CK • Washington.   Der Staat bringt das Gericht in die Welt George Orwells, schimpft der Oberrichter des Hauptstadtgerichts im Fall Act Now to Stop War and End Racism Coalition v. District of Columbia, der die Verfassungsvereinbarkeit des Verbots politischer Aufkleber an Lampenmasten betrifft.

Oberrichter Lamberth ist empört, dass der Nichtstaat Washington erst auf die Beweissammlung im Ausforschungsbeweisverfahren ,Discovery, verzichtet, doch nach gemeinsamer Erarbeitung der Prozessgeschäftsordnung ein Recht auf die Vorlage eines Fragenkatalogs an die Kläger, Interrogatories, behauptet und sich bei der Begründung in Widersprüche verwickelt.

Am 4. Oktober 2012 wies er den Antrag ab und legte dem District of Columbia die Kosten im Zusammenhang mit dem Antrag auf. Vorher gab er den Kollegen im Nachbargebäude, zu denen man nach seiner Auffassung freundliche Beziehungen pflegt, laut hörbar eins auf die Finger:

[T]he District’s position and arguments are as untenable as they are ridiculous. Defendant asks this Court to enter an Orwellian world where all arguments are devoid of context, and all Court orders magically mean whatever the District wishes them to mean. The Court rejects this invitation.
The District’s Opposition is riddled with needlessly caustic remarks, contradictory statements and peripheral law, which together serve only to highlight its own disingenuous arguments. It first asserts that the Court did not impose any limits on discovery for the District. […] The District, however, quickly backs away from this stunning assertion. Almost immediately, defendant then “respectfully suggests,” in a footnote, that the language of the final Order “leads to the reasonable conclusion” that the Court did not intend to prohibit the District from taking discovery. […] Backing still further away from its opening statement, in yet another footnote, the District “avers that its interpretation of the Scheduling Order, and the discovery it propounded thereunder, was substantially justified.” […]
Highlighting its own hypocrisy, in a section entitled “Argument,” the District asserts—without any real “argument,” just a conclusory sentence—that plaintiff failed to meet its burden for a protective order because plaintiff “relie[d] entirely on conclusory statements, with no specific facts or admissible evidence.” […] This, in fact, is the definition of irony.