgment motion are lengthy (29 pages) and very literary. They commence with a lengthy comparison of the conditions at Auschwitz and Buchenwald with conditions in the Greene County Jail. The Court is offered citations to von Clauswitz and Spengler. Plaintiff reserves to himself the natural right, entirely aside from what the Court might decide, to act against what he conceives to be as bad as Buchenwald:
When children are seen being thrown alive into huge furnaces, the gavel and the verdict shall come down without the need for further lies or obfuscations from the defense, and the individual witnesses shall judge the state and carry out the sentence with fingernails or penknives if that is all they have. At that moment, no higher authority need be recognized or subject to.
(Doc. No. 108 at 7.) The Objections continue in this vein, with allegations of fact interspersed with comments about how Greene County was allegedly dominated by the Ku Klux Klan in the first half of the twentieth century and the scene of attempted genocide of the Shawnee Nation. Id. at 16. Plaintiff asserts that "an almost unlimited number of former Glass House and jail detainees could testify to the conditions which they suffered, and these conditions are hardly de minimis, but rather in extremis. If one finds this hard to believe, let them spend 24 hours in the Glass House under the same conditions as we suffered." Id. at 17. Asserting that he was tortured, Plaintiff asks:
If torture is not a constitutional violation, then nothing is — neither murder or kidnapping or throwing living children into furnaces. If the Constitution cannot stand on the side of torture victims, the Constitution be damned and damn the nation that makes a mockery of the principles it was supposed to stand for.Id. at 18. We are advised that Sean Hannity is a "neo-conservative jackass" who allegedly pronounced someone guilty based on the way he looked and this is compared with justice in Greene County. Id. at 21. The citizenry of Greene County is accused of writing a petition in support of Hitler as late as the 1940's. Id. at 23.
In sum, Plaintiff is certainly eloquent, but eloquence is not evidence. Plaintiff has not even submitted his own affidavit as to facts of his incarceration of which he has personal knowledge. Plaintiff rails about public officials not doing their duty and speaks about how, under such circumstances, "the individual becomes of necessity and right the final arbiter of justice. . . ." Id. at 26. An integral part of the rule of law is that cases in court are to be decided on the basis of evidence, not appeals to emotion, even emotional appeals to support the Constitution. This case has been pending for almost a year and a half. The schedule on which it was litigated was agreed to by Plaintiff who was not forced to proceed faster than he himself agreed to. And yet, as of the end of the discovery period, Plaintiff had literally no evidence to present. Consistent with the rule of law the Court cannot deny judgment to public officials merely because Plaintiff accuses them of inhumane behavior.
Plaintiff's Motion for Leave to Submit Objections (Doc. No. 108) is granted and the Court has considered those Objections in making this Decision. Plaintiff's Motions to Hold in Abeyance (Doc. No. 105), to Compel Discovery (Doc. No. 106), and to Set Aside Summary Judgment (Doc. No. 107) are denied.