The U.S. Court of Appeals, D.C. Circuit, will hear oral arguments in Nader v Democratic National Committee, on the morning of Friday, March 20, at the Prettyman Courthouse, 333 Constitution Avenue, 5th floor, room 31. The case number is 08-7074. The 3-judge panel starts hearing cases at 9:30 a.m., and the Nader case is the third one that will be heard.
I attended the oral argument. Many of the questions for the attorney representing Ralph Nader came from Judge Tatel.
If you try to apply Lack of Probable Cause law to the case which standard applies? You have one for every state in which there was a ballot challenge. Do you try to apply DC law to Pennsylvania, for example? Do you really want to set that precedent given that there is no national standard?
Judge Tatel also stated that, “You don’t allege that any of the individual lawsuits were filed without cause.” This may be a weakness in the case.
Another challenge is, which statute of limitations applies and when does it begin? Ralph’s representative makes no advocacy in this regard other than that it should begin after the election cycle ends, which may also be a weakness in the case. He does claim that it is the three year limitation for an Abuse of Process claim.
It seems to me that in order to establish a pattern of malicious prosecution one has to be extremely rigorous.
(That’s if it’s even possible given the political circumstances.)
Judge Tatel made reference to a DC example of the case cited in the brief, California Motor Transport Co. v. Trucking Unlimited, 404 U.S. 508 (1972) Why didn’t they use the DC example since they filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia? I’ll try to find out more about the DC example.
I’m very interested to see more details about what transpired and hope we’ll see more in the media. It’s unfortunate that Ralph is still battling with the courts about what was done to him by the Democrats in 2004.
Things did not fare much better in 2008 with the media blackout. We should all be asking President Obama what he thinks about Democracy and alternatives to the two party duopoly that got us in the mess we’re in now.
Is it possible for BAN to publish the written briefs and other filings so that we can read the arguments?
The BAN blog has a link to Nader’s December 2008 72-page brief in this case. Go to the blog archives for December 2008, and find the December 6 2008 entry about this case, for the link.
Hey, nice tips. I’ll buy a bottle of beer to that person from that forum who told me to visit your blog 🙂