Posted on 07/07/2015 1:52:31 AM PDT by afraidfortherepublic
A federal court has declared that former Wisconsin Supreme Court Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson lied about her personal knowledge of certain facts and misrepresented negotiations between her legal team and lawyers representing her fellow Supreme Court justices. “[T]he Abrahamson affidavit contains some statements that are not based on personal knowledge and that falsely portray the negotiation of the stipulated facts,” wrote Judge James Peterson in a June 10 decision striking portions of Abrahamson’s filing from the court record. Peterson was appointed to the federal bench by President Barack Obama.
Since April, when state voters ratified a constitutional amendment changing how the Supreme Court selects its chief justice, Abrahamson has waged a legal battle to reclaim her power – and pay – as chief justice. A majority of the Supreme Court, in accordance with the provisions of the new constitutional amendment, selected the soft-spoken Justice Pat Roggensack to replace Abrahamson after the April election.
Abrahamson’s case is pending in federal court, and to streamline the process Judge Peterson ordered the parties to agree to the facts at hand so he could consider the merits of their arguments. Both sides filed an affidavit containing agreed upon statements of fact on May 29, but on June 2, Abrahamson filed an affidavit of her own claiming to provide facts “based upon my personal knowledge” pertaining to the court’s operations, her 2008 campaign, and negotiations between the parties as to what would and would not be included in the joint stipulation of facts.
But there’s a problem: while Abrahamson claims she participated in the negotiation of the stipulation of facts, according to five of her fellow justices, Abrahamson was absent from the negotiations. That means Abrahamson lied when she claimed personal knowledge of the legal discussions and claimed that certain matters were not included in those discussions.
In a filing of their own, five of Abrahamson’s colleagues declared that her affidavit “is not based on Plaintiff Abrahamson’s personal knowledge as she did not participate in the negotiations on stipulated facts,” and “the Declaration [of Abrahamson’s] contains false statements.”
Judge Peterson agreed, and struck portions of Abrahamson’s affidavit from the record.
Whether or not Abrahamson will win her case remains to be seen, but win or lose she will still be able to serve out her current term on the state’s highest court.
This is not the first time Abrahamson lied in a legal document related to this case. When she first filed the lawsuit claiming the constitutional amendment approved by voters shouldn’t go into effect, she signed her complaint the day before the election, even though in the filing she claims voters had already approved the constitutional amendment.
Look what happened here! The Abrahamson saga continues.
FReep Mail me if you want on, or off, this Wisconsin interest ping list.
Any decent judge would either fine her or put in her in contempt for lying in a legal brief. She if an officer of the court and knows better, she needs to be held to a higher standard.
I need eye bleach after that picture. It’s much too early in the day......
An Obama appointee lied to further the agenda? I’m shocked!
Why? Because having this prestigious position went to her head. Intoxicated her same Supreme Court Justice Roberts feels he has a license to go semi-crazy/logic be damned on his rulings. You can tell by Justice Scalia's recent vehemence that Scalia thinks Roberts has gone rogue.
THe Obama appointee caught the lies and expunged them from the record. That is what is so ssurprising about this story.
Abrahamson should be impeached altogether for lying to a Federal Court while trying to save her job as Chief Justice which the people of Wisconsin took away from her with a resounding vote.
I'm not a lawyer and I don't need to stay in Holiday Inns any more, but it seems that her case is so outré that if it weren't an Obama judge or it just involved one of the hoi polloi, the case would have been thrown out long ago.
Just another red diaper doper baby.
I still don’t understand why this case hasn’t been tossed. What business do the federal courts have in how Wisconsin and its voters run their state’s court system?
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