by David Tulis, tntrafficticket.us
(Dec. 21, 2024) — ATHENS, Tenn, Thursday, Dec. 19, 2024 — The clerk at McMinn County Chancery Court, on the second floor of the old county courthouse, is looking at me through the glass and saying she can’t receive my filing.
Before P.T. Torbett are three stacks of paper I fed into a slot under the pane: Motion for preliminary injunction — 24 pages. Brief in support, 43 pages. Exhibits, about 20 pages. They are neatly stacked, next to her stamps.
A clerk in Hamilton County chancery court is on the phone. “Our clerk interpreted it as a transfer. So we’ve closed our case,” Carrie says. “We’ve moved it to ya’ll. If there’s a snafu, then perhaps our Judge Patterson and our clerk and chancellor Bryant can chat.”
In many courts, a “3-judge panel” case is new. I’m standing before Mrs. Torbett in my press uniform, meaning bow tie, press tag and my favorite “I mean business” blue jacket. Mrs. Torbett is saying that Judge Jerri Bryant has received the case and has been assigned the case. Christmas stockings hang in a row behind her on a far wall.
I represent the state itself my attack on behalf of the citizenry in State of Tennessee ex rel. Tulis v. David Gerregano, commissioner of revenue, and Jeff Long, commissioner of safety.
Clerk Torbett makes a call. On the other end, McMinn clerk and master, Patty S. Gaines. Mrs. Torbett says she’s not authorized to give the case a number. Hamilton County criminal court judge Boyd Patterson et al assigned it 33CHI-2024-CV-779, but that is a bigger number used in McMinn Chancery, which for the clerks poses a problem. She wants to receive the case, but not to declare the document “FILED.”
Says Mrs. Torbett, “Just spoke with Kelley, the judge’s secretary. [Judge Bryant] is on the bench. She does have all that you sent. She has to talk with the chancellor. We are not going to assign any new numbers on this.”
“I’m not saying to assign it. I’m saying to put a ‘RECEIVED,’ that you received his documents on December 19 to preserve tht he was trying to file something on today’s date,” Carrie suggests on speakerphone.
“I’ll have to call my clerk and master because I can’t do that without her telling me to do that.”
“You need to be able to say received today,” I insist. “I am here. You are the clerk. You have a duty to accept filings, even if you don’t enter them into the case for lack of a number. You have a duty to receive the document from the person, in the flesh, behind the window, tendering it for submission.”
My case is the 32nd case filed since the anti-corruption three-judge panel began operating in 2021, says Samantha Fisher, spokeswoman for administrator of the courts in Nashville.
A clerk in U.S. district court in Nashville today files a separate federal petition for injunction after it vanishes nearly a week in transit in the U.S. mails. One way or another, the illegal and unconstitutional barbarity of “mandatory auto insurance” in Tennessee will be halted, in God’s good time, and for the benefit of all.
Comments
One response to “Clerks Heat Up Phone Lines: What to do with Injunction Filing?”
Someone issued marching orders, the impact of which is contrary to law and likely the TN Rules of Civil Procedure, and plaintiff filings everywhere against cabal members are subjected to all kinds of impediments. The clerk has no grounds for not accepting what was put in the slot: what is the slot for? ’Received’ is a purple word for the friends of the guilty: it starts a process, if not a clock.