JIM CROW LAW 2016: Cranky St. Johns County School Board lawyer FRANK D. UPCHUCH, III, grandson-scion of segregationist lawyer who bolted from 1948 Democratic Convention with Dixiecrat Strom Thurmond over civil rights plank, filed SLAPP suit against videographer-activist Jeff Gray and in document filed in Court today claims there's no First Amendment rights for news gatherers. This is St. Johns County, Florida, which Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. called "the most lawless" place in America, which our former County Commission Chairman Ben Rich called "one of the last bastions of the Ku Klux Klan (Folio Weekly, 2008).
Who said that?:
The corporate law firms of DELL GRAHAM and UPCHURCH, BAILEY AND UPCHURCH, defending St. Johns County School Board's retaliatory violation of Florida's anti-SLAPP law, a harassing lawsuit filed by the School Board against photojournalist Jeffrey Gray.
Who at DELL GRAHAM and UPCHURCH, BAILEY AND UPCHURCH?
DAVID M. DELANEY
Florida Bar No.: 121060
ddelaney@dellgraham.com
RYAN L. GILBERT
Florida Bar No.: 105931
rgilbert@dellgraham.com
203 NE 1st Street
Gainesville, Florida 32601
(352) 372-4381
and
FRANK D. UPCHURCH III (left)
Florida Bar No. 195211
UPCHURCH, BAILEY AND UPCHURCH, P.A.
Post Office Drawer 3007
St. Augustine, Florida 32085-3007
Telephone No. (904) 829-9066
Facsimile No. (904) 825-4862
Primary email: fdupchurch@ubulaw.com Secondary email: cindy@ubulaw.com
Firm Email: pleadings@ubulaw.com
Attorneys for St. Johns County School Board
Why:
Because citizen-activist-photojournalist Jeffrey Gray is gathering information for his YouTube videos and website on school safety issues, including Material Safety Data Sheets and bus safety. Mr. Gray is a CDL licensee concerned about the lack of pre-trip inspections and school bus safety. The School Board does not assure pre-trip inspections. Mr. Gray is indefatigable in documenting local government.
Developer-driven local governments, including the School Board, are paranoid about public participation.
Where's the beef?
Our School Board filed an outrageous Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation in probable violation of Florida's anti-SLAPP law, attacking First Amendment rights.
Our School Board claims on page 24 of its latest filing that news gatherers are not protected under First Amendment, misleadingly citing U.S. Supreme Court precedents, including Branzburg v. Hayes, in in which the Court in haec verba held that news gatherers were "not without First Amendment protection." The lawyers making this outlandish claim are pictured above. They are misguided.
This matters.
Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said St. Augustine was "the most lawless city in America."
We, the People, in righteous proudly defeated tatterdemalion FRANK D. UPCHURCH, III, School Board lawyer, in 2011.
FRANK D. UPCHURCH, III, School Board lawyer, in 2011 rubber-stamped a discriminatory scheme to reduce minority voting participation by slashing African-American population of District 2 for School Board and County Commission races.
The map was drawn by rancid rabid Republican reactionaries associated with the local Tea Party, and backed by BEVERLY SLOUGH and other Republican School Board members.
Yet our all-Republican St. Johns County Commission rightly listened to us, and the reasoned legal advice of County Attorney Patrick McCormack and the County's outside lawyer.
While UPCHURCH refused to participate, the Commission lawyers worked during a three day holiday weekend and swiftly worked all weekend to devise a legal redistricting plan.
This was after activist Ms. Judith Seraphin and I filed a complaint on November 9, 2011 with the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, alleging violations of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments by the St. Johns County School Board. We won -- the School Board dropped its discriminatory plan.
Unscholarly School Board lawyer FRANK D. UPCHURCH, III showed seeming unfamiliarity with the Fifteenth Amendment (just as did former St. Augustine City Attorney RONALD WAYNE BROWN, another local yokel mouthpiece, who was City Attorney for the Town of Hastings on an annexation plan and later misserved the City of St. Augustine as City Attorney, 2006-2014).
School Board lawyer FRANK D. UPCHURCH, III, is the scion and namesake of FRANK D. UPCHURCH I, Florida's leading Dixiecrat segregationist, a bigot and Jim Crow supporter, who walked out of the 1948 Democratic National Convention with Strom Thurmond and others protesting President Harry S Truman's anti-segregation policies and the civil rights platform advanced by Hubert H. Humphrey of Minnesota.
At their smug country clubs, at their all-white law firms, all-white non-profit groups, all-white corporate boards and and all-white government organizations, St. Augustine's de facto segregationists and retaliators do not celebrate the birthday of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
These unhappy, unlucky, louche, gauche, hick hack heels mock First Amendment values.
They show their weakness and lost grip on reality whenever they attempt to chill, coerce and intimidate FIrst Amendment protected activity, attacking dissenters and trying to hide under business-government fraud, waste, abuse, misfeasance, malfeasance, nonfeasance, flummery, dupery and nincompoopery.
We, the People wear their scorn as a badge of honor.
And now, as irrefragable proof of the Establishment's inept decrepitude and hatefulness, we have a massive School Board attack on First Amendment rights, a SLAPP lawsuit filed in St. Johns County Circuit Court. School Superintendent JOSEPH JOYNER, Ed.D. may have filed the lawsuit illegally, without a vote of the School Board. His affidavit said he "informed" Board members of the lawsuit.
School Board lawyer FRANK D. UPCHURCH, III and his law firm were hired without the School Board or his law firm ever completing a conflicts of interest check. His firm is apparently free to represent vendors and others doing business with the School Board, since his firm and they are part of those who still think they own Our Town.
Does the unethical SLAPP suit typify the genre of local Republican haters, big-shot crooks and kooks who still think they are Republican Lords of All They Survey and still own Our Town?
What do y'all reckon?
Then South Carolina Governor STROM THURMOND, 1948
FRANK D. UPCHURCH, Sr. was an influential member of the Florida Democratic Party Executive Committee and he publicly supported racist THURMOND's 1948 race for President as head of the Dixiecrat Party. It was a time when unconstitutional gerrymandering guaranteed North Florida's Pork Chop Gang electoral control by denying one-person, one-vote, favoring rural districts over urban ones.
UPDATE: School Board lawsuit illegal and ultra vires.
-----Original Message-----
From: easlavin
To: fdupchurch
Sent: Thu, Jan 21, 2016 11:35 am
Subject: NO School Board authorization to file lawsuit against Mr. Jeffrey Gray
Dear Messrs. Delaney and Upchurch:
A. F.S. 1001.41(4) gives only our School Board, NOT our School Superintendent, "general powers" to "sue and be sued."
B. Mr. Upchurch has admitted there was no School Board authorization (see below).
C. Thus, your two corporate law firms billing the School Board on this case is a contract violation of public policy under Restatement of Contracts, 2d, Section 178 (Contract Violation of Public Policy).
D. Filing an illegal lawsuit in violation of F.S. 1001.41(4) is a potentially serious criminal, civil and Bar law violation, right?
E. Will the two of you gentlemen and your law firms now dismiss the lawsuit, with prejudice, as ultra vires?
Thank you.
With kindest regards, I am,
Sincerely yours,
Ed Slavin
www.edslavin.com
904-377-4998
-----Original Message-----
From: easlavin
To: fdupchurch
Sent: Thu, Jan 21, 2016 11:13 am
Subject: Request No. 2016-10: School Board authorization to file lawsuit against Mr. Jeffrey Gray and Legal advice received before filing suit
1. If no authorization was voted by our School Board, this slapdash, Jim Crow style, SLAPP lawsuit of yours is ultra vires, right?
2. As my Irish-Bavarian grandmother would say, "Drop the oyster and leave the wharf."
3. Otherwise, you might expect someone might file Florida Bar charges.
4. Please notify your legal malpractice insurance carriers and your law partners of your insouciance for First Amendment rights and Florida's anti-SLAPP law.
5. Do either of your law firms have an ethics partner?
-----Original Message-----
From: Frank Upchurch
To: easlavin
Cc: Joseph Joyner
Sent: Thu, Jan 21, 2016 10:59 am
Subject: RE: Request No. 2016-10: School Board authorization to file lawsuit against Mr. Jeffrey Gray and Legal advice received before filing suit
No responsive records. However, I am enclosing SB’s complaint and response to the Anti-SLAPP motion which should help you better understand the background of the litigation and the SB’s legal position. In particular, I invite your attention to Dr Joyner’s affidavit (Ex I ), which explains the decision to file suit.
Frank D. Upchurch III
Upchurch, Bailey & Upchurch, PA
Post Office Drawer 3007
St. Augustine, Florida 32085-3007
Telephone # (904) 829-9066
Fax # (904) 825-4862
Email: fdupchurch@ubulaw.com
Website: www.ubulaw.com
From: easlavin@aol.com [mailto:easlavin@aol.com]
Sent: Wednesday, January 20, 2016 8:28 PM
To: joynerj@stjohns.k12.fl.us; Frank Upchurch
Subject: Request No. 2016-10: School Board authorization to file lawsuit against Mr. Jeffrey Gray and Legal advice received before filing suit
Please send. Thank you.
No comments:
Post a Comment