Retired Airline Pilot sues NTSB for "Zoom-climb" data

http://www.twa800.com/lahr/lahr-amended.htm ^ | 7/27/02 | John Fiorentino

[JohnFiorentino]

Retired airline Pilot Capt. Ray Lahr has brought suit against the NTSB for release of the data pertaining to the alleged "zoom-climb" by TWA800. NTSB has stated that this event was what the hundreds of witnesses observed prior to the TWA800 explosion.

You can view the amended complaint in it's entirety here:

http://www.twa800.com/lahr/lahr-amended.htm

[Asmodeus]

WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A DISMISSAL "WITH PREJUDICE," AND A DISMISSAL "WITHOUT PREJUDICE"?

A dismissal with prejudice means the case is concluded and can never be refiled. A dismissal without prejudice allows the case to be refiled, assuming the statute of limitations has not expired.

What is the applicable Statute of Limitations, GREPAR?

[JohnFiorentino]

The statute of limitations would appear to be approx. 3,000 feet------(After the nose has been blown off, of course)

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OR in your case approx 80 years, whichever comes first.

[Admin Moderator]

post links.

[Swordmaker]

Asmodeus,

The posting of the ACLU instruction manual for filing a freedom of information act request was totally a waste of FreeRepublic bandwidth.

It is just one more effort on your part to flood any thread you participate in with irrelevant data.

You are not interested in discussion... you are interested in disruption.

Your actions have crossed the line.

I have filed an abuse report on this act.

[Swordmaker]

...the case to be refiled, assuming the statute of limitations has not expired.

Wrong... the statute of limitations applies to the FIRST FILING... and incidentally does not have application to a FOIA request.

Lahr must request the AMENDED information from the agency FIRST... he then may file a suit if the agency does not respond with that information or provides incomplete information.

You are picking nits while Lahr is following the proper procedure.

[JohnFiorentino]

I must applaud the Admin Moderator of this forum for removing the obviously disruptive and bandwidth hogging post by Asmodeus. I believe it is apparent to all by now just what his MO is.

[JohnFiorentino]

RESPONSE FROM CAPT. LAHR re: NTSB LAWSUIT
(excerpts)

(provided by a personal friend of Capt. Lahr)

Ray:
>
> Am I correct in assuming that you have prepared or are in the process of
> preparing a new lawsuit against the NTSB in the event that your refiling
> under the FOIA for the zoom-climb data is not productive?
>
> (Redacted)

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(Redacted) - Yes, although this time I won't do it pro se. I have retained a
lawyer, (Redacted) to help me. ....... Ray

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[ Then I
asked:]

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> Is this information confidential or are the usual suspects aware of your
> intentions. I ask this because disinfo artists on various forums are
making much of the dismissal of the pro se motion.
>
> (Redacted)

---

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Hello (Redacted) - No, it is not confidential. You can tell the world that I am
not about to give up. .........

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[Rokke]

I also applaud the admin operator deleting Asmodeus' FOIA post. For those of us without DSL, downloading this thread takes forever. Now if he would just delete posts 803,804,807,822 and 838 we would make even more progress.

And John, I also applaud you providing confirmation that your statement about Lahr already refiling his lawsuit was more of your special "careful reading" disinformation. I guess he plans on waiting until his second FOIA request gets dismissed before resorting to lawsuits.

[Asmodeus]

"the statute of limitations applies to the FIRST FILING... and incidentally does not have application to a FOIA request."

From the now deleted source: "There is a [deleted]-year statute of limitations for suing under the FOIA. This means that you have to file a lawsuit within [deleted] years of the date you made your request - even if you have received an incomplete response from the agency."

The "request" referred to is the initial FOIA request. That's when the statute of limitations clock started running.

"You are picking nits while Lahr is following the proper procedure."

Lahr's lawsuit would not have been dismissed as "premature" and he would not have had to start all over again from square one, submitting another FOIA request, if he had followed the "proper procedure". The statute of limitations does not start over again, however. It has kept right on ticking since his first FOIA request. [Source deleted]

From the court record already posted in this thread [and not yet deleted]:

"Scheduling conference held. Charles S. Kim, counsel for Boeing - possible intervenor in this action, is also present. Parties inform Court of dispute as to the actual documents at issue in this matter. Court finds this matter premature to proceed at this time and dismisses this action without prejudice."

The presence of a lawyer from Boeing's legal team as "possible intervenor" dramatizes that the core issue is proprietary information/specs. That's what Ray Lahr, now represented by a lawyer, has to try to skirt around in his FOIA requests.

"Although the law requires federal courts to give priority to FOIA suits, they can still take about a year, and maybe two or three years if a lower court decision is appealed to higher courts. Be warned, the government may use all kinds of courtroom maneuvers to delay or prevent mandatory disclosure - you have to decide how far you want to take your request." [Source deleted]

The court system is the lawyers' playpen.

And the statute of limitations clock is still ticking.

But if or when Ray Lahr's quest fails, which I believe is inevitable because of the proprietary information/specs issue that existed long before the crash of TWA Flight 800, the legal geniuses in their own minds such as Swordmaker or the Great Paralegal (GREPAR) can step up to the plate and file their own FOIA requests and start a new clock running.

The "Missile Witnesses" Myth FBI Chief Metallurgist Blows Whistle On Kallstrom's Wild Goose Chase

[Asmodeus]

Circular logic "a logical error, caused by first making some assumption that can't be proven true, then, on the basis of that assumption, deriving some result that is then used to "prove" that the first assumption is true.

You and all the rest of the "shootdown" tinfoil hats made the same "logical error" at the outset of the investigation, the ASSUMPTIONS that the streak of light seen by many witnesses was the ascending fiery exhaust of a missile in flight and that the Massive Fireball was the Initiating Event when "the missile" intercepted the airliner. Therefore, it became your duty as Patriots to prove you were right. Therefore, those who disagreed with your interpretation of the witness reports are government agent disinformationalists engaged in the felonious criminal coverup of a heinous crime, the missile shootdown of TWA Flight 800.

In short, you've brainwashed yourselves.

And in your clumsy efforts to pound square pegs into round holes to try to prove you're right, you've run off ALL members of congress, past and present, the press [with the exception of the green men from Mars branch] and the public has walked away.

Your efforts to try to explain the wacky "coverup" allegations are grotesque.

"In my view, it does not take thousands to cover up this... it takes only a few, properly placed. It is my viewpoint that it was a terrorist act. The cover-up may be the result of the US Navy's FAILURE to intercept and capture the occupants of the two missile firing boats or it may be because the administration did not want a failure on its record in the upcoming elections. Unlike you, I keep an open mind on this." [emphasis yours]

To support your allegation that at least some of the witnesses should have testified before the NTSB, you came up with the following.

"In a trial, best evidence is primary evidence. A witness deposition is not permited or admissable unless the deposed is NOT AVAILABLE and even if admitted, the jurors are told to give it less weight than actual testimony. A police officer's report of what a witness said is inadmissable as hearsay. In this case were the witnesses unavailable??? Were they dead? No? Then the NTSB did not have to "rely" on the flawed reports from the FBI."

"I suggest that there are witnesses with more probitive value than others. I would believe it would be prudent to call those with the most detailed and complete accounts. I do not need to name them. There is a world of difference between NO EYEWITNESSES and even ONE."

SOMEBODY would have to name them.

WHO would you and the rest of the "shootdown" tinfoil hats have trusted to make the selections? The NTSB? The FBI? The civil litigants' lawyers? Asmodeus? Ian Goddard? Bill Donaldson? Reed Irvine? James Sanders? Acehai? Swordmaker?

SOMEBODY would have had to gather up the documentation on ALL of their prior interviews to see if their contentions about what they actually saw changed over time as the result of input from other sources aka tainting.

WHO would you and the rest of the "shootdown" tinfoil hats have trusted to do that? The NTSB? The FBI? The civil litigants' lawyers? Asmodeus? Ian Goddard? Bill Donaldson? Reed Irvine? James Sanders? Acehai? Swordmaker?

SOMEBODY would have had to question them.

WHO would you and the rest of the "shootdown" tinfoil hats have trusted to do that? The NTSB? The FBI? The civil litigants' lawyers? Asmodeus? Ian Goddard? Bill Donaldson? Reed Irvine? James Sanders? Acehai? Swordmaker?

[Rokke]

So let me get this straight...you say the NTSB's report concerning TWA800 is flawed and poorly supported, but you don't want anyone using the facts in the NTSB report to counter any of your arguments. That makes about as much sense as most of your arguments. You may be slow, but at least you're consistent.

[Rokke]

You have once again asked me a question refering to the NTSB report. How do you propose I answer it, without refering to the NTSB report and subequently being accused of practicing (according to your confused understanding of political science) "Bolshevism"?

[JohnFiorentino]

"downloading this thread takes forever"...........And this coming from someone who said the thread was withering?

You only HOPE it dies.

There was no "disinformation" in my postings re: Lahr.......I was initially informed he had refiled a lawsuit. Obviously that information was incorrect. I have provided the answers to your questions graciously provided to me by a personal friend of Lahr's.

Obviously none of this seems to appease you, as of course nothing ever will. You or Assmo have no interest in discussing Fl800. Your sole purpose is to disrupt this forum. A forum provided as a service by FR.

Free speech is everyone's right, even those who abuse it.

[JohnFiorentino]

Lahr is not seeking any "proprietary" information from NTSB. If you bother to read his requests, you will quickly see this.

The significance of the presence of a Boeing "intervenor" remains to be seen. Unless of course, you KNOW something nobody else seems to know for sure.

There is NOTHING "ominous" in this dismissal.

It's quite apparent to me what Lahr is seeking, and it's also quite apparent NTSB would most likely find it very embarrassing to release, or POSSIBLY even produce.

[FormerLurker]

Uh, Asmodeus. I think private email is supposed to remain private. Posting private email without the other party's permission is against FR policy I believe, if it isn't in fact in violation of the law.