BadMoonRisin said:
hawg,
This case in Fulton County that was just dismissed has been going on for almost a year. All of Amaro's other rulings never said anything about standing, just this one. If standing was the issue for the case being tossed, why play around with it for a year? It seems like this thing was making its way through until July and then its delay, delay, delay, dismiss.
Like all things election related, these cases had a torturous path. Originally filed in Fulton County, the court there deemed it an "election contest" under Georgia law. That finding triggered a change in venue to another county, Henry County, and thus Judge Amero.
Then there was an objection to whether the case had named the correct parties as defendants. So Judge substituted some defendants (from individuals to agencies and vice versa) That order triggered new service of process duties and new time periods for the defendants to file an answer. Delay, delay, delay before discovery could commence.
But Amero did order the production of low resolution images of ballots, in particular 147,000 mail in votes in Fulton County. That happened and Favorito's group went to work analyzing those. They then went back to court with their findings (appearing to have a high duplication rate of the same ballot being counted twice in different batches maybe as high 20%) and requested higher resolution images of the same ballots but now they wanted images of the envelopes as well. Favorito's experts were quite credible and very professional and had credentials out of the wazoo and Amero was convinced.
He ordered the higher resolution scans and even discussed if the court could procure the scanners to help get that done. He ordered the same for the ballot envelopes with restrictions on the side of the envelope containing the voter's signature. Those were not allowed. That was his ruling from the bench but before or just after he entered the written order, there was a flurry of motions to dismiss, more claims of the wrong parties being defendants, etc.
At the same time, one of Favorito's co-Plaintiffs subpoenaed Ruby Freeman, her daughter and Ralph Jones for depositions, among others. Defendants then moved for a protective order to stop all discovery while the MTDs and other motions were being heard. Amero ordered the stay. No depositions, no higher resolution scans, nothing.
Arguments and briefs were submitted and a hearing held. Yesterday he found in favor of the defendants and ordered the dismissal.
Standing issues are different than jurisdictional issues with the latter being waived without a prompt and timely objection. But standing issues also involved the particular relationships between the Plaintiffs and the exact defendants. When the defendants kept being shuffled around between individuals and then those same people in their official capacities, those relationships between the Plaintiffs and the Defendants got blurred. Was there a harm to Plaintiffs caused by the defendants then named?
I think his decision (several of them, in fact) were in error with the dismissal being contrived by the judge's own actions. In short, he screwed up the case procedurally and basically threw up his hands in granting the dismissal instead of trying to fix the mistakes so the case could proceed.
My .02. And yes I am extremely disappointed in Amero. From the hearings I watched he appeared to be contemplative and involved judge, querying the party's attorneys with his own questions and observations. But then it went off of the rails when certain attorneys were removed from the case and private attorneys (criminal attorneys at that) were substituted. That was occasioned by the flip of defendants being named in their individual capacity versus their official capacity.
