Written by: Michael Volpe and Tanya Hathaway

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It’s All About Jurisdiction

A judgment from a court that did not have subject-matter jurisdiction is forever a nullity.^[1][2] Wikipedia

With a corrupt judge refusing to remove himself from the case, he had no problem ignoring the evidence that the court had no jurisdiction.

A court must have some sort of a stake in a case before it can hear it; that’s called Subject-matter jurisdiction.

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 PROVING SUBJECT-MATTER JURISDICTION

Proper implementation of Subject–matter jurisdiction prevents judge shopping or forum shopping.

Some of a few of the many exhibits Hathaway presented for supporting arguments for lack of Subject-matter jurisdiction include: 1) Their marital home was in New Hampshire. Hathaway never lived in Oklahoma, and XXX (referring to Hathaway’s estranged husband) wasn’t living in Tulsa County.  XXX swore their marital home as his legal residence when he applied for a P.O. box, 2) XXX obtained a New Hampshire’s driver’s license on June 27th 2014- just weeks before filing- where he swore that he lived in New Hampshire, 3) Their marriage certificate listed New Hampshire as their legal address 4) Confirmation from the US Postal Service (USPS) that XXX permanently changed his home address from Tulsa to New Hampshire 5) dozens of resumes which XXX sent to potential employers where his return address was New Hampshire  6) While Hathaway examined XXX for her motion to vacate the suit due to lack of jurisdiction, he admitted that he did not have a residence or stay anywhere in Tulsa County during the time period required to claim Subject-matter jurisdiction.  Clearly, he relied on his insiders to take care of things.

Miller, during an argument with XXX’s attorney, even threw Hathaway a bone, saying, “I don’t understand why a driver’s licenses would not be admissible to go to evidence of where a person’s residence is in a hearing on Subject-matter jurisdiction.”

Judge Miller noted that Subject-matter jurisdiction came down to, “was the petitioner a resident of Oklahoma for six months prior to filing the petition?”

When XXX testified, he insisted that he was domiciled- or had a residence in-Oklahoma at the time he filed his petition in June 2014, but when asked to provide his address, he responded, “I did not have a formal address in Tulsa.”

He even repeated this assertion when Miller asked him the same question minutes later.

 JUDICIAL ESTOPPEL

Just as XXX knew he could rely on Hughes and Hastings, lawyers on XXX’s behalf, Hughes knew they could rely on Miller to make it all work. All they needed was something with the veneer of legitimacy: thinking Hathaway didn’t know better. Judicial Estoppel is a legal technicality which “prevents a party from asserting a position in one legal proceeding that directly contradicts a position taken by that same party in an earlier proceeding.” According to the Cornell Law Review.

Hughes and her team argued because Hathaway had come to Oklahoma to challenge the lawsuit, this implicitly gave the state jurisdiction, except, as in this case, without Subject-matter jurisdiction, Judicial Estoppel is moot. They all know it.

Hathaway knew there was no Subject-matter jurisdiction, but couldn’t prove it until discovered additional evidence that was rock solid. Knowing she could prove it, she motioned to vacate the suit in a county that by law cannot hear or rule over the matter.

Put another way, you aren’t allowed to go to New Hampshire’s Department of Motor Vehicle and swear you live there and turn around and tell a court in Oklahoma weeks later you live in that state, if all your evidence is a storage receipt.

By all rights, it was a slam dunk. No evidence was presented to overcome the lack of Subject-matter jurisdiction as the defense relied solely on Judicial Estoppel.

That’s fraud, and neither estoppel nor anything else can be achieved by fraud, unless your friends with facing the Orwellian Miller appointed by the upstanding Presiding Judge Linda Morrissey who ignored requests to review the gross negligence claimed in this matter in her court.

By all rights, it was a slam dunk. No evidence was presented to overcome the lack of Subject-matter jurisdiction as the defense relied solely on Judicial Estoppel.

Miller denied Hathaway citing Subject-matter jurisdiction as the key to vacating the suit. Yet, The Hughes Team didn’t use that dedense! If they had, it was still a slam dunk.

Still, knowing Subject-matter jurisdiction overrides Judicial Estoppel (the defenses claim), Hathaway filed an emergency motion for reconsideration, arguing that Judicial Estoppel does not apply because subject matter was not established.  This caused Miller to augment his rulings the next day in court.

“I apparently, I left the impression and I want to correct it, that the only basis for my ruling yesterday was on the basis of Judicial Estoppel. It’s my intention to indicate that after hearing those many hours of testimony, the facts support that this court has Subject-matter jurisdiction,” the Orwellian Judge Miller stated at this hearing, “He was a resident based on the factual record presented.”

Factual Record information from Cornell University Law School Includes:

“In General. In an action tried on the facts without a jury or with an advisory jury, the court must find the facts specially and state its conclusions of law separately. The findings and conclusions may be stated on the record after the close of the evidence or may appear in an opinion or a memorandum of decision filed by the court.”

The “factual record” evidence consisted of a Tulsa storage unit receipt.  

Check out the You Tube video for highlights from the Subject-matter jurisdiction hearing.