Courts

Judge Detonates Pro Se Law Student So Hard I Now Must Defend A Dumb Kid

The judge kind of overplays his very strong hand.

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You ever see a parent absolutely lose it at their annoying child in a public place? Like, the kid is acting a fool and you wish somebody would go snatch him, and then the parent does, and while the reprimand is totally deserved, it just goes on too long and too intensely that you start to feel sorry for the kid?

That dynamic basically played out in a Miami courtroom. Federal Judge Federico A. Moreno called Jonathan Mullane, a second-year law student representing himself in a credit score dispute, before the bench in a hearing. And Judge Moreno absolutely ripped into the pro se 2L. The transcript is harsh.

Clear as I can tell, Mullane made three critical mistakes to earn Judge Moreno’s verbal annihilation.

  • He was trying to file a petition of mandamus — which basically asks an appellate court to order Judge Moreno to work on his case faster. That’s pretty rude.
  • He didn’t know where to file the petition, and ended up asking the judge’s career clerk, in the judge’s chambers, ex-parte, what to do about it. That’s pretty dumb.
  • Initially, the clerk wasn’t even going to let him in, but Mullane said he worked for the U.S. Attorney’s Office (he’s an intern), which gained him access to the chambers to discuss his own personal case. That’s pretty unethical.

Judge Moreno ordered Mullane to appear before him and… it went really, really bad for Mullane:

THE COURT: Don’t talk to each other. Talk to me.

You’re smiling, and you have no idea what’s going to happen to you. All right? And that’s why I’m here to tell you. Because back on March 23rd you came to my chambers. It was the Friday before the Ultra concerts, so I let almost everyone go, but my career law clerk, Mariela Martinez-Cid was there, opposing counsel was not there and you came into chambers. Are you an intern at the United States Attorney’s Office?

MR. MULLANE: It’s my last week, correct.

THE COURT: It is your last week. It will be your last week and you’ll never be able to work at the U.S. Attorney’s again, it would be my hope, because I spoke with Mr. Greenberg at the United States Attorney’s Office about your outrageous conduct, and I wanted to give you a chance to explain.

I imagine Mullane eventually stopped smiling, but he never could really explain himself.

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Basically Mullane was an idiot who was looking for a clerical functionary to tell him where to file a motion that was going to piss off Judge Moreno anyway. Instead, he ended up in the judge’s chambers. Then, to gain entry into those chambers, he dropped his USAO cred, even though he was just an intern, and even though he was there for reasons that had nothing to do with his internship. It’s not a good look and Mullane was rightly reprimanded for it.

It also appears that Mullane is a little entitled ponce, which further pissed the judge off. Check out this exchange:

THE COURT: Do you realize what trouble you’re in? Do you realize it or not? I know you’ve had experience in Massachusetts, but do you realize what’s happening here or not? Do you think you should seek your own lawyer or not? I know you filed a motion in forma pauperis because you’re a pauper. Are you a law student at the University of Miami?

MR. MULLANE: Yes, I am.

THE COURT: You’re on full tuition I take it.

MR. MULLANE: My parents pay.

THE COURT: Okay. And you don’t drive a car.

MR. MULLANE: I do not drive a car. I took the train.

THE COURT: How did you get here today?

MR. MULLANE: Train, Metrorail.

THE COURT: Okay. Do you pay rent?

MR. MULLANE: My parents pay.

THE COURT: Your parents pay. And so you dare file — Your parents pay, support you. Where did you go to college?

MR. MULLANE: I went to a public institution. I studied in Switzerland.

THE COURT: Okay. Well, that doesn’t sound like a pauper to me.

MR. MULLANE: I paid a thousand dollars a year for my
tuition.

THE COURT: Wonderful. And so you want me to consider you in forma pauperis like the prisoners who represent themselves, who are in jail, who don’t have a penny to their name. Do you realize how stupid that is, do you, in addition to probably being dishonest because they don’t even have a suit like you have and they don’t have the parents who pay for rent? Are you understanding what’s going on and what you’ve done or not, or you’re not realizing it?

Damn. Turns out the kid’s father is also an attorney… wonder if that helped him get his sweet internship.

Okay, so Jon Mullane is a little brat who with a USAO internship who had an ex-parte conversation in judge’s chambers while trying to file a motion arguing that the judge was lazily ignoring his pro se complaint.

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But as the hearing went on, and on, and on, Judge Moreno started sounding a little shrill. If Mullane is a dauphin, then Judge Moreno started sounding like the king of his very own anthill.

THE COURT: Then you shouldn’t even be doing this, because you’re getting into trouble. You don’t even understand. Mandamus is to mandate, it’s to tell the Court of Appeals that this judge needs to be told to do something, because he’s sitting on his butt and not doing anything which can be done. Some prisoners do it if a judge sits on a motion for months or years.

This case is not even two months old. So putting aside the ridiculousness of wanting to petition for mandamus — which we would expect from a prisoner pro se, okay, but not from someone who wants to be a lawyer, who may never be a lawyer because of what you did in this case. That’s how serious this is. You go to tell the judge’s law clerk, help me to see how I can file a petition of mandamus because there’s a default that I want you to enter against the opponent who incidentally has filed a Motion to Dismiss which, of course, means a judge can’t issue a default when there’s a pending Motion to Dismiss, but putting aside the substantive ridiculousness of this, is the fact that you are not recognizing the misconduct that you have committed by coming into chambers and thinking this is no big deal.

Do you understand now why I’m having this hearing? The magistrate is going to have a hearing on whatever was pending. This case has been around for how long?

Yes, I think we all understand that you are very, very important and this kid has offended the great and powerful Oz.

THE COURT: Look at that, the father who’s paying for you to go to law school. So that means you know what ex parte is though you probably misunderstood in Massachusetts, and here, you’re committing it yourself. All right?

So I told the United States Attorney. He called me on something else. I was going to wait till after today, and I told him what happened. He’s flabbergasted. He said, you mean someone went into your chambers and said he works for the United States Attorney’s Office as an intern and it was another case?

You can’t even do that if you get a traffic ticket and say, oh, I’m going to United States Attorney’s Office. That requires an investigation. Do you realize that?

Bulls**t. People in the USAO probably pull this exact kind of crap all the time when they get a traffic ticket. I highly doubt that anybody at the USAO is “flabbergasted,” they’re probably just a little embarrassed that one of their interns pulled the power move without any tact. It takes years of experience to figure out how to drop the USAO bomb for maximum effect. And you don’t waste it on pro se cases for an issue a secretary could handle.

THE COURT: You cannot mention the U.S. Attorney when a cop stops you on a red light. Do you understand that or not, or not?

MR. MULLANE: I now understand.

THE COURT: Well, you should have understood before. How old are you?

MR. MULLANE: I’m 29.

THE COURT: You should understand at 29 years old that you cannot mention the U.S. Attorney in order to get some advantage —

MR. MULLANE: I wasn’t trying —

THE COURT: — even in response to a question.

Your Honor, I think we’ve covered this.

THE COURT: Second-year law student. So you’re in such a heap of trouble now with the U.S. Attorney, with me, with the law school’s internship program. It’s just a big mess that you’ve made. Do you understand that?

MR. MULLANE: I understand, Your Honor.

THE COURT: I’m not going to hold you in contempt and I’m not going to do anything on this case until the magistrate and I’m not telling you to dismiss it, though that would be a good idea from a personal standpoint, but for me, it’s a nothing case for me. Do you understand that? What’s the case about? I don’t even know. What’s the case about?

MR. MULLANE: My credit score.

THE COURT: Look at that. Can you imagine? Your credit score. You need your honesty score, your reputation, that is much more important than your credit score. Don’t you understand that, and that’s what you need to reflect on.

I mean, will my honesty score help me get a good rate on my mortgage? No? Well then maybe telling this kid that you don’t even give a crap about his credit score is exactly why he stupidly thought a petition of mandamus was something worth doing. The kid wasn’t trying to upend the wheels of justice, he made a series of dumb mistakes. Why don’t you yell at Miami Law School for not having enough clinical training? Or the USAO for handing out internships like favors? Or do you just want the kid to sit here some more while you yell at the clouds?

Goddamn it. See… I don’t want to actually defend Mullane. But when you start beating on him like this, eventually my sense of empathy is going to kick in.

Everybody here sucks. Let’s Fight Club the credit score industry so we never have to speak of this again.

Elie Mystal is the Executive Editor of Above the Law and the Legal Editor for More Perfect. He can be reached @ElieNYC on Twitter, or at elie@abovethelaw.com. He will resist.

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