Annette Fluker (J.C. Rice)
Lily Tomlin (AP)
And justice for the off the wall!
About a fifth of all cases clogging up the city’s civil federal courthouses each year are filed by people with fools for clients — themselves.
“We have a lot of frivolous cases,” veteran Judge Frederic Block said of self-filed lawsuits. “On the other hand, all the judges feel that you have to just grin and bear it . . . they do deserve their day in court.”
Going “pro se,” the legal term for the self-represented, might be cheaper than hiring a lawyer, but it isn’t free — launching a new case in federal courts costs $350 in fees.
Last fiscal year, about 1,300 pro-se filers made up 19.7 percent of all cases in Brooklyn federal court, and 2,148 such litigants in Manhattan’s US Southern District represented 23 percent of all cases.
Some of those cases were downright weird.
There’s the Brooklyn widow who believes she’s been targeted by a demonic cult and has filed nearly 100 lawsuits over the years; the Queens man who says the government has been poisoning his food; and the Manhattan man who recently claimed to be author Herman Melville’s nephew — and therefore entitled to all royalties from “Moby-Dick.”
The burden of goof is not as high for others who file pro se: prisoners who turn to civil courts to appeal their criminal convictions or people who fight housing discrimination, unfair job loss or a denial of an immigration status or Social Security benefits.
To find worthier cases, judges have to wade through hundreds of claims like these:
RIGHT TO THE POINT
He’s a man of few words.
Manhattan’s Victor Gaston didn’t have much to say in his Manhattan State Supreme Court filing against Mayor “m. Bloomberg,” “Manhattan Studios,” and “N.Y. Hotel and Casino,” among others.
The one- page lawsuit simply declares that he is suing because of “pure total corruption.”
Oh yeah, he’d like $580,000,000 in damages, too.
WHERE’S MY GAS MASK?
This guy’s a gas!
Colnoel [sic] John Holt wants gas masks to be as much a part of a commuting as MetroCards and subway rats. The Brooklyn man filed suit in Manhattan federal court seeking “judicial review by a federal judge for gross negligence for not providing GAS MASKS !!!!!!! to every day train riders. Al-Quida [sic] has its eyes terrorists on NYC subway system.”
The government should be preparing for nuclear fallout with “500,000 cans of chef-boy ar dee [sic] spaghetti & meatball” along with “scales to weigh people.”
In a statement that won’t surprise legal eagles, Holt describes himself as a “concerned citizen . . . not a real attorney versed in law.”
THAT’LL BE $1 MILLION, PLEASE
That’s my name, don’t wear it out — or I’ll sue!
Bronx man Maurice Scott may have been jailed in 2010 on charges of sexually abusing women at a Harlem gym, but that doesn’t mean prosecutors can just toss his name around, he says.
In a $195 million lawsuit filed in Manhattan, the inmate says he’s copyrighted and trademarked his name and never gave permission to the NYPD, Correction Department and the prosecutors to use it in court documents.
“Me, Myself and I Maurice Scott the Secured Party have not seen or been presented with any material fact which demonstrates that using My MAURICE SCOTT for themselves . . . without full disclosure and My written prior consent is now and hereby anything other than strictly forbidden and chargeable per each user and issuer in the amount of the sum certain for one million (1,000,000) Doallards [sic],” he writes in court papers.
POWER PLAY
Alben Xhidija is having an energy crisis.
The Brooklyn man claims he refused to cooperate with the federal government when it wanted him to — and he’s paid the price ever since. The feds have “consistently and continuously on a daily basis, engaged in electronically enabled harassment devices against plaintiff,” Xhidija alleges.
Xhidija alleges the use of “directed energy weapons,” which he doesn’t detail in his $400 million lawsuit, other than saying that the they’ve left him with migraines, “exposure to cancerous substances” and violated his right to privacy.
AT LEAST IT’S FOR A GOOD CAUSE
This lab’s a rat!
Basil Okocha filed a lawsuit against New Jersey-based Laboratory Corporation of America, which he claims “connived with the media” and falsified the results of his HIV testing, telling him he’s negative for the virus that causes AIDS — despite previous positive results.
The negative result is puzzling, particularly since he was infected with HIV on Dec. 6, 2004, “in a deliberate attack by a rogue nurse on orders of the Mafia,” Okocha claims.
The Bronx man wants $60 billion from the company and has specific plans for the money, saying he intends to dump 30 percent of his damages into a special bank account and “the interest shall be used ONLY in the financing of Space flights by NASA.”
The unemployed 40-year-old Okocha has filed 16 cases in New York and New Jersey federal courts since 2004.
He’s worked hard to find a lawyer over the years but no one has been willing to take his cases, he said during an interview in his Bronx apartment, where framed pictures of Abraham Lincoln and Ronald Reagan hang in the living room.
“I would advise that if you go to court, don’t go to court as a pro se,” he said.
A GIRL NAMED SUE
Forget Chechen rebels — Vladimir Putin has Annette Fluker to worry about.
The Brooklyn widow has filed 91 lawsuits in Manhattan and Brooklyn federal courts since 2006, against the likes of the Russian strongman, Oprah Winfrey, the Ku Klux Klan, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.
Fluker says Exxon is fishy, blaming the energy giant for spills that “travel by landmarks throughout USA of fish,” and takes “Iron Kaddffy” to task, alleging in a claim last year that “All blue witchcraft and green attack me from Iran and London,” and that “they” were “trying to make me mate with dogs.”
The 50-year-old mother of three describes herself as an author and songwriter and says she’s decoded the messages in the Bible to help her understand the “Satanic forces” she says have been directed her way for years.
“I think they got my grandfather in the 1960s. They did something to him,” Fluker told The Post. “Then all the assassinations happened to John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, and then I think they used Malcolm X to steer it.”
Fluker, who claims she’s never been diagnosed with a mental illness, doesn’t understand why she has a dismal 0-91 record in court.
The former certified nurse’s assistant has been barred from filing any more cases without permission in both Manhattan and Brooklyn federal courts but says she won’t let that stop her.
“It’s sad when nobody hears you out,” Fluker said.
WHERE’S INDIANA JONES?
A New Jersey man doesn’t understand why the CIA won’t answer his prayers.
Gilbert Roman of Ridgefield Park keeps sending in Freedom of Information Act requests, asking the agency for its files on the Ark of the Covenant; an ancient priest communicating with God; angels or persons dressed in white; “and other military or non-military reports on angels and persons dressed in white.”
He wasn’t satisfied when the agency wrote back, telling him it didn’t have any of such documents.
“The CIA has repeatedly failed to answer properly,” he wrote in a filing seeking a court order.
I WUZ ROBBED!
She got the shaft— and now it’s America’s headache.
When Jo Anna Canzoneri McCormick of Pasadena, Calif., brought an idea for an education Web site to an entity she describes only as “the company” they stole her concept and never paid her “royalties,” she claims.
Now, she’s suing President Obama — along with nearly every state and major city in the nation.
“The governors and states personally did not pay me. I personally am claiming theft. I personally feel my American civil rights have been taken way from me . . . I personally sent a copy to the president of the united states of America president barbarkt obama [sic],” the California gal wrote in her Manhattan federal filing.
BLESS YOU FATHER
Something about the Catholic Church just isn’t kosher.
So says Aniello Grimaldi, who was so miffed by a priest’s sermon at a Mass in Honolulu earlier this year that he was moved to confess his concerns to the holy man.
The “church breaches almost every law God gave Moses, including the cross on the altar, which is forbidden. The church does not keep the Sabbath and the holidays God ordered to be kept,” he politely told the holy man.
The peeved padre allegedly grabbed Grimaldi and kicked him out of the church, and the Bronx man has made a federal case of it — even naming Pope Benedict XVI as a defendant.
$1.5M FOR YOUR THOUGHTS?
Obama’s one slick operator.
A Queens man claims he wanted to help out President Obama after the 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, so he wrote a letter suggesting the greasy stuff be burned away.
“Should my suggestion be used I would like compensation!” Valmiki Ramani wrote.
A couple of weeks later, the president announced that controlled burns were being used to help stanch the spill, but Ramani says he was treated crudely — he never got the $1.5 million he requested in return for his lightbulb moment. “To date I received no payment,” he wrote in a Manhattan federal lawsuit.
THE DEATH HOUSE
And you think your landlord is bad?
A Queens man says he’s the victim of a campaign of torture waged by landlords acting as puppets of the government.
“I have had gas . . . bleach, plastic and other toxic substances released under and around my room in five different residences,” claims Anthony Perri.
Even dreaded “wood chips” were employed in the effort to poison him.
He labeled one Queens home “The Death House.”
Why are they after him? Perri says it’s aall because he criticized the government’s handling of a terror case in a previous Brooklyn federal-court lawsuit.
LILY TOMLIN’S TONGUE
Imitation is the worst form of flattery.
So says former teacher Deborah Fiderer, who’s on a mission to clear her name.
The Manhattan gal says in a lawsuit that she was stunned when a drunk played by Lily Tomlin on “The West Wing” bore her name — since she says she’s the only person in the country with the moniker.
Believing an out-of-work actress she once knew provided her name to the show, an enraged Fiderer hired a private investigator to find out more.
But the investigation was foiled because her phones were tapped — allowing show creator Aaron Sorkin and Tomlin to keep tabs on her every move as she tried to build her defamation case, she claims.
The two Hollywood heavyweights allegedly took it personally. On trips to California, Fiderer claims she spotted the dynamic duo tailing her in a car and looked back to see “The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe” star sticking her tongue out and “making a mocking face.”