The Need for Sua Sponte Judicial Review Laws For Pro Se Litigants’ Lawsuits

For many years late night talk show host David Letterman has had to deal with stalkers.  One of those stalkers, Colleen Nestler — whom David Letterman had never met — succeeded in 2005 in getting a protective order against David Letterman in New Mexico by claiming in her seven page filing that since 1994 Letterman had communicated to her through the telecast of his show by using coded messages, “eye expressions,” and making other gestures which Nestler claimed represented Letterman’s marriage proposal to her and offering her a job as his co-host.  Nestler further claimed in her protective order petition that Letterman’s coded messages and gestures on his show (filmed in New York) harassed and tormented her (in New Mexico).  Nestler continued to claim that David Letterman had caused her to go into bankruptcy and caused her immense mental anguish.  Nestler asked that the protective order keep Letterman at least three yards away from her (very easy for Letterman to do since he lived and worked in the northeast U.S.!) and that the court issue an injunction against Letterman to order him to no longer “think” about her and stop all of the tormenting harassment she claimed Letterman was doing to her via his coded messages and gestures which she claimed he was making toward her on his show.

Nestler had absolutely no evidence whatsoever for any of her claims in her filing for a protective order against David Letterman. Yet outrageously, Santa Fe District Judge Daniel Sanchez validated Nestler’s totally bizarre and unsubstantiated claims against David Letterman.  Judge Sanchez, without any proof or any basis in law, reason or reality, granted Nestler a protective order against David Letterman.  David Letterman was never even notified by the Santa Fe court of Nestler’s filing for a protective order against him nor of her bizarre accusations so that he could have had a chance to refute his stalker’s claims.  But once the civil protective order was issued against him that protective order put David Letterman’s name on a national registry, banned him from having guns, and potentially opened Letterman up to criminal charges if he, for example, was seen possessing firearms.

Letterman had to hire a New Mexico attorney to appeal his stalker’s civil protective order.  Judge Sanchez is on record initially refusing to dismiss or apologize for his issuance of the baseless protective order against David Letterman, claiming that Nestler’s court forms were filled out “correctly.”  After much pressure and public shaming, Judge Sanchez finally dismissed Nestler’s protective order.  As a number of legal commentators have published, this is rarely the case for the average non-celebrity person who finds out there is a totally baseless and unjustified protective order slammed against them.

https://www.overlawyered.com/2005/12/restraining-david-letterman/

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/letterman-fights-restraining-order/

My husband and I, as well as some of my brother Ken “Pastor Max” Parks’ other victims, have consulted with attorneys at various times throughout the years to discuss how to stop my brother from his all-consuming non-stop aggressively obsessive stalking, defamation and harassment campaign.  For years we’ve been told by police, our friends, co-workers, our employers, state’s attorneys and district attorneys to look into getting a protective order against my brother Ken “Pastor Max” Parks.  We consulted with attorneys.  We weighed the pros and cons.  In 2015 the harassment escalated as my brother Ken “Pastor Max” Parks filed pro se his third vexatious lawsuit against us and continued to publicly defame us to get support from his Facebook “friends” and cult “followers,” some of whom encouraged him in his campaign of defamation, stalking, threatening, and filing abusive lawsuits against us (he’s on at least Facebook and Spreely).  During this time my brother Ken “Pastor Max” Parks also publicly posted photos of his guns along with his posts about “punishing” his “enemies.”  We were very reasonably concerned for our safety.

We heard from attorneys around the Atlanta, Georgia area conflicting advice about pursuing a civil lawsuit and protective orders against my brother Ken “Pastor Max” Parks.  A number of attorneys told us that they would not help us because they stated “what if he starts going after me and my family?”  In retrospect, we desperately and foolishly tried to bring our own pro se civil lawsuit against my brother Ken “Pastor Max” Parks in Georgia for defamation, defamation per se and harassment and at the same time we also applied for a civil protective order in Fulton County, Georgia without hiring an attorney.  We ended up voluntarily dismissing our pro se lawsuit against my brother Ken “Pastor Max” Parks because the whole process is just too overwhelming for a non-attorney to handle (even though we were told by attorneys we had a very strong and valid case against my brother).  But we went through with the civil protective order hearing process.  My brother Ken “Pastor Max” Parks retaliated at the last minute and filed a counter protective order against us, making completely false claims against us.  He filed his protective order on the Friday before the Monday hearing date, in violation of Georgia Code regarding making a timely counter complaint.

The protective order hearing in Fulton County magistrate court presided by Judge Allyson Pitts was a nightmare.  She was rude to attorneys, petitioners, and even to the court security staff.  The courtroom was crowded and only a few petitioners had attorneys.  Much of the time Judge Pitts was typing on her keyboard and didn’t appear to be giving the necessary attention to the cases.  Our case was finally heard in the early afternoon after we were forced to sit there and listen to case after horrific case since early morning.

We presented clear irrefutable evidence of my brother Ken “Pastor Max” Parks’ harassing, defaming, stalking, and threatening us, which included his own writings to us, his own published statements, police reports and other documentation, as well as the fact that his defamatory and unsubstantiated counter protective order petition was filed too late against us in violation of Georgia Code (see below).  My brother Ken “Pastor Max” Parks made his typical ad hominem defamatory and libelous attacks against us, claiming (lying) that my husband and I are “anti-abortion domestic terrorists who kill abortion doctors!” and that we’re “wanted criminals!” with “criminal records!”  He also claimed that we were driving our vehicle around his neighborhood and his residence (which is approximately a 5 to 5 1/2 hour drive from where we lived).  He presented an undated package and unsigned letter claiming (falsely) that we mailed the package with the object through the postal service — yet the package had no postal date or other authenticating postal marks.  My brother Ken “Pastor Max” Parks slammed and threw around his stack of papers (which he never presented at the hearing), tried repeatedly to approach Judge Allyson Pitts despite her warnings and the warnings from the security staff in the courtroom, and he tried to approach us despite being warned to stop.  We petitioned at one point that Judge Pitts order my brother Ken “Pastor Max” Parks and his wife Joni Parks to remain in the courtroom for at least 15 minutes after our hearing so that we could safely leave the courthouse.

Judge Allyson Pitts was clearly intimidated by my brother’s overwhelming unstable behavior in the courtroom, she stopped the hearing short, and she abruptly left the courtroom while the security staff escorted my brother Ken “Pastor Max” Parks and his wife Joni Parks back to their seats.

We got the protective order against my brother, which banned his guns.  But as a horrific shock to us Judge Allyson Pitts violated Georgia statute, as seen below, and granted my brother’s baseless and defamatory filing for a counter-protective order against us, even though he had filed it late in violation of Georgia Code and presented absolutely no proof whatsoever for his libelous and slanderous claims.  But important to note is that the protective order against us did NOT ban our guns.  Judge Pitts did grant us our request to leave the courtroom first and ordered that my brother Ken “Pastor Max” Parks and his wife Joni Parks be held back so we could have enough time to safely leave the courthouse.  The Georgia Code states (emphasis added):

GA Code §19-13-4  “The court shall not have the authority to issue or approve mutual protective orders concerning paragraph (1), (2), (5), (9), or (11) of this subsection, or any combination thereof, unless the respondent has filed a verified petition as a counter petition pursuant to Code Section 19-13-4 no later than three days, not including Saturdays, Sundays, and legal holidays, prior to the hearing and the provisions of Code Section 19-13-4 have been satisfied.” (Emphasis added).

This staggering corruption of justice was astounding to us and to those we told about our absolutely horrific nightmare experience in Fulton County, Georgia’s magistrate court presided over by Judge Allyson Pitts.  We immediately contacted attorney after attorney to try to appeal the protective order and fight against my brother Ken “Pastor Max” Parks’ near instantaneous libelous claim that we violated the protective order.  Attorneys we spoke to told us that “Fulton County judges hand out protective orders like candy” with no evidence required.  All of the attorneys we spoke to had never heard of a protective order that didn’t ban guns, such as the court issued on us.  Some of those attorneys told us that the fact Judge Pitts didn’t ban us from having guns indicated that she merely appeased my brother Ken “Pastor Max” Parks to give him a token protective order but at the same time didn’t deny us our right to defend ourselves with our guns, thereby recognizing my brother Ken “Pastor Max” Parks as the sole aggressor.  Some attorneys told us they never subject their clients who are victims of violence to the protective order process because of how frequently innocent victims get slammed with protective orders against them with no evidence presented by their stalkers or abusers.  Many attorneys we spoke to told us that protective orders are a “sick joke” because “they’re never enforced.”  All of the attorneys told us that in Fulton County, Georgia it would take longer for us to get an appeal hearing than the one year term that the protective order was in force.

We were finally able to find an attorney to not only fight my brother Ken “Pastor Max” Parks’ defamatory claim that we violated the protective order but also file a truthful counterclaim that it was my brother who in fact was violating the justified protective order we had against him due to his continued online defamation and threats against us and his continued possession of his guns.

At the next hearing Judge Allyson Pitts did not give any validity to my brother Ken “Pastor Max” Parks’ false claims that we violated the protective order, but neither did she uphold the law (yet again) for our justifiable claim of my brother actually in fact violating the protective order we had against him by his continued possession of his guns and continuing his online defamation and threats against us.  Nonetheless, Judge Pitts did, at our attorney’s request, hold back my brother Ken “Pastor Max” Parks and his wife Joni Parks again, as she had done in the first hearing, so that we and our attorney could safely leave the courthouse.

My brother Ken “Pastor Max” Parks has used/abused the no-guns-banned protective order against us in his court filings in Connecticut, Tennessee and Georgia apparently in attempts to prejudice the courts against us, and we would not be at all surprised if he has boasted all over his private Facebook pages and possibly on other online sites about that protective order — all the while we also would not be surprised if my brother Ken “Pastor Max” Parks has failed to mention in his social media posts the guns-banned protective order we got against him and his violation of that protective order.

Our valid concern for anyone in the general public is that my brother Ken “Pastor Max” Parks will continue to weaponize the courts against people to file pro se his meritless, defamatory lawsuits, abuse subpoenas to obtain without any justification people’s personal information, file baseless, lying-under-oath protective order petitions against innocent people, make false complaints to various police departments trying to seek arrest warrants against his innocent victims and manufacture fraudulent “official” documents against innocent people he publicly defames and harasses.