Twice now the City of Fullerton has managed to baffle a judge with bullshit and get the judge to issue a prior restraint against myself, David and this blog stopping us from publishing “secret city hall documents”.
Twice now the city has boasted of their win only to be slapped down by the CA Appellate Court.
First they spiked the football during a 05 November 2019 City Council meeting where hack & pretend-an-intellect Ahmad Zahra threw softballs at City Attorney Kimberly Barlow to support their lies & defamation. This was the meeting where they tacitly admitted to violating disclosure laws (The Brown Act) by not properly voting & disclosing said vote to sue us prior.
A week later the Appellate Court sided with us on the publishing gag & slapped it down.
The second time a judge granted a prior restraint the city ran to the North Orange County Chamber of Commerce who pretended to care about the newsworthiness of the case & they issued a Press Release. Said PR was basically just a hit-piece against us with a laughable lie by City Manager Ken Domer who hasn’t once tried to settle this case despite his bullshit postering about wanting to work with us to “bring it to a close”.
That time it took the Appellate Court 10 days to slap the publishing gag down. Not only did they stay the prior restraint – they took over the case entirely by accepting our appeal.
Now we’ll wait to see what happens next as the Appellate Court hears both sides & makes a ruling. Will they side with Fullerton who claims we “plundered” their public, widely available, known about & non-password protected Dropbox Account by virtue of allegedly clicking links that even literally had my name on them? Or will the Appellate Court laugh at Fullerton for trying to bury us with litigation, fees and threats all to cover the incompetence they’ve admitted to in their own arguments?
Time will tell and we’ll keep you updated.
