Dear Ken;

Thanks very much for working on an Answer to the ARDC’s mostly defamation complaint where they basically complain about the fact I am running this blog.  I did not steal money, I have not neglected any client matters.  In fact, the allegations make it clear that the complaint has nothing whatsoever to do about my law practice.

Essentially the ARDC is complaining I am a mouthy chick running a blog they just don’t happen to like and they want to censor it.

Eventhough the ARDC does not allow it, as you are aware in Federal Court you have to mention your affirmative defenses or they are waived.

Be sure to put at the end that I am not waiving my rights under the  1) First Amendment to the Constitution, Article 1 of the Illinois Constitution, and since we don’t know what they will bring up at trial, the plethora of defenses I have already found 2) “fair reporting privilege”, 3) “opinion privilege” (where you cannot prove or disprove a statement, it is just someone’s opinion”, 4)  “newsworthy privilege”, 5) “satire, comedy and humor privilege”–the Campari ad, “litigation privilege”, 6) “SLAPP or 750 ILCS section 110,7)  “truth or substantial truth”–the truth does not have to be exacting, there is slop room, “innocent construction”, for example where you say “follow the trail of money leading to the miscreants”–that does not mean that they necessarily stole anything, it merely means they may have a bias because they make money declaring elders incompetent quickly and easily and 8) “business communication.” where employees transmit statements during the ordinary course of business they should be exempt from defamation claims.
A court must always consider and utilize the “innocent construction” rule when it has been alleged and it is seems fairly plausible.

 The ARDC has apparently alleged “defamation per se” which is supposed to require detailed pleading according to the cases.  Then, one of the elements of “defamation per se” is that the communication must not have been provably false.  Once the defendant brings up truth or substantial truth as a defense, then the burden shifts to the plaintiff to prove the statement was false by clear and convincing evidence.  For the “litigation privilege” the Illinois courts have not limited that to the parties, their attorneys or others directly involved in the case.  You can just “refer or relate to a case” and get the privilege.

All I do is blog.

All the courts do is figure out how to dump defamation cases out of their courtrooms.

All most clients want to do is whine, moan and groan about how someone “defamed” them or trash talked them and they want to sue for defamation.

Any lawyer that does not have a brick for a brain knows that defamation is a huge loser, a time waster and the cases go no where real quick.  The court knows you have a wimpy whiner for a client that has more money than brains.

I get that sometimes reformed alcoholics and drug addicts might want to clear their names, I do get that. (the Carol Burnett case). There might be some special, limited instances where a client wants to sue for defamation, slander, libel, false light, etc.  But if the courts allowed trash talk to get to trial, 90% of court business would be trash talk and we’d have to dump Maury, Sally Jessie Raphael, Gerraldo and a whole host of professional trash talkers on cable TV.  We couldn’t even accommodate in our courtrooms all the trash talk from cable TV!

The courts “get it” and know that defamation as a tort was done for when cable TV hit the airwaves with all the trash talk and sleeze for entertaiment.

Apparently the ARDC does not “get it” and does not know we have first amendment rights and defamation is a clear loser.

While courts dump defamation cases left and right, the ARDC apparently latches on to these when they have nothing else to say.  If you have no facts, pound the law, if you have no law, pound the facts, if you have no law or facts, just pound the table.

My complaint is clearly a table pounder.  Grandstanding at it’s best.  Besides aren’t you happy to know Leah Black got promoted for her great work on your case?  Just like Justice Connor.

Do we get any depositions?  Do you have the transcript yet from your case?

take care

joanne

PS the comments about Dorothy Brown came from their very own Help desk, and also when all the civil servants got fired in 2001 when the fed courts switched to Pacer.  I have been told it numerous times.  I have discussed it with other lawyers numerous times.  Why the ARDC thinks a lot of stuff on my blog is somehow great original news, I think they are perhaps just a few too floors too high up in their ivory towers.

After Ken sent me the case “US v. Yermian” where I am reminded it took DECADES for attorneys to get very few rights to advertise and the ARDC to this day attempts to strictly oversee our advertising speech–despite the hoardes of cable commercials we are getting sick to death on mes–lo-the-li-oma, birth control pill heart disease, dacron bladder inserts–you name that tort, it will be on cable tonight with Skin-a-max.

Dear Ken;

You mention that we have “new attorneys” on my ARDC complaint case.  Who are the new attorneys on the case?  did LB resign because I made fun of her frequently too and that might have caused a recusal?  or did she just quit because she finally “got it” that all I am doing is running a blog and who prosecutes another attorney for “running a blog”?  Is it really that important to censor me and shut me up?

The disQ of me, and my otherwise non-involvement in Sykes make it clear I am only being prosecuted for my speaking out and that makes me a pathetic victim of bullying by the ARDC and unnamed others.

how many ARDC attorneys will I have before this gets to the hearing panel?  How many attorneys will work on my complaint and get disgusted because that’s not why they went to law school–to pick on another attorney for merely running a blog and speaking out.  an attorney that spends hours and hours helping others—AND publishing it because while you and I cannot save the world, we can at least make it public on the internet how many confirmed victims of probate we are finding.

courts and attorneys out of control.  judges and attorneys acting badly.  I stand prepared to talk about them all–and let the victims themselves do it, sorting out the BS from the reality and making it into a blog post only an attorney can write up.

kill the messenger, not the miscreant.

I know I am not “the Daily Law Bulletin”, I am not the legal section of the WSJ or NYT.  I have no editing staff, I don’t worry about thinking thru my fingers, BUT I do have people who read my blog.

I also know there are legal shows out there where the lawyers dress up fancy and go to fancy courts with important multi-million dollar cases or serial murder victims.  They don’t blog about how they have no heat in the winter because it costs too much and there are too many people to help.  The law shows don’t get real emails from real probate court victims telling what is really going on in court rooms where they are routinely told to “shut up”, they get snubbed, ignored, denigrated at every turn while court favored GAL’s only have to sniffle a bit and the judge hands out motion grants like lollipops to Shirley Temple.  Disgusting.  I feel the pain, my readers feel the pain–and yet the ARDC jams it into a tax payer money wasting complaint pretending it never happens or if it does, that was fair.

Note how that was in the complaint?  GJS gets snubbed, ignored, denigrated at every turn while all CF, PS, AS, etc. have to do is sing a song and their motions are granted.

It’s a wired in system where GAL’s come from a list.  And if you are the respondent in a petition for incompetency, kiss your butt goodbye.  Even if you manage, kick, scream, fuss and yodel you want an attorney, according to Justice Connor, if “she really thought” you needed your own attorney–she would appoint one–from a list.  Let’s face it, you fry your brain a bit, just on the edges, you get frail and need help getting out, you are toast in the probate world.  You won’t get an attorney, you can kiss that dream good bye.  You won’t get the attorney friend you like who helped you for years because he’s not “on the list.”  And the GAL’s and OPG will dip into the sitting pork barrel of you paid up home, bank accounts, etc. and dump you in a nursing home despite the fact you don’t want to be there.

How corrupt is that.  Okay I said it again.  That’s corrupt and evil and greedy and the deep dark side of our “judicial” system.

JoAnne

PS–Ken, what I like about you, you are my attorney and my best friend in all of this, and I am soooo glad you never say to me, be careful what you say about august attorneys at the ARDC, don’t say this and don’t say that.  Other attys have told me that.  BUT you tell me keep going on, you are telling a truth that HAS to be told, and it’s all First Amendment rights, whether the ARDC gets it or not.  Our N.D.Illinois judges in Federal Court will “get it”.

PPS–no they have not taken down my copyright infringing portion of the complaint from their website today.  I am NOT happy about that.

PS - Ken, just so you know, all my kids have read my complaint and even THEY KNOW this blog is protected by the First Amendment to the US Constitution.

According to Milkovich, 497 U.S. 1, 20; 110 S.Ct. 2695, 111 L.Ed.2d 1 (1990):

The first Amendment protects statement on matters of public concern that are not provably false.

BUT the legal standard the ARDC is using in my complaint is:  the (false) statements must have been made knowing they were false, or with a reckless disregard as to whether or or not they were true or false.

That’s a fairly amazing standard concerning the fact that the missing gold, the antics of the GAL’s and all the statements made in my ARDC complaint against me have been verified over and over by GJS and her family as being true and accurate.  Not just one family member, but several knew about the gold coins not being inventoried, several or most know about the cash in the mattress uninventoried.

But what have the GAL’s told the court over and over?  These were figments of GJS’s imagination.

After the defendant brings up the defense of “substantial truth” to the statements, then the burden shifts to the plaintiff to show the statements are false.

This has not been done in the Sykes case, the Tyler case, the Wyman case, etc.

Dear Readers;

I know full well the pain of being viewed as only one of the unwashed masses, the hoi poii, one to be trampled upon as a recipient of a complaint by the ARDC when I am only trying to blog about all of you and how you have suffered from the “powers that be”–helpless when the GAL’s position is rubber stamped by the court–seniors and the disabled thrown into nursing homes, bank accounts and paid for homes depleted by GAL fees, Guardian and Guardian atty fees, –you name it, they charge mercilessly for it and you complain like a tree falling in the desolate forest without a person for miles.

So, if you can’t fight the truth and get some respite for grandma and grandpa, like Al Capone was put into club fed med for tax evasion, let’s go for plan B, copyright infringement.

See below and I’ll let you know how Mr. Larkin responds.

DENISON & ASSOCS, PC.
FEDERAL LITIGATION, PATENTS, TRADEMARKS AND COPYRIGHTS
1512 N FREMONT ST, #202    PHONE 312-553-1300
CHICAGO, IL 60642    FAX 312-553-1307
JoAnne M. Denison✬    www.DenisonLaw.com
JoAnne Cell Phone 773-255-7608    Efax 312-376-8842
JoAnne@DenisonLaw.com                                                 Yusuf Naqvi*, Of Counsel, YusufNaqvi@DenisonLaw.com
✬–Admitted IL, NC (Inactive) & US Patent Bar    *–Admitted IL Bar

Atty. Jerome Larkin
Director, ARDC
One Prudential Plaza
Chicago, IL 60601 via telefax 312-565-2320

        RE:     Demand to Cease and Desist from Copyright Infringement of Material Posted at Www.marygsykes.com which is copyright protected under US Law and the Berne Convention–an International copyright treaty
Dear Mr. Larkin

Without waiving my right to be represented by Mr. Ditkowsky in other manners instant to the complaint posted at http://www.iardc.org/13PR0001CM.html on the internet, I must demand you delete my copyrightable material posted on your website.

Please be advised that your recent posting is of a Complaint that incorporates creative materials I have authored on your website is in violation of 17 USC § 500 et . Seq. And thereby constitutes illegal and wrongful use of my copyrightable material.
    
I have already made application for a copyright, promptly after being informed that no less than 16 paragraphs of my propriety and protectable writings have been embodied in your Complaint without my authorization or the authorization of other authors providing me a limited license to utilize their materials in accordance with the general goals and noted provisions of my website.

I have not given you, Attorney Cynthia Farenga, Attorney Adam Stern or the Illinois ARDC  (or anyone else) the right to copy, publicly display, perform, publish, make derivative or adaptive works or otherwise  disseminate any of my intellectual property (“Subject Works”) for the purposes: 1) of causing harm and ill repute to probate court victims, who take their injuries seriously; 2) grievances to the ARDC; 3) any use which would constitute “commercial use” or “publication” under U.S. copyright law.     Demand is made that you instantly cease and desist using the same material and remove it from your websites and other publications.

You may paraphrase the Subject Works, you may link to my website at http://www.marygsykes.com or you may say “COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL OMITTED” but you cannot publish it and slavishly copy it on your website because 1) it does in fact cause further grief to probate court victims; and 2) your agency is likely to engage in the sale or licensing of this material for profit, taking it out of the realm of “unpublished works” which are afforded different protections than “published works”. I do not waive or otherwise limit any right that I have in making this demand to you and I reserve my full and complete  rights in and to my said intellectual property.

 17 USC § 501 (a) provides:
    (a) Anyone who violates any of the exclusive rights of the copyright owner as provided by sections 106 through 122 or of the author as provided in section 106A (a), or who imports copies or phonorecords into the United States in violation of section 602, is an infringer of the copyright or right of the author, as the case may be. For purposes of this chapter (other than section 506), any reference to copyright shall be deemed to include the rights conferred by section 106A (a). As used in this subsection, the term “anyone” includes any State, any instrumentality of a State, and any officer or employee of a State or instrumentality of a State acting in his or her official capacity. Any State, and any such instrumentality, officer, or employee, shall be subject to the provisions of this title in the same manner and to the same extent as any nongovernmental entity.

I hope that you will henceforth respect my intellectual property rights as well as I will respect yours. I would never take your proprietary creative writings and re-publish them on my blog without your express permission.  I will never copy and republish anything of yours from any ARDC blog which is creative in nature.  Pleadings and form business letter responses are not copyrightable nor protectable.  But, your creative and original expressions of thought, opinion and sentiment are and I will not repost or republish without permission.

I thank you in advance for you promptly removing my proprietary and copyrighted works from your website.

                            Very Truly Yours,

                            /JoAnne M Denison/esign

                            JoAnne Denison
                            DENISON  & ASSOCS, PC.

Cc: Atty Ken Ditkowsky
http://www.marygsykes.com blog