Beware the Double Negative
California's Fourth Appellate District today issued an unpublished opinion affirming the dismissal of a case brought by a disgruntled paralegal (in pro. per.) who tried to sue a law firm that had fired him, accusing it of racial discrimination and violations of public policy. Vaughn v. Garen, No. E038958 (4th App. Dist., Div. 2, Nov. 14, 2006).
After some perceived adverse rulings from the trial court, plaintiff Leon E. Vaughn moved unsuccessfully to disqualify the trial judge.
Vaughn later also moved to disqualify the defendant, who was acting as his own attorney, from representing himself and a co-defendant. He was again unsuccessful.
The trial judge ended up continuing the hearing on plaintiff's motion to disqualify opposing counsel/defendant until the same date as the hearing on opposing counsel/defendant's motion for summary judgment.
At that hearing, the judge denied plaintiff's motion to disqualify opposing counsel, and granted defendant's motion for summary judgment, thus ending the case.
On appeal:
[P]laintiff does not contest the merits of defendants’ motion for summary judgment. Instead, he claims the judgment is constitutionally invalid, because it was entered in violation of his Fourteenth Amendment due process right to an impartial judge. For several reasons, he claims the trial judge who granted the motion for summary judgment, Judge Kaiser, was improperly biased against him. We find plaintiff’s claims of judicial impartiality entirely without merit, and affirm the judgment.
Got that? The Court of Appeal found "plaintiff’s claims of judicial impartiality entirely without merit."
Yet in the first substantive paragraph of the "Analysis" section of the Court of Appeal's opinion (at the top of page 8 of 14), the Court states as follows:
Based on Judge Kaiser’s grant of the continuance, no reasonable person would entertain any doubt that the judge was unable to be impartial or predisposed to grant defendants’ motion for summary judgment/adjudication.
Go read that again. (I've read it about 50 times . . . .)
It says, in effect: "No reasonable person could doubt that the judge was unable to be impartial." If you remove the double negatives, it says: "No reasonable person could doubt that the judge was biased."
That's not what the Court meant to say (or what it ultimately held), but -- unless I am really, really high -- I think that's what it said.