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United States District Court Judge William M. Acker, Jr. is charged with corruption in Alabama.
Roger Shuler has a pending federal lawsuit against a number of entities and individuals connected to his unlawful termination after 19 years on the job at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB).
The case is being “handled” by U.S. District Judge William M. Acker, Jr., an 84-year-old Reagan appointee who is as corrupt as he is wrinkled.
This report was written by Roger Shuler:
How corrupt is Judge William M. Acker? I will answer that question with numerous details in upcoming posts. But for now, we will focus on one issue. Judge William M. Acker granted summary judgment for the University of Alabama Board of Trustees and other defendants in my case, and that ruling is now on appeal before the U.S. Eleventh Circuit in Atlanta. Judge William M. Acker granted summary judgment, dismissing the case, without giving me (or the defendants, for that matter) an opportunity to conduct discovery.
Now that simply cannot be done under the law. It’s a little like a doctor declaring you dead without checking for a pulse.
Rule 56 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure makes it clear that summary judgment cannot be considered, much less granted, without discovery. After all, discovery is the process by which both sides gather evidence to support their cases. It’s fairly important to the litigation process–probably as important as breathing is to living.
It’s not as if the law is unclear. In the Eleventh Circuit, the issue has been governed for more than two decades by a case styled Snook v. Trust Company of Georgia, 859 F. 2d 865 (11th Cir., 1988). We will discuss Snook in detail shortly, but here is the take-home point from the ruling:
This court has often noted that summary judgment should not be granted until the party opposing the motion has had an adequate opportunity for discovery. . . . The party opposing a motion for summary judgment has a right to challenge the affidavits and other factual materials submitted in support of the motion by conducting sufficient discovery so as to enable him to determine whether he can furnish opposing affidavits. . . . Generally summary judgment is inappropriate when the party opposing the motion has been unable to obtain responses to his discovery requests.
I was not allowed to even make discovery requests, much less obtain responses–and I filed two motions alerting the court to this. That’s all I needed to do under Eleventh Circuit precedent cited in Snook:
In this Circuit, a party opposing a motion for summary judgment need not file an affidavit pursuant to Rule 56(f) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure in order to invoke the protection of that Rule. . . . Form is not to be exalted over fair procedures.
Did Judge William M. Acker care about fair procedure in my lawsuit against UAB? Not one iota. His actions tell me that he is mainly interested in protecting the managers and other higher ups in the University of Alabama System who signed off on cheating me out of my job. Perhaps more importantly, Judge William M. Acker probably is interested in protecting various members of the legal tribe who know about my termination and might have played major roles in making it happen.
What, specifically, is Judge William M. Acker concerned about? Here is my guess: The judge knows that all sorts of e-mails exist that would show who screwed me out of my job and why. Judge William M. Acker knows that I would be entitled to copies of these e-mails during a legitimate discovery process, and he also probably knows that the e-mails would lay out a civil conspiracy–and perhaps even criminal activity.
The University of Alabama is perhaps the single most powerful entity in this state, and it has friends in major law firms who don’t want the truth to be revealed about who pulled what strings in my firing.
E-mails, of course, are not the only form of discovery to which I am entitled. But Judge William M. Acker’s unlawful handling of my case strongly hints that a serious paper trail exists somewhere in cyber space. Those e-mails, alone, probably would be enough to prove my case against UAB and its associates. And that’s why a federal judge is playing a not-so-subtle game of cover up.
Attribution: Legal Schnauzer
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William M. Windsor
I, William M. Windsor, am not an attorney. This website expresses my OPINIONS. The comments of visitors or guest authors to the website are their opinions and do not therefore reflect my opinions. Anyone mentioned by name in any article is welcome to file a response. This website does not provide legal advice. I do not give legal advice. I do not practice law. This website is to expose government corruption, law enforcement corruption, political corruption, and judicial corruption. Whatever this website says about the law is presented in the context of how I or others perceive the applicability of the law to a set of circumstances if I (or some other author) was in the circumstances under the conditions discussed. Despite my concerns about lawyers in general, I suggest that anyone with legal questions consult an attorney for an answer, particularly after reading anything on this website. The law is a gray area at best. Please read our Legal Notice and Terms.
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