A law school graduate who claims he was unfairly denied membership in the Michigan Bar because he offended a judge years ago has scored an early-round win in appeals court.
The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on Sept. 3 that Detroit College of Law graduate Dennis Dubuc could sue the heads of the State Bar of Michigan and the Michigan Board of Law Examiners over his denied membership.
Dubuc had sued both groups for denying him admission into the Bar after finding him morally unfit to practice law for allegedly falsely accusing a judge of criminal actions in 1995.
Dubuc had accused Presiding Judge Daniel Burress of engaging in a "conspiracy to destroy him, obstruction of justice, abuse of process, bribery and attempted bribery" after the judge repeatedly ruled against him in a 1992 lawsuit he was involved in.
At first blush, Dubuc sounds like a prime example of a run of the mill pro se vexatious litigant:
Court documents also show that the Michigan Supreme Court found that Dubuc, who had been involved in 38 lawsuits prior to applying to the Bar, had engaged in abusive and frivolous tactics, such as "naming the trial judge as a witness ... accusing the judge of criminal conduct and of conspiring with defense counsel; and threatening to file a complaint with the Judicial Tenure Commission against the judge."
But then Dubuc is a landlord, and most of his lawsuits involved disputes with his tenants, which are not necessarily uncommon. In any event, the whole story is here from The National Law Journal.