CHATTANOOGA, Tenn., Feb. 22, 2021 — Today I file a 34-page legal analysis against the imaginative and fruity reasonings of chancery court judge Pamela Fleenor, a Republican who is upholding her faithful service to state and party by rejecting my pleadings at law to overturn the COVID-19 state of emergency, as it’s called.
By David Tulis / NoogaRadio 92.7 FM
I argue that I have standing to obtain relief, that respondents Bill Lee and Becky Barnes have unequivocal duties under law, and that she in chancery has plenary power to “give each party his exact rights and to require of each party his exact duties.”
She has consistently rejected my law- and constitution-based demands, knowing what matters in life and in her career, and what matters in her maintenance of the new law order that arose March 12, 2020, with Gov. Lee’s first executive order in the CV-19 overthrow of the constitution. She is party to it. We have been under a legal overthrow, a state-office gangsterism, 348 days at this writing.
My petition for her to change her mind argues effectively that while she has been an unjust judge these 140 days, she is not incompetent. And I appeal to the rule of law — the power of mandamus, statute and the rules of equity — to get her to change her mind toward justice, change her affiliation, from that of monolithic administrative consolidated tyranny and in the direction of divided government, liberty of the people and duty of state actors to obey their doggone laws that apply to them. Incompetence can’t be fixed. Injustice can be — because it is a question of morals and godliness.
The idea is this: We have due process protections when officials act within the confines of the black-letter law. The Tennessee code applies to them, not to us. They have power, but it cannot be applied to anyone except per law. No executive order can apply, by definition, to any member of the public. It applies internally, down into the many agencies created by the general assembly and administered by Gov. Lee. Its powers are, in sum, upon criminal defendants via the judiciary, or upon people exercising privileges, licenses and permits via the executive branch (the regulated part of the economy).
Here now I put the parts of a 13,000-word motion into short form, for God’s glory and for your benefit.
Shall we obey general assembly?
In this cause, the court is siding with two people who have overthrown the legislative enactment as to how police power is to flow from the state into society and the public. That is to say, the law at Tenn. Code Ann.§ 68-5-104.
The general assembly has spoken as to the process for what constitutes an epidemic, and has devolved authority upon the governor and his agents. That protocol begins in every county with the finding of a first case and a determination as to the source and cause of the contagion, with local departments dealing with the state commissioner of health and her staff, all under the authority of the governor.
This cause evokes the plenary power of chancery court to issue a mandamus and to do whatever equity requires of it in the overthrow by respondent(s) of limited representative government under the constitution by their refusal to obey the protocols that protect the public health and also protect the people’s property right in due process — their constitutionally guaranteed, God-given, inherent and unalienable rights.
Mandamus is the means to compel obedience to a nondiscretionary act — compliance with that law.
We know of no exception to the rule that the court will not, by mandamus, disturb the decisions, and actions of the boards and officers having discretionary powers, except where they act in an arbitrary and oppressive manner (Williams v. Dental Examiners, 93 Tenn. 619, 27 S. W. 1019), or act beyond their jurisdiction (Insurance Co. v. Craig, supra), or where they refuse to assume a jurisdiction *734 which the law devolves upon them (State ex rel. v. Taylor, 119 Tenn. 229, 104 S. W. 242).
Peerless Const. Co. v. Bass, 158 Tenn. 518, 14 S.W.2d 732, 733–34 (1929)
The court has authority to draft an order, based on the petition, containing a single-sentence directive to respondents to obey Tenn. Code Ann. § 68-5-104. A draft is attached with this motion. But it can do more. Petition ¶ 207 demands “By rectification, reformation, or whatever this equity court may find just, ensure the Rules reflect the legislative intent, purpose, function, etc., of T.C.A. § 68-5-104, consistent with the Tennessee constitution which the respondent(s) fraudulently, or through other wrong, breach without such correction.” Relator provides a list of four sorts of remedies that could attach to the order, at the chancellor’s discretion.
Mandamus itself as a remedy doesn’t envision any supervision of malefactors as the Peerless court indicates. The Peerless court quotes Ferris on Extraordinary Legal Remedies § 194.
The office of mandamus is to execute, not adjudicate. It does not ascertain or adjust mutual claims or rights between the parties. If the right be doubtful, it must be first established in some other form of action; mandamus will not lie to establish as well as enforce a claim of uncertain merit. It follows therefore that mandamus will not be granted where the right is doubtful.
Mandamus operates on a clear right, upon an official with a duty that pre-exists the action, ministerial and nondiscretionary. A mandamus action concludes when the official is compelled to his duty. State of Tennessee’s cause on relation is mandamus, with relator indicating what other ascertainments or adjustments beyond mandamus could justly help bring an end to the state of disaster and restore the state economy and the people to their liberties.
The court says “Relator failed to state a prima facie case for mandamus against Barnes,” order, P. 9. But indeed he has. The petition is prima facie evidence. The court says issuance of mandamus is “within the sound discretion of the court.”
Exactly. As are other remedies that would suit the court’s understanding of respondents’ state of disaster.
Discretion means that when a matter comes before the chancellor, the judge has under law and under equity plenary power. “PLENARY. Full, entire, complete, absolute, perfect, unqualified. Mashunkashey v. Mashunkashey, 191 Okl. 501, 134 P.2d 976, 979,” Black’s Law Dictionary, 4th ed.
The court has authority over “all suits resulting from frauds, actual and constructive” and exercises, in distinction from circuit court’s “rigid realm of law,” as Gibson puts it, an “elastic domain.” This suppleness of power, this pliable intellectual and moral power of chancery, is invoked in this case.
The chancery court in Tennessee is now equipped with full power to do complete and speedy justice in all suits within its jurisdiction, however numerous the parties, or complicated their rights and duties. It is vested with authority to so shape and mould its decrees as to meet every exigency required either by law or equity, and to adjust all matters in controversy, legal as well as equitable, so as to give each party his exact rights and to require of each party his exact duties, whether such party be complainant or defendant and whether the obligations between complainants and defendants, or between co-complainants or between co-defendants. And it has been clothed with unlimited power to use any kind of process, legal or equitable, to enforce its orders and decrees; and if an emergency should arise necessitating a process not hitherto used, the court would, when absolutely necessary to prevent the failure of substantial justice, so modify one of the customary legal or equitable processes as to adapt it to the exigencies of the emergency.
[emphasis added]
Gibson’s § 25. Effect of the Act Transferring Jurisdiction over Certain Law Matters
Relator is confident that his proper petition avers an actionable grievance and harm. He would not have taken the trouble to file suit were it not so. No matter how complex the matter, no matter how mighty his enemy, he is confident in the operation of law in his protection, and that of the people of Tennessee, and in the power of equity to halt continuing harm.
Is there wrong? Chancery has remedy
Equity will not suffer a wrong without a remedy. This maxim contains many powers, and those that “lie dormant in this potent maxim will awaken, as the necessities of their action arise; and they will be found commensurate with every necessity.” Some matters equity cannot handle, Gibson says — violations of honor, or of truth, or of morals that don’t involve a question of property or pecuniary liability. But “any wrong done to a legal or equitable right will be redressed in Equity, unless some other Court has exclusive jurisdiction,” Gibson notes, § 42.
If it is true mandamus does not lie to stop an official’s public fraud under color of an emergency causing irreparable harm, and an order stopping the fraud and irreparable harm mandating the official to simply obey the law is unavailable, then the court’s inquiry serving the complete justice relator intends is not over. It continues pursuant to the plenary power of chancery to make all such orders, either in court or at chambers, to remedy wrongs threatened or done.
Equity principles require alteration of the order of the court to reflect the facts and law appurtenant the petition filed by relator for relief in chancery, not limited to mandamus, not as mistreated or guessed at by the respondent-in-fraud or adopted by the court.
If mandamus is unreachable by state of Tennessee on relation, and equity cannot help — if no remedy in law exists under any basis — the court should not have maintained the action longer than immediately.
I do hereby declare to the above statement to be true and correct to the best of my firsthand knowledge.
Well, as long as the governor can just “have” Sovereign Immunity that he is allowed to just spread on any of his underlings like peanut butter, you, and the rest of the People of Tennessee have the same nuthin’ since Ulysses S. Grant hung the Proclamation on Missionary Ridge.
Until they decide to enforce the Constitution left by their ancestors.